ON THE LAST MORNING OF VIRGINIA'S BLOODIEST YEAR since the Civil War, I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea. I was in my robe in lamplight, reviewing my office's annual statistics for car crashes, hangings, beatings, shootings, stabbings, when the telephone rudely rang at five-fifteen.

"Damn," I muttered, for I was beginning to feel less charitable about answering Dr. Philip Mant's phone. "All right, all right."

His weathered cottage was tucked behind a dune in a stark coastal Virginia subdivision called Sandbridge, between the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base and Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Mant was my deputy chief medical examiner for the Tidewater District, and sadly, his mother had died last week on Christmas Eve. Under ordinary circumstances, his returning to London to get family affairs in order would not have constituted an emergency for the Virginia medical examiner system. But his assistant forensic pathologist was already out on maternity leave, and recently, the morgue supervisor had quit.

"Mant residence," I answered as wind tore the dark shapes of pines beyond windowpanes.

"This is Officer Young with the Chesapeake police," said someone who sounded like a white male born and bred in the South. "I'm trying to reach Dr. Mant."

"He is out of the country," I answered. "How may I help you?"

"Are you Mrs. Mant?"

"I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner. I'm covering for Dr. Mant."

The voice hesitated, and went on, "We got a tip about a death. An anonymous call."

"Do you know where this death supposedly took place?" I was making notes.

“Supposedly the Inactive Naval Ship Yard."

"Excuse me?" I looked up.

He repeated what he had said.