After working on one of the worst mass killings in US history,
Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns home to recover, but
an unsettling call drives her straight back to work. The body of
a young woman has been discovered inside the sheltered gates of
MIT, draped in an unusual cloth and posed in a way that is too
deliberate to be the killer's first strike. A preliminary
examination reveals that the body is covered in a fine dust that
under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and
sapphire-blue, and physical evidence links this to another series
of disturbing homicides in Washington, DC.