Genre Fiction, Women Sleuths, Medical, Terrorism, Suspense, Murder, Serial Killers 

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner, inheriting not only an overbearing secretary, but a legacy of neglect - and potential corruption. She and her husband Benton Wesley, now a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, have relocated to Old Town Alexandria where she's headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in a post-pandemic world that's been torn by civil and political unrest.After just weeks on the job, she's called to a body on the railroad tracks. But there's more to the dead woman than meets the eye, and Scarpetta suspects an obfuscated connection between this corpse and another.Meanwhile, a catastrophe occurs in a top-secret laboratory in orbit, with two scientists aboard the craft suspected to be injured or dead. With the help of video links and two astronauts, Scarpetta must remotely work a crime scene in space.