body of evidence Author:patricia d. cornwell Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, obscene phone calls to the reclusive author. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West. But, eventually, she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably inites her killer in.. — Thus begins for Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta ... more »the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed and then nearly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a pulitzer prize-winning author and the disappearance of Beryl's manuscript. Pressure from Beryl'a agent and the attorney general, as well as the mysterious reappearance of Scarpetts's former lover, lawyer Mark James, force her beyond the boundaries of forensic medicine. She must retrace Beryl's footsteps. An investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes and lasers leads Scarpetta deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own.« less