Chapter 2 Summary

Scarpetta meets Detective Joe Trent at Henrico Doctor's Hospital in order to examine assault victim, Eddie Heath. Eddie Heath is a ten-year-old boy who was abducted and mutilated, then left for dead behind an abandoned grocery store. Besides a bullet wound to his head, Eddie has two sections of skin that appear to have been excised, one from his shoulder and the other from his thigh. Scarpetta examines each of the wounds and believes the killer was trying to hide something. At first Scarpetta believes the killer was removing identifying marks from the body, but when she learns the boy had no tattoos or scars, Scarpetta begins to wonder if perhaps the killer was trying to hide something that could identify the killer, such as bite marks. When she returns to her office, Scarpetta asks her computer expert to run a search on...