Red Mist: Scarpetta (Book 19) - Softcover

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Patricia Cornwell is one of the world’s major internationally bestselling authors, translated into more than thirty-five languages in more than 120 countries. She is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine; a founding member of the National Forensic Academy; a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, New York City; and a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital’s National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research. In 2008, Cornwell won the Galaxy British Book Awards’s Book Direct Crime Thriller of the Year—the first American to win this prestigious award. In 2011, she was awarded the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture in Paris. Her most recent bestsellers include Port Mortuary, The Scarpetta Factor, The Front, and Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed. Her earlier works include Postmortem—the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year—and Cruel & Unusual, which won Britain’s Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American author.

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With high-tension suspense and cutting-edge technology, Patricia Cornwell—the world’s #1 bestselling crime writer—once again proves her exceptional ability to entertain and enthrall in this remarkable novel featuring chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

On her quest to find out exactly what happened to her recently murdered former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, Scarpetta drives to the Georgia Prison for Women to meet a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer. Against the advice of her FBI forensic psychologist husband, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out.

Scarpetta has both personal and professional reasons to learn more about a string of grisly killings: the murder of a Savannah family years earlier, a young woman on death row, and then other inexplicable deaths that begin to occur at a breathtaking pace. Driven by inner forces, Scarpetta discovers connections that compel her to conclude that what she thought ended with Fielding’s death and an attempt on her own life is only the beginning of something far more destructive: a terrifying terrain of conspiracy and potential terrorism on an international scale.

And she is the only one who can stop it.

Praise for the novels of Patricia Cornwell

PORT MORTUARY

“With Port Mortuary, Cornwell has presented a gift to her readers—a return to over-the-top forensics and bigger-than-life characters that drew us to the Scarpetta series in the first place.”

—The Jackson Clarion-Ledger

“Entertaining…Scarpetta is one of the most believable characters in crime fiction because her many strengths are tempered by true human frailties…a must-read for crime fiction fans.”

—The Vancouver Sun

THE SCARPETTA FACTOR

“[An] insistent and gripping thriller.”

—The Star-Ledger

“A finely crafted, pulse-racing thriller that readers won’t want to put down.”

—Library Journal

SCARPETTA

“When it comes to the forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“The coolly graphic autopsy scenes are classic Scarpetta, but new elements…keep this tale fresh.”

—People

THE FRONT

“[A] classically written crime novel.”

—USA Today

AT RISK

“Highly entertaining.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Scary.”

—The Boston Globe

BOOK OF THE DEAD

“Compelling.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“What a walloping, riveting mix of…adventure and psychology. Author Cornwell certainly is skilled at dissecting the not always attractive innards of human nature.”

—Forbes

PREDATOR

“A fine psychological thriller.”

—The Denver Post

“Sensationally plotted, with a twist at the end that will leave you gasping for breath.”

—Daily Express (U.K.)

TRACE

“Cornwell gets her Hitchcock on…[She] can generate willies with subtle poetic turns.”

—People

“Fun [and] flamboyant.”

—Entertainment Weekly

BLOW FLY

“[A] grisly fast-paced thriller…utterly chilling.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“A story so compelling that even longtime readers will be stunned by its twists and turns.”

—Chicago Tribune

THE LAST PRECINCT

“Ignites on the first page…Cornwell has created a character so real, so compelling, so driven that this reader has to remind herself regularly that Scarpetta is just a product of an author’s imagination.”

—USA Today

“The most unexpected of the Kay Scarpetta novels so far…Compelling…Terrific.”

—The Miami Herald

BLACK NOTICE

“Brainteasing…one of the most savage killers of her career…[a] hair-raising tale with a French twist.”

—People

“The author’s darkest and perhaps best…a fast-paced, first-rate thriller.”

—The San Francisco Examiner

POINT OF ORIGIN

“Cornwell lights a fire under familiar characters—and sparks her hottest adventure in years.”

—People

“Packed with action and suspense.”

—Rocky Mountain News

TITLES BY PATRICIA CORNWELL

SCARPETTA SERIES

ANDY BRAZIL SERIES

Isle of Dogs

Southern Cross

Hornet’s Nest

WIN GARANO SERIES

The Front

At Risk

NONFICTION

Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed

BIOGRAPHY

Ruth, A Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham
(also published as A Time for Remembering:
The Story of Ruth Bell Graham)

OTHER WORKS

Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta’s Kitchen
Life’s Little Fable
Scarpetta’s Winter Table

BERKLEY BOOKS NEW YORK

My thanks to the Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center, and also to Dr. Marcella Fierro, Dr. Jamie Downs, and other experts who were so helpful with my research, including Stephen Braga, who generously shared his expertise in criminal law.

As always, I am grateful to Dr. Staci Gruber for her incredible technical skills and expertise, and her patience and encouragement.

This book is dedicated to you, Staci.

And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.

—REVELATION 16:1

Table of Contents

1

Iron rails the rusty brown of old blood cut across a cracked paved road that leads deeper into the Lowcountry. As I drive over train tracks, it enters my mind that the Georgia Prison for Women is on the wrong side of them and maybe I should take it as another warning and turn back. It’s not quite four p.m., Thursday, June 30. There’s time to catch the last flight to Boston, but I know I won’t.

This part of coastal Georgia is a moody terrain of brooding forests draped with Spanish moss and mudflats etched with convoluted creeks that give way to grassy plains heavy with light. Snowy egrets and great blue herons fly low over brackish water, dragging their feet, and then the woods close in again on either side of the narrow tar-laced road I’m on. Coiling kudzu strangles underbrush and cloaks forest canopies in scaly dark leaves, and giant cypress trees with thick gnarled knees rise out of swamps like prehistoric creatures wading and prowling. While I’ve yet to spot an alligator or a snake, I’m sure they are there and aware of my big white machine roaring and chugging and backfiring.

How I ended up in such a rattletrap that wanders all over the road and stinks like fast food and cigarettes with a whiff of rotting fish, I don’t know. It’s not what I told my chief of staff, Bryce, to reserve, which was a safe, dependable, mid-size sedan, preferably a Volvo or a Camry, with side and head air bags and a GPS. When I was met outside the airport terminal by a young man in a white cargo van that doesn’t have air-conditioning or even a map, I told him there had been an error. I’d been given someone...