Dr. Kay Scarpetta returns to Richmond, Virginia from freelancing in South Florida at the request of the recently appointed Chief Medical Examiner to solve the murder of a 14 year old girl, but she finds that nothing is as she left it. Her former lab is being demolished; the chief isn't really the one who requested her; and a glamorous FBI agent meddles with the case.

Kinsey Millhone's newest client, Michael Sutton, claims he has recently remembered a long-repressed event in his childhood that could unlock a twenty-year-old mystery; but as Kinsey tries to help Michael find the scene of a crime he witnessed, she begins to wonder if her client is telling her the whole truth.