It is 1803, 6 years since Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage. Their peaceful, orderly world seems unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house, and her sister Jane lives nearby. Preparations are underway for the annual autumn ball. On the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, the disgraced sister, who is hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered....

Determined to find out what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months earlier, Kay Scarpetta travels to the Georgia Prison for Women, where an inmate has information not only on Fielding, but also on a string of grisly killings. The murder of an Atlanta family years ago, a young woman on death row, and the inexplicable deaths of homeless people as far away as California seem unrelated. But Scarpetta discovers connections...