Unnatural Exposure

For part of my independent study I read the book Unnatural Exposure, by Patricia Cornwell. The book is a murder mystery with a large focus on the forensic aspects of the investigation. The main character in the book is Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner form Virginia. She is recently divorced and live in an apartment by herself. She could be described as a workaholic since she spends all of her time thinking and working on her cases. She is always the first person to arrive at the morgue and the last to leave.

As the book begins, Dr. Scarpetta is called to a crime scene at a garbage dump in Virginia. When she gets there she soon realizes that it must be a horrific scene because everyone there was almost in shock. She walked up to the taped off area and started understanding why everyone was in so much shock. The body at the crime scene was nothing but a decomposing torso. The person's legs, arms, and head had been cut off. They had found the body when a tractor was spreading the trash around. After examining the entire crime scene, Dr. Scarpetta bought the body back to the morgue to look at it closer. She preformed an autopsy and found out that the body was a woman, older, and had a petite frame. The search for the murderer began.

The investigation started with interviews of the people at the dump but that turned up nothing. It almost seemed like this was a dead end case, until DEADDOC e-mailed Dr. Scarpetta. DEADDOC was an internet screen name used by the killer. The person e-mailed Kay with creepy letters that disclosed information that only the killer would know. As the communication went on DEADDOC mailed her actual pictures of the arms and legs lying in pools of blood. The FBI tried very hard to find out were DEADDOC was plugged in to a phone jack but he was never on line long enough to track him down. This became very frustrating for Kay and she tried to move on to other cases.

The next scene Dr. Kay Scarpetta was called to was on a remote island right off the shores of Virginia. When she arrived at the scene she was told that it was a woman and she was found dead in her bead. The local cops also warned the doctor that the dead woman had bumps and welts all over her body. Thinking nothing of this information Kay walked up the stairs into the bedroom and began to investigate the scene. When she pulled back the sheets she was shocked. Dr. Scarpetta was looking at the woman and started feeling extremely uneasy. She had seen these types of bumps and wounds before. They looked like some sort of smallpox disease. As soon as she made the connection to this highly infectious disease Kay ran out of the room. The whole Island had to be quarantined and Dr. Scarpetta was put into solitary confinement until they were sure she was not infected.

After she got out of confinement she realized that she had seen some similar