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It’s Thursday, June 12, my birthday, and I refuse to preoccupy myself with my age or how time flees faster with each passing year. There is much to be in a good mood about and grateful for. Life is the best it’s ever been.

We’re off to Miami for a week of reading, eating and drinking whatever we want, maybe tennis and a few scuba dives, and long walks on the beach. I’d like to go to the movies and share a bucket of popcorn, and not get up in the morning until we feel like it. I intend for us to rest, play, to say the hell with everything. Benton’s present to me is a condo he rented on the ocean.

We’ve reached a point in life where we should enjoy a little time off. But he’s been saying that for as long as I can remember. We both have. As of this morning we’re officially on leave, at least in theory. In fact there really isn’t such a thing. Benton is an intelligence analyst, what people still call a profiler. He’s never off his FBI leash, and the cliché that death never takes a holiday is true. I’m never off my leash, either.

The pennies are lit up in the morning glare, fiery and too perfect and I don’t touch them. I don’t recall seeing them earlier lined up precisely straight on the wall, all oriented exactly the same way. But the backyard was mostly in shadows the first time I ventured out, and I was distracted by my pouty dog’s unwillingness to potty and by my landscaping checklist. The roses need fertilizing and spraying. The lawn needs weeding and should be mown before a storm ushers in a heat wave as predicted for tonight.

I have instructions written out for Bryce. He’s to make sure that all is taken care of not only at the CFC but also on the home front. Lucy and Janet are dog nannies while we’re gone, and we have our usual trick that isn’t flawless but better than the alternative of leaving Sock alone in an empty house for even ten minutes.

My niece will arrive and I’ll walk him out the door as if I’m taking him with me. Then I’ll coax him into whatever she’s driving, hopefully not one of her monster machines with no backseat. I asked her pointedly to use her SUV, not that it’s a normal vehicle, either. Nothing my former law enforcement computer genius power-addicted niece owns is for the hoi polloi—not her matte black stealth bomber of an armored SUV, not her aggressive 599 GTO that sounds like the space shuttle. Sock hates supercars and doesn’t like Lucy’s helicopter. He startles easily. He gets scared.

“Come on,” I encourage my silent four-legged friend from his snooze in the grass with eyes wide, what I call playing possum. “You need to potty.” He doesn’t budge, his brown stare fixed on me. “Come on. I’m asking nicely. Please, Sock. Up!”

He’s been out of sorts all morning, sniffing around, acting skittish, then lying down, his tail curled under, tucking his long narrow nose beneath his front paws, looking completely dejected and anxious. Sock knows when we’re leaving him and gets depressed, and I always feel rotten about it as if I’m a terrible mother. I lean over and stroke his short brindle fur, feeling his ribs, then gentle with his ears, misshapen and scarred from former abuses at the racetrack. He gets up, pressing against my legs like a listing ship.

“Everything’s fine,” I reassure him. “You’re going to run around on acres of land and play with Jet Ranger. You know how much you love that.”

“He doesn’t.” Benton reseats himself on the bench and picks up the paper beneath spreading branches of dark green leaves loaded with waxy white blossoms the size of pie pans. “It’s fitting you have a pet that doesn’t listen and completely manipulates you.”

“Come on.” I lead him over to his favorite privacy area of shaded boxwoods and evergreens in thick beds of pine-scented mulch. He’s not interested. “Seriously? He’s acting odd.”

I look around, searching for anything else that might indicate something is off and my attention wanders back to the pennies. A chill touches the back of my neck. I don’t see anyone. I hear nothing but the breeze whispering through the trees and the distant sound of a gas-powered leaf blower. It slowly comes to me, what I didn’t recognize at first. I see it. The tweet with the link that I got some weeks ago. The attachment was an odd note to me and a poem, I recall.

The Twitter name was Copperhead and I remember only snippets of what the poem said. Something about the light coming and a hangman that struck me as the ramblings of a deranged individual. Delusional messages and voice mails aren’t uncommon. My Cambridge Forensic Center email address and phone number are public information. Lucy always traces unsolicited electronic communications and lets me know if there is anything I should worry about. I vaguely recall her telling me the tweet was sent from a hotel business center in Morristown, New Jersey.

I need to ask her about it. In fact I’ll do it now. Her cockpit is wireless, her flight helmet Bluetooth enabled. For that matter she’s probably already landed, and I slide my phone out of a pocket of my jacket. But before I get the chance someone is calling me first. The ringtone sounds like an old telephone. Detective Pete Marino, and I recognize his mobile number in the display, not his personal phone but the one he uses on the job.

If he were calling to say happy birthday or have a nice trip he wouldn’t be on his Cambridge police BlackBerry. He’s careful about using his departmental equipment, vehicles, email or any form of communication for anything remotely personal. It’s one of life’s many ironies and contradictions when it comes to him. He certainly wasn’t like that all the years he worked for me.

“Oh God,” I mutter. “This had better not be what I think it is.”

“Sorry to do this to you, Doc,” Marino’s big voice sounds in my earpiece. “I know you got a plane to catch. But you need to be aware of what’s going on. You’re my first call.”

“What is it?” I begin slowly pacing the yard.

“We got one on Farrar Street,” he says. “In broad daylight, plenty of people around and nobody heard or saw a thing. Just like the other ones. And the victim selection bothers the shit out of me, especially the timing with Obama coming here today.”

“What other ones?”

“Where are you right now?” he asks.

“Benton and I are in the backyard.”

I feel my husband’s eyes on me.

“Maybe you should go inside and not be out in the open. That’s the way it happens,” Marino says. “People out in the open going about their business …”

“What other ones? What people?” I look around as I pace.

Sock is sitting, his ears folded back. Benton gets up from the bench, watching me. It continues to be a beautiful peaceful morning but it’s a mirage. Everything has just turned ugly.

“New Jersey right after Christmas and then again in April. The same M.O.,” Marino says and I interrupt him again.

“Hold on. Back up. What’s happened, exactly? And let’s not compare the M.O. to other cases before we know the facts.”

“A homicide not even five minutes from you. We got the call about an hour ago …”

“And you’re just notifying my office now? Or more specifically, notifying me?”

He knows damn well that the more quickly the body can be examined in situ and transported to my office, the better. We should have been called instantly.

“Machado wanted to secure the scene.”

Sil Machado is a Cambridge PD investigator. He and Marino are also good friends.

“He wanted to make sure there’s not an active shooter still there waiting to pick off someone else. That’s what he said.” Marino’s tone is odd.

I detect hostility.

“The information we’ve got so far is the victim felt someone was after him. He’d been jumpy of late, and that’s true in the two Jersey cases,” Marino says. “The victims felt they were being watched and screwed with and then out of the blue they’re dead. It’s a lot to explain and right now we don’t have time. The shooter may still be in the area even as we speak. You should stay inside until I get there. I’m maybe ten minutes out.”

“Give me the exact address and I’ll get myself there.”

“No way. Not happening. And wear a vest.”

I watch Benton fold the paper and pick up his coffee, his happy demeanor eclipsed by what he senses. Life is about to change on us. I already know it. I look at him, my expression somber as I stop pacing and pour my espresso into the mulch. I did it without even thinking. A reflex. A relaxing cheerful day has ended as abruptly as a plane slamming into a mountain socked in by fog.

“You don’t think this is a case that Luke or one of the other docs can handle?” I ask Marino but I already know the answer.

He’s not interested in dealing with my deputy chief, Luke Zenner. Marino isn’t going to settle for any of my other medical examiners.

“Or we can send in one of our investigators if that would suffice. Jen Garate certainly could handle it and Luke can do the post immediately.” I try anyway. “He’s probably in the autopsy room. We have five cases this morning.”

“Well now you got six. Jamal Nari,” Marino says as if I should know who he’s talking about.

“Shot in his driveway as he was getting groceries out of his car between nine-forty-five and ten,” Marino says. “A neighbor noticed him down on the pavement and called nine-one-one exactly one hour and eight minutes ago.”

“How do you know he was shot if you haven’t been to the scene yet?” I check my watch. It’s eight minutes past eleven.

“He’s got a nice hole in his neck and another one where his left eye used to be. Machado’s there and has already gotten the wife on the phone. She told him some weird shit’s been happening in the past month and Nari was concerned enough to start changing his patterns, even his car. At least that’s what Machado’s passed on to me.” That tone again.

Hostility, and it makes no sense. The two of them go to baseball and hockey games together. They ride Harleys, and Machado is largely responsible for convincing Marino to resign as my chief forensic investigator and go back to policing. This was last year. I’m still adjusting to his empty office at the CFC and his new habit of telling me what to do. Or thinking he can. Like right now. He’s demanding my presence at a death scene as if I have no say about it.

“I’ve already got a few emailed pictures,” Marino explains. “Like I said it reminds me of the lady killed in New Jersey two months ago, the one whose mother I went to high school with. Shot while she was waiting for the Edgewater Ferry, people everywhere and no one heard or saw a damn thing. Once in the back of the neck, once in the mouth.”

I remember hearing about the case and the original suspicion that it was a murder for hire, possibly domestic related.

“In December it was the guy getting out of his car at his restaurant in Morristown,” Marino continues as my mind jumps to the peculiar poem again.

It was tweeted from a hotel in Morristown. Copperhead. My attention wanders back to the seven pennies on the wall.

“And I was there for that one, during the holidays, hanging out with some of my cop buddies, so I went to the scene. Shot once in the back of the neck, once in the gut. Solid copper bullets, high-speed velocities with so little frag we can’t do positive ballistics matching. But there’s a definite consistency in the two cases. We’re pretty sure the same rifle was used, an unusual one.”

We. At some point Marino inserted himself into an investigation that is outside of his jurisdiction. Serial murders, possibly sniper kills or at least that seems to be what he’s implying, and there’s nothing worse than an investigation launched by assumptions. If you already know the answer you torque everything to fit the theory.

“Let’s go slowly until we know exactly what we’re dealing with,” I say to him as I watch Benton watching me and checking his phone.

I suspect he’s skimming through news feeds and emails, trying to find out for himself what is going on. He continues to glance in the direction of the Academy of Arts and Sciences where he saw something flash like a camera flash, only duller. A glint, a flick of light, he said. The lens of a riflescope enters my mind. I think of the low dispersion glass or kill-flash devices used by snipers and competition shooters.

I meet Benton’s eyes and indicate we need to go inside the house slowly, calmly, as if nothing is the matter. I pause on the patio, checking the grill. I cover it with the lid, acting unflustered and unconcerned. If someone is watching us or has a riflescope trained on us there is nothing we can do about it.

Sudden movements or an impression of panic will make matters worse. Lucy and Janet didn’t notice anyone when they did an aerial recon but I don’t put much stock in that. The person could be camouflaged. Maybe he ducked out of sight when he heard the helicopter’s approach. Maybe he’s back.

“You know who Jack Kuster is?” Marino asks.

I tell him I don’t as Benton and I climb the back steps with Sock on our heels.

“Morristown,” Marino says. “Their lead investigator and a master forensic firearms instructor. He’s suspicious we’re talking about a 5R like you see with sharpshooters and snipers who build their own rifles. My buddies there have been keeping me up to speed. And I got a personal interest.”

Marino grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey, and loves to attend concerts and sports events at the MetLife. This past February it was the Super Bowl. He claimed his cop friends with the Morris County Sheriff’s Department managed to get tickets.

“There’s copper frag at the scene, more of the same glitter where the bullet exited his body and slammed into the pavement,” Marino says.

“The body’s been moved?” That had better not be what he’s implying.

“Apparently some of the frag’s in blood that flowed out from under his head. Don’t worry. Nobody’s touched anything they shouldn’t.”

Benton shuts the screen door behind us, then the heavy wooden inner door, deadbolting it. I stand in the hallway on the phone while he disappears toward the kitchen. I end the call because someone else is trying me and I look to see who it is.

Bryce Clark.

Then I have him in my earpiece.

“Remember the high school music teacher who made the big stink about being persecuted by the government and ended up having a beer and barbecue with Obama?” Bryce says right off and now I understand. “A real jerk to you, remember? Dissed you right in front of the president? Basically called you a body snatcher and a Nazi who sells skin, bones, eyes, livers, lungs to the highest bidder?”

Jamal Nari. My mood gets worse.

“Did I mention a shit storm?” Bryce says. “It’s already all over the news. Don’t ask me why they released his identity instantly. Waited what? An hour? Maybe ask Marino that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean it’s no secret where Nari lives—or lived—obviously since there were news crews including CNN and Reuters and my fave GMA camped out there when that disastrous PR faux pas happened that landed him at the White House during happy hour. But they’re saying it’s him for sure. How did it happen that they released this all over the planet?”

I don’t have an answer.

“Are you going to the scene or should I tell Luke to head there? Before you answer? My opinion? It should be you,” adds my talkaholic chief of staff. “They’re already tweeting conspiracy theories. And get this? A tweet about a Cambridge man possibly murdered on Farrar Street? It’s been retweeted a million times since nine a.m.”

I don’t see how that’s possible. I recall Marino saying Nari was killed between nine-forty-five and ten. I tell Bryce to get transport to the scene ASAP and make sure they bring a barrier shelter and set it up. I don’t want people gawking and taking pictures with their phones.

“We release absolutely nothing to anyone,” I instruct. “Not one word. Alert the cleanup service, and as soon as we’ve documented the scene I want blood and any other biological material removed as if it was never there.”

“I’ll get right on it,” he says. “Oh yeah! And happy birthday, Doctor Scarpetta! I was going to sing it to you. But maybe later’s better …?”