The fingerprints say the murderer is the man whos just been executed.. . At 11.05 one December evening in Richmond Virginia convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the electric chair. At the morgue Dr Kay Scarpetta waits for Waddells body. Preparing to perform a post-mortem before the subject is dead is a strange feeling but Scarpetta has been here before. & Waddells death is not the only newsworthy event on this freezing night: the grotesquely wounded body of a young boy is found propped against a rubbish skip. To Scarpetta the two cases seem unrelated until she recalls that the body of Waddells victim had been arranged in a strikingly similar position.. .