A respectable policeman from a small southern town is the rapist and murderer of an eleven-year-old girl?! This is indicated by numerous evidence discovered after his death, which occurred under mysterious circumstances. But... isn’t this too much evidence? Kay Scarpetta, who joined the investigation, did not can escape the thought that the case is fabricated, and the “criminal” is just a pawn in the game of the real killer. But who is he? And how to find him? In search of answers, Kay goes to the Corpse Farm research center. Perhaps it is there that the “silent witnesses” - the dead - will tell her the terrible truth about what happened to them and who is to blame for it?..