Nobel laureate and advisor to the White House Sal Giordano is found dead in the middle of an abandoned theme park. When Virginia's chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta is alerted about the case, she's warned that the victim is someone she knows. When she hears who it is, she's devastated.

While teaching in Rome for a summer during the early days of her career, she met Giordano. What began as an intense love affair evolved into a life long friendship, and now he's suddenly and bizarrely dead. Scarpetta's Secret Service investigator niece Lucy says that it appears he was dropped out of an unidentified flying craft, his skin red from some type of radiation.

When Scarpetta does the autopsy, she finds yet another inexplicable surprise. While it becomes increasingly suspicious that otherworldly forces could be responsible for Giordano's death, she detects the presence of a more likely earthbound explanation that in her mind is far more evil.