“Is it just my imagination,” said Detective Barry Frost, “or do you and I catch all the weird ones?”

Madam X was definitely one of the weird ones, thought Detective Jane Rizzoli as she drove past TV news vans and turned into the parking lot of the medical examiner’s building. It was only eightAM, and already the hyenas were yapping, ravenous for details of the ultimate cold case-a case that Jane had greeted with skeptical laughter when Maura had phoned last night. The sight of the news vans made Jane realize that maybe it was time to get serious, time to consider the possibility that this was not, after all, some elaborate practical joke being played on her by the singularly humorless medical examiner.

She pulled into a parking space and sat eyeing the vans, wondering how many more cameras would be waiting out here when she and Frost came back out of the building.

“At least this one shouldn’t smell bad,” Jane said.

“But mummies can give you diseases, you know.”

Jane turned to her partner, whose pale and boyish face looked genuinely worried. “What diseases?” she asked.

“Since Alice has been away, I’ve been watching a lot of TV. Last night I saw this show on the Discovery Channel, about mummies that carry these spores.”

“Ooh. Scary spores.”

“It’s no joke,” he insisted. “They can make you sick.”

“Geez, I hope Alice gets home soon. You’re getting overdosed on the Discovery Channel.”

They stepped out of the car into cloying humidity that made Jane’s already unruly dark hair spring into frizzy waves. During her four years as a homicide detective, she had made this walk into the medical examiner’s building many times, slip-sliding across ice in January, dashing through rain in March, and slogging across pavement as hot as ash in August. These few dozen paces were familiar to her, as was the grim destination. She’d believed this walk would become easier over time, that one day she’d feel immune to any horrors the stainless-steel table might serve up. But since her daughter Regina’s birth a year ago, death held more terror for her than it ever had before. Motherhood didn’t make you stronger; it made you vulnerable and afraid of what death could steal from you.