Murder-Minded : Crime writer Patricia Cornwell isn't afraid to tackle the grisly. Her newest is 'Cause of Death.'

And now it's another day, a bright May morning, and Cornwell is again carrying one of her research books. She's in the back seat of a Bell Jet Ranger 206B-III helicopter that is vrr-vrr-vrr-ing over Virginia.

She points out her house in the security-gated Richmond community of Lockgreen. She's bought six lots, for extra privacy, in the upper-class subdivision and plans to build a "fairly large" house in the future.

She is very security-conscious, she says, because she needs to be. After all, she's an attractive woman, now single, with money. "I get a lot of fan mail from inmates who want to meet me when they get out of jail," she says. When she makes public appearances, she uses bodyguards.

Cornwell loves helicopters. They give her an orderly, controlled view of the land below. They give her ideas. They keep her from getting lost--she's notorious among friends and staff for her poor sense of direction. They save time. And she can afford them.

Off to the left she points to the "dead fleet," a covey of ships that have been mothballed by the Navy. A few minutes later, the helicopter circles some other ships that play a role in "Cause of Death."

Cornwell prides herself on accuracy in her novels. She calls on friends at the police department, at the FBI academy in Quantico and in various Washington agencies to help her get her facts right.

"She's very knowledgeable," says former FBI criminal behavior expert John Douglas. "Her books are very authentic. She really does her homework."

She has the instincts of a journalist because she was one. Newly married in 1979, she went to work for the Charlotte Observer. Her first job was piecing together the TV listings. Then she became a police-beat reporter.

When Charles Cornwell decided to leave Davidson and enter Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Patricia followed. She wrote a biography of Ruth Graham, "A Time for Remembering," which was published in 1983. A new edition of the book comes out in August.

But she wanted to be a crime novelist. To gain firsthand experience, she took a job in the Virginia medical examiner's office in 1984.

For six years she worked at the morgue, first as a technical writer, then as a computer analyst. She also volunteered to be a city cop.

In 1988 she decided she didn't want to be a preacher's wife. She and her husband divorced. In 1990 she published her first Scarpetta novel, "Postmortem," inspired by serial murders in Richmond.

As for her two rings, one is a signet ring with the Scarpetta crest--a design by an FBI friend that incorporates a microscope, the caduceus symbol of the medical profession, a toe tag, a syringe and a woman's shoe. (In Italian, "scarpetta" means "little shoe.") The other is a simple gold band.

It's not a wedding ring, exactly, but it's close. Cornwell bought it in Verona, Italy, the home of Kay Scarpetta. "This doesn't mean I'm married to my character," she says. "But I value this thing I do. It's about commitment."

Commitment to her work and to her readers.

"I owe it to them and to myself to never flag," she says. "The ring is a reminder that whenever I start feeling lazy, I need to get my butt out there."

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She says she writes her stories the way the medical examiner's office works a case: She starts with a body. "Then I let the story tell itself."

Unlike many crime writers, however, Cornwell also has a political agenda. Like Fierro, she's a strong believer in victims' rights and in meting out punishment. "Oppression and discrimination are wrong," she says. "I get physically angry when I hear about it."

She rants against inequality. "Homicide," she says, "is the ultimate abuse of power."

In a way, she is Kay Scarpetta's research assistant. Every venue, every person, every waking hour, even an occasional dreaming hour, is fodder for her fiction.

But her best stories still come from the morgue.

"You start with very little information," she says.

Then, working with a team of forensic specialists, she says, you can determine when, where and how the person died. And, with a little detective work and experience and imagination, you can figure out why.

"A dead body tells you how a person lived," she says.