Doctor Paul D'Amato's sister found him slumped over his dining room table with a .38 caliber bullet hole in his right temple. The original investigation listed D'Amato's death as accidental. Months later, insurance investigator Velma Barnett disagrees. She thinks it looks like a suicide, which would negate the half million dollar death benefit D'Amato's sister hoped to receive. Barnet petitions the Blount County sheriff to reopen the case and continue the investigation, which by anyone's definition had been brief and inadequate. Sheriff Bettye Lambert asks middle-aged detectives Sam Jenkins and John Gallagher to re-investigate the closed case. It doesn't take that pair long to determine that the semi-retired psychiatrist, most recently employed by the Veteran's Administration, had either committed suicide or been murdered. The case leads Jenkins and Gallagher into a quagmire of pornography, war veterans with non-physical wounds, a wealthy organized crime figure, a drug dealer looking to wiggle out of an arrest, and the reappearance of two former police officials who left a scar on the sheriff's office that only time and short memories could erase. As their investigation continues, Jenkins and Gallagher progress from what began as the death of a doctor to murder times four.