Undersheriff Bill Gastner of New Mexico investigates the death of his superior who was involved in a secret investigation on his own. He died in a plane crash and an autopsy shows the pilot was killed by gunfire from the ground.

Undersheriff Bill Gastner finds his cranky ancient neighbor Florencio Apodaca has borrowed a bit of land to bury his equally ancient wife--and the dead woman's stepson questions if she died a natural death.

When Posadas Register reporter Linda Real barely survives her nighttime patrol with one of Undersherrif Bill Gastner's deputies who is killed by a more accurate shotgun blast than the one that ruins her face, Bill gets angry. Teamed with his intuitive, observant detective Estelle Reyes-Guzman and her usual sharp eye for physical evidence, Bill implicates Tammy Woodruff, the thrill-seeking daughter of the local Republican County Chairman, in the brutal...

"Parked high on a side road on the flank of the second highest peak in the San Cristobal mountains, peacefully surveying what soon would no longer be his responsibility as a sheriff, almost-seventy Bill Gastner could think that the night would be without incident. He'd be wrong. He doesn't foresee that a car full of alcohol-inspired adolescents would run into his automobile. Nor that the driver would take off and disappear in the nearby woods. Far...