When Frank Damien joined the sheriff's office in a Southern California coastal town it was to escape brutal and often heinous crimes he experienced as a New York Police Detective. Thinking himself safe from something that still gives him nightmares, he was not prepared for the brutal murder of a husband and wife, bludgeoned to death in their bed seemingly without a fight. His belief that they were not killed together and at the same time and with more than one killer, is a view that is not shared by his coworkers, or anyone else. Something about this murder keeps drawing him back to the one in New York that cost him his wife and took him to the edge of insanity. The suspects are many because the dead husband had many enemies. Frank has on and off relationship with the dead man' ex-wife, who in so many ways reminds him of the wife he lost. It is a relationship that is complicated by the fact that her son is a prime suspect.
