Annie has fallen out of the habit of listening to her husband. She and Paul have been married for a long time; it's easy to nod as he drones on. That becomes a problem, of course, when Paul disappears and the police have questions. Was Paul having issues at work? Is there any reason to think he might harm himself? Annie doesn't know. But someone does. An unsettling photo found amongst Paul's things turns the investigation toward his job as a middle school teacher and a troubled girl who is hiding secrets of her own. But what exactly happened to Paul on the day he left for work and never made it to the classroom? Is his disappearance related to a local heroin trafficking operation?

When a young woman is found strangled to death and left on a park bench in Santa Rosa, California, Detective Eddie Mahler and his Violent Crime Investigations (VCI) Team are called to the scene. The crime immediately thrusts Mahler back to two unsolved homicides --- young women who were also strangled --- at this same location a couple of years earlier. His inability to find evidence against the man he knows was responsible for their deaths has haunted him since. Now suffering from chronic migraines that affect his vision, Mahler has secretly lost faith in the investigation process, and must rely more than ever on his team.