When David McIvey, a despised yet brilliant surgeon, is found murdered outside of the Kelso/McIvey rehab center, a safe haven that he planned to close, Oregon attorney Barbara Holloway is confronted by a wealth of suspects.

When state senator Robert McCrutchen is murdered, the evidence points to David Etheridge, who, along with Robert, had been investigated in the death of a young coed twenty-two years earlier, and Barbara Holloway, following her intuition, takes David on as a client.