A guy walks right into a trendy Los Angeles cafe — a disgruntled ex-employee with a computerized weapon — and seconds later, thirteen people are inactive and thirty-two more have already been wounded. It is a heinous act of mass slaughter that haunts Homicide Detective Peter Decker.

But, though eyewitnesses found only the lone gunman — who all apparently took his personal existence after his bloody work was done — evidence suggests more than one weapon was fired. It is a troubling inconsistency that sends Decker race headlong into a sordid, labyrinthine globe of Southern California cash and power, on an investigation that threatens to destroy his popularity and his career.