It's been a busy year for Alameda County Coroner's Deputy Clay Edison. He's solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man--earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. And his brother's fresh out of prison, bringing with him a great big basket of crazy. Then the call comes in the middle of the night. It's a bad one. A party in West Oakland. An argument with the neighbors. A crowd in the street....

Deputy Coroner Clay Edison has his hands full. He's got a new baby who won't sleep. He's working the graveyard shift. And he's trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there? No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call--this one from a local businessman, wondering...