Cecil Younger's lawyer/psychiatrist offers him a job - a client wants to hire Younger to kill someone. Though common sense tells him murder just isn't a good career move, his finances tell him it can't hurt to meet his potential client, hoping he can succeed in appeasing the him - without a dead body. Cecil investigates a murder that brings him back to the Centralia Massacre of 1919, an event in Alaskan history that seems to still be reaching into the present - and its dark, chilly grasp may extend to Cecil himself.