Joe the Plumber Carruthers is in a real fix. His favorite customer, gorgeous philanthropist Emma Lorraine Stuckley, has been brutally murdered, and Joe's DNA and finger prints are all over her Trenton townhouse. And why wouldn't it be? He'd been working on a leak in her hallway hours before her death. However, when Emma's corpse yields evidence that her plumber was fiddling with more than her copper fixtures, Joe becomes suspect number one and gets hauled in by Trenton's finest. The cops are under pressure to close the case, but Joe's apprentice, nineteen year old Rebecca Rueda, stands by her boss. She hasn't known him all that long, however, her instinct tells her a guy who'd give a woman a chance, in 1988, to become a plumber is a good guy and not some psycho killer. Joe's lawyer gets him released temporarily. Still Joe's depressed. He misses his ex-wife Debra, his part-time lover is dead, and at thirty-eight years of age he's headed for the slammer. He looks around the city he grew up in. It's crumbling down around him. Yeah, he thinks, Trenton takes the plug right outta the drain, alright. Everything's running down a big old sewer pipe. This place has become nothing but the breeding ground for the sicko who did such an awful thing. Joe's on the verge of giving-up, and it isn't until Rebecca convinces him to join her in an investigation of their own, that he sees a small ray of hope. Will the Carruthers-Rueda duo beat the clock and find the real killer? Or will Joe the Plumber be plumbing the depths of the state prison for the rest of his life?