In a small east Texas county, two young boys on a summertime fishing trip discover a submerged car. When the decaying relic of Judge Walter Cotten's car is pulled from its watery tomb, the decade-old mystery is thrust in to the hands of a newly appointed Sheriff Ethan Connelly. Sheriff Connelly discovers Cotten's list of enemies includes some of the most powerful and well-connected men in Landron County. At the same time the sheriff is confronted by crimes previously unheard of in his fast-growing county. He is faced with modernizing the antiquated sheriff's department, which may no longer be his in the end.