Doyle is assigned to a double homicide on a rural farm some 15 miles outside Richmond. The victims are Carl and Claire Bruckner. One of them has been interred in a makeshift tomb, while the other is stuck half-in, half-out of a hope chest overflowing with cat litter. And the farm is covered with dead animal bodies. Doyle soon discovers that Bruckner was a Marine captain who lost his leg in Vietnam thanks to the incompetence of his commanding officer, Robert Lake, Republican Party presidential hopeful, who will be speaking in Richmond on the following evening. What Doyle fails to realise as he follows the various clues is that wherever he goes, he is spreading disease - and not just any disease, but Yersinia pestis.