How do you investigate the murder of a woman without a life? That is the challenge facing Cooper and Fry when a reclusive agoraphobic is found shot to death in her home. With no friends, no family, and virtually no contact with the outside world, the dead woman may simply have been the unlucky victim of a random homicide.

At virtually the same time, a raging house fire claims the lives of a young mother and two of her children. But as the debris is cleared, troubling questions remain in the ashes—among them, how did the blaze start, where was the husband at two a.m. the night of the fire, and was it really the flames that killed his family?

Released to the convention