15 Miles

Samuel "Sailor" Doyle has transferred from Vice to Homicide in the Virginia State Police. He has a mistress, an alcohol problem, a prescription drug dependency, and a burgeoning self-loathing that alienates his wife and family. The rookie investigator is assigned to a double homicide on a rural farm some 15 miles outside Richmond. One of the victims 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 bodies: dozens of cats, sheep, goats, cows, and one dead horse. The mentally handicapped daughter of the victims, Carl and Claire Bruckner, is missing. Doyle soon discovers that Bruckner was a Marine captain who lost his leg in Vietnam thanks to the incompetence of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lake—now retired General Robert Lake, and Republican Party presidential hopeful, who will be speaking in Richmond on July fourth—the following evening. What Doyle fails to realize as he follows the various clues is that wherever he goes, he is spreading disease—and not just any disease, but Yersinia pestis. The plague. Is the dead Marine planning revenge, even from beyond the grave?