When a serial lady-killer is found with shears sticking out of his chest and an ice pick in his hand, Kathy Mallory and her NYPD Special Crimes partner Detective Sgt. Riker are called in to investigate. One of the occupants of Winter House, the scene of the crime, is 70-year-old Nedda Winter, who immediately confesses to the killing, claiming it was self-defence. Murder solved, case closed. It's even poetic justice. But Winter House is the site of a massacre that took place 50 years previously and doesn't give up its dead so easily. Mallory and Riker will have to reopen the original investigation in order to try and stop the murderer from finishing what they started.