Berkeley, California's, tireless cop, Jill Smith, is at it again. On less than good terms with her department - after all, Jill is not known for her blind obedience to authority - she is summoned by her fellow justice-seeker, the irascible, pizza-loving private eye Herman Ott, to the lobby of Berkeley's elegant Claremont Hotel, for reasons she can't understand and he won't divulge. But when she gets there, Ott has changed his mind and decides to play dumb. He'll call her in an hour to explain, he promises. He doesn't. When Jill checks up on him the next day, she comes up empty-handed. Except for one corpse in his car and another corpse in his office. Ott is surrounded by dead bodies, but he himself seems to have evaporated into thin air. As Jill works to find her missing friend, she finds herself estranged from the police department that hired her, and on her own in a tangled web of bureaucracy, city politics, and murder.