Detective Sergeant Patricia (Patti Mac) McAvoy's career was turned upside down when an undocumented Mexican teen-aged boy was found strangled, floating in a 55 gallon drum in South Oyster Bay, Long Island. Inspection revealed he was carrying rosary beads and wearing a diaper. Simultaneously, McAvoy was transferred to Nassau County, NY, Homicide Squad South as a public relations ploy. Following a hostile reception from woman hating Detective Captain Peter J. Brennan, Patti was handed a cold case squad and exiled to an attic stacked floor to ceiling with cold cases. Brennan saddled Patti with four detectives, culled from his bad boy list, turning her assignment into a set up for failure. Outwitting Brennan by using guile and ingenuity, Patti led her team to a daring manslaughter arrest. Taking note of Patti's leadership, a detective confided about his case of a murdered boy in a floating barrel, inexplicably removed from the active murder list and placed in the dead file as a special investigation. Patti attempted to re-open the case and ran into the infamous police "Blue Wall of Silence"Patti browbeat Brennan into releasing the case. Breaching the "Wall" cold case squad yielded two "persons of interest" a prosperous attorney and a Roman Catholic Monsignor who was the Police Commissioner's twin brother. Patti discovered the meaning of the 'loneliness of command' as she descended into the squalid world of sexism, racism, corruption and worst of all, pedophilia. The gruesome trail took her to the pillars of society. Patti found herself in the crosshairs of vile violent men, who would love to put a bullet between her eyes. The investigation exposed a massive political cover-up leading to the top of the food chain and ripped open a sleepy suburban county with the arrests of a powerful figure and Brennan.