Sorry. The single word was written on the mirror. In front of it hung the body of Andy Fallon, a Minneapolis Internal Affairs investigator. Was it suicide? Or an unfortunate and embarrassing accident: death by autoerotic misadventure. Either way, his death wasn't a crime. The investigation will be a formality, a duty that veteran Homicide Detective Sam Kovac isn't looking forward to. He doesn't want to spend any more time than he has to in the bleak, empty world of the victim's father, Iron Mike, Kovac's old mentor and a department legend. But Kovac has a sixth sense for crime, and it's burning.
Together with his partner, the wisecracking, ambitious Nikki Liska, Kovac begins to dig at the too-neat edges of Fallon's death, uncovering one motive and one suspect after another. The shadows of suspicion fall deeply not only on the city's power elite, but into the very heart of the police department itself.
But Fallon's death has been officially ruled an accident, and the top brass in the Minneapolis Police Department want the case to disappear. Iron Mike, gunned down in the line of duty twenty years earlier and forced to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, has suffered enough, they say. They would much rather have the publicity spotlight remain on their latest legend, retiring Captain Ace Wyatt, who is headed for the bright lights of Hollywood.
Unfortunately, neither Kovac nor Liska believe Fallon died by his own hand accidentally or otherwise. As the case unfolds, it seems more and more likely that his death is somehow tied to his work. The question is whether he was killed for a case two months old - the murder of a gay patrol officer - or a case twenty years closed the one that left his father a paraplegic and made Ace Wyatt a hero.
As Kovac and Liska dig deeper, they find their careers and lives on the line, because a killer wants the truth left dead and buried. Ashes to Ashes. Dust to dust.