(Warning: contains both spoilers and a misleading summary of the book that omits the lion's share of important details, yet includes one reader's assumptions and misunderstandings.)

In 1997, NYPD detective John Corey is on the back porch of his uncle's waterfront home on the North Fork of Long Island recovering from three gunshot wounds while working in his town of Manhattan, NY.

The local police chief, Sylvester Maxwell, comes to the back porch and asks Corey to act as consultant in a local murder investigation, as Corey is personally acquainted with the two victims, Tom and Judy Gordon, both employees on the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a facility suspected of carrying out biological warfare research.

They discuss theories of the deaths, such as the Gordons trading the deadly diseases to which they have access for money and using the boat chest as a container for the items.

Corey silently dislikes how the reporter exaggerates it because there is no public evidence of the work connecting them to biological warfare or theft.

They do not see him and he gets on the ferry to Plum Island with the rest of the group from the previous night with Paul Stevens, the security director, who pretends he doesn't know Foster or Nash.

The scientists also act like they are on a script and give cover up theories that suggest that the Gordons were underpaid government workers who stole a vaccine so they could "discover" it elsewhere and become rich and famous.