The death of a beautiful escort in a downtown hotel room appears to be a case of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong. But when a woman brings her young daughter to the police department with a strange story about a similar death six years before, Homicide Detective John Santana is drawn into a dangerous web of drugs, sex, and deceit, and toward a shocking secret that lies buried in the past; a secret that could not only destroy the lives of some well-connected and powerful men, but one that raises questions about the very meaning of life and deathaaand the boundary between the living and the dead.