Perhaps the driver of the big station wagon didn't see Sam Jackson on that icy December night in the parking lot of a country inn. But why weren't the wagon's headlights turned on? And why did the driver run over Sam twice?

Inspector M. L. Heimrich, New York State Police. has a special interest in this one. Sam Jackson was a personal friend, and the sole eyewitness to his death was the girl friend of M. L.'s stepson.
Pursuing clues in his tough-minded, imaginative way, Heimrich learns a remarkable fact. Jackson, while acting as the defense attorney on a local homicide, may have accidentally uncovered some very unusual proof of the real murderer's identity—a person who would stop at nothing to keep Sam Jackson quiet.