Dead Aim

A pair of murders leaves Hastings torn between following his orders and listening to his gut

After nearly a decade as a San Francisco cop, Frank Hastings is becoming something of a stranger to kindness. He feels perfectly at home in the Draper household—a rundown Victorian not far from the streets on which he grew up—where a social worker has been beaten to death by a man hiding in the bushes. The crime looks like a mugging, but something in the husband’s manner tells Hastings there are secrets hidden in this shabby middle-class home.

He’s closing in on the answers when a double homicide in posh Pacific Heights draws his attention away. Fearing bad publicity, his superiors tell him to drop everything and focus on this new killing, but Hastings can’t get his mind off the death of Susan Draper. As he divides his time between the two murders, Hastings finds that for a man at home with cruelty, kindness can be terrifying.