Abraham White, a promising businessman and community leader, walks into the bank that two decades earlier had awarded him a college scholarship. There he shoots five people and then himself. Why? Jack Madwyrd, his former business partner, wants to know what forces led Abraham to this tragedy and hires Patrick Conley, chief archivist at Sandhomen University, to interview former associates of Abraham White to make sense out of the chaos of a random shooting. As Patrick speaks with co-workers, a coach, a teacher, and Abraham's widow, he gradually learns which demons drove a good man to commit a terrible crime. In addition, Jack Madwyrd, ever an enigma and often clouded in the miasma of pungent Cuban Cohibas and dark French wines, leads Patrick on a financial and spiritual quest that takes the archivist and his daughter and son-in-law to Mexico and Patrick alone into cloistered mysteries.