The last time Atlanta tax assessor Joe Brock saw his teenage daughter Cynthia alive, they parted in anger. Now he's identifying her gunshot-blasted corpse in a police morgue, and the only thing he recognizes about her mutilated body is the tattoo on her shoulder-the little blue butterfly that caused their final argument.

Cynthia's body has been found in the swank Atlanta home of drug dealer and bar owner Jack Sloan, who is also dead, along with an unidentified young woman. Four half-eaten take-out Mexican meals point to the presence of someone else on the night of the murders-the person...