How well do you know your friends - really, truly, know them? That's the question Police Chief Sean Colbeth finds himself asking when a local university professor living in the seaside village of Windeport is found dead in the bed of his late-model powder blue pickup truck, surrounded by five-gallon jugs of water. While it's clear he's been shot, there's no bullet, no gun, and no clear reason why the geriatric head of the Extension Service would be on anyone's hit list. Reasoning he knows his town better than anyone, Sean ignores his gut instinct to let the State take over the investigation, but finds himself asking unexpectedly hard questions of the people he thought he knew - friends, and even family members that become strangers upon further examination. As he struggles to understand the startling motive he uncovers, Sean discovers both lies and deceit just below the whitewashed exteriors of the village he's lived in his entire life. Digging deeper unearths secrets even the dead professor had hoped to keep buried; as he watches his own personal life unravel with each and every revealed clue, Sean discovers memories are long and fury can be as icy cold as the long Northeastern winters.