It's a cold November when James Harris takes his dog, Stanley, for their usual rounds of panhandling. Blind since Vietnam and married to a blind woman as well, James realizes his disability pension and her part-time job go only so far. The money he makes on the streets is desperately needed--yet it's still not enough. But after today it won't matter...When Detective Steve Carella finds James' wife murdered as well, her throat slit like her husband's, it is no longer a random crime. And when another blind woman turns up dead, all Carella has to go on is the nightmare James told a psychiatrist after coming home from the war ten years ago. What he finds is a labyrinthine trail of betrayal, sex, and a secret worth killing to keep buried.