Seven-year-old Deborah Brashers' father, Robert, kills himself in a hotel room, and for 20 years, she struggles to understand why. Neither she - nor the police - have any idea he'd been living a secret double life as a serial killer.

Every time Cheri Tate calls the police on her husband Edward Allen Covington, they believe him over her. Then she leaves him, and he takes his revenge - but on others. She realizes in horror that he has done to them what he always wanted to do to her.