With three confessions to the murder of Pierre LeBeuf (The Body Under the Ice), two of the confessors dead, and the third non compos mentis, Sheriff Nathanial Jefferson is in a quandary – he doesn't believe any of the confessions and he has no other leads.
Caught in a sudden downpour, Rachel and Jeremy, two summer lake deputies patrolling Hibbard Pond, seek shelter under the West Branch covered bridge. While climbing the dirt embankment to tie a line, Jeremy unearths the skeleton of a young boy. When the time of the boy's death is set in the late 1950s, the sheriff and his deputies know that they have a cold case, one of the most difficult to solve.
Nathanial Jefferson believes that even with the most diligent of police work, cracking these two cases is going to require the one ingredient that helps solve many police cases, but yet is the most difficult to come by: Dumb Luck.