An old man dies in a sanatorium, Valleyview, seemingly of a coronary. His grandson doesn't think that he could have died that way and pays for the Medical Examiners office to do an autopsy. Quincy does the autopsy and tells David, the grandson, that there is nothing unusual about the death. All is done with until a young girl, Anne Freedman, dies at the sanatorium as well. Again the cause of death is not clear and Quincy begins to think that maybe someone is performing ‘mercy killings' on patients that are in pain.

An ailing woman's accidental death outrages Quincy when he discovers that she had been seeing a holistic doctor and had been treated with natural medicines rather than scientific ones. His opinion about the doctor responsible though is affected by his liking for her and it gives him something to think about.