A large passenger jet crash-lands 40 miles outside LA. Quincy and Sam are sent out to start the identification of the bodies and to make sure that the crash scene is kept intact. Once the rest of the Coroners team has arrived and the positions of the bodies have been marked out they are all taken back to LA, where an autopsy has to be completed on each and every one of them, all one hundred of them! Quincy eventually discovers that a dangerous flammable gas was being carried by the plane, not illegal but extremely dangerous.

He then finds himself with two dilemmas to solve. The first being how to persuade the airlines that transporting this sort of flammable substance is not a good idea and secondly, to get an insurance company to accept that one of the unidentifiable bodies was that of a man they insured so that his wife and family can claim his life insurance.

Quincy is asked to do an autopsy on the body of a marine who died in an accident during his training. Harry Collier, a friend of Quincy's wants him to give a second opinion, to stop the press from calling the death a cover up. What Quincy finds though is what he thinks is evidence of a murder and he goes to the base to find out what did happen to cause the young soldiers death, and if necessary who caused it.