A fraternity ‘hazing' stunt goes badly wrong and a young man, Cary Stadler, dies. The other students panic and cover up how he died by placing his body in another place. Seeing as Quincy is the ME who deals with the case their attempt is very quickly uncovered. He proves that the story they are telling the police is complete fabrication. Proving they were involved and proving exactly what happened are two completely different things though, and there seems to be nothing that the police can arrest the boys for.

A young boy, Tim, goes to do some welding at his workplace and ends up dying in an explosion. One of Asten's top field investigators, Arnold Chatham, thinks that it should not have happened. He discovers that Tim couldn't read and continues his investigation while Quincy tries to find out how someone who couldn't read managed to get through school.