When the body of nature photographer Lester Burton is found lying next to a dead alligator at an island rookery, it was first believed that he fell from a viewing platform into the rookery's pond and drowned. But that didn't explain the alligator or the bullet wound in his thigh. When the county sheriff's office hands the case to Val Forster and Sam Pierson of Egret Bay's Homicide Division, two days have passed and any clues compromised when the bodies were removed. With little to go on except that some of Burton's past acquaintances had been in Egret Bay just before his death, the two detectives develop a scenario of what they believe happened the morning Burton died. When they discover that he was in business with a suspected drug smuggler under federal investigation, they are directed to minimize that line of inquiry and given 48 hours to solve the case or drop it.