 For a quarter of a century, Dr. Hoffman has been the County Coroner -- a man who has dedicated himself to his work and nothing else. Perfect performance in a sometimes gruesome profession, he has been admired and his practices mimicked by many. On the eve of his retirement, his perfect record is about to be tarnished by a chance encounter with an unclaimed body and comes dangerously close to revealing something he has long neglected -- his life.