The day breaks gloomy outside Saint Patrick's Cathedral where a solitary gunman waits for the services to end. Inside the majestic church 2,000 worshippers join New York Senator Frank Connolly and his wife, Caroline, being honored for her contributions to the Archdiocese. When the mass ends Connolly goes to confession before leaving the Cathedral - where he is met and assassinated by James Murphy. Except there is no James Murphy. His name and identity are false, his history beyond the past ten years as a janitor, untraceable, his motive never discovered. Tried and convicted, Murphy refuses to speak until, four years later - and two days before his scheduled execution - Murphy gives his last confession to the prison chaplin. The confession so startles the priest, bound by the Church's restrictions on revealing the words of the penitent - the Sacramental Seal - he races to Saint Patrick's to seek the advice of his former pupil, Dominic Cardinal Enicerlico, a street tough raised in Little Italy who has risen to one the highest and most powerful positions in the Church . Having extracted the information from the chaplin, the Cardinal risks excommunication by soliciting the aid of his best friend - retired police detective Dean Napolitano - to prevent the execution by discovering why Murphy committed murder. What Dean learns is a secret maintained through coercion, bribes and murder, committed by people who will stop at nothing to keep Murphy's words from being disclosed. Anyone aware of the secret faces death, Dominic and Dean not only face death but their own demons before the secret can be disclosed.