Frank Beck, a man with terminal colon cancer, a new divorce, and a stack of debts, hangs himself. It's an open-and-shut suicide--except for a string of numbers inscribed on Beck's right arm. Minneapolis Homicide Detective Marshall Bahr can't make sense of the numbers or the fact that a guy everyone describes as sloppy tied a perfect hangman's noose for himself. But then he uncovers an obscure fact in the dead man's ancestry--a connection to the Battle of Gettysburg--and to make sense of its bearing on this homicide, he needs to understand ninety seconds of action at the end of this historical battle.