End of the Line

R. J. Butler is a banker…or was a banker. After being promoted to manager of his bank's downtown branch, R. J. was fired when the bank was sold and the new owners discovered an embezzlement.

When R. J. is found murdered in a city transit bus, police immediately make the connection between his murder and the bank embezzlement and the state police special investigations unit is assigned to investigate. The lead investigator is Detective Sergeant Jerome (Stan) Stankowski. Assigned to "advise" the investigation is Deputy Attorney General Parker Noble, Stan's persnickety nemesis from Murder Most Holy.

R. J.'s widow, Linda, a former cheese-cake model, is undergoing drug rehab therapy through a local hospital with her apparent lover and therapist Bob Maxwell. R. J. and Linda's divorce was pending at the time of his murder.

R. J.'s first wife, Ann, is now engaged to the nephew of a local Mafia-type, Johnny Capo, who Parker, as a prosecutor, had sent to prison. To accommodate his family's desire that the nephew, Chris Roncolli, be married in the Catholic Church, Ann filed for a Church annulment of her marriage to R. J. The annulment was granted, but R. J. (partly out of spite) appealed the decision to Rome, which may delay Ann and Chris' wedding plans several years.

Stan is "aided" in the investigation by newspaper reporter Buffy Cole, and also receives some "moral" assistance from a bank teller, Kitty Quinn, and by Teri Barkley, the niece of one of Parker's old classmates, as he and Parker try to piece together the disparate clues to solve the murder.