The Leader

"Six quarts is way more than necessary for something like that," Reed said. "It's not just overkill..."

Letting his voice trail off, he blinked several times, bringing himself back into the moment with the realization that it was a statement.

Of what, he had not a clue.

The call was not unlike several others that Columbus Police and state Bureau of Criminal Investigation Detective Reed Mattox and his K-9 partner Billie had received over the years. A domestic squabble involving a man armed with liquid courage from a night at the bar, convinced that his girlfriend was having an affair with her boss. Unable to be talked down, he had grabbed a gun from the nightstand and stormed off, intent on meting out his own form of justice.

Desperate and verging on hysterics, his girlfriend had phoned the police, asking them to keep him from doing something stupid and finishing what he set out to do.

An ultimate goal that someone had already beaten him to, all parties arriving to find her boss's body battered, soaked in motor oil, and hoisted into the air in the barn behind his home.

A titan in the local business community, he had been targeted in a crime so heinous Reed and Billie set off to unravel both the culprit and their motive. Questions they barely begin to answer when a second murder occurs, staged in an equally macabre way.

And then a third.

Performative acts meant to create a spectacle, clearly building toward something larger. An impending finale that sends Reed and Billie sprinting across much of central Ohio in a desperate attempt to end the rampage before it can claim its ultimate goal.

Or even one of their own.

"What do the owner of a car dealership, the president of a paper company, and a lobbyist all have in common?"

Considering the question for only a moment, she asked, "Besides sounding like the opening for a bad joke?"

"Starting to feel more like a bad dream."