The night was pitch black, filled with driving rain when the California Zephyr jolted to a stop on a desolate stretch outside McCook, Nebraska. Somebody pulled the emergency brake, catapulting Jake Hatch out of the train — and onto a severed corpse. He stumbled over the trousered bottom half. Someone else found the torso, neatly divided at the belt.
It was Hatch’s job to piece together the truth. All he had to go on was a book of sonnets and a money clip in one pocket, and three cigarette butts and a lipsticked handkerchief in the other. And a plugged nickel, now hidden in his own pocket, leading him to a criminal mastermind, a case of espionage, and an almost perfect murder.