The big outside world just can’t seem to leave peaceful Picketsville, Virginia, alone. Ike recognizes the ex-Russian operative who lies on the border between his jurisdiction and the Commonwealth’s. It is worrisome to him that a man who was reported dead several years ago should look so good; at least it is good for a man with bullet holes in him. Ike has the choice of calling in the troopers and Feds or taking this one himself; but it is too much of a puzzle and hits too close to home to let go for now.

The story runs up and down I-81 between the extremes of our nation’s capital and Buffalo Mountain in Floyd County. Buffalo Mountain is a real place in Virginia's Blue Ridge, and the reality of feuding and fighting, moonshine and poverty that is America’s stereotype of mountain people remains evident in the 21st Century. Ike’s big question is who is trying to make a professional extermination look like a family squabble, and why leave the body where he will be forced to make the identification? What is the message he is missing?

In the same way that Floyd County is in the in the ominous shadow of Buffalo Mountain, Picketsville will forever lie in the shadow of the choices made by Ike Schwartz.