"The body lay face up, with an expression of unbelievable horror frozen around the mouth. The blood-splattered head was tilted backward with the slice on the throat, gaping widely from ear to ear, framed by the coagulated blood that had gushed from the severed carotid arteries. The eyelids were fixed open in the nature of death. Each eye sprouted a flower with yellow petals surrounding a dark brown center precisely inserted through the opening designed for the pupil." A psychopathic killer stalks the streets of this southern city, leaving in his wake a string of mutilated young women selected for their beauty and vitality, their bloodless bodies discarded like garbage to nature's scavengers. A young but astute lawman works against time and compounding evidence to prove the innocence of his childhood friend, the chief suspect, who has become a fugitive from both the law and an enflamed mob seeking vigilante justice. The search for the serial murder is complicated by local corruption, intrusion of big city racketeers seeking that big score in the waning days of Prohibition, and racial dichotomy of thought and practices in this time and place. Throughout, the young Deputy is surreptitiously aided and abetted by a mysterious and sometimes mischievous energy source - Bull Durham.