“Skulls do stare back, don’t let anyone kid you.” So says Dr. Clarissa Circle, for not one year after graduating from UT and its infamous “Bone Farm” in Knoxville, she attains regional fame by exposing a supposed Native American burial as a not-so-recent murder. Consequently her dissertation gets revamped and published commercially and she gets hired by UK’s Physical Anthropology Department northward in Lexington, where she also earns a lucrative retainer as consultant for Fayette County’s Metro Police. In the ranks of that same department a mercurial lover appears: a black homicide detective named Willy Cox. Mercurial can run both ways, Clarissa decides, having a fling with an old hippie aptly nicknamed Methuselah, who comes in the picture after a thirty-year-old mass grave containing eight ritualistic murders is unearthed. There were rumors, local historian Methuselah indicates, of a strange campus cult in the early ’70s . . .
Bang! In Manhattan, when the Twin Towers fall, events cascade. A young woman sneaks into Clarissa’s lab to photograph the eight reconstructed death heads during the mesmerizing TV extravaganza of the falling towers. Not-so-passive death threats concerning the eight ritual murders start, which incline Clarissa and Willy to temporarily mend their love life. Methuselah takes up with a young classical guitarist. The odd middle-aged “petite artiste” who’s been stalking Clarissa’s house to draw endless sketches disappears. A young religious zealot gets committed, then released to haunt the campus and neighborhood in a disturbing fashion. On steep banks by the Kentucky River, a double suicide is discovered—or was it a murder of passion? A drug parole office from Louisville visits to add fuel to the cult rumors—just as he adds fuel to another spat between Clarissa and Willy. In sum, love shifts from requited to unrequited and back and forth, just as deaths mount to shuffle from official suicides to official murders. Love, hate, and unsolved murders are getting a workout in the Bluegrass state.