Hugh Jarrett

Upon his return from Vietnam, an ex-soldier finds his neighborhood has deteriorated badly, and is being terrorized by a vicious street gang. He calls some of his GI buddies, and together they hatch a plan to get rid of the gang.

A drifter comes between an aging Southern beauty and her teenaged daughter.

Wallace a wealthy landowner in Meriwether County, Georgia, has virtually unlimited power in the county, including having the sheriff under his control. When he murders a share cropper he thinks that he is powerful enough to get away with it. Because the act of murder took place in Coweta County, it is under the jurisdiction of the Coweta County sheriff who hunts the murderer without trepidation.

Three different police chiefs in three different eras become involved in a growing mystery -- who is the mass murderer behind the killing of transient youths in and around the fictional southern town of Delano over a forty year period?