Someone is trying to frame Chicago private investigator Dek Elstrom for murder in the latest intriguing mystery. It's election season in corrupt Cook County, Illinois ? where the dead vote on who lives and who dies. A skeleton's hand spills out of an abandoned grain silo, aiming an axe at a candidate. A heavily-disguised woman hires PI Dek Elstrom to head west to find men with no pasts ? and one with no present. While he's away, someone dead comes calling to frame him for murder. A sheriff's deputy wants Dek arrested. Someone else wants him dead. No one knows what the woman who hasn't spoken in decades wants. And Dek Elstrom? He wants to stay alive.