When a billionaire’s son is suspected of his father's murder, a Paiute tribal officer must take the lead in the joint FBI-Paiute investigation to apprehend a serial killer using deceptive natural substances and a surprisingly humanitarian motive.

SYNOPSIS:

A Billionaire, BRANDON CLAREMONT (80), is drugged, transported, and left to die at a specific location on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation. The body is spread-eagle and face-up with a “W” on his forehead. It’s already a complicated case for Tribal Officer SARAH THE YOUNGER (28) when an intimidating black FBI Agent MAVIS COLLIER (28), intervenes. The autopsy shows the victim overdosed on magic mushrooms and died hours later of a heart attack.

The FBI is obligated to partner with Officer Younger because the primary suspect is a Paiute drug addict named JAKE LONG BEAR (25), but they have difficulty finding Jake and connecting him to the case. Sarah suggests an environmental link to the killing since the billionaire developed the Tahoe Keys subdivision over a pristine wetland and his body was left precisely at the old lake level of Pyramid Lake before the white man began stealing their water. The FBI remains focused on the Paiute drug addict and the billionaire’s son, ADAM (55), an unstable real estate mogul.

When the billionaire’s munitions business partner and lover, ESTELLE GODFREY (60), is found tortured and killed in her new Sprinter van in a campground near the Tahoe Keys, Adam becomes the primary suspect. Estelle’s estranged husband, U.S. SENATOR GODFREY (70), insists on suspending autopsies and rushing to cremation. International munition sales are at stake! Meanwhile, the family’s attorney, GARRISON THOMAS (60), divulges more Claremont family’s secrets of dysfunction, mental instability, and suicide.

Sarah and Collier begin to work together to solve the crimes. They get help from the risk-taking coroners and Collier’s boss, SPECIAL AGENT KIARA GUPTA (40s), who runs interference from the powerful lawyers and politicians in the investigators’ way. Collier discovers Adam also had an affair with Estelle, and Sarah sees strange similarities in the murder cases that raise more concerns about Adam who may have killed his wife three years earlier and made it look like a suicide.

Sarah begins to suspect Adam’s estranged daughter, MELISSA (MEL) CLAREMONT (24), as the sinister mastermind behind a rampage of killings. Sarah leads the investigation into uncharted psychological territory and uncovers the details of each murder. She deduces Mel’s preference for poisons, powders, and solutions derived from local plant and mushroom species linked to issues of environmental degradation in the Lake Tahoe Basin. With a series of twists and turns at the end, Sarah determines that Mel is killing off her wicked family and herself to end the cycle of human and environmental degradation that her family has caused, making the world a better place for future generations.

MURDERS WITH NATURAL CAUSES