Our dramatis personae can be encapsulated in a single photograph.

James Dalton, brother of the deceased, stands next to the gravestone with his hat against his heart. He cuts the figure of a movie star cowboy: a care worn face with a masculine jawline, eyes the same color as his faded blue jeans, a well starched white button up, and a turquoise-and-amber bolo tie. His eyes are upturned, his mouth set in a thoughtful grimace as he plots the next line of his ovation.

Linda has her back to the camera. She is wearing a black, lacy garment- whether it's a dress or a blouse is impossible to tell from the framing. No doubt, she's controlling her expression, and that is why the photographer chose not to show her face. Instead, her slumped posture tells the whole tale. Every hair seems to rest at an angle of loss. You cannot point to a particular feature, but you know that you're looking at a woman with nothing left to live for.

The county coroner, Elizabeth Birch, stands awkwardly to one side with Jack Finch, a detective with the Garfield County sheriff's department. Liz has somehow managed to be overdressed at a funeral, resplendent in a form fitting black gown fit for a Audrey Hepburn. Jack sports a well made but understated gray suit and boyishly handsome features.

No one else is in evidence. The photographer, of course, is Elliot Holt, brilliant enough to capture a man's life in a single photograph, and too cerebral to know how inappropriate the timing is.

The photo runs above a news brief in the local newspaper. It reflects in a pair of mirrored sunglasses in the waiting room of a Detroit high rise. The assemblage moves the man behind the lenses. Tragically small. Tragically devoted. It shifts something inside him. The vague beginnings of something new begin to assemble themselves in the back of his mind.

Through a extravagant mahogany door at the other side of the room, a man stands in front of floor to ceiling windows and looks out at the crumbling sky line, secure in his power and totally unaware of the cracks beginning to form in his maniacally brilliant master plan.