Branson Butcher (ePub)

The Branson Butcher" is the story of a crusty, semi-retired, old disenchanted detective from Chicagoland who ends up in the music town of Branson, MO.

Despite his best efforts, Mike Monahan finds himself in the thick of one of the biggest murder investigations in history as a serial killer has obviously come to the Ozarks.

As the murders increase, Mike is asked by the local Sheriff to try and enlist the help of a psychic from rural northern Arkansas as he claims it is their best shot at catching the "Butcher."

Mike and the psychic, Nicholas Meehan, along with local police officer Wayne Dilfer pursue the killer. It is obvious very quickly that the killer also has very acute abilities and the skills necessary to effectively disguise and "cloak" himself. He moves around at his leisure and even kills the FBI Chief sent to lead the investigation.

At a town meeting, Nicholas and the killer sense each other and the police swarm the parking lot but he gets away. In anger he kills four tourists who are on a zip line outing. As expected by law enforcement, the killer widens his area of operations to thin out the massive police presence and he kills several people far from Branson but still in the Ozarks.

Nicholas knows that the killer will come for him and his two companions. They scour Branson looking for the "Butcher" while the FBI watches from a distance. Nicholas and Mike are distracted and Wayne is abducted by the killer.

The new FBI Chief brought in shuts down the "psychic angle" and Nicholas is to be sent home to his mother in Arkansas and Mike is to go to his daughter's house in Illinois.

Nicholas and Mike aided by Simone, an old friend from Illinois with limited psychic powers, decide to hunt the killer on their own and hopefully find Wayne who they believe is still alive.

The trio finds him disguised as a biker and they follow him, "blocking" his psychic sense best they can.

Eventually, they find themselves on the opposite bank of an arm of Table Rock Lake and they watch in horror as the killer unloads what looks like a body rolled up in carpet into the lake. The police and FBI are alerted and Mike jumps in the water and swims to the body on the far shore while Nicholas and Simone drive around to help Mike at the bank as the killer again escapes.

Mike, Nicholas, Simone and the FBI track the killer to his trailer. Despite Nicholas' protestations that the killer is definitely very close, he again eludes them. Nicholas can sense Wayne despite the fact that he is comatose in hospital and is close to death.

That night the trio is at a makeshift Command Center at a firehouse and Nicholas is angry that he was not listened to about the killer at the trailer. Simone can sense Nicholas is hiding something and he confides to her that the "Branson Butcher" is very close and that he cannot trust the police to catch him.

The final showdown occurs in a dark quarry where Nicholas "hears" Wayne who is a hundred miles away and dying. The pair unwittingly bridge time and space and the Branson Butcher strikes for the last time.