Clark has to interview a murderer up for parole. The case has haunted him since he found the files as a child and he opportunistically used his father’s name to access the first interview. The murderer persuades Clark to investigate the mine which was the crime scene. The secrets and twists Clark discovers are as complicated and unpredictable as the network of abandoned iron mines in Harriman St. Park. Clark is caught in a threeway trap and must choose between preserving his father’s reputation, possibly letting a child murderer go free, and keeping the job he spent his life perfecting.

Clark witnesses a young woman die from an opioid overdose at the Point Pleasant, NJ boardwalk. As he explores the circumstances surrounding her death, he finds indifference in the police and community, a corporate genocide unfolding in broad daylight and tens of thousands of bereaved parents. Clark sees once again how the system of societal checkpoints and safeguards that are supposed to protect us - doctors, police, government oversight - is broken leaving the grieving parents no recourse. Clark soon finds himself in the dark underbelly of the opioid crisis which has turned an idyllic New Jersey shore town into a dystopian drug wasteland where those still living must devise their own ways to cope…legal or not….

Clark follows the cases of several missing students gifted with extreme intelligence. They have been recruited into a lifelong contract with a consumer genetics agency that is identifying smart kids and sequestering them for research in the old Fort Monmouth army base in New Jersey. Clark gets caught up in the whirlwind of technology, ethics, and temptation. Clark is drawn to the founder, an enigmatic woman genius who is collecting and curating a main database of genetic code from millions of people and cataloging epigenetic markers. By harvesting the good genes, they can be added to one’s genome to increase disease prevention, longevity and human potential. But as the recruited smart ones begin meeting various tragic ends, as he simultaneously uncovers something far deeper and more sinister.

Clark is in Alaska touring the Ft. Richardson Strategic Air Command air force base (Elmendorff) and investigating Lt. Col Kelly Pram’s new assignment. He is shown hard core extensive botanical research laid out in elaborate futuristic tower gardens and greenhouses, presented as the military’s official GMO lab. Clark learns that the base has a secret entrance to an under-mountain network of chambers called the “Seed Bank”. It's an underground vivarium bunker that catalogs all the seeds in the world by geography, curated, owned and operated by the military high command. The various agriculture samples get radiation testing, priority given to food plants etc. The military says it is routine contingency planning for any event that would disrupt the ecosystem and the environment, and its all just smart proactive disaster preparedness. As Clark reports he questions the ethics, safety, and scope of the plan. But its hard to prove a secret bunker that can control the weather and restore the planet’s biodiversity even exists when everyone who has seen it is winding up dead.

Clark is called to report on a suicide of an all star high school athlete with no apparent cause. Clark is dogged by the death and knows something is off. A few days later a Catholic Bishop’s death is also declared a suicide. As Clark investigates the death of the Bishop he learns the star athlete was a victim of his abuse. Clark thinks its a double suicide, yet one turns out to be murder. Clark investigates the Catholic Church abuse vortex and finds a global protection racket for perpetrator clergy reaching the highest levels of the Vatican. Additionally, he finds an ex-special forces military chaplain who is a tough Irish priest that uses his Bronx street smarts to deal with the problems in their own way. But amidst the dirty settlements the Church is doling out in secret, and in the crevices of the trafficking system built to protect predator priests, there is a new, violent and deadly element of justice slicing through centuries of institutionalized corruption. And all around, there are dead priests with bloody collars.