The seeds of a killer are sown as Billy Bonner suffers torture at the hands of his father and two older brothers on the family farm in Iowa. He commits his first two acts of murder when he is just twelve years old, and he spends the rest of his life avenging the abuse his family perpetrated on him.

Forty-two-year-old Nick Powers, a seventeen-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, is assigned to investigate a special case. A serial killer is on the loose in New York. Targeting victims over the age of sixty, this murderer disguises himself as a charming deliveryman, policeman, or priest. After gaining entrance to the victims' homes, he hangs the women by their ankles while they bleed to death, and then he removes their eyes. The notes left at the scenes read: "She should have seen."

Powers vows to catch this diabolical killer who has successfully eluded twenty police departments for twenty years. But the chase becomes personal when the killer contacts Powers and threatens to harm his family