These are terrible times for Lieutenant Chris Spell, once acclaimed as San Francisco's premier homicide investigator. At the heart of his beat, the City's chaotic Mission District, women are being systematically murdered, their bodies mutilated and dumped on neighborhood doorsteps. Spell is unable to stop the carnage.
Understaffed, desperate, and beleaguered by the press, the Lieutenant quickly assembles a rag-tag task force to take on the investigation. He recruits the station's forensic psychologist, borrows an old friend and fellow investigator from a neighboring District, and convinces a young, inexperienced beat-cop to join his team. But the killings continue.
Cryptic threats are issued to the press and to Spell's task force. Then, in a stunning act of mayhem, the killer kidnaps the youngest member of the team, a woman with an uncanny resemblance to the half dozen victims he's already claimed.
Out of options and out of time, Spell formulates a plan to get her back and bring the killer down, but the plan might require the life of a second team member. Worse, Spell's prey has already made a last, shocking plan of his own - one his pursuers hadn't considered.
In a final confrontation, orchestrated by the serial killer himself, Spell's world collapses when he learns the killer's motivation and realizes the answers were within his grasp from the very beginning.