One morning, the criminal authority Dad convenes three "sons" and tells the latest news. Everyone remembers how three years ago, the keeper of the regional communal Mule ran away, taking the money. Also, everyone remembers how he was found, punished and buried. And the news is like this. Yesterday Mulya, alive and well, was seen in three cities at once: St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Rostov. Dad sends "sons" to these cities to scout out what's what. For each of them, the journey will not be the easiest.
Yuri Bragin, after a year-long business trip, where he, as part of an investigation team, was investigating a high-profile case, returns to St. Petersburg. When he returns, he learns that the current head of the First Investigation Department of the First Directorate of the State Investigation Department, Vadim Maltsev, is retiring. With a high degree of probability, it is Bragin who will be offered his place. But Yuri is not a careerist and the position of the boss is not the goal of his life. A talented investigator likes to do "live work" more. And now he is again sent on a business trip. This time in one of the cities of the Leningrad region, where two girls were killed with a difference of a week. Here, in a small town, everyone knows each other, and this complicates the search for the criminal.
Anna Vorontsova, or, as her colleagues in the investigative committee called her, the Crow, has been refusing for three weeks to open a case on the disappearance of a famous Bohemian photographer. By a fateful coincidence, this man dies. Now, tormented by the pangs of conscience, the heroine sets her task to sort out this case at all costs.