FBI agent specializing in working with Russian-speaking Americans, young Karina Lonova is tasked with investigating the murder of a Russian woman in a small town near Orlando, Florida. The matter turns out to be difficult. Complex, confusing relationships between people confuse the investigation, and new circumstances arise every now and then. The tracks lead to a professor from Boston; it looks like the case is already closed. But a careful analysis of the pathologist's certificate convinces Karina that she is on the wrong track. Unexpected finds and deceived expectations, eternal philosophical problems of good and evil, crime and punishment. Karina has a wise senior mentor - her father Evgeny Lonov, known to the reader from the trilogy "In Search of Mephistopheles." Together with him, she gets out of the impasse. The evil was terrible, but the punishment was no less terrible.