The emcee opens the 1966 LAPD Gala and introduces Cornwell, who takes the stage with ease. Watching from the shadows, Beverley reflects that men like him never have to be nervous because they control the narrative. Beverley, on the other hand, still cannot determine what role she occupies in her husband’s story.

Cornwell’s speech centers on his arrest of Henry James Lightfoot, the Heatwave Killer, five years earlier, crediting his deputy Roger Greaves before dwelling on his own pride. He then pivots to Beverley, praising her as a remarkable woman whose intimate knowledge of a killer’s daily life is invaluable to law enforcement.

As the spotlights find her, Beverley is overwhelmed by memories of the day Henry was arrested. She walks to the microphone, steadies herself, and delivers her introduction. She gives her name, her husband’s name, and the fact that Henry killed seven women in California between 1957 and 1961. She leaves the stage to a roar of applause, numb from the effort.

As she passes Cornwell at the bottom of the steps, an officer approaches with news: a body has been found. His eyes linger on the lipstick stain on Beverley’s dress before he adds that the circumstances of the body’s discovery are “unusual.”

The day after the gala, Beverley’s two friends are at her house. Margot Green, hungover, lounges on a pool float, while Elsie Moss, who is British and more reserved, sits poolside. Beverley calls her children, Benjamin and Audrey, to stay within sight, then frets that airing her stained dress outside will fuel neighborhood gossip.

Margot recalls first meeting Beverley four years ago, noting her effortless beauty and her need for someone to control her life. Margot believes this explains why she had a hard time processing Henry’s incarceration. Elsie quietly suggests the three of them are technically survivors, given that most killers murder their intimate partners. Margot rejects the “victim” label, insisting they are different: They learned the truth, they got angry, and they moved on. Beverley is not sure she has moved on at all.

That evening, with Elsie gone and the children in bed, Margot helps Beverley clean the kitchen and asks about her plans for the fifth anniversary of Henry’s arrest. Beverley reveals that someone left an envelope on her windshield at the gala: A local TV network is asking her to appear on a morning show to mark the anniversary. She says she will ignore it.

Margot notices that Beverley compulsively monitors the radio and television for news alerts and keeps a scrapbook detailing recent crimes, and tells her directly that she is not personally responsible for the safety of all women. Beverley is skeptical when Margot says they cannot stop bad people from doing bad things.

At the offices of the Los Angeles Signal newspaper, Elsie arrives early to find the female typists already at their desks. Though she is qualified and full of story ideas, Elsie works as assistant to editor Paul Hunter, a role that amounts to fetching coffee and sourcing sports tickets.

Hunter arrives with a new hire, Patricia Fowler, a reporter transferring from the Times who wears a pantsuit and no makeup. Hunter announces Patricia will work on news, assist with crime coverage, and run the domestic column. Elsie resents being passed over yet again. When Hunter beckons her to his office doorway during the morning meeting, she hurries over hoping for an assignment, only for him to ask her to fetch a bottle of scotch.

That afternoon, while Hunter is out of office, Elsie answers his ringing direct line. A man from the county sheriff’s department leaves a message about the Jane Doe from the gala and asks Hunter to call back before six o’clock. Elsie writes the message down, then recognizes the connection to the body Beverley described. She pictures the story flowing straight to the reporters while she is left outside the door. She turns back, takes the note, and puts it in her pocket.

Beverley is in bed with Roger Greaves in the same room she once shared with Henry. Roger’s police badge sits on the nightstand beside a packet of Valium she took from her mother’s cabinet.

She asks Roger about the body found on the night of the gala. He says Cornwell’s attention is on a gang called the Kings, and when Beverley asks about the victim, Roger dismisses her as a “good-time girl” (25). Beverley pushes back against this label, and Roger concedes the point. He tells her she is a remarkable woman before she reflects that their relationship began from proximity and need, rather than passion. Now their relationship has become a steady routine of late-night visits, deceiving Roger’s wife, who believes he is working.

After Roger leaves, Beverley performs her nightly security routine: checking windows with a flashlight, scanning the yard, then pushing a heavy sideboard against the front door and stacking books and a glass vase on top as a makeshift alarm. She then retrieves her scrapbook. The first clipping shows Henry grilling at a backyard barbecue; she recalls that just before the photo was taken, he had burned her wrist with the tongs as punishment for buying the wrong frankfurters. Her wrist remains scarred from the incident.

Flipping through the book, she is struck by how consistently crime coverage sidelines female victims or implies they brought death upon themselves. She finds a small article on the mystery victim from the gala and immediately connects it to the woman Roger called a “good-time girl.” What stays with her is the officer’s description that the crime was “unusual,” which neither Roger nor the article has acknowledged. She wonders what the police are hiding.

Beverley has called Elsie in an agitated state, asking about the Kings gang. Elsie already suspects the police are concealing something significant about the murder and sees it as both a personal and professional opportunity. She tries calling the sheriff’s department number from the note she pocketed, but the line goes dead. She then approaches the Signal’s chief crime reporter, Robert Heston, and asks about a Jane Doe nicknamed “Blondie” with possible connections to the Kings. He dismisses her as a secretary who should stick to typing.

The new reporter, Patricia Fowler, has overheard the exchange and quietly calls Elsie over. When Elsie explains she heard the body had something unusual about it, Patricia tells her the victim is no longer anonymous: She is Cheryl Herrera, a 21-year-old college track athlete. Contrary to what the police are claiming, Cheryl is not blond and not a sex worker. She was strangled, after which the killer then drove an arrow through her eye and placed a blond wig on her dark-haired head. Patricia, who maintained contacts at the Times, suggests the Kings are an unlikely fit given how elaborate and premeditated the act was.

Elsie asks how to learn more. Patricia, who insists on being called “Patti,” offers to supply an address in exchange for lunch. Elsie has always kept colleagues at a distance to protect the secret of her past, but this story is too important to give up. She grabs her coat.

More than a week after Cheryl’s murder, the three women are at a lake. Beverley tells them about the arrow, a detail she finds ritualistic. She wonders if it signals a cult or carries a specific message. Margot asks why Beverley is so personally invested, and Beverley admits she feels connected to Cheryl: the timing, the location, and the way investigators spoke about the victim as a spectacle all remind her of her own experience.

Elsie reports her research on the Kings: a Chicago-origin street gang operating mainly in drug trafficking but linked to homicides. She notes, however, that the murder’s elaborate staging feels too deliberate and controlled for a gang killing, and reads as professional rather than impulsive.

Margot’s attention drifts to a group of university students on the beach. She thinks back to meeting her husband, Stephen, at a dull political event in New York. He was decades older, well-dressed, and clearly wealthy. She moved in that night and never left. She recalls that the worst part of discovering Stephen was a killer was the realization that she could be deceived.

Elsie’s voice pulls her back. Beverley divides tasks: Elsie will dig further into possible connections between the Kings and Cheryl’s background; Beverley and Margot will look into the arrow’s symbolism and research local archery clubs. Margot agrees, reflecting that since she already caught one killer, she is sure she can do it again.

Beverley struggles with hedge trimmers in the front yard while her mother, Alice, observes from a deck chair and offers a steady stream of criticism. Beverley rescues the family’s pet tortoise, Meatball, which Henry once brought home for Benjamin as a gift, from the road. She burned most of Henry’s possessions after the arrest, but it is harder to get rid of a tortoise.

Her attention is caught by the new neighbor across the street, Mr. Appleton, who furtively deposits what looks like bundled blankets into his trash can. When their eyes meet, alarm flares in Beverley’s chest, but he turns and retreats inside. She has maintained the front yard meticulously since Henry’s arrest, ensuring the yard remains fully visible to her as an ongoing safety ritual.

Alice presses Beverley about a man she wants to set her up with. Beverley reflects that her mother’s push for a new partner echoes a pattern from her own childhood: Her father was habitually unfaithful while Alice looked away. Beverley tells her she hasn’t had time to call, partly because of the Cheryl Herrera case and partly because a television producer tracked down her supposedly unlisted number to follow up on the TV appearance request. When Alice notices that Mr. Appleton is watching them from the upstairs window, she remarks that his garden is entirely dry and dead, unusual for a neighbor who has lived there several weeks.

A breaking-news bulletin cuts in from the kitchen radio: The body of Emily Roswell, a 20-year-old cheerleader from Fillmore, has been pulled from the lake at Meadow Vine Golf Course. Beverley drops her shears and runs inside.

Ten days after Cheryl’s murder, Elsie arrives at a candlelight vigil in Las Espadas, where the Herrera family lives. She identifies Cheryl’s father by the hollow quality of his composure and introduces herself as Elsie Parker, a reporter from the Tribune, using a false name and publication to hide both her identity and her lowly position at the Signal. When Mr. Herrera mentions that another reporter has already visited, Elsie covers smoothly and he invites her inside.

The house is full of somber visitors. Mr. Herrera shows Elsie Cheryl’s bedroom, preserved exactly as she left it, its walls dense with athletic certificates and medals. He tells Elsie that Cheryl was on the verge of competing at the state finals before mononucleosis forced her to miss her biggest competitions. When Elsie asks whether anyone on Cheryl’s track team might have had a grievance against her, Mr. Herrera bristles, then reveals what the police ignored: Cheryl wore a bracelet engraved with her initials, CJH, every single day without exception, but it was absent from her body when the family identified her. Elsie immediately asks for a photograph of Cheryl wearing it, believing it could serve as a public lead.

Leaving the vigil, Elsie notices a man she had clocked earlier still hovering at the edge of the crowd. He is tall and thin, with long hair and a jacket unsuited to the heat. Their eyes meet and he immediately flees. Elsie pursues him on foot to a utility van parked on a side street, and though she cannot read the company logo at this distance, she sketches it in her notepad as he drives away, believing she may have recorded their first real piece of evidence.

Roger arrives at Beverley’s house after nine, and she leads him upstairs before asking about Emily Roswell, knowing she will get more from him if she is patient. She reflects on how their affair started: After Henry was sentenced, Roger had been one of the only people to treat her with warmth, telling her during a diner meeting that a woman like her could not have been expected to see through Henry’s manipulation. She was lonely and shamed, and she clung to his kindness.

Afterward, Beverley retrieves his cigarettes from his coat and uses the moment to ask about Emily Roswell. Roger confirms she was killed elsewhere and dumped at the golf course, stabbed multiple times. He then reveals the detail that disturbs her: The killer tattooed the words “love” and “hate” onto the victim’s knuckles, one word per hand.

Beverley presses him on whether the two murders are linked. Roger resists, arguing that the methods differ and that Cheryl Herrera being Hispanic makes a Kings connection more plausible. He adds that Cornwell is dedicating significant resources, including covert surveillance, to the Kings. When Beverley persists, he accuses her of trying to manage her own misplaced guilt through the scrapbook and her sudden interest in these cases, and warns her plainly to leave the investigation alone.

Beverley drops her eyes and agrees, but as she stands at the window watching the quiet street, she knows she has no intention of stopping.

Margot attends a Hollywood Hills party, reasoning that mingling with people off-guard is genuinely useful to the investigation. She reflects on how different this friendship is from her previous social life: With Beverley and Elsie, she never has to perform. She nurses a daiquiri and watches the crowd. Her actor boyfriend Mark is somewhere inside hoping to meet film director Mason Clarke.

Margot’s broken heel forces her to sit, and a young woman in go-go boots approaches. Margot recognizes her as Barbie Cook, a studio makeup artist.

After brief small talk, Barbie steers the conversation to Mason Clarke. She describes him as sexually predatory, physically dangerous, and ruthless. She then mentions a specific rumor: a model from Golden Point had been writing to Clarke, trying to break into acting, and then simply vanished. Barbie is certain Clarke will never face consequences because of his wealth and status. The missing woman and the location catch Margot’s attention. She asks for the woman’s name, borrows one of Barbie’s lipsticks, and turns over her arm to write it down.