When a young journalist named Bernardo Blanco is killed in the fictional Mexican port city of Paracuán, investigation into his murder reveals missing links in a disturbing multiple homicide case from twenty years earlier. As police officer Ramón Cabrera discovers, Blanco had been writing a book about a 1970's case dealing with the murder of several young schoolgirls in Paracuán by a man known as the Jackal.