Peter Katz, a New York literary agent, receives a submission from Richard Flynn, who in the late eighties was an English Literature student at Princeton and dreamed of becoming a writer.

Flynn's manuscript tells the story of his love affair with a Psychology student named Laura Baines, whom he suspects of being in a secret relationship with a famous professor, Joseph Wieder.

The second part is the first-person account of John Keller, a freelance reporter who is trying to reconstruct the circumstances of the same killing for a true crime book.

Afraid of the possible legal repercussions of putting forward his theory about the murder, Keller abandons the project.

Freeman receives some vital information about the case from a convict, Frank Spoel, who is awaiting execution at the Potosi Correctional Center in Missouri.