A teenage girl, Sofie, disappears on her way home from a party in Kautokeino. A friend reports her missing to the police, but the case is not taken seriously. Not until Sofie is found murdered in a village a few hours away.

Maja defies all warnings and begins to investigate on her own accord. And she grows increasingly confident in her theory - the police are wrong.

Maja's theory of a possible serial killer is finally heard by the police, who permit her to join the investigation despite their doubts. She begins to dig into old cases in the archives, searching for a pattern.

Maja and the other investigators are looking for connections between several murders and missing person cases. They discover that the pattern much more extensive than first thought.

Maja is reduced to the sidelines and is close to giving up. But information about Maja's own family sheds new light on the murder. Could the killer have been a part of Maja's inner circle.

Maja's confrontation with her father has major consequences. The day after their feud, he is found dead at home having taken his own life. The shock of the loss of her father sends Maja even closer to the tipping point.

Despite all the warnings about dragging her private trauma into the case, Maja decides to try one last time to talk to her demented mother.

After going down what turns out to be a blind alley, the suspicion falls on a man who was close to Maja's family in his youth. The police strike, but he escapes and disappears.