A torrent of human deaths crashes down on the quiet life of a dacha settlement. The list includes a party worker retired on pension, a respectable widow, an engineer, and the guys who have just finished their army service. Evgeniya Okhotnikova’s bodyguard makes a contract with the Semyonenko couple—disturbed by the events—to conduct a joint private investigation. Before long, the newly formed trio of detectives comes to the conclusion that the murders are connected by only one rather shaky circumstance: all the victims showed excessive curiosity about the new resident of the settlement, whom the locals, behind their backs, call no other than a sorcerer. Of course! Strange bundles of herbs of unknown origin are hung on the walls of his gloomy dwelling; the house itself looks abandoned; and from time to time, from the stable, a terrifying, heart-rending howl carries throughout the whole area…