On New Year's Day 1901, reporter Jorden Lang is summoned to the newspaper's office to find the police waiting. Jorden's business card was found in the pocket of an unidentified woman struck and killed by a train the night before. As the police investigation of the woman's death goes on, Jorden recounts meeting the dead woman two decades earlier when she was a young wife accused of brutally murdering her police officer husband with the help of her teenage paramour. For the first time and while putting together the broken pieces of the dead woman's life, Jorden reveals her past encounters with the dead woman during her multiple murder trials.