The police are convinced that Julia Ransom was guilty of the brutal murder of her husband, renowned psychic August Ransom. But after six months of investigation and media frenzy, she is free of their scrutiny. One afternoon she walks from her Pacific Heights home to Fishermans Wharf, alone, unwatched - and, she realizes, happy. It suddenly comes to an end when a respectable looking man distracts her with conversation before striking her unconscious and heaving her over the railing into San Francisco Bay.