Retired St. Petersburg police detective Rodion Vanzarov was asked to return to service - a case so difficult that only one can do it. And on the very first day of the investigation, Vanzarov... kills a crime victim! Or was the victim dead before that?.. The police of the city of Pavlovsk, through the streets of which a dead-living girl wandered, could not answer this question. The great forensic scientist Lebedev could not solve the riddle of what happened: something important was slipping out of sight all the time. And this continued until Vanzarov heeded the warning of a mysterious bibliographer named Trupp...