Abnormal solar activity is believed to have driven the violent escalation of suicides in Rome. In a city under a strange atmospheric strain, the body count rises in stark, disturbing ways: a woman cuts her wrists in a bathroom, a man slips into a river with a plastic bag over his head, another dies in his car after setting it on fire, and a husband/father shoots his family before turning the gun on himself. Amid the chaos, Simona Sena Mimsy Farmer works long hours at the coroner’s office, where the stress is so crushing that she begins to see the dead as if they’re stepping back to life. She moves through the days with a practiced calm that barely masks a fraying psyche, and she endures regular harassment from her assistant Ivo Ernesto Colli as she tries to hold on to some sense of professional distance and personal dignity.
Into this crowded, dangerous weave enters Betty Lennox [Gaby Wagner], the latest lover of Gianni Sanna [Massimo Serato], whose presence unsettles Simona even as it pulls her deeper into the spiraling mystery. Betty’s body is found on a beach the next morning, a gunshot through the mouth making the death look like suicide. But when Betty’s corpse is reconstructed by Ivo, who has a history of exploiting the dead, Simona recognizes her from a red wig Betty wore in life. Betty’s brother, Father Paul Lennox [Barry Primus], arrives at the morgue to identify his sister and asserts that she was murdered, not allowed to slip away. He implores Simona to help uncover the truth, a request that she meets with initial resistance, wary of the way faith and murder begin to blur.
As the investigation unfolds, Edgar Riccardo [Ray Lovelock], a race car driver with a bruising attitude, surfaces as a man who belittles Simona and tests her resolve. He is connected to Gianni’s life in unexpected ways, and his own pride and aggression complicate every step toward answers. Simona’s world grows even more tangled when she encounters Gianni’s partner Daniella [Angela Goodwin], a controversial artist who embraces bold colors and bold truths, including the red wigs that seem to haunt the case. Daniella’s presence stirs tension with Simona as she navigates both personal flirtations and professional skepticism, especially as she learns that Gianni plans to marry Daniella despite Betty’s entangled ties to the men around him.
A tense night at Gianni’s apartment—above Simona’s own building—brings a close call with a burglar, who searches for something unknown but leaves empty-handed. The encounter deepens the sense that someone is actively hiding crucial evidence. Paul, the priest who has claimed Betty’s murder, grows more insistent; he experiences a seizure during a confrontation with Simona, which shakes him but doesn’t derail his mission. The building’s caretaker—a voyeur who abuses his dog—takes his own life by hanging, a grim echo of the city’s unraveling morality, and Paul’s attempt to resuscitate him ends in failure. As Simona and Paul grow closer, Edgar’s taunts intensify, and he suggests that Paul might be fabricating the entire narrative to feed his own ego and faith.
To test Gianni’s truth, an experiment is conducted using a device that reads eye movements to extract answers from the apparently comatose man. The results are garbled, the wrong drug mix sends Gianni into a deeper coma, and Simona uses the moment to examine the Betty case more closely. She discovers a puncture mark on Betty, proving she was injected and murdered, not simply slain by suicide. Ivo makes a brutal attempt to violate Simona in the heat of the moment, but she defends herself with a fork, stopping just short of killing him when Edgar intervenes and interrupts the assault.
Paul’s church becomes a pressure cooker as he receives Betty’s belongings—among them an old Bible that he believes is a historic document salvaged from Rome’s floods decades ago. The Bible connects to a broader scheme involving Gianni’s brother Lello Sanna [Carlo Cataneo], a dealer in antiquities who may be entangled in illegal schemes. Paul confronts Lello, and the line between sacred duty and secular greed sharpens into a dangerous edge. Edgar finally reveals the truth to his aunt over a weak, hard-of-hearing line: Edgar killed his own father to secure an inheritance and a will, and he had used Betty to manipulate Gianni into retrieving the document. Betty wanted to mail back the will after speaking to Paul, but Edgar drugged her to hear the truth, then shot her to keep control of the situation.
Edgar’s confession, however, does not end the danger. He breathes a last breath after his plan to stage a joint suicide with Paul and Simona is foiled. The trio fights back against his deadly scheme, Paul turning on the bathroom faucet to flood the room and summon help as the dog’s alert saves them from a carbon monoxide trap. The climax unfolds on a familiar scaffold, where Edgar tries to kill them both; Paul survives the fall, but Edgar’s grip on the edge gives way, and he plummets to his death before a crowd that rushes to the scene, leaving Simona to confront the heavy truth that the case has pressed upon them all: some questions may be answered, but the cost is a heavier silence than before.
