A man walks into Roland Longville's office and asks for help with the disappearance of his young daughter. Her apparent kidnapping caused a media circus years earlier because her parents were wealthy, and she had disappeared during her ninth birthday party—with the house full of guests. Longville, a private detective, joins forces with Detective Amos Tiller. The two men embark on a journey that takes them from the seediest parts of Birmingham to a surreal ghost town in the Arizona desert, where circuses go to winter. There they will find the awful truth behind a crime almost too dark and terrible to believe.