While playing with a puzzle, a teenager is repressed by his mother, and he kills her and severs her body with an axe. Forty years later, on a university campus in Boston, a serial killer kills young women and severs their bodies in parts, stealing body pieces from each student. Lt. Bracken makes a deal with the dean of the campus. Agent Mary Riggs infiltrates the campus posing as a tennis teacher, and with student Kendall they try to find the identity of the killer.