In Willow Creek, a small town in Iowa, two seven-year-old girls, Callie Clark and her best friend Petra Gregory, have disappeared. Callie's father is an alcoholic who, when drunk, beats his wife and eldest son Ben. Several years ago, after a particularly ugly scene, Callie stops speaking, and Petra becomes her “voice.” Deputy Sheriff Loras Louis is in charge of finding her friends. He is afraid that the girls were kidnapped by a dangerous maniac who a year ago, under similar circumstances, raped and killed a ten-year-old girl. Then the criminal could not be found...