A woman burns to death in her car near the Regensburg service area. Inspector Lucas and Judith Marlow, who has returned to the team, quickly find out that it wasn't an accident. The car was set on fire while the victim was still alive. The first hot lead leads the investigators to the renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Alexander Krayenberg, with whom the dead woman regularly had aesthetic procedures carried out. Holger Franz, the husband of the dead man, sinks into deep sorrow and is not really of any help to the investigators. Or is he just faking his sadness? The images from a surveillance camera lead the inspector to the Proell family. Lucas sets his sights on the innkeeper and pension owner Marc, since the victim Carla Franz had taken up residence with the Proell family and they lost track of them from there.
Together with his wife Katrin, Marc takes heartbreaking care of his brother and whirlwind Theo, who was born with trisomy 21. Lucas is depressed when the evidence points more and more to Theo, who is already on record. The victim's mobile phone, which is in his possession, weighs heavily on him. How did Carla Franz get from the pension to the site? And who put her there? With this question, Inspector Lucas moves between two completely unequal worlds: the world of the Proell family, who is struggling to survive on the poverty line, and that of the glamorous plastic surgeon Krayenberg. The doctor's smooth facade cracks when Tom reveals that Krayenberg has hired cheap guest surgeons to work for him.
In order to fully reconstruct the mysterious course of events, the commissioner must first understand that everyone involved has probably contributed their own personal part to the death of the former beauty.

Young Monika is found lying in state in the branches of a tree, twelve meters above the ground. She's dead. Inspector Lucas sees it as a kind of funeral ceremony. But who does that? The investigations lead her and her team to the idyllically situated Aschenbachhof, to a home for girls who are difficult to train. The victim had disappeared from there months earlier. Lucas meets Polly at the home. She shared a room with Moni. The death of her friend affects the girl very deeply, and Lucas arrives just in time when Polly is about to slit her wrists. Lucas and her team find out that the girls have repeatedly escaped to the village. When Lucas comes home in the evening, Polly is already in her apartment. Lucas is touched by the girl and, against all reason, she keeps Polly with her for the night.
While Max lovingly supervises Polly, Lucas delves ever deeper into the chasms surrounding the home. Tom and Judith find out that Matthieu Egginger, a young man from the village, was in touch with the home girls and ran a sex chat channel from which the girls made money - and Egginger made money with them. During interrogation, Egginger reports that caretaker Hannes Lenz threatened him. He had a close relationship with the girls and put massive pressure on him the night before Moni disappeared. But Polly also seems to have information, and Lucas and her team also come across inconsistencies in the girls' home files that point to a stay abroad.
Did the private sponsor of the home, under the direction of the tough businessman Christian Kroiß, become guilty of something with the help of the home manager Frieda Schreiber? Or is the motive for the murder to be found in the immediate environment of the victim? For Commissioner Lucas, Polly becomes the key figure in this case.