In a raucous department meeting at Farwestern University, Roberta Pierce, 60-year old popular lecturer on the faculty, criticizes some of the senior staff. Her body is found in the morning, with a knife in her back. Rocky Yates, detective in the city police department, is called in and starts an investigation that turns up drug dealing on the campus, and gets young assistant professors Mark Hastings and Kate Barton involved as they try to help a promising black student, addicted to drugs. Rocky suspects that Roberta Pierce was not just a sweet old lady who liked to entertain her female students, and as he goes through her house, he finds samples of pornographic photography. Mark and Kate help identify students as models in the pictures, which seem to be behind a second murder. Rocky investigates San Francisco drug dealers, vagrants who pass through town, the usual suspects, but with the help of Mark and Kate finds the real motives for murder in the faculty.