Episode 1
When news gets out that Mariko is returning to Kyoto, everyone in the forensics department is puzzled. Then, on a bus making a midnight run from Tokyo to Kyoto, a man is found dead. All but one of the eight other riders are taken to the police station, but what of the eighth rider?
Episode 2
Popular mystery writer Fujio is found bludgeoned to death in his hotel room. About the time he was killed, a woman was hit by car outside the hotel. According to the driver, the woman had come running out of the hotel. Did she kill Fujio?
Episode 3
Mariko has been asked to appear in a TV special on the occult. She is in the studio as she watches a live broadcast from the "haunted house." The announcer suddenly panics over something and falls to his death. The police rule it an accident, but is it?
Episode 4
A hiker comes across a skeleton. It is identified as that of okinaka teresa, a filipino woman who disappeared four years before. Her marriage to okinaka had been faked, and she was working in a pub. A frequent visitor to the pub comes to light.
Episode 5
Mariko wins a trip to a hot-spring inn and she drags det. Niiyama along. It's a rundown inn in an isolated spot. The road to the nearest village has been blocked by a landslide, and the phone lines don't work. Soon, one of their members is found hanged in a shed.
Episode 6
Investor makie is dead. His body was found by his housekeeper, upon her return from a week's vacation. Initial investigations point to death due to alcohol-related liver damage. But mariko finds that makie had been ingesting arsenic over a long period of time.
Episode 7
Satoko has reported a stalker to the police. The culprit has entered her apartment and slit her clothing, and she has sensed someone watching her. As no official request has been made, mariko is unable to examine the girl's apartment. Then, she dies in a fall.
Episode 8A & 8B
Final Episode (in two parts). Inspector Koba has been stricken with a fatal disease. Mariko can do nothing for him, but he is still a reliable confidant, able to offer her advice from his long years as a detective. The granddaughter of a political party leader is kidnapped, and her mother receives a demand for 200 million yen. The mother follows the kidnappers orders, but in the end, the money is stolen and her chauffer is wounded. Meanwhile, Mariko is able to figure out where the daughter is being held. When she is rescued, it becomes apparent that the kidnapping was a hoax, and that the chauffer had stolen the money. Then, when the chauffer dies in a fall, only Koba does not believe that it was a suicide.
