Secret of the Secret

In a small bucolic Staten Island community, Red, a federal agent, is taking a break, due to a young informant dying on his watch. While off duty Red discovers that his friends are hooked on legal hallucinogens concocted by Mats, a pivotal figure amongst them, who appears to be brutally murdered. Red is assigned to solve the murder, while remaining undercover.

Mats is a wizard at concocting hallucinogenic foods, gently using this methodology, coupled with journaling and meditations, to ease his lovers into an altered state, making the women altruistically free from their conditioning. Unbeknownst to the group, Mats has an identical twin brother named Sten, who accidentally murdered a woman on the West Coast, which his brother dutifully covered up. Mats discovers Red is hot on their trail and has made similarities with the unsolved murder on the West Coast where members were controlled by legal hallucinogens and disappeared. Simultaneously, a second woman dies under Sten's watch, which mysteriously results in the death of one of the twins.

Before the disappearance of his friends, Red becomes romantically involved with one of the women in the cult, and frantically pursues a man who turns out to be one of the twins and attempts to press charges for murder. Red is convinced that he is Mats, assuming the identity of his brother in order to close the case, and to avoid a lifetime sentence. Desperate to bring the real killer to justice, Red falls for the psychological manipulation of the twin murderer, who cleverly diverts all blame away from his detailed plan to vindicate himself.