Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is an alcoholic newspaperman in Oregon, whose long-suffering editor, Bill Rentels (Hume Cronyn) complains that Joe is always setting up stories in order to write them. Joe is contacted by an old girlfriend, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), who tells Joe that she is in fear of her life. It seems someone is killing all the reporters who attended a news conference three years earlier in Seattle at which a congressman was assassinated. That murder, which takes place at the beginning of the film, was considered closed when an armed waiter was arrested. However, the real shooter was a contract killer who escaped. Lee tells Joe that six reporters have been murdered so far, although their deaths have all been judged accidental. Joe feels she is being paranoid and dismisses her fears. However, when Lee is found dead of an apparent overdose, Joe is sure she has been murdered. He convinces his boss to let him investigate the case, and goes to Washington to interview witnesses to the death of one of the persons present at the press conference. While, he finds test applications for the Parallax Corporation. He consults a psychologist, who says it looks like the purpose of the application questions is to judge whether or not a person is capable of murder. Joe has a convicted killer fill out a form and he submits it to the Parallax Corporation under an assumed name. He then meets with Austin Tucker (William Daniels), an aide to the assassinated congressman, who tells him he thinks there was a widespread conspiracy to kill the congressman for his liberal views; shortly thereafter, Tucker himself is killed. Joe is contacted by Jack Younger (Walter McGinn), a representative of Parallax, and is taken to Parallax headquarters for more testing. Joe becomes sure that Parallax is training assassins, and gives his preliminary report to his boss, who is also murdered. Events then spiral out of Joe’s control, as he is drawn deeper into Parallax’s plans for assassinations and domination.