chunk: Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns to his logging home town of Lumberton, North Carolina from Oak Lake College after his father suffers a near-fatal stroke. While walking home from the hospital, he cuts through a vacant lot and discovers a severed ear. Jeffrey takes the ear to police detective John Williams (George Dickerson) and becomes reacquainted with the detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern). She tells him details about the ear case and a suspicious woman, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who may be connected to the case. Increasingly curious, Jeffrey enters Dorothy's apartment by posing as an exterminator, and while Dorothy is distracted by a man dressed in a yellow suit at her door (whom Jeffrey later refers to as the Yellow Man), Jeffrey steals her spare key.