Detectives Briscoe and Logan investigate the murder of Dawn Bryan. The young African-American woman once had a bright future ahead of her. She was a good student and was even voted most likely to succeed. It seems to have all come tumbling down when she got hooked on crack. She was shot with a .45 caliber gun and their first suspect is her supplier and sometime live-in boyfriend who goes by the street name of Skate. The dead woman's family are devastated by the loss of their daughter but they feel they lost her long ago when she became hooked on drugs. When the evidence points to a family member as the likely culprit, ADA Stone and DA Adam Schiff both feel a good deal of sympathy. Paul Robinette however doesn't think anyone should have leniency and pushes for a grand jury indictment.

A businessman is accused of killing the psychiatrist who diagnosed his daughter with multiple personality disorder. McCoy suspects that the psychiatrist may have uncovered a repressed memory involving her mother's possible murder.

Did the son of an assassinated African-American leader attempt to murder his father's successor, or is he the victim of an elaborate FBI frame-up?

The discovery of a dead body inside a Volkswagen van dumped in a river leads Briscoe and Curtis to investigate the disappearance of a campus radical from the late 1960s.