Robert Arnold, an ex-con who's "gone straight," is at the scene of a drug store hold-up by a former cell-mate that leaves one cop dead. To clear Arnold's name, Maris goes in search of the killer.

Maris is called into the case of Tom Sheppard six weeks after the young man was convicted of murdering an ex-girlfriend. An old lady across the street says she saw him chase the woman out of a bar and whack her in the head with a rock.

The warden asks Maris to investigate the case of Ron Davis, a man on death row whom he thinks may be innocent. Fellow inmates testified that Davis stabbed a prison thug to death.

Ex-con Frank Harbach comes to Herb Maris when a couple of old prison mates pay him a visit. The thugs force him to hold the $30,000 they stole in a robbery, or they'll implicate him in their crime and do harm to his wife.

Businessman Martin Reeves knows his teenage son Paul is somehow involved in an attempted robbery and shooting. With a big merger pending, Martin is more concerned with his own reputation, and bribes witnesses to tell his version of what happened.

Hot-tempered soldier Blake Newman is accused of killing his best friend, a fellow soldier, who'd kept him waiting at the train station because of a girl. Maris' old commander asks him to help the boy.