A young girl falls to her death and Joe Faraday searches for a boy whose shadowy figure is caught on CCTV. But the investigation is hampered by the discovery of the body of a small time crook in the wasteland north of the city.

The gruesome case involves a man chained inside a tunnel, then dismembered and scattered along the tracks by the morning train. While checking the list of missing persons, DC Winters follows up on another man whose only connection seems to be someone working at the morgue.

While DI Faraday copes with the death of his assistant just killed in a car crash, DC Paul Winter, master of the scam, lashes out as he copes with his wife's terminal cancer. But grief must be set aside to work the current case at hand, a missing gynecologist with a suspect list of maimed women.