Detective Ed Delongpre (Dennis Hopper) is challenged by the mayor of Burman City to make an arrest in a one-day series of child slayings within 48 hours. With no clues to work with, Delongpre and his longtime partner McGivern (Frederic Forrest) and their team of investigators stake out just about every place in town where kids are at play. Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to the cops (with one notable exception), the mayor has also made a deal with a notorious mobster to also find the killer, pitting the good guys against the bad guys to stop a sicko. Also meanwhile, Delongpres relationship with his estranged adult daughter Leslie (Leslie Hope) is torn open after a decade - Leslie is the mayors pushy assistant.

Quadripeligic ex-cop Lincoln Rhyme was looking forward to his assisted suicide when he got the news: some sicko was abducting people in a taxi and leaving them to die in particularly sadistic ways. With time counting down between each abduction and possible death, Rhyme recruits rather-unwilling Amelia Donaghy, haunted by her cop father s suicide and thinking she s next, into working the crime scenes to track down the killer.