Overview

When the pregnant wife and four-year-old stepdaughter of fading movie star Tom Travis disappeared a massive search was launched. Soon after the body of Travis' wife is discovered only a few miles from where he had been riding his dune buggy on the day she vanished he's arrested and placed on trial for capital murder. Only a few days away from an almost certain guilty verdict Travis' lawyer hires suspended Ex-Deputy D.A. Steve Janson to try to find some overlooked clue that might keep Travis off death row. Janson accepts the assignment, not to help Travis but in the faint hope of finding the missing child still alive. Janson's investigation leads him on a twisted path from Travis' mistress to her drug-dealing brother to the writer and producer of Travis' last movie and on across the landscape of Southern California until Janson eventually begins to wonder if Travis might really be innocent after all.