A teenage boy is dead, the victim of a hit-and-run. Clues have dried up and the police have assigned it to the cold case file. The father still seeks justice and engages the services of Finley Sullivan Investigations. Jimmy McSwain is about to be handed his most challenging case as he enters the second year of his apprenticeship.

Jimmy can empathize with Malcom Tenney. Their situations are reversed, though, one having lost a child, the other a father. But that's where the similarities end. Fourteen-year-old Roddy Tenney was an anomaly in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a violin prodigy with a bright future in a troubled neighborhood. His father tried his best to shield him from the dangers on Brooklyn's tough streets, providing him with a privileged life.

Malcolm is convinced the boy's death is related to a real estate developer who will stop at nothing, including murder, to take control of the valuable property where Tenney's Auto Emporium stands. As Jimmy goes undercover, mutual grief becomes the motivation in solving a case built on tragedy ... before another can occur.