A shooting incident in a mini-mart puts Det.Tutuola's face on the cover of newspapers as the hero who saves a young boys life.... but it brings back a old ghost from the past: a mother who never knew his name but recognised him from his picture - and who blames him for the loss of her daughter who went missing shortly after an undercover narcotics operation he was involved in collapsed for lack of evidence.
A brief visit at the hospital from Det Tutuola's estranged teenage son reinforces to him that not only were the mini-mart robbers only teenagers, but so was this missing girl...
He starts to see the girl from a parent's point of view, where, in the past, working in narcotics, she was merely a strung out junkie on the streets out of choice.
Despite his shoulder injury and with the help of a narcotics squad agent, he sets out to make things right with the angry mother and find the missing girl, but the trail only leads them to further sinister reasons to keep looking for the mother's sake...
Tutuola feels personally responsible for letting the fate of the teenage girl be decided by driving the mother away, and only his personal actions can redeem him in the eyes of a mother whose last encounter with him was a gun to head and a threat to kill her if she did not leave....
With the loss of stability in the Stabler family, the further development of the paternal instincts and background of Det Tutuola's character bring the added dimension of humanity to some otherwise quite unpleasant characters and situations....
A brief visit at the hospital from Det Tutuola's estranged teenage son reinforces to him that not only were the mini-mart robbers only teenagers, but so was this missing girl...
He starts to see the girl from a parent's point of view, where, in the past, working in narcotics, she was merely a strung out junkie on the streets out of choice.
Despite his shoulder injury and with the help of a narcotics squad agent, he sets out to make things right with the angry mother and find the missing girl, but the trail only leads them to further sinister reasons to keep looking for the mother's sake...
Tutuola feels personally responsible for letting the fate of the teenage girl be decided by driving the mother away, and only his personal actions can redeem him in the eyes of a mother whose last encounter with him was a gun to head and a threat to kill her if she did not leave....
With the loss of stability in the Stabler family, the further development of the paternal instincts and background of Det Tutuola's character bring the added dimension of humanity to some otherwise quite unpleasant characters and situations....