 Boston, 1974- a security guard is shot when trying to stop three robbers get away, the very next moment the police arrests them. Present (1990s), schoolboy Jimmy Taylor who works as part-time busboy overhears a man who did 20 years of jail demand Julia Harris to get paid for not having her friend Stanley put away for life. Sheriff Mort Metzger got many reports on a prowler, but all descriptions are contradictory. Dr. Seth Hazlitt remarks local computer store owner Evan Rafferty is particularly grumpy, perhaps because he doesn t want his son Will to start a boating business and thus refuses to cosign; Evan tells Julia Harris his property is not for sale, whatever her company bids; she suggests to Will, who also told her about his dad s past, a Boston bank which might co-finance his project, he gratefully invites her for dinner. Shortly after he examined the mysterious ex-con, Seth is missing, his office ransacked, and there is a blood stain, his type. Based on a robot-photo of the presumed prowler, the sheriff finds the man -our ex-con- was using various false names; Jessica believes Jimmy lied not to recognize him; the fingerprints in Seth s office belong to Leo David Fender. A male body is spotted in the woods- it s Leo s; Seth is around all-right, he just made a distant medical house-call, and recognizes Leo as a recent patient. After a talk with Jimmy, who realizes Evan was the only one in town who went all the way to Boston to hear a symphony orchestra, Evan decides to move in a hurry, saying to his fiancée, Jimmy s mother Marion Taylor, his past has caught up with him. From Leo s police file Jessica notices the names of his accomplices and starts figuring out some links just in time...