 A prison lifer working in the infirmary as an orderly gets the shock of his life when a dying fellow inmate confesses that he himself committed the murder that the orderly, a businessman on the outside, was convicted of three years earlier. Nobody else heard the confession, and there is no evidence tying the now-dead hit man to the murder. The orderly freaks out and grabs a guard s riot shotgun, tapes it to the throat of the prison doctor and sends out the word -- reopen his case and find the person who ordered the hit, or get the doctor s head on a plate. Skeptical at first, McGarrett soon finds evidence that contradicts statements made at the businessman s trial and renders his "motive" for the murder meaningless. He still doesn t know who could have ordered the hit, though. A professional colleague of suspect, victim and the suspect s lawyer is found to have perjured at the trial -- coached by the lawyer, who DID order the hit. The lawyer s two hired thugs waste the colleague in traffic as he goes to talk to McGarrett, then go after the colleague s wife. The scene switches back to the infirmary, where the doctor persuades the increasingly sleepy convict to cut the tape holding the shotgun, in case it goes off accidentally. The doctor, though, believes the convict s story and refuses to alert guards that he s cut the other half of the tape while the convict was sleeping and now has the shotgun in his own hands. McGarrett, still lacking a firm case, tries to find the business partner s wife -- the last possible witness -- before the lawyer and his thugs do.