A rape victim is found dead at the bottom of an airshaft of an abandoned building in the Alphabet City section of the lower east side of Manhattan. She is the fourth young lady from the mid west, who has come to NewYork City seeking employment, and has met the same fate The pressure on the NYPD to end this string of horrendous crimes is growing. Ian MacDonald, a senior trial assistant district attorney in the homicide bureau of the New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney's Office and Emily Bird, the head of the sex crimes unit of the same office, head up a task force with the NYPD to investigate and apprehend the perpetrators.
The rapers are a group of young men from wealth homes in Westchester. They have concluded that no one would ever suspect affluent young men from the wealthy suburbs of doing this. They have developed a means to locate "Hayseeds" who come off the buses at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and lead them to their downtown orgy pad.
At the same time there is a brilliant young inmate awaiting trial at Rikers Island. He has dreamed up a scheme to bring the courts to a stand still. He has got to be stopped before he succeeds in causing the collapse of the City's criminal justice system. Ian MacDonald may have to go out to Rikers in order to prevent this inmate from succeding. The great work of one of his colleagues safes him from that unenviable trip.