Springdale Detective Jim Eaton really wants to catch the serial rapist who's on the loose in this small town. The perpetrator has already brutalized and raped three women from the local college, and the crimes are escalating. The crimes become personal when John Stratton's twenty-year-old daughter, Laura, comes home-her face bruised and swollen after having been raped. The rapist knocks her unconscious and takes her to his home where he repeatedly assaults her. While she is still only semiconscious, he drives her back to where he had grabbed her and dumps her on the ground. He simply drives away. Though she is two hours away, Laura manages to get her car and heads home.
The beating and rape devastate her father. The police are never notified. After months of physical and psychiatric therapy, Laura recovers but John does not. He is haunted by his anguish. Sleepless nights and tortured days nearly make him insane. Laura remembers something about the exterior of the rapist's house, so for weeks John crosses and re-crosses the residential neighborhoods of this small city until he finds the house.