An officer goes on suspension when he shoots a suspect in self defense and the man's gun vanishes.
While on the lookout for a psychopathic killer, detective Sgt. Tom Valens spots a man running across the grounds of a housing development and orders him to stop. Instead, the man draws a gun, and Valens shoots him in self-defense. The dead suspect turns out to be a highly respected doctor, James B. Ruston, well-known for his philanthropic efforts on behalf of the Mexican people in Baja California. Because no trace of the slain doctor's gun can be found, Valens' story is discredited in the press, and he is accused of being a trigger-happy cop who murdered an innocent man. Suspended from field duty, he has only a short time to clear himself before being prosecuted on manslaughter charges. Desperate, Valens returns to the housing development and visits Alice Willows, an elderly patient of Dr. Ruston's, who tells him of the doctor's weekly visits and the little presents he always brought for her dog. While there Valens also encounters two other tenants--Walt Cody, a commercial airline pilot who seems sympathetic to his plight, and a dead model, the victim of an illegal abortion. Then Valens calls on Ruston's nurse, Liz Thayer, and learns that the doctor had recently been receiving large dividend checks from his broker, Calvin York. A short time later the nurse is found murdered, and an attempt is made upon Valens' life. Deducing that somehow there are connecting links between these facts, Valens recalls something Miss Willows said about burying her dog with all of Dr. Ruston's little presents. Calling upon Walt Cody for help, Valens unearths the dog's tiny coffin and finds the missing gun--a toy wooden pistol filled with heroin. Realizing that both Ruston and his broker were part of a narcotics ring, Valens accuses Cody of being the contact to fly the heroin to every large city on the Pacific coast. Trapped, Cody draws a gun and shoots. But Valens is only wounded, and he fires two rapid shots which knock Cody into the dog's open grave.
