In 1991, Detective Matthew "Matt" Scudder is in a car with his partner, who urges him to get help and expresses his concern that Scudder is not a reliable backup. Scudder then enters a bar and buys drinks with a coffee. Two armed men come in and kill the bartender, and Scudder fatally shoots one assailant. He pursues and kills the second assailant, as well as their getaway driver.
Eight years later, a drug addict named Peter Kristo approaches Scudder, now retired, and asks him to help his brother Kenny Kristo. Kenny is a drug trafficker whose wife was kidnapped and murdered. Kenny tells Scudder that after he delivered the ransom, the kidnappers directed him to a car containing his wife's dismembered body. Scudder ultimately agrees to find the kidnappers.
At the library, Scudder researches similar killings, and finds victims named Marie Gotteskind and Leila Anderssen. He meets a homeless youth named TJ, a streetwise artist with sickle cell anemia who helps with his search.
Based on an article, Scudder goes to a cemetery and speaks with the groundskeeper, Jonas Loogan, who is upset that Scudder forces him to remember finding bags containing parts of the dismembered Leila in the cemetery pond.
Scudder talks to Leila's fiancé, Reuben, who claims to have witnessed two men drag her into a van driven by a third person. Out the window, Scudder sees Loogan exiting an apartment building. In a tool shed belonging to Loogan on the building's roof, Scudder finds photos of Reuben and Leila having sex.
Loogan admits that he helped kidnap Leila. He had conspired to take Leila away from Reuben, who is a drug dealer, and help her stop using drugs. Instead, the other two men tortured and killed Leila. Loogan gives Scudder one name, "Ray," and jumps off the roof to his death.
The two kidnappers, Ray and Albert, scout out the home of Yuri Landau, another drug trafficker. After realizing Landau's wife is bedridden, they prepare to leave for a new target. However, they see his 14-year-old daughter, Lucia, and Ray decides to kidnap her.
Scudder eventually learns that the victim Marie Gotteskind was a DEA agent and realizes that the people who murdered her also got her files, which they have been using to choose their victims. Meanwhile, Scudder grows closer to TJ, and encourages the boy to study and avoid a life of crime. During a conversation with TJ, Scudder explains why he retired. During the shootout in 1991, one of his stray bullets "took a bad hop" and killed a 7-year-old girl. He has been sober ever since.
Kenny brings Scudder to Yuri Landau's home, where the kidnappers call and arrange a drop. Scudder, Kenny, Landau, Peter, and TJ (who earlier brought Scudder his old gun) go to the cemetery. After a stand off, Lucia, with a finger hurt down to the bone, is returned to her father. When Albert realizes the ransom money is counterfeit, a shootout ensues. Peter is killed, and Scudder wounds Ray. Albert and Ray escape in their van, with TJ hiding in the back.
After Albert and Ray arrive at their place, TJ sneaks out of their van, calls Scudder, and tells him the address. Albert kills the wounded Ray in the basement and goes back upstairs to find Scudder, Kenny, and TJ. Scudder overpowers and cuffs Albert. He leaves Albert for Kenny to decide what to do with and calls a cab for TJ. Kenny knocks out Albert with a bottle and goes into the basement, where he finds Ray’s body and sanitized tools used for dismembering bodies. While Kenny is downstairs, Albert wakes up and frees himself. Scudder goes back inside the house and finds Kenny's corpse. Albert attacks Scudder, and after a brief fight, Scudder kills him.
Scudder returns home to find TJ sleeping on the couch and spots a drawing that TJ made of himself as a superhero.
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