Two New York City detectives track down a dangerous killer who kills his victims via Edgar Allan Poe's short stories.

SYNOPSIS:

Two New York City detectives, Ed Green and Dana Cassady go to a morgue in Queens to investigate the murder of an esteemed medical examiner named Joshua Perkins. When they get there, they find a few bits of evidence while they investigate the murder: four chess pieces (two rooks and two bishops) around the victim's head and the pages of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Murders In The Rue Morgue". Then, the detectives question the victim's fellow medical examiner: Becky Schulman, the one who noticed the victim when she was working. They find out from Becky that the victim was her mentor.

Then, the detectives question Violet Perkins, the victim's wife. They tell her that her husband was murdered. Violet is sad and she tells the detectives that she didn't want him to be a medical examiner. When the detectives leave the apartment, they debate the fact that Violet had a motive for her husband's murder. They go back to the precinct and Rita Martin, the detectives' lieutenant asks them were the friend and the wife helpful on the investigation. The detectives tell Rita that Joshua was her mentor and Violet tried to talk him out of being an M.E., but he didn't listen. Ed sides with the wife and says that it was a case of "women's intuition". Rita tells her detectives to get more information at the morgue.

When the detectives get there, they talk to Anne Marsden, another M.E. and good friends with Becky and Joshua. When the detectives ask how well she knew the victim, Anne tells them that he was a great guy and a great M.E. and she was Becky's temporary replacement until she comes back to work due to taking time off from witnessing Joshua's dead body. Anne tells the detectives Becky is lucky that she wasn't at work, because Anne has to pull out the slugs from Joshua's body and tells them that Becky would've been further traumatized if she had that job. Then, the detectives question Ron Carter, the head M.E. Ron tells them that Joshua was a great M.E., but they had a disagreement about Ron not taking a vacation in ten years and tells them that Joshua told him that he was going to keep working at the morgue "or die trying".

Back at the precinct, the detectives tell Rita about the information that Anne and Ron gave them. Rita suggests that they question the female M.E.s again and the detectives do just that. They question each woman and they tell them that the only woman that Joshua loved was his wife. In Anne's apartment, Ed gets a call stating that there was another murder in an abandoned theater on Broadway. When they get there, they are hit with a smell of decomposition. They, and the other officers put on gas masks and go into the theater. The detectives come across two uniformed cops who are looking at the floorboards of the stage and open the loose boards and find that the body parts of the victim were cut up and shoved into the floorboards. The uniformed cops also find the pages of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" with it. And they also find something else: A small manila envelope and the victim's eye was inside it.

They report back to the precinct and tell Rita about the second murder. They tell her that the victim had no I.D. so they had listed him as a John Doe. Then, the next day, the detectives continue investigating the two murders. Just then, a woman named Sophia Collins tells the detectives that her husband was missing for four days ago and his name was Frank Collins. She also told them that she talked to the police in Brooklyn about her husband's disappearance and he had a tattoo of the American flag on his left arm when he went to go to the store for cigarettes. The detectives go to the library and look into the story by way of the newspaper archives. The detectives find out that Frank Collins had disappeared on April first, which confirmed Sophia's story. Then, the detectives go to the precinct in Brooklyn and talk to the detectives who were investigating Frank's disappearance four days ago. The Brooklyn detectives tell the visiting detectives that the case went cold when they didn't get any information to investigate. When the visiting detectives ask to take over the case, the Brooklyn detectives refuse. Then, Ed threatens to tell their superior that they didn't investigate the case long enough (twelve hours) if they don't hand over the case. The Brooklyn detectives finally agree and hand over the case to Ed and Dana.

As Ed and Dana go back to their precinct, they find out that Frank was an avid reader of Edgar Allan Poe from a book of Poe's works were in the box of personal before he disappeared. They also go to the medical examiner's office in the precinct and talk to Shea Connors, the M.E. who works at the precinct. Shea confirms that she is working on the body of Frank Collins when she shows them the faded, but clearly seen tattoo on the left arm of the victim. Then, the detectives go to the address of Sophia and tells her that her husband was indeed murdered as well as dismembered.

Then, when the detectives go back to the precinct and investigate both murders, they still have no suspect as to who the killer is. That is until a young man named Jon Baxter comes into the precinct and asks the detectives if he could speak to them and their lieutenant. Ed calls Rita and tells her that Jon wants to talk to her and the detectives together. Then, when Rita comes to her detectives' desks, she greets Jon and she asks him why he's at the precinct. Jon sadly says he has some information on the killer that killed Joshua Perkins and Frank Collins. When the Lieutenant asks Jon who was it, Jon confesses and says that he is the killer.

The detectives and Jon are in the interrogation room and the detectives question Jon's motives behind the murders. They find out that Jon was a patient at Bellevue and he had escaped because he wasn't being treated properly while he was there. Then, Paul Gibson and Susan Kaplan, the lawyers and Rita listen to the interrogation on the opposite side of the one-way mirror. Paul tells Rita to draw up a search warrant for the detectives to search Jon's apartment for the murder weapons. Rita does just that.

When the detectives get to Jon's apartment they find a gun, a hatchet with blood on the blade and they also find a switchblade with blood on the blade. They confirm that they were the weapons that Jon used to commit the murders. Then, they cuff Jon, read him his rights and take him away.

Then, Paul and Susan tell their superior, Arthur Miller, about Jon. They tell Arthur that the detectives have Jon in custody after they searched his apartment for the murder weapons. Arthur tells them that Jon was a patient at Bellevue and he escaped and Bellevue had called Missing Persons on the day that Jon escaped. Then, Paul tells Susan to go and get Jon and have him come to his office.

Later, the lawyers and Jon talk about Jon's situation and the crimes he committed. Jon is upset when Paul tells him that he has to have his day in court. Jon asks Paul why and if him committing the murders was enough to send him to jail, which is what he wants as opposed to going back to Bellevue. Paul informs Jon that all suspects of a crime are "innocent until proven guilty". Later that day, back in Arthur's office, Paul and Susan tell Arthur that Jon wants to go to jail rather than going back to Bellevue. Then, Arthur tells Susan to go to Bellevue and let them know that they found Jon and have him in custody.

Susan talks with the nurse at the front desk and they talk about Jon. The nurse informs Susan that he had escaped from the hospital a month ago. Susan informs the nurse that she has him in custody at the precinct. Upon hearing this, the nurse is relieved and asks the lawyer if they will return him to Bellevue, but Susan informs the nurse that Jon committed two murders during his escape. Now, feeling a little concerned, the nurse tells Susan that he has paranoid schizophrenia and has been restrained numerous times for numerous suicide attempts and he hasn't been taking his medication since he escaped.

Susan returns to Arthur's office and tells him and Paul the information that the nurse gave her. Paul, who says that this case will be a case of "corpus delicti" and he worries that if he takes the case, it will send a bad message to the mental health community if the case doesn't go well. So, Paul volunteers Susan to try the case. Just then, Sandy Kramer enters the office and introduces herself to Arthur and the lawyers and tells them that Jon should not even be tried in the courtroom and should be returned back to Bellevue. Susan tells Sandy that Jon was well enough to know that what he did was wrong and he wanted to go to jail. Sandy snaps back and tells Susan that he wasn't taking his medication and he wasn't well and she hands Susan a document. Susan reads it and finds out that on Sandy's behalf, she will try to get Jon a "not guilty by mental disease or defect" defense and return him back to Bellevue.

The case begins with Violet Perkins, Sophia Collins and finally Jon Baxter himself and finally, after all the lawyers' questions and the answers from those who took the stand, the Jury Forewoman, when asked by the judge, tells the entire court that Jon was "not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect" making Sandy proud and Jon unhappy. Upon the verdict, the presiding judge ordered Jon to go to Bellevue for further psychiatric care.

At Arthur's office, Susan and Paul tell Arthur that Jon was back in Bellevue. Susan asked Paul why he didn't want to try the case and Paul said that the case hit too close to home because a relative of his, who also had paranoid schizophrenia, killed himself. Just then, Arthur gets a call from the detectives and Arthur tells Paul and Susan to go to Bellevue and meet Ed and Dana there when they find out that Jon had killed himself in the hospital. When the lawyers get to Bellevue, they meet the detectives there and the lawyers asked them what happened. Ed tells the lawyers that Jon smuggled a small knife into the hospital, laid in his bed and stabbed himself under the covers until he bled out. Susan asks who called in the suicide and Dana tells her that it was one of the nurses. When the detectives and the lawyers get to Jon's room, they go in and find Jon's dead body in his hospital bed with a big red splotch of blood where his chest is and a knife sticking out of it. Susan sees that Jon wrote a suicide note before he died and finds out that the note was a poem parodying Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". Paul tells them that Jon wrote the note before he died. And Ed says "May he rest in peace" in Latin. Then, the lawyers and detectives leave the room and Jon's dead body.

"CORPUS DELICTI"