Police Lieutenant Sam Carson spots Walter Bard's bullet-ridden corpse in a car brazenly left in front of the police station. Carson questions Janet Bradley after finding her name in the dead man's appointment book. She admits that the Bard had been blackmailing her friend for $20,000, and that she went to see him, though she had been able to raise only half the money. When he refused to settle for that, she claims she took what she came for at gunpoint. Max Calvert, a newspaper owner, pressures Carson to arrest Bradley to hurt her father's election campaign for mayor. Carson declines.