Gene Cabell, a world-class chess Grandmaster, blames himself for the loss of his family in a tragic car accident. Deeply depressed and emotionally unstable, Gene wanders homeless through the streets of a waterfront city. One winter night, a drunken Gene heads to sleep outside under the warm exhaust ducts of an industrial building, even though an unfamiliar homeless man is already sleeping close by. When Gene wakes up, he finds that the man next to him has a gaping hole in his forehead. He yells for the police.

The police arrive and take Gene in for questioning, where he is eventually interrogated by Chief Detective Mandy Rubel. Mandy eventually confesses to Gene that she was once a serious amateur chess player in her student days and knows Gene's professional background quite well. Gene is soon released, but it isn't long before he finds himself digging into a web of circumstantial evidence that implicates Sam, a simple stable hand of his recent acquaintance. Convinced of Sam's innocence, Gene teams up with failed physicist-turned-journalist John Fronheim to stop the wheels of Justice from convicting the wrong man.