Deaf with Open Eyes

DOBRY KOWALSKI, a retired police detective turned newspaper journalist has been assigned to write the first story about GREGORY ROBINSON, a former neighbor he loathes for killing a young store clerk and her unborn child that he helped put behind bars. At the threat of being fired, he reluctantly takes the assignment.  Dobry ignores the agenda of his story assignment and instead pushes Robinson to admit that he murdered the store clerk, which Robinson had never done. Dobry grows increasingly frustrated with Robinson’s traumatic memory loss, and his inability to recall the events on the day the clerk was killed, and believes it’s all an act. DAVID BODINE, Dobry’s boss, is concerned that Dobry’s reluctance to take the assignment will cause him to miss the story’s deadline, so he assigns BECCA VIGLIONE, a spry and gutsy journalist, to assist him. 

Dobry’s wife, MINKA, pleads with him to open their home to his brother, ADRIAN who claims to have fallen on hard times after moving to Florida soon after the clerk was killed. Dobry agrees to his wife’s request, though he has conflict with Adrian for cheating on his wife, Helena, when they were married.

PAUL ROUSEY and ED ROMANINSKI, two of Dobry’s ex-partners on the police force demand Dobry stop the story for fear it will incite public hatred for the Columbus Police Department for indicting a gay black man for murder. Adrian also tries to discourage Dobry from writing the piece. Dobry refuses their demands because he needs his job. With Becca’s help, Robinson’s memory slowly begins to recall the events that took place the day the day he was in the store at the time the store clerk was murdered. In doing so, he realizes he wasn’t alone in the store, since he remembers there was a man at the store counter with the clerk, whom he can’t identify. With every visit from Dobry and Becca, Robinson remembers more of what happened during the incident. He recalls hearing someone come down the stairs from the apartment above the store. Dobry and Becca visit MARGARET BENSON, the woman who lives above the store, and question her about the day of the shooting. Her responses conflict with Robinson’s story which raises concerns with Dobry and Becca.  Adrian was cheating on his wife with Margaret at the time of the killing and has rekindled his romance with her since returning to Columbus. He assures her she has nothing to worry about since Dobry can’t have the case reopened since he’s no longer a cop. Margaret isn’t convinced. Dobry and Becca are certain Margaret wasn’t alone as she claims. After the questioning, Adrian reassures her he had nothing to do with the clerk’s death, and that he never went to the store when she was in the bathtub at the time of the shooting.

Romaninski and Rousey invite Dobry for a few drinks to demand he drop the story on Robinson. Dobry refuses them again. This time it’s not because he fears losing his job, but because his attitude on the story has changed since he has learned more about what really happened. He also learns some damaging information on how his ex-partners handled the investigation after he was removed from it. Bodine is badly beaten up on a nightly jog and is hospitalized. When Dobry and Becca visit him in the hospital he orders them to drop the story on Robinson, and investigate a water shortage in Montgomery County. Seeing Romaninski and Rousey in Bodine’s hospital room, Dobry and Becca are convinced they are the ones who put Bodine in the hospital and ordered him to put an end the story, which makes them more suspicious of what really happened in the store.

After interviewing the victim’s ex-boyfriend and learning that a paternity test proved he wasn’t the father of the murdered store clerk’s baby, Dobry suspects Rousey might be the father of the victim’s unborn child. He explains to Becca how he saw Rousey in the store where the clerk worked more than once, but didn’t think anything of it at the time, since he and Dobry visited the store regularly for snacks during their workday when they worked together. With Dobry and Becca’s persistence, Robinson can identify Paul Rousey as the man at the counter on the day of the shooting. When asked, Rousey denies being in the store at the time and accuses Dobry of giving into a murderer to advance his career as an investigative journalist. Dobry and Becca are fired, which is not a surprise since they never stopped the story like they were ordered to. On a return trip from the prison they are run off the road and their car rolls over several times. Dobry is uninjured, but Becca spends the night in the hospital for observation for her head injury. They know Rousey is behind the murder, which further validates that they are on the right path to solving the crime. The victim’s mother refuses to have her daughter’s body exhumed at Dobry and Becca’s request to obtain a DNA sample of the fetus. She has been intimidated by Rousey and Romaninski. When Dobry and Becca nearly have her convinced to exhume her daughter’s body, she goes missing and is later found dead outside of Wheeling, West Virginia, which is Romaninski’s hometown. 

Dobry is upstairs in his own home helping Adrian pack his things to move to his own apartment when the front of the house is peppered with bullets leaving Minka and a neighbor boy who was on the front porch badly injured and hospitalized. Becca pleads with Dobry not to go after Rousey and Romaninski for nearly killing Minka and the neighbor boy. Instead,he makes a call to Rousey and tells him he knows that they killed the victim’s mother. Dobry also knows that Rousey will kill Romaninski for fear Romaninski will make a plea deal and throw Rousey under the bus. Becca questions if Dobry’s call was ethical and moral. Dobry assured her his call was needed if they were to save Robinson from the death chamber. Dobry visits Bodine in the hospital to inform him that he and Becca will finish the story and have it published. Dobry prefers the story be published in the Columbus paper, but if Bodine refuses, Dobry states that he will find any one of a hundred newspapers that would love the story. Bodine agrees to publish the story and gives into Dobry’s demand to hire him and Becca back with a 50% raise.

Rousey is shot and killed in his car, which catches Dobry and Becca by surprise since they had him pegged as the final piece to the puzzle. A day later Adrian is shot in the leg while on a walk, which is equally surprising. On her own, Becca investigates the area where Adrian claims he was shot. She tells Dobry what he doesn’t want to hear. There was no blood anywhere near where Adrian said he was shot, and the traffic on the road was too busy for a random shooting without a witness. When Dobry visits the apartment complex Adrian said he moved to, the office never heard of Adrian. Dobry and Becca break into Margaret’s apartment. They find an empty RC Cola can and pieces of a moon pie, which is a favorite treat of Adrian’s. They also find Margaret dead in her bedroom closet. Dobry suspects Adrian is hiding at Margaret’s apartment, and goes there to find that he is right. Adrian tells his story of how he and Rousey had sex with the store clerk. Rousey was against finding out whose child it was and killed her. When Rousey called Adrian from the store to join him, he wanted Adrian to kill Robinson who was cowering at the back of the store. Adrian lied and told Rousey the gun froze and that he hurried out of the store. He explains to Dobry that Minka was never the intended target, since she was supposed to be upstairs helping him pack at the time of the shooting, not Dobry. He confesses how he killed Margaret and Rousey and then panicked and shot himself. He explains how everything got out of hand, and that he never wanted the clerk dead. When the Columbus Police enter the apartment to arrest him, Adrian tells Dobry he has a lot of money, and that he and Minka are entitled to a third of everything. Adrian tells Dobry he’s sorry for everything, and then uses the gun to commit suicide.

With Adrian’s taped confession, Dobry and Becca convince the Governor that Robinson is innocent. The Governor agrees to commute his sentence to time already spent in prison, grant him amnesty, and works to have him immediately released exonerating him of all wrongdoing.