On the afternoon of October 24, 2011, 12-year-old Garrett Phillips is found mysteriously strangled in his home in Potsdam, New York. Police quickly zeroed in on a suspect in this unthinkable crime: Oral "Nick" Hillary, the ex-boyfriend of Garrett's mother Tandy, who was a soccer coach at Clarkson University and a black man in a community that was mostly white. Hoping to put the welfare for their children first, Tandy and Nick had recently separated, feeling pressure for their interracial romance in the small town, and, in the wake of Garrett's death, Tandy finds support from her ex-boyfriend, Sheriff's Deputy John Jones. Considering few other suspects, Potsdam investigators brought Nick into the station for a traumatic interrogation he would never forget.