Bank manager Howard Grant steals money from the vault and delivers it to a waiting man. When one of the staff raises the alarm, the man pulls a gun, and is shot and killed by a security guard. Howard is detained. Eventually, he admits that two men (including the deceased) kidnapped his six-year-old daughter Julie and forced him into the robbery. The dead man is petty crook Cyrus Lowell, who was working with his father Mitchell, a serial conman. The detectives track Mitchell Lowell down. He won't reveal where Julie is, so Fontana threatens Lowell with a gun and submerges his head in a toilet until he talks. Julie is rescued from a boat that Lowell's ex-wife Cookie owns.

Lowell's lawyer Randy Dworkin is confident of getting the forced confession excluded as evidence. The judge rejects his motion but the [=DA=]s are divided over the morality of Fontana's actions. Borgia confronts him but he says he will deny it. Lowell refuses a deal and Dworkin privately tells [=McCoy=] that, although obliged to defend Lowell, he thinks Fontana was justified. Fontana is repeatedly evasive when cross-examined, and a frustrated Dworkin requests a dismissal. Borgia convinces the judge that the detectives would have found Julie anyway, since the harbormaster had called Cookie to tell her Lowell was on the boat.

Dworkin makes the case that Fontana brutally assaulted Lowell, who had only ever been gentle with Julie and never threatened or harmed her. In his summation [=McCoy=] tells the jury that while he understands why they are upset by Fontana's use of excessive force, the alternative was to risk Julie being harmed or killed. The jury convicts Lowell of both kidnapping and robbery.

!Tropes present:
* AwfulWeddedLife: Lowell's had at least two with wealthy women he defrauded.
* BunnyEarsLawyer: Dworkin. He has a clownish manner but he is smart and ruthless.
* FrenchJerk: The detectives discover Cyrus worked at a restaurant, and interview the head waiter, a very arrogant French man who makes snotty comments about Cyrus being too poor to be a patron of the restaurant.
* KillingInSelfDefense: The guard shoots Cyrus Lowell after Lowell pulls out a gun, presumably in order to shoot the guard.
* OutlivingOnesOffspring: Cyrus Lowell is killed at the beginning of the episode, his father convicted at the end.
* ParentChildTeam: The father kidnapped the bank manager's daughter while the son went with the bank manager to collect the ransom money.
* PoliceBrutality: Fontana's actions are effectively this.
* TitleDrop: When Branch retells an anecdote from his childhood where his father tells him, when he is weighing what to do with the fish he caught (release it and go hungry, or kill it and eat it?): "Son, there's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."