A New York woman calls the LA police department and says her grown son in LA has called her and told her he is committing suicide. Detectives Friday and Gannon investigate.
Since the man's name is known, for once they don't need the "who", but they most definitely need the "where" . They find the man's wife, find out he is recently divorced and living with his sister. At the sister's house they find that the sister's bottle of prescription sleeping pills is completely empty.
So now it is up to the phone company to trace any incoming call in case it is the brother. This part includes some unwanted callers who just want to yap and the sister of the potential suicide shooing them away so that her brother does not get a busy signal.
So all of this drama would not happen today. Cell phones make all of this suspense at the phone company unneeded. Also, the drug used for the suicide attempt was a barbiturate. Barbiturates can sometimes cause death even if you take a normal dose . It's one of the reasons that benzos were invented - it's very hard to kill yourself with an overdose of benzos alone. The Madoffs tried and failed. But I digress.
Friday and Gannon's interview technique needs some work here. They ask people questions and when they are less than forthcoming get huffy with them. Only after wasting a couple of minutes when they have no time to lose do they indicate that the person they are looking for is in danger not in trouble with the law. They might have gotten further faster if they had led their questions with - "A man is dying somewhere and we need to find him before it is too late!"