Secret in Their Eyes
In Los Angeles, in early 2002, not long after New York City's 9/11 attack, FBI counter-terrorism investigator Ray Kasten (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Los Angeles district attorney's investigator Jessica "Jess" Cobb (Julia Roberts) go about their day in the office.
Newly hired assistant DA Claire Sloan (Nicole Kidman), an attractive Harvard graduate, is getting Ray's attention. Jess is pushing Ray to ask Claire out, to Ray's disapproval, since Claire recently became engaged to a guy named Ellis (Ross Partridge).
While Jess and Ray bicker, they receive a call about an unknown female's body found in a dumpster near the Al-Ankara mosque. Ray and his colleagues have been investigating the Al-Ankara mosque for possible terrorist links.
Arriving on the scene, Ray takes the first look at the body, and he's deeply shocked that it's Jess's 18-year-old daughter, Carolyn (Zoe Graham) -- she was raped, brutally killed, and bleached inside and out so there would be no DNA evidence. Jess is utterly devastated.
Ray feels guilt-ridden about what happened to Carolyn -- he and Carolyn were planning a surprise birthday party for Jess, and they were supposed to meet at a bakery, but Ray was unable to show up because of his job. Two hours after they were supposed to meet, Carolyn's body was found. She was last seen outside the bakery.
During the investigation, Jess feels the increasing need to move away from the city. While helping Jess pack, Ray notices pictures from the police station's picnic day, and a young man staring at Carolyn in all the photos.
After Ray finds no leads with the police officers for the identity of the young man, causing intense frustration, he begins scanning the system for a matching photo. He finds a match.
Ray tells D.A. Martin Morales (Alfred Molina) that Anzor Marzin (Joe Cole), the man in the picture, is the killer, but Morales is reluctant to go after Marzin. Morales is desperate to nail the sleeper cell that they're after at the mosque so Los Angeles won't have its own 9/11 attack. Morales sees Marzin as important to making a case against the terrorists.
Morales says that the counter-terrorism work that they're doing comes before anything else, and then fellow cop Reggie Siefert (Michael Kelly) says that he has brought in a suspect named Aban Ghazala (Amir Malaklou). Ray interviews Ghazala, and realizes that he's not the killer.
A furious Ray heads to the weight room where Siefert is working out, and forces him to admit that the main in the pictures is Marzin. Siefert had brought Ghazala in to throw Ray off of Marzin's trail, because Marzin is Siefert's snitch at the mosque.
Ray realizes that Detective Guerrero, the detective assigned to the case, knew that Marzin is the killer, and didn't do anything, because Guerrero knows that Marzin is an informant. Before leaving the weight room, Ray ends up punching Siefert.
Ray gets Detective Bumpy Willis (Dean Norris) to help him investigate. At Marzin's home, the two find and recover a suspicious-looking comic book, within which they find a pattern that reveals Marzin's location -- he goes to Los Angeles Dodgers games.
Marzin is tracked down at Dodger Stadium, and arrested. Bumpy ends up with a knee injury in the chase. Claire argues with Ray over his methods, citing the evidence as inadmissible because of improper protocol and conflict of interest.
Claire almost releases Marzin during his interrogation, but hesitates and changes her mind when she catches Marzin attempting to look under her blouse. Claire taunts Marzin, leading him to unzip his pants, expose himself, and attack Claire, while saying things that prove that he's the man who raped and killed Carolyn. Ray beats Marzin, who is let go by Morales because of his status as an informant against the terrorists.
Jess, Claire, and Ray argue with Morales, who refuses to pursue the case because he doesn't want to lose an informant who can help him nail the terrorists. After his release, Marzin's van is found burned, destroying all evidence against him. Jess, Claire, and Ray know that Morales had the van torched so he could keep Marzin as an informant.
With the loss of her daughter, Jess becomes a tormented shell of who she was, and she regresses into anti-social behavior. Ray vows to never stop looking for Marzin, but he transfers to the private sector, and gets a job in security.
Now, thirteen years later, Ray, who now works as head of security for the New York Mets, returns to Los Angeles. Ray and Claire are reunited once again, their attraction now obvious. Claire is now the D.A., and Jess, who is still a shell of who she once was, is Claire's top investigator.
Ray has uncovered a new lead on Marzin that he feels can permanently resolve the case. Ray has found a man named Clay Beckwith (Joe Cole), who looks a lot like Marzin. He thinks Beckwith is Marzin using a false name. Jess insists that the matter is closed.
The investigation, which includes a few chases, leads Ray to Beckwith, and a shootout with Beckwith leads to Siefert getting killed. Beckwith and his men are arrested, and Jess says that Beckwith is not Marzin. Ray says that Siefert needed to answer to Carolyn for trying to protect Marzin 13 years ago.
When Ray and Claire pay a visit to Jess's isolated farmhouse, Jess says that she found and killed Marzin 13 years ago, just a couple of months after Ray left. Jess says that after Morales had Marzin's van torched and the evidence in it destroyed, she knew that Morales would not ever let Marzin go down for killing Carolyn.
When Ray later follows Jess to her barn, he discovers that her claim that she killed Marzin was intended to cover up the fact that, for the past 13 years, she has been holding Marzin in a cage in the barn. For the past 13 years, Jess has been making Marzin suffer for what he did to Carolyn.
Marzin begs Ray to ask Jess to talk to him. Ray, who sympathizes with Jess, pulls out his gun, and leaves it with Jess, as he goes outside and starts digging a grave. Ray hears Jess firing a shot that kills Marzin, and Jess walks outside the barn, and gives Ray a look of relief, while Claire officially closes Carolyn's case.
murder, flashback