After a terrible fire in an apartment building returning Sailor Joe Rawlins's, wife and child seem to have simply disappeared. Two unidentified bodies remained after the fire but surely it couldn't be them because the description of the sailor's family just doesn't fit... but if they didn't die in the fire where did they go and who else could it be that died that night? Can Captain Frank Kennelly find the missing woman and child when everything points to them having died in the fire? Can anything be done to actually identify the mysterious, unclaimed bodies? And will the desperately concerned sailor have to accept that his wife and child may be gone forever?