The sudden, unexplained death of a Japanese martial artist movie star leaves Quincy without an assistant. Sam quits after urging him not to perform an autopsy on the man, as it is against the religion of his parents. Quincy tries to balance his need for knowledge, to find out how the man died, and the feelings of his best friend.

While completing the autopsy of a construction worker who fell to his death Quincy spots some unusual abnormalities. He gets Sam to run some further tests to see if there was anything that could have made the man fall. The results show that he was killed by a large amount of pesticides, pesticides that were covering the tomatoes he had for lunch. Follow up investigations show that a dumpsite near the town of Rosewood is leaking. The chemicals are infecting the ground in and around the dumpsite and town.