Final Words

Susan Richards, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, is assigned to cover the execution of Joseph Hartman, a San Quentin death-row inmate, convicted of crashing a Christmas party for some of San Francisco's elite 10 years earlier and robbing them of their cash and jewelry. Taking the Mayor's daughter hostage and later killing her---as well as his two accomplices---sealed Hartman's fate. However, he was able to bury his loot before being captured and declined to reveal its location for all those years until just before his execution when he offers up a cryptic poem to be read as his final words. The poem is a riddle, and once deciphered, reveals the location of the $30 million is cash and fine jewelry. Susan attends Hartman's execution, obtains a copy of his poem, solves the riddle and embarks upon a scavenger hunt to find the loot. But unscrupulous individuals, including the Warden of the prison and a rival reporter from another newspaper, soon realize that Susan is onto something and vie to get to the treasure first. A sudden opportunity to obtain $3 million in cash and fine jewelry brings out the worst in desperate people, and this fault renders Susan's journey to get the loot nearly impossible. Further complicating matters is the fact that one of Hartman's accomplices was Susan's brother.