The expanded third season picks up six months after the events of season two and follows Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee as they investigate the disappearance of two boys, with only an abandoned bicycle and blood-stained patch of ground left in their wake. Meanwhile, Bernadette Manuelito attempts to settle into her new life 500 miles from home with the Border Patrol, but stumbles across a conspiracy involving human and drug smuggling with far-reaching implications.
Many criminals made the mistake of underestimating Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide investigator with a crumpled trench-coat and a beat-up car, who certainly acted as an incompetent bumbler. But he was so polite to every suspect, and he talked so much about his wife (who we never got to see on any episode, but who many believe later had her own show, starring Kate Mulgrew, later of Star Trek Voyager fame) that he lulled even the shrewdest murderer into a false sense of security. And although the audience had witnessed the murder in the beginning of each episode, it was still a surprise to see what mistakes the killers had made during the seemingly perfect murder.