- After a mother orders a professional hit on the new husband of her former daughter-in-law, detectives reopen an investigation into her son's death.
- Detectives Briscoe and Curtis investigate the shooting of James Shepherd, who was walking to his home from the parking garage where he kept his car. He had just returned home from an outing with his wife Robin and 8-year-old daughter to celebrate the child's birthday. Forensics reports that the same weapon was used in a hit some two years before by a professional hit-man. A fixer points the finger at Robin Shepherd's former mother-in-law, Estelle Muller, whose son Rick was married to Robin until he died some 5 years earlier in a rock climbing accident in Central Park. Jim Shepherd was with Rick when he died, and Estelle is convinced Jim was responsible for her son's death. She makes no bones about having orderied the hit on Jim, but she offers to plead guilty if the police and DA investigates Jim for murdering her son. A new autopsy on Rick Muller shows he was hit on the head with a baseball bat before he fell. The DA decides to proceed against Jim Shepherd.—garykmcd
- When an attempt is made on a man's life, detectives discover a hit man was hired to kill him--by his wife's first husband's mother. When arrested, the former mother-in-law says she'll agree to a plea bargain so long as police investigate whether or not her son was killed by the man she tried to have killed.—Esprix
- Legacy
Robin, a young mother, and her eight-year-old daughter, Darlene, enter their neighbor's apartment after a night out. Robin's husband, Jimmy, is parking the car. They talk to the neighbor, who was babysitting Robin and Jimmy's infant son, Billy, while the family was out.
Suddenly, they hear gunshots and someone yelling "Police!" Darlene stays with the neighbor while Robin runs downstairs. She sees her husband lying in a pool of blood and rushes to him.
Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis are on the scene. They interview several witnesses: a woman who had been walking home from the gym and a man who was out walking his dog. The man says he's Dr. Paul Sacket. Neither could be very helpful in identifying the shooter or saying which way he or she went.
While Jimmy is in surgery for a bullet to the head, the detectives interview Robin. She explains that she, Darlene, Jimmy, and Darlene's grandmother Estelle had been at a restaurant for Darlene's birthday dinner. Estelle is the mother of Rick, Robin's first husband. Robin is upset that she's at the same hospital where Rick died. The surgeon enters and reports that Jimmy will be OK.
The detectives talk to an analyst at the ballistics lab. She explains Jimmy might have tipped his head a tiny bit before the bullet hit him, and it ended up going around his skull rather than into it. She matches the bullet to the death of Jeffrey Zabner. An unsolved case, Zabner was shot in the street two years ago.
The detectives interview a former detective from the Zabner case at his office. The detective is certain that a loan shark named Morelli was behind Zabner's killing, though he hired someone to do it because he was in Florida at the time Zabner was shot. They can't interview Morelli because he is dead. He directs them to Mrs. Zabner, who was at the scene when her husband was shot but has never given the police any information about anything she may have seen or known, probably in fear for her life.
The detectives interview Mrs. Zabner outside the store where she was the night her husband was killed. He had been waiting for her on the sidewalk. When she hear the shot, she came out and found her husband dead. She only remembers a few things: a couple on the steps drinking at the time, kids walking by with a big speaker, and a pudgy man walking a little dog. She doesn't remember the man's face but she remembers the dog. Lennie wonders if he was the same man with a dog at Jimmy's shooting who called himself Paul Sacket.
At the station, Mrs. Zabner has helped a sketch artist create a sketch of the dog. Van Buren suggests a doggy line up. Curtis tells Van Buren that there is no Paul Sacket. They have a sketch of what the man with the dog looked like.
The detectives interview Jimmy and Robin in Jimmy's hospital room. They don't recognize the man from the sketch. They tell the couple that they suspect the shooting was a hired hit and that they'll be putting a uniformed guard outside Jimmy's room. Robin can't think of anyone who would want to hurt Jimmy. Speaking to Jimmy alone, the detectives ask him if he has any ideas of who might want him dead. He has no problems with his business, a t-shirt printing company, and he doesn't gamble. He says it must be some mistake.
Outside, the detectives head to their car and decide to canvass Jimmy and Robin's neighborhood to see if anyone saw or knows a chubby man with a dog.
A bar owner recognizes the sketch of the dog and remembers the dog and the man coming in about 9pm. He ordered a bourbon and a piece of pie. He also talked about a specific brand of cigar.
Reporting to Van Buren in her office, the detectives haven't turned up anything nefarious about Jimmy's business or life. She suggests they track down who sells the specific kind of cigar the man mentioned.
After a long search, the detectives find a smoke stand owner who recognizes the sketch of the man, identifying him as Howard. He comes around every other day or so.
The detectives are sitting the car outside the smoke stand, Curtis in the driver's seat smoking a cigar, Lennie waving the smoke away, saying he used to smoke cigars before he quit. They see a man who looks like their target enter the smoke shop, then they discreetly follow him home. He appears to live in a nice house and have a typical family, as they see him greet a woman and a young girl.
At the station, the detectives report on Howard Phillips. They retrieved his garbage and have his fingerprints. He was in jail for assault years ago under a different name. Van Buren wants to know who would hire a hit man to kill Jimmy and, since Jimmy's business is clean, she tells them to investigate his marriage.
The detectives interviews the babysitter in her apartment. She says that night the Shepherds were supposed to be home at 9pm but they didn't come home until after 10pm. Since she knows Robin quite well, they ask about her first husband. She says that he died while rock climbing in Central Park. She says that Robin and Jimmy are a very happy couple and Jimmy will be adopting Darlene soon.
Outside, the detectives want to know how the hit man knew that the family would be late coming home. At the station, they tell Van Buren that someone at the restaurant that night used the payphone to call an untraceable phone twice. One was at 9:15 and the other at 9:45. They review who was at the dinner: Robin, Jimmy, Darlene, and the grandmother Estelle Muller. Van Buren tells them to interview them separately.
Curtis interviews Estelle at her apartment. She had worked in her husband's criminal law office before he died. Now she's a widow and lost her son five years ago. She points out that Jim and Robin married seven months after Rick died.
Lennie interviews Robin at her apartment. Robin explains that Estelle blamed Jim for Rick's death, because he was there at the rock climbing accident. Robin says that Estelle continued to voice suspicions and only stopped when Robin told her that if she didn't, Robin wouldn't let Darlene visit Estelle anymore. She did not make a phone call when they left the restaurant. She didn't see Estelle make a call, but Estelle did return briefly to the restaurant as they were leaving, saying she forgot something.
At the station, Lennie has pulled the file Rick's death. The investigating officer had marked it as accidental because Jimmy said both of them were very drunk after their softball game. The file also says that Estelle doesn't believe her son, an acrophobic, would ever climb a rock of any height. They suspect Estelle might have ties to unsavory people like hit men from working in her husband's law firm.
The detectives meet with ADA Jamie Ross at the DA's office. She looks up Mr. Muller's file in a computer database, remarking that he had been a successful criminal defense lawyer. One of his clients was Mr. Morelli. Morelli is dead but they have the name of one of his associates, Bronson.
At a bar, the detectives meet with Bronson. Under threat of accomplice to murder, Bronson admits that he put Estelle in touch with the hit man.
Lennie, undercover as a hit man, walks with Estelle in Riverside Park. Curtis and Ross are close by listening through a wire. He says he can finish the job. She gives him $4000 and says he'll get the rest after Jim is dead. They arrest her. Then they find Howard in his neighborhood walking his dog and arrest him. Lennie agrees to return the dog to his house.
At arraignment court, both Howard and Estelle are charged and plead not guilty. The judge sends them both to jail without bail. Howard's lawyer tells Jamie that they are meeting with the U.S. Attorney the next day.
McCoy and Ross meet at the office of Chuck Rodman, a U.S. attorney. Howard will tell them everything he knows about Jim's case and then he will turn state's witness for the U.S. attorney and help them with many other cases. Howard confesses Estelle hired him to kill Jim.
At Riker's, McCoy tells Estelle's lawyer that they have a strong case against her, with testimony from Howard and the tape of her trying to hire Lennie to finish the job. She says she will plead to anything they want, as long as they prosecute Jim for the murder of Rick. She insists Rick would not have climbed rocks no matter how drunk he might have been. She says there was something going on between Robin and Jim before Rick died. She put up with it for five years but decided she had to do something when she learned Jim was going to adopt Darlene.
At the DA's office, McCoy tells Adam Schiff he's interested in looking into Rick's death. Ross tells him there was no autopsy.
Ross interviews Robin at the hospital restaurant. She says she loved Rick and only fell in love with Jimmy after Rick died. She insists there was nothing between her and Jimmy beforehand.
Ross interviews Jimmy's former roommate. He said that Jimmy was very fond of Robin and didn't really date anyone. During physical therapy, Jimmy denies to Ross and McCoy that he had anything to do with Rick's death.
In Adam's office, he doesn't think there's much of a case, but suggests they exhume Rick's remains. Dr. Rodgers, in the morgue, tells Ross that the original medical examiner missed a fracture in Rick's skull. The indentation matches the width of a bat.
The detectives arrest Jimmy in his hospital room.
In court, Estelle testifies that she suspected Robin and Jimmy were having an affair before Rick died. His roommate testifies that Jimmy wasn't interested in Robin and that he dated a lot of other women, which is different from what he told Ross earlier.
In Adam's office, they talk about how trying to prove Jim killed Rick is difficult. Ross talks to Estelle in jail, and she remembers one time when Robin was out of town while she was still married to Rick. She said she went to a high school reunion.
Ross investigates Robin's reunion and finds out that Jim was there at the same time. McCoy asks Robin about this in his office. Robin says she was at her reunion and only ran into Jim by surprise. He was only there for a business trip. Later, Ross tells McCoy that she was able to verify that Robin was telling the truth, as she spent the entire reunion with her girlfriends. McCoy wonders if maybe Jim was semi-stalking Robin, and it wasn't an affair.
In court, under cross, Jimmy admits that he lied about the business trip. He had intentionally gone to be near Robin when she went to her reunion. Robin looks concerned but still leaves court that day with Jimmy.
The next day in court, Robin testifies against Jimmy. She says that Jim used to be a little too close to her while she was married to Rick. He would sometimes flirt with her but she brushed it off as harmless.
In the DA's office, Ross reports that the jury came back very quickly, finding Jim guilty of killing Rick Muller. "Gotta be tough finding out you married your stalker," says Adam.
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