... especially after circling back to the beginning after watching the final and dismal season eight of this show.
A woman is seen talking to her publisher about a tell-all book she is writing about Hollywood celebrities. She says she feels unsafe in her home and that she is checking into the Sunset Motel for a few days to finish her book. You see a man listening in - Her house is obviously bugged.
Next we see the police investigating at the motel. The woman's body is wrapped in a towel - she was taking a shower - and an empty liquor bottle is near the body. There were only a couple of outfits in the closet, no ID. The police determine she is a probably a prostitute working out of the hotel. The initial blood and tissue samples from the autopsy point to liver cirrhosis as cause of death, and in Quincy's absence, a rushed Dr. Astin, Quincy's boss, signs off the death as being due to natural causes. The same man we saw listening in on the author's conversation shows up at a mortuary claiming to be the family's attorney and asks that the body be sent there and cremated.
Quincy was suspicious of the woman's death to begin with, but when he returns to the coroner's office the body is not only gone, but cremated! Starting with the woman having no ID and having just a few tissue and blood samples, Quincy works backwards to determine who the victim really is and the cause of death without a body.
This was only the second episode, but it establishes Quincy as clever and with an eye for detail whose hot temper could get the best of him, especially when dealing with people he considers incompetent or stonewalling bureaucrats.