A dead man is found with a wallet stuffed with multiple fake I.D.s. When his prints come back, he turns out to be a career criminal named Ronnie Buck. He and his accomplice Paul Kasperski ran a cleaning company that's a front for casing stores to rob. Alan Cobin, the owner of an electronics store, was killed during one of these robberies. When the detectives check records, they find that Cobin's widow Lorraine (Cathy Moriarty) hired Buck's cleaning company at the store. Under threat of being charged as an accessory to murder, Kasperski takes a plea and admits that Buck was hired to kill Cobin.
Lorraine is a gold-digger who left her first husband after his business failed, and then lied about him molesting her daughter Melissa (Katherine Moennig) to clean out his assets in court. But her pre-nup with Cobin meant that if they divorced, she'd only receive a small fraction of his wealth. McCoy and Southerlyn have evidence that Lorraine killed Buck because he was blackmailing her. Melissa gives Lorraine an alibi, but when the DAs find holes in her story, she admits she went shopping and wasn't home with her mother. Lorraine refuses a deal despite risking the death penalty if she's convicted at trial.
The judge won't allow Lorraine to be tried for both murders but will allow evidence of Cobin's murder as a motive for Buck's. When McCoy makes Lorraine's many lies apparent, she and her lawyer claim that Melissa killed Buck and Lorraine's covering for her. Lorraine is acquitted, but subsequently, Melissa wears a wire and lures her into admitting she had Cobin murdered. The detectives arrest Lorraine for Cobin's murder. With the tape recorded confession, she will most likely receive the death penalty.
Tropes present in this episode
- Black Widow: Lorraine has a habit of marrying rich then getting rid of her husbands. When her daughter asks why she killed her most recent one, Lorraine responds with, "Sweetheart, you didn't have to sleep with him."
- Broken Pedestal: Melissa experiences this after realizing her mother really is a killer, and agrees to wear a wire to catch her.
- Exact Words: The judge would only allow Tobin to be tried for the murder of the career criminal. When she claims double jeopardy during her arrest in the finale, McCoy points out that that only applies to the first murder trial, and confessing to murdering her last husband gives them another shot to convict her. See Hidden Wire below for why this will be a slam-dunk conviction.
- False Rape Accusation: Lorraine coached her then 9-year-old daughter to lie in court about being abused by Lorraine's first husband.
- Hidden Wire: McCoy gets to listen to (and record) an incriminating conversation between Lorraine and Melissa.
- It's All About Me: Lorraine, so much so. She is only interested in her husbands to make her rich; and she's more than willing to call her daughter a murderer in court to provide herself with reasonable doubt. Not that it does her any good in the long run.
