Original Airdate: March 25, 1977
Written by: Juanita Bartlett
Directed by: Reza Badiyi
Gibby’s, a busy Hollywood disco, is robbed by two men in ski masks. In the course of the heist, a bartender is shot dead. LA Rams third string running back Davey Woodhull (Howard McGillin) is arrested because his watch matches the description of one taken in the robbery.
Davey’s lawyer Beth Davenport (semiregular Gretchen Corbett) believes she can beat the circumstantial evidence against him if she turns up Doreen Carpenter (Sondra Blake), a married woman Davey claims to have spent the night with. While she tried other PIs for the alibi hunting job while Jim was on a fishing trip, she goes to him when he returns.
Club manager Gibby (Joseph Mascolo) grows angry when Jim grills him and is revealed to be a PI working for the Woodhull defense team. Jim believes he may be hiding something, which puts him on the list of suspects when Beth starts receiving suggestive gifts and threatening phone calls. The stalking disturbs and distracts Beth, but she still performs well in court.
Knowing that Doreen Carpenter has show business ambitions for her young son, Jim sets up a meeting with the talent agent (Conchata Ferrell), pretending to be an executive seeking a specific kind of boy for a national advertising campaign. When Doreen contacts him he reveals his true identity and purpose. She reluctantly agrees to testify, but a gunman kills her on the way to Jim’s car.
Jim’s Friend on the Force Dennis Becker (Joe Santos) agrees to help Jim and Beth by tracking some equipment used in the harassment campaign. The trail leads to a company that does business with government employees. Since Gibby doesn’t fall into this category, Jim changes tack in his investigation, finding that the purchases were made by public college football coach Spencer Garrett (John Calvin), whom he finds and tackles on the field.
Beth wins an acquittal for Davey Woodhull, largely on the strength of Doreen Carpenter being murdered after she agreed to testify. Davey doesn’t have long to enjoy his freedom, however, since Jim has discovered that he really was guilty of the robbery (with Garrett as his accomplice) and the bartender’s murder, and that he had Garrett kill Doreen lest she fail the polygraph test. They planned and executed the stalking of Beth so that he could claim incompetent council if he was convicted. In a closing scene Jim theorizes that Davey decided to go for money since big glory in football seemed unlikely.
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Clothing Damage: Gibby rips a hole in Jim’s suit jacket while finding his PI badge.
- Evil All Along: Davey committed the murder that he had been charged with, charges on which Beth was defending him. He was also guilty of planning his own witness’s murder and the cruel psychological torture of Beth herself.
- He Knows Too Much: Doreen Carpenter is killed because she knows at the very least that Davey wasn’t with her when the robbery went down.
- It Was Here, I Swear!: Subverted. The Stalker Shrine is taken apart while Beth gets Jim and Becker, but Becker can tell she’s telling the truth from the pinholes in the wall, and Jim wouldn’t have doubted her anyway.
- Meaningless Villain Victory: Davey gets acquitted for the bartender’s murder, which he committed, and thanks to the double jeopardy rule can’t be retried for it. However, his accomplice gives him up for ordering the murder of Doreen Carpenter, and both of them are still on the hook for both the robbery and what they did to Beth. Safe to say he won’t be getting out for a long time.
- Stage Mom: Doreen Carpenter is determined to get her 4 1/2 -year-old son into movies, which is how Jim gets hold of her.
- Stalker Shrine: Beth finds a roomful of hidden camera photos of herself at the (alleged) headquarters of the Harriet Bergstrom Society, which has (allegedly) been sending her the gifts.
