The Ledger

12.12 Undercovered

In this episode (12.12), a health insurance adjuster is killed, apparently by an unhappy client. Briscoe and Green investigate, and it takes them quite a while to track down the killer.

The episode begins with the driver of a street sweeping truck coming across a dead body in the street. Briscoe and Green quickly learn his identity, but they can't figure out why someone would want to kill him, or what he was doing in the uptown neighborhood where he was found. They track down a homeless guy who frequents the area, but he didn't see much. The victim's wife says they led a normal life, and a co-worker says he was meeting someone downtown the day he died.

Along the way, Briscoe's cellphone rings, and he answers it. This might be the first time in the history of the show this has happened. Even Det. Green comments on it, saying, "You finally gave out that number, huh?" The ME has news: a blow to the skull killed the man, sometime between 9 and 11 pm the previous night. They learn that the previous night, the victim attended a show at an art gallery and had a private meeting with one of the artists, a female videographer. Briscoe and Green suspect the man was having an affair with her, but we learn that their relationship was innocent: he wanted to make a birthday tribute film for his wife. The artist even shows them test footage the two had shot the night before. So we see the victim clearly on videotape, something that doesn't happen very often. But the question remains: How did he get all the way up to 108th street, and why?

Near the artist's office, they ask some loading dock workers whether they saw anyone that night. They say they think they might have seen him talking to someone in a cable van, and they saw him get in the van. Since the homeless guy had mentioned seeing a cable van, this sounds like a lead. They check in with the cable company, and learn that one of the trucks had been reported stolen. They check out the guy who reported it stolen. He seems like a nice guy, but soon enough, the van turns up, and there is some physical evidence in it. They arrest Mr. Garcia, the cable guy, who has a hammer matching the ME's description of the wounds.

It turns out he might have a motive: he is a client of the health insurance company the victim worked for. The victim decided who got what kind of medical treatment, so maybe there's something there. Unfortunately, the insurance company closes ranks and refuses to reveal what the victim's relationship to the suspect was. Eventually, McCoy gets an order for them to reveal that relationship, and we learn that the victim refused to cover a new and expensive, but successful, treatment for a form of leukemia that Mr. Garcia's daughter has. He voted against the treatment on a committee, and he was the deciding vote. An assistant had unintentionally relayed this information to Garcia, and he apparently acted on it.

The defense, sensing a sympathetic story, presents a justification defense: he thought his daughter was going to die, so he did what he thought he had to do to prevent it. While the case is going on, the insurance company decides to cover the experimental treatment, in a bid, apparently, to get some public sympathy. It all works out for Mr. Garcia in the end: the jury is hung 9-3, and a mistrial is declared.

Posted by adm at March 27, 2004 11:56 PM

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