The Ledger

6.18 Atonement

Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos guest stars in this episode (6.18) in which a model turns up dead, and any number of loosely connected people may be responsible for her death. Briscoe and Curtis investigate, while McCoy and Kincaid assemble a prosecution.

The episode begins with a woman running down the street yelling that a man has stolen her purse. The apparent purse-snatcher is also running. He's caught, and when police go through his garbage back full of purses, they find one that has fresh blood on it. The purse belongs to Sharon Lasko, a model who recently went missing. At some nearby docks, Curtis finds a jacked embroidered "Sharon," but no body.

Curtis and Briscoe are told they have to investigate the case because missing persons is backed up. They talk to her parents, who direct them to Amber, her ex-roommate (also a model) who talks to them while in her underwear. (She's changing.) Amber says she last saw Sharon at a night club talking to the club's sleazy owner, Frederick Scannel. Curtis remembers Scannel from his days working for the Organized Crime Control Board (OCCB). Scannell says he saw Sharon leave with a basketball player, Ken Soames, but Somes says he took Sharon to his apartment building, where they split up. They talk to Soames's limo driver, Johnny Stivers (played by Michael Imperioli). He says he drove her home and then to a modeling shoot near the USS Intrepid early the following morning. A coffee vendor near the Intrepid says he saw her. They track down the photographer from the shoot, Rick Kasteler, who has a reputation for getting too close to his models, and even has a lawsuit pending against him from one of them. While talking to Kasteler, the detectives get a call: Sharon's body has been found in a landfill...she had been left in a Dumpster.

Something leads them to a hotel room that was apparently frequently used by Kasteler(?) -- it is not very clear how they ended up there. They find tickets to the Intrepid there, which leads them to believe she was in the apartment. ME Rogers tells them that the victim had sex that night but wasn't raped. She was hit in the head by a bottle, and that the person she had sex with was different from the person who killed her. The ME also found cocaine in Sharon's system.

They check back with the basketball player who says that the limo driver, Stivers, sold cocaine sometimes. They talk to Stivers who says he doesn't know anything about that and he was busy driving to JFK at the time of the murder. They learn from Castellar's phone records that he called Stivers' limousine service. They search Stivers' car, which has been steam cleaned, but find glass shards under the seat, as well as traces of blood. Stivers is arrested (29 mins). As they arrest him, they find a shrine to Sharon in his apartment.

His lawyer argues extreme emotional disturbance, saying that Stivers was insanely jealous because he had an imagined relationship with Sharon. Amber, the ex-roommate, says that Sharon used to flirt with Stivers, just like she used to flirt with everyone, and always did so to get what she wanted: drugs.

At trial, Stivers testifies on his own behalf (in an unusually low-key performance from Imperioli). But McCoy realizes that Stivers complicated story about being at JFK was made up, and this indicates premeditation. He learns that Scannel and Stivers share a connection: Scannel is the owner of Stivers' limo service. The detectives reinvestigate Scannel and discover that he was using Stivers as a drug courier. Stivers had told Sharon that he had a trunk full of cocaine, and he showed her. This made Sharon a liability, and Scannel ordered Stivers to kill Sharon. Stivers rolls on Scannel, who takes a deal for Murder 2.

Posted by adm at May 28, 2004 07:23 PM

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