CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 5 - Episode 20 - Hollywood Brass

Writen by Sarah Goldfinger & Carol Mendelsohn
Directed by Bill Eagles

When Jim Brass receives a rare phone call from his problem daughter Ellie, he takes an emergency leave and travels to Los Angeles to help her find a girlfriend who has disappeared.

But what Brass doesn’t know until he reaches Hollywood is that his daughter and her friend Dakota were walking the streets, and Dakota went missing after she slipped into a customer’s car and drove away. Brass turns to Captain Annie Kramer (guest star Murphy), a former colleague and now in the homicide division of the LAPD, and also gets assistance from a surprising source – Warrick Brown, who is in LA for a conference. With Annie’s help, they locate the car, whose trunk has been cleaned and rifled with bullet holes and cleaned. The car is traced to assistant city attorney Todd Piccone, who claims he was carjacked, but didn’t report the car stolen because he didn’t want anyone to know he was with a prostitute. He also suspected the hooker set him up and knew the car thief.

Ellie grudgingly gives up the name of Dakota’s sometimes boyfriend, and Annie, Warrick and Brass determine that he is operating a meth lab, which makes the carjacking scenario Piccone described feasible. But when Dakota’s body floats to the surface of a lake in Echo Park, Ronnie denies he murdered her and Ellie agrees – she thinks Brass should be taking a harder look at the assistant city attorney.

 Ultimately, Todd Piccone has a lot of explaining to do when Dakota’s blood is found in his car and in his house, but all he will admit to is paying for Dakota’s services for a friend. “Does this friend have a name?” Annie asks during the interrogation. “Yes,” replies Piccone, “a big one.” Until Brass and Annie get to the bottom of his shocking claim, there is only one thing Brass knows for sure: Ellie is the only one who can connect Piccone and his “big name” friends to Dakota, and the last place she should be is out on the street where she, too, can be “disappeared.”