The Closer 311: Lover's Leap

Brenda's back from surgery and her first order of business is to harness herself to a willing fireman and scale the descending slope of a valley off the highway to examine the coyote-ravaged remains of a woman who apparently drove off the side of the road and straight to her death. The victim's a priority because she's a member of Homeland Security. The boys of PHD hand Brenda around the crime scene, helping her over the rocky terrain and the smashed vehicle while she gives orders for phone/GPS motherboard dumps, evidence retrieval, and other logistics. She's also standing in a patch of poison oak that will result in a rash deserving of its own guest credit.

Back at the station, Pope asks Brenda a bit about her victim, Maggie Scott, who he says was a friend of his. Will fills in some more details for Brenda: Maggie was an accountant auditing the LAPD, and he wants to stay apprised of the goings-on. He also okays any necessary overtime, no matter the budgetary constraints. Brenda's just distracted enough at not being able to find her painkillers that she doesn't question this much. In the Murder Room, Taylor wears a really offensively ugly tie and repeats that Maggie was in the process of auditing the LAPD's use of federal funds. Daniels adds that DHS wants Maggie's encrypted laptop and cell phone, so far MIA, which contain classified information. Sanchez and Tao map out Maggie's movements for the last week, courtesy of her GPS; the last address entered is the spot she veered off the road. The guys wonder if she was having an affair, as her accident site is a bit of a Lovers' Lane spot.

Brenda, on her way to the morgue, calls Fritz and manipulates him into getting her the information on Maggie's phone and possibly her computer. Fritz protests, and Brenda pulls the surgery card, as well as the can't-have-chocolate card. I think she's still dealing with the whole peri-menopausal mood swing thing. Fritz, not a little annoyed, decides to make the call. I stop wondering about him as soon as we cut to the morgue and the ME starts hitting on Gabriel.

Cause of death: complicated. She first drove off the cliff, banging herself up but good in the process; then climbed the hill, scraping her hands and elbows but good; and then received multiple blows to the head with a tree branch and rock. Not only that, but she got a faceful of pepper spray before she drove over the cliff.

Brenda gives the news of Maggie's death to some LAPD budgetary mucky muck who is more pissed than anything: Maggie ran him through the ringer with her audit and the demands she made while investigating how the LAPD spent its money. Brenda asks for the financial records Maggie was investigating, and he leaves practically foaming at the mouth. Her next avenue of questioning is for the CFO of Civil Audio, a firm that supplies first response equipment to the LAPD and FD and one that was part of Maggie's audit investigation. The CFO is Joe White, former LAPD officer. His house is under huge renovations, his AC is out, and his reaction to Maggie's death is bemused confusion and slight relief, given what a hardass Maggie was. His wife, bundled in long sleeves and pants, has much the same reaction: "Oh. Well. Huh."

Gabriel nags Brenda about her poison oak as they follow the financial records down the hall. Tao joins them to say they still don't have access to Maggie's phone, but her husband's arrived. He also wants to know what to do with her rental car, and Brenda says to hang onto it until they know what happened to Maggie. She looks over at her office, where Mr. Maggie's waiting, and longingly stares into the vending machine of forbidden chocolatey goodness as she whines about telling the man his wife was eaten by coyotes.

Maggie's husband wants to see her body, but Brenda gently persuades him otherwise, as well as sidestepping the issue of whether or not Maggie suffered. She asks who would have wanted to hurt Maggie, or if she talked about her work. Mr. Maggie says she was happier lately, not coming to LA every other week the way she had been. Brenda glances out her window to the Murder Room, into which Pope and a few other besuited men are making a rather bullish entrance, and says that DHS only had Maggie in LA every other month. Mr. Maggie doesn't see why she would be there for reasons other than work just as Pope et al arrive. Subtle, show.

Brenda meets Pope and his entourage in the hall--they're FBI agents she apparently knows, but my memory is failing me. Her reception of them is frosty, which is unsurprising. They're at the PHD because Brenda called Fritz, thereby notifying the FBI of an investigation into the death of a federal employee and some missing classified information (Maggie's laptop and cell), which is a national security issue and the purview of the FBI, not the LAPD. Brenda is dumsquizzled, but gives. She asks her team to copy everything they have, hide the GPS computer, and play hide and seek with the car. And after some brief posing in the hall about the investigation, Pope tells Brenda he and Maggie were having an affair six months ago.

Aaaand Brenda is pissed. She lets Pope stutter his way through an explanation that he saw Maggie while he was still technically married but separated, and feeling lonely (which he puts a little on Brenda). Brenda reacts a tad too emotionally before gathering herself together to be practical, but quickly walks right through that revolving door again. Maggie was a female investigator for an intelligence agency and who was in a relationship, and Pope seduced her into coming to LA on a regular basis. "It all sounds so familiar, and yet I'm still surprised," she says. Pope asks if she wants to talk about it in detail, but Brenda sharply suggests he drop it. Despite the fact that she brought it up. She also asks for more details about who Maggie was, and he describes Brenda to a T. Brenda, teary eyed, thanks him, and makes to leave; he tells her that if anything gets out about his involvement with Maggie, it could jeopardize the custody suit for his kids. In the hall, Brenda composes herself a moment before the FBI arrive, Gabriel in tow, and threaten her with federal whatevers and stuff. They complain they should be dealing with the department's counter terrorism team, not the PHD, and Gabriel sneakily offers to hook them up with said team. Because the PHD IS the counter terrorism team.

I love it when Gabriel gets the chance to smirk. The PHD peacock around a bit about having one over the FBI agents, and I always enjoy these moments of team better-than-thouness. No, I do. Once the agents are gone, Tao tells Brenda that Maggie's Bluetooth connection to her cell operated through the GPS in her car as well, meaning that they have a record of her phone calls on the motherboard already, and it's why the agents wanted Maggie's car so much. Tao does some computer magic, and Brenda leanrs that the last call Maggie made was to Joe White, CFO of Civil Audio. She then punched in the address of her death. Daniels offers to go through the Whites' finances. Flynn and Provenza debate whether or not Joe would have done the deed with Maggie or killed her, but Flynn doubts Joe would kill someone with a can of pepper spray. Brenda does the thoughtful face.

At home, Brenda and Fritz fight and are boring, but Brenda does get an idea about making the FBI agents miserable by trying to help them unhelpfully.

Next morning, Daniels explains that the Whites are overspending their income without going into the red--they're pulling money from somewhere that's not Joe's earnings at Civil Audio. She says that they cancelled charges to the contractor four days ago, despite all the work Brenda and Gabriel saw at their house the day before. Daniels clarifies: the charges were reauthorized if the work could be done in three weeks. Brenda decides to have Flynn call the FBI agents and tell them what they know about the Whites' finances. Flynn points out that will make the PHD's job that much harder, since White will be in federal custody and therefore not available for Brenda to question and get a confession from. Brenda, she is cool with this, because she's already figured it out like House.

At the Whites' home, the agents already have White in cuffs and heading into the back of their car (kinky). Gabriel plays dumb so well I am actually surprised he doesn't know what's going on, while Brenda does the opposite. The agents exposit that White was fleecing civil departments out of money by overcharing them for radios, and Maggie had figured it out. Brenda lets them go, pertly telling Gabriel she's going to find out where Maggie's computer and cell are as she enters the house.

Inside, Joe's wife is going nuts. Brenda, all sugar sweetness, warns Mrs. White (Susan) that she knows she was at the scene of the accident and that there's bad shit down the pipeline if she doesn't 'fess up to being on the cliff where Maggie met her end. She lays out the phone call and GPS map and tells Susan she knows Maggie wouldn't go alone to a deserted nowhere to meet someone she would be accusing of embezzlement. Susan explains that Joe wasn't embezzling so much as borrowing, since the budget for their remodel had ballooned right along with their adjustable-rate mortgage, and Joe only wanted to keep them from losing their life savings. She only wanted to tell Maggie that. Brenda fakes that it sounded reasonable. Susan spins a yarn about telling Maggie Joe would flip the house and pay the money back with interest, if she only gave him a month. Brenda plays her, as she always does, with just the right amount of "I get it," as she gets Susan to elaborate that Maggie just drove off and veered over the side of the cliff. She fakes it was so upsetting that she just drove off, though she knows she should have called someone.

Gabriel asks if she wasn't too upset to call the contractor and rehire him; Susan fumbles a little as she says she wanted to make the best of a bad situation, and she thought it would give Joe time to sell the house and repay the money before another audit could take place. She starts calling Maggie "that woman," and Brenda drops the understanding facade as Gabriel explains they found pepper spray all over Maggie's steering wheel. Brenda says it proves Susan's the killer, not Joe, since the attack was "so inept." Susan insists there was no attack. She "that womans" some more and lies badly about Maggie grabbing her arm and dragging her along the road. Brena wants to see the bruising, but Susan hides her arms, which Brenda tells her are probably covered with poison oak, which they totally are. Susan starts to cry as Brenda details the whole thing: Susan sprayed Maggie in the face with pepper spray, and after Maggie tried to crawl back up the hill, beat her to death with whatever she could get her hands on. Brenda's shouting mad, but she gets her confession. As she does. She even gets the location of the cell phone and computer, which she gives to Fritz over a home cooked dinner. The stuff is smashed beyond recognition, apparently courtesy of Susan. I'm pretty sure Brenda wouldn't destroy evidence, even for Pope, so here's hoping that's true.

Gabriel's trying to do some amateur ass-kissing with Pope, and I expect better of him by now. He should be a pro at it. They find Maggie's smashed Prius parked in Pope's reserved spot, and he looks regretful and maybe a little bit shamed as he sends Gabriel to look for his car.