Without A Trace: A Dollar and a Dream (Episode 616)

Sam comes home to find her place filled with baby paraphernalia, including a partially assembled crib. Brian comes out from the bathroom, having bandaged his hand after slicing it with a screwdriver, and she's surprised and a little bit weirded out to see him so enthusiastic about getting things ready for the baby. She tells him she can take over and he prepares to leave, but not before asking if he can touch her giant fake belly. She complies and he talks to the baby while she looks wary but pleased.

At a campsite, two couples sit around a fire and share stories, laughing and generally having a good time. However, when one of the women, played by Sprague Grayden from Jericho, breaks out the expensive champagne and caviar, the other woman starts to look really uncomfortable and escapes to her tent, feigning weariness. The next morning, she claims she got a call to handle something back in the city and leaves, while her boyfriend and the other couple stay behind to pack up the campsite. She heads out of the park, waving to a ranger, then vanishes.

25 hours missing. Viv meets Danny at the apartment of the vanishee, Lacey Moran. Viv marvels at how nice the place is and Danny says Lacey won a $32 million lottery a month ago. She was last scene leaving the campground around 8:00 am, saying she had a meeting with her co-op board, but nobody on the board knew anything about a meeting. He has a surveilliance footage photo from the parking garage showing that Lacey made it home around 9:30 am. The next morning when the cleaning lady arrived, she found the door open and Lacey's purse inside, so she called the police.

Jack, still looking like 10 miles of bad road, comes back to work and his phone is ringing when he enters his office. It's someone named Alex, from presumably the FBI equivalent of Internal Affairs, and Jack says he takes full responsibility for what happened. He hangs up and heads out into the hall to intercept Viv, who's walking by and talking to someone on the phone. Jack says he's back and Viv, obviously still pissed at the way Jack bogarted her case, replies, "Yeah" in a tone that indicates she feels the same way about Jack's return as she does when her cat yarks up its food. She says she'll have Sam bring him up to speed on the case and leaves. Oh, BURN.

Viv continues down to interrogation to talk to Jeff Turner, Lacey's boyfriend and brother to Paula Reiser, Lacey's best friend. He says after Paula dropped him off at home after the camping trip, he stayed there until he went to work that morning. He tells Viv that they all grew up as friends in Philly and when Paula moved to NYC to pursue fashion, Lacey came with her. He visited one summer and hooked up with Lacey, then moved out to be with her. Viv wonders why Lacey lied about why she came back to the city and Jeff doesn't know, but says something was up with her. He says when they were setting up the campsite, he came back from gathering wood to find Lacey arguing with a strange man, who ran away when Jeff confronted him. Lacey pretended she didn't know the man, that he lost his wallet and was asking if she saw anything. But when Jeff insisted they tell someone, the ranger said they had seen the man but he hadn't reported a missing wallet. Viv wants to know if the man could've been an ex-boyfriend but Jeff says he, Paula and Paula's husband Eliot are all Lacey has. Viv has one last question: how was Lacey handling winning all that money? Jeff says they all grew up with nothing and it was difficult for Lacey to adjust to being a millionaire.

Jack finds Sam to find out what's going on with the case and she says Jeff's alibi checks out, so now she's going through Lacey's financial records. She tells him that Lacey took a lump sum payout and since then, she's been spending on average $30,000 a week, with a lot of it going to friends. She'd been paying for most things with credit cards and checks but last week she took out $3000 in cash.

Elena and Martin talk to the Reisers, who don't recognize the sketch of the man Lacey argued with at the campground. Martin asks about a $10,000 check Lacey wrote to them and Eliot explains that Paula is three months pregnant. Lacey gave them the money to start a college fund, since none of them got to go. Elena wants to know about the $3000 cash withdrawal and when Paula hears the date, she remembers seeing Lacey that day. In a flashback, Lacey talks about meeting a man who is raising money for kids with cleft palates to have surgery. She admits she gave him money and Paula chides her, saying it was probably a scam and that Lacey shouldn't feel guilty for not donating to every sob story she hears, especially after the good she's done for Paula and Eliot. Lacey introspectively says she feels weird about the way she got all this money and thinks she needs to do something good with it. Paula tells her she needs a break and suggests they go on vacation, then when they come back Lacey can set up a foundation. Back in the present, Paula says that Lacey was generous even before she won the lottery. Elena asks if Lacey mentioned the charity again before she disappeared and Paula says no.

Sam tells Danny that Lacey got a pizza delivered to her apartment the night before she disappeared. Danny thinks that's weird because there were no pizza places in Lacey's phone records. It'll take some time to track down the restaurant but Danny has better news - they've brought in the guy Lacey argued with. His name is Raoul Perez and he was picked up soliciting donations for a charity to raise money for kids with cleft palates. Danny heads off to talk to Raoul, who folds in about ten seconds and admits he's a scam artist. He says Lacey gave him one cash donation and promised more but never showed up. He followed her to the campground to make sure she'd keep quiet, convinced she figured out his scam and was going to report him, but insists he ran off when Jeff interrupted and never saw Lacey again. He recalls that Lacey told him the money isn't hers and she has to give it back but he has no idea what she meant by it.

Elena and Sam track down where the lottery ticket was purchased and, with the help of a cute A/V tech I don't know, discover from the convenience store's surveillance footage that the winner is an older man. He's carrying prescription medication bags so Sam calls the pharmacy. Danny knocks on Desmond Carter's apartment door but the landlady tells him he's too late because Desmond died of cancer a few weeks ago. Danny shows her Lacey's picture and the landlady says Lacey was Desmond's only friend. When Desmond died, Lacey was the only one to come and clean out his apartment. The landlady says about a week ago, Desmond's son came by looking for his father's things and she gave him Lacey's name and number.

Sam enters Jack's office with the details of her maternity leave and assures him that he won't even know she's gone. However, he's more interested in her babydaddy and grills her about Brian but she's like, "Look, it's not like I expected to be tied to my one night stand for the rest of my life." She leaves and Jack looks thoughtful, which is never a good thing.

Danny finds Viv and hands her a sketch of Desmond's supposed son. There's no mention of him in Desmond's records and Danny thinks he might be another scammer. He changes tack and tells Viv that he's got her back when she talks to Internal Affairs, because Jack was out of line.

And speaking of out of line, Jack asks Gail, some FBI flunky, to run a secret background check on Brian Donovan. DUDE. I'm finding it increasingly hard to believe that Jack is the hero of this show because he is such an epic asshole.

Elena has tracked down the pizza delivery guy, Curtis, and he tells her what he saw that night. He delivered the pizza to Lacey and as she was paying him, a man came out from the bedroom talking about how they should go to the cops. Lacey slammed the door in Curtis' face but he hears Lacey respond to "Jeff" that they need to stick to the plan, get the money, and go. Elena thanks Curtis and calls Viv with the news that Jeff lied about his whereabouts that night. Viv and Danny head over to Jeff's apartment and he's not home but they do find him in his car. Unfortunately, they're not going to be questioning him further hecause he's shot himself in the head.

Later, even though initial exams indicate suicide, Viv and Danny think there's a possibility it was simply staged to look that way, maybe by Lacey or by Desmond's son. Martin arrives with an ID on the son, who used a credit card at a coffee shop across from Lacey's apartment. His name is Alex Shaw and witnesses recall seeing him confront Lacey outside her building the day she disappeared.

Elena talks to Eliot and Paula, who is tearful over the death of her brother. Neither of them recognize Alex from his photo and when Elena says he was Desmond's son, Eliot asks what he wanted with Lacey. Elena says she thinks they already know why, since it doesn't make sense that Lacey would tell a stranger the money isn't her but not tell her friends. Paula admits that she was with Lacey the day she found the winning lottery ticket while cleaning out Desmond's apartment. Lacey didn't want to keep it but Paula convinced her to with the argument that Desmond's family abandoned him and Lacey was the only one to take care of him while he was sick.

Danny and Jack, who I guess has decided to take a break from being a creepy, power-abusing stalker, interrogate Alex while his lawyer looks on. Alex says that despite what witnesses report, he only talked to Lacey once right after the landlady gave him her address. Flashback to Alex telling Lacey that he knows she stole the lottery ticket, because the numbers Desmond used were his ex-wife's and Alex's birthdays. He says that Desmond cut Alex out of his life, not the other way around. Lacey denies and protests the accusation then throws him out. Alex tells Jack that Lacey called from her camping trip to tell him she was coming back early to return the money. However, she never showed and the woman witnesses say they saw him arguing with was not Lacey, just someone who looked a lot like her. Danny gets an idea and shows Alex a picture of Paula. He looks at it and confirms that's the woman he saw, but with long hair.

Later, Elena tells Martin that Paula and Eliot haven't been seen since they identified Jeff's body, but they did find a blood-stained hat in their apartment like the one Lacey was seen wearing when she left the campground. They speculate that the Reisers were making it look like Lacey was alive longer than she was so they could get her money, and maybe it was actually Paula that the pizza guy saw and Paula in the parking garage's surveillance footage. Elena thinks it's possible Lacey never left the campground alive.

Elena enters an interrogation room where Paula waits and tells her that she was in a rush to get out of town when the cops pulled her over. Paula claims they were going back to Philly because she was so distraught over her brother's suicide. After being confronted with the evidence so far and being told that once Lacey's body is found it's all over for her, Paula asks Elena to help her husband since he had nothing to do with what happened. Elena says she'll do what she can and Paula says that when Lacey told her she was returning the money, they argued. Paula tried to reason with her but Lacey was adamant, and in a rage at seeing her and her baby's future wealthy comfort slipping away, Paula bashed Lacey over the head. Jeff and Eliot rushed over, horrified at what Paula had done, but agreed to help her hide Lacey's body and pretend she was still alive long enough to try and get their hands on the money. It was Paula, wearing Lacey's hat, that the ranger saw driving out of the park. With no remorse, Paula angrily tells Elena that Lacey had no right to return that money because they deserved it. While Paula signs her confession, Danny calls Elena to tell her that police dogs found Lacey's body.

Gail enters Jack's office with the results of her background check. It turns out that Brian Donovan was arrested for sex with a minor, but the charges were dropped. I'm assuming we're supposed to think Brian's a skeeze and Jack was right for doing this, but it says right on the file that the girl was 17 and Brian was 23, so we're not exactly talking pedophilia here. I still maintain that Jack is an asshole and I hope when he presents this information to Sam, probably with a smarmy "I did it for your own good" speech, she kicks him hard in the balls about a hundred times. Anyway, Gail is curious as to why Jack's interested in this guy and instead of answering, Jack asks her about her career goals. She admits she likes Legal but does have aspirations to work in Violent Crimes. Jack tells her he'll give her a recommendation when she applies for a transfer, and it's clearly understood that he's promising career advancement in exchange for her silence.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE. I'm really glad I only have two episodes left to recap because I think my hatred for Jack would give me a stroke if I had to endure his assholery any longer than that. DIE IN A MOTHERFUCKING FIRE, JACK MALONE.

I need a drink now.