On the courthouse steps, maverick defense attorney Mike McBride (John Larroquette), his eager protégé Phil (Matt Lutz) and Harry Evans (Stephen Tobolowsky), McBride’s accountant, prepare to enter the building.  Harry is worried.  He is in a brutal custody battle with his ex-wife over their son.  Despite family law not being McBride’s thing, he agreed to represent Harry in court.  Since his wife left him, Harry has been a wreck.  His business has hit the skids and he’s been in therapy with Dr. Prescott (Richard Fancy) five days a week – and he took most of his money.  McBride reminds Harry that Dr. Prescott is on his side so their court date should go just fine.

Family court is in session.  Judge Olsen (Danielle Kennedy) presides.  On the witness stand, Dr. Prescott testifies that since the divorce, Harry hasn’t shown any improvement.  His opinion is that custody should be completely given to Harry’s wife and perhaps, some time in the future, supervised visitation rights can be awarded to Harry if he continues therapy and improves.  Harry becomes angry.  He yells at Prescott that, during their last session, the doctor assured him not to worry.  He lied!  McBride and Phil try to get Harry under control but full custody is awarded to his wife.  After court is adjourned, McBride tells Harry to keep his cool.  He’ll continue working on the case.

Harry goes to Prescott’s house at night.  The doctor is sitting in an expensive high back leather chair behind his desk.  Harry tells him that he feels lousy, that Prescott took away his reason to live by having his son taken away.  He pulls out a gun and puts it to his head, threatening suicide.  Prescott never responds or reacts.  Harry becomes upset that he is so callous.  Then Harry trips and the gun goes off, hitting George in the chest.  George slumps forward onto this desk.  Harry stand motionless, then drops the gun and runs out of the house.  

Outside, Harry doesn’t know what to do.  He calls McBride on his cell phone.  McBride says he’ll be right there.  Harry runs back to the house.  He hears footsteps inside.  He gets terrified.  He calls out.  Then McBride shows up.  McBride examines Prescott.  Harry tells him that he wiped his gun clean and tossed it over the fence.  McBride sends him to sit in his car while he examines the crime scene.  After, McBride tells Harry to drive home while he calls the cops.

The police arrive as do Phil and Sgt. Roberta Hansen (Marta DuBois).  When they go to see the body, it’s missing!  McBride tells Roberta that he thinks Prescott was already dead before his client shot him.  She tells him to call her when he has a body – or is ready to reveal the name of his client.

McBride comes home to find Harry there.  He says he was too afraid to go home because of the police.  McBride tells him that he thinks Prescott was dead before Harry shot him.  McBride thinks he was poisoned with something like monocaine, which dissipates in less than 48 hours, making it totally untraceable.  If no one found George until Monday, it would look like he died of a heart attack.  This is why George’s body was taken.  Whoever killed him didn’t want him found for 48 hours.  McBride tells Harry to get a hotel.  Hide out and don’t talk to anyone.

Phil and McBride begin their investigating.  Phil talks to one of Prescott’s neighbors, who tells him he heard a noise in Prescott’s house and saw an ambulance parked around the corner.  He gives Phil the name of the ambulance company.

McBride reviews Prescott’s schedule and notes.  He sees the Evans court appearance noted and a regular Friday night case review that he conducts with the four psychiatrists he advises – Dr. Jessica Taylor (Gigi Rice), Dr. Leo Eckert (David Bowe), Dr. Jacob Newman (Tim Conlon) and Dr. Daphne Sawyer (Sydney Penny).  From his notes, it seems that George could make or break careers and acted more like the Grand Inquisitor with his colleagues than their advisor.  

Phil checks out the ambulance service and finds out they have an exclusive contract with Angel of Mercy Hospital.  At the hospital, he checks the morgue.  A good looking young man, Allen Carter (Seamus Dever), wearing a doctor’s coat and holding a clipboard, hears him inquiring about a body.  The morgue attendant shows Phil the bodies that came in the night before, but one is missing.  Carter slyly pushes Prescott’s body, wrapped in a hospital bathrobe and propped in a wheelchair, down the corridor.  He calls someone on his cell phone and tells them that things are getting complicated.  Someone is looking for a body and he needs to find another place to stash it.  

McBride meets with Dr. Taylor, tells her that Prescott is dead and reveals that he knows of her romantic involvement with a patient – a fact that could kill her career if Prescott wanted to use it against her.  Dr. Taylor insists that she did not kill Prescott.  Suddenly, Ted Pearson (Todd Babcock) bursts into her office and demands to see her Dr. Taylor in an hour.  McBride follows her as she meets the man.  Then he follows Pearson home and knocks on his door, finding Dr. Taylor in his room.  Dr. Taylor makes it known that Pearson isn’t the patient referred to in Prescott’s notes.  

Back at the hospital, Carter attaches an I.D. band to Prescott’s wrist.  Carter spots Phil and once again hides the corpse – in a bed next to a 90-year-old woman!

Prescott’s secretary tells McBride that Harry was only a little depressed when he first came to see the doctor.  But Prescott tore Harry down and made him dependent on him.  It’s what he did to the members of his case review group too.  

A search for Prescott’s body begins at the hospital.  Carter gets nervous and rushes Prescott’s corpse out of the old lady’s room.

McBride finds out that Dr. Eckert was up for a chief of staff position – but he didn’t get it.  He talks to the woman who turned him down for the job.  Prescott gave Dr. Eckert a bad review.  Although Dr. Eckert doesn’t have an alibi for the night of the murder, he swears he wouldn’t have killed Prescott, whom he claims was like a father to him.  

McBride investigates Dr. Newman, whose paper about the psychogenetic ramifications on schizophrenia was plagiarized by Prescott.  Although Dr. Newman certainly seems to have had a motive for murder, he claims he is innocent – and has a patient as an alibi.

McBride suspects that Prescott tried to get sex from Dr. Sawyer in exchange for a good recommendation.  She denies it – and offers up the alibi that she was home reading a psychiatric journal the night Prescott was killed.

At the hospital, Phil continues to search for the body as Carter continues to hide it.  Ultimately, he puts the body in his car and takes off.  Phil follows, chasing him all across town.  Finally, Carter crashes into a parked car and flees.  Later, the place is flooded with law enforcement officials and paramedics who remove Prescott’s corpse from the car.  McBride directs a police officer to examine the body immediately.  He wants the monocaine detected before it’s out of Prescott’s body.  

Phil stakes out Carter’s apartment and sees that Pearson, the man who gave Dr. Taylor her alibi, just arrived.  Through a window he sees Carter give Pearson an envelope.  Later, McBride confronts Pearson about being Carter’s friend.  He finds the envelope, which contains pills.  McBride tosses them into a toilet and warns Pearson that he’ll see him in court.

Harry turns himself in to Roberta, who arrests him for Prescott’s murder.  The medical examiner steps out of the corners office and states that there’s no trace of any poison in Dr. Prescott’s body.  His death was caused by gunshot.

McBride confers with Roberta about Pearson’s history of prescription drug abuse.  He thinks he got the drugs from Dr.Taylor, who pretended to be romantically involved with him in order to get an alibi.  Roberta isn’t buying it.  McBride asks Roberta to keep it quiet that Carter has been arrested.  At Carter’s apartment, McBride greets Dr. Taylor.  He tells her that Carter was arrested, bailed out and headed to Mexico – and hands her a subpoena.  

In court, the medical examiner testifies that Prescott’s death was caused by a single gunshot wound to the chest.  McBride talks to him about the poison monocaine and how he would have had to examine the body sooner to detect it.  He then puts Dr. Taylor on the stand.  He theorizes that she was romantically involved with Allen Carter, who was her patient, and that Prescott found out and was jealous – because he wanted her for himself.  Prescott threatened to have Dr. Taylor’s license to practice revoked, a move that would have destroyed her career.  So she killed him.  

On the stand, Carter fingers Jessica as the murderer.

Now that Harry is off the hook, he asks McBride to keep fighting his custody battle.  And McBride and Roberta, who always seem to be at odds, decide to make peace over lunch.

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