CSI: Miami

Season 2 - Episode 20 - The Oath

Written by Alison Lea Bingeman
Directed by Duane Clark

Seventeen-year-old party girl Mallory Jacobs is driving through Miami on her way out for the evening. She is mystified when a police car pulls her over; she isn’t even speeding. Officer Dan Cofield approaches her car but collapses to the pavement with bloody foam coming out of his mouth.

Horatio and the CSIs quickly determine that Mallory had nothing to do with the murder and that Dan Cofield drove himself away from where he was shot. Alexx tells Horatio that Cofield took two bullets in his bulletproof vest and one that went through the armhole. The bullet hit him in the lungs, which filled will blood making him unable to radio for help. Cofield’s gun is missing five bullets, but there are no shell casings in the car; he must have been outside when he was shot.

Calleigh finds blood and hair in the back of the police car. Speedle gets the videotape out of the trunk and they discover a taped traffic stop that was not logged by Officer Cofield. In the tape, a man, Fred Rutter, is lead behind the sight of the camera and the picture rocks violently. Using the license plate from Rutter’s car, Speedle gets the man’s address and they bring him in for questioning. Rutter tells them that Cofield is his neighbor and that the police officer was always hassling him about his dogs. He claims Cofield pulled him over and beat him in the back of his cruiser but that he didn’t file a report because cops always protect their own.

Meanwhile, Delko discovers that the muffler was hanging low on Cofield’s cruiser and is able to follow scrapes in the road to the spot where Cofield was shot. Horatio arrives at the new crime scene to find that Internal Affairs investigator Rick Stetler has already arrived. Horatio and Stetler have words, but Stetler claims they are both after the same thing. On his way out, Stetler makes a point of confirming an upcoming date with Yelina in front of Horatio.

Horatio goes to see Cofield’s widow and assures her he will do everything in his power to make sure Stetler doesn’t take away her husband’s pension. Calleigh stops by Rutter’s house for another interview and finds evidence that he beats his wife, the likely reason for Cofield’s off-duty interest.

Speedle finds a recently chewed piece of gum in the front seat of Cofield’s cruiser. The lab finds three separate DNA samples on the gum, one saliva and the other two semen. Clearly Cofield had a prostitute in the front seat of his car. The semen leads to a DNA match with Gary Neilson, formerly suspected of sexual assault. Horatio tracks down Nielson on a golf course and the man admits to being with a prostitute but denies any knowledge of Cofield’s murder. He gives Horatio the street name and neighborhood of the prostitute he was with.

Yelina finds prostitute Tiffany Brand and brings her in for an interview. At first she denies knowing Cofield, but she reacts with genuine sadness when she hears he has been murdered. She claims that Cofield was nice and even paid her. Horatio asks for the exact bills Cofield gave Tiffany and is surprised when it turns out to be five hundred dollars, far more than a street prostitute would be paid for sex. It turns out that Tiffany was being paid as a confidential informant, not as a prostitute.

Horatio finds the necessary paperwork on the five hundred dollars; Cofield was an honest cop. He angrily confronts Stetler with the new info, but the IAB officer claims to have only just found out about it himself. Horatio leaves him with a warning and tells Cofield that his maneuvers are leaving a cop killer out on the street.

Horatio brings Tiffany back in for questioning and forces her to reveal what she was working on with Cofield. She gives up Jimmy Azario, a criminal that pays Tiffany to call him after she is with a guy with an expensive car. With Yelina’s help, Horatio sets up a sting operation to arrest Jimmy Azario.

Meanwhile, Calleigh is hellbent on putting Rutter away for spousal abuse in spite of the fact his wife refuses to testify. She gets a warrant to search Rutter’s house and finds the man stabbed and bleeding on the kitchen floor. Rutter tells Calleigh that his wife stabbed him and ran out.

While racing to get Jimmy Azerio off the street, Horatio is unaware of an even greater danger…Internal Affairs investigator Stetter is quietly building a case against him.