Directed by Jonathan Herron Original air date June 15, 2008 | Production code CI7012 | |
Episode no. Season 7
Episode 12 (#146 overall) Written by Dick Wolf (creator)
René Balcer (developer)
Warren Leight (story)
Peter Blauner (story and teleplay) | ||
"Contract" is a seventh season episode of the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Contents
Plot summary
In this episode, Detectives Logan and Wheeler investigate the case of a television news anchor who is blackmailed by a popular tabloid gossip columnist. When the man goes to the NYPD and wears a wire for detectives, the car blows up and the columnist is killed, while the anchorman is severely injured. The detectives find themselves up to their eyeballs in suspects and motives, where no one theory and suspect can be ruled out as a possibility, because the columnist was extorting money from famous people, ostensibly to open a luxurious restaurant and trying to protect his younger sister. The list of suspects include a mobster whom the victim had some major gambling debts and a physician who has operated on many renowned athletes, as well as an unscrupulous filmmaker and his wife/assistant – a studio executive who is disturbed to hear about any drug involvement in relation to a huge star who recently died on set. As Logan and Wheeler begin to stitch together the pieces, they discover a sordid secret life of sex and deceit that could be a motivating factor in the crime.