Vicki prepares to open her office when she is surprised by a visit from her old partner, Paul Deeds. She ribs him about his undercover work and he jokes about her new cases. Then Paul tells her he needs her help with a homicide… his own.
Yes poor Mr. Deeds is now a ghost and to prove it he walks straight through Vicki’s door, leaving her standing in the hall. She follows him and begins to question Paul about his death as he tries, unsuccessfully, to channel his inner Patrick Swayze and move physical items with his corporeal form.
Paul tells Vicki he went to his apartment but everything looked the same. He doesn’t seem especially upset about his dying since he’s been living on the edge for a while. He just doesn’t understand why he’s a ghost and wonders where his body might be. He’s been working undercover with a bike gang so he’s pretty sure he didn’t just bust an aneurysm or something.
Vicki tries to find out when he last checked in with his supervisor but for some reason Paul can’t remember. He’s saved from having to try by Coreen, who arrives to find Vicki talking to herself. After a quick introduction which involves Paul proving himself to Coreen by telling Vicki she’s wearing a red thong, Vicki heads off to the station to get some information out of Mike.
Mike doesn’t understand why Vicki is so interested in Paul Deeds and she tells him he’s sort of a client. At Mike’s prodding she reveals that he’s a ghost without a body. They reminisce about Paul “Dirty” Deeds and how many cases he closed and that the way he closed them might have something to do with his death. Mike agrees to ask around and Vicki heads off……
To Henry’s. Paul tags along for this visit and comes up with some more information. Apparently the last thing he remembers is hooking up with some girl at a biker bar called the Standard. Henry knows it as he hunted there once or twice but he questions that Paul is who he says he is. Vicki says she knows Paul, she believes it’s really him and no one is going to investigate his murder if they can’t find his body.
Mike, meanwhile, is meeting with Crowley at the hangout of the Wolverines, the biker gang Paul was riding with. She fills him in on what’s going on with Deeds and asks why he wants to know. Mike confirms that he got a tip that Deeds might be in trouble. He says Paul’s a good cop and Crowley confirms that he was. When Mike questions her about her use of the past tense she spills that he’s being investigated by Internal Affairs because he hasn’t been bringing in as many of the Wolverine gang as they thought he would. IA worries that he might be crooked.
Mike says it doesn’t fit the picture he has of him and that this outside source was worried that he was in trouble. As he’s talking he turns to look at the group of Wolverines that’s assembling and is shocked to find a very alive Paul Deeds among them. Mike begins to wonder if Paul is running some sort of con on Vicki.
Henry and Coreen research what might have happened to Paul. Coreen is firmly convinced about the ghost theory but Henry thinks it might be something else. He heard of a myth about vampires who would visit the living and strip them of their life-force. Coreen counters that Paul came to Vicki for help but Henry is suspicious that Paul doesn’t know how he died or where his body is. Coreen wonders if Henry thinks it might be Astaroth but Henry doesn’t know what it is.
Mike calls Vicki in to the station and presents her with the very much alive Paul Deeds. He’s happy to see Vicki and immediately hits on her but Vicki is suspicious because Paul is “burning up” and eating a whole lot of red meat. Paul saunters out for some coffee giving Vicki and Mike a chance to compare notes about alive Paul and dead Paul. Mike says he’s working the case from a different angle and they agree to talk later.
Meanwhile, at the local biker bar, the Standard, Henry uses his vampire powers of persuasion to make the bartender tell him about the girl Paul hooked up with at the bar. Apparently, after their encounter at the bar Paul took off and the girl sat down at the bar and died.
Back at the station, Mike and Crowley compare notes about his conversation with Deeds. Paul has fingered a rival gang for a murder of one of his Wolverines but the rival gang also has an undercover operative who says they aren’t responsible. Mike thinks Paul might be selling out the gang he’s riding with to either another gang or another agency. Crowley tells him to stay on it.
At Vicki’s office, Paul is astonished to learn that his body is still walking around. Vicki thinks it might be some kind of demon possession and tells Paul Coreen is researching it. She tells him a sudden desire for red meat isn’t much of a clue and Paul confirms that his body is on it’s own by saying whatever soul is squatting in it is killing his health regime. They discuss who else might want him dead.
A visit to the morgue brings Vicki and Henry face to face with the girl that dropped dead after her hookup with Paul. Mohadevan asks them how old they think the girl is and when Vicki says she looks to be mid 20’s Mohadevan confirms it. Then she says that’s only on the outside because she has the cellular structure of a 70 year old woman. Vicki thinks it might be progeria, a disease that makes people age prematurely but Henry says the girl is too old to contract that disease. Mohadevan agrees and says that the girl is normal in every respect but is “burned out”.
Just before Mohadevan is paged out of the room, she tells them that the girl’s stomach was full of raw meat and Vicki tells Henry that Paul’s body was chowing down on steak when she saw him earlier. She doesn’t get to say more though because they’re interrupted by none other than Paul’s body itself.
Vicki covers that the victim was a friend of a friend and introduces Henry as her chiropractor. Henry notices Paul covering up some sort of book in his jacket and gets a look at it before Paul takes off. Vicki tells Henry that is not Paul Deeds, her ghost client is. Henry argues a little but finally gives in and offers to kill Paul. As they leave the morgue Vicki decides that she might take him up on that option later.
Mike has followed Paul to a club called The Alleycats Body Rub. Apparently it’s the hang out of an Asian gang called the Dragons. He watches as Paul approaches the leader of the Dragons and presents her with part of her police file. Paul informs her that the Dragons just took over another Wolverine operation and he wants a thank you. He’s hitting on her pretty hard but she manages to pawn him off by saying that so far he’s done good, but she wants him to really impress her. He agrees and tells her she’s going to be yummy. He and Mike watch as she takes the police file and heads inside the club.
At the office, Vicki and Coreen are reviewing the file on the dead girl, Tessa. She was a drug dealer but lately she’d gotten clean. The only wrinkle was that she was trying to save her boyfriend, Derek Pheasant, who was still addicted. Unfortunately, Derek’s also dead. He died four days before Tessa.
Mike puts the squeeze on Chuntao Fang, the leader of the Dragons. She wonders what interest he has in a dead Wolverine and gang violence. Mike is after the killers, after all homicide is homicide. But before he leaves he remarks that Fang might be a nice alias for a Wolverine and tells Chuntao he’ll be in touch.
Vicki and Henry discuss what might have happened to Paul, Tessa and Derek. Henry finally relents and says that the demon is jumping from body to body and that she really has been seeing the real Paul as a ghost. Vicki celebrates being right once again, but tells Henry that he’s becoming a good detective and he shouldn’t give up his critical mind. They flirt for a little bit with talk of becoming partners and putting Henry’s name on the letterhead but, just as Henry leans in for a kiss, they’re interrupted by Coreen, who has arrived with coffee.
In another part of town Paul’s body is fulfilling his promise to impress Chuntao Fang by driving up in a car and laying out two members of the Wolverines with a machine gun.
The next day, Vicki heads over to the police station and talks with Mike about the trail of deaths leading to Paul. We already know that Paul’s hook up Tessa was pre-deceased by her boyfriend Derek. Turns out Derek was with a now-dead hooker named Mary Wallace and before she died she was with a john named Bert Winters, who is also now dead. All the murders are connected because of the superficial contact between the people involved and the way they died, being burned up from the inside.
Mike points out that Paul’s not dead (Vicki: “Yet”) and wonders what might killing these people. Vicki admits that she doesn’t know but that Coreen’s looking into it. Vicki wonders what Mike might know and figures out from his lack of information that IA was looking in to Paul’s shenanigans. Vicki doesn’t want to believe that Paul was dirty but Mike confirms that it’s almost a surety. He asks her to ask Paul about it.
Vicki is going over the case later in her office when Paul shows up. Vicki thinks they might be able to save Paul before whatever is inside him does too much damage and then she questions him about the IA investigation. She thinks whatever evicted his soul is attracted to a certain kind of essence and that it jumps from criminal to criminal. Paul leaves, upset that his only ally is turning on him.
Henry, who arrived seconds before feels Paul leave the room and Vicki starts blaming herself for trusting her instincts too much with Paul. Henry tells her not to blame herself and then notices she found another link in the death chain. As they are looking at the information about the body jumper Vicki wonders if the deaths weren’t meals but opportunities, since each body has been higher up on the success chain than the one before. Henry thinks it’s an Ekimmu, an ancient Babylonian entity that lives to create violence and chaos.
Henry confirms that he and Coreen found it in a book and that it jumps from one gender to the next and that it needs intimate contact to do so. They speculate that Paul might be able to jump back into his body once they evict the Ekimmu from it. Vicki says that would be great except she thinks Paul just fired her because she questioned him about being dirty.
Henry compliments Vicki on her ability to have arguments in two different dimensions and then remembers that he saw some sort of book in Paul’s jacket when they were with him at the morgue. Vicki thinks he might have taken some records from the police station. She goes there to check it out and asks Henry to go to the Alleycats Body Rub and try to find Paul the Ekimmu.
At the Alleycats club Henry watches as Paul the Ekimmu meets up with Chuntao Fang and realizes that the Ekimmu is targeting Fang for its next jump. Ghost Paul is hanging around and Henry either senses him or believes that he’s hanging around his own body. Henry tries to tell him that there is a way to make things right. Ghost Paul doesn’t seem totally convinced and plus he’s not really thrilled that a vampire is trying to get through to him.
Vicki and Mike are going over the records of the Wolverines to try and find out what Paul took. Mike tells Vicki they should look at the Dragon surveillance photos because Paul is involved with them somehow. They realize that a good portion of the Chuntao Fang surveillance is missing and Vicki realizes that most of those missing dates are from before the Ekimmu claimed Paul. She thinks Paul is playing rival gangs against each other.
Mike leaves to fill Crowley in and set up surveillance on the Alleycats club, leaving Vicki in records alone. That’s a perfect set up for Paul the Ekimmu. He thinks he and Vicki could have fun together, but she calls him out for the Ekimmu he really is. He tries to attack her and the Ekimmu begins its jump from the mouth of Paul to the mouth of Vicki. Vicki manages to knee Paul in the groin and he and his Ekimmu run off.
Back at her office, Vicki takes out her frustration on her boxing bags when Ghost Paul shows up. She confronts him about the files he stole and the money he got from it. He thought she’d be more understanding but she doesn’t agree that the ends always justify the means and says she made a mistake telling everyone that he was a good cop.
Their argument is interrupted by Henry, who comes with a cedar dagger. He says it’s a Babylonian solution to a Babylonian problem and Coreen advised that they have to get the Ekimmu while it’s between bodies.
Henry, Vicki and Ghost Paul head over to the Alleycats and find Paul the Ekimmu trying to take over Fang’s body. Vicki manages to kill the Ekimmu as it’s between Paul and Fang’s bodies and Paul resumes his form. He apologizes to Vicki about the lies and brushes off her “its okay” by saying it’s not supposed to happen because they’re the good guys. Paul talks about how tired he is and then he slips away and Vicki closes his now dead eyes.
Mike shows up just in time to arrest Fang and sees Paul, now dead against the car. As they zip Paul into a body bag and take him away Vicki apologizes to Henry. He says that’s a first and wonders if something got into her. She meant that she was mad at him for not believing him when she said she was talking to Paul’s ghost. He says he was wrong too.
As they’re talking Mike walks up to tell them Paul’s IA file will get buried. Vicki thinks it doesn’t really matter because people will only remember that Paul Deeds was a dirty cop. Henry says he came clean at the end but Vicki replies that no one will remember that. Mike thinks that the three of them will. As he takes his leave, Henry comments that Mike will be one of those cops that dies with his boots on and Vicki replies that all of them will. Henry seems pleased to think that she includes him in that assumption, despite the fact that he’s, you know, 500 years old and will probably outlive all of them.
Synopsis generously created by: Sandra
