- Beth's new photographer, Morgan, takes some photos of a building fire. When her camera is stolen, she hires Mick to find the culprit and retrieve her equipment. But Mick's more interested in investigating Morgan, who looks exactly like Mick's ex-wife Coraline.—Jesse Sanchez
- A fire in a 1920s apartment building where Mick's parents used to brunch after Sunday church brings Mick and Beth together. While watching the building burn, Mick is astonished to see Coraline, his ex-wife and the vampire who turned him, photographing the blaze. Except she's not Coraline. Her name is Morgan Vincent [Shannyn Sossamon], she's not a vampire, and she's Beth's friend. Beth has known Morgan personally since Morgan moved to L.A. from Chicago six months ago. For over three years, Beth has been buying her photographs for Buzzwire, and Morgan has a long history of working as a stringer (freelancer) photographer for various publications. No way can Morgan be Coraline. Mick isn't convinced, even though Coraline would need to have found a way to become human again, which is impossible. What's even more unbelievable is that she would have had to resurrect from the dead after Mick saw her destroyed in a burning inferno 22 years ago.
When Morgan's apartment is broken into and her cameras stolen, she hires Mick to find the thief. Since the thief didn't take money or jewelry, Mick suggests that he could have been looking for the pictures in her camera. Perhaps he was the arsonist and was afraid that Morgan had photographed him? Fortunately, Morgan carries around her photos on her Palm Pilot, so Mick, Beth, and Morgan scrutinize them. One photo of a blazing window shows a man who appears to be murdering a woman. Morgan recognizes him as the thief.
As Mick works with Morgan, he begins to notice more things that reinforce his belief that she is Coraline. Morgan walks like Coraline, sounds like Coraline, likes the same music as Coraline. Mick begins to suspect that the fire, the theft, the murder, the photos -- everything is being staged by Coraline as an elaborate cat-and-mouse game to get back at him for killing her. To be certain that the whole thing wasn't staged, Mick searches the burned building for evidence of a body and, indeed, he finds one. It gets even more weird. The woman in the firey window has a tattoo of a fleur-de-lis on her shoulder, just like one that Coraline had. Perfect fingerprints that Mick lifts from Morgan's apartment identify the thief as Hank Mattola, a man who died of pancreatitis three weeks before the break-in.
A search through Mattola's apartment finds Morgan's cameras hidden in a safe at the back of a closet. When Mick and Josef present Morgan with the cameras and with Mattola's death certificate, she concludes that he faked his own death and suggests checking out his remains at Hollywood Forever, the mortuary where his ashes are housed. That night, Mick and Morgan drive to the cemetery. While Morgan distracts the guard, Mick goes in search of Mattola's ashes. The vault is empty.
As Mick is leaving the mortuary, he is attacked by Hank Mattola. Their fight leads them into the cemetery where Morgan takes one look at Mick's vampire eyes and runs. Mick chases after her, determined to find out the truth. Morgan continues to plead innocence, so Mick rips open the shoulder on her sweater, looking for her fleur-de-lis tattoo. It isn't there. Then Mick notices that a wound on Morgan's arm, a wound made when she was attacked by the thief, a wound that would have already been healed on a vampire, has started to bleed. Morgan runs away from a confused Mick. Later, when Beth asks what is going on between him and Morgan, Mick explains it all...how Morgan is a dead ringer for Coraline, how the murder of the girl in the burning apartment parallels the way Coraline died, how Mick was the one who killed her, and how he was wrong about Morgan.
Meanwhile, Morgan goes home and washes the makeup off her shoulder, revealing a fleur-de-lis tattoo. [Full synopsis by BJ Kuehl]
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