A teenage boy in a locked house is the only survivor of a family slaughtered in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood. Making the investigation more difficult, Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson has to deal with across-the-board budget cuts. She is torn between transferring one of her own team members or force Lt. Provenza to retire early.

The discovery of a body at a building site dating back to the L.A. Riots puts Brenda on a collision course with a priest, a politician, and one of her team.

Brenda becomes the most downloaded video on YouTube after being assaulted by a bride whose wedding she's stopped due to a corpse falling out of a casket.

When a little girl is abducted, Sergeant Gabriel steps over a line for results, but he jeopardizes the case and his career.

Brenda finds herself investigating the goings on at a retirement facility when a man confesses to seven murders and refuses to give his name.

Brenda has to solve a murder with just Provenza while she's ill when her team is forced into WMD training.

A suspected gang retaliation double murder takes a different turn, and Brenda continues to feel ill.

Brenda and her team deal with the grisly case of a serial killer who seems to have re-appeared after an absence of many years. The cases all have the same type of victim and the same results. Attractive young women - all divorced and recently re-married - are kidnapped and tortured with a cattle prod, among other things, and then dumped nude on the beach along the Pacific Coast Highway. There would always be three victims, found several days apart, with a Roman numeral branded on the heel of their foot. Three victims were found in 1998 and again in 1999 but nothing since. As the police look into the backgrounds of one of the victims, they find exactly where they were tortured and the reason why no one could hear their screams. In her personal life, Brenda is devastated by the results of her medical tests and the doctor's diagnosis.

A reporter dies while Brenda is helping him profile the LAPD, but she's barred from participating in the case by Pope until the department psychiatrist clears her for duty. At home, she and Fritz are expecting her parents for a visit.

With her parents still visiting, Brenda has to deal with the murder of a Chinatown-based tour operator. The young woman was found bludgeoned to death on one of her tour buses when her husband arrived for work in the morning. Her phone messages reveal that she may have been having an affair. It also appears that the tour company was running too much money through their books leading the police to believe she may also have been involved in prostitution. While Brenda is investigating, fiancé Fritz is stuck playing tourist with her visiting parents. Brenda has another visit with her doctor and gets good news and bad news - the really bad news being related to her diet.

Having just undergone surgery, Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson leads the investigation into the death of a female DHS agent. The woman was well-known to the LAPD and was frequently in Los Angeles auditing the installation of police telecommunications equipment funded by Homeland Security. Her car is found off the road in a ravine but the autopsy suggests that she probably survived the crash, with a fatal blow to the head with a wooden stick being the murder weapon. She also had pepper spray residue on her face. Brenda and her team are soon in conflict with DHS investigators who are trying to recover the dead woman's cellphone and laptop computer. The biggest shock however is that she was also having an affair with someone - who turns out to be Chief Pope.

Brenda and the priority murder squad investigate the death of Oliver Henry, a prominent divorce lawyer, who is found at the bottom of his swimming pool. His wife Valerie, who was also his law partner, is the only beneficiary of his $10 million life insurance policy and is an obvious suspect. There are several others, usually the ex-spouses of his clients, including one, Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer, who may have been particularly vexed with him. Brenda finds herself in unfamiliar territory when she is unable to get a confession from him and has to testify at his murder trial. Meanwhile, Fritz and Brenda are in the process combining their finances but Brenda's attempt to get cheaper car insurance for them reveals something from Fritz's past.

The trial of Jonathan Shafer is not going well. He had always claimed he was off fishing with a friend, Topper Barnes, but the police couldn't find him and Brenda was convinced that he simply did not exist. When Barnes suddenly appears, Brenda may have to face the fact that they have the wrong man on trial. She perseveres however and finds that a lien placed on a house owned by Shafer may have been a more that adequate motive for the killing. Brenda also looks to break his alibi for the day of the murder. Meanwhile, Brenda begins to doubt her relationship with Fritz when he admits to something in his past.

It's turning out to be a not so very Merry Christmas for Brenda who is still trying to sell her house and is putting up Christmas decorations as recommended by their real estate agent. In the midst of this, Chief Pope transfers an armored car robbery investigation from a less than pleased Commander Taylor to Brenda and her team. The latest is the most recent in a string of robberies and Brenda believes it has to be an inside job. The only survivor of the most recent robbery is Wesley Reed who was shot but promptly disappears from the hospital. When he's traced back to his home in Atlanta, Brenda and Fritz go to pick him up and stay with Brenda's parent who are happy to see her, but make a point of telling her that she has come on business and not necessarily to see them. When they are unable to fly Wesley back to LA, they set off in the RV her parents were to use to go to Florida. Brenda's parents are there as well as the prisoner and Lieutenants Flynn and Provenza.

Brenda, her parents, Fritz and Lts. Provenza and Flynn set off on their cross-country trek to return their prisoner, Wesley Reed, to Los Angeles. Brenda's parents are the only ones who are allowed to drive the RV and they hit several bumps in the road along the way. Wesley tries to escape through the RV's bathroom window damaging the toilet so they face a long ride with no facilities. Wesley takes a different tone over time thanks to the kindness of Brenda's parents but Brenda makes what later proves to be a fatal error when she tells him that his younger brother was killed the same day Wesley fled. Wesley tells her that the group he was involved with was planning another armored car robbery and, finally back in LA, agrees to wear a wire. Unfortunately, the take down doesn't quite go as planned.