Pleasure Is My Business (Season 4, Episode 16)
Premise: Called to Dallas, the BAU hunts a call girl who poisons wealthy clients who abandon their families, while the men’s lawyers fight to keep their names hidden.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 16
- Unsub
- Megan Kane (Brianna Brown)
- Location
- Dallas, Texas
- Starring
- David Rossi (Joe Mantegna), Aaron “Hotch” Hotchner (Thomas Gibson), Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore), Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler), Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster), Jennifer “JJ” Jareau (A.J. Cook), Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), Jack Hotchner (Cade Owens)
- Opening quote
- “The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture.” (Camille Paglia, read by Hotch)
- Guest stars
- John Getz as Andrew Kane, Catherine Dent as Ellen Daniels, Nora Dunn as Lauren, Melissa Keller as Katherine, Chet Grissom as A.G. Patrick Jackson
- Director
- Gwyneth Horder-Payton
- Writers
- Breen Frazier
Summary
The Case
“Pleasure Is My Business” brings Hotch to Dallas, Texas, at the request of Attorney General Patrick Jackson. Hedge fund manager Hoyt Ashford has died in a luxury hotel, and his lawyers want the death called a suicide; Jackson suspects a high-end call girl, who he thinks also killed executive Michael Stanton. He wants her clients kept out of the reports. The team concludes she poisons the men with rat poison before sex, choosing her targets in advance. Matching phrases in the two companies’ press releases lead Hotch to summon both lawyers, but crisis consultant Ellen Daniels arrives instead. She points two agents to Lauren, a madam posing as a real estate agent, who explains that these men pay mostly for someone to listen and that an escort’s client list is her retirement fund.
A third man, chief financial officer Joseph Fielding, is poisoned in his office and wheeled out to be found, his lips painted after death. Garcia learns that all three victims fought their ex-wives in court and refused to pay alimony or child support. The team gives its profile to the corporate lawyers, and Allison Barnes, a lawyer at Fielding’s company, tells them about a penthouse he leased for a friend. Inside, agents find a child-size purity ring and well-read French classics. Hotch answers her phone. The killer, who has researched him online, accuses him of serving powerful men, and during the call she shoots Trent Rabner, a widower she met that day.
Deciding she grew up wealthy, the team guesses she bought her list from a retired escort. Under threat of an obstruction arrest, the lawyers give up Katherine, now a mother, who sold it to Megan Kane. Megan’s father, oil executive Andrew Kane, was Katherine’s client for years and left his wife over her; Megan bought the list so no one else would have it. Kane denies everything, then books a hotel room, but agents waiting there find only someone he sent. He is meeting Megan at the Chase Regent, which the team identifies from her remark about an ivory marble foyer.
The Team
On the phone, Hotch tells Megan that his wife left him and admits he does not see his son as often as he would like.
The ending
Spoiler: In the room, Megan tells her father what his peers paid her to do. He offers to hide her client list and send her abroad, takes it and leaves, saying he will see her at the police station. Agents reach Megan, who says nothing will change for men like these. Police stop Kane’s car with the list, the clients’ names become public, Kane resigns, and the attorney general denies leaking them.
Why it stands out
- Brianna Brown guest-stars as Megan Kane, the call girl who poisons her clients, with John Getz as her father.
- When Megan looks Hotch up online, the footage she finds is his press statement from the earlier episode “Brothers in Arms.”
- Catherine Dent, who plays fixer Ellen Daniels, starred on The Shield with Walton Goggins, who guest-stars in the next episode, “Demonology.”