CSI: NY - Episode 5.09, “The Box” Recap

Episode 5.09 - The Box
Air Date: November 26, 2008

Danny appears to be talking to a therapist of some kind. He’s telling of how his baseball career ended when he shattered his wrist in a game. He changed careers, no big deal, but now, ten years later, he has another life-changing moment, and he’s scared. A flashback of a recent case begins.

A group breaks into a junk yard. Clad in padding and helmets, they climb atop stacks of vehicles to “fight”. Afterwards, they’re all joking, laughing, and enjoying some beers. One of them, too close to the trunk of a car, is surprised by his friends and put into the unlatched trunk. After closing the lid, they’re interrupted by a vehicle entering the lot. They tell their friend to relax and keep quiet, promising to return for him. They flee.

(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

The next day, a crane operator is maneuvering a car in the crusher. When he hoists it back out, it seems to be leaking a lot of liquid. Mac swabs and tests the liquid, declaring that it’s blood mixed with “decomp juice”. The yard owner has told Don that the car was never checked in. In the morning, they had found the gate chain broken, and this car sitting in the yard. Inserting a scope, they find a body trapped inside the crushed car.

Back in the therapist’s office, Danny is explaining how they get all the details for every job they do. He thought this would be a common job, but he was wrong. He flashes back to talking to Lindsay at the junk yard. Lindsay had found tool marks at the gate, consistent with bolt cutters. He tells her that he tried to call her the night before, but she said she went to bed early. Danny tells the therapist that Lindsay, from Montana, and having received outdoor sports gear as gifts as a kid, wasn’t like any girl he’d ever known. This is a good thing.

At the junkyard, Lindsay and Danny hear a knocking noise. It’s the “gladiator”…Mike Hess…who’d been locked in the trunk. At the station, Don IDs him as a veterinary nurse, who practices Live-Action Role Playing…LARPing.

[To find out more about LARPing, you can check out my interview with LARPer David Olsen]

He told Don that his buddies ran off, thinking that the cops were there. When they came back, it looked like a crime scene. Don had found out that the owner never went to the junk yard, and that no police had been patrolling the area that night.

Sid and Sheldon examine and photograph the crushed vehicle. They remove the remains, mostly skeletal, laying them out on the floor. Sid shows Mac that the pelvis shows that the victim is a female. Sheldon shows him that the only partially fused clavicle and triangular eye orbitals indicate that she is most likely a white woman between 17 and 25. Decomposition leads Sid to believe the time of death was about three weeks earlier. They hadn’t found much else to go on, though. A VIN plate is the only seemingly identifying piece, but the numbers are scratched off.

As Stella is accosted by a kid selling fake Rolex watches across from the crime lab, Danny shows up to tell her that the VIN plate yielded a name, Elizabeth Barker. She’s a 25 year old white woman from the city. They visit Mrs. Barker’s home, and find her alive. She’s shocked that they thought she was the murder victim. She says that her husband noticed the car missing when he went out for the paper that morning, and reported it right away. She tells Stella that her husband is at the park with their son. When Danny asks if he’s as good a husband as he is a father, she’s a little surprised. He asks if she suspects him of having an affair. When she seems shocked, Stella explains that having found a body in their car means they’re going to have a lot of questions. Asked about the night before, Elizabeth replies that they went to bed around 9PM, and that the new baby has left them too fatigued ever to stay up much later. Just then, Steve Barker enters with their baby son.

Sid and Sheldon find a locket inside the car. The photos appear to be those of the woman’s parents. Sid finds a slip of paper in the victim’s pocket, but it’s too stained by decomposition liquid to be read, even when he shines the UV light…ALS…over it. Sheldon notices, though, that the ALS had revealed strange wavy lines on the skull.

As Don and Mac discuss the as-of-yet lack of leads yielded by the locket and from asking neighbors if they’d heard the Barkers’ car being stolen, Adam catches up to them in the corridor. He shows them a sheet on Reggie Dunham, whose prints Lindsay had found on the broken gate lock. He has been imprisoned three times, including two for aggravated assaults on women.

Police and the team find Reggie teaching hands-on car theft techniques.

Danny tells the therapist that they arrested Reggie, but that nothing is ever as it seems.

Mac shows Reggie that they found a bolt cutter in his classroom. His prints are the only ones on the tool, and they match those found on the scene. Reggie claims he’d been out that night stealing parts from junked cars, but hadn’t killed anyone. Suddenly, his head slams into the table. After he shakes it off, he warns them that he’s going to claim that they got rough with him. Mac, though, explains to him that he must not have paid attention in science, since Don’s slamming his head into the table would have resulted in a hand print in the back of his head. So, his little trick wasn’t going to work to get him out of this.

Sid and Sheldon found prints on the steering wheel, but they don’t match Reggie Dunham. Sid shows Mac some blood on the driver’s door handle. Perhaps, he says, the killer transferred it to the handle after placing the body in the trunk. Mac wonders if it could be from the killer.

Sheldon reconstructs the skull, finding concentric fractures around the temporal lobe. As he and Sid are ready to call the COD blunt force trauma to the head, Sid points out slices in the L1 vertebra. He tells Sheldon the marks are v-shaped, and scalloped, indicating a knife blade, not metal from the car’s being crushed. There are also no blood stains in the marks, indicating that they were post-mortem. Sheldon wonders why someone would stab a dead woman twice.

Danny uses the computer to reconstruct the woman’s face. It doesn’t match any missing persons. He and Mac wonder why a woman dead for three weeks, and with photos of apparent family members in a locket wouldn’t be reported missing by those family members.

Adam shows Stella a silver spoon found in the victim’s back pocket. He has also cleaned off the paper that Sid found. It’s a business card for a Dr. Lori Winton of Life Systems. The address is illegible still, but Adam has already looked up Life Systems, a midtown medical center.

Stella and Danny talk to Dr. Winton, who doesn’t recognize the reconstructed facial image. She agrees to post it, in case anyone else recognizes her. Just then, Lindsay enters the office. Seeing Stella and Danny, though, she turns and rushes back out the door. Stella catches up to Danny, who had seen Lindsay. He tells her only that he thought he saw someone he knew.

The therapist asks Danny why he didn’t tell Stella that it was Lindsay. He was unsure what was going on, since Lindsay had lied about what she was doing. He says she’d never lied to him before.

From his desk, Danny anxiously watches the elevator. Mac comes up, and Danny shows him the DNA results from the blood on the door handle. It’s a male, and has a matching allele pattern indicating either the victim’s father or son. They wonder if they’ve just discovered a witness, a killer, or another victim.

Adam shows Stella that the victim had been taking tetracycline, a component of which binds to calcium, including bones. This explains the strange lines that Sheldon noticed on the skull. As for the spoon, the only usable prints that Adam found belonged to the victim.

Sheldon shows Stella and Mac that there was pitting in the pelvic bones. This indicates chemicals commonly in the body during pregnancy. Other tissue they found turned out to be placental. Sheldon adds that this combined with the post-mortem knife marks on the vertebra, as well as the blood on the door handle, lead them to believe she was pregnant at the time of death. The killer must have cut out the baby.

Danny sees Lindsay exit the elevator. She tries to avoid him, but he insists she talk to him. She rushes into the ladies’ room. Danny tells the therapist that things hadn’t been the same between him and Lindsay, since they got back together, just a couple months after he had been with another woman.

Lindsay exits the restroom, and tells Danny that she’s pregnant. She hands him an ultrasound photo, and says she’s known for a few weeks. She heads back to work, but Danny rushes after her. She tells him she knows him, and didn’t expect anything from him. Just then, she notices the facial image in the lab. She says she knows her….Nicole Harris. She met her at her first clinic appointment. Nicole had told Lindsay that she was eight months pregnant, and her parents lived in Albany. Lindsay insisted they trade numbers, since they were both alone. She gives Danny Nicole’s phone number.

Mac and Stella talk to Nicole’s parents. They hadn’t heard from her in seven months. Mac asks why they hadn’t filed a missing person report on their teenage daughter who they hadn’t heard from for so long. They explain that she was a good girl, a straight-A student. When she told them she thought she was pregnant, her father told her that if she was in such a hurry to be an adult, she should act like one. So, they kicked her out of the house, and she went to New York all alone. The mother insisted that, in the small town where they live, it would have been hard for her. Stella adds, “And for you.”

Danny tells the therapist that he lied to Sheldon, who asked about her identifying Nicole. He told him that she was there for a flu shot. Sheldon shows Danny the medical records that show Dr. Winton as the provider for the tetracycline prescription. So, she lied about not recognizing Nicole.

When Danny and Stella confront Dr. Winton about knowing Nicole, she denies having any memory of that patient. When Danny produces a copy of the prescription, she wants to talk to a lawyer.

Adam tells Mac that the minor DNA from the silver spoon matches the elimination sample from Steve Barker. Stella comes in with Dr. Winton’s phone records. One of the recurring phone numbers is Steve Barker’s, includine a call within the last twenty minutes. She must have called to warn him.

At the Barker home, Don cuffs Steve. He says he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. They tell him about the call, but he says that he just got home from work, so it must have been to his wife.

At the station, Steve Barker tells Mac that they tried to have a baby, but, eventually found out that she couldn’t have a baby. She felt her life was over. When they tried to adopt, there was concern over Elizabeth’s mental health. As she became more obsessed over having a baby, he convinced Elizabeth’s childhood friend, Dr. Winton, to talk to her. When Nicole went to the clinic to have an abortion, Dr. Winton thought she could fix everybody’s problem.

Meanwhile, Don, Danny, and Stella have caught up to Elizabeth, who has locked herself in a gas station restroom in Brooklyn. She’s inside with the baby, crying. As Don, then Stella try to convince her to come out, she grabs a pair of scissors, clenching them in her free hand.

Steve says that Nicole agreed to let them have her baby, when they offered to pay for the expenses plus $50,000. Nicole came to their house to break the deal. They tried to convince her, but, as she was leaving and Steve tried to grab her arm, she fell down the stairs hitting her head at the bottom. She was dead instantly. Steve sent Elizabeth to get a knife. He tells Mac that he didn’t know what else to do, because an ambulance wouldn’t have gotten there in time.

Stella enters the restroom, and convinces Elizabeth to drop the scissors. Stella takes the baby, and Don cuffs her. Officers also take Dr. Lori Winton into custody.

Danny meets Jim and Andrea Harris and tells them that Child Services will bring their grandson to them shortly. He looks a little drained or forlorn, and Jim asks if he’s okay. Danny sits down, and we see that the wall behind him matches the scenes where he has been telling about the case, and about Lindsay. Jim tells him that, whatever he does, don’t allow himself any regrets. When Lindsay appears in the hallway with Child Services and the baby, Danny introduces her to the Harrises. Jim wishes Danny luck, and Andrea adds, “to the both of you.”

As Danny and Lindsay watch Mr. and Mrs. Harris receive their grandson, their hands seem to brush closer, but we don’t see them join.