CSI: NY Episode 5.11: Forbidden Fruit
Air Date: December 17, 2008

While cruising down a dark road, patrolmen spot a man pulling a woman’s body from the trunk of a car. They drive up, and he runs. As the officers catch up to him on foot, he falls from a fence and impales himself on a piece of rebar.

At the grocery store, Mac runs into Ella McBride, the owner of the confessions website SecretsU from episode 5.07 Dead Inside. Ella invites Mac to breakfast, but he gets a text, though, about the new case.

At the scene, Don tells Mac that the man is Tony Clark, a department store buyer. The woman has no identification, no signs of trauma, defensive wounds, no missing or disturbed clothing, or any of the usual clues to what happened. Her mouth does show internal bleeding. Danny hears Clark’s cell phone. He is receiving a text from a blocked number:

“Is it done yet?”

Danny finds a red stain on the floor of the car with traces of vegetation, but neither Tony’s nor the victim’s shoes have anyting similar on the soles. The car title has the name Isabelle Vaughn. Mac, though, has already run the plates and received preliminary info on the victim. She’s a talented, successful, young handbag designer. Danny wonders if the the red stain was blood came from an accomplice.

As Sid makes his Y incision on Isabelle, liquid oozes from her abdomen. He calls Hawkes down. The liquid is her stomach, liver, and other internal organs. Sid tells Hawkes that this…saponification…is the cause of death, and the breakdown continued long after her death. He shows Hawkes the contents of both bodies’ stomachs: citrus peels, dandelion, raw onions, vinegar, tobasco, and duck blood soup. Isabelle, though, also had sodium hydroxide, drain cleaner, in her stomach. She would have had to drink at least 18 ounces to do this damage. It appears that she drank it voluntarily. Hawkes wonders why, if this was a suicide, would Tony dump the body.

In a pawn shop, Detective Angell leads Stella to the body of Declan Rooney, 29. He is lying with a snapped neck and broken fingers, the torture methods used by the killer of the Rat Fisherman, the same man who threatened Stella. [See Episode 5.05 Cost of Living.] Stella says the killer, Sebastian Diakos, is “on the wind.” Angell counters that he may have just blown back. Stella notices that the only apparent missing item is whatever was on a mat lying on the counter.

Adam tells Danny that Isabelle had elephant dung under her fingernails. Danny offers Adam a beer if he figures out where that came from, but Adam tells him that he and Lindsay are going to have some big expenses coming up with the new baby.

Lindsay walks up, and wonders why Danny isn’t at Isabelle’s apartment. He says it was clean, but he’s about to go over to Tony’s apartment. She tells Danny that she felt the baby kick earlier. They go to a quiet hallway, where he tries to feel it, but the baby has settled down. He wants to be alerted right away, the next time, though.

Lindsay returns to the lab to find Mac looking over a variety of strange foods laid out on the counter. She offers Mac a berry to put in his mouth for a few seconds. She says it matches the trace that Danny found. It’s a “miracle fruit,” Synsepalum dulcificum a very trendy West African fruit that makes sour foods taste sweet for about an hour or so after coating your tongue. Mac tries an onion, but it tastes sweet. They realize that this would explain how she drank a caustic substance without realizing.

Danny, Hawkes, and Don find the remnants of a “strange foods” party in Tony’s apartment. Danny finds the miracle fruit, and the foods on the counter and tables match the contents of Isabel Vaughn’s stomach.

Don gets a call. Quincy Feeney is the one who sent the text message to Tony. Quincy tells Mac and Don that she idolized Isabelle Vaughn, but she didn’t know her. Tony was friends with her. She says Tony didn’t kill her, but found her dead at his party. He sent everyone away from the party, then led Quincy to the bathroom, where Isabelle was lying. They thought she’d had an allergic reaction. She claims that they were going to dump the body, because the scandal would have ruined Tony’s image and career.

Mac asks if the clothes she’s wearing are the same clothes from the party. They are, so he asks to see her boots. There are red stains on her soles that seem to match the stains on the carpet in Isabelle’s car. She helped Tony put the body in the car. Quincy got in the driver’s seat, but Tony insisted on doing it himself. She says the plan was for Tony to dump the body, then meet her in Long Island City to dump Isabelle’s car. Tony never showed up, though.

Back at Tony’s apartment, the Danny finds a blood trail leading to the bathroom. The sink and its surrounding area are splattered with bloody vomit. There’s no sign of struggle, but a dirty glass on the vanity. Beneath the vanity, Danny finds a half-empty bottle of drain cleaner. They suppose that Tony took the opportunity to spike Isabelle’s drink.

Ella McBride meets Mac in his office. She’s seen news of Isabelle’s murder all over the internet, and thinks she can help. She shows Mac a card sent in a few months before. It has the logo and signature pieces from Isabelle’s handbags glued to one side, and the words “I want her dead” on the back.

Mac and Don visit Isabelle’s business partner, Marina Melton. They tell her that they know that Isabelle was suing her to regain full control of her label. She denies having any reason to fear Isabelle’s “frivolous” suit, claiming that she had become one of the biggest women’s accessories manufacturers in the country on her own. She owns the rights to the label, the contract means Isabelle works for her. She had found her making bags in her dorm room. Mac shows her the death threat card. She recognizes the design elements as Isabelle’s but claims not to know who would have made it.

Danny finds Hawkes in the lab. Hawkes has been testing all the drinks from the party that might have delivered the poison in Isabelle’s glass. Most of them, though, are too acidic to have be sodium hydroxide. The exception is the liquid in the blender. It has a pH of 14. There are no useful prints, but Hawkes hopes to isolate all the ingredients to find a lead to the killer.

Danny receives a report that the sodium hydroxide in Isabelle’s system was pure, so it couldn’t have been the drain cleaner. Otherwise, it would have included bleach. The hope that looking at the guests at the party, they can figure out who would have access to laboratory quality sodium hydroxide.

Sid talks to Stella and Mac about Declan Rooney’s murder. He says that this type of neck-snapping requires a rare skill. He shows them that the direction of the head turning matches that of Woolford Bessie, the Rat Fisherman…left to right. Mac lists the types of special forces that could have trained the killer.

Stella insists that it is Diakos, but Mac says that they only have cause of death connecting the murders. Stella tells him, though, that Diakos was introduced to her as an expert in ancient Greek artifacts. Woolford Bessie was killed over a priceless antique coin. Rooney owned a pawn shop, and Stella believes that he may have come upon something that Diakos wanted. Sid says the kill was pretty clean, but that there was a metal splinter in Rooney’s arm.

Stella rushes out of the lab with the splinter. Mac follows her. He’s concerned over her obsession with finding the killer.

Stella tests the display mat from the pawn shop counter. She shows Danny that she was able to do a surface mapping of trace metals. An image of King Phillip II appeared, just like the image on the coin that the Rat Fisherman had. The splinter from Rooney’s arm matches the metal used to encase the first such coin they had found.

Stella and Detective Angell meet with Stan Trovato, a former counterfeiter. Stella offers to have his brother moved to a closer prison, if he’ll craft them some fake King Phillip coins. At first, he thinks he’s being set up, but gives in, if they’ll put it in writing, and move his brother first.

Mac finds Hawkes disassembling the DNA analyzer. Mac is concerned that he’s taking a $200,000 machine apart, but Hawkes tells him that it requires recalibration. Running elimination samples from the party guests, in particular Marina Melton, he got no results. Mac says he took Melton’s reference sample himself. Hawkes tells him that either the machine needs fixing, or he’s discovered the first human with no DNA.

Adam tells Danny that a smelly bag from Tony’s apartment contained elephant dung, just like that found under Isabelle’s nails. The vegetation in the dung matches that from the Manhattan Zoo. Colby Fisher buys dung from the zoo, and uses it to make paper. Fisher was at the party.

Danny and Don visit Fisher. He says he meant it as a joke. He says he didn’t pick Isabelle. She was just the first person he met at the party. He says he just wanted to see if the berries worked. He claims he didn’t offer her anything else, and that he wouldn’t hurt her. He says he was very close to her, having had a casual sex relationship. He also made hang tags for her bags until a couple months ago. As he’s telling them this, Danny notices jars of sodium hydroxide sitting nearby. Fisher says they use it to bleach their products.

Lindsay tells Mac that she found no identifying marks or traces on the SecretsU card. When she removed the logo and handbag parts, she found a detailed sketch drawn on the card, but nothing else significant. Ella’s prints were the only ones on it, and the glue used to make the card match the glue Ella uses to hang the cards on her office wall. On the computer, Mac brings up the “handbag” card and the statement that Ella wrote out when she was a suspect in her father’s murder. He matches pencil strokes in the new card’s handbag sketch to elements of Ella’s handwriting.

Mac visits Ella, and asks why she made the card. She tells him that she wanted someone to talk to. She asks if the way he treated her in her father’s murder investigation meant nothing. He’s angry that she made him waste valuable time on a fake lead. She apologizes for such a stupid stunt, but he leaves, still angry.

Danny tests the sodium hydroxide from Fisher’s factory. It matches that from Isabelle’s stomach.

Don and Danny question Fisher. Don tells him that the phone company records show that they talked all the time for two months. After that, she ceased calling, but he kept trying to call her. Eventually, she had Fisher’s number blocked. He says that he didn’t tell them about the extent of their relationship, his cheating on her, and his desire to get her to come back, because he knew they’d arrest him. He figured it wouldn’t have mattered once they found the real killer.

He explains that the affair with Isabelle’s partner Marina went on for two months, before Marina called it off. She stopped the affair, then told Isabelle about it. He says Marina is diabolical. Don says he thinks he killed Isabelle. When they tell him that the sodium hydroxide from his paper plant matched the substance that killed Isabelle, Fisher seems shocked that it would be possible.

Mac calls Stella into his office. He says that the chief’s office wants to know why a CSI is moving Marty Trovato to a downstate prison. She says Stan Trovato is helping her. Mac insists that she stop what she’s doing.

Danny tells Mac that Fisher has contacted a lawyer. Hawkes comes in with news on Marina Melton’s DNA swab. He found flakes of betel quid in the blender. The leafy plant produces a mild stimulant that also isolates DNA from saliva making it appear that there is no DNA in a sample. It’s also used primarily by southeast Asians. Melton is from Thailand, and, when she was hooking up with Colby Fisher, she had access to his sodium hydroxide.

Mac brings in Marina Melton. He tells her that officers found her snuff box, full of betel quid, as well as…sodium hydroxide. He tells her that she couldn’t take it when the woman whom she’d used to make a lot of money, Isabelle Vaughn, stood up to her, and wanted to take her designs away, she couldn’t stand it, and she killed her.

Detective Angell finds George Kolovos in a diner. Not identifying herself, she hands him one of the fake coins. He tries to act uninterested. She starts to leave, and he asks what she wants. She tells him she’ll be in touch, and leaves. She gets into Stella’s car and tells her that he took the bait.

Mac receives a call from Ella McBride. She’s crying, and keeps repeating that she’s sorry. He rushes to her apartment and finds her sitting on the kitchen floor. She has cut her wrists with a kitchen knife, but not deep enough to hit the arteries. She says she’s so tired of being alone.

As Mac carries Ella out, the camera closes in on a card on the wall. It says, “I WILL MAKE HIM LOVE ME.” The “O” has the the peculiar curl at the top that Mac found in her drawing and her handwriting.

Talk about your themed sets of subplots: Obsession…much?

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: NY Episode 5.10: The Triangle
Air Date: December 10, 2008

On the street, near the Empire State Building, a man is walking about, frantically talking to himself…or his cellphone…about the “airwaves”. At the same time, several people talking on their phones or listening to radios all suffer horrible interference. This includes Danny, who has just been talking on his phone to Lindsay about the baby. His phone goes out as he’s heading into the 34th Street Station. The strange man talking about the “airwaves” announces to himself the arrival of “The Bermuda Triangle.” An armored car nearby is stalled at an intersection. The driver can’t reach anyone on his radio or his phone. When he slides the peephole open to check on Carl in back, Carl is suffering from a rain of sparks, and is apparently being electrocuted as a result of the phenomenon hitting the whole block. The driver seems unable to exit the cab, and bangs the glass crying out for help. The back door swings open.

The driver, Greg Hufheinz, tells the team about the incident. They ask if he had opened the door to help, but he tells them that drivers are instructed to stay in the cab until emergency assistance arrives.

Stella and Mac examine the irregularly shaped “bullet” wound on Carl Custer’s chest. There’s no GSR, exit wound, or apparent bullet. He has burns around his eyes, as well as on his wrist near his watch. Stella spots a small, black pineapple sticker on the guards cuff. She asks Mac if the crime scene seems strange, but Mac has already walked away from the body.

Don tells Stella about the driver’s protocol to stay in the cab, but he has found a witness from a nearby bus stop who says she saw someone turn a knob on the back door and open it. The few who noticed the person disagreed on whether it was a man or woman, and none of them noticed a uniform. Stella says there were no prints on the handle. Stella wonders where Mac disappeared to. Don responds with the common urban legend about that block being the “Bermuda Triangle”. Of course, Stella is not buying it, but Don goes on about all the calls that come in about that block. [Interestingly, the High Eye logo on the armored car has a triangle with an eye in the center.

Sid finds metal shards deep inside the wound. Hawkes enters the lab, as Sid is microwaving a pig's liver. Sid explains that it wasn't a gunshot that killed Carl. The plastic and metal fragments he found inside the chest cavity lead him to believe that Carl had a pacemaker that exploded, causing massive trauma to the heart. Hawkes says he's heard of them failing, but never exploding.

Sid pulls Carl's liver from the cooler, and points out the dark lines. He then removes the pig's liver from the microwave, showing him similar lines. So, he concludes that Carls was exposed to massive microwave radiation, which also explains the burn marks where his eyeglass frames and wristwatch were in close contact with his skin. Sid continues that, after 9/11, all the radio antennae from atop the World Trade Center were replaced on the Empire State Building.

Adam shows Lindsay that the intersection camera had stopped working at 4:56 PM. Both the camera and the traffic light haven't functioned since then.

Danny catches up to Lindsay, who is satisfying a craving at a sidewalk vendor's cart. He hurriedly asks about her family's medical and mental health history. Seemingly satisfied with her answer, he proposes marriage. She pauses, then replies, "No." He seems deflated, but... Didn't he see Walk the Line?

Hawkes uses the imager to reconstruct enough of the pacemaker to read the identifying marks. He tells Mac that patterns, directionality of the fragments, and lithium cobalt oxide traces seem to confirm Sid's theory that the pacemaker exploded as a result of microwave radiation hitting the batteries. The manufacturer, Marwood Technologies, had remote monitoring on Carl's device. His cellphone would relay signals from the pacemaker. The signal, however, ended at 4:56 PM, the same time that the security cameras and traffic signals failed. Hawkes wonders, though, how all that energy coming from atop the Empire State Building could have only affected Carl Custer, and no one else.

Mac, Danny, and Hawkes look out from atop the Empire State Building. They all circle the roofline just below the base of the tower. Using electrosmog detectors, they find no signs of unhealthy amounts of radiation coming from the roof. Mac proposes running a DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) search to see if they know of anything that could cause the damage.

Stella finds Mac in his office, and asks where he was last night. He tells her he was with the FBI. Special agents picked him up and took him away to ask about the Ann Steele case (Episode 5.04 Sex, Lies & Silicone), the one with the mysterious flash drive containing Steele's client list and all the sordid details that she helped go away for these powerful people, some of whom are supposedly top government officials. They accused Mac of stealing the flash drive, and warned him to be careful. If he plans to use that "weapon" to take "pot shots" at public officials, he'd better make sure there wasn't one pointed at himself. He tells her that he took it to the property room right after Sheldon gave it to him. After speaking with the FBI, though, he returned to property and found it missing from the case evidence. He told her that he checked the chain of custody. He hadn't yet talked to the clerk he handed it to, officer Kevin Cross.

Adam shows Lindsay that he found a dust void circling the electronic lock on the armored car door. Knowing that electromagnetic radiation had disabled the electronics, he knew that the intruder would still need to bypass the actual lock mechanism. Then, he remembered a device that he was able to borrow from a friend at the Treasury Department...Satan's Ring.

Lindsay turns the borrowed ring around the lock, and the unique polarity of the magnetic charges on the ring...two south poles opposite each other, and two north poles opposite each other...charge the coils in the lock causing them to disengage. The shape and size of the ring match the dust void on the door. Adam tells her that Don is looking for anyone with a record of using a Satan's Ring to perpetrate a crime.

Don finds one instance of Satan's Ring use. It's a case he worked, and the thief was Bernie Benton. He tracks Benton down in his pub, and shakes him down. Benton insists that he was never sloppy and hurt anyone, and that he's no longer playing that game. A woman enters the pub and Benton sends her home with cash, telling her that he's closing before her shift. Don tells him not to go anywhere.

Lindsay examines the pineapple sticker that Stella found on Carl's sleeve. Currently pregnant, she becomes wary of the toxins she handles in her job. Conspicuously...for the camera, anyway...she applies the chemical under a hood to minimize her exposure to its vapors. She tells Stella that she found epithelials on the sticker. She has sent a DNA sample to Adam.

On GCMS, they notice compounds commonly found in sunblock. Lindsay tells Stella...the lab's official safety officer...that she has a pregnant friend who works in a forensics lab in New Jersey. She tells her that her friend is nervous about all the toxic chemicals she uses. Stella assures her that her friend is safe, considering all the safety protocols they follow: fume hoods, goggles, gloves, face shields. When Stella asks about her friend's partner, Lindsay is coy about the circumstances, saying they're complicated. Stella...with a bit of a nod and a wink...tells Lindsay that, if her friend's co-workers are anything like Lindsay's own co-workers, that they will surely help her, and that they'd absolutely be happy for her. Stella's caution and intentional avoidance of acknowledging Lindsay as the "friend" was very touching. [Tear.] “Tell your friend, ‘Congratulations.’”

As Sheldon tells Mac that the military is uneasy about releasing information about advanced weapons to civilians, including police investigators, Danny rushes in with news about the armored car.

Danny takes Mac to Anderson Savings and Loan, the next stop on the armored car’s route. Danny tells him that, last evening, “Carl Custer” from High Eye signed in at 5:01 PM, and walked out with a deposit transfer of $250,000. The problem is that he died five minutes before that, four blocks away. On the security video, they see the guard…young, blond, bearded. The man doesn’t look like Bernie Benton. They deduce that it’s probably an inside job.

As Stella and Mac discuss the lack of leads, Danny enters with news that all the High Eye employees checked out “squeaky clean”, and all were accounted for at the time of the incident. Mac realizes that a camera on the roof of the Empire State Building might offer a better vantage of the scene. Stella notes that it points toward the Anderson Savings and Loan. They tap into the recorded video, and find the assailant leaving the building with the cash. He gets into an old red van. The driver takes off, and almost hits a pedestrian. They seem to know how to track him down.

Stella and Danny find Yert Yallawac…the disturbed, “Triangle”/”Airwaves” man from the opening. He’s in the area doing his “research” with his equipment…a dead and half-smashed cellphone. They ask Yert about what he saw at the time of the incident. He says that, at the time of the “Wave of Darkness”, when he was monitoring congested energy channels, he heard the “warning signal” and narrowly defeated death…i.e. he wasn’t killed by the van. He managed to snatch an epaulet with a High Eye button on it from the fake guard’s uniform. He lets Danny keep it. Yert goes back to his monitoring the energy.

Adam tells Lindsay that he found no hair or epithelials on the epaulet. He decided to search based on fragrance, but any scent on the material was too faint for their equipment to make a match. She recommends using canines.

Don and a canine officer go to High Eye. The dog leads them to Greg Hufheinz’ locker. Mac and Don question Hufheinz, who insist that Carl was like family. Don tells him that the man who stole the money from the savings and loan was wearing his High Eye uniform. Hufheinz, though, tells them that he had taken his spare uniform to the dry cleaner, but when he went to retrieve it, they told him he’d already picked it up. He insists that someone else picked it up. He denies recognizing Bernie Benton’s face. Mac and Don both believe him. Don wonders if Bernie scoped out Hufheinz, stole his uniform, and took the money. They have to wonder, though, who helped him stop the real armored car.

In DARPA, Sheldon finally finds an advanced prototype microwave gun developed by Sanon Research, a midtown company. As he tells Stella this, Lindsay enters with news that the sticker was a tan-too sticker, a novelty used to leave an image on tanned skin. The person who used it, must have been at a tanning salon, but failed to remove the sticker before coming into contact with Carl. DNA from the sticker doesn’t make any direct hits in CODIS, but there is a familial match. Bernie Benton must have a daughter.

The team discuss the newest developments. Nothing in Bernie Benton’s case file mentions a daughter. Don has put a tail on Benton, though. Sheldon has checked out the microwave gun prototype. Whoever used it, also knew how to wipe it down. The user could have easily driven up behind the armored car, and set off the gun at the light, causing all the damage. The list of Sanon Research employees, though, doesn’t include any Bentons, so the daughter must have a different name.

Don and Stella visit Benton. When they describe what they’ve figured out, that his daughter was just supposed to stall the truck, but must have gotten greedy and used his Satan’s Ring to rob it; he acts as if he’s the one who did it. Don tells him that he can tell he didn’t know the details of his daughter’s actions until Don mentioned her. He won’t tell his daughter’s name or her whereabouts. Bernie assaults Don, but misses. Don cuffs him, as Stella checks Benton’s cellphone call. She finds a series of texts to a Jamie Sunderland, and reports this back to Sheldon. He finds her name. She’s a marketing representative at Sanon Research. Benton tells them that there’s no use going to Sanon. She’s lying low.

Meanwhile, Jamie Sunderland is getting into a helicopter.

Across town, an officer tells Mac about a woman finding a body in an alley. The victim, property clerk Kevin Cross, has a bullet wound in his forehead.

Lindsay tells Danny that it’s not that she won’t marry him. It’s just not the right time. She assures him that neither of them is going away, so they can afford to take “baby steps”.

In Mac’s office, he smiles and hugs Lindsay and Danny. [Yea!]

Post from: CSI Fanatic

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.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

[Photo: courtesy of newscom.com]

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

[Photo: courtesy of newscom.com]

[Photo: courtesy of newscom.com]

[Photo: courtesy of newscom.com]

[Photo: courtesy of newscom.com]

[Photo: courtesy of newscom.com]

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: NY – Episode 5.07: Dead Inside
Air Date: November 12, 2008

Mac walks across a vacant lot. He descends into a hole to catch up to Hawkes, who is photographing the body and scene. Don identifies the victim as Kevin McBride. He says some BMXers were doing trick on the lot, when one of them fell into the hole, and found the body. Mac and Hawkes note that the victim’s core body temp of 55 degrees (Fahrenheit), makes the time of death about 36 hours earlier, around 9-10 AM, the day before. Skull fractures and marks on the face indicate strong blunt force trauma. Mac follows a trail of blood up the steps. It ends at the top step. The perp must have dragged the body down from the surface.

Stella is at another scene, where she has found a cleaned up blood trail that goes to a doorway, and stops. When he asks where she is, she says she’s in the middle of the East River. She’s in a house, on a barge, traveling in the river.

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

Danny shows up at the moving house barge, in a speed boat. He tells Stella and Lindsay that McBride owned a house relocation company. His latest job was moving this house from Staten Island to the upper east side for stockbroker Franco Vladek. Vladek has been in Beijing for the past six months. The three discuss the scenario. A broken window with no glass on the floor indicates that maybe the killer broke in after the house was secured, killed McBride, and cleaned up the mess. Why, though, would McBride have been in the locked up house.

After Sid’s autopsy, McBride’s wife, Annie, and daughter, Ella, come to identify the body. The daughter tells Mac that her father had a distinctive scar on his left index finger. The mark on his hand, she says, was from an accident while slicing a bagel.

Back in the house, Stella finds a recently-fired shell casing. Since Kevin McBride wasn’t shot, Danny asks if they should be looking for a second victim.

After Detective Angell talks to McBride’s secretary, Don comes over. She tells Don that she saw his sister at a party where they were responding to a call. She adds that they didn’t take her in, because she mentioned his name.

Danny tells Lindsay that Angell found nothing in a background check on the moving crew. She shows him a piece of cardstock that Sid had removed from McBride’s hand. The fragment shows an eye…that matches the victim’s eye…and the word “tell” scrawled on it.

Stella receives a call from a blocked number, “The fisherman’s death is an unsolved case.” “Be smart about this, Detective. Don’t try to be the hero.”

Lindsay finds part of a QR (Quick Reference) code on the back of the card. She shows Stella and Danny how QR codes…essentially a two-dimensional barcode…is encoded text that can be read by a camera phone, and converted to a website, or other information. [They're very popular in East Asia, but are still slowly catching on in the U.S.] She runs off to try to decipher the code.

Stella reminds Danny of the Rat Fisherman. She tells about the man from the embassy who spoke fluent Greek, and must be the man who attacked her, a few weeks before. He must also be the one who killed the Rat Risherman, and the phone call was a threat.

Hawkes tells Sid that a hair found in the victim’s nose matches that of the Virginia opossum. Sid shows him lacerations on the wrist that appear to have happened right before death. The opossum ate bits of McBride’s face, taking away potential soft tissue evidence of the murder weapon. Hawkes, though, finds a pattern in the bone fragments from McBride’s skull.

Stella walks in to find Adam smoking from a gourd. He tells her that the carrot from the scene was a “veggie pipe”, hollowed out and showing traces of THC. Stella notes that tests on McBride didn’t indicate any controlled substances, so it might be the killer’s. Adam adds that he has DNA from the carrot.

Don confronts his sister at a bar. She deflects his concern with a childhood story. She promises not to use his name to keep out of jail.

Stella visits the shop of Tanner Somerset, and flashes her badge. He sits up and tells her the paraphernalia in his shop are for legal use only…a sentence which she helps him finish. She tells him that his DNA was found on the carrot pipe found at a murder scene. He tells her that the house looked like a good place to light one up. So, he broke in, smoked, and fell asleep. He woke up the next morning, and the house was moving. So, he rushed out.

Danny matches the marks on McBride’s skull to a framing hammer. The marks also match those found on nails at the crime scene. Problem is that it’s a common tool, available anywhere. Hawkes tells him that the scale that Sid removed from the victim is from a gara rufa fish, a carp native only to Turkey, Syria, and Iran.

McBride’s daughter complains to Mac about their taking all of her father’s things. She pleads with him, because her mother is very upset. He tells her that they’ll find the person who killed her father.

Flack gives Danny a framing hammer found in a dumpster a couple blocks from the crime scene. He also found out that numerous people had reported seeing a man jump from a moving house, corroborating Somerset’s story. When he and Danny come upon Lindsay fretting over the QR code fragment, he says he recognizes the card and the border around it.

He and Lindsay head over to the bar where Flack’s sister works. She finds the cards, but the manager tells him that his sister had been fired two weeks earlier. She shows up and tells Don that she’s there because she works there. He replies that he knows she was fired. She dismissed it as no big deal. He wants to know why she is drinking and hanging out with a no-good crowd. She asks when he started caring.

Hawkes demonstrates to Stella how a tank full of gara rufa fish are used in manicures. For $50, you can stick your hands in the tank to have the fish eat dead skin for thirty minutes. Stella tells him that Rita, McBride’s secretary, told her that she had a manicure the morning of his death, around 10. The long, deep, scratch marks on McBride’s arm, where Sid found gara rufa tissue, could be nail scratches. Danny walks in with news that Tanner Somerset had lived in that house. His mother sold it out from under him six months before.

Rita tells Danny that she had fallen, and McBride caught her. That’s when she accidentally scratched his arm that morning. Stella confronts Somerset with a receipt for a framing hammer that he’d just bought. He says that he was mad that his mom kicked him out and sold the house. He was angry and went over to mess up the house. She notes that the only thing messed up was McBride. He denies seeing McBride, while he was in the house.

Lindsay shows Mac that the cards are for a website: Secrets You. People in bars fill out their secrets, get a PO Box address from the QR code, and the site owners post them on the website. The PO Box, however, is paid for in cash, so the owner is unknown.

Hawkes comes in with news that blood on the handle of the found framing hammer match McBride. The handle has epithelials, but they are female. They’re too degraded, though, to match definitively. Adam bursts in, and reports that the cardstock had compounds commonly used in organic floor stains. Feathering on the edge of the card where he found the substance indicate directionality, and that it was dragged along the floor, after it was torn. Mac asserts that the other card fragment must still be in the house.

Using a heat gun, Mac dries the bottom of the flooring in the house. A piece of cardstock peaks out from between the floorboards. The whole message on the card was, “I’ll tell her, if you don’t.”

Lindsay finds several instant message streams in deleted files from McBride’s computer. For the past two months, though, all of the messages are between McBride and a “Lola57″. He had emailed a photo to Lola57 the week before his death. It matches the photo on the postcard. She stopped all communication after that. He tried to contact her, but she didn’t respond.

Don goes to his sister’s apartment. She’s been drinking and doesn’t want to talk. He apologizes, then pulls out his phone, and plays the Peter Gabriel song Red Rain over the intercom. She’s moved.

Hawkes shows Mac a video walk-through of the house, that Annie McBride made the morning of Kevin’s death. Lindsay comes in with the identity of Lola57.

Mac shows up at the apparent home of the confessions website. Ella McBride. Mac tells her that he knows that she tricked her father. She confesses that she was Lola57, but it wasn’t a trap. A couple months earlier, she met someone wonderful online. Mac realizes that she didn’t know about her father’s activity, until she received his photo. She sent the postcard to get him to stop, but swears that she didn’t kill him.

Stella tells Mac that mitochondrial DNA from the hammer matches Ella. Since mitochondrial DNA is an almost perfect match between a mother and her children, it could be either of them. Annie told them that she was in Montauk, making the walk-through video. Ella claims she was gluing up Secrets You cards in her loft.

Stella watches Annie’s video. She calls in Annie McBride. A shadow of someone outside the house, indicate that it was 2 in the afternoon, not 10 in the morning. So, she changed the timecode to set up her alibi. Annie tells her that she found the postcard, and realized that he was cheating online.

Outside the interrogation room, Ella asks Mac if her mom knows about Lola57. He tells her none of it was her fault. She says that the man she met online was so understanding, and made her feel important. He was nothing like her father.

Don follows Samantha. She goes to an alcoholics’ support group, where he hears her confessing that her last drink was only 20 minutes ago. He meets Jessica outside, and tells her that he didn’t need a ride. He says his family is stubborn, but they’re going to be okay.

Back in the lab, Stella opens a package, and is startled by the contents. She shows Danny the dead rat inside. She says that, concerning his question the other day about wanting to break some rules, “I do now.”

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: NY – Episode 5.06: Enough
Air Date: November 05, 2008

In montage, we see three people; a man with a bong and a huge stash in his apartment, a man snorting drugs directly on a woman he has in the back of his sports car, and a well-dressed man snorting in a club restroom before returning to the dance floor to pass a drug capsule to a woman, while kissing her. As if timed together, they all are gunned down. The man in his apartment answers his door. The others are shot suddenly, where they are.

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

Danny and Angell work the club scene. She IDs the victim as Michael Jones, who ran drugs in a nearby neighborhood. Lindsey and Stella work the car shooting. Mac, Hawkes, and Don are in the apartment.

Don points out the handgun lying next to the victim in the apartment, that was still warm when he arrived. He also notes the gameboard money that the victim had been counting.

When Sheldon points out a joint rolled in the play bills, Mac notes that the bills are very thin, and intentionally created as rolling paper. The apartment belongs to Michael Jones, but the victim is known to the neighbors as “Scooby”…(as in “Scooby-dooby-doo”).

Danny is pouring a handful of pills into an envelope, when Angell comes over. Some girls across the room told her that the victim was the go-to guy for Ecstasy. They said that a man in a blue hoodie came from another table and shot the victim, then dropped the gun onto the floor.

They find semen on the boxers of the man from the car. He appears to have been dumped onto the street after being shot from outside the window glass.

Adam tells Mac that he’s been given one month’s notice. Mac looks at the paper and assures him that it’s just a random layoff to cut expenses. He vows to keep Adam on staff.

Sid tells Mac that each of the victims showed signs of quite a load of drugs in each of the victims. He tells Mac that time of death is diffuclt to assess. Sid points out recent stun gun burns on the victims’ necks. Michael Jones, Luther Stanton, Duckens LaBranch. Mac recognizes each of them.

Mac shows up in a courtroom and tells the judge that their three defendants are all dead. The DA tells Mac that the defendants all tried to plea bargain with info on a dealer who’d murdered two people. The city didn’t make the deal with them, so she doesn’t have the name of the dealer who might have found out about their plan to give him up. Since lawyer-client privilege doesn’t apply to the deceased, Mac wants to ask their lawyers. She recommends Jake Donovan, Michael Jones’ lawyer.

Danny delivers boxes of broken glass and handguns that need to be dusted for prints.

Donovan resists, but eventually tells Mac that it’s Petrix Derosier.

Danny finds that the guns in the apartment and the club were used to kill Manny Sky, a year before. Hawkes tells Danny that he found drugs laced into the play money. Oxycodone, crystal meth, and albuterol mixed with marijuana.

Danny and Don find Derosier on a playground. They tell him that the three victims were selling some of his product for themselves. He expresses some anger at that idea. They ask how he got their guns. He walks off.

Angell questions Vivian, the prostitute who was with Duckens Labranch. She’s driving his car, but claims he gave it to her. Stalla finds the handgun in the car. Vivian insists that she didn’t kill Labranch, some guy in a hoodie did. She didn’t see the guy’s face. She said all Labranch had in his pocket was play money, which she says she threw away.

On the phone, Mac argues about Adam with Chief Sinclair. Stella walks in on his ranting to the chief. Mac tells her about Adam, and six other lab techs. Sinclair had told him no one would have to go if he could find $200,000 to shave from elsewhere in the budget. He asks Stella if they could wait on some lab equipment. She’s not happy about that idea. Mac says he would take Adam over all the equipment.

Lindsay tells Mac that the gun from the car was also used in the Manny Sky murder. There were no prints on the gun, but a lot of limonene on the grip and barrel. Limonene, from citrus fruits, is used in various products.

Stella finds that the mark on Labranch’s neck matches that of a gun that fires a wireless charge with four barbs. The one they have is too large to carry around, but Stella found, online, that there is a smaller stun gun versions. In the list of customers, she found Maggie Hall, a witness who was to testify in the trial of all three victims. Mac tells Stella that he promised her she wouldn’t have to testify.

Mac visits Maggie Hall. Her face is covered with deep cuts. She says that it happened right after she was subpoenaed to testify. She was attacked, but she had a new stun gun. With it, she was able to get away before they cut her anymore. Kevin, Maggie’s brother, is angry that Mac promised she wouldn’t have to testify. She says her brothers weren’t as forgiving as she is.

Mac confronts the DA about subpoenaing Maggie Hall. She said that evidence was suppressed. Budget cuts may have led to issues with the evidence.

Mac and Stella talk to the FBI about Petrix. According to their surveillance, Petrix and his crew were all too busy to have executed the murders. Lindsay comes in, though, and tells them that Maggie’s brother, Kevin, works at a produce warehouse. This would explain the limonene on the various handguns.

Danny, Don, and Mac speculate on the brothers’ involvement. Sheldon found that they were not working that night.

Adam finds a match on one of the glasses from the club. They bring in the victims’ lawyers. The limonene came from a pesticide that was sprayed recently. After what their clients had done to Maggie, the lawyers conspired to use their clients’ guns to kill them.

After Adam leaves for the night, Danny walks into Mac’s office, and asks to be on the schedule, since his Costa Rica trip didn’t go through. Then, Lindsay, Hawkes, and Stella walk in, all to give up paid vacation to keep Adam. Stella made arrangements, through a union contact, to make it possible to transfer that paid vacation back in to make it possible to keep Adam around.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: NY Episode 5.05: Cost of Living
Air Date: October 29, 2008

A young man, who looks like he robbed the Indiana Jones wardrobe room, wrestles a railcar from its position to unearth some treasure buried beneath it. As guards enter the tunnel or building, he takes to the ceiling and clings to a steam pipe. After a daring escape, he appears to be telling the story to some interested friends in a club. After an exchange of remarks, “Indy” exits.

The team is overlooking his dead body in the alley. He has a gunshot wound surrounded by GSR, indicating a shot at close range. Don IDs the victim as James Sutton, an archaeologist. His friend, Laura Roman, had heard the shot, found Sutton, and called the police.

Blue liquid is spattered . On Sutton, Mac and Stella find his credit cards, jewelry, and $500 cash on the body, seemingly ruling out a robbery. Mac finds the leather he had wrapped around his find at the dig. Non-bleeding marks on his neck seem to imply a necklace pulled off post-mortem.

Laura Roman tells Don that all the women in the club wanted Sutton, and all the men wanted to be Sutton. She couldn’t imagine anyone wanting him dead, but Don replies that those are the two top motives for murder.
(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Sid and Hawkes pull out small, blue, plastic shards from around the entrance wound. The bullet is not very deep into the body.

At the scene, Danny finds an oven mitt with fishing hooks caught on it. In the lab, he discovers the traces of Sutton’s blood, as well as blood and hairs from multiple rats, on the oven mitt. Hearing this, Stella gets an idea, and takes Danny with her to talk to Wolford Bessie, the “Rat Fisherman”.

Bessie is luring a rat with a piece of pizza hooked onto a fishing line. When the rat gets close, Bessie scoops it up with his oven mitt. He denies seeing anything. Stella, though, notices Bessie’s pocket watch, as she remembers Mac remark on Sutton’s leather wrapping that seemed to be missing its contents.

He gives it to Stella, and tells them about hearing a shot in an alley, and taking the watch from Sutton’s body. When they ask about the necklace, he produces a shiny, silver-colored necklace. Bessie tells them that the wrapping was untied, when he found the watch on the ground. He said there were two men there, the first was over the body, the second came down the alley right after the first man ran off. The second man scared Bessie off.

Mac finds Adam sailing paper airplances down the hall. Adam shows Mac and Stella how he analyzed a blood-soaked map that Stella had found. Making a copy, he had found that he could produce a different map by folding the copy into a paper airplanes.

Stella is attacked by a Greek-speaking mugger. She tells Mac and Don that the man had asked what they got off Sutton’s body.

Hawkes deduces that the shallow bullet wound must be from a homemade weapon. He’s also found that the blue liquid on Sutton was mineral oil and blue dye.

Sid tells Mac that the bullet wound from the crime scene hadn’t killed him. A bullet wound from a couple years ago killed Sutton. Scarring makes it look like an amateur dug around the wound to remove the slug. Don hadn’t found any records of criminal activity, though. Sid points out that the cause of death was a ruptured abdominal aorta. The old, improperly treated, gunshot wound had caused weakening of arterial wall, and the trauma of the new gunshot wound had caused the rupture.

The team answers a call. The Rat Fisherman is dead, and shows signs of torture. It seems that Bessie must have been dead before the time Stella was mugged. Stella notes that they must have two separate killers, the one who murdered Sutton, and the second man who came down the alley way. The second man must have killed Bessie.

Adam shows Mac that a shard that Lindsay had found in the soil at the scene, matches a Roosevelt family plate. The soil analysis from the treasure wrap indicates residue carbon steel and lead-based, pullman green paint. Mac puts the pieces together, and asks to see the map again. He leads the Don and Danny to a rail tunnel…track 61…beneath the Waldorf. He tells them that FDR often stayed at the Waldorf, and took the Presidential train right into the hotel here. They find Sutton’s dig site. Suddenly, someone runs past the men. Don catches her…Laura Roman.

Mac and Don question Laura. She tells them that she loved him, and wouldn’t have killed him. Don tells her it’s suspicious that she originally told police that she and Sutton were merely friends and colleagues, when they were, in fact, lovers. She explains that they were competitive. She tells them that she was in the tunnel trying to finish Sutton’s work.

He was looking for the remains of a judge who disappeared a long time ago, Joseph Crader. Lindsay, watching the interrogation, notes that the pocket watch yielded a serial number that led her back to an owner…Judge Joseph Crader. Crader had been appointed to the NY Supreme Court by then-governor Franklin Roosevelt. He had disappeared in 1930, and his body was never found. Lindsay said the watch wasn’t particularly valuable, so the real prize must have been whatever else was wrapped up with it.

Stella and Danny inspect the necklace, and find a rare, ancient Greek coin with the head of Phillip II on the face.

Sid tells Mac that Sutton had surgery in 1999 to remove a ruptured spleen. The body, however, still has its spleen. So, this man wasn’t the real James Sutton.

Adam shows Mac a video he found of the real James Sutton. In the video, he tells a little personal history, then offers his life at auction. Don and Mac find Sutton working in a lighthouse museum. He identifies the dead man as Mitch Henson, who paid $500,000 for Sutton’s identity. Sutton says he was just looking for “a fresh start”. He says he hadn’t spoken with Henson, since they had a non-communication clause in their contract.

Mac notes that Henson was shot a year or two after he bought Sutton’s identity.

Laura begs Don to know more about Henson. She is upset that she’d spent three years with him, and didn’t know who he really was. Don is surprised to hear that she must have known him when he was shot, the first time. She admits that it was she who shot Sutton, but it was an accident. She tells Don that she was hired to excavate in Cyprus. She arrived to find Sutton was already there. Angry, she pulled a gun on Henson. He jumped her, causing the gun to fire, accidentally. Don doesn’t tell Laura that her bullet is the one that killed Henson.

Hawkes has examined the blue plastic from Sutton’s body, and has built a homemade gun out of a pen and a handful of household items. This must be the sort of weapon fired behind the club.

Mac and Don question Sutton. Sutton says he confronted Henson, who was getting famous…and more rich…using Sutton’s original life. Sutton wanted his life back. He’d killed Henson, believing he’d get away with it.

Stella visits the Greek Embassy to get identities of known smugglers. Stella meets Sebastian, an antiquities expert. Stella recognizes Sebastian as the man who attacked her. She excuses herself, and leaves the embassy. This is definitely the beginning of a multi-episode story arc….

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: NY – Episode 5.04: Sex, Lies & Silicone
Air Date: September 24, 2008

As street performers go about their business, a woman comes out of the shadows, bleeding from her eyes. She makes her way to a man on stilts and collapses.

The team arrives. Don tells Mac it was a renegade street party, one of several that have occurred as a result of the city’s putting restrictions on public gatherings. The woman is in a suit, but has no ID. With multiple lacerations to her face and skull, she appears to have died from blunt force trauma.

Danny finds plastic shards lie scattered near the body. Stella and Mac note bloody tissue on her bracelet, and no defensive wounds. Canvassers find her wallet and Blackberry. Her name is Ann Steele. Membership cards in her expensive wallet, and a business card that indicates she’s a “professional consultant”…no specific type of consultant…indicate she has significant cash flow and a ritzy clientele. They ponder why she has no cash or credit cards. Theft? Then, why did they leave the Blackberry and expensive wallet?
(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Her Blackberry shows nothing in her calendar for the evening of her death. Her last call, though, was to Police Chief Sinclair, about two hours before her death.

Sid walks into the exam room to find an intruder, who quickly gets away. The security guard said the man flashed a badge, but he didn’t get to inspect it closely enough to see what it was.

Adam gets a partial shoe print, but the intruder seemed to know how to avoid being seen too closely by the cameras. Mac and Don discuss the city’s having recently replaced police guards with cheaper civilian security guards. As Mac gets testy about it, Chief Sinclair walks up and cheekily claims responsibility for that decision. Mac shows his indignation over such budget cuts that could jeopardize people’s safety, as well as the safety of evidence. Sinclair responds that it’s the way things are. With the huge deficit, budgets must be cut, yet CSI seems to manage with each belt-tightening.

When Sinclair asks Mac about the lab intruder, Mac asks him about his connection to Ann Steele. His question implies that he suspects him. Sinclair said she needed a parking ticket taken care of. He claims not to know her well, and only from seeing her at functions. He tells Mac that her consulting job entails “making things go away.” Mac doesn’t trust him.

Stella finds that the bloody tissue from the Steele’s bracelet is synthetic polymer, not human tissue. Lindsay finds that a hair in her nylons isn’t hers.

Don and Stella confront a man cutting hair on the street. He used Ann Steele’s credit card to buy an amplifier. He claims he found the credit card on the street, right after he saw the woman die. He says he left right after that happened. He claims his alibi is the “steet walking ballerina”. They were on the train together, before the party.

Adam and Danny look at the city’s surveillance video. It shows the street, as well as a woman standing in a window down the street, looking right at the crime scene.

Danny and Don head to the apartment where the woman was standing. Trevor Jones, who lives there, claims it was a woman he met at a bar…the Bluetail…and who left around 12:30 AM.

Sheldon runs into a college buddy at a newsstand, Greg Pullman. Pullman asks him about the Ann Steele case. He says Steele works for one of his lawfirm’s clients. He says she’s very powerful, and has her “fingers in a lot of pies.” Pullman invites Sheldon for drinks that evening.

Mac is receiving calls from everyone Ann Steele ever worked with. He tells Don they want to know what they’ve found. Don tells him no one at the Bluetail had ever seen the woman in the window, nor knew who Trevor Jones was.

Lindsay says the hair on Ann Steele’s stockings belonged to Jan Fowler, a young woman listed, in Connecticut, as missing for the past two years. Isotopic breakdown in the hair match Boston. Lindsay contacted Boston Police, who sent her the record indicating that Fowler died of a drug overdose a year before.

Adam tells Stella that the partial print from the intrusion in the lab was a size 10 Nike Air. Adam adds that the synthetic polymer from the victim’s bracelet is synthetic silicone skin. He tells her he’ll figure out why it was in the bracelet.

Sheldon pieces virtually together the plastic shards that Danny spotted at the scene. It’s a cover to a flash drive, but not the actual drive. He and Danny suppose that the drive is what the intruder was looking for.

Danny and Don go to Ann Steele’s home. They hear rustling inside, and enter with their weapons drawn. They find Anthony Martino, a private investigator. Martino tells Don that he left the police force for more money. Danny notices his shoes, Nike Air. When they ask what he’s been looking for, in Steele’s apartment, and in the Medical Examiner’s office, and who he’s working for, he claims it’s someone who’ll make sure he doesn’t do time for either charge of breaking and entering.

Mac confronts Sinclair. He believes he’s behind the break-ins, because he’s a client of Steele’s, and his sexual harassment case from the year before went away suddenly. Sinclair is defensive. He tells Mac that, if the flash drive falls into the wrong hands, it would cause a lot of “fallout”.

Adam discovers that a mortician in Boston was selling human hair to a New York company that makes high-end designer dolls. Stella, Lindsay, and Don visit the doll maker to get a list of clients who bought the dolls. They visit the man who bought “Tiffany”. He says he traded her for a new doll from guy he met in an online “doll devotees” site. Don and Lindsay take the doll to search for DNA. [Does the one in the floral dress not look a little like Khandi Alexander? Yikes!?]

Lindsay finds a print on the doll’s removable tongue. Adam interrupts, and is tongue-tied [pardon the pun...] by the doll’s, um, life-likeness The print matches Trevor Jones.

Don and Danny visit Jones, and find the doll and the hook that was likely her holder in the window. The police take “Tiffany” and Jones downtown for questioning and to match the hair to that from Ann Steele.

At the bar, Pullman tells Sheldon that his father had used Steele’s services. He also tells Sheldon that his father was behind the money that paid Sheldon’s tuition. He asks Sheldon to hide anything that he finds among Steele’s files that might have to do with his father. Sheldon declines.

The hair matches Jones’ doll. Jones claims that he hooked up with her, but she walked out after seeing “Tiffany”.

Sheldon gets home, where three men attack him. Before they run off, though, he manages to grab a hank of hair from one of the men’s heads.

As Sheldon is testing the hair from his attacker, Danny whos up with news that they don’t have anything to tie Trevor Jones to the murder. Sheldon, though, finds the guts of Steele’s flash drive inside Tiffany. The drive has info on it from the Attorney General’s office, where Jones works. Jones claims that she said it was lipstick. Jones finishes by comparing himself to the real monsters, the people of authority whose deeds were recorded on the flash drive.

Sheldon confronts Pullman. The man who attacked him told police that Pullman hired them to attack Sheldon. He hands Pullman a check to give to his father; a check for the tuition that he paid. Sheldon then tells him about the records from the flash drive that implicate Pullman’s father to extortion and bribes to gain construction contracts. When Pullman offers him cash, Sheldon tells him to give his father the check before he gets hauled off to jail.

Sinclair asks Mac to see the flash drive. Mac tells him it’s in a safe place, off-site, where it won’t be at risk from the lowered security in the lab. He also tells Sinclair that he knows, from files on the flash drive, that Sinclair paid Steele $25,000 to keep the woman quiet who had accused him of sexual harrassment. Sinclair tells Mac that he is innocent. With these cases, though, it’s just being accused that ruins you.

In a large evidence storage warehouse, a policeman stores a box. He puts it on a shelf, then removes the bag containing the flash drive, and puts it on top of the box. A hand reaches around, from the other side, and takes the drive.

Writers have used this “evidence that will shake the foundations of the government or large company exists but only on one disk or tape and everyone wants it” formula before. Ann Steele really kept her whole world on that one flash drive, and never backed it up? Shame on her.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: NY – Episode 5.03: Turbulence
Air Date: October 08, 2008

This is another detail-heavy episode. If you’re into the details, it certainly helps if you recorded the episode, just in case…

On a commercial airliner running into mild turbulence, Mac tries to calm the man sitting next to him. The young man, Ed Riley, is on his way to file for a patent, and shows Mac his invention: The Wig Lock, that holds his toupée down. Mac finds a flight attendant’s brisk movement to the back of the plane curious, and follows her to the galley.
(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

In the galley area, Mac flashes his badge, and the flight attendants show him the passenger lying dead and bloody in one of the lavatories. The man, who has lost a lot of blood from his severed carotid artery, has an Air Marshall badge. His weapon is missing from its holster. None of the attendants saw anyone come or go from the back lavatories, or saw or heard anything that might have caused the man’s death.

Mac tells the crew to ask the captain to lock the cockpit and turn back to New York. He tells them to tell the passengers that there is a sick passenger. Mac takes photos with his phone. None of the passengers seems overly suspicious. Mac tells Ed what’s going on, and asks him to help him watch for anything suspicious.

Mac searches the body, using gloves from the plane’s first aid kit, but finds no identification on the man. A flight attendant tells Mac that Air Marshalls don’t usually have seat assignments, but believes that he was sitting in 6C, but definitely Row 6.

Mac tells her to have the captain contact the Air Marshall Service with the badge number. He checks out the sixth row, finds nothing unusual. Then he noticies that 11D is missing its passenger, James Turner. Another flight attendant says he seemed agitated, and recognizes him sitting in Row 12. Mac walks by Turner, and notices blood on his cuff.

The first attendant comes back and reports that the badge belongs to Roger Stockwell, a late forties marshall, scheduled to go to Los Angeles that day. The victim, though, is much younger looking. Mac wants to send his fingerprints back to the lab. The attendant and Ed bring him the airsick bags, lipstick, and captains satellite phone that he needs to take the prints, photograph and send them.

Stella receives a call from Mac. He gives her the details, and asks if she’s heard of any hijackings. She hasn’t. Mac tells Stella to have Lindsay check the prints, and to look up James Turner. He tells her to send everyone to JFK to meet them, when the plane lands.

The victim is Anton Greenway, a man convicted of drug dealing and smuggling, who escaped from a courtroom the day before. He once worked at JFK, for Atlantic Vista Airways. She says the real Air Marshall, Roger Stockwell, was staying at an airport hotel, but failed to check in for his assignment that morning.

Don and Danny find Stockwell shot dead in his hotel room. There’s no sign of forced entry, but Stockwell is very bruised up with defensive wounds. They find duct tape and a handgun…a Desert Eagle 50…in the room. Danny finds white fibers in the bullet wound.

By the bed there are more, and under the bed, Danny finds a plush panda with a bullet hole and powder burns. This explains why no one in the hotel heard a gunshot. They find variegated hairs on the panda, but they’re not human. They suppose that the panda was also a delivery ruse that got the intruder into the room.

The plane lands at JFK, where the team, and a slew of authorities are waiting. Mac tells the passengers that a murder happened on board, and to cooperate with the police. He picks Turner out, and has him escorted first.

Stella tells Mac that Homeland Security and the FAA believe this is an isolated incident. They’ll allow NYPD to investigate, but want to be kept in the loop. Stella says she was unable to get a warrant to search all the passengers’ belongings. She says that Homeland Security will talk to the passengers, while NYPD looks for evidence.

Hawkes goes to inspect the body, and Mac dispatches Adam to search for the murder weapon and the air marshall’s gun. Stella receives a call on James Turner. He paid cash for a one-way ticket, had no luggage, hadn’t booked a hotel, and doesn’t live in Washington.

Turner acts surprised that he’s a suspect. He tells Mac that he has a second family in Washington, and that his other wife doesn’t know. Mac challenges him about the blood on his shirt, and sends him off to be searched.

Placement of blood in the crime scene tells Hawkes and Stella that the victim had his back to the wall when he was cut forcefully, spinning him around quickly. Blood in the sink basin makes them think the killer tried to clean up there, and could have left a trail back to the cabin. The search for latent blood reveals little, but the trail ends in the other lavatory.

Adam found the marshall’s gun in the trash across from the lavatory. He didn’t find the murder weapon, though. Mac leaves him to search the waste tanks.

As Stella and Hawkes ponder out loud why someone would kill an air marshall, but not hijack the plane, Hawkes finds a life vest holding $250,000 Canadian cash, blood, and the air marshall’s missing ID. They believe the murderer took the gun and the ID to distract the investigators from the actual crime, a botched robbery on-board the plane.

Sid tells Lindsay that Stockwell died from the bullet shot from the Desert Eagle found at the crime scene. Anton Greenway’s fist matches the bruising on Stockwell’s jaw. Greenway’s injury is torn, indicating a rough edged instrument. Sid also found condom lubricant and spermicide on his hand. He either had sex right before boarding, or while in flight. He also has “IKELIMM” written in indelible ink on his hand.

Don tells Mac that the airline won’t let the crew give samples until they each talk to a lawyer. Mac has eliminated Ed, the captain, and the co-pilot from the possible suspects. None of them left their seats before the murder.

Don says Homeland Security is going to talk to all the female passengers again, but he doesn’t understand why the Mile High Club entry would warrant killing the man. Mac makes the required “invertebrate kills her mate” reference, but Don thinks it’s Turner. Mac, though, says the blood on his shirt turned out to be his own.

Stella tells Lindsay that prints on the duct tape belong to Greenway. She supposes that his plan was merely to restrain Stockwell and steal his credentials. He must have used the gun, only because Stockwell fought back.

Lindsay hasn’t found any matches for the letters in the language databases to indicate what it might mean. It’s not a word or a phone number. Closer inspection revealed, though, that the Is are actually 1s. Lindsay realizes that they’re probably encoded geo coordinates.

Without further explanation, they determine that determine that it points to an abandoned airfield in Montreal. So, Greenway was planning on hijacking the plane to flee to Canada, explaining the money. He needed the air marshall badge to get the gun past security, but needed to hijack the plane to avoid Canadian customs.

Hawkes has found that Greenway’s jacket was custom fit with hidden pockets that were perfect for holding the money. The murderer must have found the money or knew he had it, and hid it to avoid its being found when the plane was forced to land. The jacket also shows traces of cocaine, and non-human hairs matching those on the panda in the hotel room…leopard hairs.

Danny says the Desert Eagle is missing its serial numbers, and had no latent prints. The magazine, however, was forgotten in the cleaning. Prints on the magazine match Terrence Davis, a downtown club manager (played by Hip-hop artist, Nelly). He was in the “import/export” business, before the DEA made him quit. Prior to his arrest, he worked for Atlantic Vista Airlines, at the same time as Greenway. But he wasn’t on the plane.

Danny and Don head to Davis’ club. Davis has a leopard. They ask him about his “partner”, Greenway. Davis claims he hasn’t worked with Greenway for a long time. Davis says that Greenway came by the day before, wanting some letters he was holding for Greenway, while he was in prison. He also asked for the jacket. Davis opens his desk to give them the gun, but is surprised to find it missing. They arrest Davis for owning the gun.

Lindsay tries to find matches for distinctive marks on Greenway’s jaw so they can determine the murder weapon. They try every possible weapon found on the aircraft. Adam bursts in with a condom wrapper. The condom had no useful DNA, but the wrapper has lipstick on it. He had narrowed down the shade and the manufacturer.

Terrence Davis won’t talk to Don. Flack tells him that he can keep the charges local, and make a deal, if he has any information. (This is the set-up for the recurring role Nelly will play this season.)

As the passengers are being released, Mac takes to searching for any more clues on the aircraft. Stella calls. The lipstick didn’t match that of Nina, the flight attendant who lent her lipstick to Mac. Mac, though, tells her that they’ve already released all the suspects.

Hawkes found brass and nickel plating in the marks in the victim’s jaw. It doesn’t, however, match anything confiscated from the plane. Mac realizes, though, that flight attendants’ wings might match. When Hawkes forwards him the jaw images, Mac finds that the points on the wing do match the marks. He also notes that photos of the crew show that Susan is the only one not wearing her wings.

Susan has already hopped on a flight to Paris that leaves in three minutes. Don and Mac hurry to the gate, and onto the aircraft. Her wings revealed blood matching Anton Greenway. Mac tells her that they found out that she worked at Atlantic Vista, at the same time as Greenway. He also reveals bank photos of Susan converting the same amount of money found on the plane. She admits that she loved Anton. She said he was only supposed to restrain the marshall, not kill him. He held a gun to her, when she refused to help him hijack the plane.

Mac: At that point you had two choices: come forward, having prevented a hijacking, or go for the cash. You made the wrong choice, Susan. And now, you’re grounded.

Post from: CSI Fanatic

CSI: NY – Episode 5.02: Page Turner
Original Air Date: September 24, 2008

At the Maroon 5 concert in the park, a fight in the excited crowd becomes a small riot. The police use soft rounds to take down the fighters. Eliza Carpenter, a college student fleeing the action, collapses and dies, right in front of a city bus. She appears to have suffered a blow to the trachea, probably from a stray riot control soft round. The woman has a lot of face and body paint.

Listening to Mac and Stella assess what might have killed Carpenter, Don seems disturbed that the police may end up taking the blame. They were just doing their job.

Sid, examining the victim’s body, discovers signs of radiation poisoning, marks on her skin beneath the paint, and hair loss. Measuring high levels of radiation on the body, he shuts down the exam room. It isn’t airborne, though, likely transdermal…from the paint. Though Mac and Stella weren’t likely exposed enough to worry, Sid collapses. The CDC rushes in to contain the body and Sid.

Adam matches the writing…shriiimping…on the victim to the graffiti of Kenneth Bamford, aka KA-BLAM. Stella and Danny visit KA-BLAM. They find no signs of radiation, and ask him about his contact with the victim. He remembers her, but not that she complained of any discomfort or pain.
(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Mac and Lindsay visit Sid, who is still unconscious. They worry that he won’t last long, if they don’t figure out how to counteract the radiation.

Hawkes finds high levels of radiation in Eliza’s liver…600 Rem…but the level is twice as high on her skin. Lindsay comments that she was a “walking ghost”. She could have survived only about a week. She also notes that the radiation would have induced dementia. Toxocology reports indicate high traces of thallium 201. Thallium is highly toxic, but this is also radioactive. At finding this, Hawkes quickly alerts the hospital radiology team to treat Sid with a nasal intubation of Prussian Blue…aka radiogardase…the only treatment for radioactive thallium poisoning.

Stella and Danny search Carpenter’s clothing for signs of the source of the thallium. They find black mold on her shoes. Stella gets a call that another body has shown up, in a movie theater. Film director Dante Gunther was due to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Horror Film Festival, and died in the balcony of the theater. Dante had shown up late, and was acting strangely. His death in the balcony was far enough from the crowd in the theater, that the film continued, even after the team arrived. Apparently, no one made contact with him.

In Gunther’s hotel room, though radiation levels are not unusual, they find a mylar tag fragment in the cuff of a pair of pants, showing high levels of radiation.

Hawkes shows Stella an aged-looking, torn piece of paper. It looks like a todo list: CALL AGENT; GET FESTIVAL DATES/TIMES; 7TH & WEBSTER. The paper has a wet sheen to it.

Adam tells Don and Danny that 60-70% of thallium is used in the electronic and optical lens industry, the rest in nuclear medicine.

Stella finds thallium in the mylar fragment, and that it’s part of an anti-theft tag used mostly in printed material. The paper carbon dates to the 1930s, and appears to have been freeze dried, as in after repair from water damage. Danny says the mold turned out to be black toxic mold, found commonly in water damaged buildings.

Mac and Stella head to the antiquities branch of the public library to search for the thallium. The building suffered a flood in the lower stacks, due to faulty plumbing. In the lower level, in Special Collections, they find radiation in a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Knot of Eternity symbol on the cover matches the design on Carpenter’s forehead. Eliza must have researched the symbol before visiting KA-BLAM. They also find black mold on table legs in the room. The book is also the source of the mylar tag piece found in Gunther’s hotel room.

Doctors treat Sid with the Prussian Blue. Hawkes explains to Mac that it speeds the removal of thallium from the body. Meanwhile lawyer Paulson announces his intention to file a wrongful death suit against the city’s library. Paulson tells Mac that his wife worked in the main branch of the library…in Special Collections…and died with the same symptoms as Carpenter and Gunther. The family doctor said she had lupus, but seeing the news of radiation, led him to believe this was the actual cause. He shows Mac a painting he made of his wife, while the couple took an art class together. Paulson agrees to let Mac exhume his wife to investigate her death.

Stella is gleeful to find out that Sid is alert and responsive. Don tells Stella that none of the books can be removed from Special Collections. Carpenter and Gunther had both checked into Special Collections, within a week of each other. Only ten people have signed in, in the past six months. One of them, Timothy Pram, actually read the affected book. Pram also has a record including vandalism at chemical labs, and at Three Mile Island. He now resides at 7th and Webster, the intersection in Dante Gunther’s notes.

Stella and Don find Pram at the intersection, in a Buddhist temple. Changed, thanks to his newfound faith, he regrets his earlier protests, and claims to be innocent of any recent crimes. He denies knowing Carpenter. Gunther, however, had called him recently, asking about Buddhist views on preparations for death. He also told him to refer to the Book of the Dead.

Lindsay finds a small fleck of sea sponge in the Book of the Dead. The sponge has traces of chitin. Adam notes that it appears more consistent with an insect than with crustaceans or other sealife. Why would it be in a sea sponge?

Hawkes shows Mac the 3-D scan of Molly Paulson’s body. When exhumed, her body had pinned the radiation detectors. Enlarging the stomach image, they find lesions, indicating that Molly Paulson swallowed the thallium.

Danny and Stella deduce that, since Molly Paulson had died earlier, and from ingestion, she was the intended target. The other two victims were likely just collateral damage. Who, then, wanted Molly dead? Don shows up, and leads them to the office of Lawrence Wagner, Molly’s assistant at the library. Molly had written him three times for not showing up to work. Once she passed, he never showed up for work again. In Wagner’s office, the team finds a collection of smoke detectors, probably for their radioactive sources, as well as iodine tablets. The tablets would have protected the thyroid from absorbing too much radiation.

At Wagner’s home, they find him building a reactor. He exhibits a lot of agitation…almost paranoia…as he explains how he is searching for cheaper energy alternatives. He claims to have spent two years accumulating the supplies he needed to build a reactor. He says, though, that Molly had never been near his “work”. Among his radioactive materials, though, they don’t find thallium in his belongings.

Lindsay determines that the red chitin found in the sponge belongs to a beetle commonly used to make red paint pigments. KA-BLAM, though, uses an airbrush. Mac tells the team that there’s another artist involved.

Three years ago, Paulson represented a chemical plant in Chinatown. The plant had imported multiple radioactive agents, including thallium. Knowing his wife already had lupus, he feed her the thallium to collect the insurance money: $500,000. He also secretly painted the Book of the Dead to validate his claim that the library killed his wife. The additional victims would allow him to pursue a lawsuit, and claim much more money. Once discovered by Mac, Paulson confesses that, after working hard defending the chemical company, and looking after his sick wife, he just wanted to retire.

Mac, Hawkes, and Don visit a recoving Sid, bearing chips and water, to watch the Rangers game.

Post from: CSI Fanatic