CSI New York - Episode 218 Live or Let Die

[Jojo]

In the upcoming CSI: New York episode, entitled "Live Or Let Die," a stolen liver has the team racing against the clock in order to solve a murder and possibly save a life.

"Live Or Let Die" takes us into a busy hospital, where an orderly is hurriedly wheeling a patient through the halls. There is something particular about the orderly and the patient, however, evident when they find themselves alone in the elevator and strip their hospital attires to reveal civilian clothes, decorated fancifully with guns and revolvers. The two men get to the roof of the hospital, where a medi-vac helicopter is landing to deliver a newly donated organ. A young organ courier steps out only to come face to face with the two assailants, who shoot him dead and steal the igloo cooler he'd been carrying, along with the fresh liver that was inside.

Mac, Danny, Hawkes, and Detective Flack are on the case. Because of this unusual crime, the CSIs have reason to believe the liver was stolen to be sold in the Chinese market, possibly an inside job. An ID on the courier's scrubs identifies him as Ryan Elliott. Though Elliott exclusively worked at a donor's hospital, Mac and the team focus their investigation on the hospital from which the liver was stolen.

Mac talks to Dr. Beaumont, the transplant surgeon who was in charge of the operation that was to take place before the liver was stolen. Mac wants to know why Beaumont didn't pick up the liver himself, but Beaumont explains he wanted to stay with the patient, who'd already gone through an operation and was in relatively unstable condition. Beaumont also claims he got a phone call a little before the surgery telling him there'd been a mistake, and the patient wasn't compatible with the liver after all. Mac is suspicious, shouldn't the patient/organ compatibility test be performed before the surgery is scheduled? Beaumont just assumed the organ transplant committee had passed the liver along to the next person on the transplant list, he never imagined the liver had been stolen. Mac thinks Beaumont's cluelessness regarding the crime might be a strong clue...

... but the case takes the investigators in a new direction when they discover Ryan Elliott isn't really Ryan Elliott, but one Sean Hovac. The detectives hunt down the real Ryan, who claims he and Sean merely swapped places just the night before to deliver the liver. Flack wonders why Ryan would do such a thing, and Ryan explains a friend of his had Knicks tickets and he couldn't let that opportunity go. Flack thinks Ryan and Sean's little swap is a little suspicious and accuses Ryan of being in on the liver heist, but Ryan has a better explanation: Sean was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is there something more to Ryan's story? While the CSIs try to figure that out they race against the clock to find the stolen liver before it becomes unviable.

Elsewhere, Stella and Lindsay are called to investigate the death of Lillian Stanwick, a 22-year-old whose body shows signs of sexual assault. In her purse, the CSIs find a business card belonging to one Chas Cooper. Stella and Lindsay talk to Chas, but Chas claims he never heard of or met Lillian. Thinking the man has something to hide, Stella and Lindsay decide to play good cop/bad cop with Chas. Lindsay shows him his business card and explains they found his fingerprint on it, but Chas maintains Lillian could've gotten his card from someone else. Stella, aka the bad cop, has done her homework and brings up the fact that Lillian called Chas multiple times the previous week. Chas wavers under the intensity of Stella's demeanor and demands a lawyer. Chas leaves, but the CSIs aren't through with him yet.

Things get complicated on the case when the girls discover Lillian's little secret. Apparently, Lillian was a fan of placing anonymous phone calls to random men to claim their cats were in her garden. When the men said they didn't own a cat, Lillian would shift the conversation and end up talking to them about a myriad of topics. It never took long for the phone calls to become sexual, and as the girls continue the investigation they find an impressive number of men who'd fallen for Lillian's charms through these phone conversations. So, when the morgue discovers multiple donors on Lillian's body during her autopsy, it's time for Stella and Lindsay to round up all of Lillian's phone pals for a little chat.

[Jojo]

Update -

Two men disguised as a doctor and a patient head to the roof of a hospital, where they hijack a helicopter carrying a liver needed for a transplant. When Danny and Flack find the helicopter the next morning, it's been abandoned on a nearby roof, the pilot injured but alive and tied up inside. Mac and Dr. Hawkes discover the body of the intern, Ryan Elliot, who signed for the liver, by the hospital, on a lift truck by a billboard. The liver is missing. Danny processes the helicopter and takes the tape used to tie the pilot up. He also finds glass in the alley from the getaway car. Dr. Hammerback shows Hawkes that the bullet that killed Ryan was a through and through. The bullet, a jacketed round, is still missing. At the police station, Stella and Lindsay meet Charles Cooper, who they've brought in for questioning in the death of Lillian Stanwick, a twenty-two-year old hostess at the restaurant Majorica. Lillian's last call was to Charles, but he claims not to know her. The CSIs don't believe him--Lillian had his business card, and both of their prints were on it. Charles storms out, sticking to his story.

Dr. Keith Beaumont tells Mac he was waiting for the liver to transplant it into his patient, Ed Rice. He doesn't know Ryan, but assumes he was a courier. He also tells Mac that the list of people who would have known about the liver was a long one. On the roof where the helicopter was found, Mac, Flack and Danny follow a blood trail off the roof. They look down into a grate below--the bullet could have fallen into it. Luckily there's a homeless man across the street fishing for money with a homemade contraption, and Mac talks him into loaning them his fishing device. They recover the bullet and take it back to the lab, where Hawkes has surprising news: the prints of the dead intern match a pediatrics intern named Sean Hovac, not Ryan Elliot. Flack and Hawkes bring the real Ryan Elliot in for questioning, suspecting he may be involved with the conspiracy. He insists his absence was pure coincidence--his roommate called at the last minute with Knicks tickets and he talked Sean into signing for and delivering the liver.

Hammerback tells Lindsay that though there's evidence Lillian had sex before she was killed, he has found no defensive wounds. Lillian was killed by a blow to the head, which caused an arterial subdural hemorrhage in her brain. There were no prints on the bike found underneath her body--perhaps she was pushed into it? Stella pays a visit to Lillian's apartment, where she overhears an angry neighbor complaining about a painter who didn't show up to finish his work. In the apartment, Stella discovers an array of business cards from various men. In the lab, Danny works on a latex fleck pulled from the duct tape and the glass from the getaway car, while Mac maps out the case on the glass wall of his office. Mac thinks there must have been someone on the inside helping the thieves. Hawkes tells him the bullet matched a gun used in the robbery of a dry cleaner recently. Flack pays the suspect, a young woman named Angie Watson, a visit in jail. After some encouragement, she describes to him where she abandoned the gun, but won't name her partners, whom Flack suspects she left the gun for.

Lindsay tells Stella there were two different sperm deposits found in Lillian's body. Stella shows Lindsay the business cards from the men and cross-references them with Lillian's phone records. They zero in on three potential suspects: Charles Cooper, Will Graham and Dwayne Gessner. The two CSIs question the three men individually and discover from the men that Lillian called them for anonymous phone sex. They all deny meeting her or knowing her real name, but a leaf imprint on Charles' coat that matches a leaf found on Lillian's body confirms that he did in fact meet her in the tunnel where she was found. He admits to insisting on meeting her, but claims she picked the place and that they had consensual sex. She insisted he keep his eyes closed, so he only got brief glimpses of her. Lindsay stops by the restaurant where Lillian worked and notices a fishbowl filled with business cards for a free dinner prize--clearly the source of the cards Lillian had. Impatient for the DNA results on the two sperm samples, Lindsay queries Danny about anonymous sex phone calls. When she tells him about the case, he tells her that he thinks their killer might not be one of Lillian's contacts--rape is about power, and Lillian was in control because she initiated the phone calls.

Danny gets a hit on the glass from the headlight of the getaway car--it's from a Mercedes. Mac and Flack team up to search for the car and the place where Angie deposited the gun. They are surprised when they find themselves at the house of Dr. Beaumont, and see him with his ailing wife, who is being put into an ambulance. He tries to run, but Flack and Mac catch up with him. Mac cuffs Beaumont as the doctor insists that the hijackers are holding the liver hostage. Danny gets a lead on one of the hijackers when he gets a print off the latex--it belongs to one Mark Andes. Hawkes is able to locate the Mercedes, and Flack hunts it down, finding the liver in the trunk. Andes spots Flack with the car and tries to take off, but Danny steps out and stops him. Beaumont confesses to Mac--his wife, also a doctor, was gravely ill and in need of the liver, but she wasn't as high on the transplant list as Ed Rice, an alcoholic. When Beaumont found a gun in his trash can, he came up with the plan to steal the liver, but the plan went awry when the hijackers tried to take him for more money. Mac, remembering how suddenly Claire was taken from him, isn't sympathetic, and reminds the doctor that at least he had time with his wife.

After Mac closes the case, Stella has some disturbing news--the second sperm trace from Lillian belongs to D.J. Pratt, the rapist who attacked Regina Bowen twice. Pratt worked as a painter at Lillian's building and must have followed her when she went to meet Charles; he raped her and killed her after Charles left. But there's not enough evidence to bring him in. Mac is determined to not let Pratt get away again--he made a promise to former CSI Aiden Burn that he'd get Pratt, and he intends to keep his word