CSI New York - Season 3 Spoilers
Episode 301 - People with Money
Mac Taylor's romantic tryst with ME Peyton Driscoll is cut short when they're both called to the same murder scene. Sam McFarland lies dead on the Brooklyn Bridge, a Statue of Liberty key chain buried in his chest and ligature marks around his neck. Across the water, windows in the building Sam worked in light up to spell out 'Marry Me.' The CSIs learn Sam was seeing a woman named Erica Lancaster, but when they visit the bereaved woman and her father, Denny, they learn Sam was suppose to pick Erica up from the airport but never showed up. The ring Sam had doesn't fit Erica's finger, suggesting he was planning to propose to someone else. Stella examines the keys attached to the key ring Sam was killed with, while Lindsay focuses on dynamite found on his tie.
Across town, Danny and Dr. Hawkes greet Detective Jennifer Angell, who shows them the badly beaten body of socialite Vanessa May, who lies dead in her underwear, bruises covering her body and pillows on her hands. Vanessa's friend, Margo, found her and tried to revive her. Danny discovers ten grand in the pocket of Vanessa's jacket. Sid Hammerback confirms blunt force trauma was the COD, and points out a tongue print on her body from a tequila body shot as well as the imprint from a designer LSD tab on Vanessa's tongue. Danny and Angell track down the dealer, Picasso, who admits to seeing her at Prowl but claims her bodyguard beat him up when he tried to approach her. Blood on Vanessa's coat matches a man named Clarence Rome, but he denies killing Vanessa. He wanted to work for her, and challenged her bodyguard to a fight for employment, which he lost.
The Statue of Liberty key chain proves to be a dead end when the owner of the keys turns up in the morgue, an apparent suicide. Traces of prenatal vitamins on lipstick marks found on Sam's face further puzzle the CSIs. Lindsay suspects Erica is the culprit--a patch on her arm to treat a spider bite could contain trace amounts of dynamite--but Mac and Stella remind her about the importance of gathering evidence, not forming hunches, and send her back to the drawing board. An earring on the bridge leads the CSIs to a young woman named Cassidy who was having bungee sex with her boyfriend at the time of Sam's death, but while the couple saw his dead body, they deny any involvement or seeing anyone else around.
A lollipop stick in one of their shoes directs the CSIs to the Lollipop strip club, where they find Dori, a stripper pregnant with Sam's child. She admits to being involved with Sam, but she turned down his marriage proposal because three months prior he'd tried to give her a check for forty grand to stay out of his life. Lindsay has cleared Erica by discovering the location of the dynamite on Sam's tie indicates she was tying his tie for him, not strangling him. The CSIs turn to surveillance camera photos, where they discover a light was on briefly in Sam's office. When they investigate, Stella discovers the shredded remains of a check. Lindsay pieces it together--it's the check addressed made out to Dori, but it's signed by Denny Lancaster, Erica's father. He tried to bully Sam into marrying his daughter, but when Sam rebelled, Denny tried to strangle him and then stabbed him.
Danny and Angell track down Asad, Vanessa's bodyguard, whose tongue print matches the one on her belly. He admits to doing a body shot off her and fighting with Clarence, but not to being in her apartment. The CSIs realize he's lying when they learn Prowl doesn't serve tequila shots. Danny, Angell, and Hawkes interrogate Margo, Clarence and Asad separately, piecing together what happened. The three of them returned with Vanessa to her apartment and continued to drink. Margo, envious of Vanessa, challenged her to a fight of sorts, and the girls began to fight with pillows on their hands. But the gloves came off literally when Margo, angry at Vanessa's superiority complex, pulled the pillows from her hands and began to punch Vanessa in earnest. She claims she never intended to kill Vanessa, but that no one would have believed it was an accident. Danny tells her he would have, but because she tried to cover it up, no one will now. The cases closed, Mac worries about his relationship with Peyton interfering with their jobs. She assures him it won't and he pulls her into a kiss.
Epsiode 302 - Not What It Looks Like
When three women dressed as Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's rob a jewelry store, they leave the assistant manager dead in their wake. Stella quickly determines the death was an accident--the security gate hit the trigger of one of the fallen guns, causing it to fire at the hapless man, but Lindsay notes it's still murder since it happened during the robbery. The CSIs discover that the women escaped out an old air vent that no one employed in the store knew about. Inside it, Lindsay discovers the discarded disguises and rifles. Danny puzzles over the lack of stress marks on the shattered glass from the jewelry cases, and brings in his dog to prove a theory he has. He thinks the women used a sign wave generator to shatter the glass, and he proves his theory when his dog reacts to the wave generator and a piece of glass he's testing shatters, leaving no stress marks. When a young woman is caught trying to get a necklace appraised, the CSIs think they have a real lead, until it turns out she was at the scene and simply picked up a necklace that dropped by her when the robbers were collecting their bounty.
Mac and Detective Angell arrive at the site of a building demolition, where the mummified body of a woman suspected to be Pauline Rayburn, the wife of Councilman Matthew Rayburn, has been found. Peyton Driscoll and Sid Hammerback confirm her identity, and assess that she's been dead for three to four weeks. A cadre of reporters and an eager young ADA named Jeremy Bloomfield are eager for Mac to confirm she's been murdered, but Mac refuses to jump to conclusions. When Peyton declares the young woman died of a heart attack, he urges her to go back and reassess the COD, and she counters that he needs to bring her evidence that will give her an idea of where to start. Mac and Adam return to the apartment to take a computer image of it. Mac finds a dead beetle stuck to the wall. Prints in the apartment lead them to Sal Bavado, who admits he was hired by Rayburn to dump the body, but he denies killing her. ADA Bloomfield is eager to arrest Rayburn, but Mac urges him to hold off until they have conclusive evidence of something more than a body dump.
Adam and Mac try to puzzle out conflicting evidence: the body is mummified, indicating low humidity, but the presence of the beetle indicates the humidity was high. The body was placed right in front of the air conditioning, suggesting someone was hoping to mask the smell from it. Mac realizes the power must have gone off at some point, allowing the beetles to enter, and then come back on. The fluctuation in temperature could have thrown Peyton's autopsy findings off. He shares his findings with her, and she reexamines Pauline, this time finding evidence of fatal blows to the jaw and neck, as well as the distinct imprint of a Claddagh ring identical to the one Rayburn wears. The evidence is finally conclusive, and Rayburn is arrested.
Blue ink on the gloves from the jewelry store robbers proves to be Prussian blue print ink, and the CSIs realize the robbers used the blue prints to the original building to plan their heist. Sure enough, an engineering student named Natalie Letterman checked out the prints from the library not long before the robbery. The CSIs head to her apartment where they are shocked to find Natalie lying on the bed, a bullet in her chest. She was shot at close range, execution-style. Hammerback, disturbed by the girl's resemblance to his daughter, shows Stella red granules he found in the girl's eye. The granules prove to be powder from blood diamonds, unique to the Congo river area. When the CSIs view surveillance footage from the store, they spot an African man who appears to be attempting to sell diamonds to the store manager. The CSIs turn to airport surveillance and records and discover a man named Mosi Gheti flew into JFK from the Democratic Republic of the Congo two days prior to the robbery.
Realizing the remaining three women are in grave danger, the CSIs track his rental car and rush to his location where they notice a frightened, frantic woman rushing to the building. Stella stops her, recognizing her from a picture in Natalie's room. She's one of the robbers, Beth Larson, and she tearfully tells them unless she takes the jewelry up to Mosi, he'll kill the third woman, Dana. The CSIs refuse to let her, and Lindsay quickly agrees to go undercover to make the drop and secure Dana. Armed with a light grenade in the jewelry bag, she cautiously enters the room where Mosi and his associate are holding Dana, but he quickly realizes she's not Beth. Lindsay drops the bag and the rest of the team rushes in, securing Mosi and freeing Dana. A concerned Danny locates Lindsay and they embrace.
