Flies feed of a DB dumped in the park, as the scene flashes back to the murder Vic in the club; where she's picked up by a man. The scene rewinding and then fast forwarding with the song, New York, New York, playing was an interesting effect. Flack (Eddie Cahill) informs them the Vic was found by a hiker. Hawkes (Hill Harper) determines she's been dead at least 36 hours. Flack recalls the name of another Vic who was also stabbed, strangled and dumped in the park, Macy Martinez.. Mac recalls it was on the other side of the park. A nearby path could have provided easy access for the body dump. Mac: "sometimes evil finds finds you on the road you take to avoid it." Another one of Mac's evil comments, second one this season. Also alluding to himself, with the ex-con finding him and his ex-partner, who was evil personified too. Just like the killer.
Lindsay (Anna Belknap) had to be there. She takes a cast of the shoe print, which took forever. Hawkes and Mac process the DB, there's trace under her fingernail and Hawkes notices two deep puncture wounds. Mac adds Sid (Robert Joy) who wasn't in this episode, found the same marks on Macy also indicating manual strangulation with the left hand. Jo (Sela Ward) comments on Mac wearing the same suit, he hasn't been home in two days. He had a granola bar from the vending machine. Jo: "Don is driving you out." Mac asks if he's getting "Milk and cookies and singing a lullaby."
Flack: "Lullaby thing's a bit weird, but milk and cookies could happen." Hey no lullaby, no fair!
Jo notices the Vic's expensive lingerie, she was ready for a night out. Hawkes mentions in Macy's case, she left the club with an older man. Mac and Flack go to Mac's favourite diner. Flack: "So no more milk and cookies." Outside they bump into Mike Tannenbaum and Rex Ryan; and Flack makes several comments alluding to NFL players and their game. Inside, Flack wonders who arrived at the formula that every dog year is 7 human years and wonders 'how many years these cases take off our expiration date?' A man feigns being lost and Flack provides him directions to the Statue of Liberty; stealing Mac's wallet in the process. Flack determines they lose 2 human years every year as a cop.
Adam (AJ Buckley) works his Scottish accent on Lindsay (waste of time really) and she fobs him off by wanting him to analyze the shoe treads for her. He was improvising. Why does Adam want to act anyway? Ha. Mac says he should have seen his wallet being taken. Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) identifies the Vic as Patricia Kelly (Najarra Townsend). Her roommate filed a missing person's report on her. The trace under her fingernail is identified as tyrian purple, Jo worked on art heist cases at the FBI. Hawkes surmises fine art pieces would belong to a private collector and he's compiled a list of collectors. Adam identifies the circles on the shoe tread as belonging to 'the Jammer', he has his fingerprint on 500 shoes and he cross references the owners with the art collectors. Hitting on one match to Charles Martin (Josh Randall). His apartment looked a bit like Stella's (Melina Kanakaredes) one when she was attacked by her psycho boyfriend.
When they arrive at his apartment they find it's already been processed. Danny thinks Patricia was murdered here so the CS has already been processed. So what would they have done if Danny hadn't turned up to answer Jo's question of, "What the hell's going on here?" Flack finds Martin was at a business conference but the police were unable to arrest him. Jo says whoever processed had to have a basic knowledge of CSI techniques. Danny: "Basic knowledge, kind of like the Feds."
Jo: "I heard that Messer."
Flack checked and neither the Feds or the NYPD were here. Jo finds the source of the tyrian purple, using the 'poor man's process', where the paint turns blue when it's exposed to water . Patricia touched the painting on the wall. Danny notices the lock was picked. Jo hopes Martin returns here, which he will won't he, cos he doesn't know he's been fingered! The man who stole Mac's wallet returns it, under the guise of finding it on the street. Mac insists he didn't lose it. Raymond Harris (Clifton Collins Jnr) was released from prison a week ago. Mac isn't sure who he is or what he wants and meets with his former partner. Whose entire name isn't mentioned until the end, where Mac introduces him to Flack as 'Wild' Bill Hunt
(Peter Fonda). Mac tells him they locked up Harris, but he appears to be stalking Mac. Years ago Mac saw him at Rikers, where he believed he was somehow 'wronged. Flash to Mac in uniform. Bill doesn't want Mac questioning his integrity; but Mac respects him, "we just had a different way of doing things." Somehow he doesn't strike as the type who needs to be careful or needs to be warned about danger.
Lindsay finds blood evidence from Macy connected to Martin's apartment. Lindsay had to be the one to mention Stella here again, as in the season opener, as this was her last case at the lab. No wonder it was unsolved! Gravitational blood drops on the bed frame matched Macy, who was also killed there. As well as finding evidence of another woman, as a blonde hair was recovered from the sofa. Danny finds the CSI rang the doorbell and left his print, identifying him as Mark Fields, (Gene Blevins) a former cop, turned PI.
Yet more tiresome questions from Lindsay, where Jo says it's not a question of 'what', but of 'who'. Danny shows Fields a photo of a blonde woman, Christina Moreno, who left her husband, Benny ( His only lead was Martin and he was looking for evidence of Christina, but didn't find anything. Well he missed the hair. What was the point of having Lindsay there to question the husband,other than pulling faces. Sure Flack would have managed on his own. He tells Benny all they can do is hope she's safe. Whereas Lindsay said to Jo earlier on Christina's probably dead, and Jo replied, let's hope not, just as Flack did here. Lindsay is so cynical, yet another one of her faults.
Flack informs Jo Martin was chased to the roof of his building and Jo is sure he won't jump. Did anyone really care he was threatening to jump, not really cos the coward wouldn't have gone through with it. Jo's not there to make him come down but to ask about Christina, since they know where Macy and Patricia are. She tells him he's "too fond" of himself to jump. When the camera showed the bird's eye view of Jo's head, she looked like a stuntwoman. Jo tells him she can give him 12 ways to kill himself when he's in jail if he changes his mind. Her hands shake, which she puts down to drinking too much tea and an adrenalin rush. He admits Christina called him and stayed here a week, then left. Christina being his friend, well there's no accounting for taste. Martin arrogantly and remorseless, posits their last moments were filled with pleasure. He has an impulse to kill. Flack's impulse: to 'smash his face in and throw him out the window'.
Jo believes he didn't kill Christina. Bill gives Mac his file on Harris; then proceeds to beat him up in an alley and warns him off. He's actually going to eat that bread from the ground, yuk. He tells him "What's done is done." The apartment across the road from the alley looked like the one Danny and Hawkes went to in the episode Jamalot. (Which is a studio set of course.) Mac tells Jo that Christina doesn't fit Martin's Vic profile. Hawkes traces the last call made from Christina's phone to a hotel, where they find a bloody CS. Danny says a man didn't request a maid. Obviously the husband, Benny killed her as there were no other suspects, then it's always the spouse. Also as Fields said, Benny kept her on a 'tight leash'. It was apparent her suitcase was missing, so they're looking for a missing DB. Lindsay with yet more pointless questions, this time she asks who'd kill her. Duh.
Mac says they can pretend they have her DB. Which is what Flack tells Benny, so why did he butcher her? He shows him the CS photos and one of the leopard skin suitcase. Flack also asks him the significance of why they found Christina there. Benny only wanted love and respect in return. He dumped her where he met her and yes Lindsay also had to be there! Like it was necessary. Flack tells Mac he owes him for the suitcase and if Fields hadn't broken into Martin's apartment, they wouldn't have solved Christina's murder. Cue Harris breaking into an apartment to retrieve his old weapons. Bill lets Mac know he doesn't expect Harris to bother them. Flack "...expect a body to turn up." (Well maybe in the next episode.) Mac is adamant he should have left things alone as Harris won't be easily frightened. Hey last time I looked, that wasn't Flack's desk where he sat at episodes end. Ha.
This episode didn't seem to be too focused on the main story, but more of a mish-mash, piecing together the pieces of the various puzzles. With Martin being revealed as the killer very early on. How did we know Mac's partner would be his polar opposite, engaging in everything Mac strongly disapproves of and doesn't stand for.
Great to see Jo actually getting Mac to listen to her when she sends him away for food and sleep, in that she hasn't been here long but he listens to her. He should've taken his own advice when he said similar to Hawkes last episode, who appears to be back on the straight and narrow now. Jo calling Flack 'Don', felt so comfortable to her, and the number of times she said his name, as we know, usually everyone just calls him Flack. Flack was in a kind of crazy mood, what with counting the number of dog years and cop years too. Great to see Eddie portray comedy and seriousness all in the same episode and he does it so well. Later losing his cool with Martin when he says he's thinking about throwing him out the window. Providing Mac with milk and cookies, yeah that can be arranged, cos then he can have some too and he didn't refuse breakfast with Mac either. We haven't seen Flack eat in a long time for someone who loves food.
Didn't like Lindsay popping up everywhere again, surprised she didn't turn up to force Martin from the roof. Her endless puerile questions being asked again and stopping Adam from his explanation about his accent, was uncalled for, she's not Mac. If she didn't want to know why bother asking to begin with when she was too busy attempting to score more points off him when asking him for help.
Getting back to Mac, he really seems weary in this episode, but not just because he hasn't had any sleep. His years on the job appear to be catching up to him - so no wonder he probably had thoughts about leaving the force and the crime lab. Almost as if the writers were projecting their opinions about the show and where it may be headed, onto Mac. You can tell there's something going on when the killer's unmasked straightaway and you don't have to put together clues or evidence to guess the suspect, as that's what happened in this episode. It felt as though the writers had given up already before the season was even over and couldn't be bothered to keep up the momentum to keep viewers interested. What with Stella being mentioned it practically made it seem like the final series. Slipping standards when they feel Lindsay has to be written into every scene, practically.
Macy Martinez's case was one of the last ones Stella worked on before leaving for New Orleans.
Also not mentioned since season 1's Officer Blue episode, was Mac and Flack being able to lie to Benny about finding Christina's body to elicit a confession from him. Then Aiden (Vanessa Ferlito) told the suspect, : "You know what one of the greatest rules of an investigator is - we can lie to the suspects legally." Used to brilliant effect here in getting Benny to admit, not only he killed his wife, but her whereabouts too. Very tactful on Flack's part and clever (he's not just a pretty face!) The DB being carried out in the leopard print suitcase reminded me of Rear Window, (1954) where the killer, Lars Thorwold cut his DB wife into little pieces to dump her. Hey how could they be sure they got the correct leopard print?
Flack and Mac meet Mike Tannenbaum, the NY Jets coach and Rex Ryan, the General Manager outside the diner, in a scene filmed in downtown LA. Flack giving some pointers about NFL and comments on the players, whereas with Danny it was baseball in the episode The Untouchable.
Mac's reference to evil was in the season 7.11 episode To What End, where he said "...the sacrifices they have to make...the necessary price of evil."
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