In the first story, people with plastic bags over their heads beg for their lives, before being shot. One survives. The police arrive to find two DBs in the basement. Terrel (Greg Davis Jnr) is found upstairs. There's another DB behind the counter. Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) asks Flack (Eddie Cahill) to get the paramedics to preserve the duct tape, used to tie them. To bag their hands and to use gloves. Flack relays what happened as the uniforms had to break in, the door was locked. There were two DBs on the floor next to the counter. The back door to the alley was open. The alarms weren't on and the place closed at 11pm. Danny: "sounds like an inside job." Mac (Gary Sinise) "then that's where we'll start...you're in charge. Your three years in promotion to Second Grade doesn't come easy."
There's a dumpster upstairs and down. Danny: "This would be the deep end we've been thrown in." Danny and Aiden (Vanessa Ferlito) process the CS together, double checking each other and move out from the centre. Surprised there was any or much evidence left after the number of people who would have trampled through there. Still it was a bloody scene. Flacks IDs a woman as Gina Robeson, the waitress. Jared Perkins was the cook. Danny finds a .32 calibre Magnum was used, there were no extractor marks, so the shooter used a revolver. Firing 5 shots. Aiden comments he needed to be calm. Octavia was with the night deposit and was planning a trip.
The plastic bags used were identical on every Vic so the shooter didn't being any. Aiden asks why he bothered bagging the heads. Danny: "I'd stick to the how." (Like Nick (George Eads) and Cat (Marg Helgenberger) in CSI.) He didn't bring any duct tape with him and so he knew about the bags, bringing only what he needed. Aiden believes it could be a robbery since wallets and jewellery were taken from the DBs, then asks why they were killed this time. She's persistent with her 'whys' Danny: "it was worth it to someone."
In the second story, a leg is found in an alley. Mac comments the lower leg is 15% of the body's weight. Stella adds "all we have to do is find the other 85%." Yeah that was funny.
Danny examines the Vic in the kitchen who suffered a single, medium shot to the back, no powder burns, contact head wound, muzzle stamp and burns to the temple. Misting spatter on the oven shows he was shot there. There's blood on the phone so Terrel called for help. Aiden says this makes him a hero. He carried Octavia upstairs and called for help. Danny calls the shooter cool enough to reload but he left the casing behind carelessly. Danny again calls it an 'inside job' and asks how they all got shot.
Hawkes (Hill Harper) conducts a medical exam on the leg which shows signs of stabbing and cuts. There's scar tissue in the wound, a femur injury caused by a power drill. The bone was cut with a high speed saw, a surgical amputation. He doesn't think there was anything wrong with the leg. There's a rod in the tibia from which he collects a serial number. Which comes back as a match to Frank Herzberg (Laurence N Kolder). Doctor Willems (Patrick Bauchau) tells them Frank was cleaning his gun and it went off, a lesser surgeon would have amputated it and he saw him several months ago.
Danny looks at a model of the cafe layout, with the DBs laid out according to the evidence of the shooter. Someone let him in. Aiden goes over the sequence of events: Octavia was downstairs. Lipstick with Gina's DNA is found upstairs. Patel had cleaning fluid. Jared and Terrel were eating upstairs. Hawkes found traces of sucrose in Jared's teeth, he was a known user of drugs. Danny finds blue fibres on the edge of the tape. Aiden finds a print on the tape. The blue fibres could be from a carpet, from anywhere. The tape has Terrel's print.
Mac and Stella go to Frank's apartment and find him dead on the bed with a missing leg. Mac says that's the other 85%. So not funny either. The EMT (Michael B Silver) talks to the police at the scene. Mac notices signs of putrefaction, showing he was dead 24 hours. Gangrene speeds up decomposition. He knew he was dying. Mac: "Everything's odd about this place, including time." That was a clue. A blood stain on the floor is revealed by luminol. The leg was amputated here. Frank was married and there's a file of people with missing limbs in photos. Stella finds a finger in the fridge. Stella: "This place gives a whole new meaning to the term chop shop." Trust her to come up with a line like that.
Octavia is dead. She had children and a brother. Terrel didn't see anything and claims his prints were on the tape cos the shooter made him tape the others first and them himself. Danny needs to prove the killer was allowed to enter. There are prints on the key, belonging to Najiv Patel, the print was smeared, trying to open the door. Danny does a complete 180 turn and works from the outside in, that was a clue to this case. They talk to themselves here and they didn't do much of that later on, when processing a CS and putting the evidence together.
Hawkes finds there was nothing wrong with the finger either. A handsaw was used to finish off the amputation, but why? 'Why' seems to be the question for this episode. The finger is a match to Joe Garford. (Paul Perri) Stella: "Only takes one print to finger someone." Oh here we go again. Frank was oppressed by his leg and wanted it removed. He didn't feel complete until it was removed. They were "wannabes," wanted to be amputees. Some have surgery for this. Frank's wife, Deidre (Kristen Shaw) shows them a photo from their honeymoon, only in Frank's one there's no leg. Frank was planning on doing this. Joe came up with new ideas to remove a leg. The condition is known as "Apotemnophilia" i.e. Body Integrity Identity Disorder: where part of a body is hated.
Danny believes they'll find something in the dumpster so he and Aiden go on trash duty once more. He finds syringes. "One's a fake, two's a pattern, three's a suspect." A bloody fingerprint from the syringe is identified to Jose, but the blood is Octavia's. Luis (Jacob Vargas) tells them the children are his and he was let in before they locked up. Jose says the back door was open. Terrel hasn't seen Jose before. Danny has to move forward by going back, follow the trace to see if they missed something. There's a palm print on the front door, so someone looked through it. It's match to Lemar Adams, ( De'angelo Wilson) he wears a blue wristband, but claims he saw nothing.
The wristband doesn't match the blue fibres, which are synthetic not cotton. Aiden says she has good news, the main component of the tape is aluminino silicate, with traces of zirconium. Danny knows zirconium oxide is heat resistant and is used mainly in car repairs. Two different duct tapes were used. The distributor of the tapes is cross referenced.
The Tox report on Frank shows he had post-operation prescriptions, only available in the hospital, pointing to the doctor. Stella discovers he has a history of removing limbs in Holland, but he won't risk his career, claiming drugs are stolen everyday.
The duct tape is narrowed down to 5 auto shops and muffler tape. One is owned by Luis. Danny looks at his car and finds a duct tape imprint from the roll in the boot/trunk on blue carpet. This tape was found on Octavia's neck. Flack searches his apartment, taking it as informed consent on Luis' part. But comes up empty. They look a the dumpster at the shop. Aiden: "You think we got enough experience going through other people's garbage?" Danny: "Notice how we always get put on trash detail." Yeah we did. Aiden: "when you make it to second Grade - it's be a thing of the past, my friend." Danny: "from your lips to God's ear."
Hawkes reconstructed the bone. The femur end was intact and he sawed some samples. The dark area could represent a burn mark. Stella saws the leg and there's a power shortage. The clock's stopped. She finds a print on the fuse box in the apartment. The paramedic did it. Mac's says there was an electricity failure. The EMT carried out the surgery and had to finish with a handsaw. He took his gloves off first and left the print. He needed the money and was a pre-med student. Mac asks him about the Hippocratic Oath.
Danny and Aiden examine the trash at Luis' garage and find a plastic bag, identical to the ones used on the Vics. The ends are compared from the roll, until one matches the bag. Octavia was going to leave with Luis' kids to escape her brother. Mac tells Danny he's on the promotional grid, but Danny hates how life is so ordinary and then one day it hits you. He's not really bothered about promotion in that instance and Mac should have realized that.
Great episode in showing so much of Danny's character and his dedication to the job. No wonder he was singled out for promotion. The last scene with him is so touching, showing he truly cares and how deeply this case has affected him. Outside Man, Luis was looking in and Danny had to go from outside in to investigate.
Though the two stories were heavy in terms of the violence factor: one where people were robbed of their lives and one where people weren't really aware of how lucky they were to be alive, robbing themselves of their limbs. Although it is a disease, can't help thinking it's all so senseless; as were the needless and senseless murders. How far is it to drive to Albany to see his kids. Plenty of forensics involved in this episode, especially with story 1, Danny keeps calm and doesn't vent his emotions until he's solved the case. Also it was more about the 'why?' rather than the 'how?' This was one of Carmine's fave episodes.
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