A man comes out of a building in Chinatown on fire in the rain. Mac (Gary Sinise) comments on his eyebrows and eyelashes being singed. There's bruising on his his cheek but his face hasn't got the same degree of burns as his chest. Stella (Melina Kanakaredes) comments on there being "something gooey here."
Mac: "gooey that's a good forensic word, gooey, I'll have to use that more." Mac notices the trace of melted plastic and finds a discarded mask. Inside the bank, the safety deposit vault was cut away from the wall. Flack: "Gotta wear a mask for a bank robbery, it's a rule." Two bank security guards fired shots and the acetylene tank caught fire. Martin Hummel (Matt Bushell) one of the guards thinks there were two, but he was trying to save his partner, Tony's life. One shot the other and Tony (Andre Ware) was DOA.
Stella follows a blood trail to the alley and the trail ends outside as it's washed away by the rain. Mac takes Hummel's gun and retrieves a bullet from the wall. Another mask is found inside. Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) "ballistics is gonna be fun on this one." They all seem to get lines with 'fun' in them this first season. Aiden (Vanessa Ferlito) got one in the third episode American Dreamers about being able to reconstruct the Vic's face; calling it "big fun." Six months ago the bank was a shoe store. The wall was cut and Flack says the robbers entered through the empty store after the alarm was switched off. Giving them 30 minutes to rob the place. They had to leave the way they came in. So Danny says the first robber knocked over the tank. Aiden wonders why they didn't just take items from the boxes in one area.
Stella had to have the answer on that one. Box numbers all ended in '8'. Which Mac explains is the lucky number in Chinese culture. They believed their money would be safe in boxes with the number 8. Danny asks why box numbers 12, 14, 45 were also opened. This question doesn't get answered, which left us wondering too, so why have him ask it to begin with. Hate when that happens, cos it leaves you hanging.
The leasing agent received a letter from the owner a week ago saying he didn't want the building rented out. Mac asks Flack: "You buying this story?"
Flack: "You know me, everyone's a suspect until you prove otherwise." Finally we begin to see the funny and witty side of Flack, which will become synonymous with him. At least he was given more lines than he has in the past. Mac finds an umbrella shell outside which was used on the hole in the door to open it.
Hawkes (Hill Harper) finds the Vic suffered secondary and tertiary burns over 52% of his body. Abnormal accumulation of fluid in his chest led to pulmonary edema. There's no smoke or soot in his throat and he was instantly suffocated. He was holding something in his hand. There's damage on his outer tissue of his hand so they'll have to work inside out for prints.
Stella examines the fragments found at the CS, including a Jade monkey; part of a charm and the clasp reveals a partial print. Aiden examines the bank tape and all the robbers were wearing the same mask, constructed from a real face. Which happens to be Aiden's specialty. Aiden uses a laser to outline the face print from the mask. The burn Vic was Carlton Heinz, the other is a John Doe.
Chinese characters signifying love, prosperity, were taken from the vault, but why? The contents in the boxes were worth over $10,000 so they knew what was in the boxes, suggesting an inside job. The print on the clasp leads to Joanne Cho (Samantha Quan) she keeps the bank keys and has an eleven month old daughter, Dolores and she recognizes the Jade monkey. Stella: "The first time I looked at them, it took me a while to figure out what they were." Cos she's implying she's not Chinese, but you don't have to be Chinese to work out what they were. Joanne doesn't know Carlton. Mac says the monkey is significant cos 2004 is the year of the monkey. A young, female, Chinese child had the charms for prosperity and good fortune. Dolores was kidnapped. The bank robbery turns into a kidnapping. Joanne shows them the note with missing letters, telling her they have Dolores and what she should do. The letter 'x' is missing from the word 'boxes.' She was threatened with Dolores' death if she called the police. Flack discovers the phone number is a public phonebox at Madison Square Gardens. The clothes and the note is analyzed. Danny test fires bullets from the guns.
They go over the sequence of events inside the vault. Hummel heard the shot, as Flack says, the first shot from the robber's gun hit Tony. Hummel wasn't there when it happened and he fired at someone in the smoke. Flack asks Danny: "You believe me?"
Danny: "yeah I do, but then there's the evidence." Clearly showing what Mac said to him on the previous episode and in 1.5 A Man A Mile rubbed off on him and he knows he needs to follow the evidence to find the answers.
Mac analyzes the note. Aiden accesses the parole database for the mask and the facial features match Luthor Willet (Alex Sol) he was involved in a bank robbery 4 years ago. She and Flack interview Willet, "wow cops around here just get prettier everyday."
Flack: "Watch it."
Willet: "Well, hey don't get upset. I just got out of prison, you both look good to him." Which isn't something Flack wants to hear. Though yeah, Flack does look good! He claims he can't help them since he had 15 different cellmates in prison.
Stella analyzes the clothes. Danny uses a laser to map out the trajectory of the bullets. Each of them talk to themselves here when they analyze the evidence and that disappeared soon enough in the show, which was a shame in some cases. Stella finds the presence of sodium polyacrylate, found in disposable nappies/diapers and artificial snow. Mac finds the letters used on the note are from 3 different magazines. The snowflakes could be from a play set in winter, called Winter Retreat. There's a hole on the door of the theatre and a DB inside. Small handprints can be seen in the blood. There's a hair on the DB. A paper test proves positive for the presence of cocaine. There's a missing letter 'X' on the inside of the magazine cover. The DB is identified as Moretti, he was in jail with Willet.
Hawkes discovers a gunshot wound to the neck, hit the carotid artery and he bled to death. There was shattered glass at the scene, lead paint. Hawkes doesn't know what to make of it. Mac: "usually you have all the answers Sheldon." His lungs contain mercury and traces of lead in his trachea. The same trace found in the clean-up crews at Ground Zero. Moretti was sick 3 years ago, over a period of time glass fibres settle in the lungs, this was more recent. The paper has a dragon symbol.
A ransom note is sent to Joanne, but no prints or DNA can be lifted. The handwriting is analyzed to reveal the same person wrote both notes. Mac: "some sort of gooey residue on the top of the paper."
Stella: "great choice of words." Well knew that was coming. Stella raises the imprint from the page above and needs a translator. Joanne wants to pay the ransom and the Police Department has to respect her wishes. Stella places the money at the newsstand at Central Park and waits with Flack.
A man approaches the stand and sirens blare, causing him to run. It's a Police Terrorist Response Drill. Stella: "Did you know about this?"
Flack: "They don't send out a memo." Duh Stella, yes they'd advertize it wouldn't they, then how would it be a drill if they're aware it's going to happen. The same principle of having fire drills at school and work, you don't know they're coming. The money is still there and a mask is left on the ground. The stand is dusted for prints. Stella seems to have an irritating side, what another one, ha, she doesn't answer her own questions.
There's a message on the notepad. Nina Chang (Kym Hoy) is a make-up artist who worked on the play at the theatre. The name 'Chang' is searched in a 10013 partial zip code. Mac comments on 'six degrees of separation'. The hairs on the body, being out of prison, needed a place to live, leading to this zip code. The debris in his body leads to the fallout zone in Lower Manhattan. The drug packet has a dragon logo. The address leads to Nina Chang. She made the masks and met Moretti (David Guzzone) at the theatre. She left him there to die. Mac asks her to write the Pledge of Allegiance to check her handwriting.
Danny finds the computer trajectory doesn't match the sequence of events of where the bullets were fired from. There were 5 shots at the CS, five casings were found. One hit and killed the security guard, 1 was found from the wall behind him, 1 recovered from the adjacent building; missing discharge from Tony's gun was found in Moretti, 1 found in the vault pillar. He recreated the scene and found that the bullet didn't hit the pillar. Hummel's story doesn't fit cos his bullet stopped in midair, turned left and then hit the pillar. Rain diluted the partial found at the newsstand, but it belongs to Hummel. Danny tells him he shouldn't have fired his weapon. He didn't shoot at anything, his casing was found out of the vault. Hummel says no one was meant to get hurt.
Hummel could have been a hero and returned the baby, no one would have known. Mac: "It's always something, something you didn't expect or count on. Something that always screws everything up...if only it hadn't rained." Alluding to the episode title. Nice line that cos it's true, something always goes wrong especially when people think they can get away with committing crime.
Also some foreshadowing here, with Danny analyzing the bullets and casing and determining what happened at the CS, cos it'll happen to him too later on in the season. Think someone was having a sneaky laugh here at his expense.
Mac mentioning Six Degrees of Separation, a play. Which means everyone in the world is connected by six people. Also mentioned by Gill Grissom (William Petersen) first in the CSI episode Let the Seller Beware: "to connect you to the Vic is one degree." Also CSI episode $35K O.B.O. where there was rain which affected the CS and the evidence collected. Funnily enough typed this out after the season 9 CSI:Miami episode FTF was aired. That had water from a fire hydrant contaminating the evidence. CSI:Miami season 2.12 Witness to Murder, rain clouds loom so no evidence can be processed until they reach the lab. In CSI episode Friends and Lovers, string is used to map out the blood spatter traces.
CSI:Miami season 2 episode Witness to Murder the bullet trajectory is traced. I love writing about deja vu and how other episodes of CSI shows and the same show itself uses similar storylines, plots and evidence in their own episodes. I just find it interesting. If you do too, or if you just want to read up on the three shows and how they began, as well as an in-depth look at CSI:NY season 1, then check out my book, New York Minutiae: An Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to CSI:NY.
Great thing about this episode was that the producers got to actually film a real terrorist alert drill when filming on location in New York, as well as getting caught in a thunderstorm. New scenes were filmed due to this drill and used in this episode.
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