A couple dump a hooded man in an alley, who turns out to be Mac (Gary Sinise). That didn't come as a shock but more of a surprise. Since if it had been someone else, they most probably wouldn't have been dumped alive. He was tasered in the neck and they threaten to shoot him next time. Should've recognized his striped shirt! He calls on the emergency phone and asks for Jo (Sela Ward) at the New York crime lab.
48 hours earlier. A DB of a woman in an alley is found, Flack (Eddie Cahill) says by uniforms. Jo thinks she died from an overdose. Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) finds traces of heroine and candy wrappers on the ground beside her. Lindsay (Anna Belknap) doesn't find any prints on the syringe, most likely wiped down. Mac knows her and IDs her as Tessa James (Kate Towne). Jo questions Mac, "...enough of this quiet man crap." Mac tells her Tessa would always find him; he met her almost a year ago, which he terms a "series of strange encounters." Jo thinks it may have been romantic, that was funny for a brief moment.
Tessa believed she was being followed and she can trust Mac, she saw him in the paper. She describes a woman with purple feathers and blood on her face. She saw bright lights and angels. Men carried the woman away. She is dead. Mac couldn't find Tessa, only that she was fired from her job. Jo thinks she could be suffering from extreme OCD. He didn't have any proof of her story, but he believed her, because of his gut. Jo comments about Mac telling the others to use their heads and not their hearts, but he corrects her, I said my gut." Which is not the same thing at all. Yes recall him telling Stella (Melina Kanakaredes) to use her head and not her heart, in one investigation all the way back to season 1 in the episode Creatures of the Night. Mac: "City's the city... use your head and not your heart."
Sid (Robert Joy) found heroin in Tessa's system, but no other drugs and no track marks, just one injection mark on her arm. Mac doesn't think she was an addict. All organs were healthy and the injection site was on her left arm, but she's left-handed so someone else injected her. Mac says her death was disguised, she was murdered. Lindsay wonders if it's a grease stain on Tessa's coat. Danny, "...hope it's that given where we found her." That wasn't a nice thing to say from either of them and excuse me, Lindsay, urine would stink! What, did she have a blocked nose. Danny finds a paint chip in the seam of her jeans. (Something or another is always found in, or on the jeans.)
Hawkes (Hill Harper) analyzes it to find layers of other paint underneath. There was lead in the first layer, the others were more recent and lead free. Mac guesses the building was painted before 1953-1983. Hawkes found the more recent paints were industrial. Cue Lindsay butting in, with sulphur dioxide being found in killer smog, between 1953-1966, the stains on her coat show she came into contact with this smog. Danny finds the price tag on the sweater was made in the 1970's. Mac recalls Tessa carried a 'Braggmans' paper bag. Leading to where she lived.
Flack, Jo and Mac check out the building, a sky bridge near to Braggmans. With lots of clippings on the wall, along with masks and photos. (I thought of Mardi Gras before Jo says it, cos of Tessa's reference to purple feathers.) Flack: "I don't think the elevator goes to the top floor, if you know what I mean." Why give him that line, it implies Tessa was crazy and she wasn't. Mac spots a green napkin with a logo, which Hawkes discovers is an 'L' and a 'T' for 'loyalty and trust,' belonging to the Vonner Club. Lindsay has to be given yet more lines, asking Mac if there was any hard evidence indicating Tessa witnessed a murder. Mac replies there's nothing to disprove she didn't. (She didn't actually witness a murder, she witnessed a body removal.) She wasn't delusional but Tessa was murdered for what she knew. Mac comes up with Tessa not being delusional now, but was silent when Flack had that line to say earlier on.
Jo comments you need to be a billionaire boy and know the funny handshake to get in. Mac asks her why she's got a problem with gentlemen's clubs, being a Southern girl. It's not the clubs she has the problem with, but with gentlemen "who may have committed murder." Mac recalls Tessa saying it was cold and asks what time of year is on the clippings. February 17; which Jo connects to Mardi Gras. They need to know how the club celebrated. Mac asks the manager of the club, Keith de Young (Matt Corboy) for a guest list and they need to look around. The club does have a room with bright lights and angels. Mac uses ALS to search for blood. Flack observes there being plenty of sex taking place, so the VIP room means something else. Mac replies sex isn't a crime, oh but it can be. He finds blood spatter on the wall, suggesting a GS wound.
A woman falls in front of Mac on the road, so we're back to what happened 48 hours later and he notices a black SUV in the mirror. He is tasered when he gets out. (Roadside abductions seem to be the norm for CSIs, as Calleigh (Emily Procter) and Ryan (Jonathan Togo) also got abducted in a similar fashion in CSI:Miami.) He's put into the back and he describes what he felt and heard to Flack and Jo. He felt the seats, he didn't see the woman, he got fibres under his fingernails from the car and he felt metal under his shoulder. In a reversal, it's Mac who now becomes the Vic and has to be processed by Jo for evidence and there's plenty of that. Jo thinks there could have been trace transfer onto his shoulder and takes a sample, revealing a licence plate. Jo: "...all the little details that criminals never pay attention to...I love this job." Which manages a smile from Flack.
Danny sends the photos from the wall to Adam (AJ Buckley) to compare with the guest list from the club, but none of them match. Mac surmises they had a smaller party of their own. Well they did, in the VIP room. He recalls Tessa telling him about three men with a girl: a "crying man with white hair; muscle guy with a tiger." Jo notices the Stratford candy wrapper on the wall, similar to the candy wrappers found at the CS. Tessa brought them there. The inside of the wrapper reads, 'Comisky'. Which Danny alludes to Charles Comisky and the Chicago 'Black Sox' incident, referring to the Chicago White Sox team. Lindsay has to get the comment about Danny being obsessed with baseball, which we already know from past episodes and also because Carmine is a huge baseball fan. It was going to be his intended profession. Tessa mentioned George Weaver, the third baseman for the team. They threw the World Series in 1919. Danny refers to them as the bad guys.
Whittaker owned the team, like Matthew Stratford (Don Fischer) owns the confectionery company. He's the "white-haired man" Tessa described. Lindsay recalls all the articles on the wall are about death, except for one about Derek Perry (Jon Fleming) who is Weaver. Perry was suspended from baseball for a year after taking cocaine. Gleason saw Tessa. Danny tells them Billy Gleason was the manager of the Sox, so he's the manager of the club. This is how Tessa put together all the bad guys. The manager of the club wanted the fact he gave Mac the list kept quiet. They exchanged cards.
Flack says they found the luxury car service with the number plate. Mac recognizes the man's voice and he attempts to hide between the cars. Was he really getting out of there, apparently not. He almost shoots Flack and he just happen to knew that Flack would look under the cars at the particular moment! Peter (Steve Richard Harris) doesn't talk, he'll be killed. His accomplice, the woman, is also arrested. Flack comments, they "work together, play together, kidnap cops together." Lindsay throws her weight around, now they've got her conducting an interrogation with Jo, oh dear. The manager denies seeing Tessa, but he's bad with faces. So how come he described Tessa to them so they could find and kill her! Tessa delivered papers to the club. He feels sick. Jo tells him to go ahead, she's used to it as she's got two children of her own and was covered in it for most of he life. Lindsay has to agree.
Sid finds the Jane Doe Mac asked him to look for, a strangulation on February 16. In the flashback, Mac says February 17. Her DNA matches the blood found at the club. She had cocaine in her system and blood in her nasal cavity. She OD-ed and was strangled. She had a tattoo on her arm, which is the symbol Tessa drew. Hawkes examines the buttons from Jane Doe's coat and Adam finds a foreign print on one of the buttons, matching to the manager, of course. That wasn't a surprise. He had to know what was going on there. He didn't kill Jane Doe, but he let them know about Tessa.
Mac says his compassion gave him away. They matched his print from the card he gave Mac. He let Tessa in and she saw them carry her out. Perry and Stratford left him to clean up the mess. The manager saw Tessa and he took his gloves off to button Jane Doe's coat as it was so cold outside, when he dumped her. Flack's look on his face when arresting Stratford, turning his nose up at that club and rightly so. It was left to Danny to arrest Perry, so not one of his baseball heroes! Also the cocaine connection should have been made to Perry earlier on. Sid tells Mac she'll be buried in a pine box as she didn't have any friends or family to make a formal ID. Mac sees the clipping on her wall with his name and 'trust' written on it. Mac says he's her friend and identifies her as Tessa James. In contrast to the first Jane Doe, who will be buried as such.
An episode also showing Mac's compassion for Tessa too and especially when she became a Vic herself, of the very people she was attempting to get arrested for Jane Doe's murder in an ironic twist of fate. One episode where the rich didn't get away with murder and the moral being, you can't kidnap and threaten Mac and get away with it. Speaking of Jo inferring Mac and Tessa may have been romantically involved, what happened to the doctor (Madchen Amick) Mac was seeing. Ahh, Jo she's such a romantic when it comes to other peoples' love life, what about her own!
Mac is from Chicago, but it was left to Danny to draw the necessary inferences to the Chicago White Sox. Danny and Lindsay working together again. Not a highlight!
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