CSI: NY s07e18 Episode Script

Identity Crisis

The train will arrive shortly.
Please follow all warnings posted.
Reminder-- there is no smoking in the station or in the trains at any point.
violators will be prosecuted.
A train is approaching.
Please stand clear of the platform.
Now boarding 28th Street.
Please step back.
Doors closing.
Please clear the doors.
Next stop, Penn Station.
I'm getting off at the next stop.
You can have this seat.
Thank you.
Hey, old man.
What's in the box? What's in the cigar box? You're the one.
It's you.
You remember me? Hey, man, leave him alone.
That's right, back off.
Leave him alone.
You and I are getting off at the next stop.
Now arriving, Penn Station.
Now arriving, Penn Station.
Passengers, please exit.
My God! I think he's hurt.
I think he's hurt.
Call 911! Reminder-- there is no smoking in the station or in the train at any point.
Violators will be prosecuted.
- Where is she? - There.
- Ellie! - Mom! Are you okay? Please follow all warnings posted.
Hey, Mac, bet you a cup of coffee, this is the most interesting crime scene you'll go to all week.
You sound confident.
Obviously, you know something I don't.
- Do you want to tell him? - No, please.
All right.
If you had to guess, how old do you say our victim is? Late 70s, early 80s maybe? Hmm.
- Doc? - Mid-30s would be closer to the truth.
- What? - Yeah.
And he's a woman.
I like my coffee black, no sugar.
* Out here in the fields * * I fight for my meals * * I get my back into my living * * Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
* Reminder-- there is no smoking in the station or in the train No ID on our vic.
Shooter's been described as Caucasian male, 30s, roughly six foot, black hair, blue eyes.
Got a witness working with a sketch artist.
And we're checking with the Transit Bureau about surveillance from the platform.
From what I'm told, the confrontation started when the old man got on the train at 28th Street.
There any indication our suspect knew the old man was a woman? No.
No one seemed to have a clue.
When the train pulled in here, they both got off.
Everybody heard a single gunshot, but nobody got a look at the gun.
Stellate lacerations suggest it was close contact.
Which explains why no one saw a gun.
The shooter concealed it, pulled the victim close, and fired.
That makes sense but there's no a trace of GSR.
Witnesses heard gunfire.
The victim appears to have been shot, but we have evidence suggesting a gun is not the murder weapon.
The old man was sitting right there.
And I was standing right here.
And the guy with the gun came from over there.
He wanted to know what was in the cigar box.
Did it seem like they knew each other? I guess.
He asked the old man if he remembered him.
And he smelled bad, like beer and fish.
- The old man? - No, the other guy.
I remember because he lost his balance.
Put his hand on the window right there.
Hey, old man.
What's in the box? - Possible print.
- Yep.
How about a gun, Ellie? Did you see a gun? No, but I heard the sound.
Kind of like what you hear in the movies when the bad guys have a silencer.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Kind of like a Yeah, but only once.
Then there was a lot of blood.
The red line from Penn Station to Time Square-42nd Street I think we're good.
- Thanks, Ellie.
- We apologize for this inconvenience.
You did good, kiddo.
I have one more question.
Step into my office.
Here you go, miss.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, what were you doing on that train, Ellie? You were supposed to be at school.
I was going home.
I didn't feel good.
Okay, Ellie, you have never lied to me.
Don't start now.
Why do you think I'm lying? I don't want this.
I don't like it.
All right, if you'd been sick, I would have gotten a call from school.
Did you even go to school? Oh, Ellie, why were you there? Were you meeting someone? Do your friends Lacey or Ann have anything to do with this? No! Why don't you like my friends? Oh, stop it, Ellie.
That's not true, and you know it.
Don't change the subject.
Where were you going? I don't want you to be mad at me.
I'm trying really hard not to be mad at you.
Okay, Ellie, what you witnessed this morning was horrible, but I can't shake the idea that something worse could have happened on that train.
You could've gotten hurt.
Okay, we made a pact.
Honesty, no matter what.
I need you to tell me the truth, Ellie.
Why were you on that train? Come on, Ellie, you can tell me.
I was going to visit my mom.
My real mom.
Oh, Ellie.
Isolated cryogenics? Trauma to the inferior vena cava led to massive hemorrhaging.
The COD's exsanguination; She bled out.
Now, your assessment was correct.
Wound characteristics are consistent with close contact gunshot.
However, there's no GSR.
And get this, no bullet.
The wound's not a through and through.
Somebody dig it out? Wound track appears undisturbed.
Sid, how does somebody suffer a bullet wound without a bullet? A possible weapon with the same force? And just to complicate things, the tissue and organs surrounding the wound were frozen on impact.
- How is that possible? - I don't know.
The victim was thawing right here on the table.
Now, I've been doing this job too many years to mention, and in all that time, the weapon that caused that injury is one that I've never seen.
Our suspect's palm print off the glass of our train got me absolutely nothing in AFIS.
- That's just weird.
- What? Any thoughts on why our vic was wearing a mask? And this isn't some kind of costume party kinda thing.
The newspaper bundles recovered from the cigar box are the same shape and size as money.
All right, so our shooter wanted the cash, realizes it's fake, and I don't think so because the witnesses all said that he never even touched the box.
And nobody saw what was inside it.
But why kill her? She clearly wanted to look like someone else.
If she needed a disguise, why a mask of some old guy? An older person would seem more innocent and nonthreatening, which would make you believe that she was definitely up to something.
Maybe she was just an actress on her way to an audition? Oh, man.
Hey, come on.
That's not right.
- Don't do that.
Stop.
- What? He's just messing with the age-progression software.
I wouldn't look.
Is that me? That's not funny! - I didn't do it.
- Yeah, but you're laughing.
- Well - You're gonna be married to her.
Oh, my God.
We're growing old together.
- Boss, one o'clock.
- What is happening in here? We were-- Um, well, while these guys were, uh, goofing around, I recovered a rust-like substance from the vic's sweater, more than likely transfer from the murder weapon.
- Rust, huh? - Yeah.
I think you need a distinct chemical composition.
You'll be staring at a big fat dead end, chief.
- Crime scene evidence, Detective.
- Oh.
Uh, there was no hit in CODIS from the blood on the platform.
And Danny's print from the train-- dead end.
But I did manage to find a partial print on the adhesive tape on the cigar box.
And I'm thinking since our vic was wearing a mask, she was probably up to something, and she might have a record.
Right, which we won't find anytime soon because our vic is still a Jane Doe, and I ran Sid's ten card and we didn't get an ID.
So if that print you recovered is hers, it's not gonna get us a name.
I'm your wife, okay? You don't have to turn on me.
You started this.
- You don't need to do that to me.
- I'm just doing my job.
- You three done? - Sorry.
Okay, let's get an ID on our Jane Doe.
Hunting down a location where this mask was purchased might be a good place to start.
The quality of the material suggests it was custom-made, not something you find on a costume store shelf.
There may be transfer on these items that will get us to a murder weapon.
Danny, that palm print? Let's see if you we can run it for trace.
Maybe we can find something that'll tell us where our killer works, lives or hangs out.
This stuff was collected at the crime scene after we left.
It belongs to our Jane Doe.
Danny, get your phone out and let's record this.
- Yeah.
- Put it on speaker.
- Go ahead.
- Hello? Who's this? Who are you trying to reach, sir? My wife Renee.
Who the hell are you? That's Renee.
I don't understand.
What-- What happened? There was a struggle on the subway platform in Penn Station.
No-- No, that doesn't make sense.
My wife is supposed to be on a plane to Miami.
She's a flight attendant.
I dropped her off at JFK this morning.
We' just begun our investigation, Mr.
Garrity.
We have a lot of questions.
I don't get it.
What was she doing there? Well, that's what we're trying to find out.
Was there anything strange about her behavior this morning? Anything that might have seemed like nothing at the time, but could help explain all this? No.
She was herself.
We'd like to talk to her family, her friends.
There is no family.
She was an only child.
Uh never knew her mom or Her dad died before we met.
I don't actually think I've met any of her friends.
She'd talk to them on the phone, though, but I Well, I'd like to get those names.
I only know their first names.
She she always called them.
We just got married six months ago.
We only knew each other for three months before that.
I dropped her off at the airport this morning.
Look, would it be all right if I went in there? I'd just like to say good-bye.
Sure.
I'll give you a few minutes alone.
Come on.
So I ran down all the information Garrity gave us on his wife her maiden name, Wescott, former addresses, her social security number.
Either he's lying to us, or he doesn't know who he married.
- She's not Renee Wescott? - No.
Renee Wescott died 12 years ago.
You're doing a lot of damage in here.
Yeah, I was looking for something that would fire like a gun with no GSR and a possible projectile that could be jammed or didn't exist at all.
So these are all cartridge-driven devices.
Staple gun, nail gun Some of these would be pretty tough to conceal.
I'm desperate to find something that matches our victim's injury.
- A vole captive bolt device? - Mm-hmm.
Even when these are unloaded they jet forward with a lot of force.
That could explain why there was no projectile in the wound.
And it closely mimics our victim's wound tract.
But Sid said that the tissue and organs around the wound were frozen, and that didn't happen in any of these cases.
Okay, so what would 'cause it freeze? Could any of these shoot liquid nitrogen? No.
But you know what? Adiabatic cooling is possible.
The high pressure injection and expansion of any compressed gas would cause freezing.
That's it.
Great.
So then what kind of weapon are we looking for? I have no idea, but we're a hell of a lot closer than before I butchered all these guys.
Thanks, Lindsay.
I hear our little old man is back to being a Jane Doe? Yes.
And for a short while today our Jane Doe was a 68-year-old African-American woman named Renee Wescott.
Hmm.
Even our victim's husband, Harvin Garrity, had no idea she wasn't who she said she was.
Sounds like she's a master of disguise.
I think identity thief was her chosen profession.
That mask and phony stack of bills reeks of something bigger.
- We just to need to prove it.
- Yeah.
- How's Ellie? - I grounded her to the Bullpen.
Forcing her to read science journals.
What she witnessed today will stick with her for a while, but she's fine.
And how are you? I think I messed up, Mac.
You know what all my friends keep saying to me? "Jo, you know, when most people get divorced, "they just rebound into some awful relationship "or they spend all their money traveling through Europe "trying to find themselves, but you-- you adopt a child.
" You're stalling, Jo.
Why don't you get to the part where you messed up.
Man, you run a tough confessional.
You know, I kept thinking that I was gonna tell Ellie all the details about her mother, how she was adopted, how she became my daughter, and I just never could find the right time.
And I thought she was too young to understand.
So I just painted a pretty picture, you know, told her her mother's name and where she lived, and hoped it would all go away until I was ready.
You were scared it would change how she felt about you.
Yeah.
And now I've run out of time because the child was on a subway heading to Penn Station to catch a train to Danbury, Connecticut, to visit her mother.
And I had no idea, Mac.
She never said a word to me.
She sounds like a very determined little girl.
Determined? She's lost her mind.
She skipped school and bought a train ticket.
Lied to me.
Mac, this is the part where you say to me, "Oh, Jo, stop feeling so guilty 'cause you never told her the truth.
" You didn't mess up, Jo.
You just complicated things a little bit.
You do realize there's a window of opportunity here, don't you? You gotta tell Ellie the truth.
Mac, I don't think I can say it.
Well, it looks like you got reinforcements.
Maybe these guys can help.
Oh, Tyler.
Oh, great.
Ex-husband.
Mom, a week ago, Ellie asked me how far Danbury, Connecticut was.
I thought it was part of her homework.
You couldn't have known, Tyler.
She kept it all to herself.
You didn't have to come all the way down here, Russ.
Tyler and I were having lunch when Ellie called.
She sounded pretty upset.
Is Ellie okay? Pretty tough day for a 12-year-old girl.
Hey, son, why don't you give your mom and I a minute, okay? Tyler, why don't you take Ellie home, and I'll check in with you guys later? Sure.
- I love you.
- Love you.
Sounds like this morning was a little rough on you, too.
Okay, Russ, really, we don't need to over think this.
Jo.
I'm worried about you.
Me? Well, you're great at playing the brave one, keeping a stiff upper lip.
This isn't going away.
Ellie wants to see her biological mother, and I know it scares the hell out of you.
What, you have a little black book listing all the weaknesses of the ex-wife? No.
It's a list of all the things that I adore about you.
And I care.
Mac.
Print from the tape on the cigar box got a hit.
Quincy Willis.
Lindsay, it says he died in prison three months ago.
I know, but it's at least a lead, right? He was convicted of a federal crime, so I'm trying to get the FBI to rush a confidential file.
I was hoping, maybe, you could throw your muscle around? I can do better than that.
There's an FBI agent in the lab right now.
Quincy Willis was a master of disguise, proficient at identity theft, forgery, counterfeiting, one of the most notorious con artists on the Eastern seaboard.
Old-school.
This face look familiar to you? Got to be Quincy's daughter, Sabrina Willis.
He taught her everything he knew.
So why isn't she in any crime database? Took 15 years for us to catch Quincy.
He doesn't make the kind of mistakes that made it easy, you know.
And you're thinking like father, like daughter, she's picking up where Quincy left off.
Well, something got her murdered.
This is Harvin Garrity.
Married our vic six months ago.
Nothing about him rings a bell.
My guess is he's just another dupe.
Probably has money, and Sabrina's just stockpiling all she can for that retirement fund.
Con artists aren't big savers.
It's the pleasure of the game.
It's an addiction.
Look.
This bundle of newspaper wrapped in rubber bands was Quincy's trademark.
Size and shape of money, roughly the same weight.
Put real cash on the top and bottom, the rest is easy.
If Sabrina Willis was working her magic in the city, I guarantee there's a collection of marks out there licking their wounds, sorry they ever met her.
Well, where are they? 'Cause we don't have a case file or a complaint or a description or anything that would suggest that this girl was out there conning anybody.
That's because our search has been centered on a young blonde woman when all along we should have been looking for the crimes of an 80-year-old man.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I'll never forget that little weasel.
He scammed a hole bunch of us.
We were waiting in line for concert tickets.
What's it worth to you not to wait in this line? I got a connection inside that can get you tickets.
- Just huh.
.
- No, that's okay.
By the time you get to that window, all the good seats are gonna be gone.
Just seemed like a nice old man.
So the kid went for it.
One ticket.
Twenty when you get back.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, he goes, he comes back.
He gives the kid one ticket.
Great seat.
The rest was easy.
All right, you said 120, right? Yeah, yeah.
- All right, there you go.
- I got it.
All right.
And once he had everybody's money, he never came back.
Yeah.
And the kid with the concert ticket, he disappeared, too.
I mean, he was in on it.
That's why they call it a confidence game, Mr.
Fisk.
They get you to believe and then they take you.
Yeah.
Never even got to see the concert.
He's dead? Well, let's just say he's not out there scamming people anymore.
Filed that complaint a year ago.
I thought it was a lost cause.
Imagine you didn't get my watch and my cash back.
No.
That's what I get for feeling sorry for the guy.
- You all right? - Yeah.
You need some help? I need to get some cash to a buddy around the corner.
Bunch of guys saw me get the money out of the ATM.
I think they plan on taking me.
Try to help a guy out, right? He had the whole thing planned.
There.
No, no, no, no.
It's better if you carry it close to your body.
- Hide it.
- Like? Y-you better give me your wallet.
Watch, too.
They might take it.
I was so stupid.
I should've known.
- Wrap it in the newspaper, like this.
- Okay.
Tuck it down the back of your pants.
So he gives me back the newspaper, and I do what he tells me, only there was no guy around the corner.
There's no thugs, either.
So, I go back to find the old man, and he's gone.
He made the switch when he showed you how to carry the money.
The rocks were roughly the same weight as your wallet and your watch.
Makes it a little tough to extend a hand to a stranger who might really need it.
Mr.
Wendle, you ever seen the movie The Sting? It's on TV all the time.
Always catch it in the middle.
Well, maybe you want to watch it from the beginning.
Okay.
For every one person who filed a report, there's got to be ten times as many who didn't.
It's embarrassing to be duped.
But at some point in every scam, there's the opportunity to walk away, or say no.
And then if you don't, who do you blame? It's a shame.
Some of these people were taken for change, but others lost thousands.
I wanted to tell him that the old man wasn't even an old man.
But I couldn't.
Didn't want to add insult to injury.
- Think it matters? - Yeah, I do.
I mean, one more layer of deception-- that would tick me off.
Maybe our killer found out.
Thanks for the coffee.
Thanks for stopping by to check on Ellie.
She's a great kid.
You did good, Jo.
Kind of jealous we didn't adopt her together.
Well, that wouldn't have been the solution to our problems.
I don't know.
She's kind of magical.
Yeah.
It's gonna be a little rough for you this morning.
You want me to stick around? For once, I'd love for you to come to the rescue and do the hard part, and I could just sweep in when it's time for the hugs.
No.
This one I gotta do on my own.
Okay.
Well good luck.
I'll check on you later, okay? Mom, aren't you going to work? No, honey.
You know what? I thought maybe I would take you to meet your biological mother today.
- Really? - Yep.
First, I need to tell you something, though.
Sit down.
Your mother, Gina Baker, was very young when you were born, and she'd had a pretty rough life.
I mean, she'd spent time in juvenile detention, and she was arrested for petty crimes.
She had an addiction problem.
She was a drug addict? Yes.
We learned in school that babies whose mothers used drugs were drug addicts, too.
Was I? You had what they call prenatal cocaine exposure, which resulted in you being born premature and underweight.
But, God, you were just so strong and such a fighter that you-- you grew up to be a healthy, beautiful young lady.
Is she better now? Gina's in prison, honey.
You said she lived in Connecticut.
She's in federal prison there.
She was involved in a murder with some really bad people, Ellie, and I'm the one who put her away.
Will she ever get out? I don't know.
Maybe.
So you adopted me because you felt guilty? Oh, no, honey.
No.
Gina didn't have any family, and nobody knew who your biological father was, so you would've ended up with Child Services and, ultimately, foster care.
I adopted you because you needed me and because I needed you.
Our murder weapon.
It's an HPK knife.
A cartridge in the handle expels a freezing ball of compressed gas.
The gunshot sound witnesses heard was the release of gas, and the bullet was air that forced movement of the gas.
Which explains why Sid found frozen tissue.
The high-pressure release of the gas freezes the tissues and organs surrounding the point of injection.
Divers, hunters, the military, outdoor survivalists use this knife for protection against predators.
Beneath water, a shark is stabbed.
The gas expands, creating a temporary wound cavity.
The animal becomes buoyant, floats to the surface, and no blood is expelled to attract other predators.
It narrows our suspect pool but not by much.
All right.
But we made a connection.
See, the trace that Adam found on the vic's clothing is a match to the trace that I found on the partial palm print.
It's Halomonas titanicae bacterium.
First discovered in the sunken remains of the Titanic.
Also forms on wrought iron and vanadium steel, which we found on the vic's palm print left on the window.
That brings us to rusticles-- underwater icicles.
They can only form at depths below 230 feet.
So our suspect must be a professional diver, because very few are certified to dive at this depth.
Which brings us back to vanadium steel.
Although it's not manufactured anymore, it was used to build World War ll German U-boats.
And there's a sunken German U-boat off the shore of New Jersey.
We find the certified diver who explored that U-boat and carries this weapon, that could be our killer.
Find him.
Hey, Ronnie, get that loaded up.
- How you doing? - Hey.
You know where we can find Jason Locke? - He was just here.
- Thanks, buddy.
Jason, we just wanna talk with you.
NYPD.
Show us your hands, now! Do me a favor and move.
Go ahead! How much money were you taken for, Jason? I'm not sure what you're talking about.
We have a body in the morgue and plenty of witnesses who can ID you as the killer.
So I'm not asking if you did it.
I'm here for motive.
So let's try this again.
How much money were you taken for? $50,000.
Swindled by a girl I thought I was in love with.
Sabrina Willis.
I didn't know her by that name.
- I met her when she was bartending.
- ** A dive in the Village.
In a matter of weeks, we were dating.
I went to the bar every night.
I know it sounds crazy, but I was in love with her.
You never questioned why things moved so quickly? No.
I mean I was a lonely guy.
She was a very hot girl.
How did she take your money? Looking back now, um, I can see I was just so stupid.
** Do you wanna do something risky? What are you talking about? I overheard those two guys over there talking.
She said they had a plan to rob this rich old man of his money.
He carries $50,000 cash in a cigar box, makes withdrawals from his bank same time every day, heads for the track.
So the idea was to rob him before they did? It was so easy.
Until I got back to the bar that night.
- Hey.
- They found out.
They came back for the money.
They didn't believe that I didn't have it.
What are you talking about? What happened? Who did this to you? They went after the old man, but he didn't have the money.
He told them he was robbed.
They must've put two and two together and realized I overheard their conversation.
They want the money, or they're gonna come back and kill me.
- What? - Where is it? It's all newspaper.
- Where's the money, Jason? - I don't know.
I just opened it now.
They're gonna come back and kill me! What are we gonna do? So you cleaned out your savings.
Yeah.
I sold my truck, my guitar, borrowed from my brother even.
I gave it all to her.
Never saw her again.
For a couple days, I thought that they did kill her.
I went by the bar, hung around the neighborhood she said she lived in, filed a missing persons report.
Took a week.
Then it dawned on me.
It was just part of a big scam.
The two guys in the bar had nothing to do with it.
She made up the whole story.
She knew all along that you would come back with a box full of paper.
The cuts and bruises-- fake.
Makeup.
Then yesterday happened.
At first, I saw the box.
How could you be sure it was the same one? 'Cause I remember the tape that was holding it together.
Then I stood up.
I'll never forget it-- that first moment that I knew that she was the old man.
I loved the way she smelled.
And there was this strand of blonde hair.
I didn't plan on killing her.
I don't even remember pulling the knife out of my bag.
She do this to anybody else? A few.
Hey, Detective? Do me a favor.
Tell my brother that I'm sorry.
He needed that money.
I'm not gonna be able to pay him back.
I'll tell him.
- Mom? - Yeah? I don't wanna do this.
I don't need to see her.
Did you change your mind because of what I told you? No.
I'm glad you told me.
This all started because of Ashlyn Cooper.
- Who's Ashlyn Cooper? - A girl at school.
But she looks like her mom.
They have the same blonde hair, blue eyes, same nose.
I won't grow up to look like you.
So I-- I just-- You just wanted to see what you might look like when you grow up.
That's all I was really thinking about when I was on the train.
But today, I'm kind of scared, and I don't know what I'd say.
Okay.
We'll go another time.
We'll go when you're ready.
Okay.
Hey.
- What are you doing here? - Forgot my homework.
I left myself a Post-it on my desk so I wouldn't forget, and, of course, I forgot.
On your desk? Okay.
Thank you.
Yes, it's a mess.
I know.
Uh-huh.
How'd it go? Oh.
It didn't.
Ellie changed her mind.
Teenagers.
Yep.
That about sums it up.
Mac, you need to get married and have kids so I don't have to go through all these challenges alone.
- Have you lost your mind? - Yeah.
Don't get married.
Just adopt a child.
Children are wonderful.
Misery loves company, huh? You would make a great father.
Jo, stop.
Don't you ever think about being a grandfather? Hey, if I buy you a burger and a beer, will you stop talking? Done.
You know I have a weakness for food.
Let's get a real juicy, greasy hamburger with a light beer.
You would make a great father.
Jo
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