(panting) (whimpering)
(camera shutter clicking) Maggots.
This kid's been here awhile.
No gunshot wounds.
No stab marks. No signs of strangulation.
It's a long way out in the sticks just to drop dead.
Not if you're being chased.
Look at the foot patterns leading up to the body.
See the strides?
This kid was running.
See the left foot impression? It's straight; that's normal.
But look at the right foot impression.
It's turned outward.
Almost 90 degrees.
He was looking over his shoulder when he was running.
Think there was somebody else here?
Based on these prints, it's hard to tell.
Can I get this taped off here? Yes, sir.
So you want to call it?
How do you think he died?
Fear.
Someone chased this kid to death.
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(phone rings) Grissom.
No. No, I did it yesterday.
Yes, I did.
Thank you.
Hey, you want to give us our assignments or do you want us to take... the night off? Paperwork paper clips, paper-punchers-- all these people want me to do is push paper; nobody wants me to solve crimes.
Hey, you could've turned the job down. Yeah, the grass is always greener, Catherine.
Well let's just hurry this up.
(sighs) Cool.
You really want to see flash paper flash? Walk in on a bookie. That's what this was about-- bookies. (phone rings) Don't answer it.
We've got work to do... Boss.
(ringing continues) Warrick, you and I are on the 419-- our dead body in the desert.
Sara, dead body of your own. Dumpsite out near Henderson. Oh, I'll dress down.
Catherine, Verbum Dei Charter School. 420 homicide. The school dean was killed in his office. Suspect called it in; could be self-defense. Did some kid off him with a silver spoon? Suspect's not a kid. It's the woman who founded the school. Take Nicky with you. Where is he?
Here I am.
You're coming with me.
Glad you could make it.
I'm outta here. Good luck tonight, you guys. See you.
Can't make a ruling?
Look at the bruise marks on John Doe here. I call that suffocation. Not necessarily. It could be the result of his face impacting the ground at expiration.
I'm going to take a mouth swab. Go ahead.
Grissom, I have something to show you.
You know, when a kid this young drops dead smart money chases anesthetics, alcohol methanol, maybe even a little Freon. I got to be honest. I've had a lot of dead bodies from the desert and when they're out there too long the elements tend to eat away the evidence.
My opinion is, you are looking at the picture of health, internally. Externally, it's another matter.
Skin sample.
GRISSOM: This kid was dry as a bone.
From exposure? The skin's not consistent with elemental damage. Warrick told me what you said about the cause of death being fear.
I never read about that in any medical book. Try the Forensic Medical Journal. Read the four canons on cause of death: homicide, suicide, natural and unexplained. Talks about fear in the last part of "unexplained." I had to ask.
You want to know what killed this kid? Benihana the maggots.
What the maggots?
Tox the maggots we found on the victim.
Whatever he ingested has probably evaporated from the sun. But the maggots are like little refrigerators. They preserve what we digest for longer periods of time.
Entomology is our friend. Yes.
Sorry, little buddy.
Scalpel.
My name is Paul and this is between y'all. Talk about Pulp Fiction.
It's all yours, Doc.
Fire up that gas chromatograph mass spectrometer thing, will you?
No problem, son.
15 seconds till pay dirt. Cool.
Play any pigskin, man? No, I'm off that.
It's prime time for you. I haven't made a bet in a month.
I can't say I don't have that itch, though.
Hmm. Haven't seen this stuff for a while. What's that?
Jimsonweed.
Do you have a name? She's not exactly carrying a purse.
Oh... (camera shutter clicking) Okay, let's take her out.
Thanks. Sure.
That's strange.
What's that?
Glazed like a doughnut.
Well, here's the reason the skin was funny. Formaldehyde, right? Close. BioTone Arterial. Promotes high diffusion and fast drainage in skin tissue. So I was right. This woman's been embalmed. Yeah. Yeah, I already ran her prints through work-hire; got her I.D. right here.
I, uh, I just want to say I-I... Well, I really admire the gusto with which you approach your job.
Are you hitting on me, David?
Uh... (chuckles) Let me give you some friendly advice. If you want to pull chicks, you've got to get aggressive. You've gotta drop the glasses lose the coat grow some scruff.
You do get a "C" for cute, though.
(typing) "Stephanie Reyes was laid to rest at Desert Haven Funeral Home."
Her funeral was last week.
Hi. Hey.
What do you got?
Vernon Woods, dean of the school.
49, single.
Multiple blunt-force trauma wounds to the head.
With that, probably.
I got it.
Man, check out all that blood spatter.
Yeah. Blows to the head, up close and personal.
A lot of passion around this one.
How about the suspect?
Kate Armstrong.
Founded the school. She called 911 herself.
She says he attacked her.
She's out in the hallway.
He wouldn't let go of me. He kept pawing. I can still smell his aftershave.
(sobbing): I mean... It's all a blur.
I grabbed the closest thing I could and I hit him with it.
A rock?
I don't know what it was. I didn't care. I just wanted him off of me.
How many times did you hit him? Once.
What's the matter?
Come on. No one's going to hear. Everyone's in class. Where's the harm?
I said get off of me! Miss Armstrong... were you and the dean having a personal relationship? No.
No. Vernon's a pig.
Then why did you hire him?
You founded the school. It's your integrity on the line.
He's great at raising money.
His donor list is huge.
I didn't mean to kill him.
(sniffling) I just wanted him to leave me alone.
But you hit him more than once.
Who knows. I... Well, you hit a man once, there's no blood. The first hit's free.
You hit him more than that... (clears throat) The walls in his office look like the dean went a couple rounds with Mike Tyson.
Then I hit him more than once.
Like I said, I just... I wanted him off me.
Will you excuse me?
Officer. Thanks.
What did you find out? Heavy on B.S., zippo on truth. You don't seem too bummed about it. Hell, no. I'm stoked. (sotto voce): We drew the best case, Nicky. I can feel it. Mm-hmm. Then there's only one thing left to do.
String it. String it.
I've never filed a missing person's report before but I'm getting concerned about Eric.
Where was the last place you saw your friend?
After work, we went out.
You two work together? No. A few blocks apart. I'm over at Voosh's, you know? Voosh's Fireworks. And he's at Element Sound, the music store. You guys go into the desert? Yeah. A party out near Red Rock. How did you know?
You just told us.
(chuckles) So spill it.
We, uh, drank a couple beers hung out, and... then I just lost track of him around midnight and I haven't seen him since. Did you guys drop anything that night? Ecstasy, crystal, "G"? No.
No way.
Look, do you... do you know where Eric is or not?
Bobby, we found a body that matches your description of Eric.
Would you be willing to identify him?
Is this your friend?
(crying) Oh, God... What happened to you, Eric?
Oh, God... (knocking) Hey, Boss, I got something for you.
(sotto voce): I did the whole tox-the-maggots thing like you said.
Found jimsonweed in their blood.
Which means? Jimsonweed in Eric's blood.
Jimsonweed.
"Dry as a bone, red as a beet blind as a bat, mad as a hatter."
Really?
Cite your sources.
Internet insomnia.
I thought Brass just said that they weren't doing any drugs.
Yeah.
Blood spatter on northwest wall.
Blood sprays northeast corner above... Wow.
Now, there's a look I like to see-- confusion.
(chuckles) No, I'm not confused. X marks the spot. A blow here... here... and here.
Our dean received the majority of blows when he was on the ground. Cast-off from the weapon against the window. Mm-hmm.
The back wall... Void... against the back wall.
The floor under the body? The blood spatter has a void instead of one continuous line of spray. There's an interruption-- a space where something or someone comes between the blood coming off the body and the wall. Which means our assailant was here and... there was somebody else in this room. Kate Armstrong is lying.
Fruit juice, half ice. Thanks, Warrick.
The guy said it was natural-- that it wasn't a drug.
I mean, jimsonweed is a plant. Most drugs derive from plants. That doesn't make them safe. Or legal, for that matter.
Yeah, but he said it was safe. That's why we bought it.
Did you take the drug, too?
Yeah. We both did.
You drink it. It's a tea.
Who sold you this "tea"?
He didn't give a name. He just... He told us that j-weed would be a cool high.
Mind-expanding.
I mean, that's the whole point of a rave is to experiment.
Did you get a stamp when you got in? Yeah. But that was, like, four days ago. Well, mostly they use water-resistant pads so you don't sweat it off.
Could you hit the lights, Chris?
Where did they stamp you?
Yeah, that's DJ Masterband's stamp. He is the spinner in Vegas right now. Must have been playing at the rave these two were at.
Is there any way for us to track this, uh, DJ person? The free papers, yeah. They have ads for all sorts of raves. Bobby?
Would you be able to recognize the guy who sold you the jimson?
Definitely.
No one in the mortuary business likes to discuss the issue but it does exist: people rob graves. Are you telling me that someone dug up Stephanie Reyes and stole her body? They do it for gold, trinkets or just kicks.
You should hear what I hear at conventions. (chuckles) Did you report the robbery of Mrs. Reyes' remains to the police?
As I say, we try not to discuss the issue outside of the community.
Profits over people, is that it?
I wouldn't put it like that.
Eight feet.
How deep do you bury these caskets? Well... There's nothing else in there.
I thought you said grave robbers only stole bodies. This might have been an inlaid casket-- something of value that people would steal.
You sell caskets, right? As part of your mortuary service?
I want to see some.
I can arrange a viewing.
Bonus.
Chris, I got the prelims back on that swab I took off of our desert guy. And?
Products found in mouth and nose: mentholated nose spray, patchouli and aluminum.
Nose spray? He had a cold.
Patchouli-- they burn it at music stores. Aluminum's the odd man out. Yeah. I got Trace putting together a list of products made with the stuff. Something tells me that's not lemonade.
Jimson tea.
I like to see what I'm dealing with.
Doesn't look lethal, does it? Doesn't look like tea, either. You know what the Japanese tea ceremony signifies?
What's that? That every human encounter is a singular occasion which can never recur again in exactly the same way. Does that apply to our case? Everything applies, Warrick.
That's the beauty part.
Cheers.
All right, it's true.
Someone else was there.
The name would be nice.
She's a friend on the faculty but she had nothing to do with this.
The blood evidence is telling us otherwise. Look, homicide will give us her name if you won't. There are detectives, and your school's not that big.
Julia Eastman. But she was doing me a favor.
She was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
We kind of made a plan so that the next time Woods hit on her she'd have a witness.
You know, because of the harassment. And when you were playing witness where were you standing? At the doorway.
You're sure?
Yeah. want it, you... Kate, no!
Why, you... We're forensic scientists, Julia. Blood talks to us. People exaggerate or forget. Blood's like my grandfather. Never lies.
Nick reenacted the crime using blood spatter. No, I just strung it.
Thank you, anyway.
No, the computer gizmo does all the geometry.
You factor in the location of the body in relation to the blood on the wall in order to recreate the event. Each hit that drew blood gets its own unique color as he fell. See?
Dean Woods was not in a standing position when he was killed. He was on the floor.
So how could your friend Kate, who's roughly half his size, wrestle him to the ground and keep him there while she bludgeoned him to death?
Without help?
I don't know.
Hmm.
Could we take a break? I need a break.
Sure.
Three.
It's gonna be $20 each.
There.
Thanks, man.
Come on.
Go in. You're good. Let's go.
Teenage Wasteland.
Who?
Yeah.
Hi!
Hi.
I love you.
(nervous chuckle) Uh, thank you.
You're a total stranger to me.
It's Ecstasy. It makes everyone fall in love.
Don't take it personally, Miss. He's kind of married to his job.
I love you.
Come on. Let's go.
That's him, there! That's the dealer!
Bobby, wait!
You killed my friend! Break it up! Bobby, stop it!
(shouting) Ow!
What do you guys think you got on me? Selling jimsonweed to kids.
Do you see any J-weed on me? You sent, uh, Bobby over here and his friend on quite a trip the other night. Which trip was that? The one to San Diego or the one to Mars? To the impound, where your car is going. Probable cause.
You don't have to take my car to the impound, okay? You can search it.
But I got news for you.
Jimson's a Schedule One controlled substance. Mandatory suspended sentence the first go-round for possession.
And you can't even prove that much. Guy knows a lot about the Nevada state penal code. Well, if you're gonna break the law, Jim you've gotta know the law.
Exactly.
Just don't scratch my puppy.
What do you say, Ethan?
These seeds look familiar?
(laughs) You just fish these out of your undies?
Look, man, if you want to take me in take me in. I'll be back before the party's over. 'Cause you know the law, don't you, Ethan? Mandatory suspended sentence for first possession. Yeah? Exactly. Let me tell you something, Humbert.
You're twice the age of these kids and most of them couldn't find their ass with a map. You prey on innocent children concocting God-knows-what from God-knows-where selling Russian roulette in a bottle and you think we came all the way out here to bust you for possession, you dumb punk?
I'm gonna get you for murder.
Cool?
This Ethan was selling jimsonweed tea at the desert rave. I believe Eric drank the most toxic part-- the dregs, the bottom of the batch the part that's full of seeds.
Well, If that's true then we might be able to catch up with some of those seeds because they have a way of hanging around the lower intestinal tract.
And the last ones to leave the party would be right about here.
Jimson reduced his gastric motility which kept this in his system. Now we just tie that to the dealer. Well, we see if it ties to the dealer.
That's not what you were saying out at that rave all up in that guy's face. There's three things I got a real problem with: guys that hit their wives, sexual assault on children and the scum that deal death to kids.
BROWN: The chemical compositions break down exactly the same. Yeah, but that doesn't necessarily prove that the seeds from the dead kid's gut came from the same place as the seeds in the dealer's car. We need the pods to do a DNA match and we don't have them.
The truth is, it wouldn't matter. I ran the seeds Eric ingested. The toxic levels are low-- too low to have killed him.
Square one.
There is no way I'm going to end up in a Dumpster wrapped in plastic.
I'm going to be cremated-- dust in the wind, you know.
I don't want any part of these things.
I've already got mine paid off.
Are you serious?
Yeah. It looks just like this one.
How much did it run you? Ten thou. $10,000? For a box buried in the ground that everyone's only going to see you in once. I like it. It feels like a Caddie. So when you buy one of these for $10,000, it's yours, right? Well, of course it is.
No one else gets to use it.
It's built for one.
Then how did all these people get in here?
Thought I'd find you here.
It's why I live.
Evidence... the double-edged sword.
Yeah. Nobody wanted to put that pusher in jail more than I did.
Evidence sets him free.
How do you feel about this?
It doesn't matter how I feel.
The evidence only knows one thing: the truth.
It is what it is. You don't really believe that, do you?
I was flying to a seminar in New Hampshire a couple summers ago. I was sitting on the plane next to this philosophy professor from Harvard. He told me this story about how, every morning he takes a leak right after his three-hour philosophy class.
He'd flush the toilet there'd be this tiny, brown spider fighting for its life against the swirling water.
Come back the next day, flush same spider clawing its way back from oblivion.
A week goes by, he decides to liberate the spider. Grabs a paper towel, scoops him up sets him on the floor in the corner of the stall.
Comes back the next day what do you think happened to the spider?
Dead.
On his back, eight legs in the air. Why?
Because one life imposed itself on another.
Right then I realized where we stand.
I understood our role.
We don't impose our will on a spider.
We don't impose our hopes on the evidence.
20, ten, five, boom!
Touchdown, baby. What's my name?
(Ethan laughs) You'll be back. Oh, really? What, have you got a crystal ball in your pocket or something? You're a creature of habit.
I'll catch you later.
Okay, so this is what we've got so far on our dead dean. Blood spatter and blood cast-off on the walls.
Kate Armstrong's confession, her clothes.
Three void areas, and that's pretty much it.
Anything else? That's not enough. It's not enough. What's the one thing we're missing?
That's it. What's it? The one thing we're missing.
The blood. On Julia's clothes.
We need the clothes that you were wearing the day that the dean was killed.
I burned them.
Why?
The blood wouldn't come out. They were ruined.
Blood's funny that way. In fact, I bet there's lots of blood on Dean Woods' shirt.
Look at that void.
What a beaut.
Oh, yeah.
You don't even have to know every star and you can draw a constellation.
And fill in the rest.
Whoa, look at that last finger there.
Talk about your unique attributes.
What do you think-- a bandage?
We'll have to ask our ladies, but I can tell you this-- somebody's playing through the pain.
I, uh... I just wanted you to know that Eric didn't die from jimson tea.
It didn't have the chemical toxicity to kill him.
The seeds weren't strong enough.
Is your arm all right?
Yeah, uh, spider bite.
I think it's infected.
May I take a look?
Sure. You're a doctor. You might be able to give me something for it. I'm a PhD, not an MD.
Bobby... this bite is not from an insect.
Hey. Hi.
I found a bite mark on Bobby's arm and I think it might be human.
Do you feel like sharing?
Not really. Just a little?
(sighing) I don't know, Jenna.
This whole case is going from bad to worse.
I mean, usually it's a body, it's a specimen but when it involves kids, I just can't... Gruesome Grissom... Tin Man with a heart.
Who knew?
Hey, guys.
This came back for the test on aluminum products from our kid in the desert.
Fireworks.
That's where Bobby Taylor works.
Jenna, I need a mold of Eric's teeth and an impression of Bobby's arm.
Julia, make a fist for me with your right hand. I mean, count it down like so, starting with your thumb first. Five, four, three, two, one.
Sprained it at tennis.
It heals a lot faster when you wear one of these.
Dean Woods' shirt.
Now, remember we said blood tells us everything?
Well... so does the absence of blood.
Oh, my God.
You held him down... while she killed him.
All because the guy was handsy?
Seems a little severe.
We're going to be placing you under arrest for murder.
Is there anything you want to say?
Ma'am... put your hands behind your back, please.
No, no, this isn't over.
For all forensic purposes, it is over. They're going to eat bread and bang a metal cup against some bars. That's it. It's over for us. We still don't know why.
It's not our job to know why. It's our job to know how. You heard Grissom. The more the why, the less the how the less the how, the more the why. Hey, Nick.
Yeah?
Grissom's not always right.
Do yourself a favor and think for yourself.
I mean that as a friend, okay?
Okay, Detective, we got some more homework to do.
What are you selling-- time-share coffins?
Uh, there's no such thing as a time-share coffin. Sure, there is. Once the funeral is over, you dump the body and use the same casket over and over. You can't prove that. Yes, I can.
This is a set of prints on the inside of the plastic sheeting we found in the Dumpster.
What are the odds they belong to you?
All you had to do was put the bodies back in the grave and no one would have been the wiser. You have no idea what a cutthroat business this is. The chains are moving in. I have payments to make. I see the world from a completely different perspective than most people. Yeah, I know. You see dead people. So do I. And when they turn up in Dumpsters I like to see they get back to where they belong.
I'll repay the money. Minimum. Then you're going to pay for Stephanie Reyes' family to have a real burial. Okay. At a respectable mortuary. Okay.
Then we're going to let the DA run the table.
Did some homework on Kate. Mm-hmm. Financial records for the last year.
Great.
Personal checks from Kate Armstrong to Vernon Woods over the last year.
$5,000. Another for $5,000. $3,000. "Memo: loans."
I don't think so.
I think she was paying him off for something.
Did Julia say anything?
Like what?
The real reason you killed Woods?
This is where Chris and I differ. Forensics is about more than science.
Human behavior.
The inconsistencies of human behavior.
Yes, "how" is crucially important, but so is "why."
Okay.
I'm finished paying you. We're going to live openly, honestly. It's a new century. Parents are evolved. Not where their children are concerned. I'll tell everybody that I caught you two having sex on school grounds. That's a lie! What?! Of course it's a lie.
That didn't stop the McMartin School from closing down.
Yeah, I think I'll make a call.
Julia and I would never have survived a rumor like that.
We panicked.
The school is our whole life.
Hmm. You got your "why."
Crime of passion.
Bigger "why": Why did it have to come down to this?
I guess they didn't feel like they had a choice.
Maybe they didn't.
A lose-lose situation.
I'm telling you, I didn't kill Eric. Can you remember your last hours with him Saturday night? Don't answer that. I want to answer it. I just... I can't remember anything after we took that stuff. It's not about memory now, Bobby.
It's about the evidence and the evidence... sucks.
GRISSOM: You and Eric bought jimson tea from Ethan that night.
Enjoy, fellas!
(laughing) Cheers, man.
But you guys have never taken j-weed before so you weren't aware of the side effects of photophobia.
Ph-photo what? Photophobia. It's just a big word for lights freaking you out. You guys were hallucinating and whatever Eric was seeing was scaring him, big-time.
The coroner states that Eric's dose shot his temperature through the roof. He was boiling in his own skin. So he stripped which is why we found him naked.
We just don't know if it was an act of aggression or self-defense.
I loved that guy. That's why I tend to believe it was an act of self-protection.
The lights were scaring him.
At the same time, we conjecture that you were suffering auditory hallucinations. Both of these symptoms are routine with this drug.
Shut up!
(groaning) Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
Shut up! Shut... shut up!
(both grunting) Shut up... I just... I-I can't remember, honest.
You can "believe" and "conjecture" all you want. None of this is based on fact.
I'm afraid that it is.
The evidence tells us that Bobby suffocated Eric.
We found traces of aluminum trapped in Eric's nostrils that are consistent with what we found in your client's hands and arms earlier today from his job at the fireworks plant.
I don't think I would do that.
I know, Bobby, but you did.
This is a mold of the bite mark that we took from your arm today.
This is a mold of Eric's mouth, postmortem.
Shut up! Shut up!
Shut up. Shut up.
(Bobby screaming) Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
You overpowered him, he suffocated... and then, finally, the noise stopped.
I can tell you right now we're going to plead diminished capacity.
Good.
I hope you win.
It doesn't matter. It's the difference between prison and a hospital, Bobby. It matters. You don't understand.
I don't care what happens to me. I killed my best friend.
(vehicle engine starts) Where you going?
Away.
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