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| • Friends & Lovers • |
Episode Number: 05#
Original Airdate: November 03, 2000
Written By: Andrew Lipsitz
Directed By: Lou Antonio
Synopsis: "Grissom and Warrick take the case of a young man who is found naked in the desert without an obvious cause of death. Sara gets to find out why the body of a woman who was buried last week is in a dumpster. Catherine and Nick investigate the killing of a school's dean by the school's founder."
Guest Stars:
Notes:
- From this episode on in the series, there is a change to the credit sequence. Some of the shots have been re-ordered, the font used has changed and Jorja Fox is now fifth in line of reference, whereas in 2, 3 & 4 she was second.
| | • Review • |
In the desert, two boys are running naked, looking behind them. Later, Grissom and Warrick look at a body; Grissom decides that the boy was running when he died, and was looking over his shoulder. Grissom calls the cause of death as fear, saying someone chased the kid to death.
Grissom hands out the assignments: Sara gets a dead body in a dumpster; Catherine and Nick get a dead body at a school called in by the suspect; he and Warrick take the body in the desert.
In the morgue, the coroner tells Grissom that the body of the boy is dry as a bone; Grissom tells Warrick to check the maggots in the body, which will tell them what the teen ingested. The tests show that the maggots contain jimsonweed.
Sara arrives at the dumpster and photographs the body; she discovers that the woman's body had been embalmed. She runs the prints at the lab, and finds out that the woman was buried last week.
Catherine and Nick arrive at the school and find the body of a man, the Dean of the school, who died of blunt force trauma to the head. The suspect is Kit Armstrong, the founder of the school. She called in the death, saying that the deceased attacked her, and that she grabbed the closest thing she could and hit him, once, in order to get him off of her. Catherine questions her relationship with the deceased; Ms. Armstrong says that they merely worked together and she didn't like him, but he was good at raising money. Catherine tells her that the deceased was hit more than once; Ms. Armstrong doesn't deny this, but says that she's just not sure.
Brass questions Bobby, a friend of the dead boy in the desert. He tells them that he and Bobby went to a rave; they were drinking but didn't do any drugs, and he can't really remember what happened, but he hasn't seen Eric, his friend, since around midnight the night of the rave. Brass tells him that they have a body that might be Eric; Bobby identifies it as his friend. Warrick comes in with the jimsonweed test results; Grissom comments that this would make him blind as a bat, red as a beet and mad as a hatter.
Catherine and Nick 'string' the room, and discover that based on the blood spatter, there were three points where the Dean was hit, with death occurring while he was on the floor. There's a void in the spatter, meaning that someone other than Ms. Armstrong was in the room when Dean Woods was attacked.
Bobby explains that he and Eric thought that jimsonweed was safe because that's what they were told by the guy who sold it to them. He can't remember much about the rave, but when Warrick checks his arm for a black light stamp, he finds one and recognizes the name of the DJ.
Sara talks to a funeral director, who suggests that it was a grave robber who dug up the body, for gold or jewelry. They excavate the grave, but there's no casket there; the director suggests that the casket was stolen too, as it would be valuable. Sara arranges a viewing of caskets.
In the lab, Grissom mixes up jimsonweed tea. Warrick has a report of trace elements from the corpse's nose; the one item that stands out is aluminum, which isn't explainable.
Catherine, Nick and an officer talk to Kit Armstrong, who admits that someone else was in the room; Julia Easton, who was doing her a favor. Catherine talks to Julia, who says that she was there as a witness for the harassment, and was standing in the doorway. Nick tells her that they've re-enacted the crime based on the blood spatter, and that it shows that the Dean was on the floor when he was killed, and Ms. Armstrong would have needed help to hold him down while she hit him.
At a rave in the desert, Grissom, Warrick, Brass, and Bobby look for the guy who sells jimsonweed. Bobby spots him, and attacks him. Ethan, the seller, is unconcerned, and tells them that they have nothing on him; he allows them to search is car, and tells them that jimsonweed will get him a mandatory suspended sentence, if they find any. Grissom finds some seeds in the car; he tells Ethan that they're going to get him for murder. Grissom has the coroner re-examine Eric's body for seeds, which she finds. They test the seeds, and find that they're the same chemical composition as the ones in the car, but that doesn't prove anything.
Sara looks at the coffins, and is shocked at how much they cost. She asks if once you buy it, it's yours, and is told yes. She looks inside one, and pulls hairs from different people out of it.
At court, Grissom waits in the hallway; he tells Warrick that he can't impose his will or hopes on the evidence. Ethan comes out and gloats, because he's been released. Grissom tells him that he'll be back.
Catherine and Nick review the evidence in their case: the blood, the confession, the void in the spatter. Nick says they're missing something, and they realize that it's the blood on Julia's clothes. Julia tells them that she burned the clothes because the blood wouldn't come out. They check the Dean Wood's shirt, and find a void in the blood spatter, which they trace and find it's a hand print, but the baby finger is out of proportion; it's much longer than the rest.
Grissom tells Bobby that Eric didn't die because of the tea, the seeds weren't toxic enough to kill him. Bobby is scratching his arm; he says that he thinks he has a spider bite and shows it to Grissom, who sees something other than an insect bite. Grissom talks to the coroner about the bite mark, saying it might be human and would like an impression of Eric's teeth. Warrick comes in with some fireworks results from the party in the desert; Bobby works at a fireworks place.
Catherine asks Julia to make a fist, she can't bend her baby finger, and says she sprained it at tennis. Nick offers her a finger splint; Catherine brings out the Dean's shirt, puts on the splint, showing the hand print with the splint in the absence of blood. Catherine speculates that Julia held Dean Woods down while Kit killed him. Catherine comments that it's a little severe to kill a guy for being handsy. Neither woman says anything while being arrested. Catherine tells Nick that it's not over; Nick says that from the forensic perspective it's is, but Catherine's not satisfied.
Sara asks the funeral director if he's selling time-share coffins, he says no, and she can't prove it. But she has a set of prints from the plastic wrapped around the body in the dumpster. She bets that they're his; his only response is that it's a cut-throat business and she has no idea. Sara tells him that he has to pay back the money for the coffin, and have the body reburied and then the case will go to the D.A.
Catherine looks over bank records, and finds withdrawals from Ms. Armstrong's account, marked as loans. The officer questions Kit Armstrong, who tells them what happened: she and Julia confronted Dean Woods about their relationship and he threatened to make their relationship public, saying that parents wouldn't be so accepting of a lesbian relationship. She tells them that the school wouldn't have survived the media circus if her relationship with Julia became public.
Brass questions Bobby, who can't remember anything after drinking the jimsonweed tea. Warrick tells him that photo phobia, fear of light, scared Eric; and he was boiling in his skin, and that's why he was naked. Brass says that they don't know if it was aggression or self-defence; Grissom adds that Bobby was having auditory hallucinations, and that he attacked Eric to keep him quiet. Bobby's lawyer says that it's all conjecture; Warrick says that there was aluminum in Eric's air-ways, and that it came from Bobby's hands. Grissom matches the mould of Eric's mouth to the bite mark on Bobby's arm. The lawyer says they'll plead diminished capacity; Bobby says it doesn't matter what happens to him, because he killed his best friend.
Warrick and Grissom sit outside and drink coffee; Bobby is taken away by officers. Grissom leaves, and rides the roller coaster at New York, New York to get away from everything.
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