A truck with party-goers crashes into the river with all on board and the CSIs investigate to find one malicious killer is behind the crash, just to exact his own revenge.
A party goes awry when the truck it's being held on crashes through a barrier and falls into the river.
CSI:NY's version of
Titanic (1997) on a truck. Mac (Gary Sinise) arrives on the scene and looks at the survivors. Jo (Sela Ward) watches the truck being lifted out of the river. Jo comments there were probably about 20 people inside. Mac notices they had a lucky escape through the escape hatch in the roof of the truck. There are two dead. A DB is revealed inside. Mac: "Make that 3." Flack (Eddie Cahill) calls it a truck party gone bad. Mac calls him Don and not Flack here. Trucks are being converted into nightclubs now, the new fad. Jo says the truck was meant to be stationary. Two cabbies saw it through the barrier. Thought it was the two workers who saw the truck, didn't think the two cabbies were that close to the river. Flack guesses the driver must have got out and ran away.
Mac: "Crashing this party wasn't an accident." Hawkes (Hill Harper) and Lindsay (Anna Belknap) process the truck. Lindsay finds the keys to the truck in the glovebox, but the water has removed any biological trace. The truck was hotwired. The cannister without the label contains acetylene. The hatch was wielded shut. The work was shoddy so it was broken open otherwise there would have been more casualties. Lindsay disappeared for a long time, then I spoke too soon and she was back!
The survivors are questioned at the precinct and one guest says to be there you had to be noticed, meaning it wasn't a party for losers, to put it bluntly. Flack asks who threw the party? She found out about the party from someone at work. Chris (Carter MacIntyre) didn't even realize the truck was moving until it crashed. None of them realized they were on the move, talk about being caught in the moment! Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) asks if they knew anyone at the party? No one noticed when the door was closed. Chris broke through the hatch to let everyone escape. The backdoor was closed. Flack says they'll find who did this. Danny asks if they knew the host. Abigail (Marla Sokoloff) calls Chris a hero. One of the survivors, Neil (Michael McMillian) says when he escaped and got to the surface he felt he was reborn, when he took his first breath of air. That was a clue.
Sid (Robert Joy) conducts an autopsy on Cameron who had river water in his lungs and stomach, he drowned. Hawkes notices that the second Vic, Brett had his throat crushed from the impact of the truck. The third Vic, the female died of hypothermia and must have been in pain. Her prints are in AFIS from a DUI charge, as Victoria Enzo (Deja Howell). Her father is Carmen Enzo, (Paul Ben-Victor). Head of the Sanitation Workers Union. Jo believes Victoria could have been a target. Mac recalls he betrayed his Union members so it could be retribution on the part of one of them.
Mac questions Carmen and tells him they don't have a suspect yet but are making every effort in the case to catch the killer. Victoria could have been targeted because of him. Mac: "Not everybody cares about the rules." Like Mac does. Flack tells Mac about Jessica (Alexa Havins). She was meant to be at the party and not Victoria. She received an invite but had to work late at the bar. No one else could get in after 12 midnight so she couldn't arrive late. Of course the truck wasn't going to be there later on. Mac adds no one was getting out either. They question the survivors on who else was personally invited, thus leaving 4 survivors and 4 potential suspects. They need to find a connection between them. Each one of them holds a picture of the events.
Jessica doesn't recognize anyone. Chris noticed Abigail at the party, but not before. Abigail doesn't remember anyone either. Neil tells Mac his parents taught him to look past physical appearances (another clue.) Which Mac calls being a good thing, but it doesn't work for everyone though and especially not in today's world, where looks are everything. Well it's the first thing you notice about someone! Danny believes it must be someone with a grudge. Neil recalls getting phonecalls in the middle of the night and hearing a man's voice. Funnily enough he was the only one to hear a voice. Cos Chris got calls too, but no one said anything. Abigail recalls the garbage cans were rifled through, years ago. Danny says Jessica's car was broken into but nothing was stolen. Jo believes it could be the work of a stalker, but just one. A stalker is obsessed and he only has one object of his intense hate and obsession.
Adam (AJ Buckley) processes the invitation. The paper used was vellum and the ink was Japanese and it contained human blood from the artist who made the invite. Her name is Aiko (Haviland Stillwell) and she has a record. They check out her 'exhibition' to question her and Jo calls themselves "the art police." Flack ogles the women in her exhibition and asks one of them, "How you doin'?" Jo has to drag him away! Good to see Flack back into looking at women; as he used to do that in other seasons. Remember when he had to interview a woman, he would always look at them in a certain way. But not the female suspects though. Jo calls her by her actual name, Wanda and she's an ex-con. She uses her blood to verify the authenticity of her work. A man paid her $20,000 to make 4 invites. Flack asks for a description, but beyond, dark hair, and stutters; she doesn't give much of one. Jo asks her to sketch him. Wanda comments she makes men nervous, he didn't like to maintain eye contact with her. That was another clue.
Mac shows Neil the sketch of the suspect and come on, it was so obvious the sketch matched Neil, he was staring Mac right in the face. The shape of his face was round and chubby. But Neil, thinking he was clever, alters the sketch to look like someone else. He posits he saw a man on the street with that description staring at him. Notice out of all the suspects/survivors, Neil was the only one who really recalled anything and tried so hard to be helpful. A sure sign of guilt in
CSI: Miami, when suspects are too helpful and cooperate. Jessica looks at the sketch and knows him. She calls him Johnny, (Brian Collins). See
Neil wasn't so clever, since he altered the sketch to look like John and Jessica recognized him. Providing another piece of the puzzling connection between them. She and John were engaged and met senior year in college. She saw him again three years ago, but he became possessive and needy. He called off the engagement. He began following her, just to make John into a convincing suspect. Did anyone think to question why John's behaviour had changed. No, it was because he was being stalked and so he became paranoid to the point of isolating himself, as Mac says later. Flack calls John a choirboy. Danny comments it's a big leap to a murder.
Chris interrupted a man breaking into his locker, but didn't see him. Mac feels their lives are all connected. Checking out John's apartment, Danny finds dried blood. He comments on the deadbolts in his apartment and says he was afraid. Mac calls it living in social isolation. Mac lifts the newspaper on the window and sees Carmen outside. Mac is taking care of the case himself but will let him know if he finds a suspect. Carmen replies not if he finds him first. Danny checks out the blood to find it was from two donors, both male. Matched one profile from the dark hair in the blood to John. He is found as a DB by the coastguard.
Sid says he was in the water 24 hours and there's something inside his head wound, which he calls evidence of penetration trauma. Jo comments from his clothes that he must have been a guest at the party and wanted to be noticed. There's an invite in his pocket, but Wanda only made 4. So one of the survivors is lying. Sid removes the object from his head. Lindsay processes his boots. John was being harassed. Danny surmises he surprised someone at his place. Flack adds they fought and he got away. Lindsay reveals the boots have the same pattern as was found on the driver's door of the truck. So the driver was trapped inside. Mac thinks he saw the driver and went to save him, but he killed John first. Hawkes identifies the truck as having a Demon Dog for a hood dummy. One of the horns was embedded inside John's head, that Sid removed and was the murder weapon. Danny accuses Jessica, but her alibi checks out at the bar.
Flack recalls "Dragonlady" Wanda telling them the man stuttered. So it's not Abigail. Leaving Chris and Neil as the main suspects. Chris doesn't believe himself to be a hero and he doesn't want the attention. He hates publicity. Neil's parents died in an accident and Mac asks if he got help for that. Neil responds by saying there's nothing wrong with him. Mac never said there was. Neil flinches when a policewoman comes in with water and he doesn't take the glass from her, then drops it on the floor. (Fancy giving someone who's just come out of the drink, a glass of water!)
Women scare him and make him nervous. So Jo questions him. She wonders why someone like Neil got an invite to a party, since he's just an average nobody. "A loser, the kind that women like her don't know exist." Jo isn't better than him, but she's not a killer. She said something similar to the killer in
Do Not Pass Go, when she said she would do anything to protect her family, except she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she had killed the wrong person.
Mac tells him he was plotting revenge for years and his inheritance helped pull it off. Only he didn't reckon with the CSIs on the case, even though obvious clues were missed this episode. The connection was Neil. He tutored Chris who never invited him to any party. Abigail grew up across the street from his family and was his best friend until she left him. Jessica didn't even know his name, but they found the poems and the sketches, and the photos with John. Neil says he deserved to die, so did Jessica, But did the others. He stutters now. Mac will make sure he spends his time in solitary confinement. See John's face was much thinner. He saved Neil and he killed him. Jo tells Neil he was his own enemy.
Did they also forget about Carmen and his threats of revenge here. There's always a gun in the crowd when the scene is shown like that. Carmen shoots Neil and is arrested.
Thought this episode was a bit sloppily written in places and not up to the usual
CSI:NY standard. Especially with Mac not noticing the resemblance between Neil and the sketch of the suspect. Not remembering Carmen would exact revenge when they just walked Neil out. How Neil was the only one to actually hear a man's voice on the prank calls and the only one to see John. Also this episode took place more in the precinct itself than the lab.
They usually have illegal gambling on such trucks so they can move around, but here it was converted into party use. Great to see Flack knowing the lowdown on these fads, but perhaps he probably asked around, cos you wouldn't expect to find him in such a place.
The title was self-explanatory of course and having a pun in there too! In
CSI:NY season 2 opener,
Zoo York, Mac notices a truck parked outside, where the man inside was a mobster and the uncle of the Vic. He gets in on Mac's investigation of the case . The killer subsequently disappears and Mac knows the uncle is behind the disappearance and the killer's probable death. But the uncle gets away. Mac promises to get him one day. Here it was quite similar, Carmen got his retribution but got arrested afterwards.
Oh incidentally in this same episode,
Zoo York, there was a character with the last name Danville, who was a killer and they gave that surname to Jo.
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