CSI: NY

Dig it back, dig it back.

Here.

With me, a lady Maverick.

She's a man it, uh.

And when she walks, she walks with passion.

When she talk, she talks and she can't handle it.

When she ask for something, well, she means it.

Even if you never ever see it.

Everybody get your Knicks to crack around.

The.

This is a production of WGBH.

Lawyers, all eight You wish you never, ever.

Vick's name is Jeff Zeliers.

He's a loss prevention security guard.

Well guy couldn't prevent the loss of his own life.

Witnesses?

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Anyone close to the action was in a changing room, heard the shots, and ran.

The men's dressing rooms are on the other side of the store, so I'm thinking our killer's most likely female.

We got surveillance, right?

Infrared, state of the art.

Cameras aren't allowed inside the dressing room area, but I've got one of my guys getting everything else.

This guy was popped up close and personal.

Dental mirror.

That's odd.

It's clever.

Provides the perfect view of who's coming and going.

Add these to the mix, it makes sense.

Anti-theft security tags.

Looks like they've been burnt off.

So did our Vic surprise a shoplifter?

Shoplifter surprised him with a bullet.

Hey, Danny.

Take a look at this.

It's the infrared video footage from, uh, outside the dressing room around our Vic's TOD.

Fasten your seat belt.

Here it comes.

Is the camera malfunctioning?

That, or Fifth Avenue's haunted.

Right.

Okay, well, there's our Vic.

Yeah, and he follows the blur into the dressing room, goes in, bang, and the gun goes off.

Oh, freeze that right there.

Any way you can clean the image up a little more?

Might be able to go tighter, but that's as good as it gets.

So, how do we catch a killer when our only suspect is a ghost?

Turns out our suspect is not as spooky as she wants us to believe.

All right, come on.

If this was a real ectoplasm, what's she doing shopping?

Unless it was, like, the spirit of Imelda Marcus, but, no, I don't even think she's dead.

I mean... Adam?

Yeah?

How'd she do it?

Oh, yeah, okay.

Uh, check this out, all right?

The retro-reflective material on this vest is mirroring incident illumination back to the camera signal.

All right, so whatever she wore into the store, it interrupted the infrared signal on the security camera.

Ah, creating the void and making her disappear.

I haven't been out here since I was a kid.

This hedge maze is part of the Queens County Arboretum.

New York's last tract of undisturbed farmland.

Not anymore.

We haven't been able to ID the body yet.

Hey, Mac, I searched him.

Nothing in his pocket except for these.

Chelsea University exam receipts.

Eddie Williams, Thomas Brighton.

One body, two names?

Hopefully our Vic belongs to one of them.

Who discovered him?

Groundskeeper.

Lives on site.

Said he heard someone screaming.

Who else has access?

This time of night, no one.

Made his close to visitors six hours ago.

And TODs less than two hours ago.

So we know he definitely wasn't supposed to be here.

Looks scared to death.

The hole in his neck says otherwise.

A stab wound.

Judging by the position, I'd say it severed the carotid artery.

Got another one back here.

Multiple contusions on his upper torso.

The hedge is destroyed like he was trying to get out.

Which would explain the hands.

Who's responsible for the stab wounds?

Looks like traces of blood.

I think we have a suspect.

I love this job.

Blood trail started here.

Got signs of a scuffle, multiple fresh footprints.

When Vic breaks in after hours, navigates his way to the center of the

maze in the middle of the night, it doesn't make any sense.

Will you walk into my parlor?

Said the spider to the fly.

I'm thinking our victim was lured here, then murdered.

A prize in every box.

Excuse me?

A crackerjack slogan, a prize in every box, or in this case, your murder weapon.

Killer used this to sever the carotid artery.

Absinthe spoon.

A piece of one, anyway.

I think we found his better half at the crime scene.

Absinthe is hallucinogenic, illegal to purchase in this country.

Any trace of it in this system?

Don't know yet, just sent blood to tox.

I pulled something from the wound track in his back, the flecks of a bluish-green solid.

Also found a branding, actually two brands, one on top of the other on his back right shoulder.

Healing characteristics of the burn indicate the last one happened less than two weeks ago.

Two hours before he was murdered.

Absent spoon, a branding, a brutal beat down.

I'll take cult rituals for 200.

I don't think so.

The kid doesn't look the part.

We have reason to believe he went to Chelsea University.

What is a fraternity hazing going bad?

Sid recovered the bullet from the security guard.

It's a .38 caliber.

It was moderately deformed.

I ran it through Ibis.

No hits.

I'm also looking into sources for retro-reflective clothing.

All right.

Angel pulled up some complaint forms.

Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Ferragamo, all hit the same day, all with the same M .O.

Burnt security tags left in the woman's dressing room.

And at Gucci, the thief left behind the clothes that she was wearing when she came

into the store, and they weren't retro-reflective.

Well, that means she started at Gucci, ended up at Maddox.

All right.

Well, average shoplifter can hit one, maybe two things.

Two stores in one day.

There's nothing average about this girl.

She's a professional, and she hasn't left us much to work with.

Except the security tags.

If we can rebuild those bar codes, we may be able to inventory the stolen goods.

Best way to find a thief is to find out what they're stealing.

Cue music.

Toxic detected T'hoon in our Vic.

Confirms he was drinking absinthe prior to TOD.

Oh, it means he was definitely tripping in that mace.

I explained why we found blood on the statues and that scared-to-death look on our Vic's face.

He didn't know what he was seeing.

A hallucination didn't put that statue's sword in his bag.

No, but maybe if he was, like, freaking out and disoriented, he might

have backed into the sword, which explains the copper oxide that Sid pulled from the wound.

Also, I found a stain on the piece of torn fabric he pulled from the hedge.

It appears biological, and I'm running DNA.

What about the spoon?

Clean.

I'm gonna take a look.

Okay, now, watch this.

It's a road map on how to get out of the maze.

It gets even stranger.

Fountain pen we collected at the scene contains blood instead of ink.

We type it?

Yeah.

It belongs to our John Doe Vick.

Who writes in blood?

Lawyers, college loan administrators, Thomas Brighton.

According to the serial number on the pen.

He's also one of the names we found on the exam receipts that were in the Vic's pocket.

But Brighton is not our victim.

Put a call in, campus security confirmed that he showed up for classes today.

Same for Eddie Williams, the name on the other exam receipt.

Then who's our Vic?

Sure.

Yeah, I've seen him around campus.

I think his name's Brian Miller.

You think?

Yeah.

Do you want to know what we think, Thomas?

We think that you're lying, because we know that Brian Miller took an exam for

you yesterday, and we matched the answers on that exam to a sample of Brian's handwriting.

You want to know what else we think?

That you paid Brian to take the exam, but you didn't get your money's worth.

Brian flunked the exam on your dime, which makes us ask, why would he do that

to you, and how upset were you when you found out?

I owed Brian some money.

He nuked that exam to prove a point.

No pay, no pass?

Exactly.

But I had nothing to do with what happened to him.

Brian and I were close.

Like brothers.

Blood brothers?

Found your pen at the crime scene.

What we believed was red ink inside turned out to be Brian's blood.

I lost that pen a while ago.

How long ago?

I don't know.

A month, maybe two.

Detective, call Judge Brewer.

Get us a warrant to look at that notepad.

Now, you seem like a smart kid.

But here's something you don't know.

The nib of a fountain pen adjusts itself to the user's writing style as it wears down.

If my lab matches this pen to that notepad and the ink dates

back to less than a month, what are you gonna say then?