myktsn
Morning, Mac.
Victim's name's Stacie Avida.
- She live here? - No, she worked here.
She was the doorman. Woman.
The, uh, super said everybody seemed to like her.
Him more than most. They dated for about a year and a half.
We don't have water towers in Montana.
The water pressure in the city's a little dismal,
so every building over 16 floors has one.
Every tenant have access to the roof?
Yeah. It's like a, uh, extra rec room.
Do you know there have been 6 suspicious deaths in this building in the past
10 years?
People say it's cursed.
I took the graveline tour.
You visit places where unexplained deaths have occurred,
or famous people have died.
This was stop number eight.
Now it's death number seven.
Cool Hunter
Despite the amount of blood
you found at the scene, C.O.D. wasn't exsanguination.
I found a significant amount of water in her lungs.
She drowned.
Which means she was alive when she went inside the tower?
Difficult to take a live woman up the side of a water tank,
unless she's unconscious.
My thought exactly.
An injection mark.
There's an endless number of substances that could just knock her right out.
I sent blood to Tox.
Also found evidence of sexual activity.
The semen sample was diluted from the water, but
still a chance you can pull something.
"Here's the smell of the blood still.
"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."
Macbeth.
Radial and ulnar arteries were both severed.
Superficial wounds to her knuckles and the tops of her hands.
I pulled
more glass fragments from her wounds.
Directionality of the incisions suggests movement
in both distal and proximal directions a sawing motion.
Significant arterial spray with this type of wound.
Crime scene must have been a mess.
There was nothing to suggest her wrist was sliced inside the tank.
No blood trail outside of it.
Not a drop.
How is that possible?
I'd say a quick jab, followed by a left hook and a straight right.
Never knew you were a boxing fan.
I'm a fan of all sciences,
especially the sweet one.
Used to watch with my dad.
Lividity's not fixed.
He's been here less than six hours.
Killer used tremendous force.
Probably collapsed the cricoid cartilage.
I'd say C.O.D. is strangulation.
Wallet and phone are still here.
Let's find out who this guy is.
Ben Hatfield.
23 years old.
Got a business card.
Works for NHT Media as a field consultant.
Must have been casual dress Wednesday.
What's he doing in Washington Heights?
Any witnesses?
They're all suffering from the same thing
temporary blindness.
Well, let's see what we can see.
Fake tooth. Knocked out.
Sand in the eyes.
I'd say this started out as a good old-fashioned playground fight.
I got blood. They were fighting over here.
He was strangled no more than six hours ago,
but the color of the bruises on his face and hands...
Are 8-12 hours old.
But this blood is still wet.
Means our Vic wasn't in one fight.
He was in two.
That's not a handprint, that's a glove print.
Hawkes says I missed some fun at the playground.
No worries.
We brought some back just for you.
These photos were taken from our Vic's camera phone.
He was quite the photographer.
I like the subject matter.
These girls are fine.
Girl, not girls.
Look at the eyes in all the photos.
Right, right, I see.
These are all the same girl.
Different hairstyles, different clothes.
She's quite the chameleon.
These all look like candid shots to me.
She didn't even know she was being photographed.
Yeah, maybe our Vic, Ben Hatfield, was a stalker.
And if this guy here was her boyfriend,
maybe he wasn't too happy about that.
It looks like all these shots are taken on the same street.
Let me see.
Let me get that bus stop sign back there.
George Washington Bridge.
Washington Heights.
Good job.
What are these?
I was hoping you could tell me. They're all of you.
Okay, somebody's following me?
Well, not anymore.
The person who took these pictures is dead.
His name is Ben Hatfield.
- You know him? - No.
And I don't like people I don't know taking pictures of me.
My guess is your boyfriend here doesn't either.
What's his name?
I don't know.
Just some guy who wanted to buy me a cup of coffee.
No need for names?
It was just coffee.
This guy here, he could be a murderer.
So next time you see him, get a name,
and then give me a call.
Epithelial DNA from the swing's chain came back as...
Everybody's in the world.
The blood came back as our Vic's.
Imprint on the Vic's shirt was left by tar
and New York City dirt.
And whoever grabbed the shirt was wearing gloves at the time.
What about the blood we found in the sandbox?
Belongs to an unknown male.
I'm sill waiting on news from Autopsy. How'd you do?
I've got nothing but what I think are lies
from our Vic's object of affection.
But I did find the next hot thing.
Remember NHT Media?
It was on Ben Hatfield's business card.
Next Hot Thing.
He was a trend forecaster for Madison Avenue.
He wasn't stalking Jennifer Rodriguez.
He was working.
They call it "cool hunting."
I've read about that.
What's hot on the playground
is worth millions on Madison Avenue.
That must be why he had all those pictures.
And why he was in Washington Heights.
But why is he dead?
Mac, this case is getting creepier by the minute.
All of the previous deaths in that building
had "mysterious circumstances."
Sounds to me like you're starting to believe in that curse?
Mac, I believe in the science.
Me, too.
What do you have?
This is what I found in Stacie Avida's apartment.
Blood on the door frame.
Flowers from the roof and a used condom.
The semen from the condom was a match to what we found in the Vic.
What about the blood on the frame of the door?
A male donor, but it's not a match to the semen.
But I found a substance on the flower consistent with mucus.
That is a match to the blood.
But not a match to the semen.
There were two male donors in her apartment.
Her boyfriend, the super
didn't have a cold, he's allergic to flowers.
Murder and romance. It's always about the little things.
We'd talked about getting married,
or at least living together.
We were doing great.
Evidence from her apartment suggests you weren't the only man in her life.
That doesn't sound so great.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I'm talking about you going to Stacie's with flowers from the roof garden.
A romantic gesture.
What's not so romantic is what you found in her trash.
This is a surprise.
You should've called first, Joe.
You seein' someone else, Stacie?
- You gotta go, Joe... - Is he here?
- No! - Stacie...
I'll put up with a lot,
but not that.
Was Stacie's daughter there at the time?
She doesn't have kids.
That's not what the evidence is telling us.
You didn't know Stacie was cheating on you,
you didn't know she had a daughter.
Sounds like there's a lot you don't know.
Yeah, okay, I was played.
Big deal.
It is a big deal.
Betrayal's the oldest motive for murder in the book.
Right, boy meets girl.
Boy impresses girl with his pimped-out ride...
Right.
All right, we've talked to girl, where's boy?
I may be able to find him.
See the reflection in the window?
Can you clear it up, Danny?
Give me a sec.
Let me enhance the resolution.
Look at you.
"ABO-429."
Boom.
Nice, Messer.
Let's see where that car takes us.
Tox came back.
Stacie Avida was injected with ten times the therapeutic dose
of prescription-grade morphine.
I'm looking at the shards of glass.
Cathedral Water Glass, to be exact.
85% of it is found in stained glass windows.
And when we canvassed the building for witnesses,
there was stained glass on every floor.
Look at this.
Panel's darker.
That's the only color consistent with the glass we found on the Vic.
Looks like these windows are double-paned.
This one's patched on the inside. Whose place is this?
"Craig Zimmer, MD."
He would definitely have access the morphine.
Escalade's my company car.
- Who drives it? - Elliott Stanton. Works for me.
My best employee.
Trend spotting?
Yeah, so, uh, what's this all about, detectives?
It's about your competition...
The Next Hot Thing.
One of their employees was murdered and found in Washington Heights.
What does this have to do with my company?
I mean, Next Hot Thing is no threat to me.
I mean, I know what's hot long before they do.
I don't have to kill the competition. I'm already doing it.
Would this be the next hot thing?
Guaranteed.
What makes you such an expert?
I'm just a poor Dominican boy made good.
I grew up five blocks from here.
You know, when people see Washington Heights,
they think urban decay.
See, I see the future.
And now all the big companies are coming to me.
Madison Avenue loves that I still have one foot in the neighborhood.
They know that I'm connected and that I operate at a street level.
What does Jenny Rodriguez get for all this?
The girl in your pictures.
I guess you just steal her fashion design...
You don't need to know her name.
See, my clients pay me for information.
And before you know it,
everybody walking down Times Square looks up to see what I discovered.
The rest of America jumps on board.
I run a multimillion-dollar corporation.
I'm not in public relations.
I suppose if the competition, say, The Next Hot Thing...
Took a few photos of Jenny, things would get complicated, huh?
I don't like what you're implying.
Now...
I'm a very busy man, detectives.
- You know the way out. - I have one more question:
Where's Elliott Stanton?
Man, for half the kids in this neighborhood, this is it.
They never leave,
never go anywhere else...
Not even Jersey.
This is their whole world.
Well, they may never leave
but their culture and styles travel everywhere.
What do you know?
Elliott Stanton's on Rico's payroll and he gets to drive the company car.
You know this guy, Elliot?
Nope.
Imagine him alive.
Never seen him.
Looks like you were at the wrong end of a couple punches.
You landed a few, though, right?
Looks like that hurts.
You two paramedics?
All right, look, we get it, Elliott.
Your boss told you we'd be swinging by,
so stop playing the coy boy, do this the easy way and answer our questions.
Okay.
I fell off my bike.
Before or after you slammed your fist into Ben Hatfield's face?
Ben who?
Ben "Hanging from a Swing in the Park" Hatfield.
What are you doing?
What do you think, next new fad: Ligature marks instead of tattoos?
Hear you're really good at your job.
We're even better at ours.
You think about that.
- You get it? - I got it.
Good.
Probably my kids, they're always breaking things.
My wife runs the apartment I just pay for it.
And where's your wife?
They're in the Hamptons.
Look, now is not a good time for me.
I've been in surgery for 11 hours, been on my feet for 36.
Doctor, you keep impeding my investigation,
I'd be more than happy to take you someplace
where you can put your feet up for quite awhile.
Looks like our doctor has a taste for painkillers.
Soil's consistent with what's on the roof.
I found blood on the glass from the window.
Drugs, glass, shoes:
Looks like it's all adding up.
Except why he would kill a woman who did nothing but open the door for him.
Look, there's the Vic's tooth.
He must've swallowed it in the fight.
Second fight, to be exact.
It's still in his stomach rather than his intestines.
I collected trace from the implant post that remained in his mouth.
And?
And, as soon as you analyze it, it could lead you somewhere.
Hey, I was elbow-deep in his stomach, and I walked it up here.
Can't do everything.
Thanks, Sid.
Reptile skin.
Elliott Stanton is our prime suspect,
and we don't have enough evidence to hold up in court.
Hold up, don't throw in the towel just yet.
Exhibit A :
Elliott with his arm around Jenny, gloved.
Exhibit B :
Our Vic's shirt with grab marks,
a pattern left by gloved hands.
We don't know that it was Elliott's gloves
that made the impressions on the shirt.
Bruising and cuts from this picture I took of Elliott's hands,
they are consistent with the wounds we found on our Vic.
Well, that just proves that Ben Hatfield and Elliott Stanton got in a fight,
not necessarily with each other.
You don't need to be a pathologist to see that Elliott's hand's infected.
Knocked out Ben's tooth, that's what opened the flesh.
What we see and what we can prove are two different things.
We need to connect Elliott Stanton with our victim,
prove that it was his gloves that made the pattern on the shirt,
and his fist that knocked our victim's tooth out.
And, ultimately, that it was Elliot Stanton's blood we found in the sandbox.
Safe to say we're skipping lunch.
My next.
Yo, why don't you and your little Blue Man Group
here go find a playground on the Upper East Side, okay?
Nah, we're good here. In fact, we're gonna stay here for a while.
This is a murder scene.
A kid was killed here just this morning. You know, funny how nobody saw anything.
So these guys are going to stick around, all right? We'll see what we can see.
As long as it takes.
Unless you know something.
Give me my ball back, man?
I'll tell you what. Why don't you play me?
You beat me, I'll get out of here, I'll take these guys with me,
not to mention you get to tell everybody you beat a cop.
And if you win?
You give me a little information.
You serve.
Is there anything we can get you, Doc?
I'm sick.
Oh, yeah, I can see that.
For a guy who works in the medical field,
you don't take very good care of yourself.
You recognize the symptoms, Detective Monroe,
in the junkies we get through here every day.
That building you live in has quite a reputation.
Superstition, it's stupid.
Six deaths in the past ten years.
And, uh, your name is mentioned in three of the cases.
One of the murdered women was your nanny,
who you were having an affair with...
Stupid superstition starts looking a lot like pattern, doesn't it?
I came down here voluntarily...
To, uh, ... answer a few questions.
I'm wondering what they might be.
She was a doorwoman in your building.
Okay, and?
And your phone records say that you called her regularly
for the past three months.
No, no, I never spoke to this woman in my life.
Semen found inside her body matches the DNA from your reference sample.
That's impossible.
I certainly wouldn't sleep with her. I didn't.
The smashed stain glass from the window in your apartment
is an identical match to the glass we found embedded in her arms.
Phone call, semen, stained glass.
The way I'm seeing this, you did have a relationship with this woman.
She asked you to leave your wife, you said no.
There was a fight.
You pumped her full of the morphine you happened to have lying around the apartment,
then dumped her in the water tank.
That's not true.
I do not know her. I don't.
I've been at the hospital for a day and a half.
I got 50, 100 people can back me up.
We'll look into that.
You all right to hang tight for a bit?
Need anything?
A little chicken soup, maybe?
I wouldn't want to be in Dr. Zimmer's shoes.
Something's off, Mac.
Zimmer's involved in this up to his neck,
but his behavior doesn't make any sense.
Why didn't he toss the shoes?
And when Flack leaned on him, he didn't call a lawyer?
Sophia Reza
died in that building
three years ago,
raped, no semen found. They never caught the guy who did it.
- What does that have to do with this case? - She was Zimmer's nanny...
And they were having an affair. And look at this.
Four years ago,
choking victim on the roof.
Zimmer's there, tries to save her, but can't.
Meaning?
Meaning he's everywhere something bad happens.
Maybe he's cursed, not the building.
Lindsay, we can only deal with the science in front of us.
Forget everything else.
But I was taught that instincts point you in a direction.
Science confirms a theory.
Taylor.
We'll see what we can do.
We need some science that puts Zimmer on the roof.
Otherwise, he's free to go.
The substance pulled from Ben Hatfield's mouth was reptile skin.
- Reptile skin? - Yeah.
Treated like leather.
Means it came off a bag, boot, belt
or anything else reptile skin may be used for.
What about you?
I got a match.
It was this type of glove,
identical to the gloves Elliot Stanton was wearing in the photo
that made the imprint on his shirt.
And the tar and the dirt of the pattern are a match to the handball court.
But...
Anybody who's playing handball in that court
and wearing that type of glove could have pushed Ben.
It doesn't necessarily single out Elliot, right?
No, but my three victories at handball gives us something that does.
How so?
An eyewitness who saw Elliot Stanton going at it with Ben Hatfield.
Sounds like we got enough for a warrant.
You should have seen me whipping these kids' asses.
The material on the bottom of Dr. Zimmer's shoes
is identical to the earth from the roof garden.
But it could have gotten there any time.
We need something we know connects him to Stacie Avida.
The hair on the picture frame in Zimmer's
apartment is consistent with hers.
Do you have the lift of this print?
Over time, the amount of squalene
one of the oils found in fingerprints deteriorates at a steady rate.
So we measure what's remaining...
. Find out when Zimmer last handled this frame.
Print on the picture frame's over 28 days old.
It wasn't used in Stacie's murder.
So how did her hair get on the frame?
Who else has access to the doctor's apartment?
Joe Green.
He's the super. He'd have a master key.
Maybe he's trying to frame Zimmer for the murder.
I need you in Dr Zimmer's shoes because the plaster casts
I got from the suspect's footprints are about a half an inch
deeper in the heel than they were in the toe, which is odd.
I weigh about the same as the victim,
you weigh out the same as Dr. Zimmer.
Thanks. Extra weight makes it exact.
Look, you promised me drinks for this,
but I think I'm gonna need some dinner, too.
I'm not going to give you anything if you don't get going.
Make tracks, cowboy.
What do you have?
The initial tracks from the roof
are an inch shallower than the ones Danny and I just made.
The curve of the track is lighter in the toe and heavier in the heel.
I know, but what does that mean?
You said earlier that you wouldn't want to be in Craig Zimmer's shoes.
He wasn't.
There's no question these shoes made the tracks on the roof.
Worn by who?
The victim was wearing aqua-colored socks when we found her.
Why would Stacie Avida be wearing Craig Zimmer's shoes?
Eikenella corrodens.
It's also called "fight bite"
because it proves that the cut on your hand came from someone's mouth.
Someone's mouth.
As in one person in a city of eight million.
Your gloves also match the pattern we found on Ben's shirt.
Come on. Lots of gloves in the city like that one, Detective.
You're right, Counselor.
I wasn't clear.
They microscopically match.
You hit him, didn't you?
- I didn't kill him. - Don't say anything, Elliott, please.
That's all right. I can tell you what happened.
See, Ben was honing in on your turf
on Jenny.
The newest "it" girl.
And you decided to do something about it.
Detective, my client agreed to come down here
and answer some questions.
Ask them, or we're done.
Ben was a little tougher than you thought, huh, Elliott?
After he beat you the first time, you went back there,
only this time, you didn't play fair,
strangling him with a swing chain.
He was alive when I left him.
Enough from both of you.
Come on, let's go.
Mr. Garlobo, I'm curious.
Why won't you let your client talk?
It's obvious he has something to say.
Mr. Cerda retained me to protect his employee
and I intend on doing that.
Elliott does not know what's best for him.
That right, Elliott?
Let me give you a little hint.
The truth is always best.
Come on.
The answer is in here somewhere.
I grabbed all the case files from the previous deaths
in the building autopsies,
everything. I also got everything on Stacie Avida
Former residencies, work history.
Zimmer's name is mentioned in three of the cases.
Everything's connected, right?
Through evidence, not intuition.
Wait.
Hear me out.
Gina Williamson
is the girl who choked on the rooftop.
I had Hammerback pull Stacie's DNA for reference.
Gina shares one allele with Stacie at all 13 loci.
Gina was Stacie's daughter.
And she died four years ago on that roof.
Gina?! My daughter's choking! Someone call 911!
Somebody help us!
Dr. Zimmer
had two previous complaints filed against him
for practicing under the influence,
but nothing was ever proven.
He was using drugs on the day he tried to save Gina,
overcompensated, fracturing her rib which punctured her heart
and that killed her.
Stacie Avida was a natural brunette.
And she worked in publishing
until two months after her daughter's death...
When she left to become a doorwoman.
She wanted total access.
The building was haunted
by a woman who died the day her child did.
We're not going to get anything out of Elliott now that his lawyer's got him gagged.
What we do know is that the gloves and bacteria put him at the beating.
We just need to tie him to the strangulation.
You know, I was thinking, since there was sand in the Vic's eyes,
the fight in the sandbox happened at the same time as the strangulation.
And since the only thing we found in the sand was blood...
If it's a match to Elliott's reference sample...
It means we're that much closer.
No match.
Hey, Hawkes, check this out.
The blood from the sand has a 15.2 allele at D7.
That's a variant allele.
That falls outside of the range of common alleles.
It's indicative of a subpopulation.
Gets passed around through a small genetic pool
but never goes worldwide.
Which would make it ethnically specific.
Let's see if it's specific enough to catch a killer.
Found it.
A variant 15.2 at D7 locus.
Common to 90% of the people from one particular island.
Actually, half of the island.
Dominican Republic.
You know anyone from there who might like wearing reptile?
The very trendy Rico Cerda.
Purple one is supposed to make you smarter.
That's true?
Or is it all in the packaging?
I know you didn't come all the way up here to discuss energy drinks.
So, what's on your mind, detectives?
Couple of things the Yankees pitching rotation,
you murdering Ben Hatfield in the playground.
That's ridiculous. I didn't have any...
Let me tell you something about trends, Rico.
See, this is the part where you get indignant
start to deny everything,
maybe you're going to start crying, try to convince us you didn't do it.
Crocodile tears.
Crocodile like the watch band you have on.
Piece of that skin was found on an implant post
in Ben Hatfield's mouth.
Torn watch band. Doesn't prove anything.
But your blood at the crime scene does.
See, you sent a boy to do a man's job.
When Elliot couldn't close the deal,
you went and finished it.
I told you to stay out of my neighborhood.
It's not like it used to be, Rico.
You don't like that.
Couple of years ago, people were afraid to come up to Harlem.
Right? Now they're walking the streets, they're shopping,
they're taking their kids to dinner.
Your neighborhood, Washington Heights,
is prime real estate. It's attracting a yuppie crowd.
The outside world is closing in on you.
The urban divide is disappearing, man,
making guys like you obsolete.
This is my neighborhood.
My street.
My people!
I warned that kid.
I told him he didn't belong here
him and his big corporation raking in millions
off the ingenuity and style of those poor kids?
He got what he deserved.
He was trying to take what belonged to me.
What belonged to you?
You and your $3,000 suit.
You talk a really good game, Rico.
But the truth is, you sold out your neighborhood.
And your people.
She... planted the evidence?
Everything we needed to build a case against Craig Zimmer.
Best way inside the building was through you.
And when the doorman job opened up, she asked her boyfriend,
the super,
to get it for her.
She wanted to do everything she could
to keep her eye on you and your family.
Once she had it, she had total access to your life using his master key.
She used your phone, she knew about your affairs,
and over time, she learned your habits, your secrets.
She studied you.
She knew when the doctor's wife would be out of town,
when he would at the hospital.
Yesterday, she put her plan into effect.
It must have taken weeks to set up her plan months, even.
She was patient.
She knew Zimmer was a drug addict and found the morphine.
She knew if the drugs were in her system,
it would lead back to him, the only doctor in the building.
She did everything she could to set him up.
She couldn't live with the pain of mourning her daughter anymore.
She killed herself.
And she made it look like murder.
To frame you.
Thank you for clearing me.
Don't thank me too much.
I put in a call to the medical board about your obvious drug addiction.
Time to clean up.
It's ironic
she killed herself where she did.
The newspapers say that building is cursed.
Well, this time it wasn't the building's curse.
It was Stacie's.
You know what?
It doesn't matter that she used me.
I loved her.
Guess that makes me a chump, right?
No.