CSI:NY – Episode 6-4 Review

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Opening scene: a woman sitting on top of a man assumed to be her husband and stabbing him. We next see the team processing the scene and as they are doing so, Flack brings in Mrs. Carter who has just confessed to killing her husband because she found out he was cheating on her. She knows the ramifications of what she is about to do, but decides to turn herself in anyway. While Mac is with Mrs. Carter, Stella is back at the lab processing all of the evidence that has come in from the crime scene. When the DNA testing comes back from the knife used to kill Mr. Carter and it doesn’t match that of his wife, Stella calls Mac and informs him that Mrs. Carter is lying. And thus begins the spiderweb that was this episode…

Believing that she is covering for someone else, Flack and Stella put Mrs. Carter in an interrogation room where she still insists she is guilty. Stella becomes annoyed and storms out of the room. But before Flack can leave he asks Mrs. Carter if she would do it again. When she replies yes, he tells her: “No matter how okay you think you are, it will still haunt you at night.” This is the first time Flack has acknowledged the shooting of Angel’s killer. Though he doesn’t directly mention it, it is obvious that he is feeling some sort of remorse about what he did. My bet would be he would do it again, but maybe in a way that followed protocol a little more closely :)

What a great scene this next one was! This was the first chance we have gotten to see Danny actually at physical therapy. Being the tough guy that he is, I was surprised to see Danny give up so easily. For a moment, I actually began to believe that we may not see Danny walk at all this season, and that made me a little sad. Luckily, Hawkes steps up to be the great friend we always knew he was and tells Danny the truth: he isn’t trying hard enough to get better and if he doesn’t try harder he never will get better. While it seemed harsh, I think it was exactly the kick in the pants Danny needed.

Back at the lab, Hawkes continued the DNA testing on the unknown female sample found on the murder weapon. While he is unable to get a match in any of the databases, he does get a match to 21 different crime scenes in various jurisdictions. The unknown female donor is assumed to be Carter’s mistress and the woman who really killed him. Case files and evidence are sent to the crime lab from all 21 cases matching the female sample. As Lindsay goes through all of the evidence from every case, she finds WorldSend envelopes in 3 other cases – each of them laced with cocaine residue. After some more investigation, she discovers that each of those envelopes were also delivered by the same WorldSend employee, a woman by the name of Marcia Vasquez.

When Lindsay and Flack go to find Vasquez, she runs into a restaurant and grabs a knife behind the counter. Flack finds himself in a sort of standoff with her. She threatens to stab him and instead of shooting her in order to get the knife out of her hand, Flack freezes. He as flashbacks to Angel’s murder and him shooting her murderer. Completely frozen, Lindsay has to jump the suspect from behind and knock the knife out of her hand. Once again, we see the effect of what happened to Jessica surfacing more and more, and it’s beginning to affect his job more than I thought.

Back in the interrogation room, Stella begins questioning Marcia Vasquez. She shows her photos of all of the victims – 3 of which were drug dealers. The pictures of the drug dealers made Marcia severely uncomfortable, as she almost immediately turned them over. But when she saw the photos of the other victims, she seemed completely unfazed. Mac believes this means she had nothing to do with the other murders. She was obviously involved in the deaths of the drug dealers; the other ones though were unrelated.

Receiving extreme pressure from the Chief to release a press conference about the person they have named “The Phantom Killer,” Mac suddenly notices a technician using a box of evidence swabs. He tells Stella to stall the press conference as long as she can and heads to Brooklyn to the cotton factory that produces the swabs, the factory that Marcia Vasquez coincidentally used to work at. While there, he realizes that many of the technicians feeding cotton into the machines don’t wear gloves like they’re supposed to. He ultimately concludes that the evidence swabs were inadvertently contaminated by Vasquez when she fed the cotton through the machines while not wearing gloves. Chief Sinclair admits in the press conference that there never was a phantom killer and that the people of New York should not be worried.

Sleeping soundly after a long day, Lindsay awakes to the sound of Lucy on the baby monitor. She heads down the hall into the baby’s room and sees Danny standing there holding his daughter. That’s right – standing. And even walking around a little without holding onto anything. Looks like that little pep talk from Hawkes paid off!