CSI:New York

Season 1 - Episode 2 - Creatures of the Night

Written by Pam Veasey
Directed by Tim Hunter

Detectives Stella Bonasera and Danny Messer investigate the brutal rape of a young girl, Robin Prescott, who was attacked while walking through Central Park at night, leaving her with no recollection of what happened.
In the trace lab, Danny processes the victims clothing to try to determine the location of the crime scene somewhere in the 800 acres of Central Park. A leaf lifted from Prescott’s nylons proves to be from a peony. The flowers are planted in two specific locations in the park, along with other trace organic materials also discovered on the victims clothing, the CSIs are able to find the general area of the crime scene, north of Strawberry Fields, west of the Ramble.

At the scene of the crime, Bonasera bags a set of keys, Robin’s wallet and a takeout container with an entire steak in it. She locates two sets of men’s booted prints in association with Robin’s missing shoe. From their state it is clear that a struggle took place. The impressions are deep, indicating that the men involved were large. Blood on the trunk of a nearby tree marks the place where Robin’s head was slammed. Nearby is what looks to be a bloodied earring.

Back at the lab, Stella and Danny process the takeout container found at the scene. They discover the steak is covered with coffee beans, a speciality of Ramon’s Steakhouse, a four star restaurant. They determine the container must belong to an employee as opposed to a “takeout order” due to the lack of trimmings and presentation.

At Ramon’s Detective and Stella encounter Donovan Tracy, 17, from whose nose a ring has recently been ripped. Under questioning, he claims that Robin was passed out when he found her. He was in the process of stealing her handbag when she came to, frightening him. Her bracelet caught on his nose ring, tearing it out.

Dr. Giles informs Stella the DNA analysis from semen removed from the victim reveals there is not enough DNA in the sample to conduct analysis and the perpetrator is azoospermic, either as a result of a vasectomy or of a medical condition.

Back in the lab, Danny processes trace powder taken from Robin’s dress and finds the presence of linolenic acid, which is found in fish, pumpkin seeds and linseeds is also found in walnuts, the dust of which is used to clean statues. On checking the park schedule, a four-man work crew was cleaning statues in the park on the day of Robin’s rape; they were working in an area far removed from where the rape took place, meaning that Robin herself did not carry the dust with her. Semen samples taken from this crew are all normal, indicating that none of the four raped Robin.

Stella returns to the park where the four-man crew was cleaning the statues. She realizes that the perpetrator was perhaps a city gardener who planted flowers at the feet of the statues that were being worked on. One of them, Billy Rendish, claims he was at work at a remote part of the park and had nothing to do with Robin’s rape. He does, however, provide an azoospermic sperm sample, although this would not be enough to convince a judge of his guilt.

Stella convinces Prescott to try to identify her attacker in a lineup but when Robin doesn’t show, Stella goes back to the evidence and matches tree sap in the shape of a check mark on Robin’s panties to a mirror image tree sap stain on Rendish’s jeans, proving his guilt.
Meanwhile, Detectives Mac Taylor and Aiden Burn investigate the murder of Jordy Thompkins, a drug dealer and addict, who was shot in the abdomen. There is no indication of an exit wound and there are no casings nearby. The victim’s gums are blackened, the teeth abraded, the eyelashes singed, and the hands are burned. This evidence indicates that Thompkins used crack cocaine.
Mac notes that the entry wound is larger than usual, but there is no stellate tearing or powder burns, ruling out a contact wound. Blood spatter beneath the point of entry is inconsistent with gunshot trauma. Tissue surrounding the wound is uneven and the fabric fibers are frayed outwards. It appears that something exited Thompkin’s body through the entry wound.

Dr. Hawkes finds that Thompkins’ bullet wound entered three inches right of the saggital plane. The wound track is left to right and slightly downward. The bullet struck the liver and breeched the inferior vena cava. The victim bled to death. However, there is no bullet in the body. Further, what the CSI’s first took for track marks on the victim’s ankles turns out to be puncture marks left by small, central lateral incisors. There are both postmortem and ante mortem bites. The gunshot wound itself was also eaten away at. The body is, upon closer examination, covered with tiny bloody tracks of at least 20 rats. It is likely that one of the creatures took the bullet out of the body.

Mac and Aiden return to the alley where Thompkin’s was murdered. They follow a trail of rat hair and excrement to a deli market, where Aiden uses a thermo alloy analyzer “gun” to locate the rat that ate the bullet from Thompkin’s body. They find the now dead rat with the bullet inside its stomach. Mac performs a “ratopsy” to remove the bullet. Mac and Aiden attempt to distinguish the ridges on the bullet caused by the rat’s incisors from the stria made from the barrel of the gun.

The bullet stria gets a hit in IBIS matching a gun used in a deli robbery one hour before Thompkins was shot. Video surveillance leads them to drug user, Calvin Montgomery, who robbed the deli to buy drugs from Thompkins. When Montgomery found out he did not have sufficient funds, he shot and killed the Thompkins and took the drugs.

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