CSI:New York

Season 2 - Episode 10 - Jamalot

Written by Andrew Lipsitz
Directed by Jonathan Glassner

We open on what appears to be gorgeous woman prepping for a night out – cherry lipstick, creamy base and black fishnets – and one final, incongruous touch: a bicycle crash helmet. All this leads us to the roller derby – featuring the hottest team in NYC: the “Manhattan Mayhem.” As the young beauties go round-and-round the intensity level rises to the point where a catfight erupts, and the Mayhem’s star player, Rambling Rose, ends up dead. Initial cause of death at the scene appears to be blunt force trauma to her face. Was it a skate to the head? A deeper investigation at autopsy reveals a gruesome discovery: Rose cooked to death – from the inside out. Her organs resemble butter left out in the sun. As Mac and Stella investigate they realize that both cream our victim used for her sore and shapely legs and the locker room shampoo had been spiked with DNP, a drug used for weight loss with the unfortunate side effect of melting one’s internal organs. As we learn about our victim, a former ugly duckling turned into a swan, we learn about her potential killers: her lover and coach, a “has been” who wants to hitch his wagon to Rose’s rising star, her fellow embittered derby queens whose burning desire to be the “breakout star” may have resulted in murder. Ultimately, the evidence leads us back to the team owner, a former wrestler and a man intent on selling his “girls” no matter what the cost. But in a final twist, our CSIs determine that it wasn’t the owner, but rather someone else whose dreams and livelihood are even more enmeshed in the “Mayhem” than anybody would have ever known.

Danny and Hawkes discover a body-dump found rolled in an expensive oriental rug tells a story; literally. Faint blue marks on the body ultimately show that the vic’s entire body was written on with blue ink. The investigation leads us into the world of hypographia, a compulsion that renders a person unable to stop writing. Infrared light and careful examination reveals that the writing on the body is actually a story—evidently written by the killer. A missing person report ID’s our victim and illuminates his chosen profession: a struggling writer. A visit with the victim’s editor reveals an even more amazing development: the writing on the victim’s body is actually the last chapter of his own unpublished novel. How is this possible? Our CSI dig deeper into the connection between the vic and his sexy editor and they find answer is right in front of their faces, and all it takes to reveal the killer and his motive is a simple UV light.