CSI:New York

Season 2 - Episode 12 - Wasted

Written by Bill Haynes and Pam Veasey
Directed by Jeff Thomas

It’s winter in the city, but springtime on the fashion scene… NYC’s Fashion Week is in full swing. The hottest show this season has the models wearing nothing but body paint-- and when one of the painted models dead on the runway, Mac, Hawkes and Danny are called to investigate the suspicious death. At first glance it appears that she may have collapsed from the traditional model’s diet of caffeine and nicotine. But there’s no history of drug use. Did somebody in the catty catwalk world want her dead? When yet another painted model is found felled, our CSIs look to find the link. Autopsy of the first model reveals evidence of ecstasy in her lungs. Did she smoke ecstasy? No, she inhaled it-- from the fumes of the paint she was wearing. The body paint had been spiked with Ecstasy. As our CSIs fit the sequence of events together they realize that the first model died from the paint, the other for the paint -- she didn’t overdose, but she caught a drug smuggler trying to reclaim his multi-million dollar paint. Weather forensics and unusual trace found on second model’s give Mac all the clues he needs to find the killer and take down an international drug smuggling ring.

A pale and shaking man comes into the NYPD and drops a gun on the table in front of Det. Flack, claiming to have just killed a woman and left her body in an alley. Lindsay and Stella quickly go to investigate. As promised, they find the body and an extra surprise: something wriggling under the vic’s shirt. What is that? The dead body is entirely covered in leeches! The investigation takes a bizarre turn when our CSIs learn that the victim was an alternative healer who used leeches in her practice. Motive seems clear: she promised she would cure the supposed killer of his terminal blood disorder. Instead she bankrupted his family and his health continued to deteriorate. Dissections of the leeches found on the scene prove that the man did have contact with the victim prior to her death and the case appears to be open and shut. However, magnetized bullets pulled from the vic’s chest point the case towards a disgruntled nurse. But the case twists yet again when our CSIs discover a locket on the healer’s body that was not her own. And when Lindsay ages the picture found inside the locket, Stella realizes the man who claimed to be the killer was covering up for someone he loved more than life itself.