CSI:New York

Season 2 - Episode 5 - Dancing with the Fishes

Written by Eli Talbert
Directed by John Peters

As high-energy music pumps, we open on two motorcycles cranking down 1st Ave. Narrowly escaping collisions passing a MERCEDES CLS500. Inside the car, a young couple, dressed to impress. As they emerge from under the 59th St. overpass, Whap! A woman crashes into their windshield. On the scene, Mac and Stella assume the body came from Queensboro Bridge above. No purse. NY State Non-Driver ID card gives us her name, but that’s all we know. At first blush, all indications point to suicide. But Mac notices fresh defense wounds on the victim’s arms. She may have fallen from the bridge, but she didn’t jump on her own. She fought with someone. This isn’t a suicide. It’s a murder. Autopsy reveals that the defense wounds on Beth’s arms came from a knife, and glass imbedded in her feet directs us towards a more complete identity: she’s one of the hottest dancers in Manhattan. Mysterious trace is swabbed from under her nails and points our CSIs towards a more complete picture of what actually happened: the victim didn’t fall from a bridge, she was pushed from the Roosevelt Tram. But why? Was it another competitive dancer who no longer wanted the competition? Or a salacious choreographer who wanted more from the victim than just her dancing? Or was it fact that the victim was carrying a winning lottery ticket worth 17 million dollars? In a tragic twist, the CSIs learn that the girl in fact wasn’t the intended victim, but rather collateral damage in a seemingly unrelated murder on the tram that had happened the same night.

In an alley in the Bronx, Danny and Hawkes stand over a horrifically odiferous corpse. A dump job with a distinctly fishy smell and a very unusual shaped wound tract through his chest. What could have possibly made such a wound? To find the answer, our CSIs track the victim, a fishmonger, to the Fulton Fish Market. As clues are uncovered and science adds context to the evidence, the trail leads from the bustling fish market to the underbelly of the high-end restaurant industry. And although fishing has always been about making the most money for your catch, the motive for Fred’s murder reveals itself to be much more emotional: he was killed for providing his young son an academic head start; only to learn in a city where status is everything, getting your child into the right school can be murder.