CSI:New York

Season 3 - Episode 17 - The Ride-In

Written by Peter M. Lenkov
Directed by Steven DePaul

Mac, Danny and Flack are called to a dilapidated home in Rockaway beach where they find a male gunshot victim partially buried upon a large bed of cash. The home is covered in sawdust and religious graffiti covers the walls. When the CSIs go into the backyard they find a large ark built from wood. Inside the ark are four couples who state that the end of the world is fast approaching. They tell Mac that they donated $100,000 to the ark’s construction. Back in the house, Mac hears a few threatening messages from an angry woman who wanted her money back. Flack confirms that the people in the ark are negative for gunshot residue. Sid confirms that a pair of work boots caused the treads in the back yard. Flack tells Mac that the victim’s real name is Patrick Dent, a conman with a long list of aliases and an even longer rap sheet. Meanwhile, the team finds the angry woman who left the messages. She swears that she didn’t kill him and that she was just looking for the conman and his partner Melissa Clarke. Back at the lab, Mac realizes that the money the victim was lying on was counterfeited by a Jim Eastman who said he hid a bunch of his money in a car he abandoned. The team wonders whether one of the people who’d he conned in his past killed him or if it was his partner.

Across town, Stella and Hawkes find a man dead inside a cigarette costume. A witness states that the man was lit on fire and suffocated from smoke. Stella notes that there is melted plastic on the victim’s suit and a trail that leads to the crime scene, which is in front of the National Spirit Tobacco Company. Meanwhile, Stella processes the victim’s belongings which include a can of hairspray, empty gym bag, and a flyer for a monster-themed eatery called Bloody Mary’s. Hawkes also finds a green cigarette amongst his belongings. Back at the lab, Sid confirms that the victim had a severe case of emphysema. Flack notes that an employee that worked at a hookah store spit on the victim. Damon, the hookah store employee swears that he spit on the victim because he was harassing him for smoking, but didn’t come close to killing him. Stella heads to the tobacco company where she meets with the spokesperson who says the green cigarette she found was still in the testing phase and that basically it would have 92% less tobacco than regular cigarettes. When exiting, Stella sees the victim’s distraught wife who says he used to work there which she finds strange as the spokesperson said he didn’t know him. Stella questions whether or not the tobacco company could have knocked off their victim solely because he might be in on a scam that the company would like to keep secret.