CSI:New York

Season 4 - Episode 9 - One Wedding and A Funeral

Written by Barbie Kligman
Directed by Rob Bailey
Guest Stars: AJ Buckley as "Adam Ross" and Robert Joy as "Dr. Sind Hammerback"

As a high-class wedding in Central Park erupts into a bitter battle between the families, the bride finds her groom, Brett Dohn, dead in his tent. The CSIs find little blood at the scene, so they assume that Brett was killed elsewhere and then taken to the park. Dr. Hawkes finds that the groom had been wrapped in bubble wrap. Later, he finds a wound in Brett’s stomach that has a cell phone and packing peanuts in it. They also notice a yellow smudge on his shoe. Later, they find out that it is yellow paint from a recently painted curb. The curb was painted at 6 AM, but Sid puts the victim’s time of death around 2 AM. This leads them to believe that someone had switched shoes with the victim after moving his body.

Meanwhile, Stella finds a package awaiting her on the hood of her car as she leaves court. Inside the box are puzzle pieces, some of which have dried blood spatter on them. Adam, Lindsay and Stella work on putting together the puzzle. After much trouble, they finally succeed and find out that it is half of a 3D puzzle of Manhattan. They also find a rock inside the box, and notice that a piece is missing. They identify the building that this piece should represent, and go there.  Once at the building, Stella finds another package, a satchel and a crudely drawn chalk outline of a body. Inside the box is the other half of the puzzle, again with a piece missing. When they try to find the building that the second missing piece would represent, they find that the building had been demolished.

Det. Flack and Dr. Hawkes go to Brett’s penthouse and find a bloodstain that was partially cleaned up, packing peanuts and some opened wedding gifts. They identify this as the location of the murder. Mac and Danny also find silver leaf on Brett’s corpse, which leads them to the caterer of the wedding, Timothy Maxwell. Timothy says that he and Brett had been friends in college and that Brett was doing him a favor by letting him cater his wedding as it would help to boost his business. The CSIs aren’t convinced of his innocence. Later, one of Brett’s groomsmen, George Foodim, admits to finding Brett already dead, then dressing him for the wedding and taking him to the park. George had a $100,000 bet going on whether or not Brett would make it to the wedding, and he didn’t want to lose. But he has no knowledge of the actual murder. 

 When Mac looks at the puzzle, he notices that the first building with the missing piece was his first crime, and the second building missing a piece was his first apartment in New York. He realizes that the puzzle is about his life. Mac then explains his “333 caller” to the team. The DNA from a bloody t-shirt the Mac had previously found and the DNA from the blood on the puzzle match enough to make the victims brothers. Mac and Stella later go to the rooftop of the Chrysler Building, another significant building from his past, and find a third package. That package has pieces from a different puzzle in it. Mac figures out that the new puzzle is of the Tribune Tower in Chicago, where he grew up. Mac travels to the Tribune Tower where he receives another phone call from the 333 caller.

 Danny discovers that a spatula killed Brett, and Adam finds bubble solution on the Brett’s pants. This leads them back to Timothy, whose son had been blowing bubbles when they interviewed him. Timothy had become fed up with Brett taking advantage of him, and when Brett had called him and he had to leave his son’s birthday party, he snapped and killed him, then shoved his cell phone into the wound because that had been Brett’s means for tormenting Timothy.