Fit-and-Run

Fit-and-Run
Season	2
Number	14
Writer	Thomas Hoppe
Director	Jeff Thomas
Original Airdate	February 21, 2016
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Fit-and-Run is the fourteenth episode in Season Two of CSI: Cyber.

Synopsis

When a jogger's body is found, the Cyber team use the fitness tracker she was wearing at the time of the murder to retrace her steps for the entire night leading up to her death.

Plot

Near field communication (NFC) - a short-range wireless technology used to share data between two devices.

Alison Resnick is seen programming her fitness tracker and going for her nightly jog through a South Carolina park. Unbeknownst to her, someone has been monitoring her activity through the tracker. She's soon seen unconscious on the side of the road; her stalker injects her with something and puts her in the trunk of his car. Days later, Alison's body is found with her fitness tracker submerged underwater. When the microchip is removed from the tracker, Krumitz sees that it was carrying a bunch of malware on it; the assumption is that whoever wrote the malware is the killer.

Robbery is ruled out as a motive, as Alison was sporting a diamond ring on her finger the thief never grabbed. Russell notes that in addition to blunt force trauma to the head, Alison also had bruising on her lower back. Propofol, a sedative, was found in her system, and the injection site was a median vein on her left forearm. Since the killer had access to pharmaceutical-grade drugs and knew where to inject Alison to sedate her quickly, the thought is that the killer may be a doctor. As it turns out, Alison's husband, Dylan, is a veterinarian who would also have medical knowledge and access to Propofol.

Every device is recovered from the Resnick residence; curiously, it's found that Dylan's phone was off for three hours on the night of his wife's murder. Krumitz determines that spyware was uploaded onto the fitness tracker, allowing the target to track her whereabouts at all times; however, when, where, and how the malware was loaded onto the device is still a mystery. Not only did Dylan purchase the device for his wife as a Christmas present, neighbors heard the couple arguing minutes before Alison's run. The team is surprised to find that Dylan is being brought in for questioning despite the fact that there's no hard evidence against him yet.

The fitness tracker, which Alison wore all the time, recorded everything, including workout stats, medical stats, sleeping patterns, her workout schedule, and eating habits. It also houses a gyroscope that logs movement and data in real time—acceleration, speed, and direction. From this, the team can track Alison's movements on the night she was abducted. It's found that during her jog, something happened that made her heart rate spike and her pace quicken. Curiously, both the heart rate and pace increased at the exact same time. One minute later, something caused her heart rate to drop. Following this unknown event, the data the tracker was recording went haywire; the wristband was damaged, causing the gyroscope and accelerometer to go completely out of whack. Russell notes that while the data is skewed, it's still internally consistent. To make sense of the jumbled data, they need to create a baseline of known, good data. This should allow the team to decrypt the jumbled data and figure out the rest of Alison's night.

Krumitz wears two fitness bands—Alison's and a brand new one—to establish a baseline. The two bands record wildly different movement; since the gyroscope and accelerometer are busted, Krumitz tells Avery that it will take time to use the good data to decode the bad. While parts of the fitness band are damaged, the internal clock had no movable parts and is still functioning properly. Based on the fact that the band stopped recording movement at 11:38 PM, it's assumed that Alison was attacked, murdered, and dumped before then. Everything lines up with the time Dylan's phone was off, and Nelson finds that the Internet activity in the Resnick's house shows that someone came home after the murder. From the data, it appears Dylan is the one responsible, contradicting the statement he gave the police.

Under interrogation, Dylan continues to deny having any involvement in his wife's death. Avery and Russell inform him about the Internet activity and the fact that he was heard fighting with Alison before she left for her jog. Dylan claims that when Alison didn't come home, he searched her route and went into the woods to look for her on foot. He charged his phone upon returning home; it had shut off due to having a dead battery. Avery once again tells Dylan that he's lying, for the shoes he's wearing are equipped with a built-in smart chip that logs data, including step count activity. When he plugged in his cell phone to charge it, the chip in his shoe paired with the phone over Bluetooth, then pushed the data to an app on the phone.

An analysis of Dylan's phone shows that for an hour on the night of Alison's death, he had no step count. He relents and admits that he went to visit his ex-girlfriend for relationship advice. Dylan swears that he's not having an affair and that he didn't tell the cops about this because it would make him look guilty. He adds that he loved his wife and would never hurt her.

Another jogger is seen jogging on a dark road. Suddenly, he's struck by car, breaking his leg. The driver exits the vehicle, approaches the jogger, and injects him in the leg with something (likely Propofol). During the ordeal, the driver continuously apologizes and says that he "has no choice." He puts the jogger in the trunk of his car, just like he did with Alison.

Krumitz is able to decrypt the data from Alison's fitness tracker. Her movements show the point where she stopped jogging and was transported in a car for the first time. She was at the second location for 94 minutes, which is when her heart stopped beating. Another part of the data shows the spot where she was transported to after death, which is where her body was found five days later. Krumitz sends Elijah the GPS coordinates of the place where Alison was held before being transported a second time.

Elijah and his SWAT team storm a warehouse and find the body of the second jogger hooked up to medical machines. The jogger, Ron Bechtel, is startled awake, and he later tells Russell about being hit by the car and the driver being apologetic for his actions. Since bruising was found on Alison's legs and lower back, it's determined that she was also hit by a car. This would explain the spike in her heart rate; she was trying to outrun her abductor.

It seems that the target is using the fitness trackers to profile, stalk, and kidnap people in top physical shape. The surgical tools, blood bags, and cooler in the room suggest that the target is harvesting organs. Since none of Alison's organs were taken, even post-mortem, the thought is that they were too damaged from the impact of the car to be of any use. Therefore, the harvester is being selective about which organs he's chopping out to sell.

In a secluded parking garage, the driver of the car (identified as Keith) meets with another man (identified as Richard). Keith informs Richard that their "O.R." was raided by the Feds and that they need to stop what they're doing. Richard, however, tells Keith that they're "running out of time" and that they "don't have a choice." Keith is instructed to find another victim and bring them in for harvesting.

Krumitz finds that the malware was dropped onto Ron's fitness tracker two weeks ago using a near field communicator (NFC), such as Bluetooth. This means the target had to have been within 100 feet. Ron's location at that precise moment was at a 10k race in Rockland, South Carolina—the same as Alison. The target used the race as a hunting ground, likely waiting along the race route and forcing malware onto any fitness tracker that went past. Anybody who was wearing a fitness tracker could be the next victim.

Since both victims were wearing a fitness tracker when they were hit by the car, Krumitz and Nelson figure the tracker would show an odd sequence of metrics at the moment of impact. Sure enough, both Alison and Ron experienced identical increases in heart rates followed by a sudden stoppage in activity when they were struck by the car—Nelson compares this to finding the same fingerprint at two crime scenes. Krumitz puts a flag on the fitness network, which will alert them if someone else wearing the tracker experiences the same anomaly.

Avery believes that something isn't adding up. While there are organ harvesting sites on the Deep Web that bring in millions of dollars every year, the target appears to be very selective when it comes to the victims. Organ harvesters don't care about quality; however, in this case, the target is only going after people in the best physical shape. Furthermore, it's found that Alison and Ron have the same blood type (B-positive), while organ harvesters don't care about blood type. Avery believes that their target isn't looking to make a profit, they're doing this for personal reasons.

Krumitz gets a hit on the fitness tracker database, informing him that a third victim, Karen Carter, has been taken. Elijah and his SWAT team receive the GPS coordinates from the tracker and pull over a civilian driving a pick-up truck. When Elijah lifts a tarp in the bed of the truck, Karen's cell phone and fitness tracker are found. He relays to Avery that the target knows they're onto him and sent the team on a wild goose chase.

Keith is seen opening the trunk of his car, revealing Karen to be inside. As she begs for her life, Keith ensures her that he's not doing it for money, he's doing it to save his wife. He injects Karen with Propofol and tells her that he "needs her." In a makeshift hospital, Keith tells Richard that maybe they should hold off on their plan, hoping the network will come through. They're alerted to Keith's wife Sarah waking up. Sarah tells Keith and Richard (revealed to be her father) that they need to let her go, as she has given up trying to fight the disease she has.

While the malware on the fitness bands is a custom script, it leads the team to a dead end. Analysis of Karen's tracker shows the same anomaly as the other two victims—increased heart rate followed by a sudden stoppage in activity. This is able to provide the team with the exact time Karen was hit, and the tracker's GPS gives them the exact location.

Avery notes that while the first two victims were abducted at night, Karen was taken in broad daylight. Based on this, she believes the target is on a clock, likely because the organ's recipient is nearing death. Elijah points out that the recipient has likely been sick for a long time; if so, they would've registered with the National Organ Recipient Database (NORD). It's quite possible the recipient is on that list.

A search of Karen's phone reveals that she has a jogging app that's still running. The app connects over Bluetooth to the built-in chip in the user's sneakers, which means she was wearing those shoes when she was abducted. Unfortunately, her location can't be tracked because smart sneakers don't have GPS. The only way the sneakers can dump data is if they're paired with her nearby phone, which is in FBI custody.

Elijah learns that about a month ago, someone attempted to hack into the NORD system. Rather than having a waiting list, the system uses an algorithm that pairs donors with recipients based on body size, blood type, and geographic location; this is what the hacker was trying to manipulate. While an untraceable spoof IP address was used, Avery guesses that this was the work of Alison's killer—plan A was to hack into the system, while plan B was resorting to abduction. It's determined that based on the algorithm, the hacker was trying to adjust the system to find a kidney donor.

Krumitz, Nelson and Raven access NORD, finding that over 100,000 people on the list are waiting for a kidney transplant. The list is narrowed down based on blood type (B-positive) and state (South Carolina). Based on the fact that the target is getting desperate, the list is sorted by duration; over 800 people have been on the list or over five years. It turns out that 20 people have been flagged as ineligible for a transplant, and only three of them are still alive—one of those three is Sarah Walker. A search of Sarah's FriendAgenda page shows that she was diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease. Her husband is a computer programmer, while her father is a surgeon. From this, the team knows they've found the right person.

Richard is shown prepping Karen for surgery. The team doesn't know where Karen may be, as her phone is off and there's been no recent social media activity. Since the first operating room was raided, Avery believes Keith and Richard would've set up shop at another hospital within a 100-mile radius. Elijah realizes that everyone in the NORD system is given a cell phone, which will alert them as soon as an organ becomes available. The assumption is that she still has the phone on her, and the number is pulled from the NORD data bank.

While the phone provides the team with a location, Avery wants them to be 100% sure before they're sent on another wild goose chase. Krumitz comes up with the idea to track Karen by her running shoes. Knowing that the shoes pair with an app, they can push the app to Sarah's NORD phone, hoping to trick the phone into pairing the shoes and providing an exact location. The plan works, as Sarah's phone is tracked to an outpatient clinic in Charleston. Elijah and his SWAT team arrive at the clinic and arrest Keith and Richard. However, Richard informs Elijah that they're too late—the operation has already been performed. Both Karen and Sarah are alive.

Outside, Keith tries telling Elijah that he had no choice. He asks to be made aware when his wife's condition improves, but a disgusted Elijah simply shoves Keith into the back of a squad car. Russell informs Karen that she's safe now, but he has some news to give her. Richard tells Avery that there are no other victims and that he has no regrets for what he's done because Sarah is going to live. When Alison's name is mentioned, Richard says her death was an accident and that they never intended to kill her. Avery informs him that Alison was someone's daughter, too. "It was worth it," Richard replies before being taken away in handcuffs.

Dylan Resnick is released from custody, while Russell reveals that Karen's main concern was Sarah's well-being instead of her own. "Sometimes humanity surprises me," he tells Avery.

Cast

Main Cast

• Patricia Arquette as Avery Ryan
• James Van Der Beek as Elijah Mundo
• Charley Koontz as Daniel Krumitz
• Shad Moss as Brody Nelson
• Hayley Kiyoko as Raven Ramirez
• Ted Danson as D.B. Russell

Guest Cast

• Alan Dale as Richard Margolin
• David Clayton Rogers as Dylan Resnick
• Riley Smith as Keith Walker
• Adi Ben-Ami as Sarah Walker
• Tiffany Daniels as Karen Carter
• Dennis W. Hall as Truck Driver
• Caroline Lagerfelt as Elizabeth Turner
• James Adam Lim as Ron Bechtel
• Dylan Thiffault as Barry

Goofs

• When Dylan Resnick is released from custody at the end of the episode, the news channel broadcasts his last name as "Reznick."

See Also

• List of CSI: Cyber episodes
• CSI:Cyber Season 2
• Category:Images from Fit-and-Run