White Gold | |
Season | 9 |
Number | 14 |
Writer | David Hoselton |
Director | Alex Zakrzewski |
Original Airdate | February 1, 2013 |
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Previous Episode: Nine Thirteen | |
Next Episode: Seth and Apep |
White Gold is the fourteenth episode in Season Nine of CSI: NY.
Synopsis[]
When a young pizza maker is carjacked, the CSIs must determine what the perpetrators were really after.
Plot[]
When two animal rights activists are doing graffiti as a sign of protest, they heard a loud noise of car crash soon after two cars pass through them. Soon after, several gunshots were heard. When they go out to see what happened, they saw both cars leaving the scene, with a young man is shot dead. Flack and Lovato are the first responding detectives to the scene.
While getting off their car, Jo complains to Mac about the winter weather in New York. What they got from the detectives is little: The victim is a white male in his 20s, being shot twice in his chest. No ID and personal belongings were found. The witnesses only see the cars involved: a BMW and a beige van. From the limited information they have, the CSIs suggest there are two people are involved for the crime, the hit-and-run with gunshot fired looks like a carjacking going badly. But there's a lot of work to do to define what really happened.
Lindsay and Adam joins the team to process the scene, which they collect some kind of fragments, recording skid marks on the road and collects a blood sample from the victim. In the morgue, Sid examined the victim's body but he cannot get his identity after running his fingerprints through AFIS. The COD is the massive and speedy loss of blood after being shot twice, which suggests close contact. Substance found in the victim's nose is turned out to be flour. But Sid get a major discovery inside the victim's body: His gallbladder is missing, that suggest he underwent a laparoscopic surgery, it is a rare situation to his age, and not many patients in New York underwent such surgery in the previous year. It will be a good lead to confirm who the victim is.
Adam tries to reconstruct what happened by a simulation software, equipped with Lindsay's information on the year and model of BMW involved in the crime after she runs through the microdots from the fragments, which found to be a taillight.
There are only 17 male patients in their 20s have lost their gallbladder last year, after reviewing the data of these patients, Danny finds only one person match the physical description of the victim: Paul Tortucci, who is living above his uncle's pizzeria.
When Mac and Danny visited the pizzeria and tell Ray, the victim's uncle, about the news of his nephew's death. The CSIs learned that Paul lost his parents when he was nine years old. Since then, he lived and worked with his uncle together which they successfully overcome a hardship, and everything is going to get better and better until Paul is murdered. What is more, Ray provides some information that overruled their initial theory about what happened: Paul is driving the van instead of BMW as they originally thinks. However, they are still puzzled on how and why Paul was shot?
Flack and Lovato visit the owner of the BMW based on the DMV record, but they soon realize she cannot be involved in the crime: Not only she claims her car was stolen three days prior to the crime, but also, her right leg is injured that is impossible for her to drive a car. Adam's reconstruction comes out an odd situation: The BMW pass the van and make a hard braking after doing so, which makes the van collided with the BMW, which suggest the van is the actual target in the carjacking.
Later, patrol officers located both the BMW and the van, with the victim's wallet and passport, which suggest the victim is on his way leaving the States. What is more, his passport stamps showing the victims is visiting Canada frequently. When having an initial examination on both cars, they found the inequality of impact marks between the BMW and the van, and a hidden compartment was found inside the van.
Danny and Hawkes make further examination on both cars. Danny retrieved some trace from the van's hidden compartment, with Hawkes find signs of hot wiring on the BMW with blood trace on the wires, and retrieved some sort of metal pellets on the passenger mat.
Meanwhile, Adam runs another simulation and find out the van is carrying some 500 pounds of extra weight when the collision happened. Then Danny comes with the analysis result from the trace retrieved from the van is positive to P.E.A, which suggest the victim may be involved in drug smuggling. That is enough for the CSIs to ask for a warrant to search Paul's apartment.
On initial inspecting Paul's apartment, they cannot find anything to link Paul to any kinds of crime. Then Ray comes in and he is surprised to see Mac and Jo are in his nephew's place. While Mac tells Ray that his nephew may involve in smuggling which also caused him killed, Ray denies to accept what he heard, only claiming Paul visit Canada for snowboarding. However, Ray is shocked when Jo discovered a large amount of cash is hidden inside the vent.
Hawkes find out the metal pellets collect from the BMW are castings from an oxyacetylene torch, which suggest one of the carjackers is possibly working as a welder. With gunshot residue was found outside the driver's door from the BMW, which suggest the driver is responsible for the shooting. And the DNA analysis result for the blood trace found from the wires linked to Reno Martell who had criminal records in auto theft and assault with a deadly weapon.
Detectives storms Reno's apartment and found nobody inside, but many white bricks were left behind. Flack suppose these are drugs, but Danny gives him a shocking truth: These white bricks are actually mozzarella cheese, which he jokes they "just made the largest cheese bust in NYPD history".
Hawkes joins to examine Reno's apartment and they make sense on why they found drug trace on the van because cheese contains a small amount of P.E.A. But they are still puzzled: If Paul was trying to con someone? If the doers realize they were conned, why they still take away all the cheese? Then Hawkes spots some part of the floor look cleaner than the rest, trace of blood was found that suggest someone is either wounded or killed in this place.
When Mac and Jo visits Ray's pizzeria again, Ray tells them some Canadians asked him to help smuggling cheese to Canada few years ago, saying he can earn a profit of four dollars each pound they smuggled out, which Ray called as "White Gold". However, Ray found no interest into it and forgot about it after dismissing these guys. Upon Paul's death, Ray decided to check the pizzeria's books, which was handled by Paul before, and he finds something unusual: Paul increased the order of mozzarella cheese by more than three times in five months' time, with all the delivery are made after 6pm few days before Paul's visit to Canada, that Ray cannot spotted because his duty was taken over by Paul after 6pm everyday. Besides, Ray found his nephew is putting money into the pizzeria's account over the last five months. It makes Ray realize why his nephew decided to smuggle cheese: to make a good deed to his uncle.
But Mac and Jo still don't understand why the perps made a such violent act to take something that only worth a few thousand dollars? Mac may have the answer when he sees one of Ray's worker is cutting mozzarella: The perps may mistakenly thought these white bricks are drugs when they saw Paul load the mozzarella, wrapped like as cocaine, to the van at the pizzeria's parking lot in the evenings. Then Mac spots there is a auto repair workshop nearby Ray's pizzeria. When interviewing the repairer who is working inside, he claims he done nothing to Paul's murder with providing an alibi at the time when the murder happened. And after some discussion, the repairer allows the CSIs to look around the workshop.
When looking around at the workshop, Jo found metal pellets which are similar to those found in the BMW before, and Mac found lots of cigarette butts on the floor near the back door, which provides a clear view to the pizzeria's parking lot. They learned a welder called Felipe Zacharias is the smoker, and he is not showing at work today.
The following day, detectives gets nothing about Felipe's whereabouts, with the worker's alibi checked out, they realize Felipe and Reno worked as a pair to rob Paul. And Jo find a match of DNA between the sample from the cigarette butt collected from the workshop and the blood trace from Reno's apartment, the CSIs has a theory that Felipe may be the one who is being attacked in Reno's place, until they receive the call from Flack that Felipe's body is found at a dumpster.
Upon checking the body temperature, the CSI suggest Felipe was dead for between 24 and 36 hours until he was found. When making an initial examination on Felipe's body, Hawkes found two deep stab wounds on the chest, and defensive wounds on his both wrists, then Flack spots a matchbook on Felipe's shirt. It belongs to a pub called Blue Moon Room.
Flack and Lovato goes to the pub which they heard Reno is a frequent visitor of the pub, so they decide to wait if Reno is coming again. Their time paid off when Reno comes to the pub as usual, the detectives moves in, attempting to arrest Reno. Unsurprisingly, Reno is not willing to give up without a struggle. When Reno grab a beer bottle in an attempt to hit Lovato, Flack put a stop on him just in time.
Being interrogated at the precinct, Reno initially blamed Felipe is responsible to Paul's murder, and Felipe attempted to attack him once they realize the truth, Reno had no choice but killing him. But when Mac and Jo takes over, with the evidence they gathered from the investigation, that can place Reno responsible for Paul and Felipe's murder, he got mad and make a confession.
When Mac tells Ray they arrested Paul's murderer, he also returns a photo of a young Tortucci which Danny found in Paul's van, and commends Ray's effort to transform Paul to a good, hardworking young man. Ray turns emotional and recalling what happened to Paul when he was young. Finally, Ray thanks Mac for his effort to bring Paul's murderer to justice, with Mac start to bite the slice of pizza he ordered.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Gary Sinise as Mac Taylor
- Sela Ward as Jo Danville
- Carmine Giovinazzo as Danny Messer
- Hill Harper as Sheldon Hawkes
- Eddie Cahill as Don Flack
- Anna Belknap as Lindsay Messer
- AJ Buckley as Adam Ross
- Robert Joy as Sid Hammerback
Guest Cast[]
- Natalie Martinez as Jamie Lovato
- Myk Watford as Reno Martell
- Sam Situmorang as Felipe Zacharias
- Kanin Howell as Paul Tortucci
- Daniel Roebuck as Ray Tortucci
- Teo Olivares as Noah
- Shayla Beesley as Abby
- Chasty Ballesteros as Rowena Black
- Leif Gantvoort as George
- Julie McKinnon as A/V Lab Tech
- Christopher Warren as Jonas Stark
Trivia[]
- Daniel Roebuck (Ray Tortucci) is better known as Cliff Lewis on Matlock.
See Also[]
CSI:NY Season 9 | ||
Reignited • Where There's Smoke... • 2,918 Miles • Unspoken • Misconceptions • The Lady in the Lake • Clue: SI • Late Admissions • Blood Out • The Real McCoy • Command+P • Civilized Lies • Nine Thirteen • White Gold • Seth and Apep • Blood Actually • Today is Life |