CSI: NY

Tonight's episode opens with Kid Rock playing a big concert in the city. The camera focuses on a young woman in the crowd as her cell phone rings. She leaves the concert area to escape the noise and makes her way backstage. She goes outside and asks around for Molly, but she's nowhere to be seen. Instead, the woman comes across a car with a man in the driver's seat. She screams when she realizes the driver is dead.



After the credits, we see Mac, Lindsay, and Flack come up to the car. Mac identifies the driver as Nick Russo from Staten Island thanks to the man's drivers license. They rule out robbery because his wallet still has $200 or so in it. They begin dusting for fingerprints and notice a gun, but there's minimal blood splatter in the car. One of them pushes a button on the door and it raises the dividing window to the limo. It's then that they see a great deal of blood, which leads Mac to think the killer likely got hit with some of it as well. Mac notices something sticking out of Nick's waistband and then photographs it. He pulls it out and it turns out to be a Harry Belafonte Greatest Hits CD which someone had made on their own (burned CD). One odd thing about the CD is the fact that it's severely scratched.



Backstage, Mac and Lindsay talks to one of the managers about the driver. She says he wasn't a regular driver of theirs. The manager has to leave, so Mac and Lindsay make their way over to Kid Rock, who's trying to get rid of a fan who wants to talk to him in private. As security is taking him away, he mentions something about someone ripping off a song. Anyway, when Kid Rock comments on the driver being killed, he doesn't seem too sad about it. He's more concerned with the fact that he has to wait for another ride to take him back to his hotel. Kid Rock is then approached by a woman who is looking for an autograph, and he agrees to autograph her backstage pass. She then hands him a CD and tells him that it's going to be huge. Mac notices the cigar Kid Rock is smoking is identical to the one found in the limo. Before Mac and Lindsay leave, they ask Kid if he's going to be in town much longer. Kid responds by saying he'll be here for a few more days; he's got three more shows to do.



Back outside, Mac is walking to his car when he hears a dispatch call out for assistance. An officer may be involved in a shooting. We soon cut to Mac and other officers entering an apartment and they find Stella and her boyfriend, Frankie covered in blood. Frankie is dead, but Stella is alive. Mac questions her about what happened, but she can only remember bits and pieces. He tells her she's not the CSI on this one, but the victim, and they'll have to do a full workup on her, including a rape kit.



We cut to Lindsay and Danny at the crime lab. They're both surprised by what happened to Stella and Frankie. Mac has ordered them to stick to the dead limo driver case, so that's exactly what they do. Danny tells Lindsay that the gun that was recovered in the limo actually belonged to the limo driver. They don't have the ballistics tests back yet, so they can't be sure if the gun was used in another crime. The information Lindsay has gotten from the coroner tells them the following info: the driver was killed by someone in the front seat shortly after having sex, and he had given his number to someone. They then try to piece together a simple timeline thanks to the info Linday and Mac got from Kid Rock's manager.



Flack pays Stella a visit and gives her some medication. A nurse accompanies him into the room. She's there to test Stella's body for any signs of being raped. We cut to Mac re-entering the apartment Stella and Frankie were in when they were found. He searches around for a minute before we cut back to Stella being processed. The nurse scrapes under Stella's fingernails for any blood and DNA and is able to find some. Cut back to Mac, who finds a gun on the floor along with a casing not too far from it.



Back to the crime lab, Danny and Lindsay are processing the limo driver's clothing. Danny comes across a cat hair. Danny doesn't take the driver to be a cat person, but it could belong to the killer. They run it through their database of animals and aren't able to find a domestic animal. A foreign animal search turns up a result, however. The hair belongs to a Kinkajou, not exactly the most manly of pets.



In the lab, we catch up with Dr. Sheldon Hawkes and Dr. Sid Hammerback going over the autopsy of Stella's boyfriend, Frankie, who was shot multiple times.



We cut to Dr. Hawkes looking into a microscope as Mac catches up with him. They compare notes on Stella's case. The rape kit was negative, Stella's right hand was positive for GSR, and the bullets found in Frankie match perfectly with the gun found at the crime scene, which confirms Stella was the shooter.



Back at the hospital, Flack questions Stella about what happened that night. She confirms that the website she found in last week's episode was in fact a video of Frankie and Stella having sex. She tells Flack that she broke up with him right after that. She tells him Frankie was upset about their relationship ending and began to follow her, upset at her not returning his calls. She tells him that after she finished shopping and running a few other errands, she went home. When she got home, she was shocked to find Frankie was in her apartment, setting the table for a romantic dinner. Flack asks her if she was armed, and she tells him she had a gun in her handbag. One of the things she can't explain is how Frankie got inside. She says that she never lets men into her place so that if something goes wrong, she's always got a safe place to go back to.



We cut to Mac examining the lock at Stella's apartment. With the special CSI cam, we can see a deep scratch or two in the lock, which makes it look as though someone had tried to pick it.



Back to the lab, we see Dr. Sheldon Hawkes examining the lock from Stella's door. He then compares Stella's key to the key they apparently found on Frankie. They seem to match up perfectly.



Danny and Lindsay follow up on that hair they found by tracking down an agent who's client, Nancy Sheridan, owned one. She was taken to the airport yesterday by another driver, not Nick Russo. Nick was apparently just hired because the old driver had to be fired. It seems he liked to pick up groupies in the car, and he didn't take to the firing very well.



With the new information, Danny and Lindsay have the old driver, Blake Mathers, picked up and brought in. We cut to them questioning him. He says that he was at the show during the time in which Nick Russo was killed. Unfortunately, no one else saw him in the audience, but he was seen backstage. Blake was the man who approached Kid Rock and asked to speak to him in private. He admits to all of this, but he's unwilling to admit he went out back to speak to Nick Russo. Danny and Lindsay are certain that this happened and that that animal hair transferred to Nick Russo's clothing during an altercation between the two of them. Lindsay gets surprisingly frustrated with Blake, and she storms out of the room after yelling at him. Danny follows after her and tries to calm her down. She seems to still have her head elsewhere, on Stella and her condition. Danny assures her that she would want them to concentrate at the current case; Mac would ask them for help if he needs it.



Back at the hospital, Flack receives word from the crime lab that the key was something Frankie made himself. Since he was a sculptor, he had access to clay and some metals, which allowed him to make a mold of Stella's key and then pour a liquid metal into the mold. All he needed to do after that is file down the key a little bit and it would fit just fine. Flack then questions Stella a little more about what happened that night, and it seems Frankie got a little more aggressive when Stella tried to call the police and get Frankie taken out of her apartment. He was especially pissed off at the fact that she had tossed out the sculpture he had made for her.



Back to the crime lab, we catch up to Danny and Lindsay working on the limo driver case. They use a special tool to make the 'Harry Belafonte' CD to become readable by their computer and determine it to be a master of Kid Rock's new album. Only the artist or someone from the record company would have had access to this, but so could the limo driver since he and Kid Rock were friendly. They theorize that Nick Russo uploaded MP3s of the new CD to the Internet ahead of the release date, which would hurt the sales of the new CD. When the former driver, Blake Matthews, found about this, he confronted Russo about this and scratched up the CD. Russo then turned the gun on Matthews, who overpowered Russo, killing him in the process. Another theory involves Kid Rock being involved in this. His cigar was found in the car and he would have likely lost millions of dollars by the new album being leaked to the Internet early. Lindsay gives Mac a call to let him know of their theories.



Later on, Mac and Lindsay team up and drop by one of Kid Rock's parties to confront him about their theories on Nick Russo's death. Kid Rock says that he knew of Nick releasing the CD onto the Internet, he actually asked him to. He says it's like a preview, it's a great marketing tool. The reason Kid didn't say anything about it in front of his manager is because he would have been sued for breach of contract. Lindsay then notices Kid's jacket a few feet away. Upon closer examination, she realizes there is blood splatter across the left chest and left shoulder of the jacket. He admits to have worn the jacket yesterday. Kid says it was probably from a kid in the audience who jumped onstage and got roughed up by the security. Mac, on the other hand, has a theory that Kid may have had second thoughts on having Russo leak the CD because the serial numbers would have been traced back to him and he'd be sued. Inside of one of the jacket pockets, Lindsay finds the CD Kid Rock was given by a female fan. She notices one of the corners of the insert label is torn off and missing. It appears to be the piece of paper Nick Russo wrote his number on. Before Mac and Lindsay leave, Kid assures them that he didn't shoot the driver and he doesn't know who did.



On the street, Danny and Lindsay catch up to Felicia Badman, the woman who gave Kid Rock the CD earlier in the episode. She admits to being with the limo driver that night. She asked him for his number in hopes of he would give her a backstage pass. She happens to still have it on her, so she hands it over to the two CSIs. As they're leaving to take Ms. Badman downtown, Lindsay receives a call which lets her know that the blood on Kid Rock's jacket is NOT Nick Russo's blood.



Back in the lab, Danny and Lindsay examine the backstage pass Ms. Badman gave them. The fact that the pass wasn't attached to a necklace anymore was a red flag. They put it under a series of lights and found some sort of substance. It may be blood, but it's too early to tell. They think Ms. Badman ripped the pass off of Nick's neck, but was he alive or dead at the time?



Danny and Lindsay then question Ms. Badman again about what happened that night. She doesn't tell them anything new until they find the necklace to the pass inside of her purse. She then spills her guts. Nick told her he'd give her a backstage pass if she would perform oral sex on him, and afterwards, he had a change of mind. Before she left the limo, she checked the glove box to find a backstage pass, but instead, found a gun. She threatened to shoot him if he didn't give her a pass. Instead of giving her the pass, he tried to muscle the gun away from her and ended up getting shot. She then ripped the pass from around his neck and left.



Back to the hospital, Flack is questioning Stella about that night. She can't explain all of the cuts on her finger tips, and she can't explain a lot of things from that night yet. She remembers him tying up her hands and legs. In the flashback video of what truly happened from that night, Stella tries to lie to him to put him at some ease in hopes of him letting her go, but it doesn't work. Instead, he punches her, knocking her out. When Stella comes to, Frankie drags her around the apartment floor after telling her he'll teach her a thing or two about crime scenes.



We cut to Mac examining the apartment, where he comes across a knife. He then finds a tub with a lot of blood in it, along with a razor.



Back at the lab, we have a very brief scene showing Dr. Hawkes dusting the razor blade for prints.



Back at the hospital, Flack tells Stella about the razor and says that sometime between her using the razor and he and Mac finding her and Frankie, she shot Frankie. Stella says the remembers the doorbell ringing. In the flashback video, Stella turns herself around in the tub when Frankie answers the door. She breaks her razor, separating the blade from the cheap plastic handle, allowing her to use just the blade to cut the rope she was tied up with. This explains why there are so many small cuts on her fingertips. No one could properly use a razor blade behind their back without cutting themselves! When Frankie went to check on her, Stella was gone. She hid behind the door to the bathroom and when slammed it into Frankie as he was about to look for her elsewhere. She ran into the other room to get her gun, but Frankie knocked her down and got to the gun first. He tries to pull the trigger, but it's not cocked properly, so Stella knocks it out of his hand, picks it up off of the floor, and shoots Frankie a few times in the chest, sending him to the floor. She then collapses to the floor as well and cries.



Det. Flack drops by the hospital a bit later on and tells Stella that Internal Affairs is going to rule it to be a clean shoot and she should be just fine. Stella thanks Flack for being there with her through the whole thing, and they hug. Outside of the hospital, Stella and Mac talk about coming back to work. Mac's clear that he doesn't want her back before she's ready. He offers to take her to a hotel until the crime scene cleanup takes care of her apartment. She says she's a big girl and will go back home on her own.



When Stella gets home, she makes her way through the apartment, but she's having trouble holding back her tears, especially with everything such a mess, blood everywhere, furniture overturned, etc. She finally grabs some clothes and makes her way out after seeing the sculpture Frankie gave her, which now has blood splattered all over it.