CSI: NY

We open to a snowy New York night. Some kids are being punks and taking rocks and packing snow around them then slamming cars and taxis with them. They hit a truck and the driver runs after them, the kids split up but the driver tails one of them. They run through the slushy streets and the kid accidentally bumps into a dark store. The driver walks by but can't see the kid anywhere. The kid crouches down and inches backwards. As the driver leaves, the kid stands up and looks around. He sees doll body parts hanging everywhere. He walks deeper into the store, his breathing getting deeper. He trips over something and a doll goes, "that tickles! Wanna play?" he looks down at his hands, they are covered in blood. He looks at the floor, what he tripped over was the foot of a dead body, and all around him are dolls.

Danny and Mac are on the scene. Apparently what the kid had stumbled into was NY's Doll Hospital. They are with Detective Maka and head to the body who is informing the vic is Russell McCulley- he owns the hospital. Danny notices his hand is sliced. Danny finds a piece of trace in the wound. Mac notices arterial spray. He was cut there, and stumbled onto the shelves. Maka informs that no doll is missing, no money gone, and no sign of forced entry. But Arvin, the kid who stumbled in the store, said the door was open. Mac notices the other hand is clenched, and still holding on tight to the doll in his hand. Mac pries the fingers open and takes up the doll. He glances at her and he says "something about this little doll was worth dying for."

Still at the scene of the crime Mac picks up pieces of doll fragments with blood on them. Lindsay is also on the scene, picking up bloody doll parts. She places them in bins. There are shots of all the processing going on and Maka interviewing a "nurse" who is tearing. We go back to Maka and find out the good doctor usually stays after hours, mostly to catch on paperwork. She says they try to make it like a real hospital, since it's for the kids. They apparently have visiting hours, and release forms, all the works. Danny walks over and asks if there was anything special about the doll in his hand. She shrugs. And says she was admitted yesterday afternoon and was already repaired. She can't think of why anyone would want to hurt him though recently there was a problem with a delivery carrier. We find out the nurse really thought highly of him. Mac and Lindsay are checking out the cops questioning Arvin. But Mac is actually looking at the boxes; they are wet at the bottom. They were recently delivered.

Stella and hawked are on the scene of a beautiful young girl with what seems a wig on, dead on her bed. There are no apparent external injuries. And nothing that tells him the pills are to kill her. Stella finds a to do list. The girl was a waitress, yet her apartment is a nice place. Stella thinks she's smiling, and Hawkes comments some souls find peace with death. In the kitchen, Stella notices a cup of soup that has fallen. She looks above the cabinets and sees loads of vitamins. Meanwhile, Hawkes is checking out the corpse and notices some nasty bruising. She looks in the fridge and cupboards. Everything is organic. She finds a single glove under the fridge, but it does not fit the vic. Hawkes now finds out she was wearing a wig. We see the vic's real hair, and we can tell she was a cancer patient.

A neighbor, who is very pregnant, is being interviewed by Stella and Flack. She called the doorman when Lauren didn't answer the door; she said something didn't feel right. At that moment, the husband enters. He is Dale Straker, his wife is Carolyn. He is surprised about the death, and he says there was an argument in her apartment around after 5 o clock. The other voice was an angry female. He tries comforting the wife who is very upset and had claimed earlier though she only knew Lauren for 8 months, she felt like she knew her forever.

Mac is outside a door, and stops a Rhonda Chavez, who is the delivery person for the doll hospital. She Got upset at him because he called her supervisor and was upset since if she gets one more complaint, she loses her job. Mac asks her if she went out the front or back door, and she after asking for his name, said she went out the back. She says the door locks immediately behind her. She asks if something happened, and he tells her Russell was murdered, and she freaks. He asks what time her delivery was, and she, dazed says it was very late. He asks a bit more questions, and she doesn't like that he sounds like he is accusing her (she clearly has problems with the accusations). She leaves him so she can get back to work.

Back at the apartment building, Flack gets asked, by a Harry Ellis, about how long all of it would take. Flack says most of the activity would end in a few hours though it would remain a crime scene. Flack asks him if he was around here and heard an argument, but Harry claims he tunes out the other neighbors. He pushes Flack about when the crime scene would end and when they would list it on the market. Flack, says yeah, "the realtor likes to get the stink of death out of the apartment first."

Hawkes and Stella are in the autopsy room with Sid, who is looking over the body of Lauren. Apparently poor Lauren, at the age of 28, had stomach cancer. Her CoD was not that, it was respiratory failure. There is little that Sid can conclude they need to wait till tox. Lauren would have only had 3 to 4 months to live, and she muses if she knew that. But Stella doesn't think it was suicide. She really wanted to live.

In the lab, Mac is working with the doll parts, and gluing pieces together. Lindsay and Danny are both in the lab and checking out the doll Russell had clutched in his hand. They are checking out the clothes and taking it apart, looking inside. Mac is still working on a specific porcelain hand. Back to Danny and Lindsay they are taking apart the inside and check out the mechanism, it's a talking one. They put the batteries back in and it talks creepily to them. Mac has finished fixing the hand. Danny walks to Mac and tells him there is no reason why this doll was important. They found nothing, but a bad voice box which Lindsay took over to A/V. So we need to find Secret Sophie. Mac asks for the shard from the vic's hand, and Danny brings it to him. The shard fits perfectly into the hand. The doll's arm is the murder weapon.

Danny is in the lab checking out the doll murder weapon. While Stella is checking out the glove from her apartment. She sees some lint and dust from inside the glove and knocks it out. she takes some pictures. Danny is running prints off the hand. Stella takes out the soup cup from the apartment and checks out its contents. She also sees a burn mark that matches the glove print. Whoever brought the soup wore that glove. Stella calls Flack and so they head to where the soup was from. Over at that restaurant, we see the waitress scooping a dead rat onto a dustpan as Flack and Stella walk in. they see her. And she says, "oh I mixed a bit of rat poison with some scrambled eggs…gets them every time." (And if we remember Aiden did the same thing in Season 1). She asks if they want lunch and smiles, and they quickly respond no. they ask who made the delivery to Lauren's address, and they ask to see her right hand. She takes some measurements and says they got her glove. They sit down, and she says how a few days ago Lauren was supposed to cover for her but didn't show and how she almost got fired. She said she brought the soup because she said she was sick. Apparently Lauren accused her of trying to kill her with the soup (and we have a flash to Lauren freaking out over the soup). She claims she never saw her like that before. She asks how she died. But they don't answer… Sid does. To Hawkes. It was arsenic poisoning. However nothing they already collected showed arsenic in it. Sid mentions how normally he can do a test to see how long it's been going on, but because of the chemo, he wasn't able to do that. Sid points out he might want to pick some hairs from the shower drain.

Hawkes heads back to the apartment and finds a single blond hair (conveniently placed) Stella is there grabbing the food and placing them to bring them with her. Hawkes notices a cut toothpaste container. They hear a neighbor playing violin. Stella thinks she didn't tell anyone about the cancer. She was alone during it all. She slept with her wig and makeup so she'd look beautiful when she'd die, in case she died in her sleep. Stella is checking out her tea, and notices that the teabag has been restapled…all the tea bags in the box were the same. They put some of the tea in and test it. They found arsenic, but also meteorite dust. Hawkes checked the hair and it shows she's been slowly poisoned for the last 7 months. Stella is worried it might not be someone after Lauren.

Danny and Lindsay are with the mom of the doll owner that had the secret to tell. They interview her and ask what was special about the doll. Apparently the sound wouldn't work. The mother is a teacher, and two kids come up with some things she forgot, one of the kids has a cast on his arm. She reminds him, that he has tutoring on Monday. She said she needs to leave to pick up her daughter. Lindsay thinks it's not about the doll, but Danny thinks it has to be.

We then see Linds in the lab with Mac who is explaining to him about the doll. Apparently the doll is special. Linds says she's been tinkering with it. She plays the secret. And Lindsay and Mac look at each other. Lindsay is talking to Abby, and asking about the secret. Abby says Sophie, her doll wouldn't mind. The mom says she doesn't want to tell it. Lindsay tries to be sweet and get the secret. She leans over and whispers, "you can tell me." Smiling. The little girl leans forward and says, "no I can't".

The lab is filled with techs checking out tea boxes. But only one box was tainted, the one in Lauren's apartment. Apparently the price tag is from Harry's store. He claims innocence. Apparently price tag stamps have marks only specific to certain guns. Harry asks why he would kill her. But Flack reminds her, that he wants the apartment. Flack comes up with some research- how the previous owner left that apartment to Lauren in his will, since she was his favorite waitress.

Lindsay is walking with Mac and Danny. Lindsay tells them how the little girl was really hard to crack. Mac explains maybe the good doctor heard it and also thought something wrong was going on in school. On the doll was salt similar to that which is used on the streets to melt snow. Danny is checking at the prints, and Stella comes in joking around with him. Stella reminds him of a Hutchinson murder, not the print itself, but something in the print. Danny asks about her vic, and Stella says how sad it is. Danny checks out the print and notices something interesting. He scans it, and sees a flake in it. The flake has rhodium.

Danny and Lindsay head to the home of Mrs. Drake. Lindsay take off her shoes to be polite, Danny doesn't even bother. They bring up the fact of the fingerprint on the murder weapon had rhodium, and she asks what it has to do with her. She had jewelry which was used to plate white gold. She claims it's a thing of changing costume jewelry into works of art. They say about the weapon print probably matching hers. She says it probably does as when she was waiting at the hospital for dolls; she was fidgeting and touched one of the broken doll arms. But Lindsay brings up how she didn't say what the weapon was. She claims she was at a PTA dinner and that she has an alibi. Danny asks, I thought you were going to play good cop. As Lindsay is putting back on her shoe, she sees a blood eye from a doll.

Back in the lab, Lindsay is checking the blood on the eye. She swabs it and gives it Tony, a tech. she says it's a rush. She checks out some of the collected doll heads for the missing eye. She finds it, outs it in and matches. The blood in the hallway of Mrs. Drake was a match to Russell.

Mac is with Danny and Lindsay and Mac is looking over what they have. But he doesn't think its enough as while the doll eye puts the killer in her building, it doesn't mean it's Mrs. Drake. Mac says the alibi confirms. This means that it's not her. He gets them a warrant on what they do have, since Monica seems to know her killer. Danny sees semen samples on her bed. Lindsay notices a white powder on the thing and on the floor.

At the lab Mac is checking out images of the dolls as is Danny and Lindsay. Mac after looking at an image of her windows. The snow is disturbed in the center. Someone came in through the window. Back at the hospital, Mac finds salt on the window. But they can't figure out how he got up there. There isn't a fire escape anything to climb on.

Flack is talking to Stella about Ellis. They can't get him on it. They try to think if it's the waitress. Hawkes comes in saying he answered the unanswered question. He takes out a violin and starts playing. There is dust and he blows. Its resin. And Hawkes says sometimes metals are added, one of them is meteorite dust. Stella figures it's not about a room with a view, but about space. They have the right motive but the wrong killer. Stella brings him for questioning and talking to him. They confront him with the facts. But the reason why he killed her was for the nursery. He proclaims innocence. She explains how the resin got into the tea bags. He asks for a lawyer. And they show the to do list on it is to repay him for the tea. Before she leaves Stella informs him of her terminal cancer. And how had he just waited three more months he'd get it.

Mac and Danny are with the delivery girl. They have her park the truck where she had it. Mac and Danny check out the distance. Mac sees salt on the truck tires. Danny reenacts the climbing. And he finds a trace of fiber on the wall. It's the same white powder in Mrs. Drakes home. It's from a cast. Danny has pieced it together. Luke was sent in to steal the doll. Luke says how it was an accident.

Danny is questioning Mrs. Drake while Mac questions Luke. The little girl had been talking about Like and Mrs. Drake. That's what the secret was. Luke claims he did it because he wanted to still be together with her. Danny tells her nothing on the tape said it was her. Mrs. Drake's conscience got to her. At the end she says, "Does it matter at all that I love him?" Danny can't believe that's all she can think about, not the death of the poor doctor. He gets up and leaves.