CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 3 - Episode 22 - Play with Fire…

Written by Naren Shankar & Andrew Lipsitz
Directed by Ken Fink

The body of a woman, too old to be a student, is found in a college broadcast booth, and when Grissom realizes that she has been killed within the hour, the team gets to work to find fresh evidence that will lead them to her murderer.

Nick and Sara soon determine, once Alison Carpenter’s rental car is found near the football field, that there is evidence of sexual activity as well as drug use. But what kind of killer would attack his victim in a secluded, protected spot, and then drag her across a field, up a set of bleachers, and into a room with only one way out?

The post-mortem tells the team that someone strangled Carpenter in a rage, but while her bruises are consistent with rape, the evidence could also point to rough sex. Perhaps, Grisson reasons, what began as sex ended in murder.

The CSIs soon discover that Alison Carpenter was assaulted by a notorious serial killer named Jason Kent, who attended the high school where the woman’s body was found, and now out of prison after fifteen years of hard time. But just as the team is putting the finishing touches on connecting killer, victim and location, a fiery explosion destroys the DNA lab, seriously injuring Greg, and giving Sara a reason to reexamine how she feels about her job – as well as the man she calls her boss.

So even though the semen found on the body connects the ex-con Kent with Carpenter, suddenly the case may not be the slam-dunk the CSI team was expecting. After all, reasons Kent’s attorney, who is going to trust the findings from a crime unit that blows up its own lab?

Grissom knows that his team is about to be under serious scrutiny, the kind of examination that could prevent them from doing their jobs, so he assigns Catherine and Warrick to investigate the cause of the lab explosion and come up with an explanation that will satisfy the disgruntled crime lab assistant director, Dr. Robert Cavallo (guest star Bob Gunton). Their initial suspicions lead them to take a close look at Greg, who as he lies in the hospital, recovering from severe burns and injuries, is already taking the blame on himself, and they believe he deserves it. But the closer Catherine gets to putting the pieces together, the further the evidence lead hers away from the most obvious suspect to an even more disturbing conclusion. She knows who blew up the lab and almost killed some of her co-workers – and it wasn’t Greg.