CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 4 - Episode 4 - Feeling the Heat

Written by Anthony E. Zuiker & Eli Talbert
Directed by Ken Fink

When an infant is found dead in the back seat of her father’s car, Catherine initially figure that the parents will be punished enough by making this fatal mistake, but the chief deputy D.A. intends to make an example of the father, Paul Winston. “I want to make this guy the poster parent of reckless endangerment,” she says, “so the next time a parent steps away from their car in triple-degree heat, they look to see if their infant is in the back seat before they lock the door.”

 The D.A.’s intention doesn’t change Catherine’s job, and as she begins her probe, she soon discovers that Paul Winston’s story may have some holes in it. He claims that he was filling in for his wife, became distracted by work and forgot Joshua was in the car, but things don’t add up. The first troubling clue -- the red drop found in the car that turns out to be cough syrup. The mother claims that Joshua had a cold, but could the baby have been drugged? Then, a more thorough look at Winston’s car turns up a baby blanket that did not belong to Joshua, and Brass’s search of state health records reveals that the Winstons had another child who died of Tay Sachs disease, something they did not mention to Catherine. “Losing one kid’s one thing,” Brass declares, “but two?” When Greg finds trace levels of pesticides mixed with the cough medicine in baby Joshua’s bloodstream, Catherine asks for a search warrant, and finds the matching poison at the Winstons’ home. Now she realizes she has no choice – she must order the exhumation of Howard Winston, their first child, to find out if the parents are guilty of more than negligence.

Meanwhile, Nick and Sara investigate the death of a young woman found floating in Lake Mojave, who did not drown. An autopsy shows that their Jane Doe died of a broken neck which may have been caused by a blow to her head. A locker key in her pocket leads Nick and Sara to discover her identity – Sophia Renatta -- and clues that she had a boyfriend – who may be their suspect. But they soon discover that Sophia met  Mark that very day, and they rented a wave-runner and disappeared together, never to return. “Boy meets girl, girl winds up dead,” Sara says, and now all they have to do is find the boy to figure out what happened to the girl on this lake date gone bad.

 And Grissom and Warrick are called to the scene where an overweight man is found dead in a leather massage chair. With no signs of forced entry, robbery, and no outward signs of trauma, the CSIs are stumped, until they discover the man was taking a diet drug that contained ephedra. He had apparently just returned from a run, which, in scorching heat, combined with the drug, could have caused death by heat stroke. But Dr. Robbins rules that out as the cause of death, and when he tells Grissom and Warrick the man was electrocuted, they have to figure out if the massage chair killed him – and how.