Friday Challenge 4/3/08

This is my entry for Bruce Bethke's Friday Challenge for 4/3/08.

From: snowdog@yahoo.com
To: jerry.bruckheimer@cbs.com
Subject: Story thread


Hi Jerry,

Ok, I think I have the secondary plot thread for Ep 922 ("Blizzard") nailed down.

In the first scene, we FADE UP to these kids (3 African American boys, 1 white girl, 1 Hispanic girl) playing in the snow out in front of a large building. They're throwing snowballs at each other. One of the boys turns to run from a barrage of snowballs from the girls and BAM! He plows right into a snow bank. When he gets to his feet, he sees a cold, blue arm protruding from the snow bank, loosely gripping a heavy pistol. As the boy struggles to get away, the rest of the snow bank collapses and we see it's a dead old man in a wheelchair. The camera pans to the right to show the sign in front of the building: "Doting Domicile, an Assisted Living Community for the Active Lifestyle".

For the second scene, we're inside the nursing home. Warrick and Nick are interviewing the Primary Care Director, Wanda Yates (African American female) as the crime scene is investigated outside. One of the officers on the scene tells them that yesterday afternoon late, someone (who hadn't signed in) wheeled Mr. Dyer out the door and never returned him. He had been shot in the heart four times and left to die in last night's blizzard. Curiously, the security cams saw nothing. Yates is visibly upset that Mr. Dyer was left out in the blizzard. She can't explain how it happened or how he'd gotten hold of a gun, but she tells them that Sally Smithers (white female) was the head nurse on duty last night. She should have noticed Mr. Dyer missing.

Next, we interview Sally inside Dyer's room. She demonstrates that a pile of pillows had been carefully arranged in the bed to look like a person. Yes, she was negligent, but sorry for what had happened. Here, one of the cops brings the old man's weapon in a plastic evidence bag. It's a Glock equipped with one of the new pistolcams. He tells Warrick and Nick that cracking this case should be "easy as his ex-wife". Speaking of wives, Mrs. Dyers enters the room, obviously angry. She demands her husband's personal belongings. The cops tell her that the stuff is evidence and she can't have it. She slaps Nick and is taken outside to "cool down".

After the tertiary scene involving Grissom and his new girlfriend, Warrick and Nick are in the video lab. Warrick has the pistolcam plugged into his laptop firewire port. Everything is dark and fuzzy because of the blizzard. The sound is obscured by the wind on the microphone. There is only a brief muzzle flash visible on the mpeg. Then a close-up view of the darkening ground which shakes as the other three slugs enter his chest. An office clerk enters and tells them that the pistol was registered to John Dyer, the victim's son. Also, the clerk has accessed the senior Dyer's criminal records. He had been arrested twice for domestic violence on his wife and son.

In the fifth scene, Nick visits Dyer, who turns out to be a cop. Nicks asks him how his elderly father managed to get his hands on the pistol. Dyer says his father must have taken it from under the car seat the last time he had taken the old man to dinner. Nick tells him that's pretty careless for cop and notes that he doesn't seem that upset. Dyer says he doesn't mourn the death of a man who used to beat him and his mother.

Later, Warrick is reviewing the looped footage from the pistolcam again and again. Grissom enters from behind and watches for a few seconds. He comments that there are actually two flashes, occurring close together. The first one is dimmer and doesn't really look like a muzzle flash. Warrick freezes on one of the frames and notices the odd shape and red tint. With lots of elaborate graphics and sound effects, he magnifies the burst of light and begins to move forward frame by frame. "No, it doesn't." he mutters. (Dramatic music swell into Geico caveman ad.)

In scene seven, Warrick has gathered Nick and Grissom in the vid lab. He explains that the first flash in the clip is actually a reflection of the laser sight from the pistol cam off of something metallic. As we watch, he takes a series of still frames from the first flash and overlaps them with one another to reveal an odd, reddish shape. The computer draws a cool wireframe around it. He explains that by measuring the minute Doppler shifts in the frequency of the reflected laser light, and creating a matrix with the composite video frames, he's able to create a three dimensional image. The outline on the screen expands and begins to rotate on its X axis. It's a fragment a large ring worn by the killer. Nick rubs his face. He's seen it before.

And finally, old man Dyer's wife is arrested outside her apartment. Nick produces a printout of the ring image and compares it to the one on her hand. "That thing left quite an impression on me," he says, pointing to the bruise on his face. She breaks down crying and tells everyone that she could no longer continue to pay the nursing home to care for the man who used to beat her and especially, her beloved son. She had paid off the head nurse with the promise of portion of Dyer's life insurance. The nurse had helped her dodge the cameras. Then she had wheeled her husband outside and shot him during the blizzard with the old pea shooter he had given her as an anniversary gift. He must have seen it coming, though, and stolen a gun from their police officer son to try to protect himself. So it's off to jail with her.

That's it Jerry. There are still a few rough edges to iron out, but I think you'll agree that it fits well into the canon of exciting, intriguing and racially integrated stories that is CSI.

Sincerely,
snowdog