All That Cremains - Recap

At a local thrift store, an employee warns an older woman to leave the
new stuff alone. Nobody goes through the boxes until the store does.
When he walks away, she gestures a friend over and they start opening
boxes. She thinks she found a wig, but it's the scalp of a human head.
Her friend finds a foot.

Those are all the parts found thus far, so they'll have to take all the
boxes back to the lab. These boxes were part of a pickup, not dropoff.

Gloria arrives, looking for Ray. Nick brings her to him. He and Hodges
are doing ballistics tests. Ray looks stunned. Hodges tries to bond with
Gloria, but Nick hauls him away. They're not exactly comfortable with
each other. Gloria notices that Ray is still wearing his wedding ring.
She tells him that she's engaged. She didn't tell him when she got
engaged, and didn't want the same thing to happen with the wedding. She
knows he won't come, but she'd like him to meet her fiance. She still
considers Ray her best friend. He'll think about it. She'd like him to
meet them for a drink. She tells him he looks good before leaving.

The severed head has bone fragments in the dirt in his mouth. Not dirt -
cremains. Cremated human remains. Nick prints the remaining boxes, and
they open them. Some contain clothing, but others contain more human parts.

Robbins says a flexible saw of some sort was used to dismember the body.
Robbins wishes he had met Gloria, and Ray doesn't tell him the truth of
the situation. They return to discussing the case. The victim was
asphyxiated by the cremains. Henry brings in the toxicology report on
their John Doe. He was alive when the cremains hit his throat. He was
drinking and taking sedatives. At the levels involved, Ray says he would
have had to be comatose when he ingested the remains.

Hodges wonders why somebody would choose to be cremated. Nick thinks
it's money, since cremation is fast and cheap. Hodges doesn't like the
idea of being portable. He's going six feet under. Based on the state of
the cremains, Nick says they're not doing their job right. If they were,
nothing would be left behind but ash. It's Nick's assumption that the
victim is related to the ashes. DNA should confirm that theory.

Ray meets Gloria's fiance, Phil. He seems like a nice guy, and thanks
Ray for coming. He also notices Ray is wearing his ring and assumes that
Ray remarried first. Ray doesn't set the record straight. Gloria is
fashionably late, as always. Phil tells him that he's fine with Ray
attending the wedding. Gloria arrives and is so happy to see Ray, she
gives him a big hug. Ray looks like he never wants to let go. She tells
her husband, allegedly out of earshot of Ray, that Ray won't come to
their wedding. He barely made it to his own. She apologizes to Ray, and
he promises he'll be early for hers.

Greg got a hit for that tooth bit that they found in the cremains. It
was from a death row inmate who had a heart attack before they could
give him the needle. The crazy thing is, the cremains contain two sets
of DNA. Death row Joe, and an unknown female. This is strike two for the
crematorium doing shady business. Burning more than one body at a time
is a definite no-no. When they arrive at the crematorium to investigate,
two men drop the second body they're about to double-burn, and run. The
agents give chase and intercept the men.

The female Jane Doe died two years ago in a car accident, and her name
is Sabrina Pose. She was married and had a 13 year-old daughter, Camryn.
Her husband's picture matches their dismembered victim. Sara says that
the house wasn't on the thrift store pickup list, but the house across
the street was. Reed heads over to check it out.

Sabrina and her husband were lawyers who practiced together, Pose &
Pose. Nick figures the urn would be typically placed over the fireplace.
There's a jacuzzi the size of a four-person hot tub in the bathroom, and
Nick figures it for the easiest place to cut somebody up. There are
recent cut marks in several spots around the perimeter of the tub. There
is no blood trail in the house, so the killer probably did the plastic
bit in the tub, and boxed him up in the garage. Sara gets some prints
and starts running them. She gets residue from the tub and drain to
bring in for testing. Nick finds an item that may have been used to
dismember the victim.

Reed discovered that the house across the way was in foreclosure, but
belonged to a minister and his wife. Camryn arrives home from school,
and Nick introduces Frankie and himself. She says she last saw her dad
last night. If they need to talk to him, he's probably at work. He goes
to work really early, and she bikes her way to and from school. Child
services arrives to take her to foster care. she tries to run into the
house, and Nick stops her. She collapses in his arms when he tells her
that something really bad happened to her dad.

Eric shows a picture to Ray. It's Camryn's dad's girlfriend, she's a
stripper. She must be a live-in, since her prints are everywhere. Maybe
they didn't have an amicable breakup. He kicked her out and wouldn't let
her take her things. Revenge? This is a bit beyond that. Slicing him up
and shoving his dead wife's ashes down his throat, that's a monster.

The dancers are working out when Ray arrives to speak with Sydney
Preston, the ex. She doesn't want to go with them, so the officer tells
her Ron is dead. Does she still want to talk about that here? She goes
with them. She hasn't seen him for two weeks, not since she found out he
cheated on her. She never wanted to see him again, so she left her
belongings behind. Ray fills her in on Ron being dismembered, and she
remains relatively calm. She claims she still loved Ron. She thought she
was the one, but for him, she was just one of many. You would think a
widower would be rusty, but not Ron. Ray asks for names. Serena, Tammy,
Julie, Deanna - the list is long. She didn't want to be on that list, so
she left.

She asks after Camryn, and offers to take her in when Ray says she's
with CPS. She asks permission to go, and Ray says no problem. Just as
soon as he gets a DNA sample.

Eric questions the minister that used to live across the street. He was
a neighbor to the Pose family for 15 years. The church foreclosed, the
house was next. They were forced to move to a smaller place and
everything they couldn't bring with them went to the thrift store. He
waves at Sydney, but she doesn't see him. Eric asks how well he knew
Miss Preston, and the minister says better than he knew Ron, because Ron
wasn't around that much. Sydney spent a lot of time with Camryn. She was
a loner because her parents were so busy. But when Sydney came along,
they really hit it off. He felt like they had a spiritual connection as
well.

Ron and Camryn were really happy until they weren't anymore. It broke
Camryn's heart when they broke up. The day after the fight, Sydney came
to church. She said the fight was something about strange videos. Girls
- sex tapes. Not his thing, of course so he didn't pry. Seeing her today
was the first time he set eyes on her since then.

Greg Nick and Sara look at all their evidence and realize they have
nothing. Everything can be explained. Nick's money is on Sydney. Greg
checks the house again. He finds a safe behind the videos, and takes it
back to the lab. It's packed full of videos, and Greg watches. The first
one looks like an interview of some sort, so does the second. There's no
sex. They're all numbered, and tape #15 is missing.

They go talk to the company that produced the videos. Frankie and Sara
sit down with the man in charge. Agent, manager, producer. They ask him
about the tapes. He tries not to answer, but Sara offers to have Frankie
book him. He says he gave them to his buddy Ron, to help him out. He's a
nerd, not a club guy. He needed a little help with the ladies since his
wifey died. So these girls thought they were auditioning for a hiphop
musical. Ron would watch, say who he liked, and this guy would set them
up. He doesn't see that he did anything wrong - what's the charge?

Frankie tells him he's here because Ron was murdered. He'd never do
anything to hurt Ron. He kept originals of all the tapes, and Sara asks
to see #15. It's Sydney Preston. Greg figures Sydney found the tape,
felt betrayed and killed him. Sara thinks that the cremains were here
way of telling him that he belonged with his wife. The guitar she gets
out on the tape is one that was in a thrift store box. Sara tells Greg
they have it in evidence. Nick comes in with pictures which show bruises
on the victim's chest. Greg notes that the bruises bear a definite
resemblance to the shape and size of Sydney's knee pads. They get out
the guitar and knee pads and go to work. The guitar is clean. The knee
pad patterns match the bruises. They have their killer.

Sydney is visiting Camryn, promising she will come live with her as soon
as she can get her out of the system. Frankie and Nick arrive to arrest
her. Camryn begs her not to go, but she has to leave. Nick says he'll
stay there with her, so she won't be alone. He'll order a pizza if she
wants. Sydney calls over her shoulder that she'll be back.

Ray questions her. She stands by her story. They found half of Ron's DNA
from a second contributor. That means either she killed Ron, or his
daughter did. She knows she didn't do it, and she doesn't believe Camryn
could. She wants to talk to her. When she talks to Camryn, she tells her
that she needs the truth, or they'll never see each other again. Camryn
tells her the truth. Ron got mad at her because she was playing Sydney's
guitar. He was never a father to her. She didn't have parents until
Sydney showed up - and then she was gone. When he said Sydney was dead,
she wanted him dead. So after he took his sleeping pills, she killed and
dismembered him. She hated both her parents. They belonged together.
They didn't want her, she just looked good on their Christmas card.

Sydney doesn't believe her, so she gets out the urn. Sydney becomes
physically ill and leaves. Ray fills her in on what will happen to
Camryn. As Frankie walks her down the hall, she breaks away, puts her
head in Sydney's lap, and tells her she loves her.

Ray gets ready for the wedding. He tells Nick his wife is getting
married. Nick is confused. Ray finally explains that they got divorced
two years ago. He loved her a lot, and he misses her. He knows she's
really happy. Nick tells him he's a good guy, but he needs to take the
ring off before the wedding. He does so, leaving it in his locker.


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