Scared Stiff - Recap

A blond girl with bloodshot eyes is seen sitting up on an autopsy table.
Her arms and legs are in a defensive position, pulled up close to her
body. As Sid unfolds her, he starts finding clues to how she came,
wearing an evening gown and heels, to wind up dead.

Mac tells him that workers found her under a tree in Central Park. She
had no ID, no coat and looked frozen stiff. Sid says he's never seen
anybody die in that position. Unofficially, it looks like she was scared
to death. We see her running through the park, and landing at the base
of a tree, sitting up, pulling in all her limbs, and screaming.

Jo and Sheldon are checking the scene. Sheldon finds a hank of her hair
in the tree bark. Jo notes that she broke a heel as she ran, and her
sporadic movement patters indicate she was either lost or confused. Don
brings shoe prints for them to work from, see if they can't ID the
victim's attacker. When they come back to the place where the body was
found, they agree that no other prints would suggest she was being
followed. There's no sign of a struggle, either. The question becomes
who or what was she running from? Sheldon suggests ghosts. Jo thinks
he's kidding, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of New Yorkers
believe this particular section of Central Park is haunted. There's a
lake just across from them where for years, people have claimed they saw
two women skating figure eights, at night. The women are even known.
Rosetta and Janice, died in the 1800's. If you get too close, they
disappear. Don laughingly tells Sheldon to shut up. He doesn't, though.
He recounts story after story. Don and Jo remain skeptical but Sheldon
tells them true; there are certain EMT's who won't even come in this
part of the park. They send him, and even he sometimes senses something.

Don gets serious. Surely somewhere in Sheldon's well-educated,
intelligent mind he must have some explanation for paranormal activity.
He remembers a time he heard a woman screaming here. He got off his bike
and ran to the place where the screams were coming from. There was
nobody there. Nothing. No explanation for what he heard. But he sensed
"something". And maybe their Jane Doe had the same experience.

The blond's bloodshot eyes are consistent with suffocation, but Sid has
yet to come up with a COD. His external examination revealed nothing
remarkable. Even more strange is the fact that her larynx and windpipe
were perfectly intact. But the blue tint around her lips and hands (nail
base) is another sign of suffocation. However, there are no fibers found
in her nose or mouth, and no contusions on her lips.

Sid found an abrasion below her hairline, behind her right ear. It seems
rash-like, consistent with friction against a solid surface. Aside from
that, there are no other injuries that can point to foul play as cause
of death. There is one very strange thing though; she was wearing black
underwear with a white dress. And the dress appeared to be at least two
sizes too big. Also, her shoes were white. Sid feels that the whole
outfit was just odd. It was as if someone else had dressed her.

Adam works on obtaining any evidence possible from the dress. He finds a
stain he sends in for analysis. The stain intrigued Lindsay, so she
recreates it and shows Mac. An attacker grabbed her from behind,
crumpling the dress in his hand as he does so. A real person. Not a
ghost. She and Mac trade a smile, which is wiped away by the sound of
thunder. They have to expand their search, get to the evidence before
the rain does.

Everybody is out in the park, in the dark, with flashlights. Don fears
he encountered poison ivy, and Danny says if he does, he'll laugh his
ass off. Don hopes they don't encounter any spiders. In fact, a spider
could have been responsible for her death. Danny says no, there would be
a lot of symptoms that wouldn't leave her sitting up with all her limbs
pulled in (as she was when they found the body). Danny finds something
and Don tells him shut up and bag the evidence. Jo finds something, and
Sheldon finds footprints. The ones Jo finds seem to match the earlier
set. She tells Sheldon she believes she saw a ghost at one time, too. He
thinks she's making fun of him but no, she actually saw one. She was
reading to her friend in the hospital. She glanced up and saw a man in
white, with a really soothing, positive energy, standing next to her
friend. He put his hand on her arm, and then he just vanished. She later
finds out that her friend's dad was a doctor at that very hospital for
many years, before he died. They return to tracking her path.

Sydney sees a flash of white light travel across nearby. She takes three
more steps and sees the sisters skating figure eights. She turns and
walks right into Mac. She tells him she's fine, and as she walks away,
she mutters to herself to "get it together" - rather than admit to
herself that her eyes did not deceive her.

Mac sees something on the ground that leads him to believe that
someone's out there. Lindsay overhears him, but when she responds, he's
already gone. Mac sees a man digging, so he drops out of visual range to
draw his gun, then stands up again. He makes a noise, and the digging
man sees him and runs. Mac yells at him to freeze, and gives chase. The
man has a lantern and can see where he is going. He finally realizes Mac
is following the light, so he shuts it off and Mac loses him. Mac
returns to the dig site and finds a female body that is about to be
buried. rain starts.

The CSI team arrives. Mac gives the suspect's description to Jo, but all
he really has is "Male. Medium build." The only thing this body has in
common with the other is where their bodies were found, and that they
are female. This one's been dead two weeks. That's a long time to wait
to bury a corpse. Mac thinks he wasn't burying her. He was digging her
up. The team goes to work on the dig site.

Sheldon and Lindsay banter about ghosts, and the weight of a human soul.
She asks him how often he looks for the skating sisters, and Sheldon
says "Every time I go there." Adam shows up with test results as he
declares himself "BRILLIANT!" and probably entitled to a raise as well.
The material on the Jane Doe's dress was sulphur. Sheldon is going to
try to find some answers. He brings in a filmmaker, Declan "Sully"
Sullivan, who documents supernatural occurrences in the park. He uses
sulphur to create a protective circle in an area of high activity. The
circle was disturbed when Sheldon dragged him in there, which means (he
commences yelling) "A SPIRIT COULD FOLLOW ANY ONE OF US HOME!!" He asks
Sheldon why he's here. Sheldon notes that his last film didn't do so
well, but if a woman is inexplicably killed in a haunted section of
Central Park, it's bound to do much better, yes?

Sully says yes, he met the young woman. But SHE ran into HIM. He
actually thought she was one of the park spirits. Don asks why they
should believe him, and he responds that he was filming all night. He
captured every second of the encounter.

In the lab, Sid tells Danny and Mac that the second victim's date of
death was around 1995. Her internal organs tell the story. External
decay was somehow delayed. Mac says salt - they found some at the scene.
The park places salt around the park walkways to melt the snow. If it
leeched into the soil in high enough quantities, it would work as a
preservative. So why was somebody digging her up? Was it the
perpetrator? Did he kill both women? Sid says the second victim suffered
a blunt force trauma to the skull. She was also stabbed. Stabbed +
bludgeoned = up close and personal. They're back to a single
commonality; they were both found in the park.

Sully's tape is being checked. Jo and Sheldon watch as their Jane Doe
slams into Sully, and his voice goes up an octave as he blurts that
she's real. They stop the footage to track the direction she's heading.
It looks as though she came in through the park's 72nd street entrance.
Sully chases her as she runs away screaming. So how did she die? Sid
says he can't say who but he does know how. Nitrous Oxide poisoning.
Laughing gas. It's effects were exacerbated by anti-depressants in her
system. The N2O ultimately suffocated her, and she was probably
suffering traumatic hallucinations as she was running through the park.
Sid thought maybe she'd had recent dental work, so he went to get her
body out of cold storage. That's when he discovered bruises. The fridge
temperature brought them out. Sid notes that they are in the distinct
shape of a hand, as though her body was lifted.The extent of the bruises
suggest that she was dead weight in this person's hands (no pun
intended, Sid notes). This means she was unconscious. So since she was
conscious when she was running through the park, this happened before
that, and she was at the mercy of whoever gave her the N2O. She wasn't
sexually assaulted, but they know he undressed her and took her shoes
off. So maybe he left some prints behind. Sid starts the testing
necessary to find out. Something is having a chemical reaction in her
hair and scalp.

Her fingerprint results came back. She was a 5th grade teacher named
Isabel Wilde. The results Lindsay gets lead to an ex-con that's been
dead for five years. Sheldon declares him a ghost, so Jo slaps him with
her file folder.

Adam is having a case of the sillies. He sounds like he's having cyber
sex while he demands his computer give him the results he's looking for.
Jo teases him about being on a kinky website, but he fills her in on his
activities. He was isolating the perp's fingerprints from Isabel's skin
pattern. Jo says Adam is right. He's BRILLIANT! The stuff in Isabel's
hair was makeup used in funeral parlors. Jo thinks that maybe the rash
on Isabel's neck was from one of those tables that they have in funeral
homes, to work on the appearance of the deceased. Jo fills Mac in, but
he sounds less than enthusiastic. He fills her in on his news. Sid found
sutures in the new Jane Doe, and Mac ran tests, got some answers, and he
didn't like what he found out. The victim is Chief Ted Carver's sister.

The Chief looks at Ronni and says her name. This isn't easy. Mac says
they can wait, but Ted says no. He never reported her missing, because
he didn't think she was. She had a habit of disappearing. Back in his
office, he tells Mac that he and his sister were two very different
people. He loved her, but. He doesn't remember anything about when last
he saw her. He just remembers his nephew calling to tell him that she
had abandoned her three children. No note, nothing. Mac asks if he ever
looked for her but Ted says no. They took her kids in, and raised them.
At first he was angry, and embarrassed. But he knew he had to let it go,
and move on. Mac wants to talk to the kids, maybe they have a missing
detail that could head them in the right direction. Ted says he'll
arrange it. He wants them to keep it between themselves. Mac doesn't
tell him that Jo already knows.

Jo, Lindsay, Sheldon and Don are headed for a nearby funeral home. This
may be the one Isabel was in before her run through the park. The
funeral home is abandoned. It was a family business. When they died,
they left it to their only son and he closed the doors. Allegedly, he
still lives there. The team does some looking around. Don finds the N2O
canisters and they realize they have the scene of the crime, if not the
perpetrator. Sheldon and Jo follow some stairs and find the table with
the headrest that Jo described. Sheldon's eyes grow wide as he wonders
what the hell they're dealing with.

Don is wondering the same. It doesn't make any sense. The kid closed
down the funeral home, but stayed in the embalming business? Jo is
following the chain of events. After he laid Isabel on the table, what
did he do next. Lindsay opens a door and says he dresses them. Don says
"If we come across a little old lady skeleton wearing a wig, in a
rocking chair? It's every man for himself." Sheldon is grateful that the
perpetrator left behind trace elements on Isabel, or they might never
have found this place. They hear a sound, and everybody jumps. Don opens
one of the body lockers, and finds Olivia's personal effects. When
Sheldon opens the next locker, the perpetrator is inside. They place him
under arrest. As he is being escorted out, Lindsay finds something in
another locker and brings Jo over to see it.

Mac and Danny are discussing the Ronni Parker case (the chief's sister).
He started running credit cards - they're still in use. Since her
surgery, there has been activity on one or all of them every day. And
not a single missed payment. Mac figures that her killer took over her
identity, because he knew she couldn't report him. Danny has an address.
They're going to go pay a visit. Chief Carver was notified as a
courtesy, but he took the information and showed up for the interview.
It looks like a family home, with several jackets and hats hanging on
hooks in the entry hall. The DVD is still playing. It looks like
somebody cleared out very fast. Like she knew they were coming. The
Chief picks up her wallet with ID displayed prominently in front and
announces that THIS is who stole his sister's identity.

A young woman watching the news recognizes Gordon Sprouse. He's being
taken in for allegedly murdering Isabel Wilde. She reacts in shock. Don
questions Sprouse. He wants him to confess. Sprouse says he's never
killed anyone. Don tells him how things probably unfolded. Gordon points
out that murder is wrong. Sheldon says that death and ecstasy are
closely related. Maybe growing up in a funeral home, things got a bit
jumbled in his psyche. Did he get his first little tingle, watching
daddy work on the female bodies? Mommy. His mother was the mortician,
"detective". Okay, so does he have a mommy fixation? Sprouse spits that
Don is disgusting. Don's disgusting? Well, I guess. He just prefers his
women to be alive and conscious when they get dressed, and do their hair
and makeup. Sprouse is given to understand that Don doesn't have a clue
what's going on here. So he will explain it to him.

White is the color of snow, and milk. It is so pure that it's not even a
color. Sydney asks if he wanted her to be at peace. Sprouse does a sort
of head bob that means both yes and no. So why did he paint her up like
a corpse? Not a corpse. Like a perfect version of herself. They still
don't get it. And he doesn't do what's in his head. Don says he knows a
freak when he sees one. Sprouse shrieks that if he did what was in his
head, they'd be sliced up and gushing and washed down the drain. And
you'd never find them. But he doesn't do that. He just plays with them.
He met Isabel in a bar. She came home with him. She wanted to try the
gas, she thought it might be fun. If he'd known she was on
anti-depressants, he would have altered the dose on the N2O. She was
fine, but then she woke up screaming, and hallucinating. She jumped off
the table and ran out, alive. He didn't follow her. He only plays with
them. Usually, they start coming out, and he lets them go. Because of
the gas, they don't even remember what happened. Sheldon picks up on
"they". How many others were there?

The young woman watching the news is talking to Jo. They found her
belongings in Sprouse's locker. Jo gives her some tea. She says she
can't remember. She was dancing with him, and the next thing she knew
she was at home, wearing an old white dress. All the time in between was
gone. Jo offers to fill her in with what information they do have.

Mac finds that there was a jack knife in Ronni's grave. He tells Jo he
doesn't know if it's all the talk of ghosts, but his sixth sense tells
him something is going on here. Chief Carver is too much so "On top of
it." She figures he's as on top of it as can logically be expected,
considering he just found out his sister was murdered. She suggests they
call it a night. She would appreciate it if he walked her to her car.

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