Shop Till You Drop - Recap

Jo and Mac are shopping, and Mac sees a young man pickpocketing his way
through the crowd. Mac is about to catch the kid, when he makes him. The
kid runs, and Mac loses him in the crowd for a second. When he sees him
again, Jo has him trapped from the other end, but he's ditched the bag.
The store's Christmas display is unveiled, and a man with a head wound
is part of it. He falls forward, clearly dead. Mac announces that this
is why he hates shopping.

The team is going over the display, looking for clues. Don announces
that the victim is the store's general manager, Richard Grossman. His
employees did not like him much. There was a lot of whip-cracking going
on around there, in conjunction with the belt-tightening. Mac joins
Sheldon at the body's side, where Sheldon points out blunt force trauma
to the victim's skull. The wound impression has an odd texture to it.
Maybe the victim fell against something. Mac thinks he may have been struck.

The pickpocket was booked, and the blood on his jacket is at the lab.
Sheldon says that based on liver temp, the victim had been dead for no
longer than an hour. Don asks if Mac wants to close the store, and Mac
says not now but if they need to, they will let him know. Danny thinks
he has located the site of the struggle, and Jo agrees. She asks Mac if
there are any other wounds, say on the victim's upper torso. Jo asks
Danny if he's ready to go shopping for their killer. They follow the
bloodstains from the crime scene out into the store. The trail gets a
little cold so they have to go to the spray that will reveal the blood
in the prints on the floor. The bloodstains end at a beauty counter,
and they question the young lady behind it. Earlier they had been
giving away free beauty kits, and her counter was a mob scene. Jo takes
a look at her shoes, and pronounces them adorable. She leaves her card
with Tracy. The prints on the floor were from sneakers and Tracy is
wearing heels, so obviously it wasn't her. She attempts to give Jo a
free sample, but Danny intercepts it. Hey, it was free, and he will
take it home to the girls. Jo points out that there are a couple of
blood smears on the container of cotton balls inside the counter. She
thinks if he was injured on that snowflake, he would've needed some
quick first aid. Apparently he grabbed a couple of cotton balls and got
a free kit. From there it's likely he headed to the rest room.

They arrive at the family bathroom and find another blood smear on the
door handle. Danny checks the garbage and finds the free sample kit,
along with a blood-soaked cotton ball. In the lab, Lindsay goes to work
on the Christmas ornament that has blood on it, the cotton ball Denny
recovered, and the jacket the pickpocket was wearing. They confront the
pickpocket, and he says that they got nothing in the way of evidence.
Mac tells him he's wrong, since he in fact saw Howie picking pockets.
Don points out that he may get past the theft thing, but he won't get
past the murder thing. The blood on the jacket matches the blood from
the crime scene. Don asks him if he's ever heard of felony murder. Mac
explains it. If there's a homicide during the commission of another
crime, everyone involved in that crime can be charged with murder. He
tells them that he was in the store, just warming up, and she came
bolting out of the bathroom. Ran right into him. He's a pickpocket, not
a murderer.

Jo and Danny check the security tape and see the young woman run into
the pickpocket. Jo recognizes her as the young woman that was making
snow angels right before she met Mac that night. She left blood in the
snow on that spot. She's still there, not 10' away, sitting on the
merry-go-round and barely conscious. She's non-responsive when Jo tries
to question her. The paramedics told Jo that she had a lot of bruises
and scratches on her body.

Her name is Alena Maybrook, and she's an assistant manager at
Stonefields. Jo cleans under Alena's nails for evidence. She still
won't talk so Jo tells Alena what she knows. Alena's expression changes
to mild alarm, but she remains mute. Don calls Jo out so he can fill
her in on Alena's background. She's a regular girl scout. Pays her
bills on time, model employee, doesn't even jaywalk. Jo senses a 'but'
en route, and she's right. Two weeks ago, Alena cleaned out her bank
account and her 401K, and purchased a one-way ticket to Aruba. Departure
date is tomorrow. That's not a vacation, that's an escape plan. And if
she killed Grossman, it was probably premeditated.

Adam is hard at work when Sheldon arrives. He asks about the USB Port
the was founded the crime scene. Adams says he has not yet gotten to
it. The prints on it were a match for the victim. They didn't find the
electronics device it belongs to, however. It wasn't on Alena when Jo
brought her in. Adam says that the cast iron branch with blood on it
was different than the others as it was not soldered to the tree in the
display. Apparently it was used as a club. Sheldon notices that the
markings on the branch appear to match the impression on Richard
Grossman's skull.

Danny is running tests on the blue glass bit he found at the crime
scene. He finds DNA that matches a gentleman named Pascal Denton.

Don and Danny arrive to speak with Mac. The glass had human flesh burned
into it, and that's where he got the DNA. Denton is Stonefields window
display designer. But before that, he was doing time at Rikers. Six
months for assaulting a police officer. They found his prints on the
branch which was used as a murder weapon. In addition, Grossman fired
him a week ago, and she and Pascal got engaged six months ago. So now
they know that Alena was not alone with Richard Grossman when he was
attacked.

Danny and Don go to Pascal Denton's place of business. Nobody answers
Don's call, but Denton starts to make a break for it. They take him
down. As they start questioning him, he claims to know nothing of
Grossman's death. Last time he saw Grossman, they got into a shoving
match, and Grossman shoved him back into the lamp that he broke with his
elbow. They ask him about his fiance, and he says he and Alena's
engagement was ended, by her, six months ago. He hasn't seen her since.
One day they were planning a summer wedding, the next she was giving
him his ring back and telling him never to speak to her again.

Jo tells Mac that Denton was telling the truth. The catering deposit
was sent back six months ago. Sid comes in and tells them that the
victim was also an attacker. Somebody gave him some pretty serious
scratches, and actually bit his hand. He also took a pretty heavy hit
to the groin area. It would appear that the defensive injuries on Alena
occurred in the same fight as the wounds he received. Mac and Jo reach
the conclusion that Alena may be guilty of nothing more than self defense.

Alena is still refusing to speak, but Jo is giving her all the new
information they have. Turns out Stonefields HR Dept had a stack of
complaints registered with them against Richard Grossman. Alena finally
takes Jo's hand, but it's brief - and she remains speechless.

Mac tells Don that the new DA is unwilling to press charges. They are
going to have to process her and get her out of there. Don is concerned
that they will crack this puzzle after she uses the ticket to Aruba. Mac
says they will cross that bridge when it becomes necessary.

In a meeting of the team, Jo announces that six months ago, Alena went
from working less than 40 hours per week to over 70. Danny doesn't
understand why a person would do that, knowing their boss is a total
scumbag. Alena never filed her own papers with HR, but she was a
documented witness of his misconduct with Tracy Parker. He won his case
and got to keep his job.

Jo talks to Tracy. Grossman threatened to cut her hours if she didn't
go out with him. She's a single mom of two, and she was barely putting
food on the table as it was. Alena overheard what happened, and was
willing to help her. Jo took that to mean what actually happened to
Grossman, but Tracy swiftly corrects her. She was going to help him out
the door. He should lose his job, for what he did to Tracy. Jo says
what might have happened, but Tracy tells her that is not the kind of
person Alena is. Alena let her leave early every night so she could put
her kids to bed. Alena did her inventory and closed out her register. If
Elena really did kill Richard? She absolutely had to.

Adam discovered that the USB connector was for a video camera. Very
high-tech. The USB bit may have broken off during the struggle. They
need to find the camera. Mac remembers watching Howie pickpocketing. He
was using that same camera. Mac knows where it is. They find it under a
grate in the area where Mac lost sight of him. The camera is in the
pickpocketers bag. He picked it off Alena when he bumped into her in
the store. Since the snow melted, the bag and its contents are soaked.
Adam goes to work on the camera anyway. He was able to get a picture,
but not real clear. They find Alena closing out the register, and she's
merrily stuffing cash into all her pockets. Doing the math on how many
registers she oversaw, and factoring in that the store allows for
shortfalls of less than $10, she was bringing in some serious cash.

Mac puts out an immediate APB to bring her in. Lindsay says she won't
get far. According to her microscope and Alena's medical records, Ms.
Maybrook has leukemia. She's dying.

Jo meets Alena at the prearranged spot in the park. Alena is finally
ready to talk. The doctors gave her three months to live six months ago.
She was planning her wedding when she got the news. She and Jo talk
about quality of life vs. days or months left. Alena chose quality. Jo
confronts her about the stealing. Nobody knew, except Richard Grossman.
He used what he knew to extort her. He'd keep her secret if she gave him
sexual favors. She thought it would be a one-time thing, but no. The
night of the attack, she told him she was done. Enough. He thought she
was even hotter when she struggled. That's when the attack got really
violent. She grabbed the camera and ran. She couldn't treat her injury,
but did the best she could.

She wasn't worried for herself. She tried to resign, but she kept her
job. Her manager told her everybody else was losing theirs, so she took
the money to help the people who lost their jobs. She wouldn't talk
because she was stalling. She sent money to help people, envelopes of
cash. A kid handed them out. One went to Tracy.

Jo turned the case over to robbery division. Alena may be dead by the
time they are ready to charge her.

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