Holding Cell - Recap

Somebody picks up and dons a gas mask. They walk through a club.
Something is being misted onto the partiers. The man wearing a gas mas
leaves. A gentleman joins the party and is next seen dead. A crime scene
investigator dictates in Spanish. Jo arrives, and Mac stops her from
entering. The body belongs to Miguel Martinez, a club promoter
originally from Barcelona. The gentleman going over the crime scene is
from Barcelona as well, Hector Vargas. The victim's girlfriend found the
body. She called the victim's mother, who is a diplomat of foreign
affairs in Spain. NYPD was notified by Vargas, after he arrived at JFK,
ten hours after the body was found. Jo speaks Spanish, and hears Hector
promise to find the person who did this. The victim is his nephew.

The NY team goes to work. Mac confronts Hector for not sharing that he
was related to the victim. Now every piece of evidence is going to be
called into question. He asks Mac to put himself in his shoes. If he had
a relative that was killed in a foreign country, wouldn't he do the
same? Mac would, but not by jeopardizing the crime scene. He will share
everything he learns with Hector, but as far as the crime scene goes, he
is finished there.

Don brings Jo up to speed. Apparently, a couple of nights ago Miguel and
his girlfriend argued loud enough for the neighbors to hear. No arguing
last night, but the same neighbor did hear somebody running up the
stairs, and a few minutes later he looks through his peephole and sees
the girlfriend leaving. Sheldon points out that the doorway is intact.
Sheldon has a crystalline particle to analyze, and points out that there
are bloody shoe prints throughout the apartment, and all of them match
the victim's shoes. Mac tells them that the victim's girlfriend, Natalia
Sanchez, turned up at the Spanish Consulate. He calls out to Hector. He
knew Natalia was there, didn't he. First the victim, now the girlfriend.
Is there anything else he's hiding from Mac?

Hector refuses access to the girlfriend to Mac and Jo. He says they
can't pass to her without a warrant. Jo tells him the MLA treaty works
both ways. If he refuses to cooperate with them, they'll return the
favor. Natalia asks them to wait. She says she has nothing to hide. As
Jo fingerprints her, she tells them her side of last night's events.
She'd gone to the apartment to apologize to Miguel for something she
said. As she was knocking, the door swung open and she found him dead on
the floor. She ran to his side.

Hector asks if Miguel had gone out the night before, and she says yes,
he was promoting one of his clubs. She's not sure which one. Mac asks
for an alibi. Hector interjects that she's a witness, not the killer and
Mac says they have no way of knowing that. She reiterates that she has
nothing to hide. She was home alone. Jo asks why Miguel's mother was the
first call she made. She said she didn't know, it seemed notifying the
next-of-kin was the right thing to do. So why didn't she call 911 in the
intervening hours? Miguel's mom told Natalia not to. She should just
leave, get out of there. Natalia went to the consulate under the orders
of Miguel's mother. She said she would take care of everything.

Sid goes to work on the body. There's a lot of information to catalog.
It appears he was stabbed, but Sid can't figure out the specifics. He
tells Lindsay the first two times the blade was right side up, but the
third time it was upside down. He also points out some black specks on
Miguel's shirt that he can't figure out. Lindsay figures them for burns,
probably chemical. Sid then points out the healing abrasions on his
lower back. Sid thinks they look like bed sores. Lindsay asks about
Miguel's medical records. Nothing. There is no logical reason that
Miguel had bed sores.

Mac fills Hector in. He's not willing to label this a homicide just yet.
Hector offers several objections, the most logical of which is that the
murder weapon has not been found. Mac points out that Miguel walked all
over the apartment, including to the desk with his phone on it, yet he
made no effort to call for help. The blood tells the story, it's all
low-energy, gravitational. If there had been a struggle, it wouldn't
look like this.

Sydney works on the crystal, as Adam works on the burned shirt. They
both react in surprise to their findings.

Adam asks Jo what's the best way to tell someone who never messes up
that they messed up. "Mac messed up?" she asks in surprise. No, Adam
responds. The burn marks, found on the clothing? Was sulfuric acid,
mixed with formaldehyde. It's used in drug testing. Adam thinks Mac
might have somehow spilled some Marquis reagent at the crime scene.
He's very nervous, and it only gets worse when Mac approaches. Jo makes
Adam ask Mac, and Mac says no, he didn't have his out at the crime
scene, and Adam needs to do some digging to find out where it came from.

Lindsay gives Mac the tox results. Clonazepam, yet he had no
prescription for it, and a .19 alcohol level in his blood, yet no
alcohol in his stomach. He didn't drink the alcohol. He inhaled it in
something called "The Mist Cube" at the club he was promoting.

Danny and Don show up at the club. They see the mist cube, and Don
comments that he's not a doctor - but that can't be good for you. They
see that the employees are wearing gas masks so they don't get drunk.
Danny and Don question one about Miguel. He says Miguel didn't have any
enemies. Friends with everybody. Life of the party. They know the type.
But last night, Miguel and Leo got into it a little bit. When they look
over, Leo appears to be making a drug exchange with a woman.

Don announces NYPD, and Leo flips the table and runs with the detectives
in pursuit. He grabs a woman as hostage, turns on the mist and sets it
on fire. Don counts down on him while Danny shares what a mess it was
last time they had to shoot a perpetrator. They are able to take him in
without anybody getting hurt.

Jo questions him. He has an eye drop bottle with Marquis reagent in it.
He has a website that purports to help New York's partiers take the good
stuff. They're going to do drugs anyway, may as well make sure they are
safe. She shows him Miguel's picture, and he seems genuinely shocked
that Miguel is dead, and that he's being questioned. Jo fills him in on
the splash pattern of the reagent. Looks like it happened during a
struggle, and word has it that the struggle was with Leo. There were
drugs in Miguel's system, the same kind Leo sells. Did he owe Leo money,
is that why he killed Miguel? Leo reiterates that he didn't do it. He
fills Jo in.

Last night, he tested a woman's drug, and it came up dirty. He tells her
to get her money back, and gives her the good stuff. She gives him a
kiss on the cheek. Miguel comes up and tells him he is attracting the
wrong element, and pretty soon the club will be crawling with cops. He
becomes angry, and physically attacks Leo. They struggle. When Miguel
smashes Leo into the table top, the little bottle sprays and that is
when Miguel's shirt got burned. After that, he left as ordered. Jo
points him at the door.

Mac tells Hector that Leo likely panicked and ran because he has a long
list of possession charges. Mac can't figure out why Miguel was so
opposed to having drugs at the club when he had them in his system.
Sheldon breaks in to share the crystal results. Indium and Gallium.
They're used in the creation of solar panels. Since Miguel's apartment
didn't have any, the crystal could have come from the killer. Mac takes
a call and informs Hector that his sister has arrived.

She is arguing with Sid. The body was released, but when it reached the
funeral home, new evidence was turned up. Sid needs to do some more
investigating. She just wants to put an end to all this. Hector advises
her that the new evidence can help capture the person who did this.
That's what she wants, right? Yes. So please, Mac asks; release him back
to CSI. It's in Miguel's best interest. She refuses to do so. Hector
advises her in Spanish. They can get a court order. Miguel will be
exhumed and shipped back to the States. She leaves without answering,
but Sid is examining the body.

Miguel has ligature marks on his neck. Somebody tried to kill him
before. Jo and Lindsay confront Natalia. Why didn't she know about the
attempted strangulation, a week or so before? Because she was out of
town all week, for her sister's wedding. She got back three days before
Miguel was killed. Hector shows Jo a photo which proves that Natalia's
story checks out. Sheldon joins them. The murder weapon was found in a
dumpster about a mile from the scene. Sheldon gets a .jpeg picture of
it, and Jo notes that it has a serrated blade, consistent with Miguel's
wounds.

Sheldon begins testing the weapon. There is a print on the handle. The
blood from the knife all belongs to the victim. Sheldon's beginning to
feel like he can't get a break in this case. Lindsey arrives, speaking
Spanish - a proverb which means "small strokes fell mighty oaks".
Patience is the key. Adam arrives. There was a microscopic blood sample
on that crystal evidence of Sheldon's, and for once it didn't belong to
the victim. It belongs to a vagrant named Vern Jackson. He has had three
recent arrests for solar panel theft.

When Danny and Don question Vern, his first words are "That guy's dead?"
but when asked, claims he didn't know him. He was never in Miguel's
apartment. Danny tells him they have his DNA, from inside Miguel's
apartment, so let's try again. Vern says Miguel invited him in. He
doesn't think they'll believe him, but the truth is, Miguel came up to
him and said he wanted to die. Paid Vern to kill him. He tried to
strangle him, but when Vern left, Miguel was still alive. Vern just
couldn't go through with it.

Miguel's father died under uncertain circumstances. Found dead on the
bottom of the pool. Speculation had it that either Eva killed her
husband, or he killed himself. This placed a fair amount of pressure on
the coroner, and eventually he changed his ruling to accidental death by
drowning. All speculation stopped. Mac asks if history might not be
repeating itself. Miguel took his own life, just like his father. Hector
says this could explain the conflicting evidence. Mac thinks it's time
to go back to the crime scene.

They have one contradiction though. It would seem that the knife fell,
during a struggle. If there was a struggle, then Miguel was not alone.
Looking at the photo of the murder weapon, Mac finds half of a
gravitational bloodstain on the blade. The other half must be on the
floor. Hector finds it, and Mac tests the vicinity, finding a
fingerprint. The prints are a match to Miguel. He must have picked the
knife up because he wasn't bleeding out fast enough, and stabbed himself
one last time. That leaves one question. How did the knife end up 12
blocks away?

Hector tries to fill in Eva, but she doesn't want to hear it. Miguel
never would have taken his own life. She knows her son. Natalia comes
back in and tells Mac the rest of what she knows. He'd go days
sometimes, and never even get out of bed. Eventually, it got so bad he
had to end it. He wanted Natalia to help him make it look like something
it wasn't. She refused, but he finally convinced her. He told her when
he was going to do it so she could make it look like it wasn't suicide.
She changed her mind, and that's when Miguel's neighbor heard her
running up the stairs - but she was too late, so she did as he asked.
Closed his eyes, took his cash, and the knife, and left.

He didn't want his mother to know what he had done. He tried to tell her
about his depression, but she refused to listen. She was in denial. Eva
is listening outside, with Jo. Natalia continues, telling Mac that Eva
doesn't know this, but Miguel found his father's body before she did. He
knows that his father actually hung himself in the closet, with a belt.
Eva moved the body so it would look like an accident. She fought to get
him to go to therapy, but he refused. If depression showed up in an MRI,
would people understand, then? He's finally at peace.

Eva tells Hector and Jo that Natalia is right about everything. Ever
since Miguel was a little boy, he had that look in his eye. Like his
father. She asks Jo what she would have done if it was her child. She
says she didn't know. Just hug him. Don't let go. Eva sees her daughter
and goes out to her. She hugs her.

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