Into Night - Recap

Jeremy Steckler comes in to talk to his co-worker Brenda, as they're both working late at a downtown office. Jeremy hears a gurgling noise and goes to check it out, but it's only a water bottle. When he comes back, Brenda has disappeared. He looks around and she staggers into him. He's horrified to find that her skin is horribly dried out and disfigured.

Carl is driving around listening to the police radio when he hears a police report and goes to the office building. While he waits outside, inside the police are taking pictures of Jeremy and Brenda's mummified corpses.

The next morning Perri reads the Beacon and discovers Carl's story claiming the office workers were murdered, contradicting the police report that the two victims were exposed to toxic cleaning chemicals. Carl's article cites an anonymous source and Perri asks him about it at the office. He declines to tell his source but notes that the security tapes didn't show an intruder. They go to the office building and Carl gets them in through a side door. As they go over the crime scene, Carl notices a set of footprints indicating there was... someone present. He also finds a gel smear on the floor, and when he touches it his fingers burn.

At another office building that night, Mark Rothman is working and hears a noise. Checking it out, he spots someone who comes after him. Rothman runs down the stairs but slips and breaks his legs. Hobbling to an elevator, he tries to get down to the ground floor but the killer stops the elevator several floors down and lunges into the elevator. A few minutes later, the elevator arrives at the ground floor, and the guard finds Rothman's mummified body.

Carl writes a new article on the murders the next morning, while Perri talks to the investigating officer, Cuevas. He tells her that all of the victims died from an illegal bug spray. Carl isn't convinced, and gets Vincenzo and Jain to go over photos of the crime scenes after the murder, looking for a common face. Perri still wants to know who Carl's source is and he takes her to... Alex Nyby, at the morgue. Alex determined that Rothman's throat and that of the other two victims were abraded, but none of them died of strangulation. There was also a gel on Rothman's neck just like what Carl found at the first murder scene. There's no indication of the "red mark" on the victims' wrists.

Perri wonders why the murders are taking place in office buildings and takes the gel sample to a contact, Dr. Messinger. Messinger reluctantly agrees to take the sample even though it's taken from a murder scene.

That night, a man in a security uniform leaves the warehouse where he's living and drives through the streets of downtown Los Angeles. He goes to an office building and notices a man in the office above.

The next morning the news reports that the man in the office managed to survive an attack, although he was left with burns on his neck. Vincenzo holds the front page for two hours to give Carl and Perri time to pin down the story, while Jain goes to the hospital. They talk to Messinger who reveals the gel is a concentrated astringent that draws moisture at an astonishing rate. Carl figures that someone exposed the victims to the substance and then took the water with him... by absorbing it. Vincenzo refuses to go with Carl's theory and cuts it from the story, noting there's no explanation for why the fourth victim survived. Jain returns with photos of the survivor and they notice that the man was on an IV drip. Perri talks to her father and they determine that the victim was an alcoholic who required special medication via the IV drip.

Downtown, the man in the security guard uniform responds to a call and picks up a woman to take her to her car.

Carl and Perri have no luck identifying the chemical, but Carl does research indicating alcoholics suffer from an electrolyte imbalance due to a lack of magnesium. He figures the killer needs magnesium in the water he absorbs from his victims, and stopped feeding on the survivor when he discovered the man didn't have what he wanted. Going back over the crime scene photos, Carl notices a common factor: a security guard. Checking it out, it turns out the security guard works for Skorzeny Security, which handles security at all three buildings, but he doesn't work there himself. They go to the company and bluff the owner into giving them the man's name: Walter Prees. They go to his address and Carl beaks open a window so they can get in. They find a fake ID set-up and split up to search the place. Jain finds the woman from the other night, dead, along with several other corpses. As he takes pictures, Prees pulls up outside and spots the flashes. Carl tries to bluff Prees by claiming to be the police and the security guard runs for it. Carl goes after him out into traffic and tackles the man, but Prees tries to feed off of him, grabbing and burning Carl's throat. The police arrive and Prees jumps off the overpass and into a passing truck.

The next day Carl returns from the hospital and Perri and Jain have identified the killer as a Bernard Faroux. He was exposed to contaminants at an industrial vinyl chloride plant and gained the ability to exude astringent. Going over the corpses, they've discovered that one of them had a red mark on her wrist... but she didn't while she was alive.

Meanwhile, the police put up a roadblock and stop the truck that Faroux/Prees escaped in... but he has already escaped.

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