CSI: Miami

Season 2 - Episode 4 - Death Grip

Teleplay by Steven Maeda
Directed by David Grossman

Late at night, in the suburbs of Dade County, 14-year old tennis prodigy Lana Walker looks up to see a face at her second story bedroom window. Just as she convinces herself it was nothing – a hand clamps down hard over her mouth.

Hours later, the CSIs are called to the scene to solve the disappearance of Lana and her 5-year old sister, Molly. When the police find only one set of footprints leading from the house, Horatio goes on a hunch, following the hallway down to the laundry room, where he finds Molly cowering in the empty dryer. When he asks who took her sister, she answers with two chilling words: “a monster”.

As the search for physical evidence ramps up, search dogs come upon a teenage girl’s severed right arm in the Del Sol Canal. With the help of Animal Planet’s Jeff Corwin and an embedded tooth, Alexx and Delko are quick to identify the serrated knife-like wounds as alligator bite marks.

Physical evidence found at the scene leads the CSIs to issue an amber alert for a ZR-1 Corvette. Almost immediately, one is reported as being parked at the Miami Breeze Motel with a license plate reading “10S DUDE.” The car is registered to David Kendall, a former tennis coach of Lana’s. The police storm the scene to arrest Kendall – only to find Lana, alive and intact in his motel room. She explains that they are in love, and that they can’t even arrest Kendall for statutory rape, as she is really 16. Her parents lied about her age to give her the edge in competitive tennis.

Horatio recognizes Kendall for the sexual predator he is, asking Alexx to take another look at the severed arm. She quickly identifies the condition of the musculature to be consistent with tennis elbow, but in order to link Kendall to the arm, they’ll need to identify the rest of the body… which means finding the gator that ate her.