CSI: Miami

Season 3 - Episode 3 - Under the Influence

Teleplay by Marc Dube & Corey Miller
Directed by Scott Lautanen

A visibly upset Katrina Hannagan exits an elevator and approaches the Metrorail platform. As the train pulls in, her body flies forward into the path of the train resulting in a horrible death. When the CSI team investigates, Horatio determines that it’s not a suicide because Katrina had $1,000 worth of new clothes with her. An observant patrolman, Ryan Wolfe, discovers a couple onsite whose video camera might have caught the incident on tape. Marketplace Security apprehends a shoplifter with the victim’s wallet in his possession but he swears that he only took her wallet, not her life.

 Yelina suggests that Caine consider Wolfe as Speedle’s replacement. Horatio chats with Wolfe.  Duke Duquesne, Calleigh’s father, arrives to tell her that he got drunk the night before and was involved in a car accident, but doesn’t know where or if another car or person might have been involved. Horatio hires Wolfe on the spot and assigns him to inspect Duquesne’s car for damage.  Wolfe inspects the Range Rover while Calleigh anxiously watches over his shoulder.

Horatio and Yelina interview Jay Seaver, Katrina Hannagan’s boyfriend, after Alexx finds old bruising on Katrina’s body, indicating abuse. He’s a prime suspect, especially since she was also pregnant at the time of death. Next, one of Seaver’s colleagues is found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft – a colleague up for a promotion against Seaver. Seaver admits that perhaps a stalker named Claudia Sanders might be involved in the colleague’s death providing the team with a very strong lead.

 Calleigh learns that her dad ran up a very big tab the prior evening at his favorite bar, so she and Det. Tripp trace his route home from the bar, hoping to find what, or who, he might have hit. They discover a construction site and a body with Duke’s Range Rover’s tire tracks on him. Calleigh is devastated.

 Horatio questions Sanders, who works for the plant care company that handles Seaver’s office building, but she denies involvement with either murder. A quick check in her work locker reveals a smock, the threads of which match those on Seaver’s dead colleague. One murder solved, one to go. Oddly enough, however, Seaver is quick to hire a defense attorney for Sanders.

 Meanwhile, Duke is processed through Intake, just like any prisoner, when a sliver of glass is discovered on his jacket. Wolfe hadn’t checked for broken glass in the vehicle! Further investigation reveals that the driver’s window was smashed. Duke was obviously attacked while inside his car. Calleigh and Wolfe return to the construction site where they retrieve a metal pipe used by someone else to murder the man Duke Duquesne had run over after he was already dead.  Calleigh and Wolfe match prints on the murder weapon to an ex-con recently released from prison, and Duke is cleared.

 Delko’s work with the videotape from the Metrorail station finally reveals someone standing behind Katrina Hannagan who happens to be wearing the same shade of blue as Claudia Sanders’ uniform. He checks Katrina’s body for fiber transfer – affirmative – which puts Claudia at the murder scene at the time of death. Horatio concludes that, since Claudia is obsessed with Seaver, Seaver has been using her obsession to his own sick advantage. Horatio is able to link Seaver to another unsolved murder, this one over a bidding war for a condo. Seaver admits that Claudia killed for him then, too, but Horatio proves that it was Seaver who killed that time. Claudia just did the cleanup work, linking them in a twisted bond that could never be broken. Both Seaver and Sanders are booked for murder.

 Calleigh has a heart-to-heart talk with her dad about his drinking and takes away his car keys, the only thing she knows to do. Ryan Wolfe settles his belongings into Speedle’s former locker. Life at Miami CSI begins another chapter.