CSI: Miami

Season 3 - Episode 7 - Crime Wave

Teleplay by Elizabeth Devine
Directed by Karen Gaviola

Lines of people are everywhere – ATMs, gas stations, stores. Mandatory evacuation has been announced for Miami Beach, with a massive tidal surge, or tsunami, predicted as the result of a volcano collapse in the Canary Islands. In the parking lot of a home improvement store, a man drops dead when his temple is punctured. The woman who witnessed the murder then winds up dead, leaving two bodies at the scene.

 On the scene, CSI determines that the male is an ex-con and the female is a soccer mom-type; the two are seemingly unrelated. Horatio deduces that the ex-con was probably the killer’s target and the female was only an unfortunate witness. Alexx identifies the male as Leon Caldwell and finds 5.7 x 28 mm ammo rounds in his pocket and a 9 mm pistol tucked in his pants. Given that the ammo is a monster caliber, Tripp remarks that this guy was obviously planning something big. Horatio concurs and realizes that the tsunami is not the only thing about to hit Miami.

 With only the dead man’s rental car and shopping cart, Calleigh and Eric get to work.  They gather hairs are from the seat of the car; scrape and bag pulp from a crushed orange nearby, and log what appear to be Caldwell’s purchases. Those purchases, along with the ammo, suggest a heist is in the works. Tripp checks out other stores where a partner could be buying the same items and locates a suspicious character named Steve Riddick. Delko inspects Riddick’s shoe, finding orange pulp, so Tripp brings him in for questioning.  During autopsy, Alexx discovers that Caldwell had apnea and was probably prone to unexpected bouts of unconsciousness. Horatio accuses Riddick of murdering the guy upon learning that he was a risk for pulling off the heist. Riddick wants a lawyer.

 At HQ, Horatio notices that Yelina has a bruise near her eye, but she says it’s “not what he thinks.” Riddick is released due to a lack of compelling evidence. Ryan Wolfe has gone to his Uncle Ron’s North Miami Beach condo to check on him and meets Mona Daniels, his uncle’s lady friend, who tells him Ron evacuated. Out the window, Ryan sees the tide going way, way out, indicating that the tidal surge is soon to hit. He and Mona hunker down. 

 The hair from the seat of the victim’s car is ID’d as greyhound. In a maintenance building at a local dog racetrack, Calleigh and Horatio discover a guy named Manny Orantes, who has a replica of a large hurricane window in a frame. Horatio deduces that Manny and Leon were partners in the heist, and that they were doing practice runs on how to enter a particular hurricane window during the tsunami. But where?  Manny isn’t talking. The office of Miami-Dade Code Compliance is the key to finding the location of a window of a similar build – and it happens to be at Golden Beach Bank and Trust, where a robbery is currently in progress.

 The bank is in chaos. Robbers are shooting up the place with machine guns. Mara Riley, bank manager Scott Riley’s wife, has been wounded. Horatio and Delko exchange fire with the robbers, and two robbers go down, a third escapes. Neither of the dead robbers is Riddick and there are no bags of money. As the rumbling outside builds, Caine ushers everyone into the

 bank’s vault, carrying Mrs. Riley and closing the door just in time as the 30-foot wall of water hits, flooding everything in its path.

 The wave recedes and people exit the vault. Horatio and Delko are puzzled by the fact that the robbers shot only at the ceiling of the bank. Caine realizes that something else was going on. Medics take Mara Riley away, and Tripp questions Scott Riley about the robber who got away, but feels he might not be getting a straight story from Riley. Rick Stetler shows up at the bank, Horatio tells him to keep his hands off Yelina. They square off, but let it pass…for now.

 After finding his uncle on the roof of the condo, Ryan is called to a scene with Alexx where a body has been found by the side of a road. Alexx notices the body has been embalmed. When they seek out the nearest cemetery, they find an entire hillside washed out by the wave, with bodies and caskets strewn everywhere. It turns out, however, that there is one more body than there are caskets. The stray corpse turns out to be Mabel Weiss. They find one body that doesn’t seem to be embalmed. The cause of death is strangulation – a homicide. Ryan interviews the cemetery’s owner, Alice Arena, and accuses her of scamming her clients and moving bodies around. She admits to having done that, but says she knows nothing about murder. Ryan obtains access to the cemetery’s video surveillance camera footage.

 When Scott Riley doesn’t show up at his wife’s hospital bedside, Horatio knows something is up. An open employee folder, located on Riley’s desk, leads Delko to the apartment of the escaped robber: bank employee Farley Wheeler, who Riley is now holding hostage for shooting his wife. Steve Riddick is also there and talks Riley into releasing Wheeler, but then takes Riley hostage, putting Delko and Riddick in a standoff.  Riddick is able to get away.

 Back at the lab, Calleigh finds traces of explosives on Manny’s clothes and Horatio deduces that the robbery was a cover for a much bigger heist. They return to the bank.  On the second floor, a hurricane window, identical to the one at the dog track, is blown out, and a huge vault has a 3’ by 3’ hole in it. The machineguns downstairs were a diversion for the explosion taking place upstairs. The heist wasn’t about cash at all – it was about gold, and lots of it.

 Tripp verifies with the bank’s owners that there was more than $10 million in gold in the second floor vault. A scrap of canvas found at the scene tells Horatio that the gold was probably floated out to sea by the receding wave for later pickup. The special canvas is traced back to Dr. Greismer, Ph.D, an expert on tsunamis at the College of Miami. He can’t find his canvas bags, but reveals that hurricanes could produce the same affect. This triggers Calleigh to realize that Greismer’s office partner – and expert in hurricanes – Dr. Leslie Harrison, is the one they should be talking with.  Horatio brings Dr. Harrison in for some pointed questioning about her relationship with Riddick.

 Ryan utilizes specialized software that calculates ride height and ground clearance while viewing the cemetery’s video surveillance tape to determine which car was heavier entering the cemetery than exiting. That car is registered to Paul Abbot, a college student who buried his mom in the cemetery five months prior. With a warrant to search Abbot’s car, Ryan discovers samples of Abbot’s stepfather’s saliva and topsoil matching that found in the cemetery. Paul admits to the murder of his stepfather, whom he recently found in bed with a young blonde, defiling the memory of his beloved mother.

 Yelina has pulled Leslie Harrison’s phone records, which reveal many calls between her and Steve Riddick. After revealing that Riddick has taken a hostage, Harrison finally tells Horatio where he might have gone – an old hotel that is about to be razed. Horatio and Eric rescue Riley

 just in time to watch the building blow up. With Riddick still on the run and $10 million in gold floating somewhere off the coast, Horatio asks the Coast Guard to pinpoint the location of the bags equipped with GPS transmitters, amongst the thousands of radio signals emanating from the area. They get there in time to apprehend Riddick and retrieve the gold.

 Ryan and Alexx see to it that Mabel Weiss is laid to rest … properly; Scott Riley is reunited with his wife, who is on the mend, and Horatio makes a dinner date with Rebecca Nevins, the Assistant State’s Attorney who was on the case.