- [At a crime scene, Lindsay has just told Danny the stats of the football player who is the victim in their case]
- Danny Messer: Don't tell me you know a little something about football, please.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Why, is that so hard to believe?
- Danny Messer: No, it's just dangerous.
- [Lindsay looks at him]
- Danny Messer: I might ask you to marry me.
- Adam Ross: That glass that Dr. Hawkes pulled from our John Doe... it tested positive for Krypton.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Krypton?
- Adam Ross: Kryptonite was Superman's only weakness.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: Well, that explains everything.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: Come on, didn't you ever tie a towel around your neck when you were a kid and pretend to be a superhero? A little Mac-Man?
- Det. Mac Taylor: Sergeant Rock. You couldn't get me out of fatigues.
- Detective Don Flack: Officer Nelson will show you to your room.
- Carter England: Oh, come on Flack! I thought we were supposed to be like brothers, man!
- Detective Don Flack: Yeah, well, sometimes, brothers fight.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: Hey, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's...
- Detective Don Flack: Matthew Palmer.
- [giving a wallet to Mac]
- Detective Don Flack: Found this ten feet from the vic.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Credit card, couple of business cards, all belonging to Matthew Palmer.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: No cash.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Robbery gone bad?
- Det. Stella Bonasera: Bigger question is, what's with the superhero outfit?
- Detective Don Flack: Well, I'm thinking costume party or publicity stunt. Football draft's in town, Tyrell Mann was a come-from-behind first-round pick today.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: And they call him "Super Mann".
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Blood from the pump came back as a match to Tyrell Mann.
- Danny Messer: Means it's confirmed as our murder weapon.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Right. And I got nothing from AFIS off the prints I lifted off the air pump, but DNA from the prints came back as a nondescript male, also not in the system.
- Danny Messer: You're very excited right now for someone who's telling me we don't have a suspect.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: I'm getting to the good stuff. DNA from the prints off the air pump and DNA from the blood you lifted off Tyrell Mann's ring have one allele in common at 13 loci.
- Danny Messer: That means whoever left the fingerprints on the murder weapon is the father or son of our mystery woman whose blood was on the ring.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: You got it.
- Danny Messer: Wow. And we don't have any names.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: No, but we have a starting point. The DNA on the ring was degraded.
- Danny Messer: Means it happened before Tyrell Mann was murdered.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Right. So I say we start at high school when he got the ring.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Danny, there was a car accident.
- Danny Messer: That explains the knee injury.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Elaine Bradford was killed. She was 17. An only child. That would have been pretty hard on the parents.
- Danny Messer: Yeah. It says Tyrell walked away from the scene of the accident. He didn't call for help. Claimed he was disoriented and confused.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: [pulling up another article] Here's a photo of Elaine and Tyrell at the prom.
- Danny Messer: You see the necklace she's wearing? Can you zoom in?
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Yeah.
- Danny Messer: [she zooms in] Boom. She's wearing Tyrell's ring around her neck.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Her personal effects would have been returned after the autopsy to her family.
- Danny Messer: To her father.
- Sheldon Hawkes: The stains on the money you found in Clark's drawer came back as phenylenediamine, naphtha, trimethylbenzene, and a variety of color dyes.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Consistent with shoe polish.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: You are good.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Oh, me and Black 49 Dye go way back. In the Marine Corps, your shoes had to shine as brightly as your brass.
- Sheldon Hawkes: Well, I found black, brown, tan. Makes me think Steve shined shoes for a living.
- Det. Mac Taylor: If he did, I know where: shoeshine row. It's across the street from the address he scratched off the envelope here. 390 9th Avenue, it's the main branch of the post office.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: But how did Steve get his mail? There's no PO box on that address.
- Det. Mac Taylor: You don't need one. Window 18 accepts general deliveries for the homeless.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: So, Steve was on the street. Well, no wonder he couldn't take Clark home.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Guy in a cape, clothes left inside a phone booth.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: [following his train of thought to their victim] Come on, Mac. No way.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Got an IBIS hit on the .22 found in the vic. Came back from a solved case. Shooter's in Rikers. He said he was robbing a bodega two years ago when a man in a superhero suit attacked him.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: Another crime foiled by our mystery hero.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Vigilante's more like it.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: Oh, come on, Mac, he helped people.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Yeah, and he was killed for his trouble.
- Sheldon Hawkes: Autopsy report came back on our superhero. Traces of Risperidone and lithium. Not enough for cause of death.
- Det. Mac Taylor: He was taking an antipsychotic and an antidepressant.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: [approaching] Hey, Flack just dropped this off. It's a prescription PD found in the alley. It was written by a Dr. Burr from the New York Psychiatric Home.
- Det. Mac Taylor: New York Psychiatric Home.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: [getting from his tone that it's relevant] What? What is it?
- Det. Mac Taylor: Tox flagged Risperidone and lithium in our vic. One treats depressive disorders, the other, delusional psychosis.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: Explains why our John Doe thought he was Superman.
- Danny Messer: All right, we have Tyrell's trainer with possible motive.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: And we have mystery woman number one, Charlene, with no apparent motive but a lot of attitude, which automatically makes her a suspect in my book.
- Danny Messer: Detectives have interviewed agents, players, coaches, an entire posse of people who only benefit if Tyrell is alive and playing football.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Which leaves us with mystery woman number two, who we can only identify from the blood on Tyrell Mann's high-school ring.
- Danny Messer: And we don't have a murder weapon. We're staring at fourth and long, Montana. Let's get something to eat. I think better with food.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: [something in her mind clicks] Wait a minute. That's it. Food. Remember the guy who worked for room service? Ernie Albergo. He told detectives that he came to Tyrell Mann's room to pick up the cart, and that's when he found him. Danny, look at these crime-scene photos. Where's the cart?
- Danny Messer: It was rolled out of the room.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: But according to the police report, not by Ernie.
- Danny Messer: So, our killer rolled it out. You know what? You're on to something. Because the carpet is stained in this entire area here, yet the padding below is heavily stained just in this one section. And I couldn't figure out why. The cart was wheeled out just before Tyrell's blood started seeping into the carpet. And that is about the size of the wheel.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: But, Danny, there was no blood trail from the cart. We would have noticed it.
- Danny Messer: It didn't roll through the vic's blood.
- [in a re-enactment flashback, the cart is wheeled past Tyrell's body]
- Danny Messer: The weight of the cart forced the fibers in the rug to bend, and the blood was able to seep through to the padding below.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: So, the killer wheeled the cart out of the room and down the hall, away from Tyrell Mann's room where housekeeping picked it up that night. Which is why Ernie didn't see it and he went in.
- Danny Messer: But why would I kill somebody and then worry about moving the room service cart out?
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Because you're panicked. You want to get out of the hotel, but first you have to hide the murder weapon.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: This is the exemplar. The sample Dr. Burr provided us. Notice how all the characters slant ever so slightly to the right? But in the question document we got off Carter, all the letters are perpendicular to the baseline. Now take a look at the "T"s.
- [enlarging them]
- Det. Stella Bonasera: There's no pen lift in the question document. But the "T" in Dr. Burr's sample has a horizontal initial stroke followed by a separate downstroke. It's made with two hand motions. So the one that Carter had was definitely a forgery.
- Det. Mac Taylor: If Dr. Burr didn't write that prescription, who sold it in that alley?
- Steve Kranen: I wish you could have met Clark. You would've liked him.
- Det. Mac Taylor: I'm sure I would have.
- Steve Kranen: You know that money that I brought him all those years? He never spent any of it. You know, I can't help but think that he knew that I was gonna need it one day.
- Det. Mac Taylor: That's what superheroes do, they come to the rescue.
- Danny Messer: So, the blood from Mann's championship high school football ring came back female. Nothing in the database, though. What do you got?
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: DNA from the lipstick on the sandwich. Also came back female. The lipstick matches everything I found on the bedsheets; the bodily fluids, the sweat. Nothing in the database.
- Danny Messer: Well, let's see if we can snap these Legos together, huh?
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: [comparing the DNA profiles] Hmm. Not a match. Two different women.
- Danny Messer: All we have to do is find them.
- Matthew Palmer: You thought that was me in the alley, huh?
- Detective Don Flack: Well, we found your wallet next to the victim's body.
- Matthew Palmer: The man in the superhero costume?
- Detective Don Flack: Yeah.
- Matthew Palmer: That man saved my life. I'm never gonna be able to thank him.
- Danny Messer: [looking for the murder weapon in a hotel's lost and found] You'd think they could have organized this stuff a little bit better, huh? Alphabetical order, maybe, something.
- Vern Dox: That's Steve, Clark's older brother. He was in a few days ago.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Regular visitor?
- Vern Dox: No, Steve only showed up once a month. Like clockwork. Clark had a routine. He'd get dressed up, pack a suitcase. Steve promised he'd take him home one day. He never did. The visits always ended up in a fight. Last one got pretty nasty.
- Det. Mac Taylor: You know where I can find Steve?
- Vern Dox: No. We get a lot of mail stamped "returned to sender". We stopped asking.
- Detective Don Flack: I'm confused, Carter. Up 'til now, it's been bag snatches and stickups. I never thought you had it in you to graduate to murder.
- Carter England: Murder? Nah, son. You got the wrong brother.
- Detective Don Flack: Pull down your hood. Take off your hat. I want to see your pretty face.
- Carter England: [Flack shows him a picture of the victim] Yo, that nutjob had it coming.
- Detective Don Flack: That nutjob stopped you from knifing a man at an ATM for 300 bucks. In my book, killing him for that is like killing a cop.
- Carter England: All I'm saying is, you run around in tights and a cape trying to do good, something bad's gonna happen.
- Vern Dox: I got nothing to say.
- Detective Don Flack: All right, well then let us do the talking.
- Det. Mac Taylor: Two nights ago, Clark sees you steal Dr. Burr's prescription pad, then arrange the sale with Carter England. Clark decides he's not gonna let you get away with it, so he changes into his alter ego, but before he confronts you, he tries to stop Carter from killing an innocent man.
- Vern Dox: Sounds exciting. I wish I was there.
- Detective Don Flack: So you're telling me that you weren't in the 64th Street alley two nights ago?
- Vern Dox: Nowhere near it.
- Detective Don Flack: I want to believe you, Mr. Dox. I really do. Now, Detectives Taylor and Bonasera here, they definitely don't believe you. They're all about science, and they've got a lot of stuff that tells us that you're our killer. Me? I'm old-school. So I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt by putting you in a lineup.
- Vern Dox: [sarcastically unconcerned] Thank you.
- Det. Stella Bonasera: Before your lineup, Mr. Dox, maybe you can explain to us why your handwriting matches perfectly with the prescription that was sold in the alley that you weren't in two nights ago. Here.
- [showing him a trophy of his that he gave to the victim]
- Det. Stella Bonasera: See for yourself. Notice how there's no pen lift on your "T"?
- [showing him the fake scrip]
- Det. Stella Bonasera: There isn't one here, either. The prescription's a good forgery. Not good enough.
- [as Carter is led past out in the hallway, she can see Vern recognizes him]
- Det. Stella Bonasera: You remember Carter England, don't you?
- Det. Mac Taylor: Clark was your friend.
- Vern Dox: He was a retard. I got paid to pretend I cared.
- Det. Mac Taylor: So you had no problem killing him.
- Vern Dox: Said he was gonna turn me in. I was gonna knock some sense into him, you know, give him a little beatdown. Who the hell did he think he was? He was just a man in a phony yellow cape.
- Det. Mac Taylor: [in disgusted contempt] Put this guy in the cage.
- Danny Messer: Since when do you work the day shift, Pino?
- Dr. Marty Pino: Hey, I was out of here five hours ago. And then the man came in. Tyrell Mann. I could not pass up this autopsy.
- [submerging the vic's heart in a vat of water, he punctures it with a scalpel]
- Dr. Marty Pino: You see the air bubbles escaping from the heart? Vic did not bleed out, Lindsay. There was not enough blood on the carpet from the scene. You were right. The cause of death is an air embolism.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: So, air was forced into the bloodstream.
- Dr. Marty Pino: Yeah, via the murder weapon. Something punctured the external jugular vein, here. Due to negative pressure in the veins that suck blood towards the heart, air mixes with blood, causing the bubbles to form, producing a valve lock. Your vic probably struggled to take one, maybe two breaths, collapsed immediately.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Any idea what the murder weapon might be?
- Dr. Marty Pino: No, not so far.
- Danny Messer: Footballs. There were two balls signed by Mann that were inflated, and then there were two that were flat that weren't signed. So somebody was pumping air into those balls.
- Dr. Marty Pino: A sport pump has a needle that would be consistent with the wound and an embolism.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: But, Danny, we turned that hotel suite upside down, we didn't see anything like that.
- Danny Messer: Killer took it with him.
- Dr. Marty Pino: Our vic suffers from a floating kneecap. It's an injury that he sustained at least four years ago. There's evidence of injections of corticosteroids, anti-inflammatory drugs, and the ligaments beneath the patella, barely holding together.
- Danny Messer: Wait a minute here. Nobody's going to sign him first-round if he's got a knee injury like that.
- Dr. Marty Pino: They will if they don't know about it.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Well, how do you keep something like that secret?
- Danny Messer: [remembering him from the crime scene] You hire a personal physician-slash-trainer.
- Adam Ross: Managed to pull a workable print off the glasses found in the phone booth, and they match your John Doe.
- Sheldon Hawkes: So he changed in the phone booth before he came to the rescue at the ATM.
- Adam Ross: Yeah, it's just like the real deal.
- Sheldon Hawkes: [showing Adam the victim's clothes] This look odd to you?
- Adam Ross: No zippers, no laces, consistent with prisoners and people on suicide watch.
- Sheldon Hawkes: Yeah.
- Adam Ross: Anything from Missing Persons?
- Sheldon Hawkes: Not yet.
- Adam Ross: Huh. I-I just don't see the upside.
- Sheldon Hawkes: What do you mean?
- Adam Ross: What would make a man put on a superhero suit and... and risk it all?
- Sheldon Hawkes: The naive belief that one man can make a difference.
- Danny Messer: [learning a murder victim is a football player who was just drafted] Sad. This kid had the best day of his life yesterday.
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Somebody decided to make it his last.
- Danny Messer: Who found him?
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Uh, Ernie Albergo from room service. He knocked, didn't hear anybody, and let himself in.
- Danny Messer: And who's this guy, uh, wearing out the carpet behind him?
- Det. Lindsay Monroe: Tyrell Mann's personal physician-slash-trainer. And he's not leaving until he gets some answers.