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- Kate
We begin this week with a woman driving at night, and it’s pretty clear she’s exhausted. She ends up dozing for maybe a second or two, and her car swerves dangerously. Next we see Megan is zipping through photos on her phone of Lacey horseback riding while meeting her mom for breakfast. It doesn’t take long before Megan and her mother are bickering. Megan apparently rode when she was younger and her mom didn’t want her to. Thought it was too dangerous. And in short order, Megan gets called away on a case.
The scene is more than just your normal crime scene. The victim, Joe, was a cop. So Sam and Bud are out for blood. Megan and Peter arrive and quickly notice that something is off. The blood should have coagulated by now, but it’s still dark red and wet-looking. So of course Megan is going to run it at the lab. Before Kate walks off, she warns Megan of the high profile nature of the case (read: don’t screw it up). Back at the precinct, Bud and Sam are starting to go through traffic cams and tips when the driver (the woman we saw at the beginning of the episode) turns herself in. Apparently, when her car swerved she hit the cop. She didn’t think it was a person. At the lab, Megan, Ethan and Curtis have a bit of squabble over testing the blood (it could be contaminated with oil) when Sam and Bud show up to share the news of the driver. Megan does a cursory exam and reveals that Joe was dead before the car hit him (good news for the driver).
Things are not going to be easy with this case. Joe and Sam go all the way back to the academy. She even got him and his wife together. But Peter promises they’ll find out what happened. Based on the skeletal injuries, Megan surmises that he was pushed or tossed off the overpass before being run over. And since there was blood basically everywhere in his body (including his joints), Ethan’s off to do another blood test. But that’s not all that’s odd. Joe’s been on desk duty after a drug dealer filed assault charges against Joe. So Bud and Peter go talk to the dealer while Megan and Sam inform Joe’s wife. Both visits are useful. The dealer said that Joe beat him up for not having info Joe thought he would. And Joe’s wife said he’d been working a case lately (and hoping he wasn’t having an affair). It turns out Joe was working an old unsolved murder where the drug dealer was the primary suspect. The victim was a star lacrosse player. Megan’s examining Joe’s heart, and she finds something that’s odd. It appears to be generic filler for a drug. And we see our little dealer selling them. And then it gets rather ugly. Sam and Bud are tag teaming the dealer in interrogation until he gives his side of things. He saw the girl the night she died, but she left with her lacrosse coach. And he also says that Joe tossed his place a bunch of times and could have gotten the drugs then. Sam is not pleased to hear the kid saying Joe would do drugs.
Sam and Bud have gone to talk to the lacrosse team that the victim played for and find out that Joe had been coming around almost every day for the past month. One of the girls had a theory that the victim was seeing a guy but wouldn’t tell anyone (could have been a teacher and that was strictly forbidden by the school). Meanwhile, at the lab, Peter’s having a hell of a time trying to find her autopsy file. Sam shows up at the lab and bullies Ethan into giving her the results of the second blood test. Joe died from being poisoned with a drug usually used to treat thrombosis and embolisms. Not long after, Curtis finds the girl’s file, and Megan discovers two inconsistencies with the prior ME’s findings. What he assumed to be tan lines was really evidence the victim had been moved before rigor set in and there was a mark on her neck not documented. And that’s enough to exhume the body and do another autopsy.
Megan walks in on Kate watching herself on the news (great crimson colored blouse she’s got on- really nice). Megan explains she wants to exhume the girl’s body but, Kate says to get Joe’s body on the table since that’s the case they’re working. Megan’s not stopping there. She tells Peter to notify the girl’s family of the pending exhumation, and then Peter pawns the task off on Ethan. That’s not going to end well. Meanwhile, Megan pays another visit to her mom. This time in chambers. Megan’s mom is a judge, and she signs off on the exhumation order. The exhumation goes smoothly, I guess. They find a weird little animal-skin ball in the coffin and bag it. Before they leave the cemetery, Megan pays a visit to her dad’s grave. We learn that he killed himself. At least we’re getting some pay off from the previous episode.
Sam is interviewing faculty at the girl’s school. They’ve brought one guy in, and he seems to be their guy. At least, he admits to having a relationship with the victim. And it turns out the ball from the coffin was a 19th century lacrosse ball he used in his Native American history course (which she and two other girls who accused the professor of coming on to them took). But he says he was out of town the day she died.
Megan and Curtis have begun to examine the body and the find a solid plug of particulate matter that would have been loose and uncollectable by the previous ME when the girl died. Before they can get farther than that, Kate bursts in and tells them to stop what they’re doing. They’ve just broken the law. Kate is furious that they broke procedure by not notifying the family. Ethan claims he’s been trying but has had no luck. Kate says Megan better hope when she (Kate) notifies the family they don’t want to file a complaint. I have to say, I saw this coming, but Kate has every right to be super pissed off. Megan doesn’t seem too fazed by the whole thing and tells Ethan he can make up for it by identifying the particulate matter from the girl’s nose. He discovers that while the bottom layer is mud from where her body was found, the top layer is clay. Green clay. And it matches the sample found on a piece of paper in Joe’s pocket. So Sam, Bud, Megan and Peter head back to campus to the tennis courts. They find that the courts were in between the party the girl was leaving and her dorm room. Megan still doesn’t understand why Joe had become so withdrawn and moody. She figured if the case hit him so hard because he had a daughter of his own, he would be home every night tucking her in. So she races back to the lab and tells Curtis to run a chromosome test. And then she heads down to the lab and finds Kate suiting up. The girl’s family gave their blessing for the second autopsy. Megan’s a little miffed that Kate didn’t tell her, but all’s fair in love and war. They begin to examine the girl’s body together and find that there’s a strange absence of fungus on her neck. They roll her and find an imprint of her killer’s hand.
It turns out that Heather, one of the girls on the lacrosse team, broke her finger when the victim ran into her at practice. So Heather followed her and ended up killing her. It was a mistake, but she let the coach talk her into lying about it and then the coach killed Joe when he got too close. Megan says he’s poisoned by the same stuff and he’s going to die. Bud and Sam bring him in for questioning and after he confesses, they give him a bottle of cranberry juice. Apparently that’s enough to cure him. Later, Megan swings by her mom’s chambers to tell her how it all went. Joan (Megan’s mom) says she wants one hour brunch that Sunday with no cell phones. Megan says she’ll do it if her mom signs an exhumation order for her dad. They fight over how Megan needs to move on, and Megan storms out. Back at the lab, Curtis hands over the chromosome test. Megan and Sam inform Joe’s wife that he had Huntington’s disease and all of the changes he’d been going through were related to that. But Megan did find that the paper in his pocket was origami for his daughter. At least they’ll have some peace now.
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