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“Daddy killed himself, we suffered and I miss him. How is that a point of family pride?”
- Megan
We begin this week in a park where a little boy, Noah Parker, is being kidnapped. A woman, his nanny named Helen, sees him and tries to save him, but a man grabs her and pushes her to the ground. When she chases after the car that has Noah, she gets run over and is killed. Megan and Peter arrive on scene to find Bud (Sam’s training down at Quantico) and lots of campaign signs for Megan’s mom. Megan’s not pleased. And she points out rather quickly that Helen put up a fight before she died. She also discovers a child’s inhaler. Noah has asthma and is now without his medication. At Noah’s house Bud and Special Agent Ames are meeting with his parents. They don’t seem to know anyone who would want to go after them or Helen.
Agent Ames is intent on going to see Megan about theories. Bud warns him to be careful what he wishes for (after they discuss the odds of finding Noah alive and they aren’t positive). Megan tasks Curtis and Ethan with finding out the make and model of the car that killed Helen. Ames shows up and tells Megan she’s working too fast and that she can’t let her emotions and her heart get in the way of the investigation. I really dislike this guy. He’s messing with our team. Megan discovers some day-old bruises on Helen’s shoulder and agrees to join Ames in looking through Helen’s room once she’s found cause of death.
At the precinct, Peter and Bud are talking to the witnesses and other nannies that knew Helen. They all seem to think she was great, but they do mention that she had a boyfriend, Oscar, who they think was hitting her. Bud and Peter bring Oscar in for questioning, but he denies taking Noah or killing Helen. He loved her and she was his world. They’re not all that impressed, but for now they’re looking elsewhere for suspects. Megan shows up to find the Parker house crawling with feds. Megan has cause of death. Not surprisingly, Helen died on impact. And just as Ames shares that all he found in Helen’s room were a few discarded photos of Oscar, Noah’s mother gets a call. Noah managed to get hold of a phone for a few seconds but it wasn’t long enough to trace the call. But at least for the moment, they know he’s alive.
Curtis and Ethan have found the type of car the kidnapped drove and identified the only guy with priors and a huge debt, Jason Peterson. They also took the liberty of updating the Amber Alert. Megan is collecting trace from under Helen’s nails when her mother calls and then shows up at in autopsy. She wants Megan to go to lunch with her and her publicist but Megan is not interested. Just as her mom asks if she’s working on Noah’s case, Ethan shows up with the news that Bud arrested Jason Peterson. Things get very dicey, very quickly. Bud hauls Jason into the precinct and locks himself in interrogation. He cuts video feed and the next thing we know, Jason is dead. Megan is really pissed and confronts Bud, even though Peter tells her not to. She’s dubious of the injuries on Jason’s neck and flank but Peter tries to explain those as injuries that could have happened in order for Bud to subdue Jason.
Kate’s decided to assist Megan with the autopsy on Jason. The case brings up some old memories. She worked a missing child case early on in her time in the ME’s office and unfortunately, the child didn’t make it. The team discovers that there was a fungus under Helen’s nails that likely was transferred from Jason. It’s a bioluminescent fungus (hooray for glow in the dark) and that means it came from somewhere dark and damp. Even though Bud is off the case, he stops by Peter’s office to give him evidence that he thinks Jason left in his car. It could be Noah’s. Peter tells Bud he’ll pass it along to Megan but that Bud can’t be around the case anymore. He also expresses his displeasure with Bud’s tactics. I can totally agree with him. First of all, it wasn’t necessary to cut the camera. And even if they don’t normally tape the interrogations, they could have had more proof of what Bud did or didn’t do to Jason.
Megan is working late that night and calls Lacey to make sure she’s okay. And once again, Megan’s mom shows up. She’s got abstracts of every case where Jason was mentioned. Megan asks what the quid pro quo is (it is an election year after all), but her mother says she doesn’t want anything. And she wants to know what she said that’s set Megan off now. Megan pulls out her mom’s campaign pamphlet with a photo of them after Megan’s father’s death. Megan says it was the worst day of her life and every time her mom runs for election to the bench, she has to relive it. The next day, Megan runs into Ames at the office. She’s found blood mixed with the saliva on Noah’s toy and she’s got the team looking into it, and she’s about to head to see his parents. Ames questions if that’s the best use of Megan’s time since she hasn’t found a cause of death on Jason Peterson yet. She just gives him an annoyed look.
At the Parker house, Megan asks his mom if Noah had an asthma attack recently. Mrs. Parker doesn’t see how that helps but then breaks down, saying that she and her husband have been arguing a lot lately with work stresses. The FBI techs get an image of Noah holding a sign that is asking for 1 million dollars and he’s really sick. Megan tries to tell Ames she’ll have evidence he can use to help find Jason’s accomplice (who likely knows the Parkers) in an hour. She really shouldn’t have said that. Kate makes a comment that Megan isn’t the first to get swept away from by Ames. Megan reminds Kate that she’s got a boyfriend (and for once, there’s no tension between them about Todd at all).
Megan finds what looks like an insect in some of Jason’s tissues that he could have swallowed. Meanwhile, Bud shows up in Peter’s office again, begging to know what’s going on. Peter tells Bud to expect the worst. Internal Affairs getting ready to consider voluntary manslaughter and Bud doesn’t seem to care and won’t tell Peter what happened. Ethan bursts in, as he usually does, with news that he found cocaine cut with a weight-loss drug in Jason’s teeth. Ames brings in a dealer (who we assume Bud identifies), but the dealer denies knowing Jason. Ames gets the dealer to tell him where all of Jason’s hideouts were. They’re scattered all over the city but between the poor air quality needed for Noah to get sick so fast and for the bug that Jason swallowed to be alive, they narrow it down to one place. But they’re too late. The accomplice and Noah are gone. And worse yet, Megan realizes Noah has pneumonia.
Megan and Kate are back to trying to find cause of death on Jason Peterson. It turns out he had an infection that spread to his blood and eventually burst an artery. Bud didn’t kill him after all. And Bud is more than just a little relieved to hear it. He admits to Megan that he thought he really had killed Jason. Ethan pops by to explain the cause of the infection; vaporizer lung. Sounds awful to me. Ames and Megan are at the Parker house in Noah’s room, and Ames shares the news that Mr. Parker’s company bankrupted the year before giving him motive (according to Ames). Megan explains to the Parkers about vaporizer lung and Ames can’t help but try to implicate Mr. Parker for being Jason’s accomplice (he had to get into the room somehow).
The interrogation turns into a shouting match between Mr. Parker and Bud. But once both of them calm down, Mr. Parker says he and his wife were out of town over the weekend a few weeks earlier. The team figures out Oscar wasn’t involved because he was in the hospital and Helen was with him. So she likely entrusted Noah to another nanny. And thanks to the bioluminescent fungus, Megan figures out who it is. But they’re a little stuck. They need a warrant on a Sunday morning. So of course Megan goes to her mother (not that she’ll tell Ames that). He takes the nanny (Rina) inside to go room by room to try and find Noah, but Megan checks outside. She spots a rusty hatchway door and they get to Noah in time to save him. He’s reunited with his parents and all is well. Mostly. Ames tries to ask Megan out but she turns him down (I don’t think I could stand I they went out). Back at the lab, Megan is saying her last goodbyes to Helen when her mother shows up again. She’ brought with her an article about Megan’s father’s death and says that the worst four hours of her life were when she got home and Megan wasn’t there. Megan’s mom just wants her back in her life (and campaign support). Yeah, we’ll see how that goes.
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