CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–2015): Season 15, Episode 11 - Angle of Attack - full transcript
Air Force test pilot captain Robert Holland made a fatal fall in a prototype wing-suit. However his corpse was moved to the desert and he was dying from a brain condition anyway. The team soon realizes being lied to by the widow, who knew of his infidelity, his military project manager USAF major Bernard Mills and two-faced wing-suit company executive Claudia Mason, who encouraged after-hours (ab)use of the prototype. Holland's colleague Jack Ferris suffers a gruesome death during his revealing interrogation, which lead to more secrets to be tied in.
Oh, man.
What do you got there, Super Dave?
First blush?
Well, judging from the
major crushing injuries
to his chest and torso,
- I'd say a hit and run.
- More like hit and drag.
Guy left a trail.
Mm, that's one hell of a roll,
I'll tell you that.
You see something?
No skid marks.
He skidded plenty,
but there's no tire marks.
So whatever hit him didn't slow down at all.
Plus, the angle's all wrong. Look at it.
Car would have to be headed off the road
to send him flying in that direction.
All right, how about body dump?
Tossed out, high speed.
Come here and check out this glass.
Look at the thickness.
That's at least five-eighths of an inch.
Definitely didn't come from a car.
More like a window. It's heavy duty.
Guys,
wherever that glass came from,
we got plenty of it on the victim.
You guys don't think we got ourselves
a jumper here, do you?
Well, you do realize
the problem with that theory...
there's nowhere to jump from on this block.
So where did he come from?
Did you get an ID?
Bradley Weaks, an accountant.
Silver Spring Office Tower... 30th floor.
Silver Springs?
Well, you've got to admit...
that's one hell of a jump.
# CSI Las Vegas 15x11 #
Angle of Attack
Original Air Date on December 21, 2014
# Who... are you? #
# Who, who, who, who? #
# Who... are you? #
# Who, who, who, who? #
# I really wanna know #
# Who... are you? #
# Oh-oh-oh #
# Who... #
# Come on, tell me who are you, you, you #
# Are you! #
Looks like a tornado went through this place.
This looks like the same glass
we found with the victim.
Radial pattern, so...
came from that direction.
Two blown-out windows.
It's just like an entrance and an exit wound.
Something blasted in from that window,
cut the corner of the room here,
and then goes out that one.
Yeah, but what the hell was it?
I mean, this glass is thick.
Normally, you could hit these windows
with a baseball bat,
they wouldn't even blink.
Yeah, I think we're way
beyond a baseball bat here.
Look at that.
Scorch mark.
Do you think this thing was rocket-powered?
Like a rocket-propelled grenade, maybe?
Then why's the office still in one piece?
Didn't detonate?
Maybe it was a dud, or on a timer.
Some of these are triggered by a signal...
maybe the signal was never sent.
Now, what if the guy was standing here,
and this rocket-propelled
whatever hits him...
...carries him out the window, sends him
30 floors down and 100 yards up the street.
Yeah. This guy was an accountant.
Somebody decides to take him out
and they use a rocket-powered
something to do it.
That don't make any sense to me.
Maybe we'll know more when we find it.
What goes up has to go down, right?
It's got to be out there somewhere.
Okay, so that's puzzle number one.
Puzzle number two is putting
this window back together.
Maybe we can figure out what came through it.
Your pick.
Needle in a haystack
or the impossible jigsaw.
Why don't you take the easy one.
Which one is that?
- What do you think?
- Well, it's not 100%,
but it's enough to see an impact zone.
Yeah.
Bigger than any RPG I've ever seen.
Yeah.
It's, uh...
it's about 24 to 30 inches.
Something that big and rocket-powered?
I mean, unless we're talking
about a damn cruise missile...
What do you think it could have been?
Honestly, I have no idea.
- Hey, can I bounce something off you?
- Sure.
So I've been looking into
the death of our CPA,
trying to figure out who
would want to take him out
- in such a spectacular fashion.
- Did you come up with something?
I don't know. I mean, this guy
is as average as average gets.
He's a mid-level CPA at a mid-tier firm.
But there is one possible lead.
The firm where the victim worked...
Baker, Smith,
Capaldi... they, along with about
20 other firms across the country,
have very tenuous ties
with the Colombian cartel.
You're thinking this was a cartel hit?
I don't know what I'm thinking.
I'm trying to draw a line
between a... a Vegas accountant
and a possible RPG attack.
So far, the cartel angle
is the only connection
I've been able to come up with.
Hey. You having any luck?
- Actually, I am.
- Hmm.
I've isolated some of the trace
from our mysterious UFO.
It's a UFO now?
I'm only using the term
in the strictest literal sense:
"Unidentified Flying Object".
Although, admittedly,
I do find the notion that
we are not alone in this
universe to be oddly comforting.
Uh-huh.
What did you find out about
whatever this rocket thing was?
For starters, it wasn't a rocket.
Or at least not rocket-powered.
I found fuel residue in the scorch marks.
Jet A aviation fuel.
So it was jet-powered?
Yes. The marks come from close contact
with the exhaust nozzle
from a jet engine rather than a rocket.
Which implies an entirely
different type of flying object.
- Mm-hmm.
- More likely,
it's something that was
piloted rather than fired.
And there was something else telling
about these scorch marks.
You expose wood to intense heat,
such as the case here, and you get
a spontaneous breakdown of
the cellulose into charcoal.
- But what is charcoal?
- Carbon.
Obviously.
Carbon with some tarry residue
and a little bit of wood ash.
The hotter the burn,
the faster the process happens.
The faster it happens,
the less wood ash you're
gonna have left in the mix.
Yeah, so you measure the amount of ash,
you get a rough idea of
how hot it was burning.
I can go one better.
By measuring the wood ash
over the length of the burn,
we can determine whether
our jet was throttling up
or throttling down, so to speak.
And?
Tip to tip,
the intensity of the burn drops 20%.
- Wait, so it was slowing down?
- Rapidly.
Based on the relative fuel residue,
I'd say it was running out of gas.
Which means it couldn't have gone far.
Depends on your definition of far.
Even if this thing was slowing down,
it still had significant velocity.
Enough to crash through two windows
and take a 175-pound man with it.
Any way to calculate where it landed?
I've been playing with some numbers,
uh, based on the energy
necessary to break the glass,
the momentum transferred
to the victim, gravity, elevation,
but these are only
ballpark figures right now.
Ballpark's better than nothing.
What are the numbers telling you?
Well, the numbers tell me
it could have traveled
another quarter, maybe half, mile
in this general arc...
landed somewhere in that area.
Okay, I'll make the call.
Get the uniforms out there.
All right, cool.
While unis were canvassing the area,
they said they found this.
You kidding me?
It looks like a war zone.
Looks like we have what's left of a body.
Ugh.
Cab driver must have been sitting in here.
Sleeping, maybe.
That would be a rude awakening.
- Right?
- Pulverized.
Hey! Hey! What the hell
are you doing to my cab?
Look at it, what am I supposed to do now?
- That's my livelihood.
- All right, sir,
we're from the Vegas crime lab.
Was there a fare in your taxi?
Somebody waiting, anything like that?
No, what are you talking about?
I've been off duty for 12 hours.
I just woke up.
- Nobody was in my cab.
- All right, all right.
I'll tell you what, this officer's gonna
take your statement, okay?
This is not how I needed to start my day.
Hey...
if that's the cab driver, then
who got blown to bits in here?
That's a good question.
This might be part of our missile.
Engine, maybe.
This might be the nose cone.
Oh, Nick.
It's part of a helmet.
Look at this.
- Is that a boot?
- Yeah.
Somebody's foot's still in it.
Whoever it was wasn't sitting in here.
I think they flew in here.
Our missile was a man?
Oh! Geez.
It's called a wingsuit.
Or-or a squirrel suit. Same difference.
And this is what our guy was doing?
That's a hell of a lot of kinetic energy.
How fast we going there, do you think?
Oh, around 220 miles an hour,
depending on good design and proper fit.
It turns falling into flying, basically.
But that wasn't good enough for our guy.
He puts the suit on, figures
it's not dangerous enough,
so he straps jet engines to his feet?
He was begging for trouble.
Well, I don't think he'd argue with that now.
So, anyway, Morgan's been working with David,
trying to separate the man from the machine.
Literally. So I'm gonna
go in there and check on her.
She should be back by now.
Okay.
Hey.
How's it going in here?
It's going.
You know, one of my exes was a skydiver.
He had a wingsuit.
I don't remember it being this high-tech.
If anything, it struck me
as more of a clown suit.
Course, I could've said that
about everything he wore.
Well, that's probably
why he's your ex-boyfriend.
Now, this suit...
it, uh, it looks different than
the one I was just watching.
It's more advanced.
Looks like some sort of metal exoskeleton
across the wings...
I haven't seen that before.
And this is what's left
of the propulsion system.
It's definitely not something that was
hacked together in somebody's garage.
This is sophisticated.
So where in the hell do you
think this thing came from?
I don't know. But check this out.
It's got one more thing my ex
didn't have when he was diving.
There's a little box
integrated into the front of the rigging,
and it looks like it has leads
connected to the suit as well.
Looks like a mini version of
a black box, like they have on airplanes.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
It's weird, right?
Hey. I got an ID on your, uh, Rocket Man.
Ran his DNA.
When he didn't pop in CODIS,
I expanded the search to military databases.
- Military?
- In this case, Air Force.
Your deceased was a pilot.
Captain Robert Holland.
He was stationed at Nellis.
So has Russell notified the family yet?
The wife. She lives on base.
The victim's CO is bringing her in.
All right.
Mrs. Holland, I am so sorry for your loss.
Thank you.
Major Mills,
on the phone last night, you said that
Captain Holland was not on duty last night.
Yes, that's correct.
And the wingsuit...
that's property of the Air Force?
Uh, no. Technically,
it belongs to TRP Aeronautics,
a DoD contractor.
The Air Force is exploring the possibility
of using them in urban incursion.
And Captain Holland was on loan to TRP
- as a test pilot.
- Lf he wasn't on duty
last night, then...
what was he doing in his suit,
flying in downtown Vegas?
It's a damn good question.
All I can tell you is that test pilots...
like Captain Holland...
live to fly.
Now, it wouldn't be the
first time one of them
stole a prototype to log a few extra hours.
No. Bobby wasn't like that.
He-he never took unnecessary risks.
He wasn't that kind of a pilot.
Amanda, you have to understand,
Bobby didn't want you to worry.
Now, I'm sure he downplayed the risks
of whatever he was involved in,
authorized or no.
And that's not a criticism.
Taking risks is what made
Bobby a great pilot.
Mrs. Holland, when was the last time
you saw your husband?
Truthfully, it's been about three days.
Three days ago?
Ever since he started working for TRP,
it's not uncommon for him
to be gone for days at a time.
Mr. Russell, I understand
that this accident resulted
in the death of a civilian.
Now, for the record, the blame here
lies entirely with TRP Aeronautics.
They never should've allowed
the unauthorized removal of that
prototype from their facility.
Major, you keep saying that
like Bobby did something wrong.
Mr. Russell, if you don't mind,
Captain Holland's parents
have yet to be notified.
Oh, I'm sorry. I, um... I forgot my phone.
I'll bring the car around.
Mr. Russell.
I don't care what anybody says.
I know my husband.
And he wasn't some yeehaw test pilot.
He never would've flown
without authorization.
Think the Air Force is covering something up?
I think they're trying to blame Bobby.
That way, they can avoid
paying death benefits,
they can take away his pension.
I mean, it's all about money.
They don't even care
that they dirty his name.
Well, if there's something
to find, Mrs. Holland,
I promise you, we'll find it.
Okay.
Thank you.
I've been examining the wingsuit, and our
flyer's rig has two chutes.
A primary... and a reserve.
Now, neither one of them deployed.
- Why?
- I don't know,
but you got to figure the guy
was either dead or unconscious
when he hit that office tower.
Wouldn't have pulled the ripcord.
But the reserve has an AAD...
an automatic activation device,
which should have
deployed on its own.
- No matter what.
- So was the AAD
damaged by the impact?
No... no sign of external damage.
Okay, the trigger's based
on air pressure, right?
Needs two things to pop.
You got to be really close
to the ground and you got to be
falling really fast.
Which would scare me into popping.
Okay, so let's scare it.
See what happens.
Okay...
...all we've got to do is trick this bad boy
into thinking it's taking a fall, yeah?
We suck the air out,
lower the air pressure inside,
the chute thinks it's at altitude.
Couple thousand feet ought
to do it, don't you think?
All we need now is the fall.
Geronimo!
Altimeter's showing a rapid descent.
Altitude's dropping,
all the way to zero.
It should've fired.
Excuse me.
Standard barometric sensor.
Hold on. Nick, check this out.
That's obviously been tampered with.
Tool marks. Two-pronged pattern.
Circuit's been cut.
Well, let's see what happens
if I bridge the circuit.
- All right, you ready?
- Yeah.
And that's what turns
an accident into murder.
I'm so sorry, Ms. Mason.
These officers want to have a word with you.
It's all right, Ellen.
Obviously, they have news
about Captain Holland.
Is that right, officers?
What makes you say that?
Thank you.
Well, last night, Captain Holland stole
a wingsuit prototype from this facility,
a very expensive prototype,
and we have not seen him since.
So, either he caught the
largest thermal in history,
or he's gotten himself into trouble.
You're here, so,
I'm guessing it's the latter?
Your guess would be right.
The captain crashed the suit.
Killed a civilian and himself.
That means you have questions.
Uh, okay. I expect you'll want to start
with our Project Icarus lab.
- Icarus?
- Icarus,
Greek myth, wax wings,
flew too close to the sun... that's a bit
of an inauspicious name
for a wingsuit project,
given the way things turned out
for poor old Icarus, don't you think?
I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name.
CSI Nick Stokes.
Well, CSI Nick Stokes...
follow me.
Okay.
Captain, this is CSI Nick Stokes. And...
Detective Crawford.
Captain Ferris. Is this about Holland?
Lance, Holland is dead.
What?
- God, what happened?
- He had an accident.
- Not in the suit.
- Yeah, it was in the suit.
- Where is it?
- It's evidence.
I-I don't... I don't think you understand.
We're at a critical stage in testing.
I need to see that suit to
determine what went wrong.
We're the ones examining it now, okay?
You do have some interesting
tools here, Captain.
Like that one in your hand.
What is that used for?
It's specially made,
used to adjust the attack angle on the wing.
Specially made?
By me.
My design.
Mind if I take it back to the crime lab?
Why?
Well, we can talk about that downtown.
Wait... am I under arrest?
Captain Ferris, just go with the officers.
I mean, we have nothing to hide, right?
Please.
Thank you.
Here's the deal:
Someone used a tool just like yours
to sabotage the AAD
on Holland's reserve parachute.
Bobby was like a brother to me.
Yeah, we imagine there's a lot of camaraderie
between test pilots.
Lot of competition, too, right?
Yeah. Not... not so that
I would do something to him.
Okay, come on, man, we're just trying
to get some answers, here.
Poor guy's widow deserves
that much, don't you think?
God.
Amanda.
Yeah, Amanda.
And right now, she thinks the Air Force
is gonna hold back her husband's benefits
for stealing that suit.
Look, Bobby didn't steal the suit.
Well, your CO sure seems to think he did.
As does Ms. Mason, the CEO of TRP.
No, that... no, that's bull.
From the Air Force perspective, maybe
the flight was unauthorized,
but not TRP. God! Mm.
Can I get something for my headache?
In a minute. Keep talking about TRP.
Are you saying that they knew
Captain Holland was testing
the suit on his own?
It's Claudia, she's got
us pushing the limits.
Logging extra hours in the simulator,
in the hypobaric chamber.
Was she encouraging after-hours flights?
More than encourage, she,
uh, she paid incentives.
Cash awards for hitting milestones.
Last month, Bobby, he made, um, 25 grand
for sustained level flight.
You all right there, Captain Ferris?
Hey.
Captain.
Hey.
Hey, man, do you know
where you are right now?
H-Hey.
Hey, guys.
Hey.
H-Hey, you guys remember that girl?
Th-That one time?
Man, what was her name?
Hmm?
Captain?
Captain.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Call rescue.
- We need paramedics in here!
- Captain?
I got you, I got you.
- What the hell is happening?
- I don't know, I don't know.
Captain?
Crawford, he's dead.
Heard you were working on Captain Ferris.
What have you got, Doc?
Textbook.
I could've told you
cerebral edema without even
looking at the body.
Brain tissue's like any
other part of the body,
it swells in response to injury or illness.
Yeah, but unlike the rest of the body,
the brain has nowhere to go.
True, it swells against the skull,
causing neurovascular constriction.
Cutting off the brain's oxygen supply.
So if that's COD,
what caused the edema?
The list of possibilities is long.
The fact that Captain Ferris was a pilot
suggested to me we could
be dealing with HACE.
HACE?
It's an acronym...
High-Altitude Cerebral Edema.
It's a form of altitude sickness caused by
repeated rapid ascents.
It's not the first time I've seen it, either.
What do you mean?
Well, as I'm sure you remember,
there was not a lot of
Captain Holland left to examine,
but his brain tissue did present
vasogenic edema, capillary leakage
and spongiosis of the white matter,
and those are all consistent with HACE.
Do you think it's possible
that Holland could have
stroked out mid-flight,
the same way that Ferris
stroked out mid-sentence?
It's possible, if he was dropped off a plane
at altitude in a wingsuit,
that could certainly cause the onset of HACE.
A hypobaric chamber replicates the condition
of high altitude, right?
Right, the Air Force uses them for training.
According to Nick, TRP uses them, as well.
They want to make sure that
their pilots can function,
even with altitude sickness.
Training like that's dangerous...
the margin of error is incredibly small.
And if you get even a little bit aggressive,
the effects could be lethal.
People, no, this work is unacceptable.
We're not building these suits
for some jackass buzzing
a half-time show, okay?
These are weapons of war.
You know what, stop. Everybody.
Hey! Eyes on me. Listen.
I know that there have been
a lot of distractions lately, okay?
But that is no excuse for failure.
Is that clear?
Clear enough for me.
CSI Stokes.
Nice seeing you again.
I assume you heard about Captain Ferris.
Two tragedies in as many days.
It's almost more than one can bear.
Almost.
Not sure what you mean.
Maybe this will make it clear.
That's a search warrant.
That allows us to seize
medical records, program
schedules, flight data,
all materials related to Project Icarus.
I-I don't, I don't understand.
I've been absolutely nothing but cooperative.
Two of your pilots have died.
Both victims of HACE.
- Unfortunate accidents.
- Is that really what you want to go with?
'Cause on top of the HACE, Captain Holland's
parachute was tampered with...
either by the competition
or by you, so, quite frankly,
I think you're hiding something from me.
This warrant is worthless
without being cosigned by a military judge.
I don't need JAG approval, and you know it.
Okay, boys.
Yes, sir. Move out.
You really want to cooperate with me,
give me the decryption key
for the code from the black box
on Holland's wingsuit.
I don't have it.
Black boxes are Air Force property,
and if you want access, you're
gonna have to talk to them.
You know what that is, right, Major?
- Yes, I do.
- We need
the encrypted data from
Captain Holland's flight
the night he died.
According to TRP, as his CO,
you're the only person who can give it to us.
That's correct.
And?
I'm sorry, but I can't give
you the decryption code.
- It's classified and...
- Two of your pilots are dead.
They died working for a contractor
who subjected them to unnecessary risks.
Might have even killed
one of 'em to cover it up.
Those are serious charges, Mr. Russell.
These are your guys we're
talking about here, Major.
TRP did something illegal
and right now, they're just,
they're hiding behind the Air Force.
They're hiding behind you.
My hands are tied.
Only if you let 'em be.
Look, this kid, Captain Holland, was under
your command. He woke up every morning
and put his life at risk simply
because you asked him to.
Help me find some peace for his wife.
You need to do the right thing here.
There's an alphanumeric pass
phrase keyed into each box.
I'll have my office send it
over to you within the hour.
Thank you, Major.
Like you said...
it's the right thing to do.
How goes the data retrieval
on the wingsuit man?
Honestly, I am crashing
and burning, just like him.
What do you mean?
The numbers don't make sense.
I think maybe the data's corrupted.
I mean, this thing was
involved in a serious crash.
Black boxes are designed
to withstand crashes.
That's the whole point.
Take a look for yourself.
At the biometric data.
We thought Captain Holland
stroked out mid-flight,
but look at his vitals.
Heart rate, BP, respiratory rate...
all flatlined, the whole way.
According to this, he was dead
before he even took flight.
That can't be possible.
You know that Sherlock Holmes quote?
"Eliminate all other factors,
the one which remains must be the truth".
"Must be the truth".
So we're saying what?
We're looking at an elaborate
body dump from a plane?
Not according to this.
Check out the altimeter reading
at the start of the flight.
2,920 feet.
Yeah. Now, given that Las Vegas is
roughly 2,200 feet above sea level...
That would mean he would jump
from a height of 700 feet.
He didn't jump from a plane.
This is more like a BASE jump.
Okay, well, the flight data would give us
all the GPS coordinates, right?
Right.
We know where he landed,
now we just got to figure out
where he came from.
I've reconstructed
Captain Holland's flight path
on the night he died,
zeroing in on the point-of-origin
of which we now know was a BASE jump,
beginning... here.
The Delmore Towers.
The top-floor corporate condo, to be precise.
Owned by TRP Aeronautics.
Right, it says here TRP's CEO
Claudia Mason used it as her in-town digs.
But she wasn't the only one using it.
The data on the black box
shows history of BASE jumps
at the same condo over
the last several months.
So Holland was using the
Delmore Towers to train.
Off base, off hours, off regs.
And, we have to assume,
with Claudia's approval.
You know, all these test
pilots vying for bonuses
that TRP was offering,
maybe Claudia was just trying to give Holland
a leg up on the competition.
Maybe that's not all
Claudia wanted to give him.
Ah. Okay.
All right, I like that. So Holland goes up
to the tower with his wingsuit,
a little off-hour training.
But first he and Claudia decide to have a...
a pre-flight tryst.
Things get hot and heavy.
But Holland has HACE, just like Ferris,
and in the heat of passion,
he just strokes out.
Okay, so I'm Claudia. What do I do?
Well, you have two choices.
You either call 911...
Yeah, but if I do that,
I lose my contracts, I lose my company...
So you go with choice number two.
You put Holland in his wingsuit,
you drag him out onto the balcony,
you fire up the jet engines
to give him just enough thrust to launch him,
and then all you need is a little push.
But first, you disable the backup chute,
so that when he crashes to the earth,
nothing left of him to trace back to you.
After all, he was just
another reckless flyboy.
Stole a suit, went for a joyride.
Not a bad plan if you're Claudia Mason,
and you're coming up with it on the fly.
Yeah.
But like all things on the fly...
I'm betting that there's
something that she missed.
You sure about your theory? I'm just saying,
doesn't even look like anybody's been here.
Well, Claudia Mason must have cleaned up.
Let's just hope she's a better
CEO than she is a maid.
Balcony.
Where Holland started his flight.
I got some blood.
Like Russell said...
Claudia must have missed something.
Would you hit the lights?
Wow.
That is one serious blood pool.
Well, doesn't end there.
Got some blood drops.
And cast-off.
You thought the guy stroked
out from HACE, right?
Well, that's what I thought, but... I mean,
this blood pattern suggests
something different,
more violent.
This is from a brutal beating.
It's a crime of passion.
You know how they always say
the cover-up is worse than the crime?
Not this time.
So what does our CEO have to say for herself?
Not a whole hell of a lot, really.
She denies knowing anything about Holland
going up to the condo
to do his BASE-jumping, so...
So she denies having an affair, too?
Oh, yeah.
Well, look, the first time, she
was hiding behind the Air Force.
This time she's hiding behind
that $800-an-hour lawyer.
Well, if she won't talk,
her condo definitely will.
Well, no crime of passion
starts without the passion.
There were no prints on the murder weapon.
But once we run the blood,
the fiber, the hairs,
maybe we can prove Claudia
was here, killing him, too.
She may not have been
the one wanting to kill him.
Just got the security camera footage
from the lobby the night Holland died.
That's Holland's wife.
Show is just getting started.
You lied to us, Amanda.
You told me you hadn't
seen your husband in days,
and that the night he was killed,
you assumed he was on a
training mission for TRP.
This video says you knew
exactly where he was.
And he was on more than
just a training mission.
Look, I know what this
looks like, but you're wrong.
No, I'll tell you what's wrong:
You coming to me, asking me
to find out what happened to your husband,
when you knew all along.
No. It is not like that.
Okay.
Tell us what it's like, then.
The past few months,
Bobby has been different.
At first, I thought it was just
this new job at TRP, I mean...
But a woman knows
when her husband is...
Is what?
Straying?
He said he was going to TRP that night,
and I followed him.
Downtown.
- To the condo.
- Yes. And I confronted him.
And I was gonna confront that
woman, too, whoever she was.
But on the way up in the elevator,
Bobby swore to me that he was innocent.
That he really was there training that night.
He was doing a BASE jump from a condo tower.
He showed me his wingsuit,
he showed me his gear,
and I... I had to believe him.
I didn't want to lose him.
So you didn't go up to the condo,
you didn't continue the fight
and you didn't kill your
husband in a jealous rage.
Am I getting that right?
No... I didn't kill Bobby.
I'm sorry that I lied to you
about seeing him that night.
And Major Mills is right...
Bobby didn't follow the rules.
He lived on the edge.
And jumping from a tower
in the middle of the city
was against regulations.
You lied to us just so that you could keep
his death benefits.
Yeah.
And preserve his memory.
And I'm not lying to you now.
Then you won't mind giving us a
blood and DNA sample, will you?
Nick, you need to see this.
- What is it? - Expanded tox
panel on Air Force Captain Ferris.
I don't think it's any accident that
he stroked out on you in Interrogation.
Tested positive for furosemide.
Isn't that a diuretic?
A hard-core diuretic,
often abused by models and bodybuilders
to get that "cut" look.
Ferris's medical records make
no mention of any prescription.
Okay, so the guy was on a diuretic.
I don't see how that would kill him.
Flip the page.
You'll see that the furosemide caused
a major sodium imbalance.
For a guy logging that many
hours in a hypobaric chamber,
it makes for a lethal combination.
Makes for murder.
Hey, Henry. Got your text.
You have, uh, results
on the DNA from the condo?
I do. Uh, blood is a match
to the victim, Captain Holland.
Okay. Uh, what about the bed?
The murder weapon?
I found semen contribution
from Holland in the bed...
Just cut to the chase.
Which woman killed him?
The wife or the boss?
The boss was in bed with him.
But not the one you're thinking of.
Your DNA
in the bed and your DNA on the murder weapon.
Mrs. Holland knew her husband
was having an affair,
she just didn't know it was
with his commanding officer.
Would you like to tell us
what happened that night, Major?
Help us understand.
You know, maybe it'll help a jury understand.
He said he was going to leave me.
Said he was afraid.
Of what?
Afraid of getting caught?
It wasn't just an affair.
And there is no way that you
or anybody can understand that.
You could try us.
I loved him.
And I thought that he loved me, too.
He said his wife was asking questions
and that she followed him
to the condo that night.
Can you believe it?
For a second, I was actually relieved.
I thought maybe this meant
that we could...
stop living the lie.
But he didn't feel that way, did he?
No.
It's over.
Don't you understand that I love my wife?
You love me.
How can you deny who you are?
Who we are?
Deny? This coming from you?
Your whole life is denial.
I had to make sacrifices for my career.
Yeah, and me, too.
And now I'm making another sacrifice.
I'm sorry, but...
we're done.
Don't turn your back on me!
I panicked.
I... I cleaned up the condo as best I could.
Yeah, you put him in the wingsuit
and you sabotaged the
chute so it wouldn't open.
Or, at the very least, make Claudia
and TRP the fall guy.
Is that why Ferris had to die, too?
Yeah, well, we searched your place.
And, um, we found this.
It's furosemide.
What was your plan, Major?
I mean, you slip some into his coffee
and you hope he strokes out
in the hypobaric chamber?
But it didn't work out that way, right?
He was a strong test pilot.
Took a few extra hours.
Bobby and Ferris were best friends.
If anybody knew the truth
about us, it was him.
I...
had no choice.
Major...
you always have a choice.
And you chose wrong.
Twice.
Mrs. Holland?
You still waiting for something?
Haven't they finished with you yet?
No, they said I could go.
I just...
I mean, go where?
Home is empty.
It's always gonna be empty.
I'm so sorry.
For everything.
Your husband...
You were just doing your job.
I understand.
Do you keep secrets from your wife?
I used to.
Not anymore?
No.
She's a lucky woman, then.
Excuse me.
What do you got there, Super Dave?
First blush?
Well, judging from the
major crushing injuries
to his chest and torso,
- I'd say a hit and run.
- More like hit and drag.
Guy left a trail.
Mm, that's one hell of a roll,
I'll tell you that.
You see something?
No skid marks.
He skidded plenty,
but there's no tire marks.
So whatever hit him didn't slow down at all.
Plus, the angle's all wrong. Look at it.
Car would have to be headed off the road
to send him flying in that direction.
All right, how about body dump?
Tossed out, high speed.
Come here and check out this glass.
Look at the thickness.
That's at least five-eighths of an inch.
Definitely didn't come from a car.
More like a window. It's heavy duty.
Guys,
wherever that glass came from,
we got plenty of it on the victim.
You guys don't think we got ourselves
a jumper here, do you?
Well, you do realize
the problem with that theory...
there's nowhere to jump from on this block.
So where did he come from?
Did you get an ID?
Bradley Weaks, an accountant.
Silver Spring Office Tower... 30th floor.
Silver Springs?
Well, you've got to admit...
that's one hell of a jump.
# CSI Las Vegas 15x11 #
Angle of Attack
Original Air Date on December 21, 2014
# Who... are you? #
# Who, who, who, who? #
# Who... are you? #
# Who, who, who, who? #
# I really wanna know #
# Who... are you? #
# Oh-oh-oh #
# Who... #
# Come on, tell me who are you, you, you #
# Are you! #
Looks like a tornado went through this place.
This looks like the same glass
we found with the victim.
Radial pattern, so...
came from that direction.
Two blown-out windows.
It's just like an entrance and an exit wound.
Something blasted in from that window,
cut the corner of the room here,
and then goes out that one.
Yeah, but what the hell was it?
I mean, this glass is thick.
Normally, you could hit these windows
with a baseball bat,
they wouldn't even blink.
Yeah, I think we're way
beyond a baseball bat here.
Look at that.
Scorch mark.
Do you think this thing was rocket-powered?
Like a rocket-propelled grenade, maybe?
Then why's the office still in one piece?
Didn't detonate?
Maybe it was a dud, or on a timer.
Some of these are triggered by a signal...
maybe the signal was never sent.
Now, what if the guy was standing here,
and this rocket-propelled
whatever hits him...
...carries him out the window, sends him
30 floors down and 100 yards up the street.
Yeah. This guy was an accountant.
Somebody decides to take him out
and they use a rocket-powered
something to do it.
That don't make any sense to me.
Maybe we'll know more when we find it.
What goes up has to go down, right?
It's got to be out there somewhere.
Okay, so that's puzzle number one.
Puzzle number two is putting
this window back together.
Maybe we can figure out what came through it.
Your pick.
Needle in a haystack
or the impossible jigsaw.
Why don't you take the easy one.
Which one is that?
- What do you think?
- Well, it's not 100%,
but it's enough to see an impact zone.
Yeah.
Bigger than any RPG I've ever seen.
Yeah.
It's, uh...
it's about 24 to 30 inches.
Something that big and rocket-powered?
I mean, unless we're talking
about a damn cruise missile...
What do you think it could have been?
Honestly, I have no idea.
- Hey, can I bounce something off you?
- Sure.
So I've been looking into
the death of our CPA,
trying to figure out who
would want to take him out
- in such a spectacular fashion.
- Did you come up with something?
I don't know. I mean, this guy
is as average as average gets.
He's a mid-level CPA at a mid-tier firm.
But there is one possible lead.
The firm where the victim worked...
Baker, Smith,
Capaldi... they, along with about
20 other firms across the country,
have very tenuous ties
with the Colombian cartel.
You're thinking this was a cartel hit?
I don't know what I'm thinking.
I'm trying to draw a line
between a... a Vegas accountant
and a possible RPG attack.
So far, the cartel angle
is the only connection
I've been able to come up with.
Hey. You having any luck?
- Actually, I am.
- Hmm.
I've isolated some of the trace
from our mysterious UFO.
It's a UFO now?
I'm only using the term
in the strictest literal sense:
"Unidentified Flying Object".
Although, admittedly,
I do find the notion that
we are not alone in this
universe to be oddly comforting.
Uh-huh.
What did you find out about
whatever this rocket thing was?
For starters, it wasn't a rocket.
Or at least not rocket-powered.
I found fuel residue in the scorch marks.
Jet A aviation fuel.
So it was jet-powered?
Yes. The marks come from close contact
with the exhaust nozzle
from a jet engine rather than a rocket.
Which implies an entirely
different type of flying object.
- Mm-hmm.
- More likely,
it's something that was
piloted rather than fired.
And there was something else telling
about these scorch marks.
You expose wood to intense heat,
such as the case here, and you get
a spontaneous breakdown of
the cellulose into charcoal.
- But what is charcoal?
- Carbon.
Obviously.
Carbon with some tarry residue
and a little bit of wood ash.
The hotter the burn,
the faster the process happens.
The faster it happens,
the less wood ash you're
gonna have left in the mix.
Yeah, so you measure the amount of ash,
you get a rough idea of
how hot it was burning.
I can go one better.
By measuring the wood ash
over the length of the burn,
we can determine whether
our jet was throttling up
or throttling down, so to speak.
And?
Tip to tip,
the intensity of the burn drops 20%.
- Wait, so it was slowing down?
- Rapidly.
Based on the relative fuel residue,
I'd say it was running out of gas.
Which means it couldn't have gone far.
Depends on your definition of far.
Even if this thing was slowing down,
it still had significant velocity.
Enough to crash through two windows
and take a 175-pound man with it.
Any way to calculate where it landed?
I've been playing with some numbers,
uh, based on the energy
necessary to break the glass,
the momentum transferred
to the victim, gravity, elevation,
but these are only
ballpark figures right now.
Ballpark's better than nothing.
What are the numbers telling you?
Well, the numbers tell me
it could have traveled
another quarter, maybe half, mile
in this general arc...
landed somewhere in that area.
Okay, I'll make the call.
Get the uniforms out there.
All right, cool.
While unis were canvassing the area,
they said they found this.
You kidding me?
It looks like a war zone.
Looks like we have what's left of a body.
Ugh.
Cab driver must have been sitting in here.
Sleeping, maybe.
That would be a rude awakening.
- Right?
- Pulverized.
Hey! Hey! What the hell
are you doing to my cab?
Look at it, what am I supposed to do now?
- That's my livelihood.
- All right, sir,
we're from the Vegas crime lab.
Was there a fare in your taxi?
Somebody waiting, anything like that?
No, what are you talking about?
I've been off duty for 12 hours.
I just woke up.
- Nobody was in my cab.
- All right, all right.
I'll tell you what, this officer's gonna
take your statement, okay?
This is not how I needed to start my day.
Hey...
if that's the cab driver, then
who got blown to bits in here?
That's a good question.
This might be part of our missile.
Engine, maybe.
This might be the nose cone.
Oh, Nick.
It's part of a helmet.
Look at this.
- Is that a boot?
- Yeah.
Somebody's foot's still in it.
Whoever it was wasn't sitting in here.
I think they flew in here.
Our missile was a man?
Oh! Geez.
It's called a wingsuit.
Or-or a squirrel suit. Same difference.
And this is what our guy was doing?
That's a hell of a lot of kinetic energy.
How fast we going there, do you think?
Oh, around 220 miles an hour,
depending on good design and proper fit.
It turns falling into flying, basically.
But that wasn't good enough for our guy.
He puts the suit on, figures
it's not dangerous enough,
so he straps jet engines to his feet?
He was begging for trouble.
Well, I don't think he'd argue with that now.
So, anyway, Morgan's been working with David,
trying to separate the man from the machine.
Literally. So I'm gonna
go in there and check on her.
She should be back by now.
Okay.
Hey.
How's it going in here?
It's going.
You know, one of my exes was a skydiver.
He had a wingsuit.
I don't remember it being this high-tech.
If anything, it struck me
as more of a clown suit.
Course, I could've said that
about everything he wore.
Well, that's probably
why he's your ex-boyfriend.
Now, this suit...
it, uh, it looks different than
the one I was just watching.
It's more advanced.
Looks like some sort of metal exoskeleton
across the wings...
I haven't seen that before.
And this is what's left
of the propulsion system.
It's definitely not something that was
hacked together in somebody's garage.
This is sophisticated.
So where in the hell do you
think this thing came from?
I don't know. But check this out.
It's got one more thing my ex
didn't have when he was diving.
There's a little box
integrated into the front of the rigging,
and it looks like it has leads
connected to the suit as well.
Looks like a mini version of
a black box, like they have on airplanes.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
It's weird, right?
Hey. I got an ID on your, uh, Rocket Man.
Ran his DNA.
When he didn't pop in CODIS,
I expanded the search to military databases.
- Military?
- In this case, Air Force.
Your deceased was a pilot.
Captain Robert Holland.
He was stationed at Nellis.
So has Russell notified the family yet?
The wife. She lives on base.
The victim's CO is bringing her in.
All right.
Mrs. Holland, I am so sorry for your loss.
Thank you.
Major Mills,
on the phone last night, you said that
Captain Holland was not on duty last night.
Yes, that's correct.
And the wingsuit...
that's property of the Air Force?
Uh, no. Technically,
it belongs to TRP Aeronautics,
a DoD contractor.
The Air Force is exploring the possibility
of using them in urban incursion.
And Captain Holland was on loan to TRP
- as a test pilot.
- Lf he wasn't on duty
last night, then...
what was he doing in his suit,
flying in downtown Vegas?
It's a damn good question.
All I can tell you is that test pilots...
like Captain Holland...
live to fly.
Now, it wouldn't be the
first time one of them
stole a prototype to log a few extra hours.
No. Bobby wasn't like that.
He-he never took unnecessary risks.
He wasn't that kind of a pilot.
Amanda, you have to understand,
Bobby didn't want you to worry.
Now, I'm sure he downplayed the risks
of whatever he was involved in,
authorized or no.
And that's not a criticism.
Taking risks is what made
Bobby a great pilot.
Mrs. Holland, when was the last time
you saw your husband?
Truthfully, it's been about three days.
Three days ago?
Ever since he started working for TRP,
it's not uncommon for him
to be gone for days at a time.
Mr. Russell, I understand
that this accident resulted
in the death of a civilian.
Now, for the record, the blame here
lies entirely with TRP Aeronautics.
They never should've allowed
the unauthorized removal of that
prototype from their facility.
Major, you keep saying that
like Bobby did something wrong.
Mr. Russell, if you don't mind,
Captain Holland's parents
have yet to be notified.
Oh, I'm sorry. I, um... I forgot my phone.
I'll bring the car around.
Mr. Russell.
I don't care what anybody says.
I know my husband.
And he wasn't some yeehaw test pilot.
He never would've flown
without authorization.
Think the Air Force is covering something up?
I think they're trying to blame Bobby.
That way, they can avoid
paying death benefits,
they can take away his pension.
I mean, it's all about money.
They don't even care
that they dirty his name.
Well, if there's something
to find, Mrs. Holland,
I promise you, we'll find it.
Okay.
Thank you.
I've been examining the wingsuit, and our
flyer's rig has two chutes.
A primary... and a reserve.
Now, neither one of them deployed.
- Why?
- I don't know,
but you got to figure the guy
was either dead or unconscious
when he hit that office tower.
Wouldn't have pulled the ripcord.
But the reserve has an AAD...
an automatic activation device,
which should have
deployed on its own.
- No matter what.
- So was the AAD
damaged by the impact?
No... no sign of external damage.
Okay, the trigger's based
on air pressure, right?
Needs two things to pop.
You got to be really close
to the ground and you got to be
falling really fast.
Which would scare me into popping.
Okay, so let's scare it.
See what happens.
Okay...
...all we've got to do is trick this bad boy
into thinking it's taking a fall, yeah?
We suck the air out,
lower the air pressure inside,
the chute thinks it's at altitude.
Couple thousand feet ought
to do it, don't you think?
All we need now is the fall.
Geronimo!
Altimeter's showing a rapid descent.
Altitude's dropping,
all the way to zero.
It should've fired.
Excuse me.
Standard barometric sensor.
Hold on. Nick, check this out.
That's obviously been tampered with.
Tool marks. Two-pronged pattern.
Circuit's been cut.
Well, let's see what happens
if I bridge the circuit.
- All right, you ready?
- Yeah.
And that's what turns
an accident into murder.
I'm so sorry, Ms. Mason.
These officers want to have a word with you.
It's all right, Ellen.
Obviously, they have news
about Captain Holland.
Is that right, officers?
What makes you say that?
Thank you.
Well, last night, Captain Holland stole
a wingsuit prototype from this facility,
a very expensive prototype,
and we have not seen him since.
So, either he caught the
largest thermal in history,
or he's gotten himself into trouble.
You're here, so,
I'm guessing it's the latter?
Your guess would be right.
The captain crashed the suit.
Killed a civilian and himself.
That means you have questions.
Uh, okay. I expect you'll want to start
with our Project Icarus lab.
- Icarus?
- Icarus,
Greek myth, wax wings,
flew too close to the sun... that's a bit
of an inauspicious name
for a wingsuit project,
given the way things turned out
for poor old Icarus, don't you think?
I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name.
CSI Nick Stokes.
Well, CSI Nick Stokes...
follow me.
Okay.
Captain, this is CSI Nick Stokes. And...
Detective Crawford.
Captain Ferris. Is this about Holland?
Lance, Holland is dead.
What?
- God, what happened?
- He had an accident.
- Not in the suit.
- Yeah, it was in the suit.
- Where is it?
- It's evidence.
I-I don't... I don't think you understand.
We're at a critical stage in testing.
I need to see that suit to
determine what went wrong.
We're the ones examining it now, okay?
You do have some interesting
tools here, Captain.
Like that one in your hand.
What is that used for?
It's specially made,
used to adjust the attack angle on the wing.
Specially made?
By me.
My design.
Mind if I take it back to the crime lab?
Why?
Well, we can talk about that downtown.
Wait... am I under arrest?
Captain Ferris, just go with the officers.
I mean, we have nothing to hide, right?
Please.
Thank you.
Here's the deal:
Someone used a tool just like yours
to sabotage the AAD
on Holland's reserve parachute.
Bobby was like a brother to me.
Yeah, we imagine there's a lot of camaraderie
between test pilots.
Lot of competition, too, right?
Yeah. Not... not so that
I would do something to him.
Okay, come on, man, we're just trying
to get some answers, here.
Poor guy's widow deserves
that much, don't you think?
God.
Amanda.
Yeah, Amanda.
And right now, she thinks the Air Force
is gonna hold back her husband's benefits
for stealing that suit.
Look, Bobby didn't steal the suit.
Well, your CO sure seems to think he did.
As does Ms. Mason, the CEO of TRP.
No, that... no, that's bull.
From the Air Force perspective, maybe
the flight was unauthorized,
but not TRP. God! Mm.
Can I get something for my headache?
In a minute. Keep talking about TRP.
Are you saying that they knew
Captain Holland was testing
the suit on his own?
It's Claudia, she's got
us pushing the limits.
Logging extra hours in the simulator,
in the hypobaric chamber.
Was she encouraging after-hours flights?
More than encourage, she,
uh, she paid incentives.
Cash awards for hitting milestones.
Last month, Bobby, he made, um, 25 grand
for sustained level flight.
You all right there, Captain Ferris?
Hey.
Captain.
Hey.
Hey, man, do you know
where you are right now?
H-Hey.
Hey, guys.
Hey.
H-Hey, you guys remember that girl?
Th-That one time?
Man, what was her name?
Hmm?
Captain?
Captain.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Call rescue.
- We need paramedics in here!
- Captain?
I got you, I got you.
- What the hell is happening?
- I don't know, I don't know.
Captain?
Crawford, he's dead.
Heard you were working on Captain Ferris.
What have you got, Doc?
Textbook.
I could've told you
cerebral edema without even
looking at the body.
Brain tissue's like any
other part of the body,
it swells in response to injury or illness.
Yeah, but unlike the rest of the body,
the brain has nowhere to go.
True, it swells against the skull,
causing neurovascular constriction.
Cutting off the brain's oxygen supply.
So if that's COD,
what caused the edema?
The list of possibilities is long.
The fact that Captain Ferris was a pilot
suggested to me we could
be dealing with HACE.
HACE?
It's an acronym...
High-Altitude Cerebral Edema.
It's a form of altitude sickness caused by
repeated rapid ascents.
It's not the first time I've seen it, either.
What do you mean?
Well, as I'm sure you remember,
there was not a lot of
Captain Holland left to examine,
but his brain tissue did present
vasogenic edema, capillary leakage
and spongiosis of the white matter,
and those are all consistent with HACE.
Do you think it's possible
that Holland could have
stroked out mid-flight,
the same way that Ferris
stroked out mid-sentence?
It's possible, if he was dropped off a plane
at altitude in a wingsuit,
that could certainly cause the onset of HACE.
A hypobaric chamber replicates the condition
of high altitude, right?
Right, the Air Force uses them for training.
According to Nick, TRP uses them, as well.
They want to make sure that
their pilots can function,
even with altitude sickness.
Training like that's dangerous...
the margin of error is incredibly small.
And if you get even a little bit aggressive,
the effects could be lethal.
People, no, this work is unacceptable.
We're not building these suits
for some jackass buzzing
a half-time show, okay?
These are weapons of war.
You know what, stop. Everybody.
Hey! Eyes on me. Listen.
I know that there have been
a lot of distractions lately, okay?
But that is no excuse for failure.
Is that clear?
Clear enough for me.
CSI Stokes.
Nice seeing you again.
I assume you heard about Captain Ferris.
Two tragedies in as many days.
It's almost more than one can bear.
Almost.
Not sure what you mean.
Maybe this will make it clear.
That's a search warrant.
That allows us to seize
medical records, program
schedules, flight data,
all materials related to Project Icarus.
I-I don't, I don't understand.
I've been absolutely nothing but cooperative.
Two of your pilots have died.
Both victims of HACE.
- Unfortunate accidents.
- Is that really what you want to go with?
'Cause on top of the HACE, Captain Holland's
parachute was tampered with...
either by the competition
or by you, so, quite frankly,
I think you're hiding something from me.
This warrant is worthless
without being cosigned by a military judge.
I don't need JAG approval, and you know it.
Okay, boys.
Yes, sir. Move out.
You really want to cooperate with me,
give me the decryption key
for the code from the black box
on Holland's wingsuit.
I don't have it.
Black boxes are Air Force property,
and if you want access, you're
gonna have to talk to them.
You know what that is, right, Major?
- Yes, I do.
- We need
the encrypted data from
Captain Holland's flight
the night he died.
According to TRP, as his CO,
you're the only person who can give it to us.
That's correct.
And?
I'm sorry, but I can't give
you the decryption code.
- It's classified and...
- Two of your pilots are dead.
They died working for a contractor
who subjected them to unnecessary risks.
Might have even killed
one of 'em to cover it up.
Those are serious charges, Mr. Russell.
These are your guys we're
talking about here, Major.
TRP did something illegal
and right now, they're just,
they're hiding behind the Air Force.
They're hiding behind you.
My hands are tied.
Only if you let 'em be.
Look, this kid, Captain Holland, was under
your command. He woke up every morning
and put his life at risk simply
because you asked him to.
Help me find some peace for his wife.
You need to do the right thing here.
There's an alphanumeric pass
phrase keyed into each box.
I'll have my office send it
over to you within the hour.
Thank you, Major.
Like you said...
it's the right thing to do.
How goes the data retrieval
on the wingsuit man?
Honestly, I am crashing
and burning, just like him.
What do you mean?
The numbers don't make sense.
I think maybe the data's corrupted.
I mean, this thing was
involved in a serious crash.
Black boxes are designed
to withstand crashes.
That's the whole point.
Take a look for yourself.
At the biometric data.
We thought Captain Holland
stroked out mid-flight,
but look at his vitals.
Heart rate, BP, respiratory rate...
all flatlined, the whole way.
According to this, he was dead
before he even took flight.
That can't be possible.
You know that Sherlock Holmes quote?
"Eliminate all other factors,
the one which remains must be the truth".
"Must be the truth".
So we're saying what?
We're looking at an elaborate
body dump from a plane?
Not according to this.
Check out the altimeter reading
at the start of the flight.
2,920 feet.
Yeah. Now, given that Las Vegas is
roughly 2,200 feet above sea level...
That would mean he would jump
from a height of 700 feet.
He didn't jump from a plane.
This is more like a BASE jump.
Okay, well, the flight data would give us
all the GPS coordinates, right?
Right.
We know where he landed,
now we just got to figure out
where he came from.
I've reconstructed
Captain Holland's flight path
on the night he died,
zeroing in on the point-of-origin
of which we now know was a BASE jump,
beginning... here.
The Delmore Towers.
The top-floor corporate condo, to be precise.
Owned by TRP Aeronautics.
Right, it says here TRP's CEO
Claudia Mason used it as her in-town digs.
But she wasn't the only one using it.
The data on the black box
shows history of BASE jumps
at the same condo over
the last several months.
So Holland was using the
Delmore Towers to train.
Off base, off hours, off regs.
And, we have to assume,
with Claudia's approval.
You know, all these test
pilots vying for bonuses
that TRP was offering,
maybe Claudia was just trying to give Holland
a leg up on the competition.
Maybe that's not all
Claudia wanted to give him.
Ah. Okay.
All right, I like that. So Holland goes up
to the tower with his wingsuit,
a little off-hour training.
But first he and Claudia decide to have a...
a pre-flight tryst.
Things get hot and heavy.
But Holland has HACE, just like Ferris,
and in the heat of passion,
he just strokes out.
Okay, so I'm Claudia. What do I do?
Well, you have two choices.
You either call 911...
Yeah, but if I do that,
I lose my contracts, I lose my company...
So you go with choice number two.
You put Holland in his wingsuit,
you drag him out onto the balcony,
you fire up the jet engines
to give him just enough thrust to launch him,
and then all you need is a little push.
But first, you disable the backup chute,
so that when he crashes to the earth,
nothing left of him to trace back to you.
After all, he was just
another reckless flyboy.
Stole a suit, went for a joyride.
Not a bad plan if you're Claudia Mason,
and you're coming up with it on the fly.
Yeah.
But like all things on the fly...
I'm betting that there's
something that she missed.
You sure about your theory? I'm just saying,
doesn't even look like anybody's been here.
Well, Claudia Mason must have cleaned up.
Let's just hope she's a better
CEO than she is a maid.
Balcony.
Where Holland started his flight.
I got some blood.
Like Russell said...
Claudia must have missed something.
Would you hit the lights?
Wow.
That is one serious blood pool.
Well, doesn't end there.
Got some blood drops.
And cast-off.
You thought the guy stroked
out from HACE, right?
Well, that's what I thought, but... I mean,
this blood pattern suggests
something different,
more violent.
This is from a brutal beating.
It's a crime of passion.
You know how they always say
the cover-up is worse than the crime?
Not this time.
So what does our CEO have to say for herself?
Not a whole hell of a lot, really.
She denies knowing anything about Holland
going up to the condo
to do his BASE-jumping, so...
So she denies having an affair, too?
Oh, yeah.
Well, look, the first time, she
was hiding behind the Air Force.
This time she's hiding behind
that $800-an-hour lawyer.
Well, if she won't talk,
her condo definitely will.
Well, no crime of passion
starts without the passion.
There were no prints on the murder weapon.
But once we run the blood,
the fiber, the hairs,
maybe we can prove Claudia
was here, killing him, too.
She may not have been
the one wanting to kill him.
Just got the security camera footage
from the lobby the night Holland died.
That's Holland's wife.
Show is just getting started.
You lied to us, Amanda.
You told me you hadn't
seen your husband in days,
and that the night he was killed,
you assumed he was on a
training mission for TRP.
This video says you knew
exactly where he was.
And he was on more than
just a training mission.
Look, I know what this
looks like, but you're wrong.
No, I'll tell you what's wrong:
You coming to me, asking me
to find out what happened to your husband,
when you knew all along.
No. It is not like that.
Okay.
Tell us what it's like, then.
The past few months,
Bobby has been different.
At first, I thought it was just
this new job at TRP, I mean...
But a woman knows
when her husband is...
Is what?
Straying?
He said he was going to TRP that night,
and I followed him.
Downtown.
- To the condo.
- Yes. And I confronted him.
And I was gonna confront that
woman, too, whoever she was.
But on the way up in the elevator,
Bobby swore to me that he was innocent.
That he really was there training that night.
He was doing a BASE jump from a condo tower.
He showed me his wingsuit,
he showed me his gear,
and I... I had to believe him.
I didn't want to lose him.
So you didn't go up to the condo,
you didn't continue the fight
and you didn't kill your
husband in a jealous rage.
Am I getting that right?
No... I didn't kill Bobby.
I'm sorry that I lied to you
about seeing him that night.
And Major Mills is right...
Bobby didn't follow the rules.
He lived on the edge.
And jumping from a tower
in the middle of the city
was against regulations.
You lied to us just so that you could keep
his death benefits.
Yeah.
And preserve his memory.
And I'm not lying to you now.
Then you won't mind giving us a
blood and DNA sample, will you?
Nick, you need to see this.
- What is it? - Expanded tox
panel on Air Force Captain Ferris.
I don't think it's any accident that
he stroked out on you in Interrogation.
Tested positive for furosemide.
Isn't that a diuretic?
A hard-core diuretic,
often abused by models and bodybuilders
to get that "cut" look.
Ferris's medical records make
no mention of any prescription.
Okay, so the guy was on a diuretic.
I don't see how that would kill him.
Flip the page.
You'll see that the furosemide caused
a major sodium imbalance.
For a guy logging that many
hours in a hypobaric chamber,
it makes for a lethal combination.
Makes for murder.
Hey, Henry. Got your text.
You have, uh, results
on the DNA from the condo?
I do. Uh, blood is a match
to the victim, Captain Holland.
Okay. Uh, what about the bed?
The murder weapon?
I found semen contribution
from Holland in the bed...
Just cut to the chase.
Which woman killed him?
The wife or the boss?
The boss was in bed with him.
But not the one you're thinking of.
Your DNA
in the bed and your DNA on the murder weapon.
Mrs. Holland knew her husband
was having an affair,
she just didn't know it was
with his commanding officer.
Would you like to tell us
what happened that night, Major?
Help us understand.
You know, maybe it'll help a jury understand.
He said he was going to leave me.
Said he was afraid.
Of what?
Afraid of getting caught?
It wasn't just an affair.
And there is no way that you
or anybody can understand that.
You could try us.
I loved him.
And I thought that he loved me, too.
He said his wife was asking questions
and that she followed him
to the condo that night.
Can you believe it?
For a second, I was actually relieved.
I thought maybe this meant
that we could...
stop living the lie.
But he didn't feel that way, did he?
No.
It's over.
Don't you understand that I love my wife?
You love me.
How can you deny who you are?
Who we are?
Deny? This coming from you?
Your whole life is denial.
I had to make sacrifices for my career.
Yeah, and me, too.
And now I'm making another sacrifice.
I'm sorry, but...
we're done.
Don't turn your back on me!
I panicked.
I... I cleaned up the condo as best I could.
Yeah, you put him in the wingsuit
and you sabotaged the
chute so it wouldn't open.
Or, at the very least, make Claudia
and TRP the fall guy.
Is that why Ferris had to die, too?
Yeah, well, we searched your place.
And, um, we found this.
It's furosemide.
What was your plan, Major?
I mean, you slip some into his coffee
and you hope he strokes out
in the hypobaric chamber?
But it didn't work out that way, right?
He was a strong test pilot.
Took a few extra hours.
Bobby and Ferris were best friends.
If anybody knew the truth
about us, it was him.
I...
had no choice.
Major...
you always have a choice.
And you chose wrong.
Twice.
Mrs. Holland?
You still waiting for something?
Haven't they finished with you yet?
No, they said I could go.
I just...
I mean, go where?
Home is empty.
It's always gonna be empty.
I'm so sorry.
For everything.
Your husband...
You were just doing your job.
I understand.
Do you keep secrets from your wife?
I used to.
Not anymore?
No.
She's a lucky woman, then.
Excuse me.