Cypher

Episode 105 (005) - Apr 24 1996

As they are returning home from a Basketball game, Blair accompanies Jim when he answers a radio callout about a prowler, only to discover the latest victim in a string of gruesome serial killings in Cascade. All the bodies are discovered naked, drowned in the bathtub with a yellow scarf wrapped around their necks. The killer also steals the victim's effects from the scene, as trophies from the kill.

Blair is particularly disturbed by having witnessed the latest victim, Susan Frasier, and when his girlfriend Chris becomes upset by his preoccupation, he confesses to the details of the murder.

In the meantime, a member of a Cascade television news team, Don Haas, also seems to be coming up with unreleased details of the killings and Simon is put under tremendous pressure to solve the case, as the Police Department's apparent inability to catch the killer plays out every night on the TV news.

At Susan Frasier's funeral, Blair unwittingly tips off a female suspect and Jim loses her in a car chase through the city. Simon and Carolyn become suspicious that Blair is the source of the leak, but Jim fiercely defends him.

Simon is forced to call in Doctor Anthony Bates, a psychiatrist specializing in serial killers, even though Jim is reluctant to accept an outsider. A news video tape from the funeral provides Jim and Blair with visual evidence that the suspect they are looking for is actually a man dressed as a woman, this time in a wig which mimics Susan Frasier's appearance and driving her Jaguar.

Jim resolves to visit a trendy, underground nightclub, Club Doom, which was frequented by a previous male victim, but believing that he will blend in better, Blair goes there instead against Jim's advice in an effort to make amends for his faux pas at the church.

With girlfriend Chris in tow, insisting on details of Blair's activities, he comes up with a vital clue in the investigation. It seems that the killer assumes the identity of his victims.

With Blair's timely evidence, Doctor Bates is able to come up with an accurate profile of the killer, and prints from Frasier's recovered Jaguar focus their investigations on a mental patient escaped from a Californian institution, David Lash.

In the meantime, Don Haas is still reporting leaked evidence from an unknown source.

When Blair becomes the killer's next target, the loft is ransacked and he is kidnapped, Jim must go back to the beginning, using his senses to try and discover clues that forensics missed to track down the killer once and for all before Blair becomes the next victim.

[ Back to Season Overview ] [ Switchman ] [ Siege ] [ Killers ] [ The Debt ] [ Cypher ] [ Night Train ] [ Rogue ] [ Love & Guns ] [ Attraction ] [ Vow of Silence ]