Dead CertainEpisode 310 (044) - Nov 26 1997Jim and Blair attend the scene of a homicide where the very badly traumatized body of a man appears to have fallen from an overhead road bridge onto a parked car. On the scene, Jim's briefing with Brown is interrupted by the appearance of an overzealous young woman who introduces herself as the new Chief of Forensics with the Cascade PD, Cassie Welles, who has transferred from San Francisco. Ms. Welles then proceeds to inform them that she has already been through the victim's pockets and there was no ID, and is taken aback when Jim asks that next time she should leave that to the detective on the scene. Cassie then expounds her theories on the mud and carpet fibers evident on the victim's shoes, the height of the fence on the bridge, the absence of a parked vehicle on the bridge and the improbability of suicide due to cold weather and the victim only wearing a T-shirt. She proclaims that it was murder. Jim proceeds to poke holes in all her theories -- the bridge was closed for maintenance work and there was a work crew who would have seen the killer and Jim points out the difficulty of hefting a 200 pound body over the high fence. He asks her why anyone would go to that sort of trouble to murder someone and Cassie has no answer. When Jim and Blair attend the autopsy with ME Dan Wolf, Cassie is already there. Wolf remarks that the body is extremely traumatized -- every bone broken, every major organ shattered -- and in his opinion the injuries are not consistent with a simple fall from a bridge. The condition of the body makes identification impossible, so fingerprints are taken. Outside the autopsy room Cassie is full of ideas for how to proceed with the investigation and Jim tries to reason with her. He says he enjoys her enthusiasm but asks that she leave the investigation to the detectives. Cassie warns him that 'you don't have to carry a gun and a badge to solve a crime.' She remarks that she hoped things would be different here in Cascade, and storms off angrily. Jim reveals his concerns about Cassie to Simon, saying she's pushy, but Simon argues that she is supposed to be very good at her job and is just over-eager. Blair counters that she's smart and aggressive, and that he likes her. Just then Cassie enters Simon's office with a laptop and a computer program she says she's been beta-testing which reconstructs human appearance based on measurements from the skull, she then calls up a computer generation she says could be their John Doe. Jim is visibly unimpressed but Simon insists he get the mug-shot over to the medical examiner. When Jim and Blair arrive, they can't find Dan anywhere, then Jim hears breathing coming from the morgue. They find Dan with his mouth taped locked in one of the morgue drawers and he says that some men took the unidentified body, along with the records and fingerprints. Out in the alley, Jim and Blair surprise two men loading the body bag into a station wagon, but as Jim pulls his gun, they set off a remote control charge that explodes the vehicle, destroys the body and the evidence and allows them to escape. The vehicle was stolen and Jim decides to go back to the beginning. At the murder scene, Jim takes the opportunity give Blair some tutoring on crime-scene investigation, leading Blair through the investigation process. Some nearby telephone wires seemingly make it impossible to heft a body over the bridge railing and Jim notices a suit coat in the branches of a tree a quarter of a mile away. Blair retrieves the coat and Jim finds a wad of Swiss Francs in the pocket and a European passport for a Jean Duval, with a picture that resembles Cassie's mock-up. Reporting to Simon, Jim remarks that he remembers an incident from army parachute training. When one jumper's chute didn't open, his body was so badly mangled they weren't allowed to see it. They suspect the victim was thrown from a plane. Blair adds that it would also account for the position of the jacket. There's no US visa on record for Jean Duval and no scheduled flights over the crime scene. Simon adds that Cassie's report on the soil analysis from the victim's shoe's comes from the Watumsa basin, 200 miles away and Blair remembers a little town called Pinecrest from a tribal study he did there. Jim and Blair drive out to Pinecrest and introduce themselves to Sheriff Kelly McNeil. Then Cassie emerges from the back office, and has apparently already been there with there with their ID picture. Jim is frustrated with her intrusion and outside the sheriff's office, when Jim reprimands Cassie and she walks off again, Blair urges Jim to be lenient. Jim follows Cassie back to her van, where she is apparently distressed. He insists that she's not a detective and suggests that she go to the academy and make it easy on herself. She says she can't and then pulls out an asthma inhaler, revealing the reason she was not admitted to the police academy. Just then Jim spots one of the assailants from the morgue and gives chase. They struggle outside a hardware store, crashing through the display glass, but the suspect is killed when a scythe is lodged in his back. The county coroner is too far away so the body is taken to the local clinic, where Jim and Cassie are introduced to Dr Stephen Morrow. They examine the body and Cassie takes some shots with a digital camera. When Jim is examining the body he notices that the fingerprints have been surgically removed, and that it has heavy scarring around the hairline, the eyes and the ears, consistent with radical plastic surgery and Dr Morrow agrees with the assessment. Much to Cassie's amazement, Jim also uses his sense of touch to identify a prison gang tattoo that has been removed from the victim's forearm. As Jim and Cassie thank the Doctor, Morrow reports to an accomplice that the police know too much. He says they have a "client" coming and it's too late to cancel, and if they get too close, he is to "handle it". Outside, Cassie proudly demonstrates the capabilities of her forensics van to Jim and Blair. It houses a rebuilt Porsche engine, a spectrographic analyzer and an x-ray machine, some of which she says she built herself and the rest she is testing for some manufacturers. Simon rings with the information that Jean Duval was an Interpol officer who disappeared in Geneva a few weeks ago. In the meantime Cassie feeds the information from the digital camera into her computer and makes adjustments for the surgery. She comes up with another image she says she can modem to various prisons looking for a match, and Jim reluctantly agrees to let her stay. Jim locates a local private airfield, Leland's Crop Dusting, and he and Blair go out to investigate. Bob Leland intercepts them at the hanger and is most uncooperative when they try to purchase his services. He insists he doesn't need the business. When leaving the airfield, Blair remarks that the runway is much longer than needed for the crop-dusting bi-planes and Jim notices some unusual tracks. Leland witnesses the whole thing from the hangar. Back at Cassie's van, Jim asks her to investigate Leland and Cassie has also had a match on their dead suspect. His real name is Ray Loomis, on parole for his involvement in a black market organ transplant scheme, directed by a Vernon Delanian. When she brings up the picture, he is revealed to be Doctor Morrow. When they tell Sheriff McNeil she is reluctant to believe Dr Morrow is involved and the fingerprints she locates for Dr Morrow don't match. Outside the Sheriff's office, Jim finally sends Cassie home, but when she leaves she instead drives out to the crop dusting hanger. In the meantime, the sheriff confronts Morrow and it is revealed she had a relationship with him. She finds out that he has bribed both her deputies, Tulliver and Nichols. She pulls her weapon on him but he shoots her with a gun pulled from his briefcase. When Jim and Blair also arrive at the doctor's office they find Kelly McNeil dead in the trunk of her car. Then Tulliver and Nichols roll up in a squad car, arrest Jim and Blair and throw them in jail. At Leland Crop Dusting, Cassie has located a secret surgery equipped for facial reconstruction and spots a plane landing with another customer. As she maneuvers closer and observes documents and money changing hands she is caught and tied up inside the hanger as they prepare for surgery. As they plan burn down the hangar with her inside, she insists on being told the whole scheme. Delanian explains that they offer new identities to wanted criminals, and they had discovered that the Interpol agent was not who he appeared to be, so they killed him. Jim is one step ahead of Tulliver and Nichols and reveals that he knows that they're involved. Jim then uses the frame of Blair's glasses and his superior hearing to pick the lock and tie up the two deputies. Blair phones Simon and finds out that Cassie didn't make it back to Cascade and they call for chopper backup. Jim takes a call meant for Nichols and he's told to bring "the two cops" out to the airfield where they have "the girl". They arrive and Blair hides inside one of the crop dusters and turns over the engine to attract the others attention. Jim and Blair get the drop on the first two heavies as Blair releases the insecticide to confuse them, but a gun a battle ensues and they are caught in the cross-fire. The noise alerts the others inside the hangar, and they abandon the surgery and leap into one of the planes with Leland at the stick and Delanian dragging Cassie off against her will. As Cassie uses her asthma inhaler to blind Delanian and grab his gun, Jim leaps aboard the helicopter and is deposited on top of the fleeing aircraft. He wedges his gun into the tail rudder making it impossible for the plane to take off and Cassie emerges from the plane with Delanian at gunpoint. Simon congratulates them for the bust, but Jim and Blair both beg off, claiming they have dinner engagements. When Jim arrives at the very expensive restaurant, it is Blair he finds behind the menu. Apparently Cassie accepted invitations from both of them. She lays down the law, saying that she never dates people she works with and that the two of them are obviously "way too competitive". When her pager calls her away, Jim and Blair decide to stick her with the check, and plan on ordering two of the most expensive items on the menu. Credits:
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