Hey, baby! Hey, baby...
Heavy rock music
I wanna party like a rock star...
Rap music
PORTISHEAD: Glory Box
I'm so tired of playing
Playing with this bow and arrow
Gonna give my heart away
Leave it to the other girls
To play
For I've been a temptress too long
(Cellphone rings)
Yeah?
OK, hold the meter. I'll be right down.
(Siren)
Paige Rycoff freshman
- Couldn't stand the heat. Dropped out of school. - Dropped out of sight.
Booked a one-way ticket home to Boulder. Never got there. Four days, MIA.
Missing persons: The first 24 hours are gold. After that...
Quick sand.
Excuse me, but could everyone in this room do me a big favour and... leave?
Please
Thanks, fellas.
Thanks.
- You want me to go, too? - If you're very still, you can stay.
She was definitely on her way out of here.
- The lamp's still on. - But she didn't take her suitcase
or purse... or the cab she called.
Like going to the vet without your dog.
Maybe she had a change of plan
Or someone changed it for her.
No sign of struggle. Everything's intact.
Nothing out of place.
(Knock on door)
Come in.
Door locks automatically, and there are no keys in her purse.
Maybe they were in her pocket.
If they were, She could have walked right back in.
- Why didn't she? - One moment, Paige Rycoff is here.
The next... vanished.
People don't vanish, Jim.
It's a molecular impossibility.
They got this multiplex system Eyes ah over the place
There's eight floors and four cameras per floor.
They have this system in place when you went to school here?
With all the stuff we got away with,
It's probably why they have them now.
- Scent dogs are on their way. - You don't live in the dorm,
you can't get in.
What about getting out?
400 students. 12 uniformed officers.
10 minutes per interview. PD should be done by Tuesday.
I'll take prints over people any day.
How about taking video? One of these cameras must have seen something. Please find it.
OK.
More is less. The more time goes by, the less chance we have to find her.
Four days? Maybe we're looking for a body already.
Hide-and-seek
Let's go.
I talked to her RA. Paige put in a request to have all her mail forwarded,
including her security deposit.
- Minty. - Toothpaste. Poor man's spackle.
An old college trick. Covers up the holes when the posters come down.
Leave the room the way you found it. Get back your full deposit.
$500. Huge money at her age, if you actually get it.
It's a big college racket, like buying books back.
Why would anyone want to sell their books?
Two beds. Roommate?
Jennifer Riggs.
Left school two weeks into the semester. Brass checked with the registrar.
There's a void
Something was here.
Area rug?
Used to conceal a body on the way out?
The disappearance of university co-ed Paige Rycoff has police baffled
They're working on several leads
Investigators are piecing together the moments before Paige Rycoff disappeared.
How's this strap here? Is this tight enough?
Er... yeah, fine.
What about this one?
Yeah, it's good work.
You know, you can get cadets to do this.
They're used to obstacle courses.
Yeah. On a missing persons, we can't wait.
Yeah, well, it looks like a kill-and-dump to me.
The guy waited for the coast to clear.
Door to door, it's only 10 metres.
Snappy little sucker! Somebody ought to fix that.
Yeah. Right after we find Paige.
Right.
Here we're looking at the fourth floor. Real time.
I'm interested in any camera that covers Paige Rycoff's room.
That's camera two.
I'll put it on the large monitor.
Now, go back four days. One-hour window.
8 to 9pm
Fast-forward.
Whoa. Hold on.
How did you miss that?
We don't catch every minute.
Roll back 15 seconds. Replay in slow-mo.
What is that?
The camera captures 13 per cent more than we see on this monitor. The picture condenses...
Pixel matrix, yeah.
Show me the underscan.
Stop.
Now go back five seconds before the lens was covered.
Freeze and magnify.
Somebody's hand
Yeah, looks like he pushed off the wall.
Tossed something over the lens
Prints over people. Thanks, man.
Find anything interesting down there?
Yeah, plenty, but not what we're looking for.
How does it smell? Good?
Funky.
Wait Stop Stop stop stop
What you got?
Looks like... something...
or someone smashed up against the chute pretty hard
What floor are you on?
Between...
first and second, I think.
Well, if the body was dumped,
it'd be moving pretty fast by then.
Pizza. Keep going.
Touchdown.
The chute's clear.
Looks like trash is picked up every morning.
We got nothing.
Hey, Warrick. It looks like we're not the only ones chasing our tails.
Water falling down a hundred metres
Coloured by the sun in rainbow colours
Paul is driving me around
Through fields of light
Blinded by the sun
How did you know where to print?
I knew where to look. How about you?
DNA, blood and semen.
We shoot, we score.
They're not telling us anything. The police aren't talking to us.
We have no information. I want to know how this could happen.
Mr Grissom
What are you doing to find my daughter?
- I'm thinking. - Do you have any leads?
- Are you only looking here? - When we get any news, I'll let you know.
What can we do?
- Just let me do my job. - This is our daughter
We can't just be observers.
No, we won't. We're part of this.
Look. What no-one's telling you
is that the only tangible connection between you and your daughter
is the evidence my team is collecting, and how we interpret it.
So, please...
let me think.
You showered.
Thanks for noticing, Gil. You're very observant.
Yeah well...
I can't tell what I'm observing here.
Who does that look like?
A 5' 11 " workaholic.
Sorry.
It looks like somebody... carrying something.
Paige Rycoff was missing a rug from her room.
Hello. Got an ID off my print. I know who covered the cameras.
Good. We know what he might have carried out.
It's a hand.
It's your hand.
OK, if you say so.
Your fingerprints say so.
OK.
I'll cop to it.
But I'm not copping to it alone.
Pledge prank? You boosted a carpet and a couch?
We borrowed some stuff from the lounge, but we were gonna return it.
- When? After you graduate? - What else did you take, Henry?
Er two lamps,
a coffee table, a couple of rolls of toilet paper.
Look, I'll pay for it.
Why the fourth floor?
The fourth, fifth and seventh floor have primo goods.
OK? The fourth floor's closer to the ground.
Less stairs. The faster we're out of the building, the faster we're away.
Do you know Paige Rycoff?
Yeah.
But I had nothing to do with... whatever happened to her.
- But you do know her? - Yeah
You know, we live in the same dorm.
We're in Economics 101 together. so what?
So what?
Paige and I dated once or twice.
She wasn't my type.
If you haven't noticed, I'm in the system now.
The talent pool's pretty deep.
She dumped you.
A guy like you, it had to be a blow to your ego.
Maybe you tried to change her mind?
Come on, listen. It wasn't like that.
It wasn't like that at all.
Paige was seeing another guy.
Someone who was "more mature" than I am.
You got a name?
No. She never said.
You can go.
But the stuff gets returned.
Yes, sir.
From hot to cold in a minute.
This is the worst place you can be on a missing person.
A dead end.
..the parents of Western Las Vegas University freshman Paige Rycoff.
They join us now to discuss their daughter's disappearance
Mrs Rycoff did your daughter tell you why she was leaving school?
We're a chose family, and Paige just felt she needed to be home.
With us.
But why heave mid-semester?
She was going to make a fresh start. Back in Boulder.
I need you in the lab.
You know, when a tree falls in the forest,
even if no-one's there to hear it, it does in fact make a sound.
Yes. Somebody must have seen or heard something.
What have we got?
This is one way to get her DNA.
- Bring me her whole life. - It's called zeal, Greg.
Or overkill.
It's called protocol. Let's get on with it.
OK. Well, I got Paige's DNA from her toothbrush.
I compared it to the blood and semen that Sara found on the mattress.
The blood's not hers.
Not hers? That's not all. Check out the tox screen.
Rohypnol?
- Date rape drug. - What about the semen?
The vaginal contribution to the semen stain matches the blood.
Whose blood, I don't know.
We may have two victims. One missing, one raped.
There's our boys, about to move their borrowed furniture.
Advance it to 8:27pm.
OK I think the table's set.
Cab double-parked.
He calls up. Paige says that she'll be right down.
He becomes the world's most patient cabbie.
And just like he tells Brass,
- he waits 15 minutes. - 13 minutes 27 seconds,
according to the time code. Close enough.
Let's get back out in the field. Tech can finish up here.
Where's the fire? We're just starting.
These cameras are the only witnesses we've got.
(Sighs)
I'II... settle in.
Good idea.
Jennifer Riggs, the girl's roommate. She dropped out of school a month or so ago.
That dorm room is cursed.
- Is this her parents' house? - Yeah.
Possible sexual assault, so I thought I'd wait for the whole team.
You thought you should wait for a female?
..offers fresh insight into the 18-year-old's personality
We can see that Paige was an average
apparently happy and healthy freshman looking forward...
How did you guys even find out about me?
I mean, I didn't report it. I just...
ran.
I left school
Nobody knew, not even Paige.
Jennifer, we found forensic evidence in your old dorm room.
We believe you were sexually assaulted under the influence of Rohypnol.
And now you guys think the guy that attacked me
had something to do with Paige's disappearance?
Two women, same dorm room.
We're looking for a connection.
Will you tell us his name?
Do you want to talk alone?
You don't understand.
I can't remember.
I never could remember.
That's one of the side effects of Rohypnol.
I'm sure he was counting on that.
There was this party.
Who was at this party?
It was a floor party.
That's why I had to leave school.
Somebody that I was living with...
attacked me.
And I was never gonna know who.
Why would a rapist voluntarily give up his DNA?
Officially, we're looking for the individual who abducted Paige Rycoff,
not the student who raped Jennifer Riggs.
So, as long as the students participate voluntarily, we can use their DNA as we see fit.
- Ah, the old bait and switch. - The old smart and legal.
Yeah, but what if someone refuses?
That's what we're hoping for. De facto suspect.
Open.
- Are you refusing? - I haven't brushed my teeth.
Hey, mouth boy. She's not gonna kiss you. She just wants your DNA, OK?
Friedrich Miescher requests my presence?
You figured out my code, huh?
Well, you know my boy Freddy discovered DNA.
He's been dead 100 years. What have you got?
Well, I ran the samples on COfiler and Profiler Plus.
And then I compared each specimen
against the types obtained from the dried semen...
Are we paying you by the word?
(Machine beeps)
13 markers.
13 matches.
One suspect. Thank you.
Kevin Watson, 19, room 40T. Just down the hall from our girls.
The athletic director says he plays first base, bats right-handed.
Any record?
Three Ds and a C. Nothing criminal.
No.25, just like McGwire.
Yeah? I wonder how he hits
Listen, Kevin. We know that you assaulted Jennifer Riggs.
Why don't you just tell us about Paige Rycoff?
I don't know anything about Paige.
- Or Jennifer. - I'll tell you what I know.
Jennifer Riggs was raped.
We found semen on her mattress. We matched the seminal DNA to you.
That Q-tip down my throat.
I thought you were here finding out what happened to Paige.
- We are. - So what did happen, Kevin?
Did you attack Paige, too? Hell, you've been in her room before.
But, unlike her roommate,
Paige fought back. Is that it?
I never touched Paige. I wasn't even in town. Three ball games in Fresno.
We got back yesterday
Check the roster. Ask Coach.
I will. In the meantime, you're coming with us.
You're under arrest
for the use of a controlled substance in the sexual assault on Jennifer Riggs.
Wait for me.
Another dead end.
Yeah, I know. I talked to the coach. Road trip.
We're losing her.
And there it is again.
Didn't that car circle the block six times
between 8:20 and 8:40pm?
All right. You loop around twice, you're looking for a parking space.
Six times...
You're up to no good
Is that something hanging from the rear-view mirror?
Why don't you zoom in on that?
You know, it's easier to get a Masters degree than a parking spot on campus.
Meet with university parking
and cross-reference all silver Volvos.
- Right. - Oh, and, Nick.
Yeah.
- When you find the car... - I know. Check the trunk.
Silver Volvo.
university ID.
A world of possibilities reduced to a single car?
Registered to Robert Woodbury, philosophy professor, tenured.
Detail's almost got the latch.
Nick, tow it to CSI and process.
Cath...
Office hours with the professor.
Yes
I was near the dorm that night.
Professor Woodbury, you circled the block six times.
Let's start with an easy question.
Paige Rycoff is a student of yours?
Introduction To Philosophy, yes.
Amanda.
Er... I'll talk to you in a while. After class.
Cute
Let me guess. C student?
Not if I can help it.
And what kind of student was Paige?
She was a very bright young woman
"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong.
As when you find a trout in the milk."
Henry David Thoreau.
But that's just broken pottery.
My perception?
Sign of struggle.
OK look. It's been six days
If you have a legitimate reason for being outside of her dorm, tell us.
If you have an illegitimate reason, tell us that.
Tell us something, so we can move forward.
Again, my perception?
Silence confirms guilt.
We found you. We will find what you're hiding.
I'm married.
Yep. The ring indicates that.
Your car's going to the Crime Lab. We'll need to search your home.
She was never in my car, or in my house.
Where has she been?
Here. That's how the vase broke, because we were...
Physical.
Amorous.
Oh so you cared about her?
But not enough to come forward.
And tell you what?
That I cheat on my wife?
With my student who is missing?
And I have absolutely no information.
If it was important enough for you to hide, it's important enough for us to know.
Any idea where she might be?
No I...I went to the dorm.
I did. I went to... Maybe to stop her, maybe to say goodbye one last time.
At the very least, I wanted to see her.
But she never came down.
Let's take a ride in the black and white.
Can I meet you there?
I'm not going anywhere
I... just need a little time to explain all this.
To my wife.
No, I understand. I'll send an officer with you, just in case.
Thank you.
Medulla, cuticle and cortex are a visual match to the hairs I pulled from Paige Rycoff's brush.
The roots have skin tags.
Means hairs were ripped out.
Ow!
Too bad this doesn't get us any closer to finding Paige.
She was in his car. It gets us closer to our suspect.
Let me remind you you have the right to counsel.
I don't need counsel.
The only person I was hiding from was my wife.
She knows everything now.
So, ask your questions.
We found some of Paige's hair in your car.
That's impossible, because she's never been in my car. Are you sure it was hers?
Do you mean will it stand up in court? Yes, it will.
Maybe it was on my sweater or something.
Four strands of hair,
pulled out by the root,
on the passenger's headrest.
Erm...
How about this one?
A phone call made from your house to Paige's dorm room,
the day she disappeared.
I only use my cellphone when I call her,
not my office, not my home.
12:16pm. Four minutes long.
Faculty lunch.
That day, 12 to 2. Every department head.
And it will stand up in court.
Professor Woodbury, does your wife work?
No.
So, are you home during the day?
Sometimes.
Were you home around 12 o'clock on the day Paige Rycoff disappeared?
I don't remember.
Sharon, someone called Paige from the house, and it wasn't me.
Mrs Woodbury, do you have the keys to your husband's car?
We share it. It's our car.
How long have you known?
About this one or all the others?
I knew that she was different.
I wasn't about to let some kid walk away with my marriage,
So I called her up.
Took her for a ride.
Explained the facts of life to her. Wife, three kids.
mortgage.
She said that it was over.
She was going home. Didn't say why. I didn't ask.
Mrs Woodbury, I think you're leaving something out.
They found Paige's hair in the car. And they think...
Did you attack her?
No.
I wanted to.
I almost did
She went to get out of the car.
You are 18. What the hell do you know about love?
I don't need to take this.
Ow!
I stopped her
Apologised. We talked.
And I dropped her off.
(Cellphone rings)
Excuse me.
Grissom
- So, is it her? I don't know. I just got here myself.
Some homeless guy, searching for hidden treasure, finds a body.
PD's here on the scene. They got first looks.
Right there.
I've seen things like this before, when I worked in Arlington, Virginia.
Every winter, homeless trying to stay warm.
Take a nap in a dumpster, wake up in a garbage compacter, mulch.
We searched the trash chute at the dorm.
It was clean. There was no reason to check the dumpster.
So, you're saying she was killed by the compacter? Crushed to death?
No, she was crushed post mortem.
And you know this how?
Tissue in the extremities was yellow and dry.
It means
blood wasn't pumping through her veins when she went through that compacter.
So, what did kill her?
Massive internal bleeding. Her spleen ruptured.
From what?
Blunt force trauma.
- Point of impact? - Ribcage.
Ribs weren't crushed. They sustained a single blow.
- Type of weapon? - Er, no idea.
I still have to straighten her out.
Truth? I may never know.
Now what?
Well, you followed a lead. It went cold.
Now it's hot again.
Found some blood.
Yeah. Not much, but enough to work with.
OK. Photograph it, swab it. Let's get it back to the lab.
If it's hers, maybe that's why the scent dogs lost their trail.
The odour from the dumpster threw them off.
I think I got something. Check this out. The whole dumpster's beat to hell.
This one spot's fresh.
Nick's right. Vehicle paint chips,
metal flecks in the colour coat.
Matching chips on the ground.
Still, there's no reason to think the paint transfer is connected to Paige.
No reason to think it's not.
Possibly a hit-and-run
Means the vehicle had a high ground clearance. Maybe an SUV.
It would explain the blunt force trauma.
Point of impact was her abdomen.
Driver tossed her in the dumpster to hide his crime.
Or her crime.
- Mrs Woodbury. - She's still a viable suspect.
But with a silver car.
She could have rented, borrowed it from a friend.
- Still, why was Paige even down here? - Let's stick to the how. The why is for later.
The car that impacted the dumpster was originally white,
then painted red, and now it's black.
With two coats of primer between each job.
Quality work, probably a dealership.
Every paint has a unique light-absorption rate. We ID the paint, we get to the car.
Really?
Cherokee, '89 or '90.
Three paint jobs all factory stock.
Stone white, flame red, and there's your midnight black.
Well, this narrows our scope. Call Brass.
Done.
An hour ago.
Where you been?
I can't be everywhere, and they banned human cloning.
I just left sanders. The blood from the dumpster matches Paige.
Hey. Brass just called. He's down at PD. Paint to car, car to driver.
Suspect's down there. He's waiting for you.
Expectant father.
Yeah, my wife's pregnant. Almost nine months.
She beeped me
I was trying to get home. I couldn't believe the traffic.
Do you always drive through campus?
We live on the other side of Fraternity Row. It's a straight shot from my office,
but when I get to the freshman dorm, nothing's moving.
What time was this?
Around 8:30, I guess.
- So, you took a short cut? - Yeah.
I thought I was having a baby, So I gunned it down the alley.
Then what happened?
I veered to avoid the parked van.
It was wet.
I swiped the dumpster.
If I'd hit a car,
I would have stopped. It...
It was just a dumpster.
Paint transfer's green, just like the dumpster.
It doesn't mean he didn't also hit a body.
We have sprayed, UV'd...
No hair, no fibres, no blood anywhere.
It was a clean strike against the dumpster.
Your guy didn't hit Paige.
And we've chased another lead to a dead end.
We still have Mrs Woodbury.
- Or her husband. Oh we got tons of motive.
Not a stitch of evidence.
HL Mencken once said
"There's an easy solution to every human problem.
Neat, plausible...
and wrong."
So if the solution to our problem
is not neat, plausible
and wrong,
then it could be messy, unlikely...
and right.
Right?
A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, we get a hurricane off Florida.
- Chaos theory - Here we go.
Random events. The wholesale rejection of linear thought.
Physics meets philosophy.
If we apply it to Paige Rycoff
at this particular moment in time, then we can say life is unpredictable.
No-one can predict more than a few seconds into the future.
I predict I'll be standing here one minute from now.
Where are we going with this?
Paige was in her dorm room, and then ended up in the dumpster.
Somewhere between the two is our answer. That's where we're going.
Coming, Nick?
Nice try Nostradamus.
Look out the window.
What do you see?
Traffic.
My cab's waiting for me.
So, what do you do next?
Grab my suitcases.
Get out of town.
Stop
Suitcases never left the room.
You didn't take them with.
I've been cleaning all day.
Cos you want your security deposit back.
Yeah, I have to leave the room exactly like I found it.
So, what's missing?
Two box springs, two mattresses, two desks...
two lamps, two chairs...
two dressers
Trash can?
And it's missing.
What's the last thing you do after you've done the cleaning?
Take out the trash.
Hi. Could I borrow your trash can?
Paige dumps the trash. Goes back to her room.
How does she end up in the dumpster?
You're thinking too linear. Chaos theory, remember? Just dump it.
OK.
Whoa.
Almost took my hand off
Maybe you're quicker than Paige was.
Excuse me.
Could you do me a favour?
We're doing a little experiment.
Could you count to 100, then drop this can all the way down the chute?
Thanks.
Watch your fingers.
(Thud)
What the hell is going on?
There is a busted spring in the chute.
Oh, yeah, I had to prop that open when Catherine rappelled down.
Relevance?
The trash can was missing from Paige's room.
You think She accidentally dropped it down the chute?
But how did she end up in the dumpster?
She wanted her security deposit back.
- There's no easy access here. - Right
So...
She had to improvise.
- Excuse me. - Oh, please.
This happened to me once before, with a set of keys.
Eddie and I had this huge blow-out.
He threw my keys in the trash.
All right. So, Paige leans over... and reaches for the trash can.
But just then, here comes Mark Doyle.
Aaargh!
Let me get this straight. You're saying a confluence of unrelated, unfortunate events
conspired... to kill my daughter?
Yes.
No, no, no.
Somebody is responsible.
Mrs Rycoff
there is no-one guilty of this.
Because you say so?
Because the evidence says so.
We'll hire an investigator. As many as necessary. someone killed Paige.
And my wife and I won't rest until every question is answered.
We told them what happened.
Yeah, but we didn't give them what they needed.
Some closure.
Truth brings closure.
Not always.