15x09 - Let's Make a Deal

[bunniefuu]

(lock buzzes, latch clicks)

Guard: Let's go! On the line!

(indistinct announcement over P.A.)

Guard: Okay, settle down! Keep moving!

(gasping anxiously)

Inmate: I-I don't...

(muttering, gasping)

(inmate mutters)

Hey... I can't do this, man. I-I hate needles.

Shut up.

I hate needles. Please, please... Please, please, please don't make me, I can't... I can't do this...

Just relax.

Inmate: Nobody listens to me.

No...

I hate needles.

Relax...

I hate needles! I hate...

Nobody's listening to me! No... Nobody's listening to me!

(alarm blaring, inmates clamoring)

Guard: Backup needed in the inmate reception-- now!

(men shouting)

Guard: O'Malley-- we need backup!

(alarm bell rings)

(all clamoring)

Shut up! Shut up!

Yo, man...

Shut up! Shut up!

(yelling)

Shut up! Shut up!

(gasping)

Guard: On your knees now! Hands above your head!

(yelling)

Guard: Inmate, drop to the floor now!

(screaming)

Crime lab.

Thanks.

Detective: You must be Russell and Stokes with the crime lab.

Detective Carl Brenner.

How do you do?

Heard you guys are the best. Follow me.

I'm kind of the, uh, new guy in Homicide.

Youngest detective ever promoted into the bureau.

Been there just over two years.

Love the job.

Oh. Well, congratulations.

Brenner: Well, you know what they say-- you can't solve murders sitting behind a desk.

A motto I live by.

So... I work 24/7.

You need me, you call me.

Home number's on the back.

Right up here, guys.

(indistinct conversations)

Quite a ruckus, huh?

Sure was.

Stokes: What happened to him?

Brenner: Took a punch in the commotion.

He's fine. Door!

(lock buzzes)

(muffled screaming)

(louder, muffled screams)

What's his story?

Brenner: Well, that's the cause of the circus right there.

Denny Morrison-- he's got some mental issues.

Freaked out getting a flu sh*t.

When he ran in here, the, uh, extraction team got him.

Watch your step through here.

Good thing it wasn't a busy laundry day, right?

Anyway, in the process, they found this guy.

Name's Bruce Grady.

There's a long rap sheet. He's, uh, awaiting trial on armed robbery.

Did he work in here?

No, he's assigned to the med mod up on the third floor.

What's a hard-core felon doing assigned to a low-risk medical module?

Well, he had cirrhosis of the liver-- on a bunch of meds.

Had one foot in the grave.

Stokes: Someone must have gotten impatient.

He's been stabbed pretty good. Look at that.

So we have an inmate from the medical module found three floors below, stabbed to death.

Any particular enemies?

This is County-- everyone in here has enemies.

That narrows it down.

Russell: We have one victim... and 2,000 caged suspects.

♪ CSI 15x09 ♪
Let's Make a Deal
Original Air Date on December 7, 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! ♪

I hate laundry.

I could never work in a place like this.

I don't know, it beats sitting in your cell with some sketchy roommate.

I don't know, I think an inmate would have been preferable to my first college roommate.

Hmm. Nutjob, huh?

Oh, yeah.

Liver temp is 94 degrees.

He's been dead around three hours.

So, 7:00 p.m.

That's about right.

Did you find any other s*ab wounds, Dave?

Just the one you already saw.

And a defensive wound on his hand.

It looks like there's some residue on his hands as well.

Blood drops on his clothing are gravitational and elongated.

And... there is blood on the bottom of his shoes, so he was walking around bleeding.

So where is all the blood?

There's some over here near the sink.

Hot water handle.

k*ller could have injured himself during a struggle.

Needed to wash up.

Hey, I've got a bloody towel over here, as well.

And somebody did a lousy mop job.

Okay, I'm gonna grab the guys, we'll pick up the body, and I'll text you when Doc schedules the post.

Thanks, Dave.

Nick, look at this.

Same residue as on the victim's hands.

“M.M.”

Medical Module, maybe?

Wasn't the victim housed there?

Well, that would explain how he got down here.

He was hiding in the laundry cart.

Yeah, but there's no blood inside.

Okay, so he was uninjured when he got in, and att*cked when he got down here.

(yells in pain)

Question is, did he come down here voluntarily, or did somebody force him to take the ride?

Yeah. Well, either way, we're gonna have to find out who was pushing that cart.

Sanders: Strep.

Pink eye.

Impetigo?

I mean, you can practically feel the germs jumping on you.

(laughs) You're being paranoid.

You do remember that I was just quarantined.

Yes, and you survived the Ibare virus, which means you can probably handle a little bit of pink eye.

If you say so.

Here we are.

Our victim's cell. (sighs)

You know, this is all new to me.

We never worked jail cases back at LAPD.

Yeah, well, welcome to Clark County.

Ladies first.

(sighs heavily)

Well... Grady's cell is pretty clean.

Doesn't look like there was any struggle of any sort.

Photo of his daughter Rachel.

It's got to be tough missing your kid grow up.

Yeah.

This artwork here explains the residue on Grady's hands.

He had some talent-- these are good drawings.

Sanders: Lake views, forests, birds.

All showing the beauty of nature.

Hard to believe he'd want to be reminded of that while he's in here.

Sanders: Well, maybe in here is where you need to be reminded the most.

Ugh. That's some nasty medicine he was taking.

Brody: Got a file folder here full of legal paperwork.

Well, that makes sense-- inmates are allowed to keep their case files with them in their cell.

Hey, look at this.

Oh. That's a jail kite.

It's how inmates communicate from cell to cell.

A message is written on paper, which is folded into a triangular kite.

The string is there, in case they need to pull it back, if it ends up somewhere they didn't want it to go.

“Liars don't last long in here.

Watch your back”"

That's a pretty serious warning.

Sounds more like a thr*at to me-- one our k*ller wasn't afraid to follow up on.

(lock buzzes, clicks)

So, Officer Woo, you were the guard in charge of the laundry room today?

Laundry's my regular assignment.

I work days on a four/ten, Sunday to Wednesday.

Okay. And you work alone?

Yeah. It's a solo gig now.

You know, budget cuts.

Did you know the victim, Bruce Grady?

Seen him around, like any other inmate.

Well, did you know that he was transported in a cart to the laundry room during your shift?

No. Didn't.

Where were you around 7:00 p.m.?

Supply trucks got delayed by a pileup on the 15.

Arrived three hours late.

Took my laundry trustees down to the dock to unload it.

That was around... 6:45.

How long did that take?

15, 20 minutes.

So you left the laundry unsupervised?

Nobody should have been in there.

I had six trustees with me, and the rest were upstairs doing linen swap.

How was the trustee in charge of swapping the linens out of the medical module?

Third floor.

That'd be Wilbur Tandy.

Laundry trustee-- that's a pretty good gig, huh, Wilbur?

I like the routine-- it gets me out of my cell.

Got Bruce Grady out of his cell, too.

Did you take him down to the laundry room?

Just following orders.

Orders from who?

Now, I wouldn't last very long in here if I questioned who's giving the orders.

You saying you don't want to tell me, or are you saying you don't know?

I'm saying I don't want to end up like Grady.

Another option is, we can charge you with accessory to m*rder.

And I ask for a lawyer and you get nothing.

Stokes: All right, all right, Wilbur...

I'm working for the dead man here.

Now who gave you that order?

Got a kite.

Said bring Grady to the laundry during the linen swap, so I did.

Grady got a kite, too.

Pretty threatening one.

So, we're supposed to expect he, uh, voluntarily got into your cart, knowing it could be his last ride?

You don't get it.

Nothing sent by a kite is a request.

Grady knew that.

He had to go.

Did he say anything?

Nah. He was out of it. He was drugged up on something.

Could barely get in the cart.

Okay, so, you took him downstairs, then what?

Left the cart, got another one.

I told you, I got my routine.

You see who he was meeting with?

Nope.

Dropped him off and left.

Stokes: You can help us eliminate you as a suspect by giving your DNA sample.

I gave my DNA at intake. Use that.

Well, you've got your routine, I've got mine.

I take a DNA sample from everybody I've talked to. No exceptions.

What do I get if I give it to you?

Well, you get to keep being laundry trustee.

Russell: So, where are we with Bruce Grady's enemies?

There's no record of any incidents since he's been in jail, but I did pull his rap sheet to look at his history, and I found a very interesting trend.

Every time he's arrested, the charges got reduced.

Yeah.

Suspiciously reduced, I'd say, and there's only one way that could happen.

Grady was making deals with the DA.

So, the guy was an informant.

Yeah. So, I cross-matched cases where he appeared as a witness to inmates who are currently assigned to the jail, and I found out something very big.

Grady was the star witness in the m*rder case of Lincoln Mayfield.

Mayfield-- the Snakeback assassin.

Yeah, but he was convicted, so he wouldn't be in jail.

He's got to be upstate in prison, right?

Well, he was, but the case was overturned on a technicality.

The retrial is this week.

And Mayfield was brought back to County for the trial.

He arrived two days ago.

(lock buzzes, clicks)

Guard: Mayfield!

On your feet!

Turn around, hands behind your back.

Hey, Mayfield, lookie here.

You want to explain this?

I ain't sayin' nothin' to no cop.

You got a problem with that, talk to my lawyer.

Russell: Well, Mayfield lawyered up, so, he won't be talking.

No surprise.

D.A. handling the retrial gave me a copy of the case file.

Care to take a look?

(grunts) Please tell me there's a Reader's Digest version.

All right, as the so-called “Snakeback Assassin” Mayfield was suspected of over a dozen gangland murders.

Yeah. I remember this one.

Young, pregnant woman caught in the crossfire.

They thought it was a Mayfield hit, right?

Yeah.

Witnesses were, of course, afraid to come forward.

Consequently, the D.A. never had enough to charge him.

So, let me guess.

They decided to go with a jail informant.

You got it. They put Bruce Grady in a cell next to Mayfield.

And after a while, Grady got him to talk.

Mayfield confessed?

No, but he provided details that only the k*ller would know.

It was enough in court, and bottom line is, Grady's testimony put Mayfield away.

Well, there's Mayfield's motive.

Payback for Grady's testimony.

(phone ringing)

Boy, I didn't see this coming.

Nick says Mayfield wants to talk.

My lawyer here ain't happy, but I got to tell you about Grady.

You're compelled to tell me about Grady, 'cause he testified against you.

That's just it.

That was all lies.

Dude stood up there and said I told him stuff while we was locked up together?

I never told him nothin'.

And that pissed you off. Hmm. Hmm. Were you mad enough to k*ll him?

I didn't k*ll homeboy.

You sent a kite to Wilbur, ordering him to take Grady to the laundry room.

To talk, straighten him out.

Why'd you bring a w*apon?

Never know who gonna make a move.

Look, all I wanted for him was to do right by me and take back those lies.

Okay, so you guys talk, and then what?

Things just go sideways?

Dude showed up wasted, makin' no sense.

Hey, Grady?

You're gonna tell 'em you lied, hear me?

You're gonna make things right.

Just be cool.

I can hook you up in here.

Look here, old man...

Hey!

(Grady shouts, groans)

So you shank him?

To get his attention....

Lincoln.

Look, I shanked a few dudes in my day.

Poke I gave him wouldn't k*ll nobody.

You got his attention. Now what?

I... strongly suggested that he come clean.

(grunting) Tell 'em you lied, I'm gonna k*ll you.

Okay, okay.

And if you tell the D.A. about our little talk, I'm gonna k*ll you ugly.

I swear, I won't tell anyone.

I swear.

Not a word.

You stabbed him, but you weren't trying to k*ll him?

I couldn't afford to k*ll him.

I needed him alive to tell the DA that he lied.

That's why I'm talking to you.

I'm telling you, him being m*rder*d is bad for me.

Real bad.

(sniffing)

Ooh.

That odor is disgustingly familiar.

It's the smell of success.

I'd hate to find out what failure smells like.

Hey, did you ever figure out what that medicine was in Grady's trash?

Wasn't medicine.

It was hooch. Pruno.

Jail alcohol.

I'm making a batch right now, using only items available to the inmates.

It's a simple recipe, really.

Fermentation is the conversion of sugars to alcohol, using yeast.

You combine fruit, juice, sugar and bread.

Mix and wait.

The yeast from the bread does all the work.

You just have to vent it occasionally to release the accumulated CO2, and you're good.

Witness said that Grady was out of it.

Maybe he was just drunk on pruno.

Maybe he just needed a little liquid courage.

If I had to face someone who wanted to k*ll me, I'd drink, too.

Mm. That looks like something out of a zombie movie.

No, it's Bruce Grady's liver.

Cirrhosis causes cells and scar tissue to create nodules, rendering it ineffective as the body's main filtration system.

Makes you not want to have that second glass of wine at dinner.

Speak for yourself.

So, what about the s*ab wound?

Well, it's a single laceration penetrating the external abdominal oblique muscle.

It's an inch wide, and about one and a half inches in depth.

That's not very deep.

I'm surprised that it k*lled him.

Well, it didn't.

Take a look here.

Petechiae.

So he d*ed from asphyxiation.

Robbins: Manually strangled.

(gasping)

You can see finger-shaped contusions beginning to form.

I swabbed the neck for epithelial DNA from our k*ller.

Already sent it to Henry.

So, he was stabbed, and then he was strangled.

That makes no sense.

That shank could have done major damage.

So, why would you strangle someone if you had a perfectly good w*apon?

You wouldn't.

Maybe Mayfield was telling the truth.

Sanders: Inmates can get pretty creative concealing their contraband, so let's just be sure to check every hem, edge, seam...

So it's a tactile examination.

Pretty much.

But never forget.

The most popular hiding place is the jail wallet.

What?

The keister stash.

Ah, well, I am double gloved, so, I'm good.

I heard about this inmate whose family smuggled him dr*gs by melting them and using the mixture to paint a picture in a coloring book.

“To Daddy. Love Lindsay”

It's kind of hard to explain a guy licking a picture of a princess.

Maybe in the outside world, but in jail, not so much.

(sighs)

Greg... take a look at this.

It's a tiny recording device.

I've never seen one that small.

It's state-of-the-art.

I saw one of these at the forensic conference last month.

It's not even available to law enforcement until next year.

Well, then, how did Bruce Grady get one?

Well, the vendor did say that one law enforcement agency would be chosen to test the prototype.

I wonder which agency that would be.

Agent Parker, thank you for seeing me.

Your call said it was urgent.

We found this in the cell of an inmate at County.

You recognize it?

I might.

Yeah.

We found that after the inmate was m*rder*d.

(wry chuckle)

All right, look, Bruce Grady was a CI for the DA's Office--

I already knew that-- but he was also an informant for the FBI, I'm not going to divulge details on an ongoing investigation.

I can appreciate that, but after the guy was m*rder*d, you might have picked up the phone and told us.

Saved us a lot of trouble.

Our investigation is confidential.

Your investigation is very likely the reason why we're in this mess.

Look, we think that Grady was k*lled by that same inmate that you're investigating.

So come on.

Let's work together here.

Well, that's assuming the focus of our investigation is an inmate.

You're investigating a guard.

(sighs)

So Grady was not just informing on crooks.

He was informing on cops.

Ecklie: Agent Parker, you blindsided me on this.

There's such a thing as professional courtesy.

The FBI is under no obligation to share information with you.

Oh, please. Drop the federal policy-speak.

We're on the same side here.

If one of my guards is dirty, I want to know about it.

Now, who are you looking at?

We're empanelling a grand jury.

We expect an indictment any day.

I'm not going to risk a leak.

A leak?

Russell: We're investigating the m*rder of your CI, and you won't share with us?

Sorry.

Best we can do is work our cases in parallel.

If your investigation collides with ours, maybe then we can talk.

Have a nice day.

Perfect. A federal corruption investigation.

We'll work the case as fast as we can, Conrad.

If Grady's k*ller turns out to be a-a jail guard...

Yeah, please let me be the first to know.

Hey.

What do you got for me?

All the blood Finn and Nick collected in the laundry room came back to the victim, Bruce Grady, including the blood on the sink.

Okay, what about the shank?

Mm. No surprises there.

Blood on the blade was Grady's. DNA on the handle came back to Lincoln Mayfield.

A perfect equation, except that the shank isn't the m*rder w*apon 'cause Grady was strangled.

I found epithelials on the victim's neck swab.

DNA doesn't match Mayfield.

DNA has to be the k*ller's.

Did you run it through CODIS?

No hits.

Given that all inmates are entered into the system...

Means we're not looking for an inmate.

Just like we feared, looks like Grady's k*ller is a guard.

So, Grady was reportedly intoxicated at the time of his m*rder, and yet his tox report says that his blood alcohol level was 0.03%.

0.03?

That wouldn't make anyone stagger, let alone an alcoholic like Grady.

No.

They also found a half-dozen prescription dr*gs in his system, all on his medical record, except for one, a drug named terbinafine.

What's that taken for?

Skin infections.

And this is the interesting part: they do not dispense terbinafine in the jail infirmary.

Okay, so where'd he get it from?

I don't know, but somebody with access to the outside must've given it to him.

Huh. All right.

Let me see here.

Terbinafine.

Here we go.

“Terbinafine should never be taken by people with liver problems. Can cause confusion and an unsteady gait”

That would explain why he seemed intoxicated.

And get this, “cases of death have been reported in individuals with cirrhosis of the liver.”

So somebody was poisoning him before he went down to the laundry.

Yeah, and they must have gotten tired of waiting for that poison to take effect, went hands-on and strangled him.

You know, Henry's DNA evidence does back up the fact that we might be looking at a guard.

Well, the laundry was guarded by Officer Woo, who just so happened to be gone when the m*rder went down.

Wow, that is awfully convenient.

Finlay: So you said that, on Sunday night, at about 7:00 p.m., you were not in the laundry room.

Right.

I was on the loading dock.

And you were on the loading dock for approximately 20 minutes?

Give or take.

You're on direct deposit for your LVPD paychecks, is that correct?

And your wife, she doesn't work, does she?

So?

So I see that there are several cash deposits to your account each month, last month, totaling more than $4,000.

Is there a rich uncle that I don't know about?

It's funny, if you want to know what the guards are actually doing when they're on the job, you just have to ask the inmates.

You want to know about Woo? I'll tell you about Woo.

He takes money to look the other way.

It's common knowledge you can get anything in the laundry.

dr*gs, weapons, sex.

Woo won't say a word for the right price.

Laundry's a three-ring circus.

Woo lets inmates do whatever they want.

Look... my wife has a shopping problem.

I can't even cover the minimum payments.

So I get it: You need to make some extra money on the side.

It started small.

I snuck in some pot brownies for an inmate with migraines.

He told two friends.

They told two friends...

Pretty soon, I got inmates threatening to rat me out if I don't help 'em out, too.

I'd lose my job.

I'd lose everything.

Let's talk about Sunday night.

Mayfield paid me to stay away while he met with Grady.

Had two grand delivered to my house.

Said they were just gonna talk.

How much did you know about Grady?

I knew he was a snitch.

Yeah. For the FBI.

He was helping them with a corruption case involving a jail guard.

I think that you found out that Grady was snitching you out to the Feds, so you let Mayfield have a little alone time with him, hoping that Mayfield would do your dirty work.

Only when you got back to the laundry room, Grady was still alive so you had to k*ll him.

No. No way. I didn't k*ll Grady.

It's a nice setup. Mayfield's a known k*ller.

He's a perfect patsy.

I didn't do it.

I swear.

Cops don't have their DNA in CODIS, so if you want to prove it to me, you're gonna have to give me a sample.

Hey. You find anything on the recording device from Grady's cell?

No, it's blank.

(sighs) We must've found it before Grady had a chance to use it.

Yeah, but here's where it gets weird.

So, I got the specs from the vendor.

Something isn't adding up here.

According to these, the dynamic range of the device is 80 decibels, with a noise floor of 30 decibels.

Dynamic range? Noise floor?

All right. Well, let-let me just show you.

So, the human speaking voice averages 60 to 70 decibels at three feet. That's... the green wave here.

Now let's add some interference.

(white noise hissing)

So as long as the interference from any kind of background noise stays within this range, then the recording device can still pick up our voices.

See how the green and red waves remain distinct?

But in the jail's laundry, with all the machines running and the cement walls, the noise interference level would have to be a lot higher.

I went back and measured. It was 86 decibels.

(hissing, crackling increases)

See?

Now look at the sound waves. The laundry room's way too loud to record human conversation with that.

(hissing, crackling fades)

So if the FBI was trying to record Officer Woo during his shift in the jail laundry, then this was the wrong device.

So, Morgan and Greg don't think Officer Woo is the target of the FBI investigation.

I think they're right. Woo's DNA did not match the DNA on the neck swab.

So Woo's not the one who strangled Grady.

Mm-mm.

Where's that put us now?

Well, I have been looking back over Grady's CI files, and instead of links to inmates, I've been looking at links to officers, and there's quite a list.

Grady has been making deals for years.

Well, being an informant can be good money.

Well, he's not doing it for the money.

He's doing it to get his charges reduced, so... sexual as*ault is dealt down to malicious mischief and robbery down to burglary.

And the list just goes on and on.

Is there a connection to any officers that we know?

Carl Brenner.

Brenner?

The gung-ho detective?

He never mentioned anything about knowing Grady at the crime scene.

Hey, wait a minute, was Detective Brenner a part of the Lincoln Mayfield case?

Finlay: He was.

And Brenner would have been in charge of putting Grady into the cell next to Mayfield.

When I talked to Mayfield, he claims that he never talked to Grady about anything when they were housed next to each other.

So what if Brenner fed his informant the information on Mayfield?

There was a lot of public pressure at the time for a conviction.

Right? Perfect opportunity for the new guy in Homicide to make a name for himself.

What are you doing?

Looking up Detective Brenner's personnel file.

You know, when officers take a random drug test, they have to list all the medications they've been taking.

Yeah, yeah. That's routine.

Right. Here's his medical disclosure form from last month.

He lists a multivitamin, ibuprofen...

...and terbinafine.

Same medication we found in Grady's blood.

Wow.

So Brenner was poisoning Grady.

Yeah.

How much you want to bet he's the one who strangled him, too?

Okay, here's what we got: Detective Brenner was using Grady by feeding him case information and then putting him next to suspects that he wanted to frame.

Making Brenner look like a hero.

Right. Explains his meteoric rise in the department over the last two years.

Mayfield was the most recent.

Also the highest profile.

And that may be what got the attention of the Feds.

Brenner's a smart guy.

Probably saw it coming.

Started to poison Grady.

Was Brenner at County at the time Grady was strangled?

Conducting a lineup down the hall from the laundry.

I'm gonna interrogate this son of a bitch myself.

I thought we agreed to talk before pulling the trigger on this.

Mitch.

Take Detective Brenner to Interrogation Room B.

Be my pleasure, sir.

Let's go.

Special Agent Parker, what we agreed was to work our cases separately, at your request, as I recall.

Arresting Brenner could affect our grand jury hearing, damage our case going forward.

Not my problem. We have our own case to solve.

We could work together.

The LVPD is under no obligation to share investigative information with you.

You want a sh*t at Brenner, you can wait till I'm done.

Excuse me.

Sheriff...

Sir, look...

I don't know what you've heard, all right?

But-but I am a good cop, okay?

I can't believe you march me in here like-like some... criminal.

I put criminals away.

Yeah, you do.

You got a hell of a conviction rate, one of the best in the department.

And now every single one of those convictions is gonna be called into question.

Aw, come on. Every dirtbag I put away was guilty, no question.

You falsified evidence by coaching your informant to lie in court.

So I nudged my cases a little bit-- so what?

You framed them. Going down that road, you become worse than the criminals you're chasing.

No. No. I could never be like them.

You already are.

You k*lled Bruce Grady.

The hell I did.

He had poisonous medicine in his system.

Your medicine.

(chuckles): Okay, yeah.

(sniffs) Yeah, I gave him the medicine.

But to make him sick, not-not to... to k*ll him.

Look, Grady was getting cold feet about Mayfield's retrial.

I figure if he's too sick to testify, the DA's forced to use his previous testimony.

No, you k*lled him because you knew he was two-timing you.

What-what are you talking about?

With the FBI investigation.

Grady was ratting you out to the Feds, and you found out.

That's why you k*lled him.

Okay, I-I, um... I need my-my union rep.

(chuckles): Your union rep.

You've committed multiple felonies while on duty.

Your union is gonna run in the opposite direction.

Well, then I want a lawyer. (sniffs)

You're gonna need one.

Russell: Hey.

How'd it go?

Admitted to the poisoning, denied the m*rder, then lawyered up.

Funny thing, though, from the look on his face, I don't think he knew about the FBI probe.

Did you get a DNA sample?

No, and there's not a chance he's gonna give one now.

Actually, wait a minute.

I think he may have given it to me already.

You need me, you call me.

Home number's right on the back.

♪ ♪

Henry, you look excited.

Were you able to extract any DNA?

Oh, I got a beautiful profile, but we're not gonna need it.

Well, yeah, we are.

Brenner only admitted to poisoning Grady-- we need to prove that he also strangled him.

Uh, except he didn't.

(sighs) Okay. What am I missing?

I found a match to the neck swab from the victim.

The k*ller's an inmate named Peter McCrone.

This is the guy that got punched during that pepper spray melee.

Hey, what the hell?

He's an inmate, so how come his DNA didn't show up in CODIS?

Oh, only DNA from felons gets entered into CODIS.

Peter McCrone is in county on a misdemeanor.

We just got his DNA when Finlay interviewed him.

It was at the bottom of a big pile of...

Hey, come on in.

Finlay: Hey.

Henry just found a match to an inmate you talked to.

Yeah, Peter McCrone.

Henry texted me.

So, I went back to try to find a connection between McCrone and Grady.

Right. And?

Grady's earliest arrest was for sexual as*ault.

Dealt down to malicious mischief.

Right, I remember seeing that.

McCrone was his victim.

Grady molested him 20 years ago.

Well, there's a hell of a motive.

You spend your whole life trying to put things behind you.

To forget.

But some things, they just never go away.

Stokes: I know it's difficult.

So, tell me what happened.

Bruce Grady was a janitor at my elementary school.

He was always nice.

Seemed like someone you could trust.

But he broke that trust.

One afternoon, I forgot my backpack.

Nobody here except you and me, man.

There it is!

Thanks, Mr. Grady.

Hey, kid, want to see a cool picture of a T. Rex?

Sure.

He molested me.

I was nine years old.

I never should have gone near him.

You know, I-I knew something wasn't right.

I knew.

He took advantage of a child.

That's not your fault.

He threatened to hurt my family... if I told.

I wasn't going to, but when I got home, my mom knew something was wrong.

So, I had to tell her.

You know, that's a brave thing to do.

Lot of kids, they wouldn't even say anything.

He was arrested the next day.

And I was ready to testify against him, so he couldn't hurt other kids.

It was all I could think about.

But Grady took a plea bargain.

He got three years.

Three years, that's it.

I couldn't believe it.

How'd you run into Grady in county?

I was dropping supplies off in the laundry.

And I heard arguing.

If you tell the DA about our little talk, I'm gonna k*ll you ugly...

I swear, I won't tell anyone.

I swear.

Not a word.

That voice.

I recognized it immediately.

Don't say a word.

Not to anybody.

Not one word.

The bastard who r*ped me was right there.

So I waited for the other guy to leave.

You're Bruce Grady, aren't you?

Who's asking?

Pete McCrone.

We met 20 years ago.

When I was a kid.

Not ringing a bell.

When you r*ped me.

Figures you'd wind up in here.

Squeezed his neck as hard as I could.

It surprised me.

I didn't think I could do something like that.

Hmm, well, then what happened?

I panicked.

I stuffed him into the closet, I wiped up the blood, and I got hell out of there.

What were you even doing in County?

I mean, the only charge I see here is a misdemeanor.

What the hell happened?

It's stupid-- child endangerment.

What do you mean?

I left my two-year-old at home in the crib, and I went and tried to pull my wife out of the bar.

While I was gone, the neighbors called the cops.

And that was a month ago.

You haven't had your arraignment yet?

Public defender told me he was handling things.

That I'd be out in 24 hours.

And then never heard anything.

Hey, uh... maybe you could talk to someone.

Get things straightened out, get me out of here.

Pete, man, I just...

I don't think that's gonna happen.

You know, not-not now.

After-after all this.

(sighs quietly)

Heard you got a confession out of McCrone.

Yeah.

Yeah, he copped to everything.

He recognized Grady 20 years later?

It was Grady's voice.

That's what got him.

Pete never forgot that voice.

Course, it was a million-to-one sh*t that McCrone'd even run into Grady there in the first place.

Yeah, why was he in jail again?

Child endangerment?

Yeah, those charges were dropped.

It was paperwork that kept him in there for that month.

How you doing? You okay?

Yeah, I'm fine.

Hey, seriously.

Sometimes these cases hit a nerve, you know?

And... this one just hit a nerve that was a little too close to home for me, that's all.

You want to talk about it?

No, I want to forget about it.

Okay.

Well... this is a hell of a job, Nick.

We work a horrific crime, turn around and work another one.

They're bound to collide with our personal lives, sooner or later.

Just never know when.

Pete did the exact same thing I would have done in that situation.

Think you would have gone that far?

Guy goes to jail for a misdemeanor, ends up in prison for m*rder.

Momentary decision... ruined his life forever.

His life was ruined a long time ago.