KISSINGER (#CI7015)
EPISODE PREMIERE: July 6, 2008
SYNOPSIS:
Skip Lowe is a Wall Street trader with a double life. Out walking with his child in Central Park at night, Skip is murdered. Goren and Eames examine Skip’s computer and find he was having a clandestine affair with another man. However, when the detectives find the object of Skip’s desires, they quickly conclude that he was not a man capable of murder. As Ross suggests that the detectives question Skip’s wife, who may have been motivated by jealousy, another woman is murdered in the park.
The woman, Paloma Renzi, was a close personal friend of Skip’s. She was a corporate executive, and she and Lowe had extensive contact with one another. The ballistics are a match. The person who killed Skip, also killed Paloma. And more disturbing: her young child was with her on the night she was murdered, just as was the case with Skip Lowe’s young son, abandoned in a stroller by the body of the victim. Goren and Eames look into Skip and Paloma’s connection, revealing that he had analyzed the stock of her company, and that the two of them benefitted from Skip’s favorable review. But red flags are raised because Paloma’s company was a dog, and anyone writing a favorable review must have been on the take in some way. As the detectives’ attention focuses on some Wall Street heavy hitters who may have been hurt by Skip’s rating, a third body appears, far removed from Central Park, and even farther removed from any Wall Street intrigue.
Once again, another young parent, Denise Mylar, was the target. Ballistics confirm that the three victims were killed by the same gun. Although Denise’s ex-husband had a penchant for violence, Goren and Eames are more intrigued with the decision to enroll Denise’s daughter in a prestigious pre-school in the Upper East Side, a great distance from her home in Far Rockaway. As the detectives explore the school’s waiting list, they find that Skip Lowe tried to curry favor with an influential board member by issuing the favorable stock review before his murder. Skip’s reward was that his young son would shoot to the top of the waiting list for entry into the school. It soon becomes clear that the wait list for the Carnegie Hill Day School is looking more and more like a ‘hit-list’.
Goren and Eames turn their attention to a family who was with Skip on the night he was murdered in the park. As they confront the grandmother of a young child currently wait-listed at Carnegie Hill Day School, they find the murder weapon in her bag. Eleanor Reynolds is now a prime suspect. But something about the case bothers Goren. Denise Mylar, a victim who lived far away from the island of Manhattan, couldn’t have been murdered by Eleanor. Eleanor’s medical condition would have precluded her from making the long journey to Far Rockaway, and her fear of public restrooms would have made any stops along the way a rather dubious possibility. The noose begins to tighten around Eleanor’s daughter-in-law, Marla, a woman who appeared to have framed her domineering mother-in-law with murder. As Goren and Eames descend upon Marla, they must diffuse a situation that is fast reaching dire proportions. Marla has brought a gun into the prestigious pre-school, and with a room full of toddlers sleeping in a darkened room, Goren must talk her out of making a potentially deadly mistake.
