This episode opens with Brooks recalling his first arson experience in a video of him in prison. Fast forward, Leonard Brooks kills a woman by setting an elevator on fire with her alone inside.
The CSIs come to investigate the fire and the burnt corpse. Upon checking at the camera footage, they find Leonard Brooks coming in, pretending to be the elevator repair man, making him the person of interest in the fire/killing.
The SWAT team comes with Mac Taylor's group to pay his home a visit, only to find an empty apartment. Mac orders the NYPD to track Brooks down, checking all points of entry/exits, and alerting them for his whereabouts.
Someone calls at Leonard Brooks' home, asking for Det. Mac Taylor. It was Brooks. He tells Mac that his victim was nothing but innocent, unlike what the reporters on TV are saying. Mac tells him to surrender, but he refuses. Mac asks Brooks who Rita Lowman is but Brooks wouldn't give him an answer, only telling him that there still has work to be done. Clearly, his work is still not done.
Upon inspecting the corpse's body, they find a Twelve-Step Recovery pendant in the victim's neck. It appears to be personalized, bearing a name different from that of the victim's.
Mac and Jo wonders why Leonard Brooks' MO suddenly changed. From his records, he only performs arson to cause damage on structures and never people. They start to think why the sudden change of mind. Jo thinks that this may be because his relief from starting fires no longer have anymore value, causing him to find a stronger "drug" to sustain his pyromania. To find him, Jo suggests they get inside his head. Mac thinks that if they don't find him soon, someone else is gonna die.
A muscular man was arrested and brought in for booking at NYPD. He tries to run off from the station, throwing cops around. Some girl stops her, catching the eye of our very own Don Flack. Turns out, she's a new detective, Det. Jamie Lovato, who was transferred from narcotics after her cover was blown. Flack welcomes her to homicide.
Mac comes to talk to Flack about Rita Lowman. She appears to be using an alias and they have no idea of her real identity. Mac struggles to find his words (memory lapses as a result of being shot) to give out orders to Flack about circulating the vic's photo, in case someone remembers her identity.
Brooks stalks a man named Jimmy Clark at Central Park. As he eats his lunch, he collapses and dies. EMTs think it was Myocardial Infarction that killed him. At autopsy, Sid Hammerback concludes that he was killed by someone burning him alive from the inside out. Whatever it is that he may have swallowed has ignited a fire inside him.
Mac Taylor and Don Flack checks on the camera footage at the scene where Clark died and finds Brooks in it to probably enjoy watching his victim's death. Mac realizes that the victims have a personal link to Brooks. Detective Lovato butts in to fill them in on the details on how Clark is linked to the first vic, Lowman. Mac orders her to check into the victims' files to find their connection to Brooks.
Meanwhile, Jo Danville tries to get into Brooks' head by studying his videos from prison for the past 14 years. Danny Messer walks in on her. He starts to ask about Mac, worrying how he seems of lately. She explains that it could be because he suffered life-changing trauma and months in rehabilitation. She assures him that she'll keep an eye on Mac.
At the lab, Lindsay explains how Brooks manage to kill Clark by just using basic Chemistry. She checks on the contents of his lunch and finds out that he just used Cesium to add into his sandwich. Cesium, being an alkaline metal, when mixed with water, the hydrogen bonds break down causing the gas to generate intense heat. Thus, burning his insides the more he drinks water. The cherry on top: when Cesium proceeds down his GI tract, to the vic's stomach, it mixes with the digestive fluids, causing an explosion in his stomach.
Mac wonders how Brooks manage to make Clark eat the deadly sandwich. Turns out Brooks applied at the deli where Clark was a regular. Brooks exploits Clark's routines by making him the sandwich that killed him. They now try to find who his next victim is.
Back to Flack and Lovato, the two are checking out old files to find victim #1's real identity. Flack asks Lovato about her past at Narcotics and why she moved to Homicide. Their chat was disrupted when Lovato finds Rita Lowman's file. Her name: Jennifer Brooks. Checking her files, they find out that victim #2, Jimmy Clark was her foster kid. They learn that Leonard Brooks killed his own mother and his foster brother.
Tracking his past, they find out that Jennifer Brooks had another foster child named Rachel Nelson. Mac orders them to find her before Brooks does. Adam Ross finds her in the DMV files and learns that she now goes by Rachel Moore. The team rushes to find Moore at a rehab facility in upstate New York. They assume Brooks has taken her somewhere after creating a diversion at the rehab facility.
The team finds Leonard Brooks and Rachel Moore at Saint Aidan's, an abandoned hospital where his mother used to work when he was younger. He hid her at the Burn Unit and is planning on killing her.
Mac comes in just in time. Flack tackles Brooks, stopping him from burning Rachel to ashes.
Upon questioning, his dark past was revealed and that his mother was an alcoholic and abused him when he was just a young boy. Clark, when he was adopted by his birth mother, would also beat him, thus plotting revenge on him as well. He wants to kill Rachel too because she has seen their mother back then hitting Leonard but never did anything to help him. He also revisits his past on how he became controlled by the fire, becoming the arsonist that he is.
Rob Morrow reprises his role as Leonard Brooks. This week, we also meet spunky newcomer, Det. Jamie Lovato, portrayed by Natalie Martinez (End of Watch).
No comments:
Post a Comment