Thursday, April 14, 2011

Body of Proof 1.03: "Helping Hand"

Guest blogger Sarah is continuing to provide her take on "Body of Proof" for MTVP. Enjoy her latest write-up!

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“It’s not that hard, you know. To connect with people. Just take an interest.”
- Kate

Much like “Letting Go” we begin with the murder of the episode. A young Hispanic woman is shot and dies. Next thing we know, Megan is arriving on scene. She was supposed to have a day off but someone’s wife had a baby and so she got called in. Detective Morris is in a rather unpleasant mood as Megan examines the scene. The victim is Elena Rosas. She looks very out of place in the dingy motel room in a nice business suit. Morris is still cranky when Megan says she can’t give him a cause of death because there’s a distinct lack of blood around the body (even though she was shot). Outside, Sam and Peter share a look and Megan’s left wondering what she’s missing. She doesn’t really know much about the people she works with. That’s kind of the theme of the episode.

At autopsy, Megan finds Ethan rearranging her surgical instruments because someone put them out of order. Megan is a little disturbed that Ethan knows the order she likes her instruments but she dismisses it quickly. She does however ask Peter what was up at the crime scene. He tells her that Bud is having issues with his wife. Megan is clueless to his situation obviously because she thought he was already divorced. They discover that Elena did die from a gunshot wound to her arm because it passed through her arm and into her torso and caused massive internal bleeding. While going over the other x-rays, Megan notices surgical clips on Elena’s skull and like a true neurosurgeon, has to investigate. In short order she discovers to her extreme surprise that Elena was one of her patients. Megan’s in her office brooding over the fact that she didn’t remember Elena was her patient when Peter walks in. He wants to know what tipped her off in the first place, and Megan explains that surgeons have certain techniques they use, like a signature, and Megan recognized her own. She requested Elena’s file from Northeast General, which Kate delivers, and Megan remembers Elena (after reading the file). Megan’s pissed at herself for not remembering Elena as a person but as a surgical procedure and is determined to find her killer.

Down in the lab, Ethan tells Curtis that the crusty stain on Elena’s blouse was breast milk, but not from her baby because she’d never been pregnant. The plot thickens. Meanwhile, Megan is meeting with Elena’s father. He’s surprised to see her there. He tells Megan that Elena was inspired by her and became a social worker with Child Protective Services in order to help people. Sam, Peter and Megan head over to CPS (Bud is taking a long lunch) and meet with Elena’s boss, Jeremy. He confirms that she was dedicated and that morning had 5 home visits. Unlike a lot of the staff, Elena continued following up on cases until she was satisfied the child was in a safe environment. They head out and discover that Holly Bennett was the only visit Elena got to. And she’s got a baby. She confirms that Elena was good to her and helped convince her to throw her cocaine addicted boyfriend out. That morning, Elena got a call that freaked her out, and she left in a hurry.

Megan is examining the bullet fragment from Elena’s chest when Kate stops by. She asks how things are going, and Megan says that she’s examining the bullet while Sam goes through Elena’s case files. Kate says that it isn’t hard to connect with people. She just needs to take an interest and again, Megan is kind of clueless. Kate changes the subject back to the bullet and Megan reveals that the bullet hit someone else before hitting Elena.

The gang is having a case status pow wow, and Megan’s still hung up on why Elena was in the dingy motel room to begin with. Morris posits she’s a prostitute and that just gets Megan annoyed. She smacks him in the arm and notices his suit jacket has a big hole in the seam (pus he just generally looks like crap). They head over to talk to Elena’s father again to see if maybe she was seeing someone her father didn’t know about. Megan and Morris are looking around Elena’s room and Megan asks how Morris is doing. He ends up spilling his guts to her but she’s distracted by a photo of Elena and herself after Elena’s brain surgery. They discover by fluke a card that came with flowers, signed by Elena’s boss. They bring him in for questioning, and Jeremy explains that he was interested in Elena, but she didn’t really return the affections. She didn’t want to date her boss. It turns out while he was trying to get Elena to reconsider, she had a seizure. He tried to help her and that’s where the bruises on her arms and the abrasions on her lips came from. She bit him during the seizure and once she was recovered, he left.

Megan is examining Elena’s brain to see if she really did have a seizure when Curtis feeds her some info on Ethan (after she asks Curtis how he’s doing). It ends up being a pretty funny result later on. Kate shows up with the results on the foreign tissue from the bullet. It belongs to Sean Wilcox, a kid who just got out of juvenile detention for weapons possession. The cops find him with Elena’s car and they tackle him at a junk yard. They take him to the hospital because the bullet grazed his neck and it’s now infected. Sean appears to be suspect #1. He got busted for having a gun by Elena when he was still in foster care so it would seem he had motive. But he explained that Elena visited him every week while he was locked up to show that she wasn’t going to give up on him. She got the hotel room for him while he looked for a job. He fell asleep, and when he woke up she was back and then someone shot them. It also turns out he’d called the same number six times that day. And meet suspect #2, Vincent Stone. He owns the junkyard where the cops cornered Sean. Vincent claims to be a father figure to Sean, but it turns out he was really using Sean to do his dirty work. Elena confronted him and she used pepper spray (colored with dye now to mark the attacker). He was responsible for the call that got Elena back to the hotel.

Megan’s examining the swabs from Sean’s neck to get her own results. Ethan helps out, and in short order Megan figures out Curtis was messing with her about Ethan’s interests. Ethan seems pretty confused by the whole thing but I think it was an interesting comic relief. They do however bond over their love of science. Right at the end of their conversation, Megan discovers that Sean had an infection that only results from pigeon droppings. Megan calls Morris to fill him in and they figure out that the shot that killed Elena went through the motel room window. The shooter was standing outside. Morris gets Peter and Sam to line up so they can figure out how far away the shooter was standing. They find a shell casing.

Peter heads over to the hospital to get Sean to help them get back on to Vincent’s property to search for guns. Peter reveals that he too was a foster kid and he was one of the lucky kids to get adopted by a great family. But he can empathize with Sean about feeling like any hand that reaches out to help should be taken. Sean ends up telling them where the guns are, giving them probable cause. The cops find a trunk full of guns. Lots of ballistics to test!

Megan walks in on Kate prepping for an early dinner date and is quite impressed. So was I. Great color dress on Jeri (kind of a pinkish orange). Then again she could wear a potato sack and I’d think she was gorgeous. Anyway, Kate congratulates Megan on the fungal infection finding. Kate’s bemoaning the fact that they didn’t have any prints or DNA to help match the gun. All they found was rice flour. And Megan knows who the killer is. Rice flour is used in baby cereal. Megan, in short order, explains that she ran a toxicological panel on the dried breast milk. There was evidence of cocaine in the results. Elena found out that Holly was using again and was going to take her daughter away. And now she’s lost both a woman who cared about her and her daughter.

Megan wants to be the one to deliver the news to Elena’s father. He’s still devastated that it was her work that got her killed. He was proud of his daughter but he worried about her every time she left the house. That night, Megan finds Bud about to sleep in his car (his trunk is full of clothes and such). She offers to fix his suit jacket for him and they have a brief discussion about how you can miss the signs right in front of you that things aren’t working anymore. It’s unclear if Bud is going to get a divorce, but they really connected.

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