The Ledger

7.6 Double Blind

In this episode (7.6), a young man on an experimental schizophrenia treatment slays a janitor from the building where he works. After Briscoe and Curtis solve the murder, McCoy goes after the psychiatrist who is treating the killer.

The episode begins with a janitor and a locksmith approaching a door that has been glued shut, They open the door and enter the apartment: the lights don't work, and there is blood spattered on the wall and everywhere else. The victim is Mr Frank, a dead janitor. He's been shot multiple times. Curtis uses his crime scene investigation skills and conclude that the killer used a pillow to muffle the sound of the shot, and killed the victim on a drop cloth, which he took wit him to minimize evidence. Looks like a professional hit, but who would want to kill a janitor?

They talk to the victim's boss, who says the victim worked, among other places, at a dental office where the dentists made porn films after hours. That turns out to be a dead end, though. They check in with OCCB to see if they have a record of a hitman who used a similar MO. They find someone, but he was convicted in the 1950s. They go talk to this old hitman (fun!), and he says that the writer's of an assassin's technical manual published all his secrets in their book, without giving him credit for developing them. It appears this is where the killer got the ideas from.

They visit the publisher of the book, and attempt to get the company's mailing list. The head of the company is racist towards Curtis. They won't give up the list, but Ross threatens them with criminal facilitation, and they get the list.

They learn that the victim got the book himself at Hudson University, or at least that it was stolen from a box in the mailroom that he had access to. They track down a kid who had access to the mail room (to steal the book) and to the chemistry lab (mercury was used in the commission of the crime). This leads to Alan Sawyer, a history major, who spends time in the chem lab. He is a fast and nervous talker. The lab where he works studies psychotropic drugs.

This leads to the head of the lab, Dr Varick, who tells them Sawyer is unstable. They bring Sawyer in for questioning, and he is brassier than expected, though still superficially polite. As they late out their case for him, explaining that the technique used in the killing points to him since he had the manual and there was little left behind at the crime scene, he retorts, "I'm guilty because you don't have any evidence?" They find mercury missing from thermostats in the lab, and arrest him (27'). As they do so, he insists on speaking to his parents, which they don't allow, because he's over 18.

He confesses, but the detectives forget something he mentioned in passing during a previous interview: his dad is an attorney. His request to talk to his parents, therefore, constituted a request to have an attorney. There's another problem: during his confession, he says that the victim, Mr Frank, was 600 years old. The pope told him so.

Varick says he was treating Sawyer as a schizophrenic, but he's been asymptomatic since taking an experimental medication, T-489.

The confession gets suppressed, and the charges are dismissed. They have to rebuild the case. Ross reports that Sawyer's father owns a .32, the same kind of gun used in the crime. They visit Baltimore (no "Homicide" cross-over, though), and talk to his parents, who says he's crazy. They want to commit him. They have a hearing in a Bellevue hearing room on whether to commit him. Judge Rebecca Steinman, a recurring character, hears the motion. He doesn't get committed, because Varick's research assistant says he's ok on the meds.

Ross and McCoy meet a restaurant, and discuss the fact that a previous Varick patient died. They talk to the research assistant, Ms Perry. McCoy believes Varick is fudging his resource data and says Perry is being set up by Varick. She admits she told Varick that Sawyer was relapsing, and the medication wasn't working. She also said that Sawyer said he was going to kill the victim, and indication that they knew the meds weren't abating his violent behavior.

Sawyer winds up in Bellevue, but McCoy wants to charge Varick with Manslaughter 2. The judge allows it. McCoy learns that Varick didn't perform certain PET scans that were ordered for the research. This shows intent to cover up inadequacies in his research. Ross gets ahold of Sawyer's PET scans, which show brain abnormalities: it turns out he wasn't even schizophrenic. He suffers from a terminal brain tumor that would have been detected in Varick had done what he was supposed to do. Looks like Sawyer will be dead in a year or two. He confronts Varick and calls him a bastard. McCoy tells Varick he's indicting him for Murder 2. But Ross defends Varick for not doing his job, saying, "Everyone cuts corners, Jack." McCoy responds, "Maybe where you come from. I'll check your briefs more carefully from now on."

The title of the episode refers to a kind of experiment, in which neither the researcher nor the patient knows which medication is being used on a particular patient. I guess this figuratively refers to the way in which Varick was "blind" to Sawyer's true condition, but that's only "single" blind. I don't know what the other blind is.

Posted by adm at June 23, 2004 05:45 AM

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