I always thought that was an urban legend …
Summary: Don’s team is called in to investigate a woman’s murder when it’s discovered her death may be connected with an organ-harvesting ring.
Original air date: January 27, 2006 (US)
Written by: J David Harden
Directed by: John Behring
Opening numbers:
90,582: Waiting list
$75,000: Brokerage fee
8,977: Miles from home
2: Sisters
No opening credits
Family Concepts: (character development)
- Charlie won the Milton Prize while at Princeton
- Amita is awarded the 85th Milton Prize for her dissertation work in 2006
- Colby worked CID in Afghanistan
- Amita’s family is from the city of Chennai in southern India
- Amita was born and raised in California
- Amita’s parents and grandmother emigrated from India to the United States
- Larry has an Aunt Louise
- Amita is planning a trip to India with her grandmother
- Amita is using the award money from the Milton Prize to sponsor Santi and her sister through school
- Information on Charlie’s driver’s license*
- DOB: 09/05/75
- 874 Hunter Street
Los Angeles California 90021
*Information is from a prop. Spoken dialog will take precedence in canon.
- Colby: What’s willingly when you’re poor and desparate.
- Megan [to a lawyer]: And you’re just here in the spirit of cooperation?
- Colby: Maybe they can check and see if he’s a donor.
- Don: Yeah, Chuck, we got your back … and your spleen.
Friday night finds Charlie, Amita, Alan and Larry at the 85th awarding of the Milton Prize at the LA Symposium where Charlie presents Amita as the winner of the Milton Prize for 2006 for her dissertation work. Don and David , meanwhile are running down anonymous tips for Homeland Security and are checking out a hotel reported for suspicious activity in the basement. They find a gruesome blood stained room and a girl in a locked room.
The girl is non-responsive until she sees Amita, who along with Charlie are visiting Don to tell him the news of her award. Amita talks to the girl and finds out her name is Santi and that her sister is missing. The FBI starts looking for the sister with Colby and David going back to the hotel to get more information. They have a time narrowed down to 7:15 in the morning for when ice found at the scene could have been delivered to the hotel thanks to Charlie and Larry experimenting with surface tension. Colby and David find a bakery delivery man who remembers seeing an ambulance parked nearby the previous day. Megan runs down possible leads at emergency rooms and finds another Indian girl was brought in to University General Hospital but had died from injuries after her kidney had been removed.
The dead girl is not Santi’s sister, Preta, and Santi reveals there were four of them from the same village who came to sell kidneys. Amita is spending more time with her to help her cope and also to connect with her own past. Amita was born in California and doesn’t know much about her heritage as she wanted to fit in at school and with her friends. She’s upset that she doesn’t know how to connect with Santi about India and seeks help from Charlie who suggests she talk to her grandmother for advice.
Colby and David find the ambulance driver, but before they can question him, the driver runs and dies when he crashes into a taxi. Charlie and Larry try to reconstruct the driver’s habits and driving routine through his logs and discover even his unauthorized trips are leading back to University General Hospital. Colby and David go to the morgue and discover a third Indian woman; this one though was murdered and most of her organs harvested.
Charlie, Larry and Amita try finding who could use Santi’s kidney in the hopes of finding a person in need of her sister’s organs but are not having success. The person needing the organ is probably not registered on a donation waiting list. Megan offers hope that information found on one of the morgue computer’s will find someone and it does: there is a positive match for someone needing Preta’s kidney. Following information from an interview with the daughter of the man needing the kidney, Don and Co. find the doctor who has been harvesting organs just as he is about to start operating on Preta.
Closing scene is family at Charlie’s house having Indian food. Amita reveals that she will use her award money to sponsor the sisters’ to go back to school and that she is planning a trip back to India with her grandmother. Don is now an organ donor, Alan and Larry already were, and Charlie adds an organ donor sticker to his driver’s license, as well.