Everything is numbers …
Summary: FBI Special Agent Don Eppes enlists his younger brother, Charlie, a mathematician, to help find a serial rapist.
Original air date: January 23, 2005 (US)
Written by: Cheryl Heuton, Nick Falacci
Directed by: Mick Jackson
Opening numbers:
0600: Time
594-E4: Map grid
772-04: Case number
1: Murder victim
Opening music: Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads
- Don ran an FBI office in the past
- Don enjoys baseball
- Don drives a dark blue Chevy Suburban
- Don and Terry have known each other for ~10 years
- Don lives in an apartment
- Charlie is “almost thirty”
- Charlie does not have a driver’s license
- Charlie’s middle name is Edward
- Charlie has helped Don with math related crimes in the past
- Alan refers to Don as “Donny”
- Alan has a bird
- Alan is a widower
- David was assigned to Don’s team by the Assistant Director, this is his first case on Don’s team
- Terry is wearing a gold band on her left ring finger
- Larry does not do his own math
- Larry is a physicist
- Larry drives a yellow classic car (make/model unknown)
- Larry wants to win a Nobel Prize for his eleven dimension super-gravity theory
Episode Synopsis:
Twelve women have been rape in the LA area, and the thirteenth has been killed, all of the women have been branded. Don is met at the scene of the latest case by Terry Lake and also meets a new member of his team, David Sinclair. Don starts an even more vigorous investigation to catch the perpetrator as his attacks are becoming more violent, but they are running out of ideas on where and how to find him.
Charlie is first seen flying down a hill in an extreme gravity vehicle, even though he doesn’t have a driver’s license. We are also introduced to Amita Ramanujan, a PhD candidate, and Larry Fleinhardt, Charlie’s mentor and a professor of Physics. Larry is in need of help with his super-gravity theory and wants Charlie to look over the mathematics involved.
Don comes to the family home for a quick shower and change before heading back to work. He’s brought home some files and maps about the rape case that Charlie looks at while Don is showering. Before Don can get too mad, Charlie offers a mathematical solution to Don for the case, find the point of origin for the perpetrator.
After a series of dead ends, David locates the car of the thirteenth victim in a parking garage. While checking that scene Don realizes she was a victim of opportunity and the perp was actually watching victim number twelve. There are cigarette butts in the area that can be checked for DNA, but Don’s first priority is the check the house of victim twelve. They break in to her home only to find she is already dead.
Charlie works out an equation for the rape cases and with Amita, presents his finding of a hot zone to Don’s FBI group, they have an area with 50 men that need to be tested against DNA evidence found at the garage, but they will have to do it through discarded trash, the courts will not give a search warrant on the grounds of a math equation.
Agents start collecting and eliminating the men who live within the specified area. As they are eventually all eliminated, Charlie realizes there is a flaw in his math and he needs to recalculate. Unfortunately, his new hot zone is only a smaller area of the one already checked. As a result, Don’s supervisor removes Don from the case to get fresh eyes a chance to find something.
Going over the case again at home, Don and Alan realize Charlie has been too specific in the search and that they need to be looking for another hot zone, possibly where the perp works. Charlie recalculates for a second hot zone and an industrial area is marked as a new search area. Don compares FBI rape files against businesses in the area and comes up with a possible connection in Roland Haldane. Don, Terry and David head out the check his party-rental business, Don and David to talk to him and Terry to look around.
While talking to Haldane, Don becomes more and more convinced this is their perp and while looking at the bottom of a knife discovers the marks the rape victims have been branded with. Terry is looking around outside when she discovers a fourteenth victim; she is suffocating but still alive when Terry finds her. Haldane, has grabbed David and when Haldane is distracted by Terry breaking in to get to the woman, Don shoots him.
Charlie is brought to the crime scene and Don shows him that his original equation was correct, Haldane had moved out of the area only three weeks before.