Calleigh Duquesne is nearly killed, off duty, when a sports car nearly overruns her but crashes into a sports equipment shop after she fires at it: two dead including an innocent bystander, teacher Valerie Gaynor; one assailant can run on foot. Duquesne has a near-limit alcohol level and is internally neutralized pending the investigation by Rick Stetler. A blood stain in the car shows the fugitive is triple assault convict Pete Morton, whose Smith & Wesson was used to fire at Duquesne, he confesses; the driver is Mark Boyd. However autopsy shows Gaynor was previously internally decapitated. Stetler finds six drinks on Duquense's bar bill, four were actually ordered earlier by colleague Jake Berkeley. Paint traces on the teacher's shoulder match her Brickel High arts colleague Dave Keppling, who claims he just gave her a relaxing massage, her desk contains empty 'cheese' (a cheep heroin drug, which causes an OD at her school while Horatio is there) bags and a trespass complaint from Logan Sheridan's older brother Charlie: she pushed it hard to pupils, or as Wolfe thinks might precisely have been gathering evidence against a real pusher. Store clerk Andre Harding Charles has no explanation why it occurs repeatedly in her accounts booklet. The stray bullet from Duquesne' gun suggests she was no accidental target. Then a tie pin is found in the shop rubble...
—KGF Vissers