Hot Shot

Synopsis
Don's team investigates a rapist who's seemingly evolved into a serial killer, as Charlie struggles with memories of his mother.

Plot
Alan and Charlie are driving through town. Alan stops at a local grocer's. Alan is getting some items from the meat section when a man pulls out a gun and is robbing the cashier. He sees Alan and continues on. Charlie is coming into the shop and distracts the robber. Between Charlie coming in and Alan urging him to get out of the shop the robber shoots Alan in the chest. The robber runs out. Charlie stays with Alan. Charlie wakes up to see his mother, Margaret, here. He’s going to be late for class. He comes downstairs and she’s made pancakes for him. He’s surprised that she’s there. He has a question for her, but he doesn’t know what the question is. Alan wakes Charlie up. They have to leave.

A woman, Carla Daniels, is dead in her car, a needle sticking out of her arm. Don arrives on scene and is briefed by Colby. The postal carrier found her. Megan says that this is like another woman they found six weeks before. David tells him that a neighbor saw her car in the drive all morning. Colby thinks that she could have done this to herself, but Megan doesn’t think so since she’s all dressed up like she was going on a date.

At CalSci, Charlie tells Larry about his dream. Larry reveals his aunt Louise sometimes is a feature in his dreams where she’s trying to eat his flesh, but otherwise he doesn’t dream much. He switches the attention back to Charlie.

Megan looks through Daniels’ bedroom. She seemed organized and tidy, not consistent with a risk taker on drugs. Colby posits that an ex-boyfriend could have done it. Megan agrees. It has been a few weeks since she broke up with her boyfriend. Don finishes meeting with a team at the FBI. Charlie is waiting for him. Don gives him the files as he tries to tell him about his dream. He is distracted by the crime scene photos. The first victim was Lisa Clarke and they were 23 and 24 years old. Charlie thinks that because they would have specific daily routines it would help them find their travel routes to find the most likely place they would have come into contact with their killer. Don asks Charlie about his dream and he tells him. David and Colby go and talk to the ex-boyfriend, Thomas Gill. Gill says that the breakup was mutual, not a specific person ending it. They were dating about a year. Colby sees a bible identical to one that Daniels’ had in her home. Gill explains upon questioning that they didn’t believe in premarital sex as they were a Christian couple. He then gets very defensive and kicks them out of his office.

The coroner’s report is in and Megan finds out that they were most likely given the diazepam that was found in the system orally to calm them and then were shot up with morphine before they were killed. Don wonders if it could be the work of a serial killer. Megan mocks Colby’s thought that it’s the ex-boyfriend solely on the fact that they weren’t having sex. Colby comes in with the news that Gill called Daniels on the night she was killed and that he has a client that lives close to where Clarke lived. Megan, David, and Colby go to Gill’s home with a search warrant. David finds bondage gear in his closet.

Don interrogates Gill who denies being involved with her death and neither did the bondage gear as she always said no to sex. He admits to yelling at her over the phone, but didn’t kill her. He didn’t even remember making the call.

At night a man is watching a woman leave a convenience store and get into her car. He goes up to the car.

Amita comes into Charlie’s office as he’s analyzing his dream. He admits it’s the first dream he had about Margaret since she died. He asks about Amita’s job offer. She shifts the conversation to the case. She suggests to look at their work life and friends rather than those from outside of work. Colby admits to Megan that she was right as Gill has a solid alibi for the night of Clarke’s murder. Megan notices that the shoes that Daniels had on were on the wrong feet. She and Colby go to evidence to look the clothes over again. She looks at the shirt Daniels was wearing and her makeup was all over the inside collar of her shirt which wouldn’t have happened if she had dressed herself. Colby doesn’t understand why somebody would dress her up and put makeup on her. As there were no signs of a struggle he either had a weapon that was never used or both the victims knew their attacker. They had thought that Gill wasn’t being completely honest with them and Megan thinks that it was because he thought Daniels was seeing somebody else. David comes in – they found another dead woman in a car much like the other two, only this time she was left outside somebody else’s home. This woman was left much more sloppily than the other two. David thinks that the killer won’t stop until they stop them.

Amita and Larry are helping Charlie get more data for the case. Megan joins them. She gets a lot of phone calls and Amita has been returning calls to analyze the way they talk with Don’s approval. Amita and Larry believe that Charlie has cast too wide of a net. Megan tells them that they have a time frame of three weeks to work from rather than a longer period of time. Megan finds out that Daniels hurt herself snowboarding about a month ago and stopped going to her usual gym in favor of Pilates, causing a change in her routine. There had been a cancellation at the studio the day she went missing that she would have been able to get to. David and Colby follow up with the trainer. She didn’t leave right after her appointment, but stayed and talked to the son of the woman who had the appointment after her. She didn’t know the son’s name, but gave the mother’s name as Charlotte Yates. David recognizes the name from parking tickets near Daniels’ home.

At the Eppes’ house Alan is dreaming. Margaret talks to him about Charlie and his living arrangements. She worries about him. After their discussion she disappears.

Don and Megan go to talk to Charlotte. Her son, Chandler, doesn’t live at home, but at a beach house. The car may be in her name, but it’s his car as she doesn’t drive. She doesn’t know of a time when Daniels would have been given a ride home in the car. She doesn’t drive as she’s on Valium (which has diazepam) and morphine for the pain from her hip. Megan sees a picture of Charlotte when she was younger. She looks similar to how the women were found. Six weeks before she told Yates that he couldn’t have access to the trust fund that he was originally supposed to have been given as she didn’t think he was responsible enough to have access to the money. Don and Megan go to the beach house. Yates’ girlfriend is there. He went surfing, but she doesn’t know when he’ll be back. He might be at a bar, John’s, for a drink after surfing. Don searches the house. David and Colby found something in the guest house out back. There are a lot of pictures of young women and a camera. There is video footage of him videotaping him with women that are drugged. Don and David go to John’s. He had been there not long ago. He was served by Lyndsey Fuller. They go and talk to her. She doesn’t believe that he did anything to anybody and doesn’t know where he is.

Megan and Colby are watching more of the video footage including footage of him with his drugged girlfriend. He’s done this to about a dozen women. None of them have been found dead though. Megan thinks that the killing started when his mother cut off his money.

Charlie goes to talk to Larry who is flinging grapes in preparation for the Physics department’s food fight. Charlie is still having trouble figuring out his dream. Larry tells him to ignore the math this time and to look to how he feels about it.

The bar tender from John’s informs the core team that Yates was just there. They consider cutting off his credit and debit cards, but Megan worries it will turn him into a spree killer that doesn’t care if he’s caught or not. They try to figure out his next move. Megan and Colby go to talk to Charlotte about Yates again. They aren’t talking and she doesn’t know where he is. He called her for money and she is to meet him in the park to give it to him. That night the team stakes out the park in hopes they find him, but he’s 20 minutes late. Somebody approaches. Don goes to Fuller’s house on a hunch and calls in his position. He hears something from the backyard. At the park the exchange has been made and they follow. It’s not Yates, but Fuller. Don sees a woman inside tied up with duct tape. Don calls for backup. Yates is in the house. Don searches for him and is attacked by Yates with a syringe. In the attack he drops his gun, but manages to get it back and brings Yates down.

Charlie is having another dream. Margaret is in the garage looking at his work. He’s figured out his question: Did she regret taking him to Princeton to take care of him away from the others. She doesn’t.

Don is working on his statement at the dining room table. He’ll be fine. Charlie thinks that Don’s never afraid, but Don does get afraid, he just has to keep it hidden most of the time. Alan comes in wondering what’s going on. They all band together to help Don with his report.

Main

 * Rob Morrow as Don Eppes
 * David Krumholtz as Charlie Eppes
 * Judd Hirsch as Alan Eppes
 * Alimi Ballard as David Sinclair
 * Navi Rawat as Amita Ramanujan
 * Diane Farr as Megan Reeves
 * Peter MacNicol as Larry Fleinhardt

Title
A skilled, often cocky, individual, aware of their ability and value. The term is frequently used in mockery.

Crazy Credits
[The appears at the beginning of the episode] 24 frames per second, 50 milligrams, 5 sleep cycles, 1 syringe