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"Mind Games" is the seventeenth episode of the second season, and the thirtieth episode overall of Numb3rs.


A psychic helps to find a burial site of numerous illegal immigrants just across the California-Mexico border. Charlie and he butt heads to see who will come up with the location of another female migrant before she joins the other victims in the morgue.

Plot[]

Someone starts sketching pictures. Search & Rescue has the sketches and are following them to an unknown scene. Three Latina women are dead in a ditch. Megan arrives on the scene. David and Colby are already there and catch her up. The women were cut open and gutted. There are odd statues around. Megan wants to know how the Search & Rescue crew knew where to look. They had a tip from a psychic who is talking to the Sheriff.

At the FBI Don and Megan are interrogating him. Charlie is watching from the viewing room. He’s willing to help, all he wants is an acknowledgement from the FBI for his work to promote his book that will be coming out soon. Don passes as the guy is a suspect and leaves. He denies committing any crimes and tells Megan about her family to show his psychic acumen. He also can see something else about her, but the scene cuts to Don and Charlie before he tells her. Charlie doesn’t think that the guys is psychic and says that there is no scientific proof that psychics are real. Don thinks that they might be real, but can’t say for sure. Megan joins them in the bullpen obviously upset.

David and Colby have had no luck in IDing the Jane Does. One of them was recently in Tecate, Mexico, but they don’t know where they were from originally so it’ll be difficult to get their IDs. The statues are from a practice that blends modern and ancient rituals from Central America. They posit that it could some sort of sacrifice or exorcism ritual.

Charlie is leaving the FBI at the same time as the psychic and confronts him, making it very clear that he doesn’t believe he’s got any real psychic abilities eventually calling him a conman after Margaret is brought up. He refuses to take the elevator with the psychic.

David and Colby are at the scene looking into evidence. They identify a car that had recently been there as being from the late 90s/early 00s based on the tire treads.

At CalSci Charlie and Larry are talking about the psychic, Simon Kraft, and the truth or fiction behind his abilities. Larry thinks it could be possible, shocking Charlie.

Agent Cullen from Border Patrol joins David and Colby at the scene. They hope he can help with their investigation. He doesn’t recognize pictures of the statues. Cullen thinks that somebody is trying to send a message to the coyotes that smuggle people over the border. They go to a camp and find a truck that’s a late 90s model. The owner runs when confronted by them and they stop him. The tires on the truck match the ones at the scene and they find similar statues in the truck bed.

David and Colby interrogate Victor Borrego, the man who owns the truck. He’s there legally so he’s not sure why he’s there. Colby shows him the crime scene photos. Borrego admits to working to help undocumented workers by making sure there is water, blankets, etc. for them. He says he found the statues on his rounds and took them as they are bad luck totems and he didn’t want them to scare people off. He thought that David and Colby were part of an anti-immigration patrol group which is why he ran.

Megan finds out that Kraft used to be a psychic for the CIA in a program called ‘Stargate’. Don puts him in Seattle at the time of at least one of the murders so it can’t have been him. David and Colby have checked up on Borrego and his story is true. He works and advocates for undocumented workers. David doesn’t think that the coyotes make sense for this. The anti-immigration group is their best lead.

At the Eppes’ house Charlie and Larry are playing air hockey in the garage. Megan comes in asking about the CIA Stargate program. Charlie doesn’t want to believe that Megan also believes that Kraft is a psychic, but she believes him as he told her about her past with her father. Charlie still thinks he’s a charlatan and he and Larry decide to put him to the test.

That night David and Colby visit Scott Winnard, the head of the local Citizen’s Border Guard (CBG). He tries to sell them on his anti-immigration views. David and Colby suggest that maybe he or one of the CBG did something to the women as it would be good for their cause. They want to see the membership roster and Winnard eventually lets them have it.

Kraft has been brought back into the FBI for some tests to verify his abilities. He gets every answer wrong which is just as unlikely as him getting every answer right. Charlie and Larry review the footage of the test. Larry thinks that there is a chance of fraud, but it can’t be totally discounted that Kraft has psychic abilities.

At the FBI Colby did background checks on the men from CBG. Nobody is red flagged. They are back at square one. David suggests to use the psychic for help. Megan gets the coroner’s report on the other two Jane Does. Everything is the same as the first one. She notices one thing: The times of death are different for all of the women, spanning a few days.

Megan and Colby visit Kraft who has more sketches of his visions. They are of women moving. He thinks that the living women are pregnant, much like he thought that the three dead women were. They weren’t and he brushes the wrong prediction off as it being an interpretation. He brings up his request to Don from earlier and Don agrees to it as he ends up at the FBI helping them. Charlie sees him and is surprised that he’s being treated as a source. Charlie comes in and confronts him about the card test. After enhancing the video he believes that he used his glasses to read the reflection of the cards being shown.

The core team are looking at Kraft’s sketches, trying to come up with any lead. Charlie wants them to ‘use math instead of magic’ to find the identities of the original girls. He has a way of using his skills to figure out where the new women are. Don annoys Charlie by continuing to use both him and Kraft on the case.

Charlie is working on the case in the garage. Alan comes in. Charlie is stumped and is still trying to discredit Kraft and his methods. Don joins them and Charlie attacks him for his choice in getting Kraft’s help. Charlie stops helping with the case and walks out of the garage.

Kraft says he has a strong sense of water, but not sure of the form. He says that the visions became clearer after the original victims died and that maybe that will be the case with this as well. Charlie comes in after taking on the case again and making some headway. He has pinpointed three areas that they need to search. David and Colby are asking questions about the original Jane Does at a farm, but haven’t had any luck so far. They keep going. Colby finds somebody who recognizes one of the Jane Does. They were in Tecate together. She has a name: Alva. She was from a small town called Metapan in El Salvador. She was just going to be in the States for a couple of days and then would be going back. They send the photos and prints of all three Jane Does to Metapan. All three were from there. Aside from this there’s no indication that they knew each other at all. Two more women are missing from the same town. One of the guys from the CBG said that some of the women that cross the border come here to have their babies and then go back home, but none of them were pregnant even though Kraft had the feeling they were pregnant. Don thinks that maybe they were carrying drugs over the border. This explains why they were only going to stay in the US for a short period of time. The statues were clearly some sort of bluff.

At the house Alan is surprised that the women smuggled the drugs in their bodies. Don and Charlie aren’t. They’re now just waiting on somebody to spot them. Charlie thinks that they swallowed the drugs in Tecate as swallowing them Metapan would have meant it passed through their system too quickly.

DEA agents found a link between El Salvador, Mexico, and the US. Barrego was the US contact in this drug ring. They found one of the missing women, Rose, as she was trying to cross the border with drugs in her stomach. Lupe, the other woman, is already on her way to Barrego. Knowing the approximate length of time it takes for the drugs to pass through the digestive system gives them an area to search. Air units find Barrego’s car. Don sends David and Colby to bring him in. David takes him down. They find a girls’ sweater and a bus ticket in the truck and he swears that he found it on his patrol. He finally tells them that Lupe's in a storage shed. There are a lot of jugs of water around. Doctors get the drugs out of her and she’s fine. Kraft congratulates Charlie on work well done, something Charlie can’t reciprocate, and makes sure that Don is going to uphold his end of the deal for helping with the case. Before he goes Kraft makes sure to say good bye to Megan.

At the house, Don and Charlie are arguing about Kraft’s official FBI nod. Alan tries to break up the argument, but it doesn’t end until a picture of Margaret falls. She always hated it when they fought. Charlie chalks it up to coincidence. Megan is sitting in her car and makes a call home.

Cast[]

Main[]

Recurring[]

Guest[]

  • John Glover as Simon Kraft
  • Darren Pettie as Agent Cullen
  • Bill Sage as Scott Winnard
  • Jacob Vargas as Victor Borrego
  • Curtis Mark Williams as Agent #1
  • Mirelly Taylor as Lupe Sandoval
  • Damián Delgado as Male Migrant Worker

Trivia[]

The opening song is Praise by Sevendust.

Goofs[]

When Larry sits down to eat lunch, he is eating a sandwich with lunch meat which isn't white. Larry only eats white foods.

Crazy Credits[]

[This appears on the beginning of the episode] 1,952 Miles, 275,000 Border Crossings, 7,000,000 Aliens, 6 Senses

  v - e - dSeason 2
Judgment CallBetter or WorseObsessionCalculated RiskAssassinSoft TargetConvergenceIn Plain SightToxinBones of ContentionScorchedThe OGDouble DownHarvestThe Running ManProtestMind GamesAll's FairDark MatterGuns and RosesRampageBackscatterUndercurrentsHot Shot
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