abstract
| - A man disturbed by the imagery of a girl wearing a low-cut costume in a school play walks out and drives to a house reciting religious scripture. He sips a mug while wearing rubber gloves. A dead woman lies on the floor next to his table. The man of the house returns and the assailant ambushes him with a hammer. Eames and Goren are called to the scene in the morning. They note that the case is peculiar because of the woman's apparent familiarity with her killer but nothing of value, even $1,000 in cash was taken, nor did any sexual assault take place during the home invasion. It turns out the killer, Paul Devildis and his wife Mary are the victims' relatives. He is extremely socially-conservative, even having used a towel to cover the chest of his sister-in-law after killing her. Paul learns from his daughter Kathy that she will next be performing in a Tennessee Williams play, which he disapproves of, because of Williams's homosexuality. Paul confronts her drama teacher, Vilma over this. He later walks out of an alley, dropping his hammer in a dumpster. She is found dead the next morning, having been killed with a hammer. It is revealed that despite being a lesbian, Vilma taught at a conservative Christian school and not every parent approved of the drama program, of which Paul was one. Paul builds a pipe bomb which is delivered to and detonated by the boss who fired him from his bank job at which he has been pretending to work for the past five months. The body count continues to escalate as Paul's wife and pet dog are found dead in his house, but he has absconded with his daughter. Goren theorizes that Paul's mother will be next. Listening to the radio, Kathy discovers what her father has done and unsuccessfully attempts to escape. After apprehending Paul near his mother's retirement home, Eames and Goren now must race to look for the now-missing daughter before hypothermia sets in. Goren manages to use Paul's fanaticism against him to reveal Kathy's location in time.
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