"During the First World War, Time Square was the premier theater district in the nation." "And today, as you can see, it's just as exciting." "Hey, it's MTV where they filmed TRL." "Great." "Take a picture." "You need to be in it, too." "You're killing me with the pictures." "You know that, right?" "We're on vacation." "Ask that guy to take it for us." "Hurry before we drive by." "You want it so bad, you ask him." "Excuse me, sir?" "Hello?" "Excuse me?" "Sir?" "Hello?" "How long is this tour?" "That was funny." "So, what do we got here?" "New twist on the "Bitch Ride to Hell. "" "Gang members dig up a rival's corpse and send it around the city on the subway?" "I mean, this isn't Chicago, Mac." "It's urban legend." "Looks like a practical joke." "Times Square." "Tour bus." "Tourist T-shirt." "Somebody was trying to scare the tourists and used a prop shop skeleton, huh?" "Store-bought skeletons are bleached and processed." "They also have drill marks from when they were assembled." "This skull is brown and no drill marks." "And it's missing a mandible." "If this is a joke, I'm not laughing." "These bones are real." "Season 1" " Episode 3 American Dreamers" "This is it?" "Yeah." "Mannequin clothes, ball cap... bones..." "Clever." "Not that clever." "Whoever assembled your skeleton never took an anatomy class." "Humerus was where the ulna should be." "Metacarpals were reversed with phalanges." "Held together by wire." "He used this for the fingers." "Adhesive putty." "Looks like our "sculptor" left a little piece of himself behind." "There he is." ""He"?" "Yeah." "Pronounced brow ridge." "Large mastoid process behind where the ears would be." "And this seals it." "Inion hook." "No doubt about it, this skull was male." "Off to a good start." "What else?" "Well, head is long and narrow." "Same with the nasal aperture." "Nasal bone and spine are long stick out over the maxilla." "Caucasoid traits." "He's white." "How old?" "Medial clavicle is the last bone to fuse." "Happens between 18 and 25." "A flake develops on the clavicle where it connects to the sternum." "It eventually envelops the entire end cap of the clavicle, smoothing it out." "But Look at his." "Round and lumpy." "Flake hasn't yet started to form." "He wasn't even 18." "He was just a kid." "Homicide?" "Maybe." "This fracture never healed." "So, it could have been a death blow?" "Well, without the rest of the bones, all I can do is speculate." "Well, tendons, tissues and ligaments are all gone." "What, probably three years since he died?" "Mm-hmm." "Bones are in good shape." "He was probably shielded from Mother Nature." "Only thing out of the ordinary is their color." "The natural decomposition color of bones is brown." "So, where did this black discoloration come from?" "Well, that's for you folks on the outside." "I need to borrow a finger." "Skeleton on a tour bus in Times Square." "The Post is going to love this story." "Practically writes itself." "It's not news." "True, but it's gonna sell a hell of a lot of papers." "Only because of where it was found." "The real story is that these are the bones of a teenage boy." "The media don't care." "I do." "Mac, when can I get my hands on that skull?" "One step at a time, Aiden." "We have to find the rest of his skeleton first." "I'm just saying, intact skulls are few and far between." "If the time comes, I don't want it farmed out." "I can handle it." "Relax." "You got it." "I'll find you when I need you." "Human skull." "Big fun." "Danny, what do you see?" "The substance isn't just coating the bone." "It's layered on itself." "Means it's been there a while." "Take a deeper sample." "Top layer is composed of aromatic hydrocarbons." "Engine exhaust." "MTBE?" "No." "Means the engine was diesel." "Rules out most cars." "Probably came from a truck or a bus." "So, your boy's laying low in a high-traffic area." "Unfortunately, in New York, that's everywhere." "Deeper sample is also diesel exhaust." "But check the benzene concentration." "Through the roof." "What kind of diesel engine spits out this much particulate matter?" "An old one." "EPA changed diesel emissions standards in 1994." "So, if he has this much benzene on his bones..." "He's been collecting dust a lot longer than three years." "He's been dead a decade, at least." "Our timeline just jumped." "I heard." "Brings back bad memories in this city." "'90 to '93, the average murder rate was 2,000 per year." ""Dream with me a city that can be better than the way it is now. "" "Inauguration speech from Giuliani's first term, 1994." "I was working Narcotics back then out of Brooklyn North." "We'd collared up every day;" "barely made a dent." "In the parks, you found more crack vials and hypos than kids." "It was a dangerous time." "Here we go." "We have six possible matches to the body fingerprint." "Who do you want to start with?" "With him." "Lester Jayne." "Stella." "Admiring your work?" "Hey." "Can't believe you're jamming me up for this." "I burned a few tourists." "That's all." "It was a joke." "NYPD didn't find it funny." "That's their problem." "No, it's yours." "Autopsy revealed the skeleton's a homicide victim." "Murder?" "No." "I ain't buying that." "Your little joke had a fractured skull." "Which had nothing to do with me." "No?" "Then who does it have to do with?" "I know what you guys do." "You twist things all around till I don't know which end is up." "I told you, all I did was screw with some tourists, and I'm not saying another word." "Where's he going?" "Decomposition on the clothes and under the bones." "I think this is where he died." "I think it's also where he lived." "What do you think?" "Runaway?" "Maybe." ""A.M."" "Initials?" "Yeah" "Home must've been pretty bad to trade for this place." "I'm sure this wasn't what he had in mind." "Skull fracture." "Blunt force trauma?" "Pocketknife." "Must have been pretty important to him to keep it in his shoe." ""Bright Lights, Big City. "" "Pages are dog-eared." "Highlighted." "Copyright 1984." "He may have been lying here for 20 years." "Have you ever read it?" "No." "You?" "Yeah." "It's about a guy who lives up New York for all it's worth." "How's it end?" "He gets out before the city kills him." "It's tough being in the bullpen, huh?" "Waiting for the nod." "Thanks for your concern." "Here we go." "Very nice." "Got a full skeleton now." "No more speculation." "Facts from here on out." "Femur gives stature." "He was five-foot-ten." "Mandible completes the skull." "Check out his teeth." "Nice." "Too nice." "Braces?" "Had to be." "Two canine teeth, two second bicuspids, but no first bicuspids." "Caucasians commonly suffer from dental crowding." "Teeth were pulled to make room for the others to straighten out." "Okay." "So, at some point in his life he saw a dentist and an orthodontist." "Which means he probably had parents who paid the bill." "It was probably the last time he got to see a doctor." "At least, that's what his tibia's saying." "Broke his leg." "And let it heal on its own." "Probably left him with a solid limp." "This kid was moving in the wrong direction." "Checked him head to toe." "With what I've got, he only potential fatal injury is a skull fracture." "Danny's running prints on a pipe we found at the scene." "Could that have done the trick?" "Easily." "He ID'd?" "Sent out dentals results aren't back yet." "I'll cut a section of mid-shaft femur, send it to DNA." "But if he's a street kid, I wouldn't expect much." "I got a back-up plan." "Been waiting all day for this." "Talk to me." "White, John Doe teenager." "Nice teeth." "Bum leg." "No face." "No problem." "Here he is." "John Doe teenager." "Fingerprints Danny lifted went nowhere." "Whoever left them... isn't listed in AFIS." "Do you have a name?" "No." "Got usable DNA off the bones, but there are no matches in the CODIS Missing Persons Database." "We can't ID him on DNA." "Mac... you still with me?" "Yeah." "Yeah." "Sorry." "I was just thinking about something you said earlier... about a guy following his dreams..." "getting out before the city kills him." "He never got out." "Why?" "Hey..." "Danny just called." "Says there's some people who want to see you... about him." "We, uh, we waited for this day so long..." "Finding Aaron..." "Our son." "Mr. Moreland, we haven't been able to positively identify the remains that were found." "We read in the papers, and the detective at DCPI confirmed, that a backpack and a pocketknife were found." "Uh... uh... they belonged to Aaron." "The backpack was monogrammed." "I stitched it myself." "And the pocketknife was a gift for his 13th birthday." "I ordered it special." "We found other items, also." "Clothes... a book." "It's Aaron." "Was Aaron an artist?" "Yes." "A musician." "Uh..." "Aaron, uh... he left home in 1987." "Uh... he was 17, just out of high school." "He wanted to see something other than Minnesota before thinking about college." "This is a reconstruction of what the skeleton would look like." "It's, um... it's not Aaron." "That's... not our son." "I" " I don't know who that is." "I'm sorry." "Nice." "Just the person I was looking for." "I put some of my time into that fingerprint I pulled from the pipe." "Extra effort." "I like that." "Talk to me." "I got 117 arrest records for people charged with crimes that were committed within three blocks of where our skeleton was found." "Time frame- 1984 to '94." "You used the CARS system." "Yeah, where suspects are acquitted or the charges are dropped." "Which means the fingerprints won't be found in AFIS." "They're somewhere in a sealed file of the NYPD." "Mm-hmm." "I just got to find them." "And hope that they match the prints you pulled off the pipe." "That's a long shot, Danny." "What're you saying?" "You want me to drop this lead?" "No, I want you to stick to the hot evidence first." "The clothes the victim was found in, I'm already on it." "Good, all right?" "You learn something, find me." "You come up dry, get back on those arrest records." "Got it?" "Got it." "Hi." "Playing hangman?" "Actually, yes." "But I've run out of letters." "I have..." "I have no idea what this is." "For now." "What do you make of this?" "Look familiar?" "Not really." "It's the last sketch in his book, and..." "looks like it could be an island but not in New York." "No people, no buildings." "Got a call from Missing Persons." "They pulled all the Unsolved Case folders from teenage boys missing within our time frame." "Thumbed through them by hand, based on Aiden's reconstruction." "No matches." "Unlike Aaron Moreland, there's no one out there looking for this kid." "So all we know about who he was, are his images of New York." "Skyline." "Busy Grand Central Station." "Empire State Building." "See his perspective?" "Street level." "Part of the city, moving with the flow." "Yeah, but look at this one." "He's totally alone in Times Square." "He was swallowed up by the city." "Lost." "Reality rarely lives up to expectations, especially if you're a teenager." "This one with the crisscross beams." "That's the Port Authority." "Upper parking deck." "Yeah, but he's looking at it straight on." "Which means..." "He's inside the only building in the city that allows homeless kids free reign to every floor." "I started Danner House in a tenement on the Lower East Side in 1969." "Intended it to be a youth crisis center." "Nobody under the age of 21 would be turned away." "First month, 500 kids came through the door." "5,000 by the end of the first year." "There's never a shortage of people that need help." "Guess we're not an uncommon sight around here." "Joel, how we doing today?" "Uh..." "We're running low." "I don't think we're going to make it." "Call over to St. Juliana's." "See if they have any meals left over from yesterday." "They usually run out of meals before we do." "Would you by chance recognize this young man?" "We don't have a name for him, but we think he might have stayed here sometime between 1984 and 1994." "It's been a long time." "I've been here 35 years." "I used to try to get to know the kids, but..." "After a while, all the faces start to look the same." "I'm going to check with Danny, see how he's doing on the clothes." "You going to follow up with the piece of paper we found in the jeans?" "Mr. and Mrs. Moreland?" "Do you know who the boy was that had Aaron's things?" "No." "No, unfortunately we don't know anything new that you that you haven't already read in the papers." "But he-he had Aaron's backpack an-and pocketknife." "How did he get them?" "We don't know." "But they're the only connection to my son." "They had to know each other, right?" "I need to know what happened." "I know the reality..." "He's probably dead..." "I've accepted that, but... but this is the closest that we've, we've come to the truth in 17 years." "Please." "What happened to my boy?" "He's somebody else's case, isn't he?" "You don't know what... what happened to Aaron... because you're not looking for him..." "Are you?" "No." "Mac?" "I took some new photos of the reconstruction." "I thought I'd send them out nationally," "And maybe someone will recognize him." "Work One Police Plaza." "Use the in-house reporters from the major papers." "Get his face all over the city." "You've already done that, haven't you?" "I figured it was one of the few times that us and the media are on the same team, so..." "Well, stay on them." "Keep him front page." "Hey, do you need anything else?" "Yeah." "I need to know what this is." "Anyway, most of the shirt was gone, but I can make out a small portion of the logo." "An "L." Lagaronne." "Fancy, and expensive." "And synthetic." "Nylon microfiber." "All the rage in the early '90s." "The victim had a couple of things on him that didn't belong to him." "Same probably goes for the shirt." "You know, five-finger discount." "Yeah, but not from a store." "What do you know?" "I reached out to the manufacturer." "Turns out that shirt never went on the market." "Prototype from 1988." "All right, well, if there was no store to steal it from, how'd he get it?" "Seventh Avenue, right off the rack." "Rack runner." "No experience necessary." "If you can walk from point "A" to point "B," you're hired." "It's a perfect job for a teenager, and easy access to clothes you can't afford." "So management's official statement is that they unofficially hire street kids to run the racks." "In other words, cheap labor, no paperwork." "Did anyone recognize the vic?" "Life span with the racks isn't too long." "Here today, gone tomorrow." "There's nobody working here now that was working here in '88." "Of course not." "Time marches on, the practice stays the same." "Dead end on the shirt." "But it wasn't a total loss." "Since it wasn't made till 1988, we know he was alive then." "So we've narrowed our time line." "Yeah, six-year window instead of ten." "Make that four." "He was alive February 21, 1990." "Pawned a watch." "Yeah." "And we have the ticket." "I'm sorry, pal, but you're a few hours late." "Owner just came in and picked it up." "The owner's been dead since Dinkins was mayor." "He didn't just come by." "Look, what do you want me to tell you?" "I had that watch forever." "Today a guy comes in, describes it perfectly." "Even the inscription on the back." "Ticket or no ticket, the thing had to be his." "No coincidence the watch is picked up today after 14 years." "Somebody else knew it was here and didn't want us to get it first." "Someone who knows we're looking for him." "But it's not 1990 anymore." "It's gotten a lot harder to hide." "Guy played the camera perfectly." "Kept his head down the entire time." "So this is our best view of the only suspect we have?" "Unfortunately." "Get creative." "Done." "Okay..." "From the top." "Mystery man enters." "Keeps his head down, goes straight to the counter." "Didn't even stop to look at the jewelry." "He doesn't have to, he knows what he wants." "Freeze it." "Bruno's glasses." "Can you pull a reflection?" "Mm-hmm." "No problem." "Cleaning up, we have..." "A great shot of his baseball cap." "Keep going." "He's steps away from freedom." "What's he doing?" "It's not on screen, but that doesn't mean it's not on tape." "NTSC signals are overscanned." "All right, how much are we missing?" "It's a guitar..." "It's DNA..." "Creative enough for you?" "Partial DNA profile from the guitar strings has got a hit in the CODIS Missing Persons database." "The missing kid who owned the backpack and pocketknife?" "Aaron Moreland..." "You're kidding?" "He disappeared in '87." "He was 17 years old." "Which means he's now 34." "And the prime suspect in a murder." "Where are we?" "We're there." "In 1987, Aaron Moreland was a 17-year-old kid." "Here's a pretty good idea of what he looks like today." "You guys know him?" "It was your DNA on the guitar string." "I was going to be a musician, you know." "That's why I came to New York." "To be a rock star." "But I was 17." "Had spent every day of my life in a town with one intersection." "I wasn't prepared for this city." "By the end of my first week here, I was broke... and hooked." "Did you know him?" "Sort of." "I used to ran racks down on Seventh Avenue and I'd see him there every now and then." "He always had money and I always needed it." "How did you get the pocketknife?" "When I was high, I'd get angry very easily." "And so I didn't want to do anything that I would regret later." "So you also sold the knife?" "Yeah." "He was easy to find." "Port Authority... all those busses." "All you had to do was get on one." "I didn't want to go home." "Here you go, man." "It's a pawn ticket." "For my watch." "Man, that's all you got?" "!" "I need more." "You killed him over two dollars?" "Six years later, I got clean." "Changed my life." "My name." "Began helping others." "And forgot about your past." "Until I picked up the paper and it all came back." "So you tried to cover it up." "You're not in the system." "Your own parents thought you were dead." "Everything was good." "But you knew there was still one thing out there that connected you to the victim." "Your watch." "You may have started over, but your mother and father never stopped looking for you." "Get up." "Aaron..." "What was his name?" "I don't know." "You already know how it ends." "That's not why I'm reading it." ""But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly... leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name. "" "His name." "It's the only thing we don't know." "Now we never will." "So that's it, huh?" "Case closed." "Yep." "Listen, a bunch of us are going to Sullivan's for a drink." "Want to come with?" "Nah, I got case files to the moon." "Case files can wait, Mac." "Come on, you need to get out." "If this case taught us anything, it was to live life, right?" "Thanks anyway." "Next time." "All right." "Suit yourself." "Hey, Stella..." "Yeah?" "How's the coffee there?" "They have Irish coffee." "You're gonna love it."