NCIS: New York season 1, episode 5 opens with a man dressed in a pilot's uniform arriving at his home. His daughter comes by and asks him to help her carry bags of food inside. Later, she prepares a plate for her mom to apologize for saying mean things. She takes it upstairs only to find her mom on the ground. Dead.
Cut to Nick's apartment, where he's in bed with a mysterious woman. He gets dressed, then uses loud noises to wake his companion, who doesn't seem in a rush to leave. Nick says he has to go to work, but he ordered a car to take his bed buddy to work. Sensing she's being rushed out of the apartment, the woman quips about Nick's commitment issues, but he brushes it off and leaves for work.
At the office, Robyn and Nick talk about his ex-partner, Michael Sloss. He perjured himself before a grand jury, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York is investigating him. Robyn advises Nick to get a lawyer. Quickly.
Afterwards, the team gathers for a debrief on their new case. Robyn tells them that a woman named Donna Islom was murdered in her home the night before. Her 17-year-old daughter, Zoe, and her husband, Caleb, found her. Apparently, Donna worked as an interrogator for Naval Intelligence, which put her in the crosshairs of some dangerous people. To investigate, Robyn sends Wyatt and Addy to Donna's office, and Sam and Nick to the crime scene.
Before they leave, Robyn reminds the team that this case is extremely delicate. They need to tread lightly.
A father wrestles with his addiction
Over in Crown Heights, Sam and Nick visit the crime scene. Before entering, the partners talk about Nick's rough night. He says his companion kept him up with her snoring. He thinks the reason he never got married is that he can't share a bed with someone else. However, Sam is skeptical.
Inside, the duo analyzes the crime scene. The cop on the scene says Donna was killed by blunt force trauma. But Sam and Nick find that the killer went overboard, hitting Donna even after she was dead. They think whoever killed her did so in a fit of rage.
Meanwhile, Wyatt and Addy visit the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) to go through Donna's files. There, they meet one of Donna's colleagues, who says he noticed something strange the last time he saw her. The two went out for lunch regularly. On their most recent outing, he went to the bathroom, but Donna was gone when he returned.
While Wyatt and Addy investigate Donna's mysterious disappearance, Sam and Nick talk to her family at home. Sam questions Donna's husband, Caleb, about his whereabouts on the night she was murdered. The conversation turns to the couple's marriage, and Caleb says they had their share of issues. However, he doesn't go into detail.
At the same time, Nick talks to Donna's daughter, Zoe, who tells him about the fight she and her mother had before the murder. Donna didn't like Zoe's boyfriend, Nate, which caused a rift between them. Nick assures Zoe that what happened to her mom isn't her fault and decides to look into Nate as a suspect. However, Caitlyn, Donna's best friend, interrupts. Later, she tells Sam and Nick that she and Donna fell out over Caitlyn's boyfriend, Vincent Giata. Donna didn't approve of him. Or anyone Caitlyn brought around, for that matter.
Sam and Nick think Donna had a pencant for meddling in other people's lives.
Back at the office, Robyn talks to Caleb's bosses and finds that he lied to Sam about his schedule on the night of his wife's murder. The team decides to confront him by bringing him in for an interrogation, where Caleb confesses that he lied. But he maintains that he didn't kill his wife. Instead, he was out at a bar, relapsing. He didn't tell Sam and Nick about it because he was ashamed. While his wife was being murdered, he was drinking whiskey.
The team closes in on Donna's killer
Wyatt and Addy watch CCTV footage from the restaurant where Donna and her colleague had lunch. They see the Naval Intelligence officer looking across the street before getting up and leaving. They retrace her steps and discover that Donna was looking at a construction worker. The mysterious man's name is Brad Skinner. His boss gives Wyatt and Addy his address, so they decide to check it out.
Back at the office, Robyn checks in with Nick. He tells her they've cleared Caleb as a suspect, but he doesn't feel right about how hard they spoke to him. From his perspective, they made a bad situation worse by interrogating Caleb so intensely. However, Robyn senses something more is going on and asks if Nick's ok, but he brushes it off.
Afterwards, Sean calls Robyn with an update. He hacked into a key fob on the Islom family's house gate and found something interesting. The only person who used the gate the night of Donna's murder was Caitlyn, her best friend.
Sam and Nick break into Caitlyn's home with a warrant, but she's not there. Her house is a mess, and it looks like she packed in a hurry. At the same time, Wyatt and Addy find the same setup in Brad's apartment. The difference? Brad has a stash of credit cards and passports, suggesting the construction worker has multiple aliases. The team eventually discovers Brad is really Vincent, Caitlyn's fiancé.
The theory is that Donna saw Vincent at the restaurant and realized he was a con artist. Afterwards, Vincent went to Donna's home to confront her and ended up killing her with her own sculpture.
Back at the office, the team finds CCTV showing Vincent dumping the murder weapon in a dumpster to confirm their theory. They also discover that Vincent's real name is Jeremy Noles. He has a long criminal record that includes a history of violent behavior towards women. Now they have to locate the con artist, who has kidnapped Caitlyn.
Nick confides in Sam
Jeremy has Caitlyn tied up in a dimly lit building, and it's clear that he's on the cusp of a mental breakdown. To track them down, Sam and Nick ask Zoe for her help. She tells them that Jeremy sent Caitlyn a listing for an abandoned building that he was obsessed with. So the team heads there to check it out.
Once there, Addy volunteers to be used as bait to lure Jeremy out of the building. Nick doesn't like the idea, but they have no other options, so he agrees. Meanwhile, Wyatt will wait nearby with his sniper rifle.
The plan works until Jeremy grows agitated. Sam decides they need to go with Plan B, so Wyatt causes a distraction, while Sam and Nick sneak up behind Jeremy. Eventually, Nick gets Caitlyn to safety, while Sam subdues Jeremy and takes him into custody.
Afterwards, Addy is visibly shaken by the ordeal but still does her best to reassure Caitlyn that Donna's murder was not her fault. Wyatt watches them talk, and it's clear Addy is speaking from experience.
Back at the office, Sam tells Caleb that Donna died before his plane landed. There was nothing he could do. Instead, Sam reassures him that he's a good man. Caleb says he will try to be.
At the same time, Nick talks to Zoe about her guilt. He confesses that he was in an argument with his own father when his father passed away. It was hard at first, but he eventually realized that the argument was just one moment. It wasn't a reflection of how much he and his father cared about each other.
Afterwards, Nick asks Sam to meet him at a bar. There, he confides in Sam about his ex-partner, Mike. The former NYPD officer is in jail for stealing money from a crime scene, but won't be going home anytime soon due to the new investigation against him. Nick tells Sam that he and his partner used to be close. Their kids even liked each other. But he doesn't know how to help Mike and his family, now that their relationship has changed.
Sam tells Nick it's not his job to take care of his old partner. But he thanks him for confiding in him, and the two decide to have a drink.
NCIS: New York is available to stream on Paramount+.
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