'NCIS' season 17 episode 8 takes murder weapons and incentives to whole new level as secret killer terrorizes musical group
This article contains spoilers for season 17, episode 8: 'Musical Chairs'.
'NCIS' has a knack of weaving these absolutely twisted murder investigation stories that usually end up making the viewer ask themselves "how the hell did I miss that?" when the culprit is finally revealed. But in tonight's episode, murder incentives and convicts reach a whole other level as we come across the story of a band musician, Hannah, who was being stalked for a while before her bandmate mysteriously gets murdered.
According to the official synopsis of the episode, “The NCIS team investigates the murder of a musician in the Navy’s most elite band that performs at diplomatic events around the world.” The musician, John Warren, begins acting rather strange and unlike himself shortly a while before he decided to dash out of a moving bus that he and the rest of the choir were traveling in. Upon further investigation, the team finds that he had been poisoned by a toxin that reacted with the prescribed antidepressants he was on and made him behave so oddly just moments before he jumped out of the vehicle, and thus the death was ruled as a murder.
The tour schedule in-charge, Hannah, gets involved when it is discovered that John was poisoned by the reed of his clarinet - a reed that he had borrowed from Hannah after his own broke. As Hannah gets roped in for the investigation, she highlights how the band has had a stalker for months now. Called 'Nugget Creeper', the guy religiously attended every performance the band would put up and even though Hannah was nice to him at first because she thought he was a massive fan, she slowly began distancing herself.
When the team is able to track down the perp, he had an alibi for the time when John was murdered. However, upon further digging, the team is able to retrieve from him that he was so overbearing as he was trying to protect Hannah from a supposed secret killer within the band. The stalker also cites valid disappearances of new band members over the recent past, claiming Hannah is next on the list but the theory is considered for a brief moment before the team is able to find out that all the disappearances had a perfectly logical explanation behind them.
But just when the team was about to stash the stalker's claims as another conspiracy theory, Kasie points out something extremely trivial, but quite striking at the same time. Turns out, all the instruments used by the band members were heavier than they are supposed to be. Soon evidence surfaces to back up Kasie's suspicion over the band manager being a smuggler, transporting contraband through the instruments and there we have our guy!
The manager wanted Hannah dead all because of the upcoming tour schedule designated by her, which would require the band to spend significant time in Europe, meaning the contraband smuggler losing out on business for the entire time. Just to make sure he didn't suffer a drastic business loss, the manager actually tried killing off a tour-schedule organizer because clearly nothing in the NCIS world can be non-dramatic!
'NCIS' season 17 airs on Tuesdays at 9 pm only on CBS.