- CSI gets three new dead bodies, and all three cases have a connection to the same con artist with multiple identities.
- Art dealer Carsten's skull-smashed corpse floats in the pool of his rented luxury villa after a party where a vase was smashed and a client, buyer for a casino museum, stormed out. The find finds the vase, which his cat Gareth bizarrely licked, was a fake for a piece stolen form an Iraqi museum. Hollywood actor Mickey Ross is arrested after his print is found in blood on the shell of Gareth, the pet tortoise he gave his murdered wife, who committed adultery with sleazy producer Tripp Linson. Finally a man's corpse is found crushed under his steering wheel, and the dog around is again called Gareth. Gradually the team works out, mainly from identification, that the identical pet name is neither coincidence nor the most remarkable link between the three murders and several related crimes and private dramas.—KGF Vissers
- In a busy night, the CSIs need to investigate three crimes. Brass, Langston and Wendy investigate the death of the art dealer Carsten Pennington, who was found drowned in his swimming pool after a party in his house. The surveillance video shows that Carsten had an altercation with a man that becomes the prime suspect. Loui Vartann, Catherine and Greg investigate the death of Jena Mackin in a motel room. The apparent cause of death would be suicide, but two bullets were fired through her chin. Therefore, the investigators suspect that the crime scene was staged. Chris Cavaliere, Nick and Riley investigate the death of the private investigator from Tahoe, who was found dead in his rented car. He was hired by Dr. Paul Anton, who is summoned to the precinct to be interviewed. Soon they will realize that the cases are entwined.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- "CSI" - "Kill Me If You Can" - Feb. 26, 2009
Night in Vegas. A man stumbles through a casino parking lot to his car and drops his keys. As he gropes to pick them up a truck comes barreling toward him stopping just short of collision. He looks in the car and sees a dead body.
A maid pushes a cart through a motel parking lot and sees debris on the ground. As she sweeps it up she sees that it's maggots. She opens the door and sees a trail of maggots leading to a woman dead on the bed.
A pool cleaner walks through a swanky house and sees blood on the ground near the pool. He follows it to a dead body floating face down in swim trunks.
At each scene the CSIs snap photos. At the first two, a magazine called "Society Watch" lies near the body. At the pool the man is revealed to be the man on the cover of the magazine.
At the swanky house Langston theorizes- and we see- a wealthy art dealer comes out for a late night swim and is assaulted and has his face smashed on the bricks. He and Wendy wonder if it was a crime of passion.
We see a screen title: "Lifestyles of the Rich & Felonious."
Inside Brass interviews the man's fiancee. She say Karsten Pennington was an art dealer who was well-loved. Outside Langston wonders why a five million dollar property had a 50 cent lock. He thanks Wendy for helping in the field. (Lot of bodies today). He notices a blood trail. It leads to a cat licking it's bloody paws.
The fiancee says Pennington went for a swim to calm down, she's not sure why. He had some kind of fight at the party with a client she'd never seen before. (We see him ordering guests from a party.) He wouldn't tell her what happened and she went to bed alone. The pool guy discovered him.
Langston and Wendy notice video surveillance but none of it appears to have a view of the pool. In his office, which is filled with art, there are signs of struggle. Wendy swabs for DNA as Langston takes picture of different objects including yogurt containers and a certificate of authenticity. The cat, Gareth, reappears and starts licking broken stuff/evidence on the floor.
At the lab: Archie and Langston pick out the guy who made Pennington mad at the party off the video. Wendy shows Langston that pieces of the broken vase the cat was licking. She thinks it was stolen from the Iraqi national museum and smuggled into the U.S. drug dealer-style. Wendy gets a text saying the PD need a DNA sample on an actor. She asks Langston to let her put the vase back together since she loves jigsaw puzzles.
Langston examines some putty that was on the crate the vase came in.
Archie searches for the video dude via face recognition and gets a match on Jeffrey Luvan.
Brass interrogates him. He saw Pennington at the party and says he had previously purchased an antiquity from him for an exhibit. Pennington called him to see a new piece at the party but he didn't want it. Brass asks if it was because it was stolen from Iraq. He shows him a before and after. The purchaser says that kind of thing is illegal and dangerous and his boss wouldn't stand for it. He says if Pennington was dealing in the black market perhaps he got what was coming to him, but he didn't deliver it.
Wendy is laboring over putting the vase back together. She can't find a piece. Langston brings it back in an evidence jar. She places it in. Langston says it's fake and explains the cat is key. As he explains the process we see Pennington do it- creating a fake by smearing yogurt on a replica base, painting it like the original, sprinkling minerals from the appropriate region on it, storing it in a hot place so it sets and ages, and fakes out experts and analysis. Except the cat would still think it's tasty. We see a scenario where Pennington tries to pass off the fake to Luvan who realizes it, smashes it and threatens Pennington.
Brass reports that Luvan is more cooperative as a victim then a suspect. Langston points out that killing Pennington wouldn't get him his bosses' money back. Brass says Pennington took out 100k the day before he died. Langston surmises he was going to skip town.
Brass goes back to the fiancee and asks if she knew he was taking the money out. She had no idea. Langston examines the kitchen and finds a dress with trace blood stains. He finds a bottle of green cleaning fluid and smiles. They confront her. She says the dress was dirty he says that real criminals use chlorine bleach since the cleaner she uses is good for the environment and DNA retrieval. She looks nervous and asks for an attorney and is cuffed.
Back at the lab, Wendy and Langston congratulate each other on a job well done.
Catherine calls Langston in to show him a person of interest in her motel case. On video is a man named Tripp Linson, who looks exactly like Karsten Pennington. She says it is and it isn't.
Eric and Phillips examine the female body at the motel, her names is Jenna. She was shot twice. Blood spatter suggests she was shot sitting up and we see a scenario of her pleading for her life.
We see a screen title: "Hooray For Hollywood"
Catherine retrieves the bullets from the ceiling. Wineglasses are missing from the room. There's a strange bloodstain under the bed. Also there's a turtle, who dragged the blood across the floor. Catherine calls him a witness.
On the slab Robbins tells Eric that there was either rape or rough consensual sex with a condom.
There's a print on the turtle, they lift it. Hodges wonders who brings a tortoise to a gunfight. Mandy gets a hit on the print. Mickey Ross, a movie star.
They bring him in (he's played by an actor who looks an awful lot like John Schneider) for a swab. No gun at his house but the bullets are the same. He hits on Wendy as she swabs him and she's called away over a missing contact lens. (This was the actor she was called away to swab when she was with Langston).
Ross tells the detective it's all a big misunderstanding. The detective says they have his print on the turtle in Jenna's blood. Ross asks if Gareth is okay and if he can see him. He admits he was there but didn't kill her. He pretends to cry at finding her body with a gun in her hand. The cop wonders why he then cleaned up the scene and took the gun. Because he knew how bad it looked says Ross. He says he feels terrible that his wife was suicidal and he didn't know and says she was the one real thing in his life. The detective plays a tape of a voicemail of him screaming at his wife for ditching him for some piece of crap dude. Ross is impressed.
Eric examines the bullets.
Ross says this is all producer Tripp Linson's fault. He ruined Ross' career and then slept with his wife. He says he came to Vegas from L.A. and found his wife distraught at the motel saying that Tripp acted like he didn't even know her when she went to see him. The turtle cheered her up. He says his wife shot herself just after they "recommitted" to each other. (Hence the rough sex evidence). The cop says suicides don't usually involve two bullets. Ross says he only heard one shot.
Eric's examination of the bullets actually reveals a theory that proves this possibility. Catherine is impressed that Ross was telling the truth.
We come back to the moment where Catherine is looking at the video of Tripp Linson at a premiere red carpet talking up Ross's latest picture. Jenna is there also with Gareth, saying the turtle was a gift from Tripp. This is the pont at which Catherine called Ray in. Then Stokes enters and asks if they recognize his guy Ryan Morton. Same guy.
We cut back to the first dead guy, the one in the car wedged under the steering wheel. Phillips goes to retrieve him and throws out his back. Riley and Stokes are investigating. No blood or shell casings. His names is Shawn Hagan, P.I. from Tahoe. Dead at least 12 hours. Riley theorizes heart attack or O.D. He picked up the rental car in L.A. four days prior and was charging his client, a Dr. Paul Anton, $160 a day.
A screen title tells us: "The Son He Never Had"
A detective interviews Dr. Anton, who says his case was personal. Hagan was helping him find a former business associate. The detective tells him Hagan is dead and asking for an alibi. The doctor was in his room watching movies and says that Morton must've had something to do with it. The doctor gives him a computer disc with all the information he has.
Riley and Nick untwist Hagan's rigor-ed body. They find a contact lens. (The one Wendy was called away to examine.) They think it might be from the killer. Riley finds a gunshot wound in Hagan's hand. No bullet. We see a trajectory as Robbins explains and extracts the bullet: Hagan holds up his hand, the bullet goes through, repierces the arm, goes into the torso, hits the lungs, and ends up in the spleen.
Nick looks at the disc it's a sales pitch from Ryan Morton, selling "Royal Tahoe Adventures" an investment property. Morton is trailed by a dog, named, you guessed it, Gareth. He thinks Morton looks familiar. Riley enters with the murder weapon inside a pizza box dumped in a dumpster. It's registered to Dr. Anton. He says he hasn't had the gun for years, he gave it to Ryan Morton as a gift. Stokes and the detective spin a theory in which the doctor, angry at being bilked by Hagan, killed him himself. The doctor protests. Stokes says the doctor should tell him what happened then.
The doctor says Ryan was an ambitious real estate developer he met at a tennis club and he treated him like the son he never had and then Ryan bilked him out of $175,000 and skipped town. The doctor wears contact lenses and they ask for a DNA sample. He complies.
We cut back to the moment of Catherine calling Langston in to look at the video and Nick entering.
Wendy enters saying she ran the contact lens and the DNA came back with a sibling match and they realize that Karsten Pennington had a brother who is probably a murderer.
Catherine and Langston are looking at the driver's license of a Gareth Morton, like the cat/turtle/dog. Ryan and Gareth were left a house by their mother in a little town. No answer at the door, local PD can't find Gareth.
Langston had Archie go back over the surveillance at Karsten's cocktail party and on the video is Gareth. We see the lookalike.
Title: The Brother He Never Wanted
So Langston, Catherine, and Stokes work out the timeline. Jenna comes looking for Tripp Linson and finds instead wealthy art dealer Karsten Pennington - living in a rented mansion- and claiming he doesn't know her. She goes back to the motel and kills herself. A day later the P.I. Hagan tracking down Ryan Morton runs into Gareth, and who, probably accidentally, shoots the P.I. in his car. Later that night Gareth goes to Karsten/Ryan's party and smashes his head in and takes off.
They catch a lucky break when Gareth is picked up for speeding. Brass interrogates him. Gareth says he hasn't spoken to his brother in years and told Hagan that Ryan's debts weren't his problem. The P.I. pointed out they could be since they could put a lien on their mother's house, which was left to them both and he was living in. The P.I. told him where Karsten/Ryan was and that he was rolling in dough. Brass says Gareth must've been mad about that and having his house threatened. Gareth admits he was, especially since he stayed with their mother right up through the diaper-changing phase and all she ever talked about was Ryan. Brass theorizes that he left for Vegas and killed Hagan. Gareth said he went to see Ryan and waited until all the guests left and asked him to quit-claim the house to him. We see the argument: Ryan argued that their mother wanted him to have half. Gareth says Ryan never cared about her. Ryan countered their mother was evil and he had the guts to leave their mother. Gareth says he then walked away and that Ryan was right, that he is weak, not charismatic like his brother. He says even after all this went down, he still loved his brother.
Langston, Stokes, and Riley examine Gareth's stuff and his car. There's a missing contact lens. A family photo. A wad of $100,000 in the trunk. The clothes in Gareth's bag are a weird mix of bargain basement and $50 Burberry underwear. The body in Pennington's pool was wearing bargain basement undies. Langston realizes that Ryan/Karsten killed his brother and switched identities.
Brass continues his interrogation. Langston watches with Ryan's fiancee and asks if she's going down with him just as the suspect tries to pin it on her. She explains how Ryan/Karsten made the switch and how he claimed he was coming back for her and she believed him.
Caught, Ryan takes off the glasses and explains that he tried to make amends with his brother and his mother, tried to give them money but they both refused it. So he ripped it up and threw it in their faces. Brass says it's a touching story and wonders what old movie he stole it from. Ryan swears it's the truth, even if it never happened.
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