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CSI: Miami – Episode 7.07 Cheating Death
Air Date: November 10, 2008
A couple in a hotel room are disturbed, and kept awake by the seemingly amorous headboard banging sounds from the next room. The man bangs on the wall and yells for them to knock it off. The banging stops, but seconds later, the radio starts blaring. He calls the front desk to complain. When hotel management get no answer at the door of the noisy room, they open the door. They find a woman, who wakes disoriented. Next to her is a dead man, handcuffed to the bedpost and very bloody.
Horatio questions the woman. She tells him that she met the man at the hotel bar and went to his room. The next thing she remembers is waking next to his dead body. She figures she must have been drugged.
(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)
While Delko photographs the scene, Ryan comes in asking where the body is. Dr. Price has had it rushed back to the lab, and texts him the ID: Steven Howell. The woman, Christina Dodd, has tested positive for GHP, the date rape drug. The murder weapon is not at the scene. They figure that the murderer must have drugged Dodd, and had Howell handcuffed. It appears that the man tried to call for help by turning up the radio. Delko notices the hotel logo on the handcuffs.
The concierge tells Delko that he provides whatever the guests want, including, when asked, a “toy box” full of sex toys. Howell didn’t order the toy box, though, Christina Dodd did, and she seemed very appreciative. Delko calls Calleigh to keep Christina in custody.
Calleigh tells Christina that being lucid enough to order the sex toys makes her suspicious. Perhaps she’s using the drug as an alibi. Christina confesses to Calleigh that she was in the bar one night, and ended up going to a room with a man she met. After having sex, the man got dressed and left $500 on the bed for her “services”. Realizing that he thought she was a call girl, and was pleased with her services, she decided to quit her part-time job, and continue “working” this way a couple nights a week for the same money. So Howell was just another trick. She says she handcuffed him to the bed, and that’s the last thing she remembers. They go ahead and hold her on solicitation charges.
Tara is startled by a body’s rising from its table in the morgue. Delko is standing outside, though, holding a remote, and laughing. He tells her that he and Ryan moved Howell’s body and replaced it with a dummy. Tara is upset, though, because she had set the body up in the position it was found, in hopes of determining the murder weapon. Eric apologizes, and asks to help. She gives him a sample from under Howell’s fingernails to take up to DNA, and adds, “And trying doing your job instead of screwing with mine.” [Yikes!]
Natalia tells Horatio that she found the DNA of several women in the sample from Howell’s nails. The largest contributor turns up in Codis as Audrey Yates. They question Yates, who has a record as a “madam”. She claims to have quit after being arrested. She recognizes Howell as the tanning butler, who had put lotion on her. This also explains why he had several women’s DNA under his nails. Yates asks about the prostitute. She seems to know the profile, an amateur, who always picks up at the same bar. An obsessed client sees her with another man and gets angry, maybe angry enough to kill.
Calleigh asks Maxine about the DNA from Christina’s sexual assault kit. She explains that another client may be the killer, if he’d become obsessed with Christina, and saw her with Howell. Some of the DNA matches a Dan Becks an Army reservist with a record for assault with a deadly weapon. Frank and Horatio ask Becks if he has a habit of picking up prostitutes. He denies it, and recognizes the photo of Christina. She’s his wife! He wants to know what they’re getting at, and what kind of trouble she’s in. Becks says he was at his son’s little league practice in the morning.
Ryan figures that Christina must have been drugged in the room, since she ordered the cuffs some time before passing out. Two champagne glasses are negative for GHP, but some broken, blue glass from the floor tested positive. Tara walks in on Ryan and Delko and takes the prints showing Howell’s body on the bed. She says this may be their only hope of determining the murder weapon. Ryan guesses that their prank didn’t go over well. [Ya think?]
Calleigh helps Tara reposition the body back into the position in the photos. Tara explains that putting silicone into the wounds may yield shapes that will reveal enough of the shape of the weapon. That is, if the body hasn’t been moved too much from its original death position.
Delko fumes the glass fragments, attempting to get prints from the vessel that delivered the GHP. One print turns up the name Lisa Radley, a licensed real estate broker. Mrs. Radley tells Horatio and Delko that she was at a department store, that morning, for an appointment with a personal shopper.
When confronted with the vial and her prints, she tells them that she met Howell at the Tremaine bar, a couple nights before. She says that he charmed her, and they went to a room together. He pulled out the bottle, saying it was absinthe. She took a sip. She realized it was GHP, when she awoke to find Howell, her wedding ring, and the contents of her purse, missing. She didn’t report it because she didn’t want her husband to find out what happened. They release her.
Delko remarks to Horatio that Howell could have robbed dozens of married women like this. Horatio responds that any one of them could be his killer.
Calleigh and Natalia consider the new information. Howell was only robbing women who had something to lose by going to the police. So, he hits on older, married women. If they respond, he drugs and robs them. With Christina, he was surprised by the cuffs. He had already given her the GHP, resulting in his being helplessly cuffed while she was passed out.
They search Howell’s home for his stash of stolen goods, thinking it will lead back to the other women he robbed, and maybe the killer. They don’t find any goods, but he had a gallery of photos of his victims. Christina is in different clothes, so his victims weren’t random. They take the photos to try and find the photographer.
Jane finds the photographer in reflections contained in six photos. She grafts the best parts of each of the images together to improve the image of the photographer. It’s clearly Audrey Yates.
Yates tells Horatio that these horny soccer moms were cutting into her profits. So, she was out of retirement. Steve was in it for the cash. She just had to point him at the right targets. Lisa Radley was a mistake. Steve is dead, and Radley won’t press charges. Horatio asks for her ring, because he recognizes it as Radley’s.
Tara shows Horatio and Delko how she attempted to identify the shape of the murder weapon. The wounds show signs of a serated blade, except for one that has a nick in a vertebra on the other side of the wound. This is a problem for her weapon profile, but Horatio points out that it could be serated on part of the back edge of the blade. This leads her to a knife that’s smooth for the first three inches, then serated from there to the hilt. It would be a very uncommon blade, making it easier to find it.
Calleigh searches the North American Knife Registry, finding one possible hit…a combat knife. This leads them back to Dan Becks, the one person involved who was in the military. Becks tells Horatio that he does own that knife, but lost it that morning, at the Tremaine. He says he knows that his wife has been cheating on him. He just didn’t know she was getting paid. He tracked her down to the Tremaine, and found her passed out on the hotel bad, and Howell cuffed. He threatened Howell, and stuck the knife into the bed. He left it in the room, rushing out after hearing a noise in the hallway. Becks says that she even had her friend cover for her, texting him, once, that she was having sushi. His wife, though, is allergic to fish. Becks storms off, when Christina approaches him.
Christina tells Horatio that the concierge would cover for her, and had sent the text message. He charged her $100 each time she needed his help.
Calleigh and Natalia head to the hotel for evidence that the concierge killed Howell. Howell would have been running off his best customers, if he was running an alibi service on the side for these women. Calleigh doesn’t find blood or the knife, but a lot of fake receipts, some even with future dates. Delko notices one of the receipts matches the one that Lisa Radley produced to back up her alibi of being at a department store.
Horatio and Delko catch up with Lisa Radley, who had been stopped by a patrolman. Delko finds the knife in her car. They arrest her. She says she just hunted him down looking to get her ring back. When he insulted her, she lost it, and grabbed the knife.
