CSI: Vegas – Episode 9.03 “Art Imitates Life” Recap

CSI: Vegas – 9.03 Art Imitates Life
Air Date: October 23, 2008

A woman is found dead and leaning casually against a light pole. She is seemingly frozen in place, like a wax figure. No burn marks, no signs of lightning. The body is in full rigor, and is roughly the same temperature as the outside air, around 100 degrees fahrenheit. She’s sporting a brand new mobile phone, that has no personalization yet. The only call on it, so far, is to MovieFone. Her purse is totally empty, and pretty new looking.

Back at the lab, the “frozen” woman’s fingerprints turn up in the health workers database. She’s Carla Peretti, an LPN at Desert Palm Hospital.
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The team gets called in to meet Patricia Alwick (Alex Kingston, ER), a grief counselor to help the team adjust after Warrick’s death. She warns them that anyone feels fine now, she has seen grief strike people suddenly, at a later time.

New CSI Riley Adams (Lauren Lee Smith) arrives. After a little unwelcome advice from Alwick about the difficulties of being the new person in a group that has just lost a beloved team member, Riley seems to cut her a bit short. She tells her that her parents are both psychiatrists, so she knows the schtick. She’s prepared to see what happens without her help. [Ooo-too-tooo!] Grissom meets Riley, and asks her to come with him, since the team is very busy.

Another victim, a jogger, is found on a bus stop bench. He’s frozen in place, like Carla. Hodges meets Riley and Grissom at the scene. Hodges finds no identification, or other personal effects on the jogger. Riley quickly commands, “Roll ‘im.” Hodges looks at Grissom, who nods. Riley pretends to be offended by David’s response, but quickly laughs, revealing her dry, morbid, smart sense of humor. [I like her.]

The bus driver that turned it in, said the man wasn’t there 90 minutes before, on his previous stop. So, the team wonders how rigor mortis set in so quickly. Riley offers that intense exercise right before a heart attack may have caused the rapid onset rigor. Grissom is definitely testing Riley’s proficiency in the field. She’s very cool about it.

Willows tells Nick that Peretti’s apartment was undisturbed, and she was last seen leaving her hospital shift. She adds that she had worked a lot of typical side jobs: model, convention booth “babe”. Autopsy revealed she died of cardiac arrest. They discuss the lack of signs of what caused her muscles to seize. There were no signs of electrocution, no history of epilepsy, no organ damage, no drugs that would have caused it.

Al meets Riley in the lab over the jogger’s body. The jogger had traces of meth, ecstasy, and heroine in his body. Pulmonary edema suggests drug abuse, but nothing bad enough to indicate drugs as the cause of death. The red and pink color of his and Peretti’s livers indicate possible gaseous asphyxiation.

A check at a methodone clinic reveals the “jogger” to be Harley Soon. Soon had a sheet full of drug abuse, solicitation, and various petty violations.

Hodges walks in on Grissom doing a blood gas assay. Grissom notes that Hodges should have been doing it. Hodges, however, had just been in the hallway, seemingly considering a little grief counseling. He notices that Grissom has skipped a stepp on his test prep, to which Grissom sheepishly notes that he probably did it on all of samples. Hodges offers to start them over, right about the time that Grissom receives a text to go to a scene.

Grissom arrives at the scene, where a dead man in a black suit is posed, holding a briefcase in his left hand, and seemingly hailing a cab with a newspaper in his right hand. It’s very creepy.

The briefcase is empty, and the man has no ID. There’s lead in the sole of his shoe, which Nick presumes is there to help hold him upright.. His nails are cleaned and trimmed, but head lice and other marks seem to imply he was a homeless man dressed up. Strangely, the lice are all dead. Grissom notes that they definitely seem to have a serial killer, working at one body per day.

Willows, Nick, and Riley discuss the possible connections between the victims. They all were stripped of their identities. They all had traces of Zolpidem Tartrate (the sleep drug Ambien). Carla was the only one that had a seemingly “normal” life, so she should have emails, phone calls, and the like, to track down any personal contacts that might lead to the killer.

At Peretti’s home, they find recent artwork, and a drawer containing marijuana. One portrait of Carla on the wall makes her appear dead. It’s signed “J. Skaggs”. Riley finds Skaggs on the internet. [nice 3G phone!]

Brass visits Jerzy Skaggs (Jeffrey Tambor, Arrested Development) working on a painting. He remembers Carla as one of his models. He doesn’t recognize the two men, though. Skaggs tells Brass that the coroner photo of Carla was a cheap imitation of his work, before Brass tells him that she’s really dead. The studio is full of macabre death scenes that Skaggs seems to be working on simultaneously. He quickly tells Brass that he doesn’t kill his models, he only captures images of models who look dead. Brass dismisses Skaggs offer to paint him in the nude.

Brass: “Where would I put the badge?”

Alwick says she’d like to meet with Grissom, but he says he’s busy. He does say that he’d like to talk to her about issues he’s been having lately with Hank.

Grissom, Willows, Nick, and Riley go over the blood gas tests, and tests on the lice indicate carbon monoxide, as well as sulfur and simple hydrocarbons: engine exhaust. Lividity on all three indicate that they died in their poses. So, somehow the killer is luring the victims to his place, sedating them, dressing and posing them in his gas chamber, and waiting for rigor to set in. Grissom adds that he has ten hours to place the bodies to be discovered.

A birdwatcher discovers an older couple on a trail, posed as bird-watchers. Nick tells Grissom that they had both suffered from alzheimer’s, and were on a field trip away from their care facility, two days earlier. The staff hadn’t noticed them missing until bedcheck. A witness had noticed an average height white male in a white panel van near the trail, about an hour before dawn.

Riley has found a local art blog where the blogger Langston Weller discusses the madness and the “art” created by the killer. The posts have drawn in lots of comments, including some anonymous ones that could be from the killer.

Greg tells Grissom that the dust on the homeless man match jute fibers on the other victims. They seem to indicate that the killer was wrapping the victims in burlap, at some point in the process.

Alwick confronts Grissom about his apparent contempt toward her work. She reveals that she asked around about “Hank”, gathering mostly snickers, until Hodges revealed Hank to be Grissom’s dog. Grissom apologizes, and says he had a serious question. He says his dog had been listless recently, and wondered if this could be an indication of Grissom’s own affect. She says that companion animals do emulate the mental state of their owners, and asks how he’s been feeling. She encourages him to talk to someone about what’s going on.

Brass calls Grissom to tell him about Harley Soon’s juvenile record. It reveals that he was arrested, five years earlier, in a raid on a party in the studio of Jerzy Skaggs.

Brass questions Skaggs. Skaggs maintains that he never knew Harley Soon. When Brass shows him photos of all three victims, Skaggs remembers the poses. A few months earlier, a man asked him to look at some sketches matching the photos’ poses. The man was a laborer working on renovations to Skaggs’ studio, and said he was entering in some art contest that was open to the public. He doesn’t remember the name of the man or the contractor.

A Las Vegas Parks Department site yields contest entries for sculptures to be used in public spaces. One entrant, Arthur Blisterman, had submitted sketches that matched the victims’ poses. Grissom, Willows, and Nick are disturbed at seeing an additional sketch, one of a little boy. So, they must find the killer before he gets victim number six.

They have Blisterman’s house staked out. Brass tells Grissom that neighbors haven’t seen Blisterman for weeks, he’s unmarried, and is an independent plumbing contractor. He isn’t answering his phone. They have circulated photos of Blisterman to schools and child services, and have a call out on his white panel van. They have no word on a possible workspace.

Nick and Riley notice that one of the photos linked in a comment to Langston Weller’s blog is of Peretti. Image data shows the photo was taken a couple hours before police were alerted.

Telling him that his blog has encouraged a killer, Detective Vartann convinces Langston Weller to lure Blisterman into commenting on his blog again. They plan to get an IP trace, as soon as Blisterman comments, and locate him.

A woman in the station tells Vartann that her son is missing. The school told her about the special alert that is out, and she’s afraid he is the killers next victim. Meanwhile, Blisterman hits Weller’s blog.

Police find Blisterman at the library. On his laptop, they find dust similar to that on the victims. Willows, Riley, and Sanders look for any old warehouses around the library, that would likely contain dust from burlap bags.

Brass calls Grissom in to talk to a very evasive Blisterman. Grissom complies when Blisterman directs the composition of the video taken of him in the interview. Blisterman goes on and on about his work, and his message. He is resistant to being rushed, and goes on about life, humanity, beauty, aesthetics, and art. Grissom asks about the child. Blisterman is outraged that no one has ever appreciated his work. He isn’t afraid of dying, but of being forgotten.

Willows finds a nearby warehouse that once stored industrial burlap hags.

Blisterman won’t tell where the boy is, because he doesn’t want the camera turned off, and needs the boy to complete his work. When Grissom reads the warehouse address from a text message, Blisterman says he’s too late anyway.

Police and the team find the boy, suspended in an exhaust-filled plastic enclosure. Riley frantically tries to revive him, continuing CPR until the boy moves, opens his eyes, and gasps a breath.