CSI: Vegas – Episode 9.05 Leave Out All the Rest
Air Date: November 06, 2008
The team works a scene out in the desert during a heavy downpour, where a man’s body is badly beaten up, and his fingers and toes torn off. Ligature marks on the man’s wrists make it look like he was tied up and dragged behind a vehicle. On his back, burnt motor oil, and scorched shirt fabric make it appear he was actually tied to the bottom of a vehicle.
Nine stab wounds are in the victim’s shirt. White tissue around the facial wounds indicate they happened post-mortem. No bleeding around the stab wounds in the torso, as well as lack of bruising around rope marks also point to happening post-mortem. Nipples are swollen with puncture wounds around the arioles.
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At the scene, presumably the next day after the rain stopped, Hodges whines to Catherine about the dirt. [What a diva] She records tire tracks at the scene, while Hodges finds a length of rope, and manages to get a splinter in his finger and whine about that. This is not Hodges’ best grown-up time.
Catherine notes melting of the rope ends, indicating the victim may have dropped while being transported. She figures the perp lost the “load” from under the vehicle, then tied him to the back and dragged him out into the desert to dump the body. Carrying him under the car would have kept police from finding him it the vehicle were pulled over.
Brass leads Nick and Riley into a house. [They seem to have edited out any dialog that would have helped us know what led them to this particular house.] The victim’s wallet, inside the house yields the victim’s ID: Ian Wallace. Nick finds a spit out blood drop, probably from a punch. Riley finds blood on the sofa too.
Henry tells Catherine he found low levels of THC and alcohol in the victim’s blood.
Grissom, who has been preoccupied by memories of Sara’s words, opens an emailed video. She tells him she’s happy for the first time in a long time, having gotten away from Vegas.
Nick and Riley find Wallace’s car in the garage of his house. Women’s magazines and other materials imply a female inhabitant. One magazine has a mailing label with a name: Justine Stefani.
Punctures in the nipples are mysterious. The victim’s tongue is burnt, consistent with application of electicity. Cause of death is bare-handed strangulation. Grissom realizes many of the clues point to S&M: asphyxiation, needle punctures, burns on his tongue. The post-mortem stab wounds are inconsistent with this, though. Grissom walks off abruptly. Catherine asks David if this seems normal. A socially awkward Grissom seems normal to him.
Grissom visits Lady Heather (Melinda Clarke) for some help. He seems cold and scared; very boylike. She seems surprised to see him. When she asks about his apparent lack of sleep, he responds, “Bad dreams.” He tells her about Ian Wallace’s wounds. She tells him she’s now a licensed therapist. She tells him the nipple piercing creates a very sensitive “pain button”. She tells him that his wounds seem to indicate that he’s submissive. She asks about the woman.
Back at Wallace and Stefani’s house, Riley finds a photo that reveals she had had implants. Greg finds semen on the TV stand and a “booty imprint” on the TV. Riley finds the stash of bondage implements. There’s a bloody shirt in a laundry basket. The marks seem to match the wounds on Wallace’s chest. Riley thinks Stefani could have killed him, changed his shirt, and tied him to the bottom of the car. Nick doubts that the woman could have done because he weighed too much. She disagrees, and Greg confirms that he thinks that she could do it.
Lady Heather tells Grissom that photos don’t reveal any dedicated space to act out in the house. So, Ian must have gone out to find his fun. She tells Grissom that Lower Linx, a postcard for which is in the house, is an “amateur” SMBD joint. They have a room “in the back”.
In Lower Linx, Brass and Nick find the owner, Michelle Tournay. She denies knowing the two vicims. She obviously wants to get rid of the cops. They mention the back room, and ask to see it. There, Nick and Brass find the oscilloscope…the possible source of the electricity, as well as metal chopsticks….the tongue bondage implement.
Wendy tells Riley the semen from the TV stand was actually mixed with vaginal fluid. DNA matches Wallace, but the female DNA doesn’t match that from Stefani’s toothbrush. The back of Wallace’s shirt has expiratory blood on the back. Perhaps his attacker had been punched, and was spitting out blood. The killer, then, may have been on his back, after all.
Looking at photos of the inside of the house, Heather tells Grissom that the couple had different priorities. She’s traditional, afraid of the dark. He was “compartmentalized”, and needed a place for everything in his world, including his “therapy” outlet. She says he had sex with another inside the house out of a need to be caught and punished. This need is also why he was with Justine. She’s the mommy that he needs to hide from.
Twenty miles or so south of the crime scene, police have found Justine Stefani’s body, charred inside her burned out SUV. Serial numbers from her breast implants confirm that the victim is Justine Stefani.
At the scene where Justine’s car was dumped, Catherine finds that footprints lead away from the highway, and the tire tracks followed after her. David finds breaks in Justine’s leg, indicating a blow from a car, from behind. So, she ran into the desert, and the car followed. Justine’s hair is on the skidplate of her car.
They appear to be looking for two suspects, one wearing size 9 shoes, and a second, who drove the getaway vehicle, which had front Pirelli tires, and rear Michelin tires. Catherine says Ian was killed at the house, and carried in Justine’s car. Justine must have been kidnapped from the house.
DNA on the center of the metal chopsticks match Ian Wallace, prints on the ends match an unknown female, but the same one that provided the DNA in the vaginal secretions near the television. Greg ran Justine’s phone call records. Last call was from a Martin Devlin. They believe they can get a warrant for Michelle Tournay.
Devlin schmoozes Brass. He was selling insurance to Justine. He claims that she hung up on him, before he made the deal.
Lady Heather tells Grissom that a killer dominant would have found a slave to assist her.
Nick questions Tournay. She denies that she’s been to Wallace’s house, or that he’d been to hers. Nick takes cheek cell samples from Tournay.
The blood from the back of Wallace’s shirt shows familial match to a convicted felon George Devlin. They call in Martin Devlin. He has puncture marks around his nipples, much like Wallace. He also has marks on his tongue like Wallace. Devlin seems nervous as they describe the scene, how he would have helped Tournay kill Wallace and kidnapped Stefani, eventually killing her and torching her in her car.
Lady Heather tells Grissom that the post-mortem wounds are not congruous with SMBD. They indicate that the killer was a sexual sadist. Such a person wouldn’t stop when asked to stop. He or she would continue, finding pleasure in the torture. So, the sex acts and the murder/kidnapping were separate events.
Grissom continues to imagine Sara’s words, remembering her in the video. Lady Heather notices Grissom’s lost look, and asks about her. His mind plays back Sara’s saying that she just kept waiting for him to respond.
Lady Heather tells Grissom that not making a decision was his decision. She thinks her own place is safe for Grissom, since it’s neither home, nor work. It is the place that doesn’t have to remind him of Sara.
Devlin’s phone records indicate no calls to or from Tournay. The last call to Stefani ended one minute before a text message was sent. The message included a photo of Wallace in a compromising position with…Devlin’s attorney. The message, however, was off by one digit. So, it didn’t go to Stefani.
Devlin’s attorney tells Brass that she just met Devlin. He asks if it’s a conflict of interest to represent a man, when you had relations with one of his alleged victims. He shows her the photo. She admits that he was there. She says she left right after the photo was taken.
She says she had feelings for Ian. After the Lower Linx, she followed Ian home to tell him how she felt. After sex, he told her to leave. Martin came in through the back door and attacked Ian, but he left.
The team goes over the evidence. They seem to have linked the suspects with the victims, but not the suspects to the scenes. It doesn’t add up, leading them to believe they were distracted by the S&M element. There must be someone unrelated, who killed Ian and kidnapped Michelle Stefani.
Now, we wait until next week to find out who did it!
Grissom, in Lady Heather’s guest room, in hopes of getting one reasonable night’s sleep, breaks with his decorum to ask her to stay in the room with him. She closes the door from the inside.