CSI:Vegas Episode 8.06 Recap "Who and What" — Part I

Tonight’s our special cross-over extended episode with the “Without A Trace” cast members. The episode starts off immediately with a kill. A mom is playing with her son and then goes to take a bath. She hears a noise and then someone comes into the bathroom and bludgeons her with some kind of object. Looked like a ball-peen hammer to me.

Grissom shows up. The boy is murdered in the living room and the mother is in the bathroom on the floor covered with a towel. He asks Greg Sanders how long he’s been there, which he responds with “6 hours”. Gil asks why the bodies haven’t been released and Catherine says because the FBI ordered them to stop processing.

Jack Malone shows up in a helicopter and enters the house. Gil asks him what’s going on and he says that 6 years ago the boy was kidnapped from his babysitter and the babysitter was killed. The only clue is that both murders only had a bloody palm print as evidence left. Jack Malone is seeming less than helpful or congenial as he normally does on “Without A Trace”.

Not sure why, but the CSI team seems to be acting much more like the BAU unit from “Criminal Minds” on this case. Talking much more about the killer than just the evidence in front of them and what happened. More about who, than what.

After talking to the medical examiner, Willows finds out that 30 minutes after death the mother was attacked and raped again.  The kid’s name is “Jason”. Jack says a random kidnapping is very rare. Gil corrects him by saying that 100 kidnappings were listed last year.

Sanders, Stokes and Warrick are investigating the house and find poker player stats and a computer with various gambling websites on the screen. Out of place for the mother to have these items when everything else in the house gives the message that she had nothing to do with gambling.

They track a suspect down at a poker tournament. Warrick looking at him scares him out of his chair and he starts running. Jack gets a great shot at him when he steps out from behind a slot-machine and punches him right in the face to lay him on the floor.

Jack questions him first. He’s leading him into a conversation. It’s so vague though I don’t think the suspect and Jack are talking about the same thing. The suspect says he doesn’t know anything about New York City. Jack shoves him down on the table and Det. Brass has to come in and interrupt him. A picture is then on the table and the suspect ends up being the father of the boy. He’s from Utah and brought his son with him to Vegas for a poker tournament. He had stolen money from a church, but dropped off the boy at an ex-girlfriend’s house where the two are killed.

Jack and Gil continue their alpha-male challenges and Jack questions Gil on his office decor. Our second body of the episode is found by Sara and another detective (was the new paramedic on the old show “Third Watch”. Good to see him working again in TV.)

Another murder scene from the same guy. This time he left the hammer. Took a .45 hand gun. Still stacked credit cards on the table. This victim’s husband was found outside the home badly beaten. It appears that the husband was alive and watching as his wife was raped and murdered.

Sara is obviously struggling emotionally with everything. We got a teaser the last couple of episodes. After finding this last body she appears on the brink of a breakdown.

Grissom tracks down that all the previous murders have been close to a railroad track. The video tech in the lab gets more details about the suspect from the Tangiers video feeds. The notice him look at a poster and see a cocktail waitress. He gets her name from her name tag on the poster and goes to visit the casino she works at. He wins $2500 at the slots, and because of that Stokes gets a fingerprint from the tax form he’s required to fill out. Later a police officer pulls him over on a secluded highway in Gina’s car. There appeared to be a kid in the backseat that the officer waved at when he walked by the car, but the suspect pulls out a gun and shoots him multiple times in the chest and kills him.

The suspect was married to Gina when he was sent to prison for burglary. Jack and Grissom appear to be getting close, but end up just finding an empty car in the railroad yard. There’s only one train moving and they try to run it down and stop it. Instead, they both get on the train, this is the scene we saw in the previews of Jack asking Gil if he misses the lab. Ends up that the suspect paid a bum a $100 to get on the train and wear his hat. They go back to the car and find Gina dead in the trunk. Gina had a son that the suspect, Wicker, picked up at school and was in the car with him.

Join us for Part II