Oct 24 2008
CSI
Back at the office, Ecklie introduces Patricia Alwick, a grief counselor, who will be available to help them deal with Warrick’s death.
A new CSI checks in, Alwick tells her it might be hard to join a team under these circumstances. She’s Riley Adams. Grissom comes for her.
A Metro Bus drives through the night. A man lies in running shorts and shoes, frozen on a bench. No wallet, cash or keys. The body’s in full rigor. Riley tries to boss David and he looks to Gil for confirmation. Lividity tells her he was here when he died. But he’s been there less than 90 minutes and full rigor takes 12 to 14 hours to develop. She spins a complicated theory about rapid onset rigor. Gil is intrigued.
The autopsy on Carla shows nothing. No organ damage, no disease, no trauma.
In the morgue Riley meets Dr. Robbins and has fun with black light on her veneers. (The lesson: she’s a little off-kilter and glib.)
The tox screen on the second victim shows a passel o’ drugs. Robbins says the COD is cardiac arrest, same as the lady in the park. His liver is slightly pinkish and reddish, like Carla. He posits gaseous asphyxiation and Gil says he’ll have Hodges run a test.
Hodges goes to visit Alwick, but Greg is already there.
They’ve ID’d the second guy, Harley.
Gil does Hodges’ test for him…and does it wrong. Gil gets a text to another scene.
Broad daylight, a man is frozen like a wax statute on the sidewalk, hailing a cab. The businessman has an empty briefcase with no ID.
At the lab, Grissom decides they’ve got a serial killer working at a pace of one a day.
Greg finds lead in the man’s shoes, which is what must have been standing him up. Under his nice business clothes he’s dirty and scabby. Gil thinks he was homeless. He had lice, dead lice.
They all had traces of a sleeping pill in their systems.
Catherine and Riley go to Carla’s house to try to find a link between the three. Riley finds her bad stuff drawer, with condoms and weed. There’s a painting of Carla on the wall. She looks dead. It was done by a local artist named Jersey Skaggs, he paints people who look dead.
Brass visits him and shows him a picture of Carla, who used to model for him. He doesn’t recognize the men. He says he doesn’t kill his models, or even sleep with them much anymore. He also wants to paint Brass nude. (He says no, where would he pin the badge?)
Alwick chats up Grissom as he gets tea. He says he’s busy. But he does want her advice on something…he’s been having a problem with Hank….but they’re interrupted.
Hodges comes in and says the victims have carbon monoxide in their heads. Gil thinks they were given a sedative then changed and posed in a gas chamber, giving the killer 10 hours to place them around town.
Riley watches a local art blog, they’re calling the murderer the “Mannekiller.” The message board has at least one supporter of the claim it’s art.
Greg finds burlap fibers on all three victims.
Alwick stops by to ask Grissom why he holds her profession in such disdain. She knows Hank is a dog. He apologizes. Hank’s been listless, he wonders if pets can take on the emotions of their owners. Grissom says he’s been distracted lately, having a hard time focusing on the details. He wants to know how long this typically lasts. She tells him there’s no time table, but he needs to talk about it with someone.
Brass has Harley’s juvy record: he was arrested at a party a Skaggs’ place. Skaggs says the party was five years ago, he can’t remember him. He’s fascinated by the crime scene photos, death mocking life. The poses look familiar. Someone showed him the sketches months ago.
Skaggs doesn’t know who he was, but he was entering a municipal statue competition. The guy was a contractor working on his studio.
The parks department sends over the entries. One of them, from Arthur Blisterman, matches how the bodies were found, but there are six statues and they’ve only found five victims so far (Nick mentioned the others briefly). The final one is a boy on a bike.
They stake out Blisterman’s house, but he’s not home. Riley thinks one of the blog posters might be their guy. On the site there’s a photo of the first victim, but before the crime scene tape was up. The anonymous poster is the murderer.
They bring in the site host and have him post to get Anonymous to respond. Meanwhile, a woman comes in crying that her nine-year-old boy is missing. They locate the IP address Anonymous is using, it’s a public library.
The cops go there and pick him up. There are burlap fibers on his laptop.
Greg wonders if they come from whatever space he’s using. They look at city plans for the area around the library.
He says he’ll only talk to someone to understands his art. Grissom sits down with him but Blisterman doesn’t want to be rushed into talking about the boy.
Riley and Greg search the locations on the map as Gil listens to the crazy guy talk about art making like beautiful. He says they were nothing until he made them extraordinary. He whines about his art being ignored. Gil tries to focus him by telling him he’ll be put to death if he doesn’t help them. He’s not scared of dying, he just doesn’t want to be forgotten.
Catherine finds a warehouse that used to be used for natural fiber bags and shipping materials.
Gil promises Blisterman that no one will ever forget him. But Blisterman says without the boy the piece is incomplete.
Cops swarm the warehouse.
Gil reads the address from a text. Blisterman says they’re too late to save him. Gil turns off the camera.
In the warehouse they find Blisterman’s sketches and the boy on a bike in a chamber, posed with a dozen ropes. They cut him down and Riley performs CPR. For a while, he remains as frozen as the previous victims. But then, after a few tense moments, he breathes.
