S09E05 - Leave out all the rest
Grissom joins Catherine and the team at a crime scene on a rainy night: the badly scraped up dead body of a man lies on the ground. Marks on his wrists indicate he was bound, and given the damage to the body, Catherine posits he may have been tied to the bottom of a car and dragged to his death. Doc Robbins points out postmortem stab wounds on the body, as well as puncture wounds around the man's nipples. While Catherine examines tire treads at the scene, Nick is able to identify the man from the personalized shirt he wore. Along with Brass and Riley, Nick goes to the house of their victim, Ian Wallace, and finds evidence of a scuffle as well as magazines with a woman's name on the subscription label: Justine Stefani. Dr. Robbins determines Ian's cause of death was strangulation, and Grissom notices burn marks on the man's tongue which, when taken with the nipple puncture wounds, leads the CSI supervisor to conclude the man may have been into S&M. Grissom leaves the lab and goes to the house of Lady Heather, claiming to want insight into the case. She tells him the nipple markings are from needle play and the tongue burns could be from a kind of shock treatment, leading Grissom to conclude their victim was a submissive. Back at Ian Wallace's house, Riley finds a box with S&M bondage gear under Ian's bed, labeled with the name 'Lower Lynx'--a bondage club. The CSIs talk with the owner of the club, a woman named Michelle, who claims not to know Ian but after pressure from Nick and Brass, leads the CSI and the detective to the back room, where they discover a pair of metal chopsticks--possibly the instrument of the tongue shocks.
Lady Heather posits that Ian was keeping his S&M lifestyle secret from Justine, whose personal effects don't indicate she was into bondage. The case gets markedly more complicated when Justine's burned body is found inside her SUV in the desert. The CSIs determine she was hit with her own car. The CSIs trace the last phone call on Justine's cell to a man named Martin Devlin, who sells insurance. He tells Brass that he had called to sell Justine insurance but that she hung up on him before he made the sale. After matching Michelle's DNA to the chopsticks used on Ian, Nick questions the dominatrix, who admits to an affair with Ian, but claims they never went to each other's houses. When Wendy matches DNA blood splatter from Ian's house to Devlin, the CSIs haul him back in, finding the same needle marks around his nipples that Ian had. His aggressive female lawyer quickly puts a stop to the questioning. Archie retrieves records from Devlin's phone and find he erroneously sent a text meant for Justine to a wrong number. The text has a picture of Ian--and Devlin's lawyer having sex. The lawyer admits she, Ian and Devlin did a "scene" together at Lower Lynx and then she followed Ian home. After they had sex, Devlin burst in and fought with Ian over her, but the two left after that--with Ian still alive. With nothing to link either the lawyer or Devlin to the scene, the CSIs are at a dead end, left to wonder if Ian and Justine were the victims of random violence. At Lady Heather's house, Grissom admits to Heather his real reason for coming to see her: a goodbye video message Sara sent him, claiming his "not making a decision" to leave Las Vegas with her was in fact "making a decision." Heather agrees with Sara's conclusion and offers to let Grissom stay with her.
S09E07 - Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
Janelle Rowe is found dead, her young daughter Nora injured but alive next to her. Brass tells Grissom that a neighbor heard shots and called the police. Janelle's husband, Peter, rushes in, but he tussles with the officers and is arrested. A .38 is found in his car, but Rowe insists he was using it for target practice. Back at the Rowes' house, Greg finds blood on the edge of the kitchen table and wonders if Nora hit her head on it. Greg discovers a spent round in a phone book on the shelf, and Riley notices the lock on the door has been forced. Brass asks Rowe about the three calls for domestic violence on his record and Rowe claims his wife was dramatic--but that he never laid a hand on her. Rowe's fingerprints ID him as Mark Redding, a suspect in a nine-year-old homicide of a private investigator named Trevor Murphy. Rowe says he's been getting death threats threatening that he'll "rot like Trevor rotted" and posits that someone is framing him for Janelle's murder. Brass brings Trevor's daughter, Kelsey, in for questioning; the e-mails to Rowe were sent from an e-mail account set up at her IP address. She angrily turns her computer over, but the e-mails are traced a halfway house where Kelsey's brother, Nathan, lives. Nathan admits to sending the e-mails and says he wants Mark dead, but he clams up and asks for a lawyer after Brass asks for an alibi. Rowe's gun isn't a match to the bullet that killed Janelle, but a gun Trevor Murphy used to take down a robber a year before his death is. On a surveillance camera at the hospital Nora was taken to, the CSIs spot Kelsey Murphy approaching Peter Rowe with something under her coat. The CSIs track her car through her GPS system and find her in the desert, aiming a gun at Rowe and forcing him to dig up the body of her father--and admit he killed him. Brass tries to talk her down, telling her Nora is going to be okay and saying he knows her murder of Janelle was an accident, but Kelsey aims the gun and fires several rounds into Peter. One of the officers with Brass fires at her, killing her.
Nick and Detective Cavaliere are at the scene of a car crash, where two young men, Chase Bowman and Max Poole, are dead, apparently killed when their car crashed into a tree. Nick immediately notices something is off when he finds splinters in Chase's wound--on the opposite side of the car from the tree. Chase's arm is also broken in a way that is incongruous with the car crash. Nick views footage from the car's internal computer showing him the five seconds before the airbags deployed, which reveals that the car swerved to avoid hitting something. Hodges confirms Nick's suspicion: the splinter in Chase's arm doesn't match the wood from the tree their car hit; the splinter is from a baseball bat, leading Nick to wonder if the boys were playing mailbox baseball. Nick and Hodges play a little mailbox baseball game of their own, trying to figure out how Chase broke his arm. Nick and Cavaliere retrace the boys' route and notice a brand new mailbox at one of the houses. They question the owner, Hal Jackmin, who says his old mailbox got smashed. Nick notices a concrete walkway with one stone out of place. He turns it over and finds a mailbox with a concrete center buried beneath. Jackmin tells Nick and Cavaliere that the boys destroyed four of his mailboxes before he decided to take matters into his own hands. Nick tells him that Chase hitting the concrete mailbox caused his arm to break, and the car to swerve, killing both boys. Jackmin tries to defend himself, but Nick has him arrested for two counts of negligent homicide.
Grissom receives a summons to testify in a hearing that will determine whether Natalie Davis, the miniature crime scene killer who nearly ended Sara's life, is mentally fit to be transferred from the psychiatric hospital she's been in to prison. Grissom observes Natalie respond to questions lucidly and clearly in the courtroom, and ADA Nichols arranges for Grissom to see the disturbed young woman. He visits her at the hospital, where she says she's unsurprised to see him. She asks if Sara is going to testify, and he tells her Sara has left the crime lab. Natalie apologizes for what she did to Sara. Grissom asks her if she truly feels that way or only thinks she should, and she insists she truly is sorry for what she's done. Grissom testifies, and when asked by the lawyer representing Natalie if he's there for revenge for what Natalie did to Sara, Grissom answers that he has no personal stake in the proceedings--he's trying to believe people can change even if they're damaged, but he doesn't know if they can. The verdict comes down: Natalie is fit to be transferred to prison. Grissom goes to see her as she's leaving the hospital and she tells him he's wrong about her: she's changed, and she believes people who do bad things need to be punished. After she leaves, Grissom finds a tile out of place on the floor and lifts it up to find a miniature of Natalie in prison garb hanging from a rope.
S09E08 - Young Man with a Horn
Layla Wells, one of the finalists in the Overnight Sensation reality TV talent contest, is found dead, wrapped in a table cloth outside the Palermo Hotel. Nick finds the Rancho Linen logo on the tablecloth, and Catherine notes that the company supplied all the old Vegas casinos back in the day. Dr. Robbins tells Grissom that Layla was killed by a blow to the abdomen just below her rib cage--and that she was eight weeks pregnant. The CSIs suspect Layla's fellow contestant and competitor, Kip Westerman, after surveillance footage from the Palermo hotel's camera reveals they left their rooms just after midnight. Kip and his overprotective father both defend Kip's innocence, and sure enough, the fetus's DNA is a match to Drew Rich, the show's executive producer. Drew tells the CSIs he offered to pay for an abortion, but denies killing the girl, claiming he was with a hooker at the time. Evidence that suggests both the lipstick Layla was wearing and the tablecloth she was found in was significantly aged leads Catherine and Nick to pull out a map of Las Vegas fifty years ago. The only casino still standing that was serviced by Rancho Linens is Le Chateau Rouge, Las Vegas's first desegregated hotel. Nick and Greg find trace from Layla's sweater and cart wheel marks similar to ones found near Layla's body. When they enter the rundown, closed hotel, they find fresh blood on the floor.
Grissom arrives at the scene and speaks with the owner, Karen Rosenthal, who tells him the hotel closed down fifty years ago after her husband, Jules, was murdered there. Catherine and Greg explore the dressing room, where they discover the dressing table of Layla's grandmother, Justine. While Grissom recovers a fresh bullet from the floor, Catherine finds Layla's cell phone and sees a video on it recorded just before the girl's death, which reveals her dancing for Kip before being surprised by a man behind the curtain with a saxophone. The man hasn't gone far; Grissom discovers him behind the same curtain, holding a gun. The man passes out from dehydration and is taken to the hospital. Kip tells Brass that Layla had wanted to see where her grandmother danced when she was a showgirl. After the man surprised them, Kip ran, assuming Layla had done the same. He searched for her for hours, but never found her. In the hospital room, the man won't give Grissom his name, but he claims to have murdered Layla.
Grissom is bothered by the 50-year-old Rosenthal murder; the print supposedly from the killer, Melchior Wilson, was lifted from an alligator skin wallet, but the texture of the print is inconsistent with the wallet's grooves. Nick matches the bullet from the gun to the one that killed Rosenthal. Grissom tracks down former Sheriff Claude Montgomery, who made the arrest. After a poker game with Montgomery and several other Vegas old timers, Grissom questions Montgomery, who deflects his questions. Back at the hotel, Catherine finds the fatal blow to the stomach that killed Layla was caused by a chair handle, indicating Layla ran into it in the darkness of the hotel. Her death was an accident. Riley identifies the man in the hospital as Harry Bastile, an African American saxophonist, using an old program from Le Chateau Rouge. Grissom asks Bastile why he moved Layla's body, and Bastile admits he didn't want anyone to discover him hiding out at Le Chateau Rouge. Grissom asks Karen Rosenthal to meet him at the hospital and tells her he thinks Melchior Wilson was framed for her husband's murder. He suspects Bastile is the real killer, but Karen admits the truth: she had been having an affair with Harry. When her husband caught them together, she shot him. She confessed to the murder, but the men in power in Las Vegas at the time forced the sheriff to arrest Melchior Wilson. A white woman could get away with murder, she tells Grissom, but not love a black man. Grissom meets Catherine on the strip and tells her he came to Vegas to win at cards. As an impecunious student, he chose science over his college love, but now he observes, it might be time to up the ante.