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Let It Bleed
Letitbleed
Season 9
Number 4
Writer Corinne Marinan
Director Brad Tanenbaum
Original Airdate October 30, 2008
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Previous Episode: Art Imitates Life
Next Episode: Leave Out All The Rest

Let It Bleed is the fourth episode in Season Nine of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Synopsis[]

Around Halloween, Nick retraces the steps of a convenience store robber who disguised himself as a cop when the suspect falls into a dumpster and dies. In a strange coincidence, his death exposes the murder of the daughter of a notorious drug lord.

Plot[]

On Halloween Eve, Nick and Riley are alerted by a broadcast that says that a liquor store has been robbed by a cop; it's the third such event of the night. As they pass another liquor store, the "cop" runs out with a bag of stolen merchandise and cash. Nick chases the perp into an abandoned hotel and eventually corners him. The perp jumps out the window and falls to his death below in a dumpster. Riley gets to the dumpster and finds another body, that of a female, under a broken mirror. The following day, Grissom, now on the scene, admonishes Nick for giving pursuit without backup. They find out that the perp robbed the convenience store for small bills, beef jerky, and a pornography magazine. Nick wonders if the other victim was a working girl who got mixed up with bad company.

Nick works the robbery case, while Grissom and Riley focus on the dead girl.

Victim: Angela Carlos (deceased)

On the case: Catherine Willows, Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Riley Adams, Louis Vartann

The dumpster is brought to the lab in its entirety. As the victim is mechanically lifted out of it, Nick spots a temporary tattoo on the body in the shape of a fish. The tattoo is a club stamp that is specific to the Dark Water Bar. Catherine and Riley visit the club, where Catherine finds her underage daughter Lindsey on the dance floor with a fake ID. It's found that their victim was working the VIP section; since she wasn't wearing a wristband, she entered the club through the back. They talk to the club owner, Craig Hess, but he doesn't recognize the victim.

Greg and Riley look through the club's surveillance footage and see their victim getting bounced by Craig four hours before her death, which is odd since she was a VIP. She started out upset, but had an instant attitude adjustment after her conversation with Craig. Meanwhile, Catherine and Grissom process the body and determine that the wounds from the glass are superficial and have nothing to do with her death; they also occurred postmortem. There are needle marks in both arms that appear to have been made recently, and Catherine finds a white powder in the victim's nose. Furthermore, the victim has hives near her stomach, a possible reaction from the drugs.

Det. Vartann interrupts and tells Grissom that their victim, identified as Angela Marie Carlos, is in the Homeland Security database. She was on a student visa from Colombia and was going to college in Utah. More importantly, her father, Juan Ramon Carlos, is a drug lord who is on several Top 10 Most Wanted lists. Juan has a sister in Henderson, and Grissom and Vartann pay her a visit. The sister, Emilina, tells them that she last saw Angela two months ago before she left for Utah and was unaware that she was back in town. Angela, she says, liked to party, something her father didn't approve of. Despite a lot of acquaintances, Angela had one true friend, Sylvie. Emilina tells Grissom that they can catch whoever killed Angela, but Juan will never forgive her.

Greg interrogates Sylvie and tells her that Angela is dead. Sylvie says that Angela took a road trip to Vegas for Halloween and was able to get them into the club because Craig was a family friend. However, a flashback shows Craig finding Angela in the club and kicking her out, concerned about his own safety. The two went their separate ways temporarily, but Sylvie says that she wasn't worried because "nobody touches Angela." Catherine and Riley head back to the club; there, Craig admits that he lied about knowing Angela, but says that he kicked her out as soon as he saw her. He feigns ignorance in regards to knowing who Angela's father is.

In autopsy, David Phillips finds a piece of glass embedded in Angela's scalp and determines that it was there perimortem. Doc Robbins shows Grissom something unusual—Angela's blood sample is hemolyzed, meaning that it has no separation between the blood cells and the serum. This is something usually only seen when a body is in advanced decomp. An unknown chemical imbalance caused the red blood cells to rupture, and the doc says that it could've been caused by a number of things, including anemia, a reaction to a blood transfusion, and even chemical warfare. Hives are associated with most of these causes.

Hodges informs Grissom that the white powder in Angela's nose isn't cocaine, but rather atropine, a stimulant which is often used to cut cocaine or meth. However, Angela's tox report came back negative for both. Atropine can also be used as a tranquilizer on fish and other animals, so Grissom wonders how it got into Angela's nose.

Greg runs Angela's phone records and gets a GPS hit on her cell phone. The signal is traced to a garbage truck, and Angela's purse is found inside of a garbage bag that's filled with broken, bloodied glass. Her phone is inside of her purse. Back in the lab, Riley lays out a map of the city and traces the garbage truck's route; however, she finds that the truck's route didn't take it past the bar, the location where Angela's body was found, or Craig's place of residence. Meanwhile, in the morgue, Wendy tells Doc Robbins that the blood sample recovered from Angela came back a mixture of one female and two male bloods. The blood appears to be contaminated, but neither party admits fault.

Doc Robbins and Wendy inform Grissom of the results and their subsequent findings. It's found that the blood stain on the glass pulled from Angela's wounds contained the same mixture of male and female blood, while the a tissue sample came back to only Angela. Doc Robbins says that the only way this could happen is if Angela received a blood transfusion from multiple donors with no medial necessity. Angela was B-negative, while one of the male donors was A-positive. The A-positive blood caused a major reaction with Angela's blood type, which Doc Robbins says was the cause of death. This would also explain the needle marks found on her arms, as well as the hives. Wendy notes that it's impossible to separate the two male donors from each another, which means that the DNA can't be run through CODIS. This leaves them with two unknown male suspects.

Hodges discovers that a piece of skin from Angela's purse is actually skin from a goldfish. Furthermore, he analyzed the glass from the garbage bag and Angela's scalp, took the pieces, and approximated their original shape—a fishbowl. Catherine questions Craig again because he has a huge fish tank in his club. He tells her that one of his guys, Goya, feeds his fish. This leads the team to a warehouse full of aquariums, which just happens to be on the garbage truck's route. Goya and his associate Joe are arrested when boxes full of "sand" turn out to have cocaine in them. In the warehouse, Riley comes across bottles of atropine and a bloody tube, while Catherine finds evidence of blood on a table in the office. The white substance on the glass turns out to be atropine, leading them to believe that Angela snorted it.

Under interrogation, both Goya and Joe lay out what happened—Angela came to them looking to score some drugs. While Joe went outside to get some pot, she found what she thought was cocaine and snorted it. However, it was atropine, and she immediately went into convulsions and smashed her head on a fishbowl. Joe called Goya, and when he arrived, Angela still had a pulse. They decided to perform a blood transfusion, believing in the urban legend that this is what keeps musician Keith Richards alive. When Goya added his blood to the transfusion, it ended up killing Angela. They then took the body and dumped in a dumpster near the Dark Water Bar, as they knew Craig sent her to the warehouse after kicking her out of his club.

Goya tells Catherine a story of a guy who was killed by Angela's father after he put her in harm's way, adding that he knew he was a dead man as soon as she walked into the warehouse. Sure enough, Grissom gets a call later in the night: Craig has been killed in his club, Goya and Joe had their throats slashed in prison, and Sylvie and Emilina have been shot execution-style.

Victim: Thomas Taylor (deceased)

On the case: Nick Stokes, Jim Brass

The gun the robber was carrying came back as unregistered and didn't have any prints on it. Nick and Brass process the robber's police uniform and see that it as a Reno city seal. Brass finds evidence that the uniform is real while everything else is fake; at some point, a real cop was wearing the uniform.

Nick questions Officer Brady, who is in town from Reno to testify on a case, which is why he brought his police uniform with him. He recounts that while walking through the Palermo, he was approached by a hooker who asked to wear his uniform. After a sexy night, he sent the uniform to the cleaners, but never got it back. The hotel had put the uniform on his door, but someone stole it.

Through his fingerprints, the dead robber/"dumpster diver" is identified as Thomas Taylor from Bakersfield, California, and he has a rap sheet. Brass calls Nick and tells him that Officer Brady has a Tower room at the Palermo, which takes a special key to access the elevators. Thomas was neither a guest nor an employee of the hotel, which makes them question how he was able to have access to the area. Nick questions how Thomas got his leather shoes and wonders if he rented them because was in town for a wedding or reunion.

Nick is able to find that a Barry Wunderlick rented a couple of tuxedos and a pair of patent leather shoes. Barry, who is also from Bakersfield, also rented the room across from Officer Brady in the Palermo and got two keys. As it turns out, Barry is already in jail, arrested three days before for a drunk and disorderly; he was unable to post bail. Barry explains to Nick and Brass that they were having a bachelor party at a club. They got scammed, which led to a fight, which led to Barry being put in jail. Thomas was tasked with working up some money to bail his friend out, and did so by stealing Officer Brady's uniform and holding up four liquor stores in one night. When asked, Barry explains that they rented tuxedos because his favorite movie is Casino Royale and he has a striking resemblance to the actor who plays James Bond (he does not).

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

Music[]

  • Sex Type Thing (Paul Edge Rework) by DJ Paul Edge/Stone Temple Pilots
  • Pity and Fear by Death Cab for Cutie

See Also[]

CSI:Las Vegas Season 9
For WarrickThe Happy PlaceArt Imitates LifeLet It BleedLeave Out All The RestSay UncleWoulda, Coulda, ShouldaYoung Man with a Horn19 Down...One to GoThe Grave ShiftDisarmed and DangerousDeep Fried and Minty FreshMiscarriage of JusticeKill Me If You CanTurn, Turn, TurnNo Way OutMascaraThe Descent of ManA Space OddityIf I Had a Hammer...The Gone Dead TrainHog HeavenAll In
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