Passed Pawns | |
Season | 14 |
Number | 6 |
Writer | Michael F.X. Daley, Christopher Barbour |
Director | Phil Conserva |
Original Airdate | October 30, 2013 |
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Previous Episode: Frame by Frame | |
Next Episode: Under a Cloud |
Passed Pawns is the sixth episode in Season Fourteen of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Synopsis[]
The CSI team investigates the death of a homeless man who had a huge winning streak at a small casino.
Plot[]
Victim: Jeremy Sikes (deceased)
On the case: D.B. Russell, Greg Sanders, Julie Finlay, Morgan Brody, Sara Sidle, Sean Yeager, Jim Brass
An unkempt man walks into a pawn shop and pawns his watch and ring. He receives $200 for the items, which he takes to a casino and starts playing blackjack with. Starting with the $200, the man goes on an unbelievable hot streak and wins over $350,000. When the dealers are switched, the man decides to stop playing. A pit boss offers to put him in a suite and come back later, but the man wants to cash out—now.
The next morning, the man lies dead in an alley. Morgan is photographing the crime scene when she's approached by CSI Sean Yeager from the day shift, who just happens to be one solved case away from becoming a Level 3 CSI. He wants Morgan to leave so he can take over the scene, but Russell shows up and has them work together while he's gone to pick up his wife from the airport.
Noting that the victim had wear pattern in his back pocket with no lump, Sean looks through nearby dumpsters for a wallet. David Phillips puts the time of death at 3:00 AM and observes that the man was stabbed in the back 12 times with a two-inch blade. Sean soon finds a suitcase covered in blood in the dumpster, but there's nothing inside of it. Morgan finds where the assault started and theorizes that the man was attacked from behind. The assailant grabbed then grabbed the briefcase and stole what was inside. Once the assailant saw that the victim was still alive, he dragged him out of sight and finished him off. Morgan spots blood on the victim's hand and under his fingernails; when she lifts the hand, she sees that the letters D and E are written in blood on the ground. She suspects that the man may have been trying to identify the killer.
In autopsy, Doc Robbins pulls a metal fragment from one of the victim's wound tracts; it's possible it's from the murder weapon. The doc looks at the pattern of the wounds and swears that he's seen something similar before. He and Greg observe that the two wounds in the middle of the back are deeper and wider than the others, almost as if the killer twisted the blade. With the possibility that this could be a signature, Greg offers to look through some other case files.
While processing the victim's clothes, Morgan finds a bloodied ticket from the pawn shop. She and Sean go to the shop, first speaking to the owner, Ruby, then to her two sons, Kyle and Zeke. While Kyle is unhelpful, Zeke is able to remember everything about the victim, including what he was wearing, what he pawned, and what his address was. Zeke also remembers the victim's name: Jeremy Sikes. Before leaving, the CSIs take the watch and ring as evidence.
Finn and Russell review the surveillance footage from the casino, watching Jeremy's insane run at the blackjack table. They also spot the metal briefcase that was later found in the dumpster. Because Jeremy's betting pattern was off, the casino suspected that the dealer, Kristi Holt, was colluding with him. Finn thinks that Kristi killed Jeremy and took his money, but Russell notes that anyone in the crowd at the blackjack table could've done the same thing. She's convinced Jeremy was cheating and she also believes that the "DE" written in blood could be the start of the word "DEALER." Morgan finds a connection between Jeremy and Kristi: the watch that Jeremy pawned belonged to Kristi's late husband, who was murdered two months ago. The theory is that Kristi hired Jeremy to kill her husband; two months later, the duo went in on another scheme, which ended up with Jeremy getting killed.
Morgan and Sean pull the case file on the murder of Simon Holt, Kristi's husband; the case is still open. As the story goes, on the night of the murder, the two arrived home around midnight. While Kristi went upstairs to bed, Simon stayed downstairs and watched television. Suddenly, two shots rang out; Simon was found soon found dead and the house was ransacked. The CSIs disagree on whether there's a connection between Jeremy and Kristi or whether it's all just a coincidence. Sean says that there's still one person alive who can answer such a question: Kristi.
Kristi is found hiding under a bed in a motel room and brought to the station for questioning. In interrogation, she says there was no cheating the night Jeremy won all his money. Brass shows her a picture of Jeremy's body followed by Simon's. He asks her to tell the truth, but she sticks with the story that Simon was killed during a burglary. Brass reveals that Jeremy pawned Simon's watch, enabling him to start his winning streak at the blackjack table. From this, Kristi believes that Jeremy was the one who broke into the house and killed her husband. Brass then makes mention of the fact that Kristi never listed the stolen watch in the police reports; however, she didn't forget about the insurance money. Kristi once again denies cheating, saying that when she was found, she was hiding from the "old-school guys" at the casino. She denies killing Jeremy and tells Brass to check the cards and the shuffler used during the game.
Hodges and Henry process everything at the blackjack table, but find no evidence of tampering. Meanwhile, Finn gets security footage of Kristi being interrogated by her pit boss, Bobby Esposito, after she was relieved of her dealing duties. Kristi was questioned for over four hours, and the time code puts her in the room at the time Jeremy was murdered. The focus shifts back to one of the people in the crowd who were watching Jeremy during his winning streak. While looking at the security tape, Morgan spots a man talking to Bobby, and she recalls seeing him somewhere else.
She remembers seeing the man in question on the surveillance video from the pawn shop. In the video, the man, identified as casino employee Alonzo Pierce, is seen pawning off a turntable and two speakers at 3:38 AM. When Zeke brings the items out, Morgan works on a hunch and guesses that one of the speakers doesn't work. She opens it and finds approximately $350,000 in cash stashed inside. The theory is that someone left the money at the pawn shop instead of a bank so that they could avoid a murder charge. They then come back later for it.
Alonzo is in the wind, as there was no answer at his apartment and he never showed up for work. His car is found in the apartment complex's parking garage; someone is loading something into the trunk while brandishing a gun. When the police confront the man, they find that it's actually Bobby. While Bobby is being detained, Alonzo's body is found in the trunk of the car. Bobby quips that nobody steals from his casino.
In interrogation, Bobby tells Brass that he knew something was going on between Jeremy and Kristi; he's seen people cheat and there's no way Jeremy could've done it alone. He claims that he didn't tell Alonzo to kill Jeremy, just get the money back and "put the healthy fear of God in him." Alonzo's alleged story is that he did just that, taking the money and putting it away for safe keeping. Bobby's assumption is that Alonzo lied and tried to steal the money, which is why Bobby killed him. He adds that he would've killed Alonzo anyway because he stole from the house. His confession now complete, he asks Brass for a favor: send him to the prison in Carson City so he can be incarcerated with the "old boys" of old Vegas, who used to run the town a different way.
In the break room, Morgan looks over photos from Jeremy's crime scene, the casino, and the pawn shop, Sara enters and focuses on the timestamps on the photos. She notes that Alonzo was wearing the same outfit in both the casino and the pawn shop. If he's the one who stabbed Jeremy 12 times, he would have blood all over his clothes when he went to the pawn shop; however, his clothes appear to be spotless. Alonzo isn't the one who killed Jeremy and the case is still open.
Greg tells Morgan that the metal fragment pulled from Jeremy's wound tract was actually part of a bullet. As it turns out, Jeremy was actually shot twice; the two wounds in the middle of the back are deeper and wider because the shooter tried to dig the bullets out. The killer then stabbed Jeremy ten more times in an effort to throw the police off. Doc Robbins' hunch was also correct; a murder from two years ago involved the same stab pattern. Back then, a drug informant with ties to the Mala Noche drug cartel was murdered, and the person of interest was a Luis Delgado. Morgan figures that the "DE" written in blood was Jeremy trying to spell out the name "DELGADO." Buy why would a big-time gangster waste time with someone like Jeremy? Greg reveals that about a month ago, Luis walked in on a robbery in his house. Luis was shot in the process, and the thought is that Jeremy was the robber. Greg shows Morgan a DEA photo of Luis; in it, Luis is wearing the same ring that Jeremy pawned.
Brass finds Luis at the strip club he owns. He shows Luis that Jeremy is dead and had pawned his ring. When told that Jeremy was killed two nights ago, Luis replies that he was staying with his sick mother at the time. DEA surveillance confirms Luis' story.
Back at the office, Russell questions whether Luis got one of his associates to murder Jeremy; however, Finn informs him that Luis is more of a "hands-on" kind of guy. She guesses that they have the right motive, but the wrong person. Since two people reported Jeremy breaking into their houses, she thinks there may be other homeowners who were robbed. It's possible one of them saw Jeremy in the alley and killed him in an act of revenge. Russell agrees with the thought and has every item Jeremy pawned for cash brought back to the lab for processing.
Twenty-two items are recovered from the pawn shop; all of them were pawned by Jeremy in the past six months. Every item can forensically be traced back to five robberies, including the ones at Kristi's and Luis' houses. In all five cases, the homeowners walked in on the robbery in progress. Four of them were shot to death, with Luis being the only survivor. The team guesses that the robberies were cover stories, as every pawned item was left off of the owners' insurance claims. They agree that the items were payments for services rendered, and that Jeremy was murdered because he became a liability thanks to his gambling addiction. The broker who hired Jeremy killed him and pinned the murder on Luis; however, the broker's identity still remains a mystery.
Kristi is questioned once again and shown about $5,000 worth of her items that she forgot to report. One of the items is a bracelet given to her husband by another woman. Russell hypothesizes that Kristi found out that Simon was cheating, or maybe he was beating her. She may have tried to make a final stand against Simon for what he did to her. Kristi tearfully admits that someone gave her the e-mail address of a broker who gave her instructions to follow and a list of items to leave off the police report to pay the hitman with. The fact that Jeremy happened to sit at her blackjack table and go on an insane winning streak was a coincidence. She paid her $5,000 up front and set up a meet—at a pawn shop. Kristi says that the broker is an older woman. Just then, Russell gets a call that someone shot up the pawn shop.
When Morgan and Sean arrive at the scene, they find Kyle shot to death and his mother in hysterics. The perpetrators also took Zeke. Ruby denies her involvement with everything, saying that Luis Delgado is responsible for Jeremy's death. However, when faced with Zeke's fate, she admits that she killed Jeremy and framed Luis; her sons knew nothing about her side business. Jeremy had stolen a cigar box from Luis that ended up containing $100,000 in heroin. Unbeknownst to Luis' guys, Ruby sold the drugs to someone else. Wanting to protect his mother, Zeke lied to the men and offered to take them to where the drugs supposedly are. When Luis finds out that he's been lied to, he's going to kill Zeke.
Brass goes back to Luis' strip club and asks him where Zeke is. He also reveals that the drugs are gone and that Zeke knows nothing. When threatened with some of Luis' armed bodyguards, Brass shoots one of them in the knee to make Luis talk and return Zeke.
At the police station, a bruised Zeke is led by a police officer past Morgan and Sean. Morgan congratulates Sean on closing the case, but he tells to take the credit, as she earned it. Before parting ways, the two promise to see each other around.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Ted Danson as D.B. Russell
- Elisabeth Shue as Julie Finlay
- George Eads as Nick Stokes (credited only)
- Jorja Fox as Sara Sidle
- Eric Szmanda as Greg Sanders
- Robert David Hall as Dr. Al Robbins
- David Berman as David Phillips
- Wallace Langham as David Hodges
- Elisabeth Harnois as Morgan Brody
- Jon Wellner as Henry Andrews
- Paul Guilfoyle as Jim Brass
Guest Cast[]
- Matt Davis as Sean Yeager
- Illeana Douglas as Ruby Banks
- Shannon Lucio as Kristi Holt
- Steven Bauer as Bobby Esposito
- Max Adler as Kyle Banks
- Harrison Thomas as Zeke Banks
- Jason Manuel Olazabal as Luis Delgado
- Larry Sullivan as Officer Akers
- Peri Gilpin as Barbara Russell
- Eric Frentzel as Jeremy Sikes
- Meli Alexander as Homeless Outreach Worker (uncredited)
- Anne McDaniels as Pole Dancer Svetlana (uncredited)
- Cassandra Starr as Pole Dancer Jessica (uncredited)
Music[]
- Who Do You Love? by George Thorogood & The Destroyers
- Query by Rene LaVice
- Dear Father by Black Sabbath
Notes[]
- George Eads (Nick) is credited but does not appear in the episode.
- Greg mentions the Mala Noche, a gang operating out of Miami. The gang and it's leader, Memmo Fierro, were the focus of several investigations in CSI: Miami.
See Also[]
- List of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episodes
- CSI:Crime Scene Investigation Season 14
- Category:Images from Passed Pawns
CSI:Las Vegas Season 14 | ||
The Devil and D.B. Russell • Take the Money and Run • Torch Song • Last Supper • Frame by Frame • Passed Pawns • Under a Cloud • Helpless • Check In and Check Out • Girls Gone Wild • Lost Reindeer • Keep Calm and Carry On • Boston Brakes • De Los Muertos • Love for Sale • Killer Moves • Long Road Home • Uninvited • The Fallen • Consumed • Kitty • Dead In His Tracks |