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Who and What
Who and What
Season 8
Number 6
Writer Richard Catalani
Director Danny Cannon
Original Airdate November 8, 2007
Navigation
Previous Episode: The Chick Chop Flick Shop
Next Episode: Where and Why

Who and What is the sixth episode in Season Eight of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Synopsis[]

Grissom and the team join forces with New York FBI agent Jack Malone, when a boy who went missing years earlier appears to have been murdered in Nevada.

Plot[]

Victims: Carmen Davis and Evan Michaels (both deceased)

On the case: Catherine Willows, Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Nick Stokes, Warrick Brown, Jim Brass, Jack Malone (FBI)

A woman, Carmen Davis, is playing a dice game with a disinterested young boy. After being rebuffed at her offer of another game, she takes her glass of wine into the bathroom and draws a bath, leaving the boy to watch television by himself in the living room. A nearby train shakes the house. While bathing, Carmen hears several thumps come from the living room. She then watches the bathroom doorknob turn slowly; the door opens slowly and a bloody hand grabs the door frame. She lets out a scream while being bludgeoned to death with a hammer.

Grissom arrives on the scene, somewhat surprised to see David Phillips and a fellow coroner waiting outside. Inside, Greg and Catherine tell Grissom that they began processing the scene because David was occupied on another case. When she sent the bloody palm print from the door frame to the lab, it came back unknown; however, it got a hit in the the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) database. She then got a call to stop processing the scene by order of the FBI.

FBI agent Jack Malone arrives soon thereafter via helicopter. The hit on the palm print echoes a New York kidnapping case six years back where a boy was taken from his home and his babysitter was murdered. He had been missing ever since. The only evidence at the first scene was a bloody palm print, echoing the current case.

There's a sleeping bag in the living room and, according to neighbors, Carmen lived alone; it seems that the boy was a house guest. Grissom looks over the boy's body and finds evidence that he may have hit his head on the corner of the living room table. Jack believes the boy's head was slammed into the table, but Grissom says that the evidence doesn't support this notion yet. Grissom also tape lifts a white powdery substance from the boy's shirt collar. In the kitchen, Carmen's keys are still in her purse, while her wallet has been emptied. Her credit cards are stacked on the table and they've been wiped clean to remove fingerprints. Jack comments that six years ago, the killer used a weapon of convenience (a baseball bat); here, the CSIs believe the weapon is a hammer. In the bathroom, Jack sees that Carmen's body is covered, suggesting that the killer knew her and showed remorse. Catherine believes that the killer was staying in the house, as there are two travel toothbrushes (three total) in the bathroom.

In autopsy, Doc Robbins informs Catherine that the blows to Carmen's head came roughly a half hour apart; evidence also shows that she was raped. Jack fills the CSIs in on the details of the original case—four-year-old Jason Taylor was staying in his babysitter's apartment when a male intruder broke in through a window, killed the babysitter with a baseball bat, and kidnapped Jason. The only evidence he left behind was a bloody palm print on the window frame. Nothing was stolen from the apartment and the babysitter wasn't raped. Catherine theorizes that, now, as a ten-year-old, Jason started asking the wrong questions and had to be silenced. Jason had been adopted as an infant, but there was no way for Jack's team to track down the birth parents. There were also no ransom demands for Jason's return.

Back at Carmen's house, Greg discovers that Carmen's jewelry box is empty; however, every photo in the house shows her wearing some. Meanwhile, Warrick finds a printout of poker players' stats and evidence on a laptop that someone was playing online poker. Since Carmen doesn't seem to be the gambling type, their killer may be the mystery card shark. The number 273 is highlighted on a printout for a poker tournament at Planet Hollywood. Warrick and Jack head to the casino and find player #273. When confronted, the man runs, eventually getting elbowed in the face by Jack.

Under interrogation, the man, Tom Michaels, admits to Jack that he took something that didn't belong to him. Jack falsely believes that this is a confession to kidnapping and slams Tom's head onto the table. When presented with the photograph of the deceased young boy, Tom says that the boy is his son, Evan. They eventually find out that Tom, a Mormon from Utah, stole money from his church in order to enter a poker tournament. He took his son with him and left him with Carmen, his ex-girlfriend. While he was playing cards, they were both murdered.

Wendy informs Grissom and Jack that Carmen's sexual assault kit came back with two donors—one is Tom, while the other is an unidentified male who is connected to two other unsolved rape-murders in Wyoming and Idaho. The two female victims appear to have nothing in common, and Jack believes that there are more rape-murders that they haven't come across yet.

On his way to the morgue, Jack is stopped by Hodges and informed that the white substance on Evan's shirt is commercial grade fertilizer. In the morgue, Jack apologizes to Tom, telling him that the same person who killed his son kidnapped another boy six years earlier. Jack says that this is the closest he's come to catching the kidnapper and tells Tom that he'll do everything he can to catch him; this is met with skepticism from Tom.

The stolen jewelry from Carmen's house is found in a local pawn shop. The owner remembers dealing with the suspect and hands over some grainy black-and-white surveillance photos. He also remembers that he gave the man directions to the Tangiers, from whom Brass retrieves surveillance videos. In the A/V lab, Archie finds their suspect at one of the poker tables; he's wearing a Hargreen Harvest hat. Jack connects the hat with the fertilizer found on Evan's body.

In the town of Boulder City, kids are playing soccer in the street while a train horn blows in the distance. When one kid goes to retrieve an errant ball, he finds a bloodied man asking for help. The man lives nearby with his wife; inside the house, the wife is found bludgeoned to death in the living room with a blanket covering most of the body. A hammer (presumably the one from the first crime scene) is found near the body, while an empty gun case is found on the kitchen counter. Also in the kitchen are two stacks of credit cards and driver's licenses, similar to what was found in Carmen's kitchen. The preliminary hypothesis is that the killer lost his money at the Tangiers and had to kill someone else to get more. Doc Robbins informs Grissom and Sara that the woman's husband died at the hospital. Sara becomes disturbed when told that the husband was likely in the house while his wife was being raped and killed.

While consoling Sara outside, Grissom hears a train horn and makes his way to the nearby tracks. When Jack calls, Grissom tells him that both crime scenes have train traffic nearby. He believes the killer is riding the rails, as freight trains are known to carry fertilizer in bulk. It's discovered that all of the previous murders were committed within one mile of an active railroad spur. There are also a dozen other cases with a similar M.O.

Archie and Nick continue to review the surveillance tapes from the Tangiers, but are never able to get a good look at their suspect. The man is shown getting up from the table after losing his money, stopping at a nearby poster of a girl, and using the payphone nearby. Nick finds out that the man dialed Information to get the phone number of the girl in the poster, only to find out that the number is unlisted. The girl's name is Gina Farentino, a cocktail waitress at a casino in Boulder City.

At the casino, the floor manager tells Nick and Jack that the still unidentified man won $2,500 on the slot machine and started flirting with Gina. A flashback shows that she appeared to know the mystery man and rebuffed his advances. After getting turned away, he cashed out and left the casino. Because he won so much money, the man had to fill out a W2-G form; Nick is able to lift a print from it. Meanwhile, Gina's car is pulled over on a desert highway. On his way to the front of the vehicle, the state trooper waves at someone inside. When the trooper asks for the driver's license and registration, the man shoots him dead and drives off; Gina is nowhere in sight.

Jack watches the officer's dashboard camera and sees him wave at someone that was in the car. Grissom finds a shell casing on the ground consistent with the gun taken from the double murder in Boulder City. Catherine calls Grissom and informs him that the print recovered from the W2-G form belongs to Terry Lee Wicker, who had served two years in prison for burglary. He was released four months before the first kidnapping took place, and it's revealed that Gina is his ex-wife. Grissom asks where the nearest railroad spur to the location is; he and Jack head there to find Terry.

Gina's car is found abandoned at the station yard as several trains move through. Grissom and Jack board a passenger train and eventually come across a man in a green baseball cap. The man tells them that someone gave him $100 to wear the cap and get on the train. They make their way back to Gina's car and find her body in the trunk. Brass calls Grissom and informs him that Gina was supposed to pick her son Kobe up from school and never showed. Someone matching Terry's description came instead and was driving Gina's car. The school principal says that Kobe seemed to recognize Terry. Upon finding a handheld game and a juice box in the back of the car, Grissom realizes that the state trooper was waving at Kobe, who was sitting in the back seat. Grissom remembers that the kid from the original kidnapping was adopted when he was six years old and that his birth parents were unknown. They figure out that Terry tracked down his ex-wife and took back his son.

Terry and Kobe are shown on a bus on their way to an unknown location. Terry sings softly while Kobe sleeps in the seat next to him.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

  • Liz Vassey as Wendy Simms
  • Archie Kao as Archie Johnson
  • David Berman as David Phillips
  • Anthony LaPaglia as Jack Malone
  • Denis O'Hare as Tom Michaels
  • John Hawkes as Terry Lee Wicker
  • Nathan Gamble as Kobe Farentino
  • Anthony Ruivivar as Det. Ruben Bejarano
  • Kim Beuche as Carmen Davis
  • Muse Watson as Station Yard Controller
  • Nicole Cannon as Floor Manager
  • Dig Wayne as Paul Fournier
  • Sarah Danielle Madison as Gina Farentino
  • Jasper Cole as Hobo
  • Tom Katsis as Bloody Man
  • A.J. Noel as Soccer Player
  • Auragizela Shaarawy as Babysitter
  • Ben Skorstad as Chopper Pilot
  • Brett Coker as Evan Michaels

Music[]

  • Who Done It by Jackie Mittoo

Quotes[]

Hodges: Sir, can I ask you something? What's it like on the federal level? You know, pay, working conditions...
Jack Malone: You want my honest opinion? There's a lot less competition in Vegas for a guy like you. The FBI has enough ass-kissers already.

Notes[]

  • Grissom's (and Sara's) dog is named Hank.
  • Sara's distressed reaction at the double murder in Boulder City seems to hint at her decision to leave in Goodbye and Good Luck.

Trivia[]

  • The crossover between CSI and Without a Trace aired together in the Czech Republic. Season Six of Without a Trace aired 15 months before Season Eight of CSI, and airing of the Without a Trace episode Where and Why was held until this episode was on schedule.
  • The conclusion of this episode aired as the Without A Trace sixth season episode Where and Why, which aired immediately after this episode and featured Grissom traveling to New York. Previously, CSI had aired a crossover with the CSI:Miami backdoor pilot, Cross Jurisdictions.

See Also[]

CSI:Las Vegas Season 8
Dead DollA La CartGo to HellThe Case of the Cross-Dressing Carp The Chick Chop Flick ShopWho and WhatWhere and WhyGoodbye and Good LuckYou Kill MeCockroachesLying Down With DogsBullGrissom's Divine ComedyA Thousand Days On EarthDrops OutThe Theory of EverythingTwo And A Half DeathsFor Gedda
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