CSI: Vegas - Episode 9.08 “Young Man with a Horn” Recap

CSI: Vegas - Episode 9.08 - Young Man With A Horn
Air Date: December 4, 2008

A man and woman sing a duet in rehearsal for the show “Overnight Sensation” –an obvious take on American Idol. The producer gruffly stops them, complaining that the young man is lazy and insufficiently emotive. The man’s father rushes from offstage to defend his son. The producer reprimands the father and warns the Layla that she was flat. They resume singing. When the producer shouts over Layla’s singing, telling her to watch her pitch, she rushes off the stage, crying. At the producer’s order, the man continues singing.

Below a highway overpass, Catherine and Phillips examine what looks like a tablecloth rolled up like a handled sack. Cutting through the cloth, they find a woman’s face –it’s Layla Wells.

Wells had been wrapped up in the bundle, clothed in just her lingerie, hinting at sexual assault. Dr. Robbins notes the time of death is between 2 and 4 AM.

(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Brass questions producer Drew Rich. Rich informs him that Layla had gone to her room, and told her chaperone, at midnight, that she was going to bed. He also tells Brass that Layla was an emancipated minor. The chaperone had gone to the casino to gamble after midnight. Hearing Kips’s father tell Kip that Layla’s death means that he won, Rich corrects him, calling up the most recent cast-off, from the semi-finals, to compete against Kip in the show finale.

Catherine and Stokes examine the tablecloth that Layla was wrapped in. Stokes finds the imprint from the room service company that services the casinos. Catherine notes that circles from drink condensation indicates that it hasn’t been washed for quite some time.

At the dump scene, Riley and Greg find blood drops and wheel tracks with an 11″ wheel spacing. Greg adds that they could be from a shopping cart, except that they’re missing the second, wider tracks from a cart’s rear wheels. Riley remarks on the fact that the area surrounding the underpass is teeming with homeless men with shopping carts.

Dr. Robbins notes that blunt force trauma to the abdomen was the cause of death. He adds that the impact is where the liver would rest while the victim was standing. He tells Catherine that he found no signs of sexual assault, but she was about eight weeks pregnant. She wonders if that’s the motive.

Brass and Stokes visit Layla’s room in the Palermo. Stokes reads the keycard record showing that Layla’s card was used to enter the room at 7:12 PM, right after she left the rehearsal. She had made calls to Drew Rich and to her chaperone. The chaperone was up all night at a progressive slot machine. Nick checks her web browser history. She had looked up several abortion clinics, around 8PM, followed by a series of adoption agencies.

Hodges and Archie look at web tabloid articles embellishing upon the “news” that Kip and Layla had been cavorting after hours. Hodges shows no respect for the show, but mentions that he and thousands of other men had voted for Ajaya, helping him make it to the semi-finals. Archie shows him surveillance footage of Drew Rich getting in the elevator just before midnight, followed by Layla, a few minutes later, and Kip, two minutes after that.

Brass questions Kip Westerman and his father. He dismisses Kip, and addresses the belligerent Mr. Westerman. Brass lays out his theory that Westerman left the Navy and mortgaged his home to support Kip. He concludes that he’d be wiped out if Kip lost, giving him motive to have killed Layla.

Simms shows Catherine that Kip’s DNA didn’t match the baby’s. She did find a CODIS match on a Marvin Flick, who had been charged in North Carolina in 2002 for having relations with a 15 year old. The mug shot, though, revealed that Flick is Drew Rich. The girl changed her story, letting Flick go free.

Brass interrupts Rich, who is editing the finale’s dedication to Layla. The video includes mention of Layla’s showgirl grandmother. Rich claims that Layla agreed to his paying for an abortion, but only to have it if she won the competition. He refused to be blackmailed, but says he didn’t kill her. Brass tells Rich that they have record of his leaving the Palermo at midnight, then using his credit card, 20 minutes later, at the Blue Madonna motel, just three blocks from where Layla’s body was found. Rich claims he was with a hooker. An officer takes him into custody.

Hodges tells Grissom that Layla’s lipstick contained spermaceti, a waxy liquid found in sperm whales’ heads. This, along with asbestos found in the tablecloth, hadn’t been used for decades. Layla’s belongings didn’t include lipstick with spermaceti.

Catherine and Stokes examine a map of Vegas from the 1950s. They notice one casino on the west side, near where Layla was found, that was closed but not torn down –Le Chateau Rouge.

Stokes and Greg visit Le Chateau Rouge. As they walk through, they talk about its being the first integrated casino, and all the big names that once performed there. Greg finds tracks similar to those he found at the scene, with the same 11″ spacing. Stokes finds pink fuzz on a chainlink wire, similar to the material in the sweater that Layla was wearing when she left the Palermo. Inside, Greg finds a cart that seems to match the tracks. Stokes finds the only table in the place that’s missing its tablecloth. He finds latent blood in an apparent track on the table.

When Grissom arrives at Le Chateau Rouge, he is curious about a classic limo. The passenger is Karen Rosenthal, the building’s owner. She invites Grissom into her car, and tells him about the casino. Her husband, Jules, was murdered inside. She says she never set foot inside, since that night. She tells Grissom that she didn’t sell the building because she knew the new owner would tear it down.

In the showgirls’ dressing room, Catherine finds recent footprints. One vanity is marked “Jasmine” –the name of Layla’s grandmother. Examining a lipstick from the vanity, she comments that Layla must have been trying to connect “with her roots.”

Grissom finds a bullet in the casino floor. Stokes finds Layla’s cellphone. The last activity on the phone was the camera. They play the last video that features Layla, clad in a costume from her grandmother’s dressing area, and matching the one Jasmine was wearing in the photo from the tribute video. Kip must have been holding the camera and a light. In the video, Layla is frightened by the sudden appearance of a saxophonist entering the stage. Grissom appears to hear something. He walks over and opens a curtain, revealing an elderly man (Bill Cobbs), holding a revolver down at his side. The man passes out and drops to the floor.

In Desert Palm Hospital, Grissom tells the man that he’s in custody, and being treated for dehydration and malnutrition.

Kip tells Brass that he cared about and loved Layla. He had searched online, and found out that her grandmother had performed at Le Chateau Rouge. He took her there, and she insisted they go inside. She peeled the fence open, and found an open door. Finding her grandmother’s vanity and costume, she put it on.

The man from Le Chateau Rouge tells Grissom that they were making sweet music. He says that Kip was jealous, and came at him, pushing Layla down. The sax player fired a shot and missed, then Kip fled alone.

Kip tells Brass that, although he left Layla inside, he went back and looked all over for her, but didn’t find her.

When Grissom tells the saxophoist that a girl is dead, he responds, “You got me.”

Back in the lab, Grissom looks over a documentary, case files, and clippings all covering the end of Le Chateau Rouge, and the murder of Jules Rosenthal. Despite rumors that it was a mob hit, Rosenthal’s employee Melchior Wilson was tried and convicted for the murder. Grissom tells Catherine that Wilson died in prison. Stokes matched the old man’s gun to the one from the Rosenthal murder. Grissom says that the sheriff, in the 1958 murder case, had lifted Wilson’s print from Rosenthal’s alligator wallet. Grissom demonstrates, with Hodges’ help, that his own print from an alligator wallet has massive voids from the skin’s texture. The one from the original case, supposedly from the same type wallet, was a perfectly clean print. He deduces that Wilson was framed, having probably had his print lifted from any number of places in the casino, since he was a musician there.

Grissom finds Sheriff Montgomery in a poker game. Montgomery says he’ll talk to him about the Rosenthal case, but only if Grissom beats him in a hand. Grissom wins the wager. Montgomery swears by his “evidence”, but Grissom is persistent. He knows the sheriff was part of the cover-up, and challenges him with the issue of the voids from the alligator skin. When Grissom shows him a photo of the saxophist, Montgomery quickly dismisses the pertinence of his fifty year old murder case, turns, and briskly leaves.

Back at Le Chateau Rouge, Catherine finds fibers from the costume on a chair. Stokes comments that the pattern on the arm of the chair matches Layla’s bruise. They deduce that she ran across the floor, and fell down, striking the arm of the chair. So, it looks like an accident. They wonder, then, why did the old man confess.

Riley shows Greg that there are two saxophonists on the brochure from Le Chateau Rouge, besides Melchior Wilson. The other two, Harry Bastille and Stanley Brown, seemed to fall off the face of the earth after 1958. The computer matches the old man’s face, though, to that of Harry Bastille.

Grissom asks Bastille why he confessed, when Layla’s death was an accident, and why he didn’t report it. Bastille says he wanted to keep people out of his place. He says it was the last place he was ever happy. Mrs. Rosenthal comes to the hospital, and says the man isn’t Harry Bastille. Grissom follows her into the hallway, and tells her that the man is Harry Rosenthal. She wonders why he asked her, to which he responds that that man is her husband’s murderer. Grissom tells her that the champagne she was drinking in her car is the same kind found on the floor near where her husband was murdered. She confesses that she met with Bastille after the last show, that night. Rosenthal entered the dressing room, and pulled a gun. Karen Rosenthal lept at her husband, and the gun dropped. She picked it up and shot her husband, before he could attack Bastille. He wanted to say it was him that pulled the trigger, but she didn’t want that to happen. She confessed, but “the town was very different then.” The town leaders convinced the sheriff to go after Melchior Wilson.

Walking down the street at night, Catherine asks Grissom about his coming to Vegas. She tells him that he has a good thing, now, including a “family” –at least, a work family. He answers, “Maybe it’s time to up the ante.”

Notice how much less time Grissom spends in each episode this year. His time, this episode, is near the end, and seemingly just as further insight into his upcoming departure.