CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 7 - Episode 23 - The Good, The Bad & The Dominatrix

Teleplay by Jacqueline Hoyt
Directed by Alex Smight
Special Guest Stars :
Wallace Langham as “David Hodges”
Melina Clarke as “Lady Heather

Lady Heather is being strangled to death over and old-time player piano in a saloon at Oakley’s Old West Town.  The mysterious cowboy pulls the rope tighter and tighter until she loses consciousness.  Catherine and Brass come to investigate the apparent crime.  Heather is still alive, but barely conscious.  Catherine finds some moist tobacco spit on the exterior of one of the windows.  They interview Vernon Porter, the night watchman who found her and called the authorities- he’s chewing tobacco.  As Catherine and Sara process the scene Catherine hints that Grissom and Heather may have had an “intimate” past.  Sara and Brass go to interview Heather at the hospital.  She has refused the rape kit, and is not willing to identify her “client.”  Grissom goes to the hospital to try to help her, but she passes out in a diabetic shock.  Brass interviews the owners of Old West Town, Jack Oakley and his son Benjamin.  Benjamin admits to renting the saloon out to Lady Heather and letting her in, but not ever seeing the client.  Catherine and Brass find out that Vernon Porter was fired from Chicago PD for a bar fight and putting a woman in the hospital and realize he could be a witness at the window or the assailant.  They go back to Old Town to interview him, but find his body in the street- shot in the back.  Catherine finds another slug inside the saloon- but from a different gun.  Brass determines that Vernon and Lady Heather knew each other by evidence of cell phone conversations. When Catherine, Sara and Brass go to Lady Heather’s dominion to confront her they find she has an alibi – Grissom.  He has been at her home all night.  Grissom swears he was only there to help his friend.  Catherine, Sara and Brass quickly piece together that Benjamin Oakley fired one of the guns.  Brass sweats Benjamin who finally confesses that Vernon was blackmailing him for $50k, but couldn’t pay him because his father had taken nearly $1 million out of their bank account.  Benjamin was going to kill his father, but his father shot Vernon first.  Grissom does further digging to find that Lady Heather has a granddaughter who is now under the custody of Lady Heather’s first husband, Jerome Kessler.  Grissom establishes that Lady Heather set up a trust fund for the young girl in the amount of nearly $1 million dollars in the last few days.  Why did Vernon pay her that money?  Can Grissom get to Lady Heather in time to find out?

 Meanwhile, across town, Faith Maroney’s body is found on a street corner.  Nick and Warrick find her skull fractured and small flakes of yellow and black paint embedded in her skin. Other paint chips at the scene turn out not to match those in the victim.  The girl’s purse is overflowing with stolen wallets, random items and receipts.  Doc Robbins quickly establishes the head fracture as the cause of death, but her body has no other signs of being run over.  Hodges manages to identify the paint chips as from autos made by Ford.  Nick and Warrick begin to piece together the trail from her restaurant receipts.  It turns out the Host of a Steakhouse saw her get into a Friendly City Cab after two cabbies fought over her as a fare.  They find the cab apparently responsible, but it has fresh collision marks with paint chips that match those found at the scene.  When they examine the cameras inside the cabs they find images of the girl in the cab and another cab ramming them.  Nick and Warrick must now decipher why the cabbies were fighting and how the girl ended up dead.