Sunday’s episode of CSI opened with a young woman partying at a club. She drinks a lot of alcohol, takes drugs, and also dances around with men and women. The next time we see her, she is floating in a pool with only her bra and underwear on. Investigators pull her out of the water the next day as David waits to examine her while Nick and Greg go through the scene. There is no ID, but Nick spots the club bracelets on her wrist and asks Greg for his UV light. Seeing a stamp on her hand, they deduce she began the night clubbing before she ended up at an abandoned home.
Julie goes to see David in the morgue as he is examining the victim. He found evidence of sexual activity, but they don’t know for sure she has been raped. At first, David thinks she may have been a sex worker because of her trashy clothes, but Julie tells him that because her clothes were so expensive, she had money. David shows her a ring he found that has a huge rock so Julie deduces it has to be ensured.
Greg finds out the ring is 4 karats, but there is no engraving or serial number to help identify their victim, but he can identify the diamond based on its fracture pattern. They find out it is registered to a Martin Fox in Utah.
The woman is Daycia Fox, the man’s wife, and he figures that she was wasted when she died. He tells Cooper that his wife was in a rehab facility in Las Vegas. Nick and Julie go to Desert Peace and are stunned at how luxurious the place is.
Inside, a woman is dealing with her addiction as another man tells her that the threat of losing his family made him open his eyes. The doorbell rings and Adam King goes to the door. When he sees Julie and Nick, he knows it’s about Daycia. Adam takes them to Daycia’s room. He tells them they do their best to make their patients comfortable.
Nick and Julie aren’t happy that King didn’t do enough to keep Daycia at the center, but he defends himself saying that they can’t force their patients to stay. He also tells them that the other patients never left and that he last saw Daycia around 9 the night before.
Cooper checks on Morgan, who is having no luck finding out which club Daycia went to the night before. Cooper and Morgan know since she went to about four places, it would be hard to narrow down who followed her. Henry comes in and tells them he was unable to distract a profile from under the victim’s fingernails.
Greg goes down to autopsy to see Robbins, who tells him that the victim’s insides were a wreck and that the marks on her neck were consistent with her being held underwater. But when he opens her lungs and drains the water, he realizes that there is an issue.
Hodgins tells Julie that the water found in Daycia’s lungs are inconsistent with a chlorine pool and could be regular tap water. The GCMS finds evidence consistent with her being drowned in bathwater.
Back in Daycia’s room, Julie picks up a bottle of Lavender soap, which is consistent with what was found in her lungs. Adam is not happy they are there and Nick tells them the search warrant gives them the right before Julie reveals Daycia was killed in the facility.
Morgan comes to the facility to tell Julie a cab company said a driver dropped off a man and a woman there at 3 am. They figure it was most likely Daycia and her guest, but they wonder how the room could look so nice and clean if she was murdered there. Julie figures the killer must have cleaned up so she goes to interview the other patients while Morgan tries to figure out where the evidence went.
The female patient did not see anything and is upset that Daycia’s issues have led this to coming in her life, the counselor was not happy that Daycia’s freedom could have an effect on the other patients’ well-being, and the male patient is sorry he didn’t see what was going on and that he was focused on trying to get sober for his children.
The cab that Daycia was in is brought to the lab and Nick tells Cooper the driver only remembered the male was right and that the woman looked like she was in bad shape. Nick gets ready to process the cab while at the facility Morgan is looking through dumpsters. One of the patients, Zak, comes up and flirts with her, but Morgan just asks him about Daycia. He reveals that Zak snuck him out once and that she hooked up with some cowboy at some point. After he leaves, Morgan’s eyes fall onto a trash can with a piece of blue sticking out, which matches the bags at the facility’s dumpster. She walks over and finds wet towels inside the trashcan.
Nick processes the car for evidence while Morgan goes through the trash she found. A montage also shows Henry getting fibers from the towels while Greg runs fingerprints. Henry tells Morgan that he found DNA on the towel and the unknown male’s profile had the same four loci he found under Daycia’s nails. Morgan was putting together pieces of wax that had dripped off a candle and was chipped away by the killer in order to clean up the crime scene. She may be able to get a handprint from the impression she found.
Greg comes running in looking for Nick. He got a hit off of a DUI arrest in 2007 for the fingerprints that were lifted. Meanwhile, back at the facility, Adam and his co-worker tell the patients they are going to continue treatment when Nick comes in with the police to arrest Adam for Daycia’s murder. Just as they are leaving to go into the cop car, Martin Fox comes walking up and shoots Adam in the chest.
Cooper comes in where Fox is being held to reprimand him for what he had done, especially since he could have shot one of the officers. Fox talks to him about what Daycia was like before her addiction destroyed who she was.
A nurse is about to give Adam painkillers when Julie comes in to stop her. He tells Julie he didn’t kill Daycia and when she shows him traffic cam photos showing him disposing of her body, he tells her that is all he did. He reveals he did go out to find Daycia and brought her home, but after putting her to bed, he checked on her a couple hours later to see that she was dead in the bathtub.
Julie tells Cooper and Greg about what happened and she tells them that a female patient did overdose at the clinic eight months earlier. They wonder if they should believe that Adam didn’t kill Daycia and Julie tells them his DNA did not match the towels or the tissue under her fingernails.
Morgan is able to put the wax together enough to get an impression of two fingers and a ring. After talking to Nick, she realizes the most likely person is Zak from the clinic since he had been a football player and after doing research, she sees his championship game score is the same as the 21-12 inscriptions on the ring.
Morgan processes Zach in the lab and finds he has scratch marks on his chest. Nick comes in later to interrogate him, telling him his DNA matched the towels and the tissue from Daycia’s fingernails. Zach reveals he can’t remember much, but he remembers Daycia coming into his room offering a bath and alcohol. He claims he can’t remember anything after getting in the tub and having pills and a drink with her. Zach is upset since he can’t remember killing her.
Greg comes down to Robbins at his urgent text. Apparently, materials in Daycia’s lungs had burst at a capacity that is inconsistent with water. It appeared someone had forced a tube down her throat to inject water into her lungs to make it looked like she drowned. Greg realizes this means they are dealing with the wrong cause of death and that most likely, Zach is not the killer.
Nick, Cooper, and Julie discuss the case and surmise that because it would take a great deal of difficulty to put a tube down someone’s throat, then Zach was too impaired to have killed her. They have three other suspects, patients Karen and Len, and staff member Twyla.
Hodgins goes to Morgan to ask her for help since the results from the organic matter that Robbins sent him don’t make sense to him. Morgan realizes what it means and soon, she and Greg go into the staff office where a fish tank is. They find tubing and a pump that could be used to intubate Daycia.
The fingerprints on the tubing came back to Twyla, but because she cleans the fish tank, they know this is only circumstantial. But when they realize that the pump wasn’t wiped clean of fingerprints like the tube, they wonder how they got water down Daycia’s throat. Greg figures out the killer used their mouth so their DNA is likely on the mouth of the tube.
It turns out Len’s DNA was found on the tube. He tries to deny he had anything to do with it and that he is close to being with his kids again. But when confronted with the evidence, he reveals he had found a bottle of bourbon in his room and that he had gone to confront Daycia. He was only trying to get her to stop talking and tempting him with alcohol. Len reveals he didn’t even drink after the murder.
Julie lets Twyla know she will be finishing up so she can get back to work. Twyla apologizes for being harsh about Daycia and that addiction is tough. Julie wishes her luck with her work.
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