Last night’s episode of CSI took us into the world of…rubber dolls. That’s right, real life rubber dolls and yes, it is as interesting as it sounds. It opened up on the streets of Las Vegas where a dark haired woman is walking along the streets. People walking or working around her look at her in complete shock and slight disgust, although we barely glimpse her face in a shop’s window.
The next scene shows Sara, Dave, and Cooper examining the body of a man clad in boxers. He has stab wounds on his body, but there is not a lot of blood on him. They find a lip stick case covered in blood and assume it could have been a sexual assault case that ended with the victim killing an assailant. Sara and Cooper realize they are getting too theoretical and continue looking for clues. Sara walks further along the crime scene and spots what appears to be a face print in blood, but there is no blood on their victim. They think it could be a facial impression of the killer.
Julie tries to run facial recognition on the blood print, but there is no data coming up. Morgan comes in to see if she has any luck and Julie tells her that if either of their faces were smashed into concrete, there would be portions that stick out because their faces are not flat like the one on the print. Morgan tells Julie that all the blood belongs to the victim and they have a DNA hit to a burglar named Nelson Kern.
Nick and an officer walk toward a dumpster where they can hear the victim’s phone ringing. They find a bloody purse and what appears to be a female’s body. But when Nick removes garbage, he finds it is actually a rubber life-sized doll. Since the doll is covered in real blood and Kern’s cell phone is in the dumpster, then Kern was wearing the doll.
At the lab, Nick processes the rubber doll while Robbins does the autopsy on Kern. Cooper comes in to talk to Nick and tells him Kern was a loner. Nick shows Cooper photos from the autopsy and the knife wound on Kern match the rubber body, meaning he was wearing it during his attack. When asked why Kern was wearing it, Nick shows him a website for people who wore life-sized rubber doll suits.
Robbins tells Julie the weapon wasn’t very dull and there were square ridges around the wounds on Kern. He also had bite marks and abrasions on him, plus he was also on drugs.
Nick tells Cooper the doll suit had carpet fibers, baby oil, and liquor combinations indicating they had a wild party. He also suggests they will be able to ask the doll’s maker some more information about the suit and tells Cooper that Belinda Goff made the suit.
In a store, Belinda is trying to help a man fit into a body suit for Beyonce. Cooper comes in and she assumes he is there for a suit himself. When Cooper tells her he is there on another reason, she has her customer leave. Cooper identifies himself and shows her the photo of the doll and Kern, but she can’t tell him much about Kern since the men who come for suits don’t want to name themselves. They want the suits to be inhabit beautiful women. She reluctantly tells him where the dolls go to meet up.
Greg and Cooper go to “the dollhouse.” They see admirers of the dolls who are not in costume. Cooper indicates they are two blocks from the crime scene and that Kern was most likely here the night he died, so someone could have followed. They decide to walk around to find someone to talk to. Greg is walking along past the, erm, dancing dolls when he sees someone who appears to walk away quickly upon spotting him. Greg runs after the doll, who ends up tripping and Greg asks why he ran off. When all of the dolls surround him, Greg pulls out his identification to identify himself. Cooper comes along too as the dolls continue to stare.
Greg talks to the man who ran, who tells him he’s a high school counselor who didn’t need his activities being made public. When asked why he thought Greg was a cop, the guy tells him because he was scanning the building like “Nordic Terminator.” Greg begins to ask something before changing his mind and focusing on asking if he knew Kern. He doesn’t recognize Kern, but when he sees the photo of the doll, he identifies her as Charlene. She only began coming six weeks earlier and quickly became popular.
Cooper goes up to a doll at the bar to ask if they can talk. He takes off his mask and Cooper asks about a smudge on his knee, which matches the wall paint from the crime scene. The man is reluctant, until Cooper mentions the murder. He tells Cooper a man assaulted him after he left the bar the last weekend. He gives Cooper the license plate on the guy’s motorcycle.
The man who assaulted the doll is Clay Miller and Nick interviews him. When Clay finds out about the murder, he admits that he did assault the previous one, but that he was working the night of the other doll’s murder. Nick tells him the victim refuses to press charges because he’s the one who feels like he has the shame, which makes Miller look away embarrassed.
Henry gets a weird result from his printer and Hodges comes in. He tells Hodges he not only has a result from DNA, but he also has a ghost story. He got DNA from Charlene’s earrings that matched a woman named Charlene Brock, who died two years earlier. They recognize her as a model from the early 80s who had a hit with a poster featuring her in a dress exactly similar to the one on the doll.
Charlene’s widower and kids are shocked to find out about the rubber suit. Her son, Jonah, is offended that someone would steal her image and his dad says it was probably a fan that was lonely and wanted to feel close. His daughter informs Cooper that her dad had an estate sale and it could be where the man who wore the suit got the earrings.
Morgan tells Sara about a Vegas Rubber Dolls forum. Apparently before Charlene arrived at the club, there was a doll named Lexy who was the bell of the ball. They can’t find out who she is and Morgan isn’t getting a response from messages she has left. Sara gets a call that Kern’s car was located.
Morgan opens the trunk of the car and finds the Lexy suit. Sara is confused since Kern was wearing Charlene when he died, so they don’t know why he has Lexy. Morgan tells her that there is only one doll per person and they theorize that Nelson stole the Charlene outfit, especially since they find break-in tools such as bolt cutters in the car. They figure that Kern could have gotten jealous when Charlene showed up and stole her, but they now need to figure out who owned Charlene. Sara picks up the bolt cutters and sees a trace of what could be concrete powder, consistent with landscaping that Cooper saw done at the Brock house.
Cooper walks along the Brock house with Mr. Brock, who tells Cooper he tries to keep the place looking nice. Cooper notices a broken padlock on a door and tells Mr. Brock he needs to go in since it looks like he had a break in at the home. They walk inside and Cooper discovers a room devoted to Charlene Brock, including an empty garment bag. He admits he did own the suit and that he still loved Charlene. Cooper asked if it was enough for him to kill.
In the interrogation room, Cooper asks Mr. Brock why he lied about not knowing about the suit. He says it was because his kids were there. He admits that the suit allowed him to feel Charlene’s presence and at the club, other people took notice. Cooper asks Brock if he had anything to do with the murder since Kern basically stole his wife. Brock says he would never harm anyone who wanted to feel his wife’s presence like he did.
Julie tells Cooper she checked police activity logs on the night of the murder and an escalade received a parking ticket, which was issued to Adrian Graham. The carpet fibers on Charlene’s suit matched to an escalade like his vehicle and Cooper recognizes him from the club.
Julie interviews Graham, who isn’t too keen on talking to a woman. She gets him to talk eventually and he admits to having relations with Charlene, but he didn’t kill her. After she suggests what could have happened if he killed her, Graham tells her that when Kern made a groaning noise during their time together, it killed his mood and he made Kern get out of the car.
Sara is going through the evidence and tells Cooper that Nick is still going through the car, but they haven’t found blood inside. She is going through Graham’s items he had in the vehicle, including various things for sex, such as baby oil. Cooper realizes since there were trace amounts of baby oil on the suit, and then the killer could have gotten it on themselves. They decide to go out to the crime scene to find any evidence of a trail.
At the crime scene, they find an oil trail, likely from when the suit was dragged away by the killer. Sara uses a tool to find where it leads, which is up to where an electricity box is. On top of the box, she finds a nail file consistent with the type of wounds Kern had. The file has the logo for the Brock family’s modeling agency.
Julie interviews Jonah, whose prints were found on the murder weapon. He tells her it was one of many files he gave family after his mom died since she had a thing for filing her nails when she wasn’t happy with a client. Julie tells him she also knows that he filed a motion to remove his father as head of the agency, but he tells her it was because the business began slipping under him. He did see selfies of his dad in the costume, but was just concerned a rival company could find those photos. As an alibi, he tells Julie he was with one of the models and he made a video.
Nick is watching the sex tape in the lab when Greg walks in. Nick tells him the timestamp puts him at home during the murder, but Greg says he could have messed with the time stamp and first impressions can be wrong. Nick teases him about being spotted at the club and Greg rolls his eyes before getting back into the case. Greg tells him the nail file had mixes of unknown female DNA and gold particulates. When Nick hears this, he rewinds the video to see the model is wearing gold nail polish.
Cooper talks to April Brock and tells her that the model spoke to them by phone and let them know the assistant at the photo shoot Jonah made had filed her nails and the assistant was April. That same nail file was used as the weapon to kill Kern. April tells him she didn’t know him, but Cooper figures that she was really trying to stab her mother. She tells Cooper her mom was a tyrant and she always defended her dad. She never could live up to the expectations her mom had and when she died, they were free, but her dad still wanted her. She admits she wanted to ignore the fact that she knew about the room and the suit, but then on her 30th birthday, her dad cancelled claiming not to feel well. However, she could hear the music in the background and knew he had chosen her mother. She tells Cooper she took the suit off to throw her away.
As April is arrested, her dad comes in, in shock. When April sees him, she yells at him for not letting go of their mom and he surprises her when he admits she reminds him of her mother. Cooper tells the cops to escort her out.
At the lab, Morgan sees Greg in the office still working. He tells her he isn’t and she comes in as he tells her about the guy who could tell he was a cop across the room. He is not happy because he doesn’t want to be defined as being a cop. He has been looking at photos of things he used to do, such as going to parties and traveling to Sweden and Europe.
She teases him about having an identity crisis at 6 in the morning. Morgan tells Greg that people are never just one thing and clicks on a photo of a friend of his holding two babies. Greg tells her about him once eating a beer can and she makes a point that people have different layers to them. Greg suggests that if people read that he’s a cop, he could get free coffee, and Morgan comments that if it’s free donuts, he’s being made fun of. Greg comes up with the idea to update his social network status to “Taking a friend out for a beer” and Morgan happily agrees.
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