CSI’s first of two episodes on Sunday began with sisters Cara and Lexi walking through the mall. Lexi is eager to give her younger sister a makeover to make her look sexier. Cara is clearly uncomfortable, especially when she gets attention form a group of guys.
Soon enough, two guys named Axel and Peter meet up with the girls. Cara hangs back while Lexi makes out with Axel before telling her sister they will meet up in an hour. Peter offers to take Cara somewhere and she reluctantly goes with him. However, it isn’t long before Peter is found dead, his body leaning over a toilet.
Dave and Nick investigate the scene, finding blood spatter indicating he had been left to bleed out into the toilet bowl. Dave examines the body and sees that he has only been dead for about an hour. Nick discovers a piece of bug carcass on the back of the victim’s jacket. When his phone is discovered, they use his finger to unlock it via thumbprint and find photos of him with Cara.
Sara tells Nick later as they process the bathroom a janitor had gotten suspicious about a cleaning sign placed on the door, likely to give the killer time to escape before Peter was found. Nick tells her about the possible witness, the girl on the phone, and Sara recognizes a shopping bag that could help them identify her.
Morgan tells Cooper that the credit card the mystery girl used belong to the San Diego crime lab director John Nolan, who is in town for a wedding. She also tells him Nick is talking to John since he had apparently offered Nick a job some years back.
John is confused about why Nick wants to talk to him, until Nick mentions the credit card being used and he shows John a photo of the girl. He identifies her as his daughter, Cara, and wonders how she knows the victim. John then surprises Nick when he mentions Cara had gone to the mall with her 17-year-old sister, Lexi, and he hasn’t heard from either of them. The girls had gone shopping together since they don’t see each other much because Lexi lives in Vegas with their mother, Tori. Nick asks for their cell phone numbers so he can try to ping their location and he gets a current photo of Lexi.
Hodges tells Cooper that the piece of exoskeleton that Nick found came from a hairy desert scorpion, but he was unable to trace it since the scorpion is common in Nevada. Doc Robbins comes in to tell them Peter died from exsanguination and his killer is likely a right-handed male. They deduce the girls could have seen the killer’s face and maybe he took them so they wouldn’t talk.
Julie is looking through surveillance from the mall when she sees the girls going up to Peter and another male. Facial recognition identifies him as Axel Vargas, who has a rap sheet and a scorpion tattoo on his neck.
Sara talks to Axel, who claims to have no knowledge of the murder or what happened to the girls. He tells Sara he only met Lexi a week earlier and after they hooked up at the mall, he went to his work as a bartender.
Cooper and Ecklie talk about the case and Ecklie tells Coooper to use their resources to do what they can and to keep John Nolan updated as a professional courtesy.
Morgan is able to triangulate the location of the girls’ cell phones based on the signals that are still pinging. She gets information that the phones are located off of route 215 near Sahara. Along with Greg, they go out to see if they can find the girls. Morgan and Greg search off the road and find the two cell phones. One of them has a chilling video of a man driving a car as Lexi begs him to let her sister go. Greg does not see a tattoo on the guy’s neck, so they know it wasn’t Axel who took them.
Nick tells John that Axel’s alibi checked out and that he watched the video Lexi shot and it wasn’t him. He asks John if he made any enemies or recent arrests and John mentions a biker gang that killed someone. John asks to see the video so he can see if he recognizes the person. He watches it as Morgan and Nick look on, but he doesn’t recognize the man. Morgan says Lexi tried to send the video to someone and the number turns out to be John. Even though the two didn’t communicate much, she reached out to him.
Julie tells Cooper that the biker gang lead was a bust and it’s likely that the kidnapping had nothing to do with John. Cooper thinks it could have been a crime of opportunity and Greg comes in to tell them that a man named Dennis Hayes as been sending Lexi text messages of his genitals and made a text that said, “You’re just like your mother.”
Sara interviews the girls’ mother, Tori, and finds out Dennis barely knew Lexi, but that one night while they were partying at the house and taking E, Tori found Dennis on top of Lexi trying to remove her clothing. She ordered him to get out, but didn’t call the police. She doesn’t know where he would have taken the girls. When she leaves the room, John angrily confronts her until Sara reminds them to focus on bringing the girls home.
Nick goes to see Morgan, who was able to determine the car driven by the suspect is a 1986 Chevrolet Suburban. They discuss trying to find out if Hayes has this vehicle when Nick gets a message. He gets a devastated look on her face and Morgan realizes what has happened as he rushes off. Police cars arrive at a dumpster, where Nick goes in and pulls off the tarp covering Lexi’s body.
Later, Sara takes photos of the scene and finds Lexi’s necklace. She walks out to see Greg, who thought Nick was there. He went back to the morgue to process Lexi’s body. Greg suggests it’s possible if the killer opened the dumpster, they might find prints. He also had told Sara that a neighbor reported hearing a “metallic squeaky sound” around 10:30 that night.
In the morgue, John looks at his daughter’s body when Nick comes in. John goes on about not being able to handle Lexi, who always had a wild streak in her. He begins to blame himself and eventually leaves as Nick continues to process her body. Later on after the autopsy, Robbins tells Nick that someone smashed her head against a flat surface and ligature marks on her wrists and ankles indicate she tried to escape. Plus, she also has a sting mark on her collar bone. Nick remembers the exoskeleton on Peter’s body and asks Robbins to collect a sample around the sting site.
Nick talks to Sara about how John is doing and neither can imagine seeing one of their own children on the autopsy table. Sara mentions John sending him a jersey a few years earlier and Nick says it was John’s way of trying to get him to San Diego. He tells her that Vegas is his home.
Henry tells Cooper the sting mark on Lexi came from a deathstalker scorpion and they are only indigenous to the country of Israel and that Dennis Hayes is no longer their suspect.. He also thinks since Lexi had tried to run away, with the venom in her system, it allowed her killer to catch her. Cooper wonders how the killer got one of those scorpions.
Greg tells Morgan seven places sell those scorpions and he got a list of buyers from 2008 to the present and they compare the list with people who own the suburban they are looking for. Morgan gets a hit to a Kieran Clark.
The police, along with Morgan and Greg, go to the address they find and discover cages filled with bugs of all kinds. As they are searching the building, they discover a wall covered with stalker photos of a young woman who looks eerily similar to Cara Nolan.
Nick goes to talk to John to give him an update and try to make him feel better, but John recognizes the spiel since he has given it before. Nick assures him he won’t stop until he finds Cara, but John is grieving for Lexi still.
Greg and Sara tell Cooper about Clark, who is known as the “Bug Guy” since he teaches kids about reptiles. He is apparently obsessed with a woman named Jennifer DeMarcus, who he stalked after meeting her at a pet shop in Nevada. They deduce that Kieran must have seen Cara in the mall and killed Peter since he was with her. Then when Lexi came back, he had to take both girls. Hodges comes in wih information about stone particles in Lexi’s hair. They came from a sealant for driveways and it was done recently, so they decide to do a search since Lexi had to be killed in that area.
Julie goes through information looking for whoever had their driveway done as Nick comes in. She tells him there is a house about two miles from where Lexi was found that had their driveway done. Nick begins to head out there and she reminds him to wait for backup to arrive.
Nick gets to the house and sees the car they have been looking for. He goes up to the home and enters to find Kieran holding a knife to Cara’s neck. Nick tries to talk Kieran down and tell him that Cara is not the person he wanted. However, this doesn’t work as Kieran begins to try and slit her throat before Nick shoots him. Nick pulls Cara safely into his arms as she thanks him.
Nick watches John and Cara in her hospital room before John comes to see him. He thanks Nick for bringing Cara home and tells him that he is deciding to step down from his job because he has not been focusing enough on his family. Nick reminds him of his job in San Diego and John tells Nick that he wants him to run the crime lab. He is stunned at the idea and John asks him to think on it before going back to Cara as Nick walks away.
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