Plot

When CSI investigates a homicide that appears to have connections to the S&M world, Gil turns to Lady Heather for help. But is he really there because of his personal problems with Sara and not for the actual case?

Ian Wallace's corpse was dragged under a car into the desert and abandoned, but has marks from multiple abuse before his death. Grissom consults BDSM professional Lady Heather as consultant on athletic, handsome Ian's wounds to work out his relationship with house mate Justine Stefani, insurance salesman Martin Devlin, lawyer and torture pro Michelle Tournay.—KGF Vissers

Grissom arrives to a crime scene in the rain where Catherine and David Phillips are working and sees a man with a messy face and no fingers and toes. They believe the man was tied under a truck or SUV, since there is motor oil on his shirt and marks on his wrists. In the autopsy, Nick finds seven stab wounds in his body and Dr. Robbins finds marks that indicate he was S&M. They identify the man as Ian Wallace, they go to his apartment and identify his girlfriend as Justine Stefani. Grissom decides to pay a visit to Lady Heather to help him in the investigation.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"CSI" - "Leave Out All the Rest" - Nov. 6, 2008

We open on home video of Sara talking about how she's been thinking about "us" alot and how she thought "we could survive anything." We then see Grissom driving in rain at night. Back to Sara talking about how her trip has given her a lot of clarity and how the last year in Vegas she could barely breathe much less think. Grissom arrives at a crime scene.

Katherine is trying to preserve a tire track in the rain. Grissom calls her over to the dead body which is covered by a tarp, thereby contaminating the scene. (A first responder did it.) A trucker spotted the body. Ugh, they uncover the body and it's face is completely demolished by asphalt. Fingers and toes are gone. An ME determines the body's only been dead a few hours. Judging by marks on the wrists and the icky face smashing they think the body was tied up and dragged. We cut to shot of that. Grissom says the whole thing should be hamburger then. They roll the body and he wipes off some goo and, shudder, tastes it. Motor oil. He's thinking the body was tied to the undercarriage of a car. Catherine posits one with high clearance like an SUV. We see a shot of this. He has no ID.

Back to Sara saying that before she left he said some things she tried not to hear, but she thinks he was right. Grissom looks forlorn in the rain.

The body is now back at the lab and Grissom and Nick take pictures. The guy played softball for Talmadge Media according to his shirt. There are also nine stab wounds in it. Grissom grabs his eyes and Nick wonders if he has a migraine. Nick departs and Robbins arrives saying that what happened to his face occured post-mortem and that you can see his brain through his nasal cavities, that's cool. Robbins departs saying "BRB," his wife has him into texting.

Grissom washes the body and notices post-mortem rope marks as Nick returns. The stab wounds are post mortem as well. There are also wounds around the dude's swollen nipples.

Cops walk the scene in daylight. Catherine takes pictures of the tire tracks. Hodges complains his shoes are ruined, and asks why she didn't warn him. He walks to another part of the scene. and looks at a bloody rope. As he goes to grab it, he pricks his finger. He tells Katherine that there is a "man down" and is really being a baby about it. Katherine comes over and grabs the rope. She hypothesizes when the rope melted, it broke, the body fell and led the killer to do the accidental desert body dump. (Haven't we all been there?) Hodges wonders why anyone would go to the bother of tying the body to undercarriage in the first place. Because, she says, if a cop stops a car they will be looking inside the car, not underneath it.

Brass is busting into a house with Nick and Riley. They check around with flashlights. Brass picks up a wallet and finds an ID, the man's name was Ian Wallace. Turns out the guy was good looking. Riley smells citrus and goes hunting. Nick finds scrape marks on the wall in another room and a blood drop. We see a vision of Wallace getting punched in the mouth and his bloody saliva flinging on to the wall. Riley is blue-lighting a chair with more blood on it.

Back at the lab tox screens show the guy had low levels of pot and booze in his system, but not via IV injection in his nipples.

Grissom opens a video clip of Sara in his email, it's the video we were seeing earlier. She's on a trip south of the equator, at sea with other scientists, students, activists. Apparently, it's pretty thrilling. She says she wishes they could talk in person. She apologizes for being out of touch. And then we pick back up on her thoughts from the top of the show. She says for the first time in a long time, she's happy.

Back at Ian's house they're still looking around. Nick poked around the garage, where Ian could've been tied up. The door was also unlocked. Riley's determined Ian lived with a girl thanks to the napkin holders and heart-shaped pillows. Nick wonders where she is. Riley wonders if she roped him to the bottom of her truck. On one of the womens' magazines they get her name: Justine Stefani. (I'm sure she's going to think this stuff is bananas.)

Back at the lab Robbins is slicing up Ian and doing tests on his skin and stuff. Nipple punctures rule out drug use. They don't know what's up with them. He also has some weird grill marks on his tongue. Torture. Also he was strangled. S&M gone wrong, they're now thinking. The stab wounds are brutal, random, and post-mortem which is inconsistent with S&M. But since you can't take pleasure in someone's pain when they're dead, that's the gone wrong part. Grissom walks away purposefully and without comment. Catherine asks Hodges if that's normal. Grissom being socially awkward? That's normal he says. She laments that he won't talk to her and doesn't appear to be sleeping much.

Grissom goes to see Lady Heather. It's still raining. She's surprised to see him. He apologizes for not calling. She asks what he wants. She brings him coffee and asks when he last had a good night's sleep. He says simply bad dreams. He explains about Ian Wallace and the S&M wounds and what her first impressions might be. She says her first impression is he's changed. He asks after her and she says she got her masters in psychology last year and she now has patients, not clients. He guesses she specializes in sex therapy.

She looks over the photos and says the nipple wounds are from "needle play." She says it's called stacking. She asks if she can touch him and outlines over his shirt how it worked. (So the victim was a submissive, surmises Grissom). He asks about the tongue grilling. She explains she never used electricity above the waist but that some people do and these are masochistic injuries created by wrapping chopsticks around the tongue and shooting juice through them. (So they're looking for a dominant, asks Grissom). He says they don't know if his girlfriend was into the lifestyle since she's missing. Heather wants to see photos of their bedroom.

Back at the house Riley, Nick, and now Greg, are in said bedroom. Grissom has called and asked them to look for S&M toys. Greg finds a "booty smudge" on the TV and blue lights semen. Riley finds a picture of the happy couple, Justine got a boob job. She also finds a trunk under the bed full of S&M stuff. Greg comes over and Riley asks if he's ever been tied up. He asks what she thinks and she says he's probably more into hair pulling. Nick, who has gone to investigate the closet, tells them to knock it off and take pictures of the stuff.

In the closet there's a bloody shirt in the laundry basket that matches the nipple stains. Greg thinks he changed before he was killed but Riley points out the girlfriend could've redressed him. Nick wonders how Justine tied him to the car then. Riley says she could do it, that it takes brains not brawn. Nick doubts she could. Greg thinks she could, including the killing part.

Back at Lady Heather's she's looking at pictures of the apartment and determining he didn't play at home since there's no dedicated S&M room to see. Grissom wonders if he went to see a pro. There's a photo of a flyer for a club called Lower Linx. She says it's part of the amateur scene but has a well-equipped back room that rents by the hour if you know the right people.

Cut to Lower Linx and its red walls and skeevy dudes leaning on them as Nick and Brass enter. A few people dance on a sparsely populated floor. They approach a hot chick at the bar. She's the owner. They show her photos of Ian and Justine. No recognition. She has no security cameras. Nick and Brass ask to see the back room. She tells them to get a warrant. They threaten to wait and she shows it to them. It's like an S&M operating room with ceiling chains over a table, an oscilloscope, needles, chopsticks etc.

At the lab Wendy explains to Riley that the semen on the TV was his but the um, female secretions, weren't Justine's. Riley thinks Justine found him cheating and offed him. Turns out he also has blood on the back of his shirt, they think this might be from the killer.

Back to the Sara video she's saying Grissom was right, if a relationship can't move forward it withers. Cut to Grissom looking out Heather's rainy window. She's explaining that there was a schism between Ian and Justine. She says Justine was a good girl, based on the photos, and Ian was a compartmentalizer and his dark side was hidden away. Heather asks if Sara knows Grissom is here. He says no. She asks if she's his secret. He says no, and she's not his therapist either. Back to the case Grissom says they found evidence Ian had sex with another woman in the house. That's his subconscious desire to get caught by his mommy figure, Justine. Heather says Justine's an enabler not a dominant. Even if she discovered him cheating she couldn't kill the guy, says Heather.

Catherine, Greg, and Brass discover a burned out car with a burned out corpse in it 20 miles from the original crime scen. (God this episode is gruesome.) It's Justine Stefani, based on the car registration and the nearly intact implants. So now their suspect is a victim.

Back at the lab, Robbins and Phillips confirm it's Justine. They roll the body and discover she was bound.

At the lab Riley, Catherine, Nick, and Greg go over the evidence: footprints, tire impressions that indicate someone chased a bound Justine with the car. Her boots were found under the car. She was hit by the car, the killer put her in the car and torched it because the car was undriveable. The killer walked back to the road and either drove himself away or had an accomplice. They figure she was kidnapped. So whatever started at Lower Linx ended at their house where Justine might've walked in on them.

Nick offers secretions on chopsticks that belonged to another woman and he suspects the bar owner, Ms. Tornee, off whom he got a "dominatrix vibe." He says she and Lady Heather could be sisters. Riley wonders who Lady Heather is. Greg smirks and says that's a whole other "Oprah." Catherine asks Nick to get her DNA. Greg also says they have a lead on another suspect, the man who last called Justine.

He's Martin Devlin and he's sucking up to Brass during his interrogation, repeatedly calling him "Jim." He claims he just tried to sell her life insurance. When Brass can't get anything out of him Devlin tries to sell him insurance.

Lady Heather is serving tea and explaining about dominance fantasies to Grissom. He says they know he had a female dominant but that she slept with Wallace. Lady Heather tsks, tsks that. He explains the two perp theory. She says the dominatrix would've picked one of her trusted slaves, one who may have played "scenes" with her in which they share fetishes.

Nick questions a surly Ms. Tournee who calls her back room clients freaks and that she doesn't practice it,she's an entrepreneur, she majored in theatre. She did sleep with Ian but not at his house and she didn't kill him. She resists the DNA swab, the cop in the room forces her to sit and take it and Nick swabs her mouth. She accuses him of being aroused by it.

So the stain Wendy found on Ian's shirt has a close match to a convicted felon named Devlin. Riley and Brass pull Devlin back in and offer up evidence. His hot blond lawyer offers counter measures. Devlin seems agitated and looks to his lawyer a lot. Brass says they don't need a warrant to make him open his shirt. He does and he has needle play marks around his nipples and he has tell tale marks on his tongue. They go in for the kill saying he and Tournee followed Ian home and got in a fight, they killed him, called Justine to frame her, tied him to the car and then things got weird, the body fell, Justine ran away, they set her on fire. He says to stop. Brass tells Devlin that there are no "safe words" in a police station. His lawyer then invokes his rights and the interrogation is over.

Lady Heather says the post-mortem stab wounds are the work of a sexual sadist. She says they tend to be loners and can't usually get into regular S&M roles with safe words. Her opinion is the S&M was separate from the murders. She makes the personal observation that everything she's told him he could've read in a book and that he's there for a more personal reason.

Back to the Sara video and her remarks about relationships withering. She said she'd been waiting for him to decide but that not making a decision is making a decision. She tells him that "he doesn't have to worry about her any more", that she's "good. Really good." Lady Heather asks where Sara is.

Grissom tells her about everything during the commercial break and she asks him why he didn't go with her. He says it was out of his control. She echoes Sara's "not making a decision" comment and we go back to the Sara video and her telling him not to worry about her anymore, she's good and she thinks they're better off this way. Heather says she thinks that Grissom is here because it's the only place that doesn't remind him of Sara. She says she has a guest room upstairs and he can stay as long as he wants.

Looking at Devlin's SIMM card at the lab they find a texted photo of ... his lawyer, in a clinch with Ian. He was trying to send the photo to Justine as proof but accidentally sent it to a stranger with one number of his phone number off.

Brass interrogates the lawyer, she finally gives up that she slept with Ian - and that she's a dominatrix- but left after the photo was taken. Turns out she, Devlin, and Ian had played a scene at the Lower Linx, she got turned on and kissed Ian. Martin got jealous and stepped out of his slave role. She loves Ian. Martin loves her. She followed Ian home and told him she loved him. He kicked her out. Martin came in the back door and they fought. Ian threw them both out. She claims she saw Martin drive away and even if he did go back to confront Ian there's no way he killed the girlfriend. Not like that.

Back in the lab they go over the conundrum of being able to link the crime scenes and victims to each other and the victims to the suspects but not the suspects to the crime scenes. They wonder, if outlandishly, this was a random murder committed by random psychopaths coincidentally after the S&M play date went wrong.

Grissom lies on his side on a bed in Lady Heather's guest room. She's about to leave when he says, "Heather would you stay?" She shuts the door, with herself on the inside.