Synopsis  

Max puts CSI on lockdown when evidence in a new murder tips Grissom and Sara to a new suspect in the crime lab. Also, Folsom and Allie investigate a series of chilling killings at a dilapidated clown-themed hotel.

Review  

Spinning off last episode’s discover, there was evidence left at the murder of Martin Kline. What Grissom noticed was luminol on the wall, meaning that someone had covered up DNA left at the scene. The theory is that shrapnel ripped through the wall and cause the killer to bleed. Since only a limited number of places sell luminol, checking the chemical composition will tell them where it’s sold and to whom. The only problem is that the makeup of that luminol points to the CSI lab.

This revelation turns the lab into a lockdown. Since Nora Cross, from IA, is stuck in the lab with them, she and Grissom and Sara finally have it out. This time, Nora listens to them, as the luminol has traces of another chemical (ninhydrin) which is used to find fingerprints on latex. Grissom posits it happened when someone put the wrong top on a bottle when refilling, so if he and Sara can find the reverse (that is, the errant ninhydrin bottle with a luminol top, or trace of luminol in the bottle), they’ll be able to find the suspect.

Meanwhile, an emergency inventory of the lab’s arsenal reveals someone took all seven grenades from the lab. They keep this quiet, even though security footage indicates the perp is still in the lab. Unable to make out the face of the person who took the grenades, but they can see his feet. Chris Park has been running around with his shoes on since he sprained his ankle. He admits he had the grenades to run a test for the case, and had not yet returned them since Max had called for an all-hands lockdown.

As he confesses, Grissom and Sara arrive and inform Max and Nora that the prints on the bottle also belong to Chris. Chris claims the bottle was stolen from his kit. It vanished when he was working on a crime scene, and he’d reported it, even complaining to the police that they’d failed to close off the area to pedestrians. Since it sounds plausible, they look into the case where the luminol was stolen, and it involves a court bailiff.

Sara runs tests on Park’s luminol and determines it was nicked from the backseat of a car from the case. Looking into the car, they found dandruff. When Sara ran the DNA on it, the results were shocking. It was dandruff from Anson Wix, the lawyer heading the class action, who stands to make a lot of money from the case. Like a lot a lot.

Is it really as simple as money? Wix is working on all the cases related to Hodges, he also worked on the case for the attack on Jim Brass. He’s all over the situation, knows the CSI playbook backwards and forwards, and Kline was his regular expert witness. He could have set all this up.

While all of that was going on, two other CSIs (Folsom and Rajan) were attempting to solve the murder of a clown. Their case turned in to one related to the Hodges frame, as the killer in the clown murders was being forced to do so by another man in prison. That man in prison expected to get out, as his case hinged on David Hodges’ evidence, and he started sending threating letters via a guard, telling people he knew where their families were. If people didn’t do what he said, he’d kill their families first. Including the guard’s.

Thankfully the CSIs were able to solve the case, but they’re running out of time.

Notes  

• Sara is remarkably calm when it comes to having a possible killer in the lab.

Gallery  

Images ©CBS (2021) - CSI: Vegas from the episode 'Funhouse'.