Synopsis  

Fourteen year-old Will Sutter is found dead in the field, his body dumped, with snacks, a pocket knife, and a compass. The case takes an off turn when the blood under Will’s nails was that of Simon Rose, a man Sara put in jail two and a half years ago.

Simon was accused and convicted him of murdering his wife. He choked her to death on the kitchen floor, while he claimed to be asleep upstairs. Simon’s nose was broken, and there were scratches on his face, belying his claims. His lawyer uses the blood as reason to argue for an appeal, claiming that the blood proves someone else was guilty of the crime.

Sara goes to the evidence locker to see if the blood was taken from there, while Ray goes to visit Simon in jail to see if he has any cuts where blood was drawn. George, the head custodian of central evidence, knows non-public details about the case, and his car has proof that Will was transported inside it.

George claims that Will was snooping around in evidence, including the Simon/Samantha Rose case’s box, when he fell and accidentally died. Afraid that Will compromised evidence, he transported the body. The CSIs find blood at the crime scene, backing up George’s story, but also finding that Will was looking for the Rose case file.

When his self-professed ‘former’ best friend, Mason, is determined to be an accomplice in Will’s break-in of central evidence, Brass investigates only to find Mason with his head bashed in on the floor of his own bedroom. In addition, the card of Simon Rose’s lawyer is found in Mason’s room. The lawyer claims Mason tried to extort her for information, as he knew that Will broke in on a dare.

Mason had asked Will to break in because he and Steve, Will’s other former best friend, had been partying and drinking underage in an abandoned house. They’d accidentally started a fire, and when the CSIs had collected the evidence, they asked Will, smart Will, to help them. But Mason wrote down the wrong evidence box and Will died. When Mason didn’t seem to care about Will’s death, Steve bashed him in the head with a bat.

And Simon Rose remained in jail.

Review  

Perceptively noticing that he looks ill, Sara admits to Steve, Will’s former best friend, that she drank when she was younger, to try and be cool. When Steve vomits, Sara correctly deduces he’d been drinking tequila.

Sara commiserates with the man working at central evidence that this sort of case, where the rich man goes free, is one of the cases that caused her to quit CSI and go to Costa Rica. They review the evidence together to ensure it wasn’t tampered with. While leaving, Sara notices George’s car matches the description of the one that dumped Will and investigates it, only to find evidence that Will was in the trunk.

Notes  

• Sara mentions she used to drink.