Grissom.
I'll be right there. Please tell the doctor that I have to reschedule my appointment. Thanks. She should be right with... you.
Any I.D. yet? BRASS: Nothing but a blanket.
She live here? We don't know. Patrol called it in. Well, whoever she is she's not talking.
I think she just ratted herself out.
Captioning sponsored by CBS CBS PRODUCTIONS ♪ Who... are you? ♪ ♪ Who, who, who, who? ♪ ♪ I really wanna know ♪ ♪ Who... are you? ♪ ♪ Oh-oh-oh ♪ ♪ Who... ♪ ♪ Come on, tell me who are you, you, you ♪ ♪ Oh, you! ♪
GRISSOM: Drug use? No visible track marks. Tox screen came up empty except for botulin. Food poisoning? I'll know more when I cut open her stomach. Heard about the rat. Hope he didn't have any children. Take a look at these tiny puncture wounds in her forehead. Indicates repeated injections. You sure she's homeless? Sometimes I'm not sure of anything. Educated guess: beautification. She was injected with pig botulism. Botox... the ultimate wrinkle cream. How did it get into her bloodstream? Bad doctor. Missed the muscle. Shot directly into her supratrochlear vein. Amazing the advances we make in science and the primitive uses we find for them. People are still animals. Signs of possible torture. A lot of scaring. Some old, some new. What about the crater in her check? The dove-tail abrasion of the margins was caused by the scraping of the handle of some weapon. Tells me the blade was completely inserted-- more than once.
There's no ligature marks anywhere. I'd think she would need to be restrained for something like that, wouldn't you? Give me a few hours; I'll know more.
BROWN: Show and tell. Who? Showing but not telling. I found a day planner in the shopping cart. Mm-hmm. It's written in code.
"T to the third power. C 1023, minus ten OK equals zero." Looks like ginkwork. It's the kind of thing speed freaks do when they've been up for ten days straight and they've already taken apart the radio. Yeah. I write everything down in shorthand. You couldn't read it. Shorthand? Keeps things in order. You're not a control freak or anything? No. Sara... what's a homeless woman doing with a day planner and a $300 handbag? That handbag costs $300? Yeah. How'd you know that? I bought one for an ex-girlfriend once. Oh.
WILLOWS: Dusty, we got no hits on the fingerprints and no one fitting her description has been reported missing. Oh, she's not missing? She's in my world. I'm just mirroring some good cheek on top of some bad cheek. Okay. I'll fix her forehead.
Her chin... What a mess. Mm-hmm. I'm going to do a little cloning here.
She actually had a really nice complexion.
Perfect porcelain face. What can you do about the hair? It's a macro. Whose hair do you want her to have? Blonde? Courtney Love? Sounds good to me. Let's give her some eyes... blue.
I know her from somewhere. You do? Yeah.
Why are you showing me this? The cover girl, Ashleigh James-- she's your girl in the shopping cart. P.D.'s tracking down her agency now. Somebody wanted her dead.
They also wanted her ugly.
BRASS: It's called gentrification. It's not doing anything to gentrify them. Tell that to the mayor. The landlord's on vacation.
It's a good thing because he's got a swimming pool in his basement. Ashleigh James apartment, tub overflowed.
Who turned the water off? The first officer on the scene found the door open. After that, he didn't touch a thing. Yeah, what have you got?
Well, narcissus would be proud. Very much a woman, yet still a little girl.
I thought Doc Robbins said the victim's tox screen came back negative. No, she wasn't a user.
But maybe the boyfriend was.
Let's hope he nicked himself.
Smells like mint.
Hey.
Find anything? No. Nothing. Anything out front? Just a couple of homeless guys.
You, uh, you sure this is the vic's? You are what you eat.
Blood in the sink.
None on the floor.
Enema. The secret life of women. Don't generalize. It's not very scientific of you. You're right. I'm sorry.
Catherine... Hey.
Ooh, pretty girl.
Yeah. Dangerous being a pretty girl in this town.
Listen to this: "Babe, he's not good enough for you. "He doesn't have the history we do. "You mean the world to me. I know you'll live to regret this decision." Mm.
Not exactly the victim's style.
What? You don't like cupcakes and candy bars? Hey, Gris! Grissom! Hey! Where's he going? I don't know. ( whistles ) BROWN: Somewhere. Come on.
♪ With eyes afire ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I am drawn to her ♪ ♪ Like a moth to flame ♪ ♪ She leaves me now ♪
♪ Unbound. ♪ What are you doing here? Contextualizing. Shopping cart in the lab is like a lion in a zoo. I needed to see it in its natural habitat. Question: How did Ashleigh James get from her loft to this underpass? She didn't walk. I'm pretty sure she was pushed.
Grissom... Is that Ashleigh James?
She was under her own billboard. Coincidence? Somebody was making a point.
Hey. You like crossword puzzles. How are you at deciphering codes? Aren't you putting the shopping cart before the horse? In order to decipher a code you need to know the alphabet for the code. In order to know the alphabet, you need to know the author.
So, what's the cart telling us?
About the victim? Well, the victim had no relationship to the cart except for the fact that we found her in it. I'm more interested in the person who used to call this cart home. Well, aside from the leather day runner and the Kate Swan bag-- which appear to be from Ashleigh James's world-- you got mostly collectibles. Newspapers, review journals, The Sun... Various editions going back several months. A couple of tennis rackets, a broom an umbrella, a pot I guess some kind of glove or something.
I stand corrected.
I have a feeling whoever owned this cart... was an Ashleigh James fan.
Or a fanatic.
Well, it looks like lover boy isn't home. Maybe he wrote her a letter and left town. It's trash day. I don't know, man. We don't even have a warrant. It's on the street. It's fair game.
What did you find? Photographic paper.
That's Ashleigh James.
( camera shutters clicking ) The cow says moo. I can hold my breath, I swear. Lola, if you exhale, you'll burst the bloody seams. Rod, I'm sorry. I... The fitting was two days ago. Are you telling me you couldn't keep your face out of the trough for 48 hours? You want me to be your agent you better start doing your part, all right?
Rod Darling?
Las Vegas Police. You're here about Ashleigh, right? Yeah. Sorry about what happened but she wasn't a client anymore. I dropped her a couple of months ago. Did you forget to pack?
We found men's clothing and personal items at her place. She was a screwed up kid looking for a father figure. One minute booking a photo shoot. The next minute, she's screaming for Daddy.
( grunts ) You son of a bitch! All right, that's enough. He killed her. He killed her! You're a psycho!
Rod did everything he could to make her dependent on him and only him. She shut me out. Is that why you tore up her photograph and tossed it in the trash? You just don't get it, do you? No, I don't. I mean, I don't know. I care about a woman, I put her picture in a frame. Maybe put it on my desk but to tear it up and throw it in the garbage with old cole slaw that just doesn't say "love" to me. If you were in love with an amazing woman and you knew she was throwing away everything that was amazing about her on some scum... would you still want her picture on your desk? What did you use to cut up the picture? Same knife you were waving around at Rod? The same knife you used to cut up Ashleigh's face?
If you're suggesting I was sleeping with her, I wasn't. You run out of drawer space in your place? I was protecting my asset. I don't know what that means. ( sighs ) You can't drive a mile in this town without seeing her face on a billboard on the side of a bus. Up in lights. The mantra in this business is you protect what's bankable in this business. ( clears throat ) So you didn't sleep with her. You just "stayed over." You brought a change of clothes razor blade, toothbrush, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. She needed constant attention, supervision. Leave her alone for a minute, fill in the blank.
I got crabs. Excuse me? I got crabs. Take a look.
Pthirus pubis. Feeds on human blood. They prefer the pubic and perianal regions because their legs are adapted to grasp hairs which are widely spaced. They don't usually nest in clothing. But when the clothing is being worn by someone with substandard personal hygiene... Like one of the victim's neighbors. We have a high-end handbag found in a street person's shopping cart a jacket covered in crabs in a closet full of designer clothes. What does that tell us? Tells me the victim not only had a visitor but that visitor was most likely homeless. Tells me that whoever is missing a shopping cart is also missing his jacket.
Good stuff in here.
Hey, you got a smoke? No. Sorry. So, what good are you?
It depends. Ooh, hey. Don't even think that you can play me, my man. I'm not playing. I've got a gal named Sara, and she would love that scarf.
What do you say? Trade me.
Yeah. What the hell.
Hey. Hey, hey, Mister. Hey, Mister, that is Tookie's scarf. That is his scarf. I gave it to him. That is Tookie's. Are you a taker, or are you a giver, Mister? I'm a trader. I traded Tookie my jacket for this scarf.
Yeah, and fleas can tell time. I think fleas can tell time. ( muttering ) That's a nice ring. I'll trade you.
Ow.
Now I can see what the dark looks like. I've been trying to do that for years.
Greg ran the blood on this scarf. It matches the victim's. How about the blood on the knife? Yeah, we got a match, too, but it's not the vic's. BROWN: Yeah, Mcbride clipped Rod Darling's right hand during his little hissy fit. Blood's his. And Mcbride's knife does not match these wounds.
( sighs ) The weapons of beauty. Yeah. If other people inflicted as much torture as women inflict upon themselves there would be lawsuits. Someone forgot to clean these, too, for a long time. Positive for blood all over the place.
SANDERS: Grissom... I, uh, ran the DNA on the epithelials from the homeless lady's ring. It's like Prince and the Pauper. No. Princess and the Pauper. The princess is a dead supermodel. Yeah. And her pauper sister could be the killer.
Hot dog?
Relish? Mm... with all those preservatives, no, no, no. I-I don't want to be preserved, thank you very much. No. I mean, I mean do you know what-what relish can do to your insides, huh? I'd have to investigate. Yeah, well, you know, you should. I mean, you know because our insides-- they can kill us. So, you're pretty careful about what you eat? Yeah, you know, you-you have to be careful, you know 'cause what goes down, you know it's got to come out. It's got to come up. Out. ( chuckles ) Newton's theory twisted again. Everybody's twisted.
How about your sister? My-my sister didn't have a sister. Protein's good, you know? C-carbs are bad. This is bad. That's bad.
Hey, Cassie, you know that scarf you gave Tookie? Yeah, I know it. Did your sister give that to you, or... did you steal it from her? I should have stole it. Because sh-sh-she stole from me. What did she steal from you? My life.
DARLING: I admit I gave up on Cassie. Washed my hands. Ashleigh was the only one who still gave a damn. Get together with her every couple of weeks. Make sure she had a decent meal, shower, clothes on her back. And what did you do for her? Let me tell you something. For every piece of meat, there has to be a butcher. ( scoffs ) So, you led her to the slaughter? Free will. Recognize this one? That's Cassie. It's the homeless sister. How long ago was this taken? Three years. See, Cassie got deep into freebase. No shortage of sleazebags around to keep her supplied. I knew she had the sister in Wichita Falls. All right, Cassie, let's go. Come on, chin up. Colin, will you get in there and get her hair out of her face? Don't touch me! I hate this! I hate this place! I hate it! I hate my life! Get away from me! ( muttering )
One look... that was it. Camera ate her up. So, in Cassie's mind, she was a victim here. Makes sense that she'd be angry. Angry was five flights up. Cassie was an obsessed basehead. Cocaine already had her paranoid. Once Ashleigh started modeling everything became this big conspiracy. Naturally, yours truly was Satan. Cassie threw her life away and her sister Ashleigh recycled it. GRISSOM: It's like a crossword puzzle, isn't it? Once you pick it up, you can't put it down. And go home? No way. You know, this Day Runner belonged to Ashleigh. "BFJ3". BF: Bellagio fountain.
J3? Date? January 3rd? June 3rd? July 3rd? Uh, third "J" month, July? That's what I thought at first. Parking space in a parking garage? Nope. Once you pick it up, you can't put it down. J3... J3... City or state grid map? You're cold. What's one thing a model always knows?
Who's shooting her. Three Js. Jay Jay Jarrett. Who? Famous photographer. Compliments of P.D.: Ashleigh James's employment contracts for the last year. And, as an aside she stopped working two months ago. Why? Good question. ( sighs ) Maybe the answer is in one of these pages.
BRASS: Nobody could blame you for being mad, Cassie. I mean, your sister took your career and you wanted to get back at her. If you couldn't have success, she couldn't either. Isn't that right? The v-victims have victims, too. So, which one of you is the victim? I-I know... you know, I know, I tried to warn her. About the in-in and-and outing and the... and the pick-pick. And the-and the and the counting the counting and the counting. I mean, I did, I tried. That's why I tried to really, really save her. I mean, I tried to save her. You tried to save her? Your sister? Right. She could never be, you know... she could never be... pretty enough. And she could never b-be... skinny enough. And sh-she could never be... perfect enough. And sh-she could never be any-anything enough.
Hey, fat girl. I got what you need. I got it. ( snorting ) ( whimpers ) ( murmuring ) One more.
Good girl. Mm. I mean, that's why I did, I did. I tried to stop her. ( choked up ): I tried to stop her.
I tried to stop.
( whimpering ) BRASS: She's a needle freak. She doesn't know what she's talking about. Yes, she does. ( moans ) You tried to stop yourself, didn't you? But you couldn't. ( yelling incoherently ) It's you! It's you! It's you! You! You! All right, read her her rights.
I found blisters in the back of her throat. What? Forced oral? That's what I thought until I noticed worn enamel on the tooth. In conjunction with this red mark on the knuckle of her middle finger. Which made me realize it wasn't sexual abuse. Eating disorder. ( gagging sound ) She was bulimic and anorexic. Which explains the down on her skin. Lanugo. Characteristic of premature babies and anorexics. She doesn't seem that skinny. Not this week. Last week, or the week before, who knows? Binge-and-purge. Till her entire system is in a state of shock. You know what's next. Body starts feeding on its own muscle. Is that what killed her? Uh, starvation and purging weaken the immune system. But cause of death: failed kidney, fueled by septicemia. Blood infection. Caused by the injuries to her face? Probably, but she's been septic for at least a month. She has anemia borne of chronic disease. Her red cell count's low, iron's low. ESR is extremely high. So she didn't just die. She's been dying for a long time.
( knocking on door ) What do you know that's good?
Cassie James's psych profile.
WILLOWS: Classic paranoid schizophrenic. Which explains why the interrogation room was too hard on her. For schizophrenics, you know, the tighter the space the more unbearable the feelings tend to be. Well, if you ask me that's not the only psych evaluation we need. Ashleigh James? ( sighs ): That poor girl. Definitely lacking in the self-image department. She suffered from septicemia, indicative of chronic abuse. But... what if Cassie wasn't the one who inflicted Ashleigh's facial wounds? Well, we know it's not the ex-boyfriend-- no evidence. Not the agent-- wouldn't jeopardize an asset. And if it's not Cassie, who's left? I don't know.
( sighs ) T 3. 1834 BC.
48 BF.
T 3... 1834 BC... 48 BF.
2 evo'd... 8G... 1 TU.
You must have been so desperate.
Cassie James's prints from Booking on the left. Prints from the loft faucet on the right. Do we have a prom date? ( computer key clacking )
All right, well... Cassie James was definitely in her sister's apartment.
STOKES: Hey, man. What you eatin'? Little college cuisine. That stuff will kill you, you know. Hasn't killed me yet. Grego, find any time between meals to check out Grissom's scrapings? You mean Ashleigh's fingernail scrapings? Yeah. Yeah. And? Got a match. To Cassie, her sister. No. To the vic. Ashleigh? Yeah. The DNA under her fingernails was her own.
Excuse me.
So what I realized was bulimia is a zero sum disease. That's why she has a plus sign over here and a minus sign over there. Whatever went in had to be exactly canceled by what went out. You're talking about BDD: Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Yes. One theory suggests it's neurobiological. Another psychological-- that people with extreme sexual or emotional anxiety unconsciously displace their feelings into the arena of appearance, because it's more manageable. You feel like crap, blame your face. Or your skin, or your hair or that zit on your forehead. I knew this dancer. Every night she'd stare at herself in the mirror for three hours. Meticulous grooming, when a person suffers from BDD becomes a destructive compulsion. There's one line in her daybook that keeps repeating over and over and over again: "I'm not even." So you're saying she knew she was slipping. No. She literally means even. A large number of BDD sufferers are convinced that they're not symmetric. That one side of their body or their face doesn't match the other. All animals prefer symmetry in their mates. The male Japanese scorpion flies with the most symmetrical wings gets the most mates. BROWN: So, really we're not talking about being beautiful at all. In terms of entomology being beautiful is about being even. It signals the fitness to procreate. STOKES: So, we're not really talking about looks. We're talking about survival of the species? The bottom line is the same: control and perfectionism. That's what her code was all about.
Let's take "HBWC/3, 1590 BC, 90 BF, 3930 S, 114 TC." Three hamburgers with cheese. Caloric content 530. 530 times three is where she gets 1590 BC. That's BC for "bad calories." And at 30 grams a pop 90 grams of BF. Bad fat? Yeah. The rest of her formula involves sodium, total carbohydrates and the actual weight of everything she ate. And so, she was, uh... operating like a scientist seeking a perfect formula to take her pain away. Or disappear altogether. Which brings me to the minus side of her equation. She would write down the number of times she t'u'd, threw up, in this case twice-- or evo'd. "Evo'd"? Moving her bowels. The directions on her disposable enema box use the term "evacuate". So, after her burger binge she "3 evo'd, 14 G, 2 t'u'd, 9 G, 3 #1." She evo'd three times but her calculations didn't stop there. "G" stands for grams.
14 gram... wait a minute. You're telling me that she weighed her bowel? WILLOWS: Yeah. We bagged it.
SIDLE: Input and output down to the last quarter gram. Well, that makes sense why the blood and skin under Ashleigh James's fingernails is a perfect match to Ashleigh James. She attacked herself.
I mean, Ashleigh was convinced that everything about her needed to be fixed. The real problem was inside her head. She couldn't deal with that so she tried to fix the outside. Hence, the digging and picking and purging and bleeding. To us, it would be torture. To her... some sort of release. Which is why Rod cut her loose. She was no longer bankable. Also why Frank was so angry at Rod. Yeah, he destroyed Frank's vision of her. So the victim and the killer became one and the same. The very nature of addiction-- whether it be self-medicating herself or self-mutilating-- is that the very behavior we use to survive it becomes a behavior that ends up killing us. STOKES: But wait, that still doesn't answer how Ashleigh ended up in a shopping cart by the freeway. Well, the fingerprints explain that.
I think Cassie was trying to take care of her sister. She pushed her to a place where she thought she'd be safe. Where she thought she could see herself for how beautiful she really was.
What happened to these girls?
I'm sorry about your sister, Cassie.
The dead don't bleed. True. Death does have some advantages.
Would you like me to help you get into a shelter? No, I would need a shelter from a shelter. No, no, no. Out here, I can hunt and I can range and I can find the things that I need out here. I mean, you never know what you need until you find it. Or until you lose it.
I mean, all we are is what we try to get rid of. Fat and newspapers and loneliness and cat food cans. And there are going-away people and there are left-behind people but, you know, everybody's secrets... everybody's secrets are the same. Were you and your sister's secrets the same? My sister didn't have secrets. Her secrets had her. That... I told you I didn't... I don't know. I mean, you know, y-y-you-you can pick through a million lives and never have one of your own.
Looking for things, analyzing them... trying to figure out the world-- that's a life. You never know what you need until you find it. And the next thing I find it might be the thing that changes everything. What will you do when you find it? Sleep... the most perfect sleep.
( muted tires screeching ) ( muted horn honking )
GRISSOM: Obviously most of crime scene investigation is about seeing. But much of it is about hearing as well. Listening. Knowing how to listen. Not just to what people are saying but how they say it. How their tone of voice matches their facial expressions or body posture. So, even if I read lips and know what they're saying... it's not enough.
We're both scientists, Mr. Grissom so let me tell you the science. You've got otosclerosis. Basically, this means a bony growth has begun to form around the base of the stapes. What this does is prevent the stapes from moving and passing vibrations to the inner ear effectively neutralizing sound waves. It's hereditary-- my mother. Most doctors think so. But there's no way to know when it's going to show up and there's no way to reverse it once it does. Right.
How long do you think?
I don't have that answer. Captioning sponsored by CBS CBS PRODUCTIONS Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org out seeing.