“Now we’ve got the recipe, let’s find who’s doing the cooking.”

The team investigates the murder of a woman found in the park, standing up next to a light pole. At first they think she was hit by lightning. However, there is something rather staged about her pose… Back at the lab they find out that the vic was a nurse but they just don’t have anything else. When Grissom returns to the lab he finds out he’s supposed to be in a department wide meeting that he’d forgotten about. In the meeting, they discover that Ecklie has hired a therapist to help them deal with Warrick’s death. After that, we see Warrick’s replacement Riley Adams coming in.

Riley doesn’t like the shrink that she meets in the break room. We find out that Riley’s parents are shrinks too. Before she can get into it with the shrink, Grissom comes in and calls Riley out to a scene. At the scene we see that Riley is definitely possessed of a poker face and an off beat sense of humor that pushes sarcasm to a new level.

The death at the second scene looks posed like the first one did. However, this time the vic is a young Asian man dressed in running clothes. This time there are a few more clues than the first murder. The vic is lying on a bus bench and the bus driver had been by there only an hour and a half before. Since rigor mortis had already set in, and the vic wasn’t there 90 minutes before, they have a problem. Riley hypothesizes that the vic was running and had a heart attack which might account for the instant onset of rigor. If it wasn’t that then the vic couldn’t have died on that bench, but had to have been placed there.

At the lab Catherine and Nick find that the cause of death on the first vic was cardiac arrest. Nick scoffs that the cause means they don’t know what killed her. Greg tells them there was nothing wrong with her organs, no drugs in her system, nothing that would give them a clue as to why she died.

Meanwhile, Riley meets Doc Robbins. They have a fun little guessing game about how she lost a few teeth. Then they take a look at the male vic. He had meth and other drugs in his system, but basically, like the first vic, he died of cardiac arrest. Despite his drug use he was a perfectly healthy person who just died… exactly like the first vic.

Next we see David going to see the shrink. He sees Greg in there and the shrink pushing the kleenex toward him. Uncomfortable, David returns to the lab where Grissom is performing a test.  When Grissom makes a mistake, forgetting a key step, David calls him on it and offers to do the retest. Grissom frowns thoughtfully, but then gets a call out to another scene.

The third death is really freaky looking. It’s a man standing on a street corner, dressed in business clothes, looking like he’s hailing a cab.  Grissom realizes all the deaths are related.  Every one of  the vics was posed and died in that pose.  When Grissom and Greg examine the body at the lab they discover lead in the bottoms of his shoes, something that kept him standing upright.  Greg also finds that the guy had filthy feet. Grissom finds dirt in the vic’s ears, and says he had to have been dressed in the clothes and shoes.  He figures the guy might have been homeless. They’re pretty sure of it when they find dead head lice on him.  However, the lice shouldn’t actually be dead. So what killed them?

Catherine decides that the only vic with a life has to be the one who has clues to give up. So she and Riley search the apartment of the first vic, the nurse. Riley finds a bag of high grade marijuana and makes a joke about it being the “good stuff”. When Catherine tells her that they randomly drug test, Riley deadpans that she has a clean urine sample in her locker. At first Catherine doesn’t realize she’s joking.

They find some art work and figure the vic might have been an art student.  On the wall is a painting that looks like a dead person. Riley uses her smartphone to search the internet for the artist’s name ‘J. Skaggs’ and finds out that he’s a local artist. When Brass visits Skaggs’ studio he finds the artist painting scenes of dead people. Skaggs tells him people pay a lot of money for art that depicts sex and death.  Brass questions the artist about the vics but he says he doesn’t know them.  The one odd thing about the interview is that the artist tells Brass he’d like to paint him.

David, meanwhile has used the dead head lice to figure out how the vics were killed. Since they all had traces of the same medicine in their system, he said they had to have been sedated then placed in a chamber and posed. Then carbon monoxide was used to kill them. Nick makes the remark that, “Now we’ve got the recipe, let’s find out who’s doing the cooking.”

An elderly couple suffering from Alzheimer’s is found dead next, posed to look like bird watchers.  Fibers found on them that match fibers found on all the vics, but they just aren’t any closer to finding a suspect, other than Jersey Skaggs, the artist.

Grissom had mentioned a problem with Hank earlier on to the shrink before he was called out to a scene. She gets all pissy with him because she’s discovered that Hank is his dog. Grissom calms her by telling her the dog has been listless and he wonders if animals can pick up on their owner’s emotions. When the shrink tells him that they can, Grissom admits to being distracted lately and forgetting things (ie the meeting, and the step in the testing). The shrink tells him it’s a sign of grief and that he needs to talk about his feelings to someone.

Going back to the cases, Brass talks to the artist again when it’s discovered that the nurse attended one of his parties a few years back. The artist denies knowing her, saying lots of people go to his parties. Brass shows him photos of the dead people. The artist says the poses look familiar not the people. Then he recalls having his studio remodeled and one of the sub-contractors had shown him some sketches that looked like the poses of the dead people. He turns over the photos saying he can’t look at inferior work. When Brass presses him about the person who showed him the sketches all he can remember is that they were for some city art competition.

The team searches for info on the art competition and finds that drawings by Arthur Listerman match the poses of the vics. All of the vics are there, but there’s an additional picture of a little boy on a bike.  Now they know the killer is going to strike again in order to bring his last sketch to life. Riley searches local art blogs and finds one where an anonymous person posted a photo of the first vic. The curious thing about the photo is that there is no crime scene tape in it, which meant the photo was taken before the vic was discovered.

They use the blog owner to trace the IP address of the anonymous poster. While the blog owner tries to lure the anonymous poster, a woman comes in to report that her son is missing. Now they know that the killer has his final victim. The blog owner gets the IP address and it’s traced to a local library. The detectives ask him to keep the anonymous poster occupied so they can close in on him. As they’re taking him into custody, they discover those same fibers on him that were on the vics.

Once they have Listerman at the station, he says he’ll cooperate but he won’t answer any questions. He asks Grissom to turn the viewfinder of the camera around so he can see himself. He won’t answer Grissom’s questions but instead looks at the camera and begins to talk about why he committed the crimes, about how he’s been overlooked as an artist. Grissom asks him where the boy is and tells him he will be executed if he doesn’t tell. Listerman doesn’t care whether or not he dies. He only cares about the world seeing his art and acknowledging him as an artist.

The rest of the team are frantically searching the warehouses near the library for one where the jute fibers might have come from. Catherine locates one and the team rushes there to look for the boy. Greg and Riley find the boy in a chamber filled with carbon monoxide. They pull him out and he’s not breathing. Greg calls for paramedics and Riley performs CPR. Finally, the boy begins to breath.

There are two really important things in this episode. The obvious one being the arrival of Warrick’s replacement and whether she will fit in with the team.  She seems a little jarring, but I suppose that was done to make it seem as if she might not fit. Her persona was certainly written in such a way that the viewer wonders if she’s going to fit in and be accepted.

The second important thing is Grissom’s confession that he’s distracted and forgetting things. When the shrink tells him that’s normal, Grissom tells her it’s not normal for him. This is key because it’s part of the wind up to Grissom’s departure.

This was another solid CSI episode, the kind you’ve come to expect. However, all the little clues are in place to show us that change is in the wind for this series.

Winter