Synopsis:
Halloween week finds Nick Stokes and Riley Adams responding to a liquor store robbery call only to catch the thief fleeing--wearing a police uniform! They give chase and Nick corners him in an abandoned hotel and the thief, with nowhere to go, jumps out the window. It's a fatal plunge, but when Riley leans over the garbage dumpster where he fell, she discovers the body of a young woman underneath his. While the rest of the CSIs investigate her death, Nick pursues the dead robber. He and Brass trace the uniform to a cop in town to testify who says his uniform went missing after he had it cleaned in the hotel he was staying in. Mandy Webster gets a print match on the dead man's thumb, identifying him as Thomas Taylor of Bakersfield, California. The CSIs are able to link him to another man in town from Bakersfield, Barry Wunderlick--who happens to be in the drunk tank at the jail. Nick questions Wunderlick, who was arrested for drunk and disorderly behavior during his bachelor party. He was relying on his best man--Thomas Taylor--to raise the bail money. Nick tells him Thomas made a genuine attempt: he committed four armed robberies in one night before Nick ended his spree.
A stamp on the thigh of the dead girl leads Catherine and Riley to the Dark Water Bar, a trendy club where Catherine is surprised to find her underage daughter. After sending Lindsey home, Catherine and Riley question club owner Craig Hess, who claims not to recognize the dead girl. The CSIs take a look at the club's security cameras, which contradict Hess's story: he's seen throwing her out of the club on camera. Grissom and Catherine examine the girl's body and find fresh needle marks in her arm and a white powder in her nose. Detective Vartann manages to ID the girl in the Homeland Security Database; she's Angela Marie Carlos, the daughter of a Colombian drug lord named Juan Ramone Carlos. The girl's aunt, Emelina, tells the CSIs that she'd sent her niece to school in Utah because Angela liked to party. She tells them that her brother will never forgive her. Greg questions Angela's friend Sylvie, who partied with Angela on the night of her death. Sylvie tells him that Angela told her that the owner of Dark Water Bar was a friend of her family and that she could easily get them in. She did, but the owner caught them and threw Angela out. Sylvie stayed behind and hooked up with a guy she met that evening. Catherine and Riley go back to Craig, suspecting he's in business with Angela's father. He claims ignorance--and also won't tell the women how he got Angela to leave the club. Back at the lab, Dr. Robbins shows Grissom that Angela's blood has hematized, a condition usually seen in advanced stages of decomposition--or some form of blood disease.
Lindsey Willows comes to her mother's office with a clean breathalizer test in hand: she can prove she wasn't drinking the night before. She claims her mother overreacted, but Catherine doesn't back down on the grounding. Hodges shows Grissom the substance in Angela's nose was a tranquilizer called atropine, not cocaine. Riley and Greg track Angela's cell phone to a garbage truck, but they can't tie its route in with Craig Hess. Wendy goes to Dr. Robbins claiming the blood he gave her is contaminated, but a retest proves the results are accurate. Wendy and Dr. Robbins tell Grissom that in addition to Angela's own B negative blood, there are two male donor samples mixed in: O negative and A positive. The latter is what killed her; it was completely incompatible with her own blood type. Fish scales on Angela's purse lead the CSIs back to Hess, who has a big fish tank in his club. Hess points her in the direction of the busboy, Goya, who feeds the fish. The CSIs go to Goya's warehouse and discover him and his cohort, Joe, with a box of cocaine. They also find tubes that could have been used to transfuse blood. Catherine questions the men, who tell her Angela came to them for cocaine and ended up snorting atropine instead. When she passed out, they thought they could revive her by transfusing her blood, but they inadvertently killed her and dumped her body, hoping to frame Craig. Later in the evening, Grissom's phone rings: Goya, Joe, Sylvie, Hess and Emelina have all been shot execution-style.
Analysis:
Three different types of blood in one body? I admit, the promise of that twist had me hooked. I love it when CSI delves into genuinely freaky science. To this day, "Bloodlines" remains one of on my favorite episodes simply because I was so completely intrigued by the concept of a Chimera. "Let It Bleed" doesn't feature a genetic mutation, but it does answer one of those questions I've always wondered about and that's, "What would happen if someone got the wrong blood type?" I figured it wouldn't be a good thing, but according to Yahoo Health, "[t]ransfusion with the wrong blood type can result in a severe, sometimes life-threatening reaction." I imagine that Angela, in her already weakened state, probably didn't stand a chance.
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