Plot

The homicide of a weathercaster who was moonlighting as a prostitute uncovers a clue that could lead Dr. Langston to the missing woman from his New York and Miami cases.

Bad casino surveillance failed to alert anyone in time when call-girl and would be weather-forecast-star Dede Chase is fatally stabbed. The team painstakingly works out from confusing clues the pimping web during a 'convention', including Dimitri Sadesky, Brett McDowell and his relevant relationships beyond traditional business. Langston hopes the web also leads to a complex New York and Miami-based white slavery network's missing girl Madeline Briggs, whose mother also keeps looking.—KGF Vissers

Langston is looking for Madeline Briggs in Las Vegas. Brass unsuccessfully tries to contact him by phone to investigate the murder of a hooker, but Nick finds him and they go to the crime scene. Soon they learn that she is the weather-woman Dede Chase from a channel in Barstow; therefore, she is a meteorologist and not a prostitute. But soon they find that Madeline Briggs and Dede Chase are victims of a prostitution ring.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"CSI" - "The Lost Girl" - Nov. 12, 2009

A quick recap of the we-love-Laurence-Fishburne-and-you-should-too crossover series: H and Ray investigated a double murder in Miami that led them to uncover a human trafficking for black market organs scheme by an organized organization called the Zetas. Ray headed to New York where he and Mac realized that the scheme might possibly include babies since the latest kidnapee is pregnant.

It's night in Vegas. A casino security guy watches a wildlife video and ignores a closed circut screen of a girl running through the hotel halls and stairways. She makes it down to the floor and tears off outside as if she's running from someone. She puts on her heels when she gets outside and is attacked in front of the lobby. The security guy finally looks up and calls for help. It's too late the girl is dead.

We cut to Brass over the dead girl. He calls Ray to ask where he is, he said he would be there over an hour ago.

Ray is showing a photo of Madeline to people on the strip. One of the pros tries to help but can't and gets some money from Ray. Nick comes to get him, yelling at him for not answering his phone. Nick asks what's up. He shows him the Madeline photo and says he's been looking for her all week. He told her mom he'd try. Nick says okay let's work on the call and then after their shift they'll look together.

They arrive at the call. Dead hooker says Brass. Word has spread on the "ho-vine." Apparently when pros hear the cops are on the scene they take off and we see a line of them leaving. Brass goes to catch up to them. David arrives and recognizes the woman, it's Dee Dee Chase the weather girl from Barstow. They wonder what a meteorologist is doing turning tricks. Nick observes that these days everyone has two jobs.

Who are you???

Catherine and Greg process the body. DeeDee's face was very bruised. And they found evidence of violent sexual activity. Her body also shows sign of abuse no more than 48 hours old. David shows them Dee Dee on the news. She goofs her own name for some reason. He can't believe she was hooker and thought she might've liked things a little dangerous. Greg notices blood on her earring, they think it might be the killer's.

Ray and Nick look at the Tangiers' surveillance. They notice a guy picking her up and heading up to her room. (He has an alibi though since he's on camera gambling at TOD). They wonder why, if she got cold feet, she went down a different elevator.

Hodges comes by and asks for a raise if he has to keep doing Archie's job. Nick doesn't think Ecklie is going to go for that. He has DeeDee's cell phone records including 28 calls from a man named Brett McDowell, who just used his credit card at the Four Kings.

Brass calls him in. Turns out McDowell's her producer and they were sleeping together and he's married and he was leaving messages on her phone to tell her not to call his house. He admits they were having an affair and they broke up while in Vegas. Brass shows him a photo of dead DeeDee and hypothesizes that he cut ties with her and her throat. Brass wants a record of everywhere he went: bars, clubs, casinos, tattoo parlors. Brett is confused at that. Brass mentions a fresh tatt DeeDee had. Brett, who looks legitimately shocked and bummed, says she hated tattoos, thought they made women look cheap.

Catherine is cross-referencing the tattoo and gets hits on several other prostitutes, all of whom had "unknown" pimps.

Mandy searches for a match for the blood on DeeDee's earrings and gets a hit on Madeline Briggs. She calls in Ray who gives her a meaningful look.

Catherine, Ray, Greg, and Nick try and work up connections between the two women in the working-up-connections room. Greg suggests if they were sharing jewelry maybe they were living together, so maybe they had the same pimps. Catherine says no pimps were listed though. Ray thinks he knows where he can find some pimps.

Ray and Nick go to a gaudy "player's ball" where the guy throwing the party claims it's really just an elaborate costume party without any "real" pimps. Tons of the girls have that same tattoo on their necks, backs, arms etc. Ray takes photos. Catherine and Brass watch a pimp close in on a potential horse for his stable. Ray and Nick walk by one guy talking to a camera about this being a Dionysian festival. (It's that excellent British dude who played Romo Lampkin on "Battlestar Galactica" and Badger on "Firefly"). They give each other a look. The four meet up and Ray says none of the girls with diamond tattoos claim to know nothing. Catherine says they should just haul them all in. Brass says they're used to being rousted. They try a different tactic: they go to the girl onstage grab money from her bra and test it for cocaine. It's positive, they arrest her.

Mrs. Briggs has arrived in Vegas and confronts Ray about withholding the info that Madeline was there. Ray says, essentially, that he was trying to protect her. Mrs. Briggs says she can handle stuff. Ray shows her the picture and she cries.

The bust was so the prostitute would call her pimp from the bugged jail phones. She does. Her pimp is less than happy, knowing the phones are bugged. He sends someone to bail her out anyway though. Ray and Brass follow her home and take pictures of her and the woman who bailed her out. As she walks in the door we see the dude from the players ball is her pimp. Greg tells them the woman who posted bail is Susan Samuels a former ho, who is the mother of the pimp, Anthony Samuels. Ray wants to get into the house. Brass says they need probable cause. Greg says he thinks he's got something when he notices that in the photos he's been sent that Anthony is wearing Madeline Briggs' earring.

Ray and Brass and a team of cops bust in. There are some girls and Anthony and his mom. He claims he's just visiting. The cops cuff him. Brass overhears a noise and busts into a room, where a woman, bloodied, gagged, and bound is sitting. Her name is Diane. She was the girl who called from the jail.

Ray shows Madeline's picture to all of the people who are in the house, all lined up in cuffs. Anthony tells them to help the cops in any way they can. The woman at the end of the line, facing away from the others gestures with her eyes towards a bedroom.

Ray goes into a bedroom on which one side is a mess and the other side has a neatly made bed. He undoes the cover and reveals a huge bloodstain.

The gang processes stuff from the house, photos, prints, blood sampled etc.both on the premises and back at the lab.

Nick gets a print. Greg uncovers a secret hiding place in an outdoor chimney with DeeDee Chase's purse in it.

Brass interviews Anthony who blames the Diane beating and gagging on the prostitutes in the house, saying those bitches are crazy, and he just happens to like banging strippers and hos. Brass exposits that they also found a bunch of money and chips in the chimney. Anthony says he has an alibi for DeeDee's murder. Brass asks about Anthony wearing Madeline Briggs' earring and he says his mother brought her buy and that girls give him stuff all the time. Brass shows him a photo of the bloody mattress and says if that's Madeline's blood he's in deep doo-doo. He asks for a lawyer.

Nick and Catherine visit Diane in the hospital who won't snitch on Anthony and blames herself for the beating since she called from jail. She doesn't want anymore trouble. Catherine says they're going to help her get out of the game and get a straight job. She wants them to save Anthony too. They point out that Anthony is a sociopath. She says Anthony fought for her, saved her life, protected her from "that Russian" who wanted to put him and her in a hole in the desert. They ask who the Russian is and if she worked for someone else before Anthony. She says she was "solo" and a renegade and asks them to leave. She turns over and Catherine notices her tattoo and Diane freaks out and screams at them to leave. She says they're messing everything up. She says Anthony loves her and then nods off thanks to a sedative given by a nurse. They roll her over to look at her tat. It's bigger than the ones on the other girls. It's because, they discover, with a fancy light thing, it was applied to cover a previous tattoo. Nick observes that cattle ranchers would often rebrand cattle they stole from others and if discovered would start a range war.

Mandy tells Ray that bloodstains on the mattress are from Madeline and her miscarried fetus. Ray posits that Anthony, after having paid a pretty penny for her, got pissed that she was pregnant and beat her up. It's impossible to tell if, wherever she may be, she's okay.

They ask around about the butterfly tattoo and it turns out that it's the mark of Dimitri Sadesky, the Russian of which Diane spoke and they dude who was talking Dionysian festival talk at the player's ball. Oddly, it turns out that he's a literature prof at a local college. Brass rolls up on him while he's teaching an outdoor class on, erf, "Lolita." Sadesky thinks he's vice but Brass announces he's homicide and dismisses the class. Sadesky dismisses the notion that he's a pimp but does wonder about the decline of the American work ethic and how anyone is expected to make ends meet in this recession. He notices down the way from them Ray checking out his car and he runs over to ask him where his warrant is. Parked in public place and in plain view apparently they don't need one. Ray pulls out a geiger counter, runs it over the car, and announces the levels are consistent with those they found on a severed leg with a butterfly tattoo on it in Miami. All the while Sadesky babble about whores and how all women are them.

Nick and Ray impound the car and check it out in the lab. They check out the GPs, give it the blue light special etc. Nick comes up with a recent latitude/longittude and Ray finds a blood drop.

Meanwhile, Catherine looks at the surveillance at the casino again where DeeDee Chase died. She picks up Diane in the background putting something in her purse. She sprays the purse she found at Samuels' and there's blood trace on it. Brass and Catherine confront Diane in the hospital and ask if Anthony coerced into helping with the murder. Diane explains that Anthony and she actually dated, he wrote her love poems, told her that they were going to retire to Hawaii and have a family. He said that the other girls would be working for them and she'd be his wife. She said that changed the night they met DeeDee.

We flash to the scene of Diane and Anthony picking up DeeDee after she had been dumped at the side of the strip by her married boyfriend. She says Anthony needed another wife to up the cash flow.

We then flash to Anthony beating and raping Dee Dee and brainwashing her over a couple of days and feeding her the same lines about making her the number one wifey and then forcing her into prostitution. Anthony didn't realize it but Diane knew that DeeDee was faking that she was going along with it until she had her chance to bolt, which she did at the hotel. We then cut to her running and then being attacked. It was Diane who grabbed her. DeeDee asked Diane to come with her and called DeeDee insane for wanting to stay so, naturally, Diane stabbed her. We cut back to the hospital room and Diane explains that Anthony had something to her that no one else ever had: I love you.

We cut to a line of people walking the desert, the last place on Sadesky's GPS. Ray gets a text that the blood from the Russian's car was Madeline Briggs'. They uncover a female skeleton. And then three more.

Ray interrogates Sadesky, pointing out disgustedly that Sadesky also burned them with his cigarettes, which they can trace back to him with his DNA. Sadesky admits that he did come in contact with Madeline: Anthony gave her as a peace offering for stealing Diane. But, Sadesky says, she was so damaged as to have no commercial value so he just cut her loose.

In a conference room Hodges opens up a package in front of Greg, Catherine, and Mandy that Langston sent them on his travels to New York and Miami including little Statue of Liberty trinkets and goofy sunglasses that Hodges tries on.

We see text messages arrive from H and Mac to Ray that the info they were given from Sadesky helped them nail syndicate suspects in Miami and New York also.

Ray wonders to Nick why Madelin didn't just go home. Nick says sometimes the girls are so damaged they don't realize that they're friends and family would take them back in. Ray gets an epiphany. He goes to the phone records from Anthony's house and sends out a text to all of the numbers that were in the phone, he guesses Anthony gave phones to all his girls and hopes that Madeline still has her phone.

He texts that the message is from her mother who just wants her to come home no matter what happened.

We see a series of girls delete the message and one, seen from the back, doesn't.

Ray is leaving the station when Madeline shows up. She wonders how she can go back after all that's happened. Ray says she just has to walk through the door and opens his arms. She goes to him. He embraces her. She cries.