CSI: Vegas - Episode 9.06 “Say Uncle” Recap

November 14, 2008     CSI Fanatic, Entertainment

Vegas Recap - 9.06 Say Uncle

CSI: Vegas - Episode 9.06 Say Uncle
Air Date: November 13, 2008

At a Korean street party, gunshots interrupt the fun, and send the crowd running, ducking, and scrambling for cover.

The team shows up, but no one seems to have seen exactly what happened. A young woman and a young man lie dead on the asphalt, she with two bullet wounds, he with three. Grissom spots only one casing nearby, but the rest may have been scattered by foot traffic from the crowd. Riley opens the man’s wallet, and identifies him as Sung Bang. He also has an prison release form in his pocket, indicating that he spent six months in detention for two DUIs and had just been released that morning. Hodges notes that the man is loaded with ID, but the woman doesn’t even have lint in her pocket. Just a few feet away from the bodies, Grissom finds a child’s sunglasses, spattered with blood.

(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Police find it difficult to find anyone with information on what happened, partly because of language issues. They also suspect that gang activity may frighten people from saying anything. Greg finds one man, though, with blood on his shirt. The man also speaks English, “If it’s gonna get me out of here quicker, I’ll be William Freakin’ Shakespeare.” The man has little to say to Brass. Brass asks if he thinks it’s worth the apparent cultural honor to know that a killer walks free. He tells Brass that he’ll agree to any forensic tests they want, but he won’t tell what happened.

Both victims died of exsanguination (they bled to death) from their gunshot wounds. The bullets come from two different guns, though. So, they figure it might be two gunmen, or one gunman with two guns, gang-style. Also, the man’s wounds are shot at pretty level trajectories. The woman’s are very steeply angled, as if shot from below, or while she was lying on the ground. Grissom asks if she could have fallen, trying to flee. David says it could be drugs. She has needle marks. Grissom notices strange scars above the woman’s eyes, indicating she may have had cosmetic surgery. They wonder if she’s a hooker.

Riley and Catherine discuss the man’s background. He’s unmarried with no children. Besides the DUIs, he has a clean record, including no gang affiliations. He was released from prison, 45 minutes from Vegas, and went to Dempsey’s department store. A couple hours later, he’s dead. Grissom comes in, and tells Catherine about the woman’s eye surgery, blepharoplasty. He tells her the so-called Asian eyelid procedure is fairly common in Korea, and is spreading in the U.S. by women wanting a more “Caucasian-look”.

Brass takes the woman’s photo to “Makeover Town”, the block of Korea town where a lot of cosmetic surgery is done. He quickly finds the doctor who performed the procedure. He tells Brass that he was held at gunpoint, and forced to perform the surgery. Brass questions the performing of this surgery to make women’s eyes look less Asian. The doctor says the procedure has become insanely popular, ever since Jackie Chan had it done.

He said the men forced him to agree to 15% of his profits. The doctor says he believes the men are part of the new group KD, the Kam Pai Dragons. He says they work in extortion, but don’t act like many other gangs. They don’t ride lowriders, spray graffiti, wear tattoos, or even deal in drugs. They take from their own, because they know they won’t turn them in. When Brass presses for why the people of Korea Town don’t turn these gangs in, he responds with a plea for the police to protect the immigrant community as well as do others groups. He says he no longer pays the extortion money. When he switched to an HMO, he says, they came and installed security cameras. The KD don’t like to be seen.

Catherine and Brass go down to view surveillance video from Dempsey’s department store. In a lab that is clearly better equipped than that of the city’s, one of the store’s video analysts recognized the man as the victim from Korea Town. The head of Dempsey’s Forensic Services asks Brass about the police and their property crime solve rate. He boasts that theirs is 93%, nationwide. The man in question was in the department store with a little boy. The boy had touched a toy car. One of Dempsey’s “CSI” hands Catherine the toy. She looks at a fingerprint on the car, and matches it to the one they have for the boy at the crime scene.

They all view video of Sung Bang leaving Dempsey’s store with the little boy. The boy is Park Bang. The female victim is Kora Sil, Park’s mother. Park’s father died of AIDS a couple years ago. Park is also HIV-positive. He’s on a strict drug regimen.

Kora has several priors for prostitution. Her “friend agenda” page shows she’s single, and was born in Seoul. It appears, from the comments people have left that she uses the page to score drugs. It also lists her address, in Korea Town.

At Kora’s house, a man: Mr. Pan answers the door. Brass tells his team to take a look around. Pan tells Brass that he’s a respected businessman, and that Park and Kora come over to use his computer. He denies knowing anything about the shooting, or Park’s whereabouts.

Nick marks a satellite photo of the area, showing Dempsey’s and the location of the shooting. There are a couple of blocks between the two locations. Riley notes the receipt for items that Park would have been carrying. Since they found nothing but the sunglasses at the crime scene, some of the other items may have been dumped or lost nearby. The team goes down to find the other store items.

Not seeming keen on “hunting”, Hodges smugly shows Nick something inside a house dumpster, where he has deduced the items might be. It’s a plastic sack with the boy’s bloody shirt in it. Inside the corresponding house, an older woman inside pulls a gun on Riley and Nick. The scene is very tense, until Park Sung comes into the room, and tells her, in Korean, that everything is going to be alright.

As a doctor takes a look at Park, Grissom asks Riley about him. She says he’s very weak. She said he wouldn’t open up about anything. Grissom chides Riley for questioning a minor without an advocate from Child Protective Services present.

Grissom asks the doctor why Park has a gastric tube inserted into his abdomen. He responds that they’ll need to look over his records to find out if he has a feeding issue, requiring the use of the tube. The doctor says dried blood around the feeding tube indicate he may have caught it on something, or tried to pull it out.

The woman from the house tells Nick, via an interpreter, that she pulled the gun because, where she comes from, people watch out for their neighbors.

As Grissom gently tries to coax Park into talking, another doctor, Dr. Eisling, enters and tries to give the boy HIV meds. Grissom looks on, with noticeable concern, as Park squirms violently to avoid the treatment. The boy screams as the staff holds him down and forcibly gives him the drugs.

Henry Andrews tells Grissom that Park’s drug screen is incredible. Since the boy is only HIV-positive and doesn’t have AIDS, there is no need for such aggressive drugs. The mix of drugs he’s taking would inhibit his growth. In fact, one of the drugs has the FDA’s blackbox label, and others are still undergoing clinical trials. Grissom wonders how a boy with a druggie mother gets on a clinical trial.

Wendy shows Greg that DNA from skin under Park’s fingernails matches that of Jin Ming: the man who identified himself as Mr. Pan. Jin was arrested at 18 for stealing cars with his street racing gang. She adds that the tissue was from gluteus tissue. Greg asked if this meant that Park had been molested. She says maybe not. Jin Ming’s mugshot, from when he was 19, showed him covered with tattoos. Now he has none. She says his gluteus tissue may have been used to graft over his tattoos. She also notes that being a street racer, it makes sense to have tattoos. If you’re a Kam Pai Dragon, though, it’s better to “be invisible.”

Greg and Detective Cavaliere return to the house where they met “Mr. Pan” and it has been emptied. They look around Jin Ming’s basement. They find where Park and his mother must have been living. Greg finds a lawyer’s business card on a desk. When Cavaliere looks at a photo of the three of them together, he tries to pick it up. He notices a trip string tied to the back of the photo, and yells, “Get down!” A small pair of blasts come from behind the shelf. Cavaliere fell in the blast, mostly, it seemed, from trying to get away from it.

Greg tells Grissom that he called the lawyer whose card he found on Kora’s desk. He says that Kora was suing Park’s doctor. He was paying her $25 per week. She wanted $50.

Grissom sits outside Park’s hospital room. He blocks Dr. Eisling, who shows up to administer more drugs. Grissom dresses him down for testing those drugs, that clearly weren’t needed, yet, when “doctors” have a stake in the pharmaceutical company that makes the drug. The woman from Child Protective Services says they’ll back Grissom.

Park, having seen that Grissom kept Eisling out of his room, tells him that they were living in Jin Ming’s house. He says that his uncle found them there, and saw the gastric tube. His mother fought with his uncle, then Jin showed up. Sung and Park managed to get away from Jin, and ran out. Hesitating, Park continues carefully, saying that Jin and Kora found them. According to the boy, Jin shot Sung and his mother, with two different guns. When Grissom tells Brass this, over the phone, Brass tells him that Sung, who was in on only a misdemeanor, was released with a 9mm.

In the lab, Grissom finds that Sung carried his gun inside the front of his waistband. Riley asks if Kora carried. Her purse showed traces, indicating a gun. She suggests that they shot each other, and Jin took off.

Riley and Grissom take Park, along with three mannequins marked to show bullet trajectory, to the parking lot where the shooting happened. He says that neither Jin, nor Kora fell before Jin shot her. When Grissom asks Park how he shot her, he positions the third dummy and points, “Bang! Bang!” The motion of his arm between shots indicates a position consistent with the low angles of the two bullets in his mother.

Brass says that juvie may be the best place for an eight-year-old with HIV. He’ll get the care he needs. Grissom says that he wished they hadn’t solved this one.

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