A woman is found dead in an odd position leaned up against a lamppost. Pedestrians in the park didn’t even notice her corpse as she is leaning upright against the post. At the autopsy lab, the CSIs notice no obvious trauma, no sign of lightening strike, her purse is completely empty and the last call she made on her phone was to MoviePhone. The victim’s prints were in the healthcare provider’s database identifying her as Carla Peretti.
Meanwhile, a therapist is on duty at the department to help counsel anyone grieving over the loss of Warrick. Taking over Warrick’s position is newcomer Riley Adams who begins on another case similar to Peretti’s involving a male who also suffered from a rapid onset rigor. Although Peretti appeared to be in perfect health, the male victim’s organs displayed his habits of being a partier. The similar trait that the two victims share is the condition of their livers, suggesting an alternate cause of death (other than cardiac arrest) being gaseous asphyxiation.
Grissom receives a text regarding another crime scene where he discovers another similar rigor case only the victim is not supported by an object to keep him standing straight up. Surprisingly, the victim is in a pose hailing for a cab. After taking him to autopsy, Grissom and Greg notice lead in his shoes to keep him standing along with specific details that lead them to believe he was a homeless man that someone cleaned up by dressing him in a business suit. Reevaluating the situation, Catherine points out the victims being a druggie dressed as a jogger, a homeless man dressed as a businessman and a nurse dressed as herself. Upon visiting Peretti’s apartment, Catherine and Riley discover a bizarre oil painting of a “dead” version of Peretti by J. Skaggs. After visiting Skaggs, Det. Brass finds out that Skaggs claims he has never seen the other two suspects however he admits to painting Peretti. Back at the lab, Hodges discovers that all the victims had traces of carbon monoxide as well as the lice found on the homeless/business man. This leads Grissom to theorize that the killer lured the victims back to his place where he slipped them a sedative giving him enough time to redress where he then put them in some sort of gas chamber releasing carbon monoxide and position the victims in the arrangement as they were found.
Det. Brass uncovers the second male victim, Harley Soon’s juvenile record and finds that he was arrested at J. Skaggs party five years prior. When Brass brings in Skaggs for questioning, he shows him the photos and recognizes the positions they are in. He claims that one of the contractors who were renovating his studio approached him months earlier to show him sketches he planned to enter in a contest that resembled the crime scenes. The CSIs research the contest and stumbled across Arthur Blisterman’s submissions which were the exact recreations of each crime scene. His last entry included one of a Hispanic boy popping a wheelie on his bicycle.
Meanwhile, Riley and Nick continue to view a blog online about the murderous “art” and realize one anonymous blogger attached a photo of one of the victims before it had been discovered and taped off. This leads Det. Vartann to bring in one of the other bloggers from the site who provoked the anonymous blogger to possibly kill these victims. Det. Vartann told the blogger to keep posting comments on the site in order to track the anonymous blogger’s I.P. address. With this help, they track him at the Las Vegas public library and arrest him. Grissom has him in the interrogation room to find out where he has the boy only to learn that in his delusional world he only wants immortality not a lighter prison sentence. With the dust that was found on all of the victims including Det. Vartann when he arrested Blisterman, they reveal possible warehouses of where the dust could have come from. Catherine tracks the down the warehouse that is used for Blisterman’s “art” studio and calls for backup. Riley is the first to get into the gas chamber to perform CPR on the boy and saves him.
