Immortality


Immortality

Season	15
Number	19/20
Writer	Anthony E. Zuiker
Director	Louis Milito
Original Airdate	September 27, 2015
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Previous Episode: The End Game

Immortality is a 2015 television movie and the series finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Synopsis[]

The team is called together when a bomber terrifies Las Vegas. The CSIs have to work quickly to determine who's behind it all, and Lady Heather is their prime suspect.

Plot[]

Victims: multiple victims (alive/deceased)

On the case: Catherine Willows, D.B. Russell, Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Morgan Brody, Sara Sidle, Jim Brass

A man dressed in a leather jacket and wearing an earpiece enters the Eclipse casino and walks up to the cashier's cage. He asks the cashier if she has change for penny. It's then that the cashier sees that the man is strapped with a bomb, which he almost regretfully detonates, taking out the people in the immediate area.

At the FBI Headquarters in Los Angeles, Catherine Willows tells her director that while the bombing isn't within her jurisdiction, it did happen in a casino that she owns. She informs him that she's taking the next flight out to Vegas.

Three people are dead and several dozen have been injured. Russell assembles the team, and everyone is assigned to process the different parts of the explosion. He then pulls Sara aside and mentions that she applied for the lab director opening, telling her that there's no bigger case to put on her résumé than this one. It's noted that the bomber surprisingly didn't take out that many people. The thought is that if you're going to put on a vest and go to a public place, the plan would be to take out as many people with you as possible. It's possible the team is looking at terrorism.

Jim Brass now works security at the Eclipse, and he meets Catherine outside the casino when she arrives in Vegas. One of the victims, Romina Gonzalez, was the last person to speak with the bomber before he self-detonated. Romina tells Catherine that the bomber bought a cigar from her and admired the picture of her children that she carried with her. The bomber then listened to someone on the other end of his earpiece and asked Romina to accompany him to the cashier's cage. Before Romina can be brought to the ambulance, she dies from her injuries.

Catherine enters the casino and tells an officer that she's been authorized by the FBI to take over the bomb site. Sara informs her that she can't work the case; since she owns the casino, it's a conflict of interest. However, Catherine insists that as long as there are bodies on the floor of her father's casino, she needs to work the case. She and Brass watch casino surveillance and figure out that the bomber lured Romina to the cashier's cage after he found out she had children. Since the bomber's face can be seen in the video, Catherine orders it to be run through every database until a name is found.

The bomber is soon identified and Sara speaks with his wife, Aisha Karmimi. Aisha is adamant that her husband wasn't a terrorist and that his only blemish was that he had a gambling problem. They even went to therapy to try to alleviate the problem; however, things got worse when the therapist unexpectedly quit her practice.

Morgan analyzes the casino surveillance footage. At the time of the explosion, she spots something gold and square-shaped flying from the bomber's vest. Hodges shows her that the bomber's vest has a hand-stitched lining, similar to a homemade pocket. Greg locates the metal piece in question, and the CSIs figure that it was inside the pocket just before the explosion. There's etching on the object; when it's cleaned up, the initials "LHK" are revealed. A web search leads Greg to an old friend of the Vegas lab: Lady Heather Kessler, who has her own website.

Greg fills Russell in on Heather's history with the lab, especially with Grissom. Outside the station, Ecklie stops Sara and asks her if she knows where Grissom is. Heather might have something to do with the bombing, but she's in the wind. The thought is that Grissom knows her better than anyone, and he might be able to provide some better insight as to where she might be. Because the bombing is now international news, Ecklie wants all bases covered, even though Sara insists they have everything under control. In San Diego, Grissom has been detained for trespassing on someone's boat. Per Ecklie's orders, he's released from custody and ordered to come to Vegas.

Grissom arrives at the Vegas lab and is greeted by Catherine's daughter, Lindsey. She welcomes Grissom back and informs him that she's a Level 1 CSI and that it's her first day on the job. After excitedly prattling on, she leaves to get back to work. It's quite evident that Grissom has no idea who she is. Grissom is introduced to Russell and shown the gold object with Heather's initials on it. While he recognizes the logo as Heather's, he doesn't know what the object is. He admits that he last spoke to Heather over the phone a few days ago, and Sara surprises everyone when she suggests she and Grissom go check out Heather's house together. Meanwhile, due to the conflict of interest with the bombing, Catherine offers to work up a chronological timeline and psychological profile on Heather.

Grissom and Sara go to Heather's, and the ride there is awkward and silent. Upon arriving, Sara says that despite their divorce, they must work past the unpleasantness and solve the case together. They soon spot signs of forced entry at the front door. Inside, furniture is overturned and there's blood spatter all over the living room.

Catherine and Greg go through Heather's timeline, starting with her time as a fetish club owner. They discover that three months ago, her granddaughter was hit by a car and killed. Shortly after that, Heather quit her therapist practice. Catherine believes that after losing both her daughter and granddaughter, Heather has nothing to live for. She's a manipulator of the human mind and can definitely convince someone to blow themselves up.

The blood from Heather's house belong to an unidentified male, and the DNA from the carpet doesn't match the bomber. Heather is still alive, but there's also another male out there, as well. Meanwhile, in autopsy, Doc Robbins pulls a metal fragment out of Romina's arm. The fragment appears to be some sort of key, and Grissom recognizes it as being from Heather's Red Room. When he, Catherine and Sara search Heather's "dungeon" and enter the Red Room, they find bomb-making materials laid out on a table.

Back at the lab, Grissom mentally pieces together the bomber's vest. Henry comes to him with the flash drive that has surveillance from the Eclipse; the two watch the video, and Grissom gets an idea. Out in the desert, Grissom makes a bomb and blows up a dummy. He, Sara and Henry see that the blast pattern is identical to what was found in the casino. Evidence shows that the bomber only used 1/4 of a brick of C-4, which would explain why there weren't more causalities. However, there's still a lot of C-4 unaccounted for.

Elsewhere, an audience is seen watching a school play. A woman suddenly rises from her seat, and an unheard voice in her ear tells her to get closer to the kids. She walks to the front of the stage and prepares to blow herself up; however, when a parent sees that she's wearing a bomb, the entire auditorium is evacuated and nobody is harmed. Later, a member of the bomb squad enters and tries to disarm the bomb as Catherine and Sara watch the live video feed from the technician's helmet. It quickly becomes clear that someone is feeding the woman commands, just like with the bomber in the casino. Before the technician can cut every wire, the woman proclaims that she's "here for Lady Heather" and detonates the bomb, killing herself and the technician.

In the auditorium, Sara questions why the bomber wouldn't take out every person she could. Grissom theorizes that whoever was on the other end of the earpiece was trying to exercise control. The person was trying to send a message, but Grissom believes that person isn't Heather. She's been controlling people for years, which would make her the dominant in this scenario. However, Grissom says that, by rule, the dominant isn't allowed the hurt the submissive; when they do, the submissive is allowed to use a safe word. He's sure that Heather would never kill anyone, especially innocent people and children, as it goes against everything she stands for therapeutically.

It turns out that the female bomber is actually a teacher at the school. According to the principal, the teacher had been put on administrative leave twice for mental instability. The school even paid for a therapist: Dr. Heather Kessler. Grissom finds a bouquet of flowers on the teacher's desk and reaches a conclusion.

In the lab, Grissom tells the team that the flowers are Burundanga, aka "Devil's Breath." It's the most dangerous drug in the world, as it contains scopolamine. When someone smells the flowers' airborne pollen, they relinquish all control and will do anything they're told to, including strapping on a suicide vest. Grissom explains that the drug is so potent, it literally turned off the judgment receptors in the woman's brain, allowing her to kill without realizing the consequences. However, it's found that the first bomber didn't have Devil's Breath in his system; he likely wanted revenge on the casino for taking all of his money. There's only one connection between the two bombers at this point: Heather. Grissom continues to maintain that Heather is being framed despite having always told his team to follow the evidence. He wonders which one of Heather's acquaintances might have access to something they shouldn't have access to.

Sara goes back to Heather's house to search for hidden recording devices, and she's able to find one under a desk. A recorder and a box of tapes are inside the desk drawer; curiously, three months of tapes are missing. Suddenly, Sara is alerted to someone in the house and she radios Brass, who's stationed outside. The woman, who resembles Heather, never shows her face and gets into her car. As Sara and Brass try to stop "Heather," her car explodes, injuring Brass in the process.

During "Heather's" autopsy, Grissom looks over the body and comes to a realization. He quickly leaves and is next seen walking into a dark restaurant. There, he meets Heather, who thanks him for coming. Grissom notes that she's still wearing her rings and that she never takes them off; the body in the morgue wasn't wearing any. He tells her that he has to bring her into custody, as everyone in law enforcement believes she's responsible for the bombings. To Grissom's surprise, Heather confesses that she actually is the one responsible.

In interrogation, Heather explains that the blood in her living room was from an intruder she fought off one night. She says that she didn't call the police, losing her faith in them after the deaths of her daughter and granddaughter. As for the lookalike in the house, Heather doesn't know who she was, believing that she was sent into the house to send the LVPD on a wild-goose chase. Heather knows that whoever is framing her took the missing cassette tapes; this would explain how the mastermind knew about the gambling and mental issues of the patients. She once again says that she was the one behind the bombings, but she reiterates that someone is framing her—likely a former Red Room client of hers. During the interrogation, Sara lets her jealousy and hatred of Heather boil to the surface, and she leaves the interrogation room after Heather gets under her skin.

Heather provides the team with 13 gold key members of her Red Room. Since male blood was found in Heather's house, Catherine eliminates the four female clients. Heather also eliminates four more clients, who have all died from various ailments. This leaves the team with five possible suspects, and Grissom believes that one of them is the mastermind. However, when Sara collects DNA samples from the suspects, it's found that none of their samples match the blood found in Heather's house.

Lindsey Willows wheels a yellow suitcase into the lab, telling everyone that it belongs to Grissom and that he left it outside the front door. Grissom replies that it isn't his suitcase, and everyone suddenly realizes that it could be a bomb. When analyzed by a bomb squad robot, it's found that the suitcase contains a body. Doc Robbins and David Phillips process the body in autopsy, discovering that the mummified corpse has a micro SD card in its mouth.

The card is plugged into a computer, and a person is shown on screen. He or she is hiding their identity with some form of digital identity concealment and using a digitally altered voice. The mystery person states that they want everybody watching the video to be dead; whoever has been kept alive has been spared for the purposes of psychological torture. They also claim that the first two bombers were "just the beginning" and that the grand finale is specifically designed for those watching.

DNA from the mummified body in the suitcase comes back to Jacob Wolfowitz, the man who was convicted of killing Heather's daughter years ago. In fact, Heather almost killed Jacob until Grissom arrived on the scene and ordered her to stop. Jacob was sentenced to life in prison, but it's obvious he got out somehow. Someone out there is obsessed with Heather and, by the looks of the suitcase, they may be obsessed with Grissom, as well.

Russell takes a crack at the video and tries to reverse the digital concealment pixel by pixel, which he explains to Hodges as "unscrambling scrambled eggs." He's able to recover an ear that belongs to a Caucasian; based on the voice in the video, the suspect is also male. This clears Heather as the person in the video, but Sara informs her that she still hasn't been ruled out as a suspect. In interrogation, Sara asks her if any one of her many clients has an axe to grind with Grissom. She encourages Heather to help Grissom and admits that she still loves him and is fearful for his safety. However, Heather replies that she can't help identify the person in the video.

As he takes a break outside, Grissom theorizes to Catherine that their suspect is a submissive playing the role of a dominant. Catherine encourages him to allow the "new girl" to assist him on the case, and she reveals that it's Lindsey, much to Grissom's surprise. He allows Lindsey to assist in processing the suitcase brought into the lab, and she finds an 'X' decal on it that seems to be out of place. When the decal is removed, a picture of a building is revealed with its latitude and longitude coordinates listed underneath the picture.

Grissom and Officer Mitchell go the warehouse, and Grissom enters alone. The warehouse is empty, but a covered medical gurney sits in the middle of the room. When Grissom uncovers it, he finds a synthetic cadaver that creepily opens its eyes and startles him. The cadaver is brought back to autopsy; when Doc Robbins opens it up, a bee flies out and stings him. Grissom is able to trap the bee after it lands on a nearby table.

The question is how the bee got into the cadaver, and Hodges theorizes that it came from the woods. Taxonomy identifies the bee as a mining bee that makes its home in the forest area of Mount Charleston. Grissom and Sara paint sniffer bees and disperse them to the six different regions of the mountain. When in flight, the bees will naturally inhale everything in the forest; upon returning, their hives will be tested for the presence of humans in high elevations. The experiment works, as the bees find a human presence on the north side of the mountain near the top of it.

Back at the lab, Russell continues to work on the digitally altered video. He's able to determine that the swirl image isn't just a face concealer; it turns out to be a hidden fingerprint, as well. When the fingerprint is pieced together and run through the system, it comes back to a suspect Sara interrogated and took DNA from earlier. Catherine, Greg and Morgan go to the bomber's residence; while the apartment is unoccupied, they find three separate bombs in the complex's parking garage. The timers are synchronized and are programmed to explode in five minutes.

At the top of Mount Charleston, Grissom, Sara and several uniformed officers approach a cabin. The bomber has been watching surveillance video of both the parking garage and his property. As the officers close in, the bomber leaves his cabin and reveals himself to be Dalton Betton. Sara is surprised at this development, as his DNA didn't match the blood found in Heather's house. Dalton is rigged with a suicide vest, and he tells everyone that there are two options: 1) he pushes the detonator and blows up the parking garage, the building's inhabitants, and the CSIs, or 2) he pulls the cord on his vest and everyone in the immediate vicinity is killed. "Finally," he tells Grissom, "I have all the power."

With the bomb squad too far away and time running out, Catherine, Greg and Morgan have to disarm the bombs themselves. The bombs are daisy-chain bombs, meaning if one goes off, they all do. They also contain enough C-4 to level the entire apartment complex and kill innocent civilians. Catherine instructs Greg and Morgan to pick a car and start cutting wires on her verbal command. The disarming must be synchronized; if they're off by a millisecond, all three bombs will go off.

At the top of Mount Charleston, Dalton reveals that he has lymphoma. He was undergoing stem cell treatment, which changed the genetic complexion of his DNA. This would be why the blood in Heather's house wasn't a match to the DNA sample taken from him. He tells Grissom that he had the bombers do his dirty work, all for the purpose of coming face-to-face with him. Dalton blames Grissom for ruining Heather, claiming that he took her away when he stopped her from killing Jacob Wolfowitz. Because of this, Heather stopped role-playing and quit her practice—and eventually quit Dalton. Dalton, who was her first client and the first man she slept with in the dungeon, felt betrayed and blamed Grissom for the betrayal. However, Grissom notes that Heather never slept with any of her clients, which means Dalton is bluffing.

The detonator in Dalton's hand hits zero, and he tells Grissom that his friends are dead. Grissom, however, believes otherwise. He tells Dalton that he's been calling out for Heather's love, but she's never reciprocated. Therefore, Dalton has no power. Grissom pulls the cord from the suicide vest and reveals it to be a dud. He later tells Sara that he could see the vest wasn't armed. His belief is that Dalton couldn't take his own life because he loved Heather too much and couldn't bear to leave this world without her.

Back at the lab, Russell packs up his office, telling Catherine that he's accepted a job east. Sara has been hired as the new lab director, and she and Grissom share a less-than-intimate goodbye. Heather gives her statement, and Grissom sits down with her. He thanks her for helping him open his heart and learning to love another person—Sara. Lindsey gives Sara the videotape of Heather's final interview, which reveals Grissom's true feelings.

Grissom has gone back to the marina to work on his boat and sail away. Sara goes to the dock and greets him, resulting in a long embrace between the two. They're last seen sailing away into the sunset, ready to take on a new adventure.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

William Petersen as Gil Grissom
Marg Helgenberger as Catherine Willows
Paul Guilfoyle as Jim Brass
Marc Vann as Conrad Ecklie
Melinda Clarke as Heather Kessler
Katie Stevens as Lindsey Willows
Larry Mitchell as Officer Mitchell
Doug Hutchison as Dalton Betton
Michael Beach as SD Harbor Patrol Scinta
Breeda Wool as Rebecca O'Bryan
Alexandra Barreto as Romina Gonzalez
Jason Gerhardt as Anthony Hurst
Yasmine Aker as Aisha Karmimi
Paul Bartholomew as Parent
Morgan Bastin as Maria Gonzalez
Ariana Devitta as Helena Gonzalez
Rick Kelly as Mr. Karmimi

Major Events[]

Catherine and Grissom return to Vegas to assist in solving the case.
Russell resigns, telling Catherine that he's moving east.
It's revealed that Julie 'Finn' Finlay succumbed to her injuries at the hands of Paul Winthrop in the episode The End Game.
Catherine tells Russell that she's moving back to Vegas, as its where her roots are and where Lindsey is.
Sara applies for the open lab director position and gets it. However, she turns it down in order to spend time with Grissom sailing the world.

Music[]

Good Morning by Norah Jones

Notes[]

Lindsey Willows tells Grissom that it's her first day as a Level 1 CSI and asks him if he's going to draw her blood or offer her a chocolate-covered grasshopper. Grissom did the same thing with former CSI Holly Gribbs on her first day in the Pilot episode.
Catherine recalls one of her past conversations with Lady Heather, in which Heather mentioned that the only thing one should never give up is their power. This conversation occurred in the Season Two episode Slaves of Las Vegas, Heather's first appearance.
Jacob Wolfowitz, the body in the suitcase, killed Lady Heather's daughter in the Season Six episode Pirates of the Third Reich.
The TV movie is dedicated to the memory of Roberta Custer, who had been William Petersen's personal assistant throughout his career. She passed away during the filming.

Trivia[]

The case appears to be partially inspired by the severely traumatic bombings of London on July 7, 2005, one of Britain's worst experienced terrorist attacks, heavily coordinated, and regarded as "7/7", as America refers to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as "9/11".
The DVD was released as CSI: The Finale on December 15, 2015.