‘CSI’ Plays The Royal Game In ‘Killer Moves’

The CSIs search for a murderer with a chess obsession, in the sixteenth episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s fourteenth season. (Major spoilers after the jump!)

According to CSI Files sources, “Killer Moves” opens with David Phillips and Detective Crawford looking down at the body of George Tabin, a professional Elvis impersonator who has been found dead on a bus bench. He has several severe head wounds, but there’s no blood around the bench to indicate he was killed here. The body was moved. Sara finds a trail of gravitational blood drops leading down the street, so she and Greg follow them to where a black bird has been stabbed to death. Sara identifies it as a rook, which is native to Central Europe and Asia. The killer must have brought the bird here for a reason. It doesn’t take long for Greg to make the connection: the rook represents a chess piece, and so does the man dressed like ‘the King’.

Armed with his knowledge of chess, Greg takes another look at their crime scenes. The ‘king’ was left at the corner of Avenue C and 1st Street, and the ‘rook’ was left at the corner of Avenue D and 1st Street. C-1 and D-1 are spaces on the chess board. Greg hurries down the street, toward the corner of Avenue E and 1st Street. He tells Sara about a chess move called castling, where the player moves the rook from it’s starting position to D-1, and the king from E-1 to C-1. If he’s right, this should be their primary crime scene for Tabin’s murder. Sure enough, they find the man’s car nearby, with a blood pool and a bloody tire iron in the back seat.

Hodges locates a piece of moss on Tabin’s body, and the moisture-loving plant seems out of place in the desert. There are traces of shampoo and bath oil on the moss, which leads Hodges to suggest it was from a living bath mat. They just installed some of the mats at the Mediterranean Hotel, which happens to be hosting a chess tournament. While Nick and Greg head to the hotel to speak to the tournament organizers, DB realizes something back at the lab: a player must move several pieces before they are able to castle. Tabin can’t be their first victim—they need to look for more bodies.

Please note that the above plot details have not been confirmed by CBS, Alliance Atlantis or Bruckheimer Films, and until such time you should treat this information as you would any other rumour. The above information comes from early script drafts and the details of the episodes are liable to change before the episodes are shown.

“Killer Moves” is expected to air March 5 on CBS.