Episode 6: Red-Handed

The agents are called to the Nevada-California state line where local cops have found a severed hand in the middle of the road. Such dismemberments were once popular with Mafia hit men. GPS results show that the hand is just a few feet into California, meaning it comes under the CBI's remit. After a quick analysis, Patrick concludes that the victim is a wealthy male in his mid-fifties. "He's upper management in the hotel or gaming business," he says.

Sure enough, fingerprints prove that the victim is one Jim Meier, the owner of a big resort and casino in Nevada. Lisbon and the team head to the casino in question and are greeted by head of security Matt Etienne. While Etienne explains to the other agents that the Mafia have had nothing to do with gambling in the area for a number of years, Patrick makes himself comfortable at a card table and begins to win big. Before long, he has made several thousand dollars thanks to his card-counting skills, until Etienne kicks him off the table. As he leaves, however, Patrick has some news about the dealer. "By the way, I hate to be a telltale, but Alexandra's robbing you blind - she's cheating," he says.

The dealer, Alexandra Yee, is brought in for questioning and admits that she had a scam set up to steal money for her mother's liver operation. Cho accuses Yee of killing Meier when he discovered her racket, but she denies murder. She also claims that Etienne knew nothing of her theft, but Patrick is convinced that the security officer is somehow involved. "Matt Etienne is lying," he says. The next day, Patrick's hunch proves well-founded when Meier's widow, Ann, contacts Lisbon and confesses that she and Etienne had been having an affair for two years. Her daughter Jessica and son-in-law Danny, a professional gambler who worked for Jim, also knew about the affair.

Things begin to look bad for Etienne when the agents turn up at his house with a warrant and discover Jim's body in a chest freezer in the garage. However, Etienne maintains his innocence. He does admit the affair with Ann, and says that Yee knew about the illicit relationship - hence his silence about her theft from the casino. Etienne claims that he was with Ann in a motel on the night of Jim's death.

The autopsy report shows that Jim was beaten to death with a blunt instrument, and that something was ripped from his neck post-mortem. Ann confirms that her husband used to wear a lucky $100,000 casino chip on a necklace. Could the motive for this complex murder be something as simple as robbery? Lisbon thinks not, and goes over the casino's security tapes to look for further clues. On one video that Jim watched shortly before his death, she finds footage showing Jessica going into the room of one of the resort's guests, a gambler called Cal Trask, dressed like a prostitute. "Jessica, your father watched this video on the night he died -what does that make you think?" she asks. "It makes me think that this video had something to do with his death."

Meanwhile, Patrick follows a separate line of inquiry and asks Danny to set him up in a high-stakes card game. Once again, Patrick uses his card-counting skills to great effect and begins to win money from the other players, until it is just he and Danny left at the table. However, despite his success at cards, Patrick seems intent on playing a different game and switches the deck while Danny is distracted. Is the wayward consultant out for personal gain, or does he have some other trick up his sleeve?