Original subtitles

They asked me how I knew

My true love was true

Ohh

I, of course, replied

Something here inside

Cannot be denied

They said someday you'll find

Stop, stop. You're killing me.

Are you freaking deaf? I said, stop! Kill the playback.

Look, this might win second prize at the talent contest

at Spiro Agnew High School in Bad Limp, Arkansas.

Hey, Drew.

It's not my kid's fault.

Who let Daddy dearest on the stage? I gave specific orders--

Everybody's moving around like there's nothing important going on.

How about a little respect?

Except for your kid doesn't deserve respect.

Lazy little prima donna.

Maybe you should sit with the losers.

Let me try it again.

- You don't care. - I do so care.

This isn't a game to me, all right? I'm a good singer.

It's all I've ever wanted to do, and you have no right to--

There, that passion.

That's what I wanna see when you sing.

Now, let's do it again.

And watch your pitch, baby. Too early in the day to be that flat.

I know I wasn't flat.

Yes, you were. - Hang in there.

The name of this show is Overnight Sensation.

For God's sake, show me something sensational.

Playback.

When your heart's on fire

Flat. Pitch, baby, pitch.

You must realize Smoke gets in your eyes

Pitch!

I can't take this.

You tell us to feel everything, but you don't feel anything.

I can't do this.

Layla.

What? Rehearsal's not over. Layla.

Layla, wait.

Playback.

They asked me how I knew

My true love was true

Liver temp puts TOD between 2 and 4 a.m.

She was Lindsey's favorite on the show.

We voted for her six times last week.

They make it to Vegas for the finals. Every kid watching wants to be them.

It just-- This shouldn't end like this.

Glamorous makeup, fancy lingerie.

Sex fetish that went too far?

Perverted idol worship?

Wholesome all-American girl.

Did you do an SAE kit?

Not yet.

She may have gotten what she wished for.

She's an overnight sensation now.

It's part of the gruesome perversity of this business.

The ratings will be through the roof on our final show.

So as a tribute to Layla, let's do what she'd want us to do.

Let's make it our best show ever, okay?

- Rehearsal. Excuse me.

- You're Drew Rich, the producer? - Who are you?

I'm Detective Jim Brass. Las Vegas Police.

We're trying to confirm the whereabouts

of Layla Wells last night. Can you help us?

She left rehearsal last night around 7.

Went back to her room, as far as I know.

Chaperone said she called at midnight. Said she was going to bed.

- Where's the chaperone? - We fired her this morning.

- Obviously, she wasn't doing her job. - Okay.

Layla's an emancipated minor,

but her chaperone is supposed to be looking out for her,

not pumping per diem into a slot machine all night.

This means you won, kid.

- You're the champion. No, he's not.

Ajaya.

Last one voted off, you're back on against Kip.

We're gonna need contact information from Miss Wells' family.

Michelle can get it to you. Now, I have a show to produce.

Call Editing.

I want a DVD of every frame we have on Layla on my desk, one hour.

Okay.

If this was a killer that fetishized her, why not just dump the body?

Why bother to wrap her up?

To conceal the body during transport from the primary.

It's consistent with those knots being tied into a handle.

You know, the looping here looks like a reef knot.

We might be looking for somebody with some sailing experience.

"Rancho Linen Service." They deliver to every hotel on the Strip.

Been around since Bugsy Siegel's days.

Which is probably the last time this tablecloth was washed.

These discolorations suggest

that this has been on somebody's table a long time.

What was Layla doing here?

She had a great room at the Palermo.

People were waiting on her day and night.

You ever been in one of those suites?

Just to get evidence.

I sure wouldn't leave there for whatever this is.

A couple of blood drops.

There's no trail. Probably dripped through the cloth.

These wheel tracks are 11 inches apart.

It couldn't have been a grocery cart.

The front wheels are narrower than the back,

so it would have left two different sets of tracks.

Something tells me a guy pushing any kind of cart in this area

wouldn't be that unusual.

That blunt-force trauma just below the rib cage is your COD.

Lacerated the liver. Hangs lower when the body's upright.

Since no ribs were impacted,

she was standing when the blow occurred.

Death would have occurred fairly quickly.

Any indication of sexual assault?

No, however, when I was doing the internal exam,

I found an embryo implanted in the uterine wall.

Maybe 20 millimeters long.

She was pregnant.

About eight weeks. I sent cord tissue to DNA.

So maybe this isn't just a case of negligent chaperone.

Maybe it's motive.

Got a reading? Yeah.

So the lock interrogator says

that Layla last used her key card to enter her room at 7:12 p.m.

That's right after she walked out of rehearsal.

Now, according to the hotel phone records, she made two calls.

One to Drew Rich's room around 7:34 p.m.

Probably to apologize.

And the other one to her chaperone to say good night around midnight.

Went to voicemail.

Casino surveillance says that the chaperone stayed up all night

trying to win a progressive.

Well, from about 8:00 on, she was looking up abortion clinics.

Looks like she had a change of heart

and started checking out adoption agencies.

Sounds like a confused kid.

It looks like they were a cute couple, I'll give you that.

But what I don't get is why anybody wants to watch that show. I don't.

- It's a talent contest? - It's more like a humiliation ritual.

- Well, you'd know about that. - All right.

So you wanna know why that kid, Ajaya--

With the fluffy hair, sings like a hinge. Why he got into the semifinals?

Me and 10,000 other guys vote for him every week on the Internet.

But if you don't watch, how do you know about him?

Well, you know, water-cooler talk. Gossip.

Mm. Right.

Well, here's something the gossips don't have.

Okay. There's the humiliator.

Layla left the Palermo too, just after midnight.

Two minutes later

Kip follows.

It must have been pretty hard for you and Layla to find some time together.

You know, can't get your mojo working, when Daddy's lurking.

So, what did you do? You waited till midnight. Dad's asleep.

And you take separate elevators down.

Then what? Layla was found in a pretty tough neighborhood.

What were you doing there?

- Scoring drugs? - He doesn't do drugs.

Or maybe it was to get a back-alley abortion.

- What? - Layla was eight weeks pregnant.

Am I right? And who's the daddy?

- You? - The hell it was.

I'm not talking to you. Kip?

- Just shut up. Just shut up. - We're gonna need a DNA sample.

- No way. You're done abusing my kid. - And so are you, sit down.

- Take him out in the hall. - You can't do this.

- Dad. - Hey, check it out.

I've got you and Kip returning to the hotel after the time of the murder.

You're like a team, right?

You're in it together, fifty-fifty.

You know, the contest, the career and future earnings.

It's a lot of money. And that's what this is about, right? The money?

Thirty million people tune in to hear my kid sing every week.

How many people wanna watch you?

So you're on the road four months? How'd you work that out with your job?

I took a leave of absence.

Come on, sailor. You abandoned ship. You quit your job.

Got a second mortgage on your house. If Kip screws up, you're wiped out.

So I can understand how you'd cover up for him.

And maybe you're even desperate enough to kill her yourself.

So I ran that fetal cord tissue that Doc Robbins sent over.

I subtracted out the mother's profile,

leaving what has to be the father's contribution,

and it didn't match the sample from Kip Westerman.

So he's not the father of Layla's baby.

No, but then I ran those alleles through CODIS and I got a hit.

Marvin Fleck.

In the system from charges in North Carolina, 2002.

Mm-hm. Do you recognize Marvin?

Drew Rich?

Yeah, he had sex with a minor. She was 15 years old.

But then she changed her story so the charges were dropped.

Wanna bet he paid her off?

Talent and ambition ran in Layla Wells' family.

Her grandmother Jasmine, was a Las Vegas showgirl

who gave Layla her first figure-skating classes.

Sadly, Layla's grandmother didn't live to see her come so close

to becoming America's next overnight sensation.

My mama didn't approve of show business.

We were always fighting about it. So I went to live with my grandma.

From the ice ballet, give me some more shots where she's crying.

We need to see some more emotion.

Mr. Rich?

- Later. - Marvin?

I left rehearsal around 7:15 and went back to my room alone.

I needed some time to think.

Is thinking what got Layla pregnant?

These kids might seem like innocents, but they're not.

They are first-class manipulators with the survival instincts of a coyote.

I told Layla I'd pay for an abortion, and she agreed.

As long as she won the competition.

I don't like being blackmailed.

- Sounds like motive. - Doesn't mean I killed her.

We know you left the Palermo around midnight.

About 20 minutes later, your credit card was used

- at the Blue Madonna Motel. - I wasn't with Layla.

Her body was found three blocks from there.

You beat rape charges once. Maybe you thought you wouldn't be

- so lucky a second time. - This is ridiculous.

Look, I was with a hooker, all right?

Layla was pregnant with your child. That's statutory rape.

Age of consent in Nevada is 16.

Might have your lawyer look at the statute again.

There's an exception

when a person is in a position of authority with a teenager,

like "executive producer."

Come on, let's go.

Spermaceti.

An oil found in the heads of sperm whales.

Mm-hm. When it cools, it becomes a wax.

The lipstick that the dead girl was wearing had a spermaceti-wax base.

There's been a ban on sperm whaling for 20 years.

Yeah, which means that the lipstick was very old.

You know, spermaceti is not the weirdest thing found in lipstick.

The ancient Greeks made theirs out of saliva, sheep sweat

and crocodile excrement.

Did any of the makeup in her hotel room contain spermaceti?

No, but there were intriguingly analogous results

from, believe it or not, the tablecloth.

Take a look.

Asbestos?

Specific type of asbestos called amosite.

Its particles are bound together by vermiculite and cellulose,

the combination found in spray-on ceilings.

That type of ceiling material hasn't been used in 20 or 30 years.

You know, it's as if your victim found a hole in the time-space continuum

and was murdered decades ago.

Brilliant theory, Dave.

Thanks.

Thank you.

So this was the Strip 50 years ago.

The Vegas my dad came to.

Now any one of the big hotels has more rooms

than all of these put together.

Nearly all the old casinos that Rancho Linen serviced

have been torn down.

Except for this one on the west side.

Yeah, where Layla's body was found.

"Le Chateau Rouge."

Man, last time I was this deep in the 'hood,

I was on a case with Warrick.

Got some track marks here.

Eleven inches apart.

Same as the other ones I found.

Layla was wearing a pink sweater when she left the Palermo.

We have a crime scene. No warrant needed.

If Layla did get inside, somebody locked up after her.

Wow. It's like someone yelled "fire" 50 years ago

and nobody came back.

Yeah, you can still feel it in the air.

Legends walked here.

Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington.

The first integrated casino in town.

Place was smoking so hot every night, they added a 2:30 a.m. show.

Sinatra, the Rat Pack.

All the white headliners and tourists came down from the Strip.

Place was swinging till dawn.

Then six months after it opened, the joint closed overnight.

How come?

Well, rumor has it, the Kansas City mob

didn't like the East Coast boys poaching their pigeons.

Back then, there were only eight or nine casinos on the Strip.

Seven or 800 people were here instead of there.

Well, do the math.

This cart could match the tracks I found.

"Rancho Linen Service."

Hey, give me some light over here, will you?

That's the only table without a tablecloth.

We've got blood.

Better call P.D., track down the owner of the building.

It's time to reopen Le Chateau Rouge.

- Whose car is that, Mitch? - Building owner.

Chateau Rouge, man.

My parents came here. They still talk about it.

Good evening.

My name's Gil Grissom. I'm with the Crime Lab.

Well, I hope your people are taking care with my property.

I understand it has quite a history.

You're too young to remember.

I've heard stories.

Wasn't there a night when Sammy Davis sang,

and the only way they'd let him off the stage

- was if he took the crowd to breakfast? - More than once.

Come on in. Have a drink.

- Thank you, but I'm working. - Well, then you can watch me drink.

In Rome, they illuminate the ruins every night.

The Italians see beauty in what used to be.

It's been 50 years since I've seen lights on the Rouge.

She walks in beauty like the night.

My husband, Jules Rosenthal, built this.

Do you know it was the first casino

where blacks weren't turned away at the door?

Your husband was a brave man.

No, he liked making money.

He gave it the best of everything.

The decor, the food, the music.

It was exciting, magical really.

As long as it lasted.

But it died with him.

I haven't been inside since...

Since he was murdered there.

Why didn't you sell the property?

There's no such thing as sentiment in Las Vegas.

They would have torn it down and I-- I couldn't bear that.

- Would you like to go in now? - Mm-mm.

You can only wake up once from a dream.

Wow. You know I have a glitter fetish, don't you?

Was some recent activity over here.

Wasn't Layla's grandmother's name Jasmine?

I think so, yeah.

I think that Layla was trying to connect with her roots.

I think I got a bullet in the floor.

Impact blew the dust back. So it must be recent.

Got something else that wasn't here 50 years ago.

Cell phone.

It's Layla's.

That explains why we didn't find one on her or in her room.

The last function was video camera.

Hey, Greg. Check this out.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Miss Layla Wells will now be singing for you.

Here I go again I hear those trumpets blow again

That costume's in the dressing room.

It looks like Kip's working the flashlight and the camera.

About to beat the ba--

Layla, run.

Surprised by the sax man?

So he kills her, wraps her up, pulls her body out of here on a cart,

comes back, puts the cart back, puts the costume back.

Put everything back the way it was 50 years ago.

Sir.

You're in custody at Desert Palm Hospital.

You're being treated for dehydration and malnutrition.

Could you tell us your name, please?

Don't matter.

How long have you lived at the Chateau Rouge?

Everybody wants a piece of you.

Drew, and managers and fans.

But...

But Layla and me, we just...

We just gave to each other. She...

I looked out for her.

I cared about her.

I tried to make her feel safe.

Nobody else loved her.

Not like me.

Nobody.

I found out online about where her grandma danced.

I thought it'd be a cool surprise to take her.

Didn't you read that part where it says, "Don't go in after dark"?

I wanted to get a picture of her in front of the place and get back in the cab.

She was, like, insane to get in there. She pulled apart a fence.

She found some door that wasn't locked.

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Layla Wells will now sing for you.

She was so beautiful.

We were making sweet music.

Sweet music.

He was jealous.

- Came at me. - Ahh!

Shoved her.

So you ran away not knowing if Layla was dead or alive?

I looked for her for hours. All around that place

and up and down every street in that neighborhood for blocks,

but she wasn't anywhere.

Guess she was still inside. With him.

A young girl is dead.

I did it.

You got me.

Inspired by Harlem's famed Cotton Club,

New York restaurateur, Jules Rosenthal,

created Le Chateau Rouge.

The casino flourished until tragedy struck.

Former sheriff, Claude Montgomery, recalls what happened.

Mrs. Rosenthal said she thought she heard a ruckus

in the musicians' dressing room.

She went in there, found her husband shot.

There were rumors it was a mob hit.

That's a good story, but no.

He was killed by one of his employees,

a musician, a guy named Melchior Wilson.

A drug addict. Took the money and ran.

Found his prints all over the wallet. Confessed to the whole thing.

You actually found a file this old that rodents hadn't nested in, huh?

Yeah.

The guy they arrested evidently died in prison.

"Melchior Wilson."

Tenor-saxophone player.

Yeah, the old guy we caught had a .32 Long Colt.

Nick ran it through IBIS.

Matched it to the bullet from the Rosenthal homicide.

Maybe Melchior Wilson ditched the gun at the Rouge

and our squatter discovered it 50 years later.

- You know what we need? - Hm?

Exemplar wallets. Made from reptile skin.

Somewhere, a swamp is in mourning. Lizard, snake...

Alligator.

In the 1958 case, Sheriff Montgomery lifted a print from an alligator wallet.

He matched it to a print from a suspect named Melchior Wilson.

That's the lift card from his file.

A nice clean print.

No serious flaws.

Compare it to this one.

Well, the one you just lifted has voids from the alligator skin.

The old one doesn't.

That print was never on that wallet.

Melchior Wilson was a musician at the Chateau Rouge.

His prints could have been lifted from anywhere in that room.

I think he was framed.

Hey, Grissom.

Where on Earth have you been, stranger?

Hey, Nicole.

Hey, look who's here.

- Hello, fellas. - Well, I'll be damned.

You're two years late. George, deal him in.

Feeling lucky? - No, I can't, sheriff, I'm working.

Then what are you doing here?

I was hoping to talk to you, actually.

About the Chateau Rouge.

One hand, you win, I'll talk.

- Five hundred will buy you in. - Big blind's 20.

Chateau Rouge.

When I was playing the lounge at the Dunes,

I used to make that my last stop on the way home.

- Lived on the west side then, huh? Yeah, sheriff, you know.

We had to. Vegas was known as the Mississippi of the West.

That's right. Pearl Bailey, Nat King Cole,

Sammy Davis, Lena Horne, The Mills Brothers,

I booked them all into the big rooms on the Strip.

But they could not stay in the hotels.

They couldn't even gamble in the casinos.

As a matter of fact, they'd come in and out through the kitchen.

Oh, you remember beautiful Dorothy Dandridge?

There was something about her going in for a swim at one of the hotels.

They drained the whole damn pool.

- Sheriff, it's up to you. Twenty.

- I'm gone. - Grissom?

The women at the Chateau Rouge. Mm, mm, mm.

They had such tiny waists.

And cakes too.

Ponytails was the big thing then.

They all had cute little ponytails. Lord have mercy.

And the flop.

- Check. No 20?

Raise to 50.

Matter of fact, when they whacked Jules Rosenthal,

they shuttered that place so fast, they paid the stagehands

in sugar bags full of quarters and nickels, and they were gone.

Melchior Wilson's arrest must have set a speed record

for closing a homicide, huh, sheriff?

Those were the days.

Turn's a five.

I'll fold.

- Sheriff? - Twenty.

You in or out?

Check.

Twenty.

You haven't raised once.

Either the county's still not paying you enough

or you're bluffing.

All in.

Call.

Now is when you show your hand, sheriff.

Dead-man's hand.

Aces and eights.

Straight.

Hell.

And I used to be able to bluff better.

Wilson signed a confession.

Yeah.

But they say some of you guys used to drive suspects out into the desert,

show them a hole in the ground,

give them a choice to sign a confession or get in the hole.

We got a good clean print.

The file says that you lifted the print from Rosenthal's alligator wallet.

Now, I examined it. Alligator skin would have left voids.

You know, in the old days, the criminals were afraid of us.

Now it's the other way around.

Does he look familiar to you?

He's been squatting at the Chateau Rouge.

Now, I ran his prints against the unidentifieds

that you lifted from the scene in '58.

This man was all over the place.

All the crime that's going on in Vegas these days,

you got time to poke around in my old cases.

Good to see you, son. Thanks for the drink.

And we know Drew Rich didn't do it. His alibi checks out.

Apparently, he's a big spender on the hookers.

So how did Layla get punched in the gut?

She came out of the dressing room, sang for Kip onstage.

Then the old man came out from somewhere behind you.

To the left.

Layla screamed and ran this direction.

Then Kip dropped the flashlight,

so she probably couldn't see where she was going.

Matches her costume.

I think she ran into this.

It does match her bruises.

About to beat the ba--

Her death was an accident?

Why did the old man confess to it?

Why won't he tell us who he is?

Hey, what you doing?

These are from the souvenir program you collected.

We still don't have an ID on the suspect.

But I'm thinking, given his age and the fact that he plays the sax,

maybe he worked there back in the day.

Melchior Wilson died in prison.

Which leaves these two. Harry Bastille and Stanley Brown.

We don't have anything on either of these guys after '58.

No recordings, no credits, no death records.

Well, hello, Harry.

Mr. Bastille, we know you didn't kill the girl.

But why did you move the body?

Why didn't you call for help?

Didn't want anybody coming in my space.

Wanted to spend my time in the last place I was ever happy.

We were all like a family back there.

Beautiful moment in time.

Right this way, please.

Thank you for coming, Mrs. Rosenthal.

Is the name Harry Bastille familiar to you?

Um... There was a musician.

Would you take a look at the man in this room

and tell us if you think it could be Harry?

- Well, it was a very long time ago. - Please.

That's not Harry.

I'm sorry I couldn't help you.

Mrs. Rosenthal.

- That is Harry Bastille. - Well, you knew.

Why did you ask me to go and look at him?

We think he may be the man that murdered your husband.

He didn't shoot Jules.

I know, because I was there.

Do you know Sheriff Montgomery?

Very well.

Well, I promise you, there is no evidence incriminating Harry.

You seem to me to be a woman who doesn't change her tastes very often.

I noticed last night you had a fine bottle of pink champagne in your car.

It's the same rare champagne

that was found in the room where your husband was murdered.

Now, champagne usually suggests a celebration.

Or maybe, in this case,

a romance.

We had nowhere to be together.

So we took a chance after the last show.

Baby, you sure we're safe?

Everybody's gone home.

We were making sweet music.

Sweet music.

He was jealous.

- You son of a bitch. - Came at me.

- This is how you repay me? No, don't!

Shoved her.

Harry wanted to say that he did it.

And I couldn't let that happen.

I took the cash out of Jules' wallet, and gave it to him.

And told him to run and never come back.

And then you and Sheriff Montgomery framed Melchior Wilson.

No.

I confessed.

The town was very different then.

And the men who ran it forced the sheriff to arrest Melchior.

You see,

a white woman could get away with murder.

But she couldn't love a black man.

They asked me how I knew

My true love was true

Ohh

I, of course, replied

There's the people who come to Vegas wanting to become rich or famous,

and then there's the people that are from here.

And we know that the odds are always in favor of the house.

It's what built this town.

You didn't come here to become famous, did you?

I came to play cards.

- No, for real. - I did, I came to play cards.

I needed the money.

I thought I was in love with this girl in college,

but I kept getting into debt buying cadavers and fetal pigs.

There was no money left for the girl. Science took the pot.

Well, maybe it just wasn't the right girl.

Plus, poker allowed me to be a loner and still make money.

Oh, right.

When was the last time you played?

I can't remember.

You know, to most people, risk is a bad thing.

But in Vegas, it's a good thing.

See?

You paid for your pigs, you got roots, friends, family.

- Well, a work family anyway. - Yeah.

Maybe it's time to up the ante.