Just One Kiss

Just One Kiss
Season	1
Number	4
Writer	Laurie McCarthy, Matt Witten
Director	Scott Brazil
Original Airdate	October 14, 2002
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Just One Kiss is the fourth episode in Season One of CSI: Miami.

Synopsis

A dead man with a slit throat and a partially burned face is discovered on a Miami beach, along with an unconscious young girl who was beaten and thrown into the ocean. The investigation leads Horatio to a prominent Florida family and its steely patriarch, who was once involved in a mysterious case that has plagued Horatio for years.

Plot

A woman, Jane Renshaw, is found on the beach badly beaten, not far from the body of a man. Alexx determines the man died the night before, noting he was beaten, his throat slashed, and his cheek burned. Megan Donner goes to the hospital to process Jane, who can’t remember the previous twelve hours. The doctor tells Megan that she recovered semen from the rape kit, and Megan discovers a torn piece of flesh in Jane’s retainer. Jane asks Megan about her boyfriend, Paul Barnett, and Megan deflects her questions. Delko sifts through the sand from the beach and discovers a small nosepiece from a pair of eyeglasses. In the morgue, Alexx recovers green glass from the victim’s neck wound, identical to glass Speedle found at the scene. Alexx finds rashes and limes under the man’s nails that indicate he was a bartender. That, along with his physical characteristics, doesn’t match the description Jane gave Megan of her boyfriend. Horatio goes to Jane’s hotel room at the Agremont and finds Paul there, looking for her. Paul tells the CSI that he and Jane attended a party at the Hamiltons, and that he passed out in their guest house. When he woke up, Jane was gone. Horatio, Calleigh and Delko pay a visit to the wealthy Hamiltons, Miami’s answer to the Kennedys. Drake Hamilton allows Horatio to question his nephew Tyler, who tells the CSI he doesn’t recognize the dead man. When Horatio asks to search the guesthouse, Drake stonewalls, and refuses to let Horatio search without a warrant. Detective Fenwick gets an ID on the victim: Estevan Ordonez, a bartender who worked the party but hasn’t been seen since.

Paul’s prints are found on the champagne bottle used to kill Esteban, but the DNA from the penile skin from Jane’s retainer isn’t a match for him. Horatio questions Paul, and turns up the pressure when the Hamiltons send their attorney, Ryan Cutler, to represent Paul. Paul caves and admits he traded a kiss from Jane to Tyler Hamilton for Tyler’s expensive watch. Jane was angry, so Paul took a bottle of champagne and tried to convince her to go off with him, but she simply took the bottle and left. He stayed and got drunk. Megan runs the watch and gets three DNA samples off of it, two of which are a familial match, and one which matches the skin from the retainer. Drake refuses to give DNA, and Tyler claims the oral sex was consensual. Calleigh and Horatio find Esteban’s blood on a public walkway up to the house, giving them the much-needed warrant, but when they go to execute it, they discover the beach house has been torn up by a construction crew. Undeterred, the CSIs scour the wreckage, discovering Cuban cigars and a zipper from it. The zipper matches one from a jacket Tyler wore at the party, but when the CSIs bring Tyler in to question him, Tyler insists he didn’t kill the bartender. Calleigh has found direct blood splatter on the eyepiece Delko discovered, which indicates the person the glasses belong to was right in front of Esteban when he was stabbed. Tyler doesn’t wear glasses, so suspicion turns to Drake. After getting Drake’s glasses and finding blood on them, Drake confesses that he came to the beach and found Tyler assaulting Jane. Estevan, badly beaten by Tyler, wanted to call the police and started to go for help, but Drake picked up the broken champagne bottle and stabbed Esteban with it. The case closed, Megan tells Jane what happened and sees Paul come up to Jane to try to make amends, only to be rebuffed. Megan finds Horatio at a table poolside, and the CSI tells her that he first met Drake fifteen years ago, when Drake crashed a car and left a girl to die while he lawyered up.

Cast

Main Cast

• David Caruso as Horatio Caine
• Emily Procter as Calleigh Duquesne
• Adam Rodríguez as Eric Delko
• Khandi Alexander as Alexx Woods
• Rory Cochrane as Tim Speedle
• Kim Delaney as Megan Donner

Guest Cast

• Erik King as Det. Fenwick
• Jamie Brown as Jane Renshaw
• Jeremy Garrett as Paul Varnette
• Kevin Kilner as Drake Hamilton
• David Denman as Tyler Hamilton
• Tom Everett as Ryan Cutler
• Joe Duer as Estevan Ordonez
• Monica Garcia as SART Nurse
• Anthony Calla as Josh Cooper

Trivia

• The episode is heavily inspired by the attack on the family of former Flower Hill, New York mayor William John Logan. His wife Marjorie was killed and his daughter Marjory was raped.
• Drake Hamilton's car crash that killed his female passenger in July 1987 that was investigated by Horatio as a young CSI is loosely based on the Chappaquiddick incident in which a member of the Kennedy Family and the US Senator for Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy lost control of his vehicle and overturn off a narrow wooden bridge known as Dike Bridge into the Poucha Pond at Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts at around midnight between the 18th and the 19th July 1969.
  • Like in the episode, the crash killed Kennedy's female passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne who worked for Ted Kennedy and had worked as a "boiler room girl" for his brother, Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. A investigation into the crash had revealed that Kopechne and other "boiler room girls" had attended a party hosted by Kennedy on Chappaquiddick Island. While the events leading up to the crash is unclear, it is believed that Kennedy and Kopechne left the party in Kennedy's vehicle, (a black 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 sedan with Massachusetts registration number L78-207) at 11:15pm on the 18th July to take Kopechne to the island's ferry landing in order for her to catch the last ferry (which usually leaves at midnight) to Edgartown when according to Kennedy took a wrong turning onto a unpaved road known as Dike Road that led to the Dike Bridge where Kennedy lost control of his vehicle and flipping the vehicle on its roof into the water. After the crash, Kennedy had climb out of the wreck and after several rescue attempts, left the scene, leaving Kopechne trapped in the seat and reporting the accident nine hours after the crash. At an inquest held in January 1970, it was revealed that Kopechne had died from asphyxiation as a result of drowning. A witness at the inquest, fire rescue captain John Farrar who retrieved Kopechne's body from the vehicle, had testified that he believed Kopechne had stayed alive for up to 30 minutes after the crash before succumbing from asphyxiation.
    • Where in the episode, Horatio was unable to arrest Drake for the crash, in the real case, Ted Kennedy was charged with leaving a scene of an accident, driving at speeds exceeding the condition of the road and driving without a license. While the charges of reckless driving and driving without a license were dismissed, Kennedy was convicted of leaving the scene of an accident and sentenced to two months imprisonment that was suspended. On the 27th May 1970, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles had suspended Kennedy's driving license for a further six months.

See Also

• List of CSI: Miami episodes
• CSI:Miami Season 1
• Category:Images from Just One Kiss