By Sobell
Morning has broken over Miami, and the faithful are gathered for Sunday mass. At least, I assume it's Sunday mass; few churches are going to have a full complement of altar servers for the daily masses, and how else can you explain the dozen or so children there? Or am I expecting too much "logic" from this show? Anyway -- hot church, lots of altar servers, no priest present. As we all wait for the priest to arrive, the camera pans over the statues -- St. Anthony and St. Elizabeth, both of whom I recognize from my grandmother's church -- and then to a woman who's had enough with the waiting. She genuflects before the altar, then heads toward what are presumably the priests' quarters. The faint ululations of a boy soprano start up, so we are all cued in to the impending tragedy. Sadly, the woman in question is not. She passes through the vestry, knocks on the door, and tells Father Carlos he's on in five. Then she opens the door and discovers that Father Carlos is in no shape to give mass at all, what with him lying face-down in a puddle of blood. The poor woman screams, the tragedy is set in motion, and the boy soprano shuts up so he can move on to warble portents of doom for some other drama.
Speaking of portents of doom, it's Horatio, greeting Detective Sevilla and Megan. Megan tells him, "Body was found at 7:40 this morning by vic's housekeeper. She checked in on him when he didn't show up for mass." We find out that the housekeeper has stuck around for questioning, and she's already told Sevilla and Megan that she had cleaned last night; at 8:15 PM, the place was spotless and the priest was alive. The three enter the apartment quarters -- spare, save for the bloody footprints and other conveniently visible evidence -- and Horatio immediately notes the expended shell casing in a wall; he neglects to mention the fine stippling of blood immediately below it. And then the camera pulls back so we can see Horatio assessing the room, and also so we can get a look at Megan's super-duper-flared pants. Someone in wardrobe really hates her, or else they're under the impression that anyone who spends a lot of time gathering evidence would welcome the chance to don any article of clothing whose fabric could easily trip them up, absorb blood pools, or otherwise impede their work. Cut to Megan inquiring rhetorically, "Who would want to kill a priest?" Viewers in several American dioceses wonder why she has to ask. So does Horatio, who replies, "Nowadays, anyone."
Not The Who. They won't get fooled again.
Back on the show, Alexx is rolling over Father Carlos -- who apparently followed the Way of the Parrothead before converting to Catholicism, if the tattoo on his bicep is any indication -- while Megan sits there and ponders whatever it is she thinks about in her spare time. Horatio hunkers on Alexx's formerly free side and asks Speedle, who's about seven feet in front of him, what it looks like. "It" apparently refers to the partial prints on the coffee table. Speedle's marvelously surly. We zoom back to Alexx, who tells us that Father Carlos's liver temp (82 degrees Fahrenheit) indicates that he was probably killed between 9 PM and midnight. And then we zoom to Horatio, who announces the genesis of the B-plot. He's off this case and on to another one. He asks Megan if she's okay with the scene, and she replies, "Sure. I'm just [beat] waiting for Speedle to finish up with the prints." Then she turns back to Alexx, who explains, "Possible entrance wound, back of his neck, and the second here, to the shoulder." We see both of these in TMICam shots. We also see a probable exit wound immediately under Father Carlos's heart. The smoke curling up from around the edges of the wound is a nice detail. We then zoom over to Calleigh, wearing a face that she keeps in a jar wrapped in lead-impregnated cloth, so as to prevent its glowing radioactivity from harming anyone else, digging a bullet out of the wall.
Then we go back to Alexx, pointing to a bullet wound in Father Carlos's thigh. She then leans in and asks, "What can you tell us, Father, about who did this to you?" My respect for Alexx grows by leaps and bounds; I hope there's a sweeps event where the guests at a diplomatic ball are massacred so we can see Alexx working her knowledge of Burke's Peerage as she chats up the dead. Calleigh bats her eyes -- no small feat with the lashes she's got attached -- and tells us that whomever shot the padre meant business, rifle-shootin' business. Megan stands up and does a word problem: "Three possible shots [beat] and only two casings. Are we missing one?" Speedle congratulates Megan on her subtraction skills, then shows her the two separate shoeprints he's lifted, which indicate that whoever was wandering around the rectory had worn out the left sole of their shoe much more dramatically than the right. The team begins brainstorming: there's no sign of break-in, because priests open their doors to a Catholic cross-section of humanity; there are two glasses, but the one without alcohol has a lip-print that's probably the result of lip balm. Megan notes, "Priests can have [beat] a drink. They can also [beat] have company over." Speedle says, "You've got an uncle who's a priest, right?" Megan clarifies, "Jesuit. He drinks, smokes, plays poker. Just doesn't [beat] have sex." But he does provide that all-important personal connection to the case, and heaven knows, we can't have an episode of CSI: Miami pass by without there being some sort of personal connection for Horatio or Megan. Meanwhile, Alexx is pulling a condom out of Father Carlos's pocket and quipping, "Don't know if we can say the same thing about our priest."
Meanwhile, in this show's inaugural B-plot, Horatio is pulling up in the CSI Humvee and hustling over to where Delko is, a ravine in which a thoroughly gutted SUV has rolled to a rest. As Horatio walks over, someone shouts off-camera that she's with Highway Patrol and the car was stolen. Horatio stands on the lip of the gully and shouts for Delko, who responds by scaling the grade and saying, "We've got a female driver, H. She's dead." The woman is the only person in the SUV, which was reported stolen two weeks ago in Georgia, and which went right over the edge of the ravine sans skid marks. Horatio and Delko wend their way back toward the scene, and Delko prepares us for the crispy carnage within by warning, "I'm thinking the fuel line ruptured when the car hit bottom. The gas tank punctured, and sparks set it off on impact." The camera then focuses on the woman in the passenger seat, who's roughly the same color and consistency as pork barbecue. We get a flashback to the car going over the edge a few times -- hey, if it's going to cost money to send an SUV over a cliff, then get your money's worth -- and then we're back with Horatio and Delko. Delko's showing off his newest piece of evidence for Horatio, a charred label to a bottle of Beauchamp cognac. Horatio comments, "Our car thief has expensive tastes -- that's a $400 bottle of cognac." Well, it was an expensive car, too. You wouldn't expect an SUV thief to be hitting the Mad Dog 20/20. ["Not until CSI: Camden, NJ, anyway." -- Sars] Horatio and Delko walk over to the car and survey the fried body within. There's no ID -- the purse found near the car was bereft of anything that could help. Delko also reveals that there was a suitcase found near the car, and Horatio muses, "Now why would this poor thing travel with a suitcase and a purse and no ID?" Could it be...foul play?
The camera then swings to a shot of a statue of Jesus, who looks as if he's either exhorting people to come and be fishers of men, or he's participating in the wave. Speedle comes over to the statue and tells Megan, "Last time I was in church was when Kurt Cobain died." Because...Nirvana's cover of "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam" was so moving? Because...he and his college pals were participating in an attempt to exorcise Courtney Love remotely? So many possibilities, none of them explored here. Megan's not really moved by Speedle's admission. The two of them progress to a doorway, and as Megan goes to reflexively bless herself with the holy water, she draws back, noticing that there's something in the water. A quick portable lab test later, and we've got confirmation of blood. Speedle comments, "The killer washed his hands, huh? A regular Pontius Pilate." Megan offers an alternative theory: "Or [beat] he blessed himself, which means we're looking for a devout Catholic." From the depths of the couch, I snort dubiously; I'm so impious as to actually physically dread a divine lightning strike whenever I take communion in my mom's church, yet I still reflexively bless myself upon entering or exiting a church. Very nearly every Catholic does; the ritual gets pounded into your head at an early age. Plus, if you're really good, and you hit the water at the right angle, you can drench a sibling without fear of retribution.
Ahem. I appear to have wandered off into one of those passages lifted straight from any number of "I was a Catholic-school refugee" books. Back on the screen, Alexx is digging something out of Father Carlos and telling Calleigh, "Don't say I never gave you anything." Can you give her a bottle of Cetaphil and an appointment at the Bobbi Brown counter, too? You'd be doing her -- and us -- a big favor there, Alexx. Anyway: it's a .223 slug, which makes Calleigh very happy on a number of levels: it's a homemade bullet cast from hot lead, it was reloaded, it was fired from a hunting rifle, and best of all, it matches the slug she dug out of the wall. Calleigh hands the bullet over to Megan, who comments that it's kind of mangled for a bullet, and Alexx points out, "It's mangled because it entered the body twice." Calleigh wants to show us all how. Alexx calls over Speedle, "I need some muscle." He comes over to heft the body; sadly, Speedle's back is to us, so we can't see how he feels about being reduced to mere muscle. After rolling the body on its side, Speedle ducks out, missing The Calleigh & Alexx Show: Let's Stick Rods In The Body To Demonstrate Bullet Trajectory. As Calleigh's busy driving skewers through the priest, we see the other end of the stick emerge from his back, dripping with grue. Okay, I'm all for gross if it serves the plot -- for example, when the guy liquefied on CSI last season, or a few weeks ago when they had to saw open the Candyman's head -- but if you're just tossing it on screen because you can, then ewwww. Long story short: the first bullet went in through the chest, emerged in the shoulder, and stuck in the wall; the second shot was closer range, at the base of the neck, and exited the chest before re-entering the thigh and flattening upon impact with the femur. This explains why there were only two casings at the rectory: the priest slumped to a sitting position after Bullet #1, and Bullet #2 ricocheted around.
After that female-bonding scene -- which, by the way, I very much enjoyed, because it showed a dynamic among colleagues that's unique to this series -- we get Speedle and Delko whipping out their case files to see whose is bigger. Delko goes first, boasting that he's got a burn victim who may or may not have been helped along by some $400 lighter fluid. "Can you beat that?" he asks. Speedle thinks he can: "I got a priest, shot with a rifle, dead in a church." Delko thinks that's not bad. Speedle contends that it's "at least a draw," no doubt fully aware that had the priest been shot in a more incongruous location (the lingerie department at Saks, the kitten kennel at the local SPCA, a nearby ashram), he'd be the hands-down winner. Delko laughs, and then Megan comes over, saying dismissively, "Boys and their measuring sticks -- you guys crack me up." She's come over to see what progress Speedle's made on the lip print; he replies that it's neither lipstick nor lip gloss, but rather, lip balm with SPF 45 and the unique ingredient macadamia oil. Megan then asks if there's any progress with regards to prints on the condom. Speedle replies that the only prints present belong to Father Carlos. Megan muses, "In my senior year, Sister Mary Frances found a condom in my desk. Her prints would have been on it." Speedle snorts dismissively, "Yeah, right." He must be a Boston Globe subscriber. Just then, before he and Megan can talk about current events vis a vis the Catholic Church, something beeps, and we find out that the mystery lip print belongs to someone wearing lip balm commonly worn by skateboarders or surfers. Speedle attempts to head back to that current-events discussion with, "A teenage boy, a priest...we might have motive."
Horatio's manning the command board in the skybox while Alexx labors on his flash-fried victim below. Horatio asks Alexx, "What do you see?" Alexx tartly replies, "It's what I don't see -- any broken bones." Horatio notes that the victim may have been drinking, and the pending tox screen will tell. Alexx continues, "I've seen drunks so looped they fall out of a car doing sixty and don't break a finger." She then begins checking passages; Horatio resituates his monitors so he can supervise further. Alexx notes that there's soot in the woman's lungs; Horatio concludes, "So she was alive during the fire." "I hope you didn't suffer too much, darling," Alexx tells the body. Horatio interrupts this moment of compassion for the victim by saying, "Alexx, if she's going to help us, we need to know who she is." And she's going to have an "if found and autopsied, return to [your name here]" label stamped on her liver? Alexx picks up a brittle, burned limb and notes caustically, "Can't get prints from bone." I note that she appears to have freshened her makeup in solidarity with Calleigh. What is it with this show? Both Khandi Alexander and Emily Procter are lovely women, and whoever is running the make-up department is just oblivious to this. I realize it's Miami and every self-appointed style expert in North America loves to point out how Floridians are into the bright feminine colors, but this goes beyond the boundaries of regional style and into an uncharted territory of excess. Ahem. Back on the show, Alexx dumps out the stomach contents to try to draw a timeline between last meal and time of death, and something goes clank in the metal pan. She tells Horatio, "You're not gonna believe this," and he zooms in, just in time to see Alexx extract a diamond ring from the mix. Alexx says, "Looks like she ate about four carats for her last supper."
Horatio takes this information and...does not run with it. Instead, he goes to Delko and says, "Check for [this woman's] dental records and you're going to come up dry." That's not all that's dry -- so was the woman, as she had not a drop of that $400 cognac. Instead, she had 15 micrograms of Demerol, an amount that shouldn't be ingested by anyone other than seasoned professionals (*cough* *cough* Liza Minnelli *cough* *cough*). Delko also notes that the woman tested high for folic acid, which, in a normal universe, would indicate a fondness for vitamin supplements. In this one, however, it means she was seven weeks pregnant. Delko declines to explain how folic acid levels correlate with specific weeks in the human gestation cycle. We all know pregnant women are supposed to take a lot of folic acid to prevent neural tube defects, but I can't find any citations linking folic acid levels to a stage in early pregnancy. The closest is a citation supporting the theory that folic acid levels in pregnant women are an indication of a pregnancy's intentionality (Knowledge and use of folic acid by women of childbearing age---United States, 1995 and 1998. MMWR 1999; 48:325--7) -- but that still doesn't provide a link between the chronology of a pregnancy and the level of folic acid in the woman's system. Note to show runners: bring the science, but for heaven's sake, at least check the science first.
Another day breaks, and Horatio and Delko are busy checking out the SUV. Delko notes that the fuel line survived the car's wild ride remarkably intact. Horatio, on the other hand, finds a cork with no glass attached to it, and a shard of glass in the back of the vehicle. Delko advances the theory that someone uncorked the cognac bottle, poured the liquid all over the doped-up woman, then set fire to her; the resultant blaze melted the bottle. Horatio rejects that theory: "See the char in the burn indicator. Look at this. It means that the origin of the fire was in the back seat and it traveled to the front seat. It also means that the fire was hot enough to melt the glass before the fire department got there." As Horatio's talking, we watch a time-lapse scene in which the fire does sweep forward and reduce the unconscious woman to an extra from the finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Delko's still a big fan of the she-was-covered-in-cognac theory. I know the alcohol would have burned off, but surely there's a chemical compound unique to cognac that would have been present, and thus detected already? Anyway, Horatio's more interested in what started the fire. Delko's all, "Maybe a spark on impact?" Horatio points out that nobody goes to all the trouble of stealing a car, removing someone's ID, doping up a person, and rolling a vehicle over a ravine to leave the fire to a chance spark. Horatio says, "I think that whoever did this wanted to make sure that this mother and child were never identified again." And I think that whoever wrote this episode is asking the audience to make a few huge freakin' leaps in logic, namely that the pregnancy was a motive for murder, and that a seven-week-old fetus somehow qualifies as a "child," as opposed to a developing embryo completely dependent on its host for survival.
Cut to Horatio and Alexx walking along. She's dolefully noting, "You sure know how to brighten up a girl's day, don't you?" Horatio says, "I've got nothing. I need an ID on the father." Alexx points out that this will be possible only if the father's DNA has unique characteristics. Horatio asks, "Are you ready for this?" Alexx replies, "Fetal tissue recovery is the one thing I'm never ready for." So long as we don't get shots of her singing lullabies...
Cut to Alexx in the morgue, preparing to cut open the victim's uterus. Horatio is hovering nearby. So that's how it is: a fully grown adult murder victim gets the Voice-of-God treatment, but an embryo gets his undivided attention. I'm not sure if this scene is supposed to broadcast Horatio being supportive of Alexx after he asked her to perform a difficult task, or if we're supposed to get the idea that Horatio has unresolved issues with gestation. The strings of solemnity play as Alexx extracts the amniotic sac and puts it in a jar, then puts the embryo in a petri dish. Horatio looks down and provides Lambs of Christ with promotional material as he asks, "Not just skin cells, is it?" Nobody was saying that it was, my man, but we're still looking at a collection of largely undifferentiated cells that's not capable of surviving independently outside the uterus. Alexx glares at Horatio, and he holds the petri dish aloft, thanking her. The strings continue as Horatio hands off the petri dish, asking a nameless lab tech to set it up for him. She puts it under a microscope, and Horatio bends to the lens. We then see a shot of an embryo; I involuntarily shriek, "Rex the Wonder Preemie has a sister!" See? I told you I was a rotten Catholic. Horatio looks in the scope long enough to confirm that, yes, it is an embryo, thanks the lab tech, then wanders downstage to brood in time with the strings of sorrow. Okay -- bag the empathy for Alexx angle. Horatio's clearly got issues centering around the wee, wee, wee ones.
Back in another plot, Calleigh and Megan are using Marathon to try and approximate Father Carlos's death. I kid -- it's only a computer simulation. Megan notes, "We can estimate that Father Carlos laid bleeding for ten seconds before he walked to his killer." Calleigh says, "That's time for the killer to come over and shoot him." Megan notes, "But he didn't. Why? What happened [beat] in those ten seconds?" Speedle interrupts this reverie and takes over the computer screen so he can play Tony Hawk Pro, or its forensic equivalent: "The shoeprints found in the rectory were DVS. Who wears DVS? Skateboarders. The reason for the difference in the wear is because one foot is always on the board, staying new, and the other foot is on the ground, wearing out." Megan notes that this person is "goofy-footed," i.e. probably extremely strongly left-handed, as their dominant foot is their left foot as well. Calleigh asks, "And you know this how, Miss Three-Inch Heels?" Possibly because Megan read The Left-Hander Syndrome: The Causes and Consequences of Left-Handedness by Stanley Coren, and the statistics in Chapter 2 ("The Lopsided Animal"), where it's noted that 77 percent of men are right-footed, stuck with her? Speedle sums up, "We're looking for a teenager, probably 5'2" and left-handed. Let's bring in the altar boys."
Cut to a baby-faced boy giving Speedle a wide-eyed look before gumming a piece of glass with his lip prints. We cut to Megan and Sevilla in Catholic agonies over on the sidelines before cutting back to a female altar server giving her lip print, then to a boy who busses the glass. As he sits down, Megan notes his DVS shoes, then asks everyone to sit down and lift their left feet so she can have Speedle take prints. The boy now looks nervous, and he meets Megan's eyes anxiously. I think we have our goofy-footed suspect.
In the shot, we're in a small tract house by a sewage pond, then inside it. There is a staggering number of lacquered alligator heads hanging on the wall; someone who lives here is clearly committed to wiping out an entire branch in the alligator family tree. Sevilla is asking the occupant of the house, "Mrs. Medina, with this warrant, do you understand we have the right to search your home and sample your son's DNA?" Who issued this warrant -- John Ashcroft? Mrs. Medina understands fine, but claims that she and her son didn't do anything. Megan dispatches Sevilla to take the boy, Cameron, outside; as he leaves, his mother tells him in Spanish, "It's all right, son. Don't worry." This does not pass by Megan unnoted. She, Calleigh, and Speedle then spend the few minutes searching the house for evidence. Megan finds the lip balm, Calleigh finds a rifle, Speedle finds DNA evidence, Megan finds shots of Cameron skateboarding. She also finds a belt, and recalls a bruise pattern from Mrs. Medina's neck; minutes later, she's found a hole in the plaster that matches the indent of a head, and some blood and hair on the edge. Then she walks in to talk to Mrs. Medina, who's reading the warrant and marveling at how many civil liberties John Ashcroft has assaulted.
Megan notes that the police have been by more than one on domestic disturbance calls. Mrs. Medina responds cagily, "My husband and I have had our troubles." Megan asks where Mr. Medina might be, and Mrs. Medina answers, "Your guess is as good as mine." Megan points out that they're going to need to speak to him; Mrs. Medina responds, "When my husband leaves for business, I don't ask where, and I don't ask for how long." We get the feeling that she doesn't want to know when he'll be coming back. Megan looks thoughtful. She then heads outside, where Speedle's just finished collecting a DNA sample from Cameron, and tells Sevilla she's going to want a minute with Cameron. She then talks to Cameron, and demonstrates the power of forensics by debunking his lie about not being at Father Carlos's with, "I know you were there -- we matched your lip prints to a glass we found, and your shoe prints match the ones we took from the floor." Cameron tries Lie #2: "I just went to tell him, I didn't want to be an altar boy anymore." How do we know it's Lie #2? Because it's really pretty innocuous on the things-I-would-lie-to-the-police-about scale of things, and because we still have thirty-one minutes left in this episode and therefore need to discover Cameron's deep dark reason for visiting the priest around the forty-something-minute mark. We do, however, find out that Cameron claimed to be at Ollie Oop, an indoor skating park, at the time of Father Carlos's death. This scene ends with a flashback of the Cameron-Father Carlos interaction (the boy screaming, "Get away from me!" and the priest imploring, "Cameron! Wait!"), and after Megan asks if Father Carlos ever hurt Cameron, he replies, "That's between me and God now." Raise your hand, everyone who automatically assumed Horatio would materialize at that moment. Well, I'm sure Horatio automatically assumed he'd materialize at that moment.
Night has fallen, and Megan's busy looking at images of Cameron skateboarding when Calleigh comes in to confirm that the gunpowder she found at La Casa Medina matches the gun used to kill Father Carlos. She and Speedle make an enthusiastic case for a murderous minor. These kids today, with their skateboarding and their priest-killing! Megan debunks that theory by pointing out that the time-stamp on the Ollie Oop photos she has places Cameron at the skate park during the time in which Father Carlos was murdered.
Fortunately, the three of them have time to come up with a new theory, because we're about to spend time with the Fetal Avenger. Horatio comes in to talk to Delko, who asks sympathetically, "Was it as bad as they say?" Horatio broods, "It was worse, and the CODIS search for the father's DNA is negative." Delko correctly notes that it's hard to search with half the DNA. Then he delivers some interesting news: the woman's dress was covered in cognac, but the melted glass wasn't. In fact, the glass was covered with a variety of other substances: sulfuric acid, sugar, gasoline, potassium chloride. Horatio takes note of the list and asks, "That's an exothermic reaction, isn't it?" Delko tells us all how to make a Molotov cocktail: "That's right. You paste the potassium chloride and the sugar to the label, then you pour sulfuric acid and gasoline into the bottle. And when the bottle breaks, you serve up a Molotov cocktail." Well, it's heartwarming to know that not every bomb recipe can be blamed on the internet. Except for people who are off to blow things up after this recap -- I accept no responsibility for your actions, chumley. We see the SUV blow up one more time (someone on this show is amortizing costs per explosion) and then Horatio muses that perhaps the Molotov cocktail points to a homicidal bent on the part of the person who began rolling the SUV downhill. Before Horatio can go from musing to brooding, Delko heads him off with more evidence and asks him to check out the diamond under the scope. Horatio does; there's a label on the base, Stewart Diamonds. Horatio says, "I can tell you this was done with an excimer laser, and its inscription point was no more than three microns in diameter." What Horatio cannot tell us, however, is what the hell an excimer laser is or why it matters. Delko references David Caruso's c.v. by chortling, "How do you know that? Were you a jewel thief in another life?" Horatio adds more dimension to this c.v. by replying, "In another life, I incarcerated many a jewel thief." Delko wonders why you'd ruin a perfectly good diamond with a $30,000 billboard. Because it wasn't enough to know that the rock was probably mined by slave labor in Africa? Horatio sets him straight: "They reserve this for the best diamonds and the best customers."
Whom we won't get to see in this scene, as it's all about Megan and Calleigh. Calleigh's delivering the bad news that she tested the guns she found in the Medinas' shed, and the rifle that killed Father Carlos isn't among them. Megan says, "We're still missing a rifle." Then she catches a load of Calleigh's hair, and the irritation over missing a rifle subsides in the face of a powerful craving for Swiss Miss Cocoa. (Seriously. Someone on this show hates Emily Procter and expresses this via sadistic grooming techniques.) Actually, Megan's musing that all is not well at the Medinas'. Calleigh proffers the theory that the violent dad thought the priest was molesting Cameron, and took matters into his own hands. I take a moment to think about how sad it is that everyone's first thought is that the priest died as a result of his molestation habits; I realize that current events make this plausible, but I also think that a fundamental flaw in this assumption is that it mistakes deviant behavior for the norm, and taints the many, many priests who have done nothing but try to serve their parishes to the best of their abilities. Megan composes herself at about the same time I manage to rein in my rant, and she and Calleigh head off to find Mr. Medina.
And now, we get to meet the man who buys Stewart Diamonds. Horatio is showing a blown-up picture of the ring and asking, "Do you recognize this ring?" The man replies, "Yes, yes, of course I do. But what are you doing with it? Did something happen to Lisa?" Horatio wonders if Lisa had a last name. The man responds, "Valdez. Lisa Marie Valdez. Please tell me if something happened to her!" Horatio does not: "According to Stewart Diamonds, you and Lisa were in eleven weeks ago to purchase that ring." The man doesn't recall. Oh, to have the kind of bank balance where spending $30,000 is but an afternoon's diversion. Delko then asks when the last time this guy (again with not identifying anyone by name! Argh!) saw Lisa. The man responds, "Maybe seven, maybe eight weeks ago?" And he's only panicking about her disappearance now? Horatio does not bother to pursue that line of inquiry, asking instead, "Buying a rock that large caused you a problem, didn't it?" Apparently so: the guy claims he gave it to her to "show my appreciation for an intimate night together." I bet you he tips really well at restaurants too. Horatio continues, "But Lisa took it to mean that it was more than a souvenir." We flash to the two of them fighting over the ring, and Lisa ending the fight by swallowing the ring. So it's been in her stomach for eight weeks? What is she, Jaws? The guy continues babbling, "Then she got obsessed" -- as might anyone who just received a $30,000 diamond from someone who didn't want to get involved -- "and I didn't want to hurt her, so I just cut it [off] cold turkey." Horatio intones, "And now she's dead." The man overplays his hand with, "Dead? How? Was it suicide?" I would have hoped that we were dealing with someone crafty enough to practice their shocked reaction in front of a mirror or something, but no. We get this. Horatio pushes across pictures of Lisa Flambé and asks, "Does this look like a suicide to you?" Fortunately, the man's reaction is all genuine there -- "Ew!"
Meanwhile, at an unmarked factory location -- if we're going by clues for geography, Calleigh's hair indicates the Rhineland -- and Sevilla fills us in: they found Medina's truck, but no Medina. Sevilla, Calleigh, and Megan walk with a foreman, pumping him for clues as to the last time anyone saw Señor Medina. The foreman replies, "Well, he hasn't been to work since, I guess, since the end of last week." Megan asks, "You mean, he's not away on business?" This amuses the foreman: "Only business he's got is in a smelly sewer." Everyone sets to examining the apparently abandoned Medina truck. Calleigh finds a pipe wrench covered in blood at about the same time Megan begins crowing over the dried blood she's found on the steering wheel, as well as a hair that got glued to the wheel. As the two compare evidence, they notice a rifle rack on the back of the truck cab. Sevilla asks, "Mr. Jones, is this any reason why Emilio Medina would carry a rifle?" Jones replies, "You ever see a gator coming toward you in a sewer? Hell, you don't talk to the sumbitch, you shoot it." That goes a long way toward explaining the Medinas' decor. Sevilla steers Jones off for further questioning, leaving Calleigh to ask, "So where's Emilio Medina and his rifle?"
Yet another day passes, if the transition shot of the Miami skyline is any indication, and Delko comes in to see Horatio brooding over a picture of the formerly very attractive Lisa Marie Valdez. Delko comments, "She was pretty." Horatio replies, "Yes, she is. Yes, she is." That's kind of creepy. He then says, "Everything we need to convict this guy is right here. Let's find it." Cut to a montage of Delko and Horatio inspecting charred items on a light table -- a bundle of burnt roses, three pairs of shoes, and a bottle of cognac. Plus a big lump of charred rubber. Horatio cuts it open, revealing red folds within. Delko asks, "What's it say to you?" Horatio invites him to sniff the rubber; it smells like strawberries. Horatio asks, "What do you get when you cross strawberries with rubber?" Delko looks like he's thinking hard about that one, then replies, "A guaranteed good time." Horatio then writes down an address, and directs Delko to ask the guy behind the counter (Artie) if Douglas (the guy who bought the diamond) recently bought any strawberry-scented rubber teddies. Ah -- so in addition to bringing down rings of jewel thieves and defusing bombs, Horatio also did time in the Miami sex-club circuit. Delko reads the paper and laughs like a fourteen-year-old boy: "Artie's Adult Playground." Horatio asks if Delko knows Artie. Delko shoots back, "Do you know Artie?" Horatio ducks that by just telling Delko to go to the address. I have a feeling Calleigh's getting a little something in the interdepartmental mail later today.
Speedle gets no field trip to Artie's Adult Playground. Instead, he gets to tell Megan that the blood on the steering wheel of the truck belongs to Father Carlos. In turn, she gets to tell him what brains all over the teeth of a wrench remind her of. The answer, for those who were wondering, is "sticky oysters." Speedle disagrees: "It looks like melted provolone." We all realize that Father Carlos's brains were intact, so they're looking at someone else's. After a few minutes, we realize that it's Emilio Medina's brains we see. To quote Megan, "If it was Cameron's dad that killed Father Carlos, he did it without his temporal lobe." "Hard to do," Speedle concedes. Heh.
We're back at the Casa de Medina, and the bloodhound scent dog brought in to check the place just found something. Megan and Calleigh head over to the dog, who's snuffling at a recently spaded dirt patch. The two of them proceed to dig, and find Cameron's bloodstained clothing. Megan mutters dispiritedly. Before she and Calleigh can continue, Megan's cell rings. It's Speedle, who finished running the tests on the hair found on the steering wheel: "I compared it to the hair that I found on the father's brush, and it didn't match. But right now, I'm looking at the one that it does. It's the hair you found embedded in the wall in Cameron's room. Both of the hairs match Cameron's mother, which means Mrs. Medina was the one driving the truck." Mrs. Medina, who's been watching everything from the doorway, catches Megan's eye and heads inside. Megan turns to Sevilla and says, "We're going to need to talk to the mother." Maybe they can bond over their dead husbands.
Meanwhile, Delko's had himself an education, telling Horatio, "Artie says hello, and that Douglas came in to satisfy his rubber fetish about three days ago." Horatio snips, "So he lied to us about the last time he saw Lisa Marie and that doesn't prove he killed her, so we go back to the Jeep." Delko says he already has. Not to Horatio's liking, he hasn't. Horatio insists a little more stridently. Delko stands up to him, insisting, "H, I already have. There's not a print, a fiber, there's nothing left in that Jeep that connects him to her." In other words, there's no evidence. Horatio takes a brief pause to brood, then says in a tone designed to transmit as much guilt as possible, "So, he's going to get away with it?" If you can't find the evidence to nail him, then, yes. And that is possible. Delko's not too happy, but he stands there and tolerates Horatio saying, "That's what you're telling me -- he's going to get away with it. He's going to crawl under that rock that he slithered out from, because he's killed the only person that knows the truth." And also, because there's no evidence to link him to the crime. We never found out, for example, how many people bought strawberry-scented rubber camisoles in the Miami area -- for all we know, Lisa Marie already had one on hand. We don't know what kind of relationship Lisa Marie and Douglas actually had, as we haven't seen Horatio interviewing any of her friends or relatives. We also don't have anything to link the cognac to Douglas, the diamond timeline doesn't match up with the pregnancy, and where would Douglas have gotten the stolen car? In other words, while it would be nice to nail this guy based on his interactions with Lisa, there's nothing there. Delko and Horatio agree that Douglas walks for now, pending the release of a time machine that will allow Horatio to pop back to the origin of crime scenes and collect the evidence he needs right then. Horatio then goes in to the computer guy Jerome and asks him for a favor. We see Jerome looking at two pictures, one of Lisa and one of Douglas.
Cut to Mrs. Medina telling Megan and Sevilla, sans lawyer, "This has nothing to do with Cameron. It was me. I killed Emilio." Megan once again whips out the forensic evidence to debunk a Medina lie. Megan immediately pegs motivation with, "He killed your husband to protect you, didn't he?" We flash to a violent altercation, and a frantic Cameron digging through his father's toolbox for something with which to stop his father. Megan continues, "That night, you and Cameron dragged his body to the river." So Mrs. Medina wasn't really lying when she told Megan that her guess was a good as anyone's regarding Mr. Medina's final location; those rivers have both currents and alligators, so he could feasibly be all over the place. Megan continues putting the pieces together for us: "When Cameron needed to talk to someone about what he'd done, he went to Father Carlos." Flash to Father Carlos saying gravely, "You need to tell the police," and Cameron not liking that suggestion at all. Father Carlos implores, "Come with me to the police. Let me help you." Cameron doesn't like that suggestion either, and we finally get to the "Cameron, wait!" scene we saw earlier. Back in the interrogation room, we learn that Mrs. Medina shot the priest shortly after dropping Cameron off at the skating park. We flash to her talking to Father Carlos: "Promise me you won't talk to the police." He assures her that they'll understand. She then commits the sin of despair by saying, "No one understands -- not you, not God, no one." Then she bats a sin triple, which she recounts to Megan with, "I gave up. I left, I went back to the truck..." and then we flash back again with Father Carlos facing down the barrel of a shotgun and trying to talk to Mrs. Medina, who's saying, "My son protected me. I'm the only one who can protect him now" (pride), then raising the shotgun to her shoulder, shooting Father Carlos once, then shooting him again after saying, "You knew what he was doing to me! You knew!" When Father Carlos says it's not his place to judge, she shouts, "You gave him communion every Sunday!" (wrath) and shoots again (murder). We see Iris in flashback crossing herself in front of the statue of Jesus, and then sobbing in front of Megan and Sevilla in the interrogation room. That poor woman -- Father Carlos couldn't judge, but there was nothing stopping him from pointing out to Emilio in confession that persistently beating his wife and asking repentance for it was perhaps not indicative of an earnest desire to stop sinning. I can see where Iris got upset -- to her way of thinking, Father Carlos would turn in the boy who protected her while turning a blind eye to the man who had beaten her.
And now, we're back at Horatio. He's saying, "Jeffrey, you lied to me about the last time you saw Lisa. You saw her just three days ago, didn't you?" Jeffrey? Who's...okay, we're at the fifty-three minute mark, and I'm going to assume that this man's full name is Jeffrey Douglas, and he's in here despite Horatio having nothing in the way of evidence to charge him with anything. Jeffrey -- who has lawyered up -- says nothing. Horatio continues, "Did you know that she had family who thought she was still alive, Jeffrey? I was forced to tell them she was dead." Don't let the tone fool you, Jeffrey -- Horatio loved every minute of it. The lawyer earns her fee by asking, "Do you have anything more than your opinion and my client's itinerary to hold him on?" As they prepare to leave, Horatio asks, "You mean, like his DNA? Jeffrey is the baby's father, so sit down." I love how he assumes that Lisa wasn't seeing anyone else, or that Jeffrey's even aware of paternity. Hell, we don't even know if Lisa was aware that she was pregnant. Horatio demonstrates that he, like the Bush administration, thinks life begins at conception: "See, I think this is about the baby, and you didn't want the baby to cramp your style so you force-fed Lisa Marie enough Demerol to kill her. Am I close?" No. You're working on a lot of assumptions: show a prescription tying Jeffrey to any amount of Demerol, show receipts indicating that Jeffrey had any transactions that would indicate the presence of a second person, show anything that signifies motive or intent. The lawyer goes to usher her client out, and Horatio pulls his trump card: "Before you go, I wanted to show you a photograph. Take a look at that. Do you know who that is? That's your daughter. This is what she would have looked like on her second birthday had you not killed her and her mother." And had she actually existed as a biologically independent entity. Horatio's ginned up a hypothetical photo based on composite features and used it to justify his fetal fixation. Horatio's not done: "Know this, my friend: every year, on this child's birthday, I am going to haunt you. I am going to be all over you until I get what I need to put you in jail." Laying aside the question of Jeffrey's guilt or innocence for a moment, how disturbing is Javert the Embryonic Avenger here? Can you imagine what Horatio's DayRunner looks like?
7 AM -- 8 AM Do yoga, think about finding calm center. Settle for brooding.
8 AM -- 8:30 AM Shower, roll in vat of 45 SPF.
8:45 AM -- 9 AM Haunt that guy from the pregnant-mom bombing in '93.
9:15 AM -- 10:00 AM Stand in skybox, use Voice of God to direct Alexx's autopsy.
10:10 AM -- 10:25 AM -- Go to Starbucks. Brood in line.
10:30 AM -- Reminder: Megan birthday coming up. Order The Courage to Heal off Amazon, plus a pirate's cutlass.
11 AM -- Drive to Boca Raton for haunting from 1998 pregnant mom overdose case.
2 PM -- Stop for burger on way back from haunting. Drop "if you're relocating, let me know" reminder cards in mail for 1999, 2000 hauntees.
2:15 PM -- Blow Delko's mind with regard to referral for bondage dungeon. Oil whip.
3:00 PM -- Haunt woman in crib death case over the phone. Foiled by caller ID.
3:05 PM -- Use Megan's phone to call back.
3:15 PM -- Balance checkbook. Send money to Operation Rescue.
3:45 PM -- Mid-afternoon brood.
4:00 PM -- Eject Megan's decorator from office again. Catch up on paperwork.
Anyway. Jeffrey and his lawyer leave the room, presumably to go out to the car and talk about how creepy Horatio is. Or they could be wondering how anyone could take a string of dubious assumptions and somehow turn them into a case for infanticide. I can accept that for people who are pregnant and excited about it, the embryo or fetus they're carrying becomes, for them, a person to plan for. However, there is no legal foundation for this kind of sentiment -- there may be in November, when the Bush administration deploys its federal fetal healthcare plan, but there isn't at the moment. For Horatio to go building a case on a seven-week-old embryo is really pretty extreme. It's also pretty stupid; if this guy had no difficulty torching someone because he was averse to the idea of children, what makes Horatio think he'll crumble in the face of a Photoshopped toddler?
Cut to a Catholic church, where they're playing "Amazing Grace," a hymn I've never really heard in conjunction with a funeral mass. Sure, St. Jerome's went through a Godspell phase back in the 1970s where the opening processional took place to "Prepare Ye The Way Of The Lord," but we were all still giddy from Vatican II back then. Even then, we never got so giddy as to appropriate such Protestant all-stars as "What A Friend We Have In Jesus" or "The Old Rugged Cross." Oh, I'm sorry -- my subconscious is apparently working on a book proposal, because there aren't enough people exorcising their Catholic upbringing in print. Anyway, it's Father Carlos's funeral, and the patricidal Cameron Medina is serving as an altar boy. This leads to a small theological debate on the sofa:
The husband: They're letting a confessed murderer attend the funeral mass of a priest?
Me: Well, I guess if he confessed and truly repented of his sin, it's possible. It doesn't seem to be in good taste, what with his mom having killed the deceased.
The husband: No, no, no. They're letting a confessed murderer attend the funeral mass of a priest?
Me: Forgiveness and redemption are big themes, you know. I just wonder how the rest of the parish feels about this.
Well, since that parish evidently includes Horatio and Megan, I'm guessing that the answer is "broody." As the funeral procession passes, I wonder if Megan is mentally comparing her husband's funeral to this one. Anyway, Cameron reaches the narthex of the church and is met by Sevilla and a deputy; evidently, he's going back to juvie as soon as he takes off the robes. As "Amazing Grace" winds down, Horatio leaves the picture of the hypothetical toddler at the foot of a statue of the Virgin Mary. And this episode ends, leaving many things -- among them, how the allegedly guilty Jeffrey would have done any number of things that led to the murder of Lisa, what a condom was doing in Father Carlos's pocket, why someone guilty of the mortal sin of murder was attending a priest's funeral, how folic acid levels are directly linked to a specific stage in pregnancy -- unexplained.