It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and people are running the usual errands that eat up the hectic minutes before work. This day couldn't be any more normal if it tried. The camera focuses on a tour bus where a woman sitting in the back is wearing a sweatshirt saying "I love Grandma," which is more or less the sartorial shorthand for "doomed" on this show. All she needs to do now is whip out pictures of the kiddies, and a hail of gunfire would immediately commence. In the shot, a woman walks by with a child who's toting a red balloon. We're forty-five seconds into the show, and I'm groaning under the weight of all the symbolism already. The camera then lingers on three people: Photo Guy (taking pictures out on an envelope), The Man In The Ice Cream Suit (stopping to scan the headlines), and Starbucks Maiden (lots of hair, dealing with coffee in her commuter mug). They all stand still, as if transfixed by the ominous music, and then the sharp whine of a bullet starts the action rolling. The Man In The Ice Cream Suit is the first to go down, and his abrupt crumple cues the screaming and stampeding. Starbucks Maiden is -- she makes an easy target, what with standing in the middle of an empty patch of sidewalk -- and then, as if to punish Photo Guy for thumbing through his prints while others ran around and screamed beside him, the shooter pegs him between the eyes too. There's chaos, mayhem, confusion, and then -- of course -- the red balloon drifting up toward a bright blue sky in slow motion.
In the scene, enough time has elapsed for the crime-scene tape to go up, the goggling onlookers to gather, and the media horde to descend. A reporter is talking about how the investigation will look into a workplace dispute one of the victims was having, but her droning fades into the distance as Horatio and Calleigh arrive on the scene. Whoever's in charge of the Sergio Leone filter needs to take it down a notch; this scene is saturated with so much yellow, it's given Horatio the appearance of a suntan. And while I'm making petty aesthetic complaints, let me comment on Calleigh's outfit: she's petite, and she's curvy, so those overlarge bell-bottoms aren't doing her any favors. As her pants drag her toward the crime scene, Calleigh comments, "Can you believe it? It's national news and we don't even know what happened? Some alpaca herdsman in Peru knows more about our case than we do." Horatio commiserates, "Knows what to look for, he does." The two of them stop to survey the victims. The camera zooms in on The Man In The Ice Cream Suit and the neat hole above his eye as Horatio intones, "One over the left eye." We travel over to the Starbucks Maiden, whose wound looks like a gory bindhi, as Horatio says, "One right between the eyes," then we visit with Photo Guy, who has, according to Horatio, "One into the right eye. Boom, boom, boom -- and that's called the Kill Zone." Calleigh says matter-of-factly, "No messing around, clean and deadly." Speaking of no messing around, here's Sevilla to exposit a little on the unreliability of witnesses. Calleigh asks, "So how did three people get shot in broad daylight on a busy street, and nobody sees anything?" The entire Washington, D.C. metro area contemptuously shouts the answer while Horatio decrees, "Sniper."
Oh, look, The Who agree. That's why they're screaming, "Yeah!" isn't it?
Once we get back from the commercial, Sevilla is again filling Horatio in on the unreliability of witnesses, clearly forgetting that the man has a built-in ClueScope and the divine powers that come with deciding who's guilty and who's innocent. He elects to humor us all, however, by reading us the clues: "Lost shoes indicate people running for their lives." Speedle -- in another Warrickian parallel -- is on shoe duty, photographing them as if he's hoping his work can double as a freelance assignment for Harper's Bazaar. Sevilla fills us in on the victims' backgrounds, but since none of it will be especially relevant later, I'm not going to bother. Suffice it to say that the only thing these three have in common is the unfortunate manner of their demise. Horatio sends Sevilla off to get all the surveillance videos from the surrounding buildings and businesses, then asks Alexx how many bullets his underlings will looking for, only he phrases it, "How many bullets am I looking for?" Alexx -- who's looking really great in a tank top, although I do wonder if all female coroners dress as nattily as she and her ill-tempered counterpart on NBC -- tells Horatio, "Guy in the suit, the bullet lodged in his head. That man over there, same thing." She then crouches down to the Starbucks Maiden and croons, "Let's see what happened to your bullet, sweetheart. Messed up your pretty weave, that's for sure. Yeah, it went right through you." I should note that Alexx is determining this by moving her fingers around in the wound area. Horatio tells Calleigh to find the third bullet, then summons Speedle, who finishes photographing Photo Guy and wanders over, chuffing in irritation. He testily says, "Don't these people have anything better to do?" Horatio's all, "Okay, all right, remember where you are...let's get everything back to the lab. We need to start the victimology, and figure out why these three people got shot, okay?" I suppose the wrong-place-wrong-time hypothesis is going to languish for the better part of the episode. I also love how Horatio's all we-we-we as though he's going to be laboring in the vineyards beside everyone, when we really know he's going to be wandering about and brooding instead. Calleigh has Horatio wander on over to where she is, as she tells him, "I've got a divot. Victim dropped in her tracks, bullet went through her head, hit here, based on a teardrop shape, tail indicates that it traveled in this direction ..." Calleigh walks over to a wall. Lo and behold, that bullet happens to be resting against it. She holds it up for Horatio, telling him, "Looks like a .223." Horatio can take that information and run with it. He says, "Two-two-three...okay. Let's get the trajectory. You and I will work the bullets. Alexx, you and I are on bodies." That Horatio, inserting himself in all the cool action. Either that or he's cloned himself. Oh, God, please, not that. Anyway, Horatio's attention is distracted by a few birds of prey circling near a tall building. He can hear their calls perfectly, and so he turns. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have our trajectory.
Meanwhile, it's a dead man's party in Alexx's morgue. And she's brought party favors -- those long metal rods which help map out the trajectory vectors for gunshot victims. Oh, man, this completely icks me out. It's as though these people are cocktail garnishes and Alexx is skewering them for a very large, very morbid fruity drink. Yeah, it's my hang-up. Anyway, as Alexx is slowly inserting the rod into the Starbucks Maiden, she's telling Horatio up in the skybox, "Angle is downward" -- okay, the wet, slurpy, crunchy sounds have really not increased my love for this particular procedure -- "into the glabella, perforated the brain, and exited through the occipital bone." Horatio checks the results on his computer, and confirms that she does look like she's about to adorn the side of a giant, disgusting, bloody cocktail. Actually, what he does it overlay a 360-degree compass, rotate the x-axis from zero, and determine that the shot went in at a 20.5 degree angle. Alexx asks what the other angles for the other victims were -- they were 20.8 and 20.1 degrees. I'll be darned; that habit of surveying the results from behind a bank of computers finally proved useful. Alexx comments of all three, "Hard to get that shot from the ground unless the shooter's ten feet tall." Horatio adds, "Or they're in a ten-story window." That's a big difference in numbers, I think; either Horatio or Alexx should show their work so we can see how they came to their respective answers. Alas, there's no time, as it's more important for us to see exactly how the Starbucks Maiden died in TMICam. As Alexx explains, "The bullet entered her brain, shut down her central nervous system...immediately fatal," we get the bullet's-eye view of the proceedings. Alexx concludes, "Never felt a thing. -best thing to going in your slee--" She trails off as she realizes she's talking to herself; Horatio's taken off. Alexx gives an eye-roll -- this is apparently typical behavior for Horatio -- and returns to her work.
Horatio's off and hovering over Calleigh, who's cracking, "These are not your daddy's bullets. Most bullets have striations, but these don't." That's because they're Sabot bullets encased in plastic. Calleigh says, "Specialty bullets. Not illegal, but also not widely available." And then we see a closeup of the bullet exiting the gun and shedding its plastic skin as it goes. Horatio explains, "It's encased in plastic to protect the bullet, making it impossible to match up the specific weapon, right?" Calleigh takes the ammunition choice as a sign of foresight and concludes, "[The sniper] does not want to get caught." Horatio concludes, "Maybe he was just beginning. Three dead before the morning rush hour is over. Who knows what the day will bring us?"
Why, it brings us something that's ostensibly a B-plot! Delko is wandering onto a tour bus, where the beloved grandmother from the first scene was sitting before a bullet shattered the window and killed her, if the broken glass and bloodstain are anything to go by. Delko tells us, "She was shot at nine-fifteen when the driver stopped for a bathroom break around Second, near Langley." This catches Horatio's attention, and he says, "Wait a minute: did you just say Second and Langley? We've got a fourth victim." Delko recaps how the shooting happened -- the driver heard the screams and a shot, got the bus to the hospital -- then asks if poor Grandma died as a result of some sloppy shooting. Horatio snorts, "Not this guy."
And now it's time for a video break: Speedle's busy doing the victimology voodoo while a danceable beat plays in the background. As is typical for these scenes, we get the idea that time has elapsed while we see nothing of value.
Horatio's back in the skybox, listening to Alexx explain how the wounds in Victim #4 differ from the three: "Trajectory is upward, into the left temporal lobe." Horatio checks this on his end -- the picture he sees is of a woman who's missing the top of her head, and there's the rod sticking out both ends -- and says, "You just said upward. Two-point-five degrees upward. How is that possible?" Alexx rolls her eyes like she wants to snap, "Was I there?" but she replies, "Ricochet?" Just then, Calleigh comes by, and Horatio anticipates her news by saying, "You're going to tell me that the bullet is not a Sabot." Nope -- it's a nine-millimeter. Horatio says, "That means we have two shooters -- one in the sky, and one on the ground." Calleigh muses that the ground shooter could explain the shot that was heard at the scene. While the two of them have been talking, Horatio's been dialing a number on his cell, and right then, Megan picks up. Oh, this is too good for words. The powers that be could actually keep her around for the rest of the season like this -- just have people call her, or be all, "Oh, Megan went out for coffee," or, if they must, resort to that creeptacular Digital Livia thing they did on The Sopranos where Tony talked to a CGI after Nancy Marchand died. Then again, if you're going to go to all the trouble of creating a digital Kim Delaney, you're going to want to debug the acting performance of the original, and it's probably less time and effort to simply rework the show. Anyway -- Horatio's on the horn with Megan, and he commands her, "You and Eric are on a different case. Take the grandmother on the bus." If I were Alex Rodriguez, I'd be worried: They're pairing me with Kim Delaney a lot. Does this mean I'm ? Then Horatio turns to Calleigh and says, "We have somewhere to be." She looks weirdly excited as she says, "Yeah."
Where they have to be is back at the scene of the crime, which they are now re-enacting with some plastic dummies. Then the contestants on The Bachelor are dismissed. I kid! They're setting up mannequins to approximate the positions the victims were in, and sticking lasers in the heads to mark the angles of trajectory for the bullets the sniper shot. Horatio explains, "These lasers should get us up close to where these shots were taken from." Calleigh and two other folk fire up the lasers. Horatio elects not to use his ClueVision around strangers, but rather, a pair of binoculars. All the lasers are pointing to the roof of the Inter•Continental office building. Horatio says, "Six hundred and fifty yards." Calleigh translates, "That's six and a half football fields." I had no idea snipers measured their marks in football fields. Or perhaps this is an example of that staple of explanatory writing, "Translate the jargon into everyday imagery to provide real-world context." Personally, that sort of thing never works for me: unless you've seen six and a half football fields back-to-back, using them as a way of making a distance more real is pretty useless. Anyway, Horatio muses, "One shot, one kill. This guy's either military-trained or police." Calleigh adds, "Marine Corps, probably. They're the best snipers in the world." Just ask Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald, both of whom received their firearms instruction courtesy of the USMC. Horatio says, "That is his nest up there. Let's go find out if he left us anything."
Well, the sniper left a lot of tape. According to Horatio, the sniper did so because "he didn't want the gunshots echoing in the stairwell." Calleigh brainstorms, "He would have had to disassemble the rifle and hide it in something to get it up here. Maybe it was a Winchester Model 70 or a Remington 700, I don't know. Charles Whitman disguised himself as a deliveryman to get up the Texas tower and he got up there, wheeled his guns and his ammo onto the observation deck, and killed fourteen people. He wounded thirty-one." Anyone want to bet that Calleigh's bookshelves include a lot of books about guns and the people who use them? Horatio then asks, "If I was a sniper, what is the first thing I would do?" If Horatio was the sniper, the first thing he would do is brood. Then he'd spend time creeping out the kids at a park, and then he'd go wave Photoshopped pictures around before finally getting down to business. Calleigh thinks otherwise: "You'd pick your spot. Prone position is best for shooting." The two of them eye the wall which rings the roof of the Inter•Continental building, and eventually conclude that the sniper was atop a maintenance entrance. Once Horatio and Calleigh are over there, she's collecting evidence while Horatio plays with his sunglasses. He asks, "So what do you get when a six-foot-tall man lays down with a three-foot-long rifle?" "Hot flashes. But that's just me," Calleigh replies. Man, if she ever gets to go to Vegas on a crossover case, it's going to take a crowbar to pry her off Nicky, isn't it? Maybe she'll even offer to be the technical advisor for his Day Of Reckoning.
Horatio's got no time for love, baby. He's more interested in the cone-shaped deposit of gunshot residue, which was made when the bullet barked the rooftop as it exited the gun. We've now determined that this is the sniper location, despite the fact that it's sufficiently exposed so the sniper could be seen by a helicopter or a neighbor in a nearby building. Calleigh's only half-listening to Horatio, because she just found a scrap of burlap and gravel glued together. Horatio says, "Know what that is? That's from a homemade urban ghillie suit. That's what Marines use in the desert as camouflage." Calleigh also points out the presence of sand; the guy used a sand sock to stabilize his firearm while he shot. After it sinks in that they're dealing with someone who's extremely well-versed in the fine art of killing people via firearms, Calleigh opines, "This guy is scary." You think?
Back at the headquarters, Speedle comes in while Delko's on the phone with one of his three sisters. Delko's saying, "Look, Marisol, it's not my case. If you want Dad to call in sick or stay home from work, you should call him yourself. You know he's not going to listen -- I have to go. I have to go, I'll call you." Once Delko clicks off, Speedle asks what's up, and Delko reveals that Marisol is worried for the senior señor's safety. They chat about the case and how Speedle's doing on victimology, and Delko asks, "Any connection?" "None that are obvious," Speedle drawls. "Then that's a good time to look for the un-obvious," Delko helpfully points out. How very Zen of him. Speedle sighs,= and says irritably, "I'm aware of that. H says that to me all the time." Delko's grinning as he quips, "Great minds..." As if he'd know firsthand. Speedle's all, "You're unbelievable." Delko departs, just in time to run into a freshly mulleted Megan. When will the indignities end? They exchange some leaden dialogue which establishes only that the bullet dinged a mailbox on its way to killing someone's grandma. After Speedle -- whose look of suffering grows more acute with every scene -- whips up a computer simulation so that they can figure out what angle the shot came from if it was capable of nicking a mailbox on its way to the tourist, we hear Dire Straits telling to look at them yokels playing the guitar on the MTV. No, actually, we just see a computer simulation that causes flashbacks to 1985, and the key piece of information is the simulated ATM which would, in theory, offer security camera footage that could be used to pin down witnesses. Speedle sighs, "What do I have? Surveillance tapes from downtown." Well, that wasn't my first guess -- that would have been "an angry hole deep down inside." And my second guess was "another email reminding Warrick and Catherine that it sure was fun working with them, so if there's ever an opening in Vegas, feel free to mention it."
Horatio's barely been yoked to science when Calleigh and another wretched outfit come bursting through his door. At least she's tied back her hair now; when it's down, it's like watching Sabrina The Teenaged Criminalist hard at work. Anyway, Calleigh reports that the tape the sniper used to fasten the door was electrical tape. Horatio responds to this by intoning, "And we got through the night without another shooting." Then his superpowers are working. That's reassuring. Calleigh mentions that her mother's fearful for her safety and wants her to return to Belle Reeve. But how are you going to keep 'em down on the plantation once they've seen the bright lights of the overpriced Miami-Dade crime lab? Calleigh replies, "I told her even Al Qaeda couldn't make me." No offense intended to Calleigh, but I suspect Al Qaeda's thinking on a bigger scale. Horatio comments, "People are starting to get nervous, which is the way he wants it. Take a look and tell me what you think of this." Calleigh does look; it's a conifer needle of some sort. Naturally, rather than ponder how an extremely fresh-looking needle made its way onto a rooftop, Horatio elects to change the subject back to the ghillie suit, and comments that it must have taken weeks to whip that outfit up. Calleigh's not surprised: "Snipers are patient. They can lay in wait for days waiting for the target. If conditions aren't right, they won't take the shot." Horatio comments on how his forensic firearms expert seems to know a whole lot about the people who use guns for killing. Calleigh replies that she used to date a sniper -- "Marine Corps, Special Ops, thirty-eight kills. He's retired now." How do you suppose they met? Were they in the local gun shop? Did their fingers brush over a box of 9mm shells? Then, when their eyes met, did he smile and casually drop the number of kills into the conversation, or was that pillow talk later? Horatio wants to know if Calleigh managed to stay friends with her ex. Not surprisingly, she did.
Cut to Calleigh and Horatio at her ex's rifle range -- which could be awkward, on account of the potential for hurt feelings and the easy access to firearms -- lying in the grass and shooting rifles. Horatio comments, "It's been a while since I fired one of these." I can see how -- between haunting all those escaped wrongdoers and patrolling parks so he can protect his lambs, there's not a whole lot of time to visit the rifle range. Calleigh's ex -- let's call him Sergeant Squarejaw -- comments that Horatio may know how to handle your average popgun, but sniping's a different activity. Sgt. Squarejaw goes all A River Runs Through It on us: "When it comes to shooting, you can't trust just your eyes...most people think a bullet travels in a straight line. The actual path of a bullet is arced like a rainbow. That's the first thing your sniper has to take into account. The thing is the wind. See that tall grass fifty feet ahead? It means the wind is moving three to five miles an hour. Seventy-five feet, wind's completely different. Look at those tall reeds. Tells you the wind is going five to eight miles an hour." Horatio concludes, "So no matter where your target is, you adjust for the wind." Sgt. Squarejaw nods, "Kentucky windage." Calleigh adds, "In the twenty-hundredth of a second it takes a sniper to pull the trigger, he takes one controlled breath and decides if conditions are right to take a life." Horatio responds, "You put a human being at the end of the barrel of your weapon, and you become God." And since Horatio's already bucking for the position, he's taking the sniper personally. Sgt. Squarejaw says happily, "You stay in control. The shot has to be perfect to take it." As if to illustrate the point about control, Horatio fires off another round.
Meanwhile, Megan and Sevilla are questioning someone whom they've pulled from the ATM surveillance camera records. There's a joke here to be made about six degrees of NYPD Blue, but I just can't summon the energy to care. Sevilla does most of the talking with the witness, since the powers that be want to keep this interview moving at a brisk, even tempo. Megan finally butts in to ask Mr. "I Saw Nothing" Santoya if he owns a gun. He denies it, so Megan stares at him a while. After getting unnerved by that, he finally asks, "What's this all about?" It's about wrapping up a B-plot in a timely manner. You're merely a pawn, Mr. Santoya. Megan asks, "May we come in?" Mr. Santoya is looking more nervous by the minute; he asks shortly, "Why?" Sevilla says, "We just want to talk to you." Mr. Santoya points out that nothing's stopping them from chatting as they are. The two women tell him that there was another shooting downtown, a seventy-three-year-old grandmother was killed -- which leads me to wonder, don't childless-by-choice people deserve the same type of law enforcement zeal when they're sent to their makers? Aren't their deaths as much a tragedy for their loved ones as the death of a mother or grandmother? Or are childless women somehow less valuable than those who have reproduced? I'm just wondering, what with this show and its emphasis on how horrible it is for parents or children to be killed -- anyway, a seventy-three-year-old grandmother was killed and it happened right near the ATM, and now that Mr. Santoya's acting all edgy, is he sure there isn't anything he wants to pass on? No, there is not. As Mr. Santoya closes the door, Sevilla asks, "You believe that?" Megan replies, "What, that I'm being paired with the woman that the forum regulars are backing as my replacement?" Actually, she says, "The door in our faces, or the story?" Sevilla says, "Either." Megan says, "Neither. He's hiding something." You think?
And now we get back to the conifer. Horatio's telling us it's Japanese black pine. Unsurprisingly, it's not native to America. However, it is commonly used to grow bonsai trees. Calleigh comments, "Our sniper has a hobby." Oh, please. It's not as if all snipers are moody loners who -- oh. Horatio's all, "Yessss. And patience. It takes twenty to thirty years to grow a bonsai tree. I also found urine." Wow, that's a non sequitur. Calleigh says, "Probably up there all night while waiting to take his shots." I'm totally behind the forum poster who pointed out that Miami is in Florida, and Florida is bound to have Depends in stock. Or maybe the guys at StadiumPal can branch out into a niche market for snipers and stalkers. Before Horatio and Calleigh can contemplate the urinating sociopath further, Speedle comes in, curtly announces, "It happened again," and turns on the giant-screen television to the nightly exposition broadcast: "What we do know is that the sniper has once again struck in downtown Miami."
Cut to the scene of the crime; Horatio and Calleigh have dragged Speedle along. After Horatio muses, "Second day, second shooting," Speedle points out that there's nothing indicating that the shootings are necessarily related. The three of them debate the merits of the copycat-vs.-original argument for a while, and then Sevilla comes by to give us the 411 on the victim. Fortunately for Horatio, the guy had kids, so he can work up the requisite level of rage to sustain him on his lonely quest for vengeance. Sevilla says, "He just bought a hot dog and fell over dead." An opportunistic class-action lawyer comes over and begins making noises about going after fast food chains. Oh, he does not. Anyway, Sevilla says that the director's ready to call in the Feds. Horatio declines to dignify that with a response, saying, "Two days, two shootings, four dead. This guy's on a spree." Sevilla less concerned about semantics and more concerned about apprehension: "Can we place him on a building?" Calleigh replies, "Not with just one bullet, but I can approximate distance." Sevilla's not happy about this: "So the only evidence we have are bullets we can't use, and strips of a homemade ghillie suit." Horatio tries to make her feel better by pointing out the bonsai and the sand, and adds, "The further the evidence takes us from the crime scene, the greater the chance he'll let down his guard. And that's when we'll get him." Or in twenty-seven minutes, whichever comes first.
It's time for Speedle's token GenX reference of the week, where he reminds everyone how he's tapped into what America's hip adults are doing. Today, we learn that they're using the World Wide Web: "So, betonanything.com posted three-to-one odds that he's going to shoot again on Monday morning." "Sounds like a good bet," Horatio observes. Speedle continues, "Ten-to-one odds that he's going to shoot in a different location." Horatio dismisses this with, "You're shooting people downtown for a reason." Not that we'll ever know it. Speedle then works around to what really seems to be on his mind: "Delko's dad works downtown, and his sister doesn't want him to go to work. What do you think the odds are, realistically, that we're going to find this guy before someone else gets killed?" The two men stop, and Horatio wheels around to address this. He says, "I don't know. But if this guy gets to change the way we do our jobs, then the odds are going to go way up. So let's not do that, okay?" Speedle warmly thanks Horatio for patronizing him while he's bringing up his friend's valid concerns. Oh, he does not. He just stands there and stares as if to implicitly acknowledge that he's in the presence of the master. He turns to go, and Horatio tells him, "Hang in there." Because today is the first day of the rest of his life. And there is no "I" in "team." And success is a choice. Horatio makes a note to flip through the Successories catalog to learn some other proactive management strategies, then wanders off.
So does my attention, as we've entered the B-plot. Not even Megan's mullet can interest me now. She's busy telling Delko -- the only one who appears to care anymore -- how Mr. Santoya is lying. Delko asks, "What do we know?" Megan says, "At 9:15, Ray Santoya was at the ATM." Delko sagely replies, "So the question is, what was he doing at 9:16 AM?" Delko's two for two on the master-of-the-obvious statements today. The B-team brain trust works on a grassy knoll theory, rejects that, works on the shot-around-in-panic theory, rejects that, then notices the tour bus driving back in the background. Megan bids Delko to blow up the security camera still of Santoya's transaction, and he notices a reflection in Santoya's large, wraparound shades. Delko blows up the reflection and hones in on it; it's a patch for the Neuvitas baseball team. Megan concludes, "He's talking to whoever's wearing that [baseball] jacket." "We may have a witness," Delko says. "To both shootings," Megan replies.
We're now back at the Santoya compound, where a babyfaced young man in a Nuevitas baseball jacket opens the door and asks if he can help Megan and Sevilla. As Sevilla tells him she's looking for Ray Santoya, Megan hones in on the black, grainy dots littering the arm of the Nuevitas jacket. The boy tells Sevilla and Megan that Mr. Santoya's not here. Then Sevilla whips out her badge and says, "Miami-Dade police. Can we come in?" The boy lets them in, and we find out that he's Gustavo Santoya. He's also toast, if the early indications are any warning. Just then, Ray "He's not home right now" Santoya comes out and asks what's going on. From where I'm sitting, it looks like what's going on is that the Santoyas are a) in a world of hurt, and b) clearly not great communicators, as they didn't exactly hash out all the details for what to do when the police come. Anyway, to make an irritating scene less so, Gustavo's jacket tests positive for GSR, Ray tries to convince the police it's his and fails, and we find out how it is that Gustavo happened to shoot a grandmother. Gustavo explains, "I swear on my mother's grave, no lo sabía. I didn't know -- people were yo creí que veía al que disparava." Megan asks, "You thought you saw the sniper?" Gustavo says, "No, not the sniper." Megan asks, "Then who?" Gustavo says, "The car was full of callajeros, street kids. I thought I saw a gun -- él tenía una pistola negra -- a black gun, he was holding it, I swear to you. And I didn't see any woman in the car. Solo los quatro muchachos -- the four boys were laughing at the people dying." Megan tells Gustavo, "Well, you didn't see her because she wasn't in the car." We see the gun aiming at the car, and as the bullet glances off the mailbox, it bounces into the tour bus. Gustavo says, "Tell her family I'm sorry. I was only trying to protect my father." Ray's nearly in tears as he hugs Gustavo before the kid's arrested. Both Sevilla and Megan look shaken.
Now that we've dispensed of the red-herring shooting, it's time to get back to the sniper plot. We pan over deserted Miami cityscapes as assorted news reports detail how terrified Miamians are barricading themselves in at home; it's a lot like being in D.C. during the sniper attacks was. How convenient that this episode aired but a few weeks after the perpetrators were caught, so we'd all have the fresh memories for drawing those kind of parallels.
And now, another science montage. You can do this at home too, you know: put on your favorite dance CD, grab a micropipettor, and shake your groove thing while occasionally shouting out words like "serotype!" and "GSR!" Lord knows, that would be about as enlightening as what we're seeing on screen. At the end of the montage -- which features Horatio watching assorted things centrifuge, Calleigh shooting assorted firearms and marking measurements, and Speedle watching security footage -- Speedle comes in to tell Horatio, "I've confirmed that The Man In The Ice Cream Suit was inside the dry cleaners' two minutes before all hell broke loose." Horatio's fine with that, but he'd rather Speedle looked at his evidence. After beckoning Speedle over to a scope, he says, "The sand on the right is..." "...is a mixture of calcifying green algae and brown Swiss cheese-looking grains, uniform in size." "Likely from erosion," Horatio says. "Beach sand," Speedle adds. He then looks at the sand on the left, which was found on the rooftop where the sniper lay, and says, "Gastropods, snails, and football-shaped rings of benthic foraminither." Horatio comments, "Not homologous. I'm thinking from a quarry."
Calleigh checks in with her results too: "Based on the penetration test -- I used a gelatin block to reconstruct human tissue -- the shooter was 975 yards away." Nine hundred and seventy-five yards away? Why, that's nine and three-quarters football fields! Horatio's impressed by this. They conclude that the leap from six and a half football fields to nine and three-quarters football fields means that their sniper's showing off. If there's one thing they can't stand, it's a grandstanding killer. Horatio then shows Calleigh how "the sand in the shooter's sand sock is coral." Calleigh concludes, "So he practices shooting in a coral quarry." Or maybe, since he's gone to all the trouble of planning everything else, he's stuffing his sand sock with a completely different type of sand. Why is this hypothesis never raised? Horatio pulls up a map of Miami, notes the three coral quarry locations that are abandoned, then pulls up a chemical analysis that reveals the presence of jet fuel and therefore narrows the number of quarries down to one.
And now they're at the quarry. Horatio's pawing through the sand, and Calleigh comes out to meet him. He notes the roaring of the jets with, "Natural sound cover." Calleigh adds, "Perfect place to keep your rifle on." Horatio whips out the high-tech binoculars and muses, "If I was [sic] him, where would I shoot from?" Calleigh says, "Well, he needs distance." Horatio cuts her off, "Because he's a long-range shooter, right?" Why does anyone else bother talking to Horatio? He so clearly knows everything about everything, so telling him something he already knows is a waste of everyone's time. Horatio notices a grate-like structure with a platform below it and, spiked into a mountain of coral nearby, a stake with a piece of orange tape tied to it. He hands Calleigh the binoculars and lays out the practice area for her: the sniper lies on the platform below the grate, and uses the orange tape as a flag to judge the wind. Horatio asks, "Where does the bullet end up?" Why, it ends up in a big mound of sand, and Horatio finds it unerringly. I bet he spends his days off finding needles in haystacks too.
While Horatio was off finding bullets, Calleigh was lifting prints off the wind marker, and now that she's back at the lab, she's got a match: Christopher Harwood, ex-Marine, special ops. Horatio's now nosing around his apartment -- there's a tiny area where Harwood's dog tags hang near a small American flag, and the rest of the apartment is sparse and clean, even the bonsai ringing the wall. Horatio comments, "His world and welcome to it." Calleigh concludes, "He's trying to control his environment, the way he wants to control us." Horatio then notices a cabinet filled with sniper data cards. Calleigh assesses the number (20,000) and comments, "He's recorded every shot he's ever taken." "Or planning to. This one was dated this morning," adds Horatio. We see the data card -- it reads at top "Sniper Data Card," logs the distance to the target (650 feet), the date, the elevation, temperature, light, velocity, direction, and other factors. Calleigh turns over the card and notices the black smudges. She and Horatio conclude that it's residue from a rooftop, and it could lead them to where he's planning on going.
Before tracking down the sniper, Horatio stops by Speedle's bank of video monitors to get to know the victims better. Speedle sums it all up with, "Three total strangers just living their lives." He does fret about Photo Guy's dogs, though, and hopes someone's feeding them. After learning that the fourth victim was merely snarfing down a quick dinner, Horatio says, "One-hour photo shop, one-hour cleaners, coffee shop, fast food...is that our theme?" What, time management? Speedle comments, "They were all in a hurry." Horatio asks, "Is that it?" Speedle replies, "That's it for them." Speaking of hurries, it's only five hours to rush hour, so he had better figure out where the guy will be before another harried multitasker is shot.
Horatio studies the sniper data card, then tells Speedle, "Let's find out what this residue is made of." Speedle looks askance at Horatio, as he's well-versed in what this whole "let's" and "we" act is really about. Then he intones, "Three hours until downtown becomes one big, living target." Going by what I keep reading from native Miamians, how is that rush hour going to be different from any other? Oh, wait -- this is Horatio's downtown, and the good shepherd must protect his flock.
Speedle tells Horatio a little while later, "The substance on the back of the data card was a hardcore adhesive called RT600. It was only used two years after Hurricane Andrew --" "To prevent rooftops from going airborne in case of another hurricane," Horatio finishes. See? Why bother telling Horatio anything when it's evident that he already knows it all? Speedle tells Horatio that he's narrowed down the buildings in Miami which use RT600 to three, and Horatio's all, "You got to get it down to one." What, because they don't have enough resources in the Miami-Dade PD to assign personnel to three different buildings? Did all the money in the budget go to the autopsy skybox? Horatio then walks in to where Calleigh's working and says, "Here's what we have to do: we have to outhunt the hunter." And then they have to outcliché the clichés, and outstate the statement of the obvious. God, I hate the dialogue on this show. Calleigh asks where they start. Horatio provides the flashback narration as he says, "Where he did. He climbed up to the roof of the hotel building" -- wait. What hotel? Was the Inter•Continental a hotel? Why was this not brought up before the fifty-minute mark? -- "and preparing for a long time. He changed into his ghillie suit, assembled his weapon, scope last."
Now Calleigh's getting into the act: "Climbs even higher, gets into position" -- the effect is of watching a muppet position itself -- "he waited for the right conditions." Horatio finally concludes, "Then his targets were irrelevant because the people he killed were picked at random. Meaning he picked spots and not victims. Once he hunkered down, he was up there all night, dry firing. He didn't eat, he didn't move, not for any reason." And here, we see the sniper piss. It's every bit as gratifying as you could have hoped. Horatio intones, "He waited for as long as it took." Calleigh adds, "And he didn't take the shot until conditions were perfect, like a skier visualizing the hill before the race starts." Not to be outdone in the "I can get into the sniper's head better than you" monologues, Horatio says, "Because he was waiting for his puzzle to be complete." Are we to presume that the puzzle was laid out on the sniper data card? Would we get more of this puzzle idea if we had been able to read and translate the sniper data card? Or have the writers merely piled on clichés to the breaking point?
Gah! Calleigh and Horatio still aren't done. Calleigh's all, "He used a flag or tree to gauge the wind." Horatio horns in, "It didn't matter how long he waited, because as soon as those pieces fell together, he'd be ready." Calleigh adds, "To take three shots." We then see the dead people being targeted -- spare us not one moment of the sniper's thought processes, y'all -- and the shots being taken all over again. Nothing says class like showing how the victims die in the scope. If that's not giving narrative legitimacy to a killer, I don't know what is -- and given recent events, I hope the people associated with this show are proud of being the first to bring us the sniper's-eye view of what goes on during a premeditated murder at random. Horatio then picks up the wind flag and quips, "And the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind."
Fresh from that tedious scene, Horatio walks over and asks, "Speed, whaddya got?" "Contempt for you and everyone associated with this show," he replies. Oh, wait -- that's me. He's got the one building. Horatio gives some more tedious hoo-ha about the sniper's ability to blend into a side of beef (no kidding), and wonders why the sniper chose that particular building. Then, remembering that he's Horatio and therefore knows everything, he answers his own questions with, "Targets everywhere. There's a high-traffic area on the upper left corner. Can you highlight that, please?" Speedle does, and Horatio checks the lines of sight from the building. Horatio comments, "That's his line of sight, lots of people walking around." Speedle says, "Yeah, but that's got to be 800 yards away." Ah, but what is eight football fields to this guy? Horatio turns to go, telling Speedle to load Delko into a chopper. Off-screen, Alex Rodriguez sobs in relief that he hasn't been put on the Kim Delaney train.
Cue the helicopter. In the streets of Miami, seasoned cosmopolites all stop and gape like slack-jawed yokels. Oh, like helicopters are really going to be that uncommon. Delko tells Horatio, "Okay, H, I'm in position to scramble the wind condition." This just raises all sorts of questions -- are we to conclude that Delko's also an air ace, in addition to being a scuba sensei? He's mastered all the ancient elements -- earth, air, water! Let's look forward to seeing him walk through fire! Horatio tells him, "Stay in position." Really? And what would Delko be doing otherwise, stepping out for a Big Gulp? Jesus wept over this dialogue, and so did I. Then, two squad cars and a vehicle full of forensics types pull up. Wait a minute -- this is a sniper who's been terrorizing downtown Miami, and the best the police force can spare is two police cars, a humvee full of forensics investigators, and a chopper piloted by Aquaman? Doesn't anyone remember what it looked like when they caught the D.C. snipers? Think about the end of The Blues Brothers, and then add John Ashcroft. And here -- three cars and a helicopter. I suppose we should be grateful Horatio took along backup, instead of arresting the sniper alone, then healing the sick and feeding the masses with a biscotti and a lox bagel. Horatio gets out of the humvee and begins screaming into his CB for Calleigh. She tells him she's taking the stairs. So she should be on the crime scene in about twenty minutes, bent double from the stitch in her side. Horatio tells her, "You'll be my eyes and ears," which is a blatant lie, as we all know he's omnipotent. He then incites a riot by screaming at the diners in the plaza, "Ladies and gentlemen, there's a sniper in the vicinity. I need everybody out!" Cue the melee. Not. People are just kind of ambling off, looking around bemusedly. Horatio personally guides a senior citizen out of harm's way.
This does not deter the sniper, who's now got Horatio in his scope. The forums begin chanting, "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" Someone reminds him he's right in the line of fire, so he stands still, shouting, "Listen up! This guy is one shot, one kill! If he can't make it, he's not going to take it! Eric, the wind from the chopper ruins his shot!" The camera swings back to Delko, who looks confused. Calleigh checks in and tells Horatio that the SWAT team has the sniper in its sights. The sniper -- who's dressed like a Tusken raider about to go joyriding on a bantha -- keeps aiming at Horatio. Silly man: bullets can't harm Horatio. Before the sniper can find this out for himself, two SWAT team members creep up behind him and tell him to drop the weapon. Cut to Calleigh telling Horatio, "The sniper has been apprehended. We have him in custody." I'd just like to note that she's wearing a tank top and a bulletproof vest. That seems impractical somehow. At this point, however, it's really not that surprising.
And now, the big confrontational scene: Horatio's wandering back toward the SWAT team, and as Calleigh comes out, he asks, "Nice work. Have you considered a transfer to SWAT?" "I don't look good in all black," Calleigh coos. "I beg to differ," Horatio replies. Oh, they are so having an affair. Then the sniper comes down, and as he's paraded past Horatio, he asks, "Don't you want to know why?" Horatio does not, because he's already made up the answer in his head: "You just killed four innocent people. You're evil. You enjoy death. I hope you enjoy your own." As the mouse said to the Fury, he'll be judge, he'll be jury. And with that edict, the case is over. Now it's time for Horatio to go wandering about the streets of Miami, looking at the faces of passersby and thinking, "You owe me your life, and so do you and you and you..." Yes, Horatio! Protect your lambs!
And that's it. week, Megan takes a powder. Y'all have a happy holiday (if applicable).