By Sobell
The episode opens with a shot of two giant cruise ships in the harbor. Since the water around them is not rapidly turning black, we can assume they're not dumping their waste holds and possibly infecting the Miami harbors with ecological invaders; maybe that's just a special treat they save for other formerly pristine waters. Anyway -- the cruise ships, the palm trees, the establishing shots.
We then hear a dispatcher saying, "CSI evidence disposal motorcade headed onto Washington." Said motorcade includes a big armored truck, a Humvee, and a police car. Horatio's voice comes over the dispatch, "Roger that. Proceed north on Robbins. Keep this channel open, please." Inside the truck, Speedle and an unnamed driver -- let's just call him Randy Redshirt -- look distinctly unimpressed.
As Speedle looks out the window, the scene fades, as if in flashback. However, we soon see that we're flashing back to what Speedle and friends did at work that day. Huh? That's not nearly so dramatic and interesting as normal television flashbacks; I expect a decent flashback to have adultery, alien abduction, infants born under cover of secrecy, wizened old men selling mogwais to colorless rubes, elaborate schemes embroidered by moustache-twirling villains and/or blue-suited government types, murder, mayhem, dwarves chewing gum, doves flying around as Chow Yun Fat goes down with his guns blazing, fairy elf princesses putting the make on Viggo Mortenson...you get the idea. I do not expect to see the Bob-white Club slicing open sealed boxes of confiscated drugs and testing them to make sure they haven't been replaced with corn starch. Those people need to get decent lives so they can flash back to those later, or else they'll be having Big Chill-style reunions where they all reminisce about their favorite centrifuge or something.
The convoy continues, and we're treated to a shot of Horatio's face because it's been forty-five seconds since his last appearance, and that's just too damn long.
Just then, a funeral procession cuts across the empty street, the hearse accompanied by what appears to be a patrolman on a motorcycle. It's a tiny procession -- just the hearse and the car -- yet it somehow rates its own flashback, too: two men we don't know and therefore don't care about sliding a coffin into the hearse. The hearse and its escort pull up to Horatio's humvee and the dispatcher says, "Uh, CSI? We got a funeral procession making its way up to you." This raises all sorts of interesting questions in my mind: are all funeral processions, large or small, registered with the police department and given an escort? And knowing that the CSI team is currently undertaking a sensitive evidence-disposal operation, wouldn't the police department have rerouted the funeral to give the disposal motorcade maximum security? I think too much about these things.
Anyway, Horatio decrees, "Let them pass. And bring the widow unto Me." Oh, he stops before voicing the widow request, but you know he's thinking it. As the funeral motorcade speeds up, Horatio studies the motorcycle patrolman curiously. The patrolman pulls ahead into a three-way intersection -- there's no way anyone can go straight, just left or right -- and Horatio notices that the motorcycle is strategically placed so nobody can turn left or right until the guy moves. He also notices, "Kevlar...at a funeral?" Why not? It's the latest in paranoid chic. As Horatio gets on the dispatch and says, "Everybody on alert. I don't like this," a station wagon materializes out of nowhere and plows into the side of the hearse, effectively snarling up the intersection and trapping the armored transport with nowhere to go. For some reason, I flash back to the episode of Beverly Hills, where Dylan got married and on his wedding night, paid assassins confused his wife (played by Rebecca Gayheart) for him in a similar auto-crash-style trap. I don't think we're going to see anything so viscerally satisfying as Luke Perry buzzing off into the sunset at the end of this episode, though.
What we do see instead: the rent-a-cop lobbing a smoke bomb into the vehicular fracas, thus obscuring visibility while retaining the element of surprise. He then uses the strategic advantage to take out one of the cops in the patrol car with what looks like a hand cannon before being shot by the pissed-off guy in the patrol car's passenger seat. This is the cue for the two guys riding in the hearse to come out with their semis blazing. They dispatch a few random people to make sure the body count goes up, then head toward the disposal truck. Horatio's all business as he skulks around the Humvee and brandishes his gun as if he knows what to do with it. Speedle -- witnessing a hail of bullets coming through the windshield of his ride and taking out the guy to him -- is considerably less sanguine. Meanwhile, in the station wagon, the woman is uselessly screaming, "The baby! The baby!" as she tries to crawl over the seat and unfasten the straps in the kid carrier in the back seat.
Horatio can't go rescue the mother and child yet because he's too busy felling bad guys with a single well-placed bullet while all around him, the other people shoot it up A Team-style. The bad guys are heading for the dispo truck now, where Speedle is trying to hold them off and failing spectacularly. You can't blame the guy for location (i.e. hiding behind a truck door and thus not able to see anything), but the jammed gun and wild non-aim can't be helping matters much, and the guy to him falling on top of him -- or being pulled to safety in a really improvisational manner, take your pick -- is the kicker in the Things That Will Affect Your Ability to Shoot trifecta. By the way, the woman's still screaming, "The baby!" It's a cute baby, and its cuteness goads Horatio into running over to play hero while around him, besieged SWAT team members drag their fallen comrades out of further harm's way. While this is going on, one of the bad guys has actually made it to the truck and is opening the door to climb across the seat. The other heads around the truck to finish off Speedle and Randy Redshirt, both of whom are lying on the pavement. Guy #2 comes around and points his gun down at Speedle; Speedle points his up in return and fires first. Or, more accurately, tries to fire first. His gun is jammed and only clicks impotently. This buys the other guy time to plug Speedle in the chest.
Horatio's still telling Sally Screamer to get down, as opposed to bobbing up, target-style, to helpfully give the shooters something to aim at. Once he's accomplished that, he looks up in time to notice Speedle's shooter sliding into the passenger seat of the truck and joining his friend as they hijack said truck full of drugs. Horatio manages to fire at the speeding truck's wheels -- taking one out, naturally -- then watches as the truck and a rent-a-cop type (huh? how many of these guys were around?) veers off into the sunset.
Horatio then runs over to where Speedle's lying on the ground and looking like death warmed over. That could be due to the mushroom-colored shirt Speedle's wearing (Rory Cochrane doesn't exactly have George Eads's coloring, but he does share the other man's inability to carry off warm-based tones without looking like he's in immediate need of a new liver), but there's probably something to be said for the gunshot thing and the blood, too. Horatio screams, "Speed! Speed!" and hunkers down to his fallen comrade for this exchange:
Horatio: Hold on, let Me see, let Me see.
Speedle: [coughing and gasping] My -- my chest.
Horatio: That's a sucking chest wound, isn't it?
Speedle: That's not what sucks in this scene, Horatio.
Horatio: Shhh. Let's just try to breathe.
Speedle: What is this "let's" business? Are you the one whose lungs suddenly got the ocean view? I don't think so.
Horatio: That's the blood loss talking, Speed. I think...
Speedle: I think my imminent death has given me a new clarity of thought.
Horatio: That's right. Now, let's go toward the light.
Speedle: Can the "we" crap, kemosabe. I'm off to a better place -- one that doesn't...include...
Speedle trails off, and the music swells dramatically as Creed's "Arms Wide Open" plays and Horatio gathers Speedle to his bosom, manfully restraining his sobs before setting the other man down, brushing his hair back from his forehead, and turning to the direction of the camera: "That's a wrap, isn't it? This is my Emmy clip. David C's gonna be in the hizzouse!"
Oh, I wish. Here's what really happened. The "lemme see" thing, the "oh, my chest" thing, and then Horatio opens up Speedle's shirt to reveal the Kevlar vest beneath it. Horatio tells a gasping, retching Speedle to hold on -- maybe telling him to breathe in might help, since the poor guy's had the wind knocked out of him at the least and is probably hyperventilating in panic. Oh, hey -- he does! Horatio's all, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait -- the Kevlar caught it! The Kevlar caught it, man. Now just breathe. Breathe easy. Keep breathing if you can." After being all calm and careful with Speedle, Horatio looks up and screams to anyone else who's presumably left alive, "Rescue! Get Me rescue right now!"
Roger Daltrey screams his comprehension of that command. I check the credits to make sure Rory Cochrane's still in them. Yup -- we'll be seeing no death-of-a-regular tonight. That's a shame: killing off a lead character without warning would be a hell of a great way to shake this show's predictability.
It's a miracle! Speedle's sitting up and looking typically unimpressed with the world as an EMT takes his pulse and announces that his blood pressure's 140/100. The EMT gives us the ostensible reason why Speedle will be up and running around by the episode's ten-minute mark: "The chest contusion is what took the wind out of him. If his lungs were collapsed, he'd be blue by now." Horatio looks on, thanking God that Speedle got shot because at least that boy's got the sense to wear an undershirt, as opposed to Delko with his fashion-forward caftanesque tops. Speedle then asks Horatio about the guy he was riding with: "Hollis?" Horatio shakes his head: "No. You okay?" After hearing about Hollis? Probably not. Speedle lies about being fine, and Horatio's already half turned-around with the sunglasses sliding into place as he prepares to leave; Horatio says, "All right. I'll be back. Hang in there." Go toward the light, Speedle! There's still time! Then your...cousin, that's it, your cousin can surface on CSI: Original Flava year as Jim Speedle. "What?" he'll say to a stunned Warrick and Catherine. "We were cousins -- identical cousins." "Cousins only share 12.5 percent of their DNA. What are the odds that two individuals would come up with such similar genetic profiles?" a puzzled Nicky would ask. And then Gil would smack him down.
Meanwhile, back on the episode that actually aired -- as opposed to the one in my brain pan -- Horatio's off telling a uniform, "With a shot-out tire, they should be within a one-mile radius and already in a safe car. Let's check the street for tread debris." Let's see Horatio actually participate in any of those first-person-plural activities he announces. Anyway, Horatio heads over to Alexx, who sorrowfully tells him, "Hollis got one in the head. You can tell his family he went quick." Horatio grumps, "Shouldn't have to tell them at all." Before they can get into the what-should-have-beens, the EMT comes over to apprise Horatio of the woman and child's condition: "Kid checked out fine. Mother got shot, upper humerus. They're at a clinic. She says to tell you 'thank you,' wants to bake you a cake." Knowing Horatio, cakes will trigger some tragic event in his past concerning rain and never having that recipe again and sweet, green icing flowing down. Right after the EMT puts in his bid for a slice of that cake, he wanders off so that Horatio can turn to a bald and irritated-looking detective and say, "Five hundred dispos and we've never had a problem." The detective questions the very existence of disposal day: "We take the dope out of evidence, test it to make sure nobody pulls a switcheroo, then cart it across town? We should just burn it at CSI. And witches. And heretics. And redheads. Let's burn them all!" Okay, he stops a little short of that. Horatio replies, "Remind Me to order the industrial-sized incinerator time." The two men joust about how this could have gone wrong, and conclude that someone leaked the classified disposal date and/or route to someone else. This makes me think of my original questions about the dispatch: was the dispatch chick on it? How did they roll the funeral procession into the proceedings so smoothly? Why didn't a funeral procession with a police escort just happening by a dispo run raise any red flags from the word go? Anyway, Horatio pooh-poohs the idea of the dispo route being secret by reminding the detective, "There are no secrets in Miami. Only useful information."
Or useless banter from the B-team. Delko's taking pictures of the hearse while Calleigh hunkers down by the wheel and comments, "It's creepy. The engine's still running." At least nothing she's wearing is creepy -- yet. The episode is still young, and I have faith that we'll see at least one puffy-sleeved atrocity before the end of this. Delko tells her from creepy: "You ought to be there in the middle of the night when we pull one of these things from the water with the radio still on. Talk about creepy." Calleigh's looking around the wheel well when Delko points out, "The car's stolen." She replies, "Based on...?" "Based on the screwdriver still in the ignition," he shoots back. Yeah, that would be a tip-off. Delko explains that we can use our Craftsman flathead screwdrivers the time we misplace the car keys because "the screwdriver completes the circuit." Calleigh's none too impressed; she's dug a slug the size of a champagne-bottle cork out of the tire and decreed, "Well, stealing cars is a side job. This is a death talon." We find out that those bullets have been off the market since 1997 or so, and the shooters must have been saving these for a rainy day.
Since it's been a whole minute without Horatio, we return to find out what he's doing. The answer: beginning to lay the trail that will lead back to the people what brung our dispo day low. He and Alexx are examining the fake cop, and Horatio decrees that the guy has the kind of frighteningly bulky physique commonly found in your penitentiary weight rooms. I've always wondered whether weight-lifting prisoners were particularly frustrated by the limitations the prison diet must impose on the quest to get cut; it's not like the warden's going to be sympathetic to the need to get down to 5% body fat in time for the Mister Cell Block C competition. Anyway, Alexx takes that insight and runs with it: "I'll get his prints to Delko for AFIS, see if I can get you a release date." Horatio says okay, but he's not paying any attention to her. Instead, he's checking out the reporter who's barreling toward him.
The man and his hair state for the camera, "Enrique Rayas, in the field. Horatio Caine -- a drug-related shootout in the streets of Miami -- a sense of dejà-vu once removed?" I'm stunned by the profusion of dependent clauses with nary an independent clause to justify their existence. Horatio warns Rayas, "You're about to make a mistake you don't want to make." To make? This guy's been committing assault and battery on the English language for a minute and he's only now making the mistakes? Rayas smarms, "Just drawing a parallel here. Your brother gave his life in the line of duty two years ago, albeit under much cloudier circumstances --" "Circumstances weren't cloudy -- the reporting was," Horatio shoots back. Speaking of reporting, why is this blow-dried pinhead the only one on the scene? Most self-respecting newsrooms have police scanners (never mind how they get them), so you can be sure more than one reporter would be there, and on a good day, you might even see a competent one. Oh, wait. This is a television television reporter, and all they're good for is clumsy exposition or agitating the protagonist. As Rayas is frog-marched back behind the crime scene-tape line, Detective Baldy comes up to tell Horatio that they've found the truck near a pier. A pier in Miami? Well, that narrows it down.
Naturally, Miami's finest have found it in seconds, borrowed the SWAT force from The Blues Brothers, and descended upon the pier to secure the truck. Horatio gets the party started by saying, "Nobody's home, gentlemen." When he raises the gate of the truck, there's a lot of controlled substances staring right back. Detective Baldy incredulously says, "Heroin, weed, meth -- hell, they left the drugs behind!" "Everything but the cocaine," Horatio clarifies, since he's apparently privy to the exact physical placement of everything in the truck and can therefore deduce with one glance what's missing. Speedle pops up to comment, "That doesn't make any sense. There's millions of dollars of drugs here." See? I told you he'd be up and around by the ten-minute mark. Everyone decides that the flat tire forced a change in plans and everyone took only what they could carry. Since cocaine's got the greatest profit potential per ounce, it's clearly the preferred baggage in any Plan B scenario. While Horatio's off barking obvious statements in the guise of questions, Speedle's working the scene. He finds a cast-off cop's shirt (fake) in the car and calls everyone over to look at it; the dry-cleaning tag indicates that the uniforms were recently cleaned. They'll also help trace the uniforms, if there's any internal logic or consistency in this show. Oh, wait -- what am I saying? That's just a beautiful dream. Speedle's actually all, "Sweat on these clean uniforms -- we'll get their DNA. There's also blood in the cab." "One of our suspects is wounded," Horatio deduces. Or maybe some of that's Randy Redshirt's blood -- he was hit before Speedle pulled him from the cab. God, this show plays faster and looser with bodily fluids than...well, fill in your own blank here. Horatio and Speedle decide to follow the blood trail of the wounded person, and Horatio babbles on about what the wounded guy probably did while making his escape in his own inimitable fashion. Just look around your living room and say, "That's a coffee table, isn't it? And there's an Entertainment Weekly, which means that one more person is wondering why on God's green earth Joel Stein has the back page. Now, there's the couch. Let's see if anyone lost any money." That approximates the entertainment value and usefulness of any of Horatio's blathering.
Back at the dispo carnage, Calleigh's looking at a gun. Right after she calls it "weird" and slips it in an envelope where it can sulk over the insult in private, Delko comes over and tells her, "That's Speedle's gun." Calleigh replies, "Yeah. Magazine's full, one in the chamber." Delko asks, "He didn't fire any rounds?" Calleigh says, "I don't know. Maybe this is his second magazine. None of this is official -- not until I finish processing the scene." Delko steps back from the "Speedle: Panicky or Unlucky?" debate with, "I'm not saying anything," but Calleigh clocks in on the "panicky" side with, "I think it's best not to."
After an aerial shot of a lushly-landscaped shore, we're back in the CSI annex. Speedle's bringing in the sweaty uniforms to Lab Tech Laura, who greets him by saying, "I heard it was the Wild West out there today." Speedle declines to acknowledge that, saying only, "See if you can get some DNA off of those." Laura opens the bag and remarks on the odor, clarifying for us, "It smells like I will. I'll start on collars and cuffs." What about armpits? Wouldn't that be a likely place too? Speedle signs the evidence release form. Laura -- deciding that Speedle's non-acknowledgement of her comment was really a cue to keep talking about it -- says, "So everyone's saying Hollis would have gotten it much worse if it hadn't been for you pulling him out of the truck." Without looking up, Speedle reminds her, "He died, Laura." She replies, "I know that. But his family can have an open casket, and that means more than you might think. You were brave." Speedle sets her straight: "I wasn't brave. I reacted...badly. I still have nightmares from what happened at Macho Grande." The conversation ends awkwardly.
Another conversation begins awkwardly out in the parking lot as Horatio walks toward the building and is intercepted by another bald police type checked out of Central Casting. Why are all middle-aged law enforcement types bald? Is it because only politicians are supposed to have good hair after age forty-five? Anyway, Horatio greets this hairline-challenged guy, "Look what the cat dragged in." The man replies by rolling his eyes and reminding Horatio, "SWAT lost a man today." Horatio implies that he has loftier priorities than this guy by replying, "Yes, and Officer Hollis left two small children behind." What, at the scene? I know, I know. I just have a thing against euphemisms. Hairline Harry is not falling for the moral one-upsmanship: "A bunch of real tragedies. SWAT guys cost more to train. We're talking half a million bucks here." Horatio's all, "So Internal Affairs does place a dollar value on employees' lives." Or maybe the rest of the people working in the Miami police department have a working grasp of budgetary concerns, Mister I-don't-care-about- this-million-dollar-trial. The IAB guy tells Horatio he's here to talk about dispo day, and while I realize they're bringing some sort of jargon here, I hear "dispo day" and think "Disco Duck," which can't be good in any way. Hairline Harry telegraphs where we'll be spending the remaining forty-seven minutes of this episode: "Speedle requested the assignment, right?" Horatio gets all pissy: "Yes, he did, and I approved his request, so if you'll excuse Me, I have an investigation to process." For the second time in the conversation, Horatio's attempt to gain the moral high ground is turned back as the IAB guy snarls, "So do I, starting with CSI." For the record, the IAB guy can be on C.S.I.: Miami -- Don and John too. Horatio demonstrates that he has a tin ear, financially speaking, as he snits, "Well, talk about a waste of the taxpayers' money, Jack." Jack looks like he's regretting taking the time and courtesy to give Horatio the heads-up, and he informs Horatio that he's going to be giving all the CSIs lie-detector tests. With as much menace as he can muster, Horatio blusters, "You poly them, you better poly Me first!" What a completely pointless thing to say. Does he expect Jack to buckle under the force of that threat or something? "Oh, God, no, don't make me give you a lie-detector test, please!" Whatever, Horatio. Jack reminds Horatio to pass on the no-nicotine, no-caffeine edict, as those substances only skew the tests, then wanders off, leaving me to wonder if the physiological results of caffeine or nicotine withdrawal affect polygraphs as well. As Jack walks off, Horatio asks snidely, "You miss being a real cop?" "Yes, because real cops are the ones that cover up bureaucracy-wide corruption and cronyism, like in San Francisco," Jack says. Oh, he does not. But it would be helpful if someone reminded Horatio that if we didn't have things like the Oakland Riders, and the Los Angeles Ramparts scandal, and the San Francisco fajita fuss, then there wouldn't be a need for IAB, would there? Horatio does his little get-in-the-last-word thing, and then the scene ends.
And now, the Fourth Estate checks in via voice-over to indicate that all is not well in Miami today. One woman announcer starts, "A veritable shootout in downtown Miami this morning..." "Veritable"? Try actual. The second voice, this one male, continues, "Old drug evidence was moved in a top-secret transport..." A third voice, female, adds, "Two officers killed..." and Voice #4, male, finishes, "An internal investigation is underway to determine how the information leaked." The screen shifts from the sunny Miami skyline to a rainy outside shot where Enrique Rayas is assailing Detective Baldy, "You're the investigator in the dispo case that resulted in two tragic deaths. You mind if I ask a few questions for our viewers?" As a matter of fact, Baldy does. When he goes inside, he tells Horatio, "Saw your friend out front. Guy thinks he's Tom Brokaw." It could be worse -- he could think he was Geraldo Rivera. Horatio cracks, "If he's Tom Brokaw, I'm Elliott Ness. So, did you talk to the owner of the incinerator?" Baldy did, and the man is genuinely mourning. Not for the loss of human life, mind you, but for the loss of his potential income. Baldy also talked to the dry cleaner; the uniforms were stolen during what was thought to be vandalism at the time, which was ten days ago. Horatio digests this information and concludes, "That's the same time we decided to dispo the dope." Baldy says with false enthusiasm, "Ooh, the media will be all over that!" Horatio philosophically says, "Even sharks gotta eat." Or maybe a free press has a mandate to hold publicly funded public service institutions accountable to the society they're allegedly sworn to protect and serve. Maybe.
In the break room, Calleigh goes to pull a soda out of the fridge and Delko stops her, pointing out, "Cola has caffeine." Calleigh thanks him for the reminder. Delko asks if she's nervous and Calleigh replies, "Well, I figure if I could pass the polygraph that got me through the academy, it would be smooth sailing." Exactly how brutal was this polygraph? "Do you yearn to work for the redheaded stepchild of God?" "Are you willing to don clown paint and prairie blouses on days other than Halloween?" We find out that the polygraph makes Delko feel guilty. Calleigh asks, "Why do you feel guilty when you haven't done anything?" Delko nails it: "I'm Catholic. I don't know. I always feel guilty." That should be a bumper sticker if it isn't already. Speedle the heretic comes in to chide Delko, "Don't worry about your religion in the chair because the poly picks up discomfort, not the truth." He then turns to Calleigh and asks if she recovered his weapon. She replies, "Yeah" in a please-don't-ask-anymore tone. Speedle catches the meaning pretty clearly. Calleigh tries to change the subject by asking brightly and toothily, "So, you gonna shave before you go to IAB?" Speedle sighs in response, "It's a polygraph test, not a portrait." Calleigh's smile falters before she rallies, "Presentation is everything." Coming from a woman who uses Divine as her cosmetic inspiration and Laura Ingalls Wilder as her sartorial guide, this is rich. Right then, Jack comes into the lounge to ask who's first. Calleigh excuses herself, "I've got a lab full of evidence." Speedle follows her out, explaining, "DNA." Delko sits on the couch and mentally plans ways to make his fellow Bob-whites lives miserable once they get out of this scrape.
Calleigh and Horatio are having a little tête-a-tête in the hall. We find out that Calleigh hasn't worked on the station wagon that caused the entire dispo day débacle. Horatio warns her against Jack the IAB guy, cautioning her, "You watch what you say. Stick to ballistics, and I'll stick with the car, all right?" Off they go to their respective tasks.
Delko's being wired for lies. As the technician attaches assorted monitors, we get the stupidest TMICam shot ever of an electrical impulse traveling from Delko's torso to the monitoring equipment. Since we won't get any visual aid to demonstrate the difference between "true" responses and "false" readings, knowing that a polygraph measures body responses by gauging their fluctuations is pretty damn useless. As Delko settles in for the inquisition, the tech asks, "Were you born in Miami?" "Yes," Delko responds guiltily. She then asks, "What is four times six plus three?" "I was told there weren't going to be any word problems," Delko says nervously. Oh, he does not. He does My Dear Aunt Sally -- multiply and divide before you add and subtract -- to come up with 27. He asks, "Why a math problem?" and the tech replies, "Mental calculations record as a lie." "You have to think to calculate. Calculate the lie?" Delko asks. The tech declines to respond, perhaps because then she'd have to explain how the polygraph is totally useless if someone has to think hard to recollect the circumstances behind a yes or no answer. For example, I'm terrible with dates, so if someone asked me, "Did you give up chocolate on March 5?" I'd have to do a lot of calculating before honestly answering yes, yet I'd be tagged as a liar. See what I mean? Anyway, the tech decides to turn the screws on Delko and ask, "Have you ever lied to someone who loved and trusted you?" Delko goes into a fit of repentant shame before answering, "Yes." The tech gapes at him judgmentally. Then she asks, "Recently?" He replies, "Yes." Well, no kidding -- what else is he gonna do when Calleigh asks if he likes her outfit? The tech asks, "Was it work-related?" and Delko goes through more Catholic agonies before replying, "No." The tech watches the polygraph readings -- lines without context, dear readers, so utterly pointless to civilians such as we -- and the interrogation continues without our observation.
Meanwhile, Calleigh's busy trying to fire Speedle's gun. She can't because it's filthy; we see this via TMICam. It figures that Speedle's gun would be as unkempt as he. When Calleigh breaks it down, she confirms as much.
Since it's been two whole minutes, we're back with Horatio and Detective Bald Guy. Horatio digs a bullet casing out of the car's dashboard and says, "That's a death talon." Yeah, and they're not in circulation anymore, we've already covered this ground, and maybe Horatio should actually read the recap if he wants to find out what we already know. Horatio's all, "So Lynn Martell had a wound to the left shoulder, didn't she?" Yes, but she's right-handed, so you'll still get that cake, you greedy bastard. There's some talk about how she came to get shot -- the trajectory is through the driver's seat, which means that the origin of the bullet was from behind the car. This will be important at some point. Detective Baldy comments, "Man, they're lucky they didn't hit the baby." Yes, because then Horatio would have never tended to Speedle in his zeal to get the baby-killers. Horatio asks, "You have kids, don't you, Frank?" Detective Frank Baldy replies, "Yes, I do." "Well, can I come over and glower at them? Maybe watch them while they play and be their protector?" Horatio presses. In an alternate episode. Detective Frank has three kids. Horatio digests this information and asks, "And what is the state of your family vehicle?" Frank replies, "It's a war zone -- freedom fries, broken toys, candy wrappers. I'm always on the wife about that. But the wife, she ignores me. Spends all of her time threatening to sell the children and run off with the 'Raoul' guy she says I hired to take care of the pool. I figure it's some coping thing she got off The View." Horatio, noticing that the part of the car housing a toddler is not also doubling as a cereal farm, gets all gnomic: "In this case, the lack of evidence is the evidence." Frank and he slip into a Mamet-style moment: "Too clean?" "Too clean." Then he says, Rosebud-style, "The baby." We flash back to the woman screaming, "The baby! The baby!" Horatio says, "She kept screaming, 'the baby, the baby,' not 'my baby.'" I'm not too surprised: as kids, my brother or I would occasionally goad Pabell into such a state of agitation that he forgot our names and our genders; Mabell would come in to see what the racket was and Pabell would inevitably sputter, "That one -- with the hair! And the one missing the teeth! Them! Them! Ask them!" Frank -- who is intimately familiar with the domestically-induced amnesia of which I speak -- replies, "In the heat of the moment, people say all kinds of things." Horatio gleefully says, "Let's go see what she has to say now."
Horatio's not kidding when he says "now." Horatio's sitting in a room with Lynn and asks, "How's your son?" She stammers that he's fine. Horatio then asks, "What day of the week was he born?" Lynn gives up the game with, "Oh, I think a Friday?" Oh, bullshit. Unless she gave birth while in a coma, she's going to have a labor and delivery story that recounts details from the barometric pressure outside to the Letterman lineup that played out while she was dilated at four centimeters; I have yet to ever talk with the mother of an infant without getting the Delivery Monologues, which are usually delivered with the kind of gore-splattered detail that makes the editors of Fangoria blanch and capped by the mother in question smiling brightly after her recitation of everything that tore and bled, and asking, "So...when are you going have one?" Anyway, Horatio lets Lynn know that she can't kid a kidder, kid, by asking, "He's not your kid, is he? It's a prop baby, isn't it? You toyed with My emotions, didn't you?!" Actually, Horatio just digs around for the provenance of the fraudulent infant, and Lynn gives him the deer-in-the-headlights look. Then Horatio asks Lynn how her arm is, because those Duncan Hines mixes don't exactly require two hands. Frank -- who has no cake riding on this outcome -- steps in to say, "These records have you with three serious car accidents in the last fifteen months." Maybe she's a really bad driver. No, well, the real point is that she used the same doctor for all three, so it looks like she's into the insurance fraud. Horatio points out, "If we can prove that you were paid to hit that car, we can charge you with Murder One." Lynn folds like her fraudulent son's real diapers: "I didn't know that there was going to be the shooting. I got paid $5000 to wait for the funeral procession, then slam into the hearse." While I realize that lack of contemplation is an asset in a career based on stupid automotive tricks, you'd think that being paid to wreck a funeral procession would set off some sort of alarm. Horatio points out that Lynn still committed insurance fraud and presses for information on who set up the scam. Lynn stammers, "Somebody else contacted him, and he wouldn't be involved in any shooting." Horatio goads her out of loyalty with, "But somebody was shooting at you. We have the forensics to prove it." And the flashbacks. Lynn thinks it was a mistake. Horatio smugly says, "Trajectory says it was intentional. So why don't you give Me a name?" I love how he indirectly implies that Dr. Fraud sent Lynn out to be slaughtered. Lynn replies with alacrity: "Dr. Guillermo Santoya."
Cut to the offices of Dr. Fraud. Horatio's asking him, "Did you know Florida has the highest percentage of unlicensed doctors in the U.S.?" And the highest percentage of deeply confused voters, but you don't see that getting dragged out in CSI: Miami, do you? Dr. Santoya did not realize he was in numerous company. Horatio asks Dr. Santoya how he came to fill out Dr. Nick's golf foursome, and Santoya responds, "I didn't report a gunshot victim I treated once." Frank thinks this is harsh punishment. Santoya admits that treating gunshot patients on the sly was something of a bad habit. Horatio snorts, "The ex-cons must love you." "Only platonically," Santoya clarifies, in an alternate universe on a show where hostile repartee keeps the scenes flowing. Santoya makes the "I'm just a humble barrio doctor" play and reminds us that losing one's medical license does not yet entail a comprehensive brainwashing to remove all those years of medical school and practice. Horatio -- who deeply resents anyone attempting to take the moral high ground he so clearly occupies -- snots, "So, you're one of the good guys." Yeah -- didn't you see his name in your Who's Who Among Good Guys volume? Horatio then looks around the office and finds some bloodstained dressings in a medical disposal can, along with a police-issued slug. Horatio asks who Santoya pulled the slug out of, and Santoya doesn't say anything. Frank steps in to say, "Officers are dead, and you're an accessory. Who the hell did you pull it out of?" Maybe I'm cranky and pugnacious, but this is about the point where Santoya tell them he's not saying another word until he has his lawyer. Then again, I wouldn't have let Horatio look around without a warrant. It amazes me that people on this show are perpetually letting the CSIs poke around without demanding a warrant up front. Santoya sighs as he visualizes his steady business from ex-cons evaporate, then replies, "Cassidy." We establish that Cassidy was brought in this morning -- this morning? You mean that IAB got set up and the evidence got processed in, like, three hours? How is this possible in the Miami that Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry are always carrying on about? Anyway, Santoya tells Horatio that it was a case of treating Cassidy or getting killed. That self-preservation argument fails to knock Horatio off his high horse. We find out that despite Santoya's recommendation to take the heavily-bleeding Cassidy to a hospital, his pals decided to dump him at someplace called the Hialeah.
The sun is setting as Horatio and a SWAT team break into a darkened room where Cassidy is lying, all clad all in black. Even the hospital duds in Miami are styl-- oh. This isn't a hospital, is it? Cassidy's just lying there dizzy from blood loss. Well, he's not about to get a transfusion, just the hellish vision of Horatio glowering at him as he slips off this mortal coil. Frank asks where Cassidy's partners are, and Cassidy just kind of bleeds in response. Horatio leans in to ask, "Do you think your friends are coming back for you? I think they left you here to die." And since Horatio and Frank are helping that result along by not bringing in medical personnel, that's probably what's going to happen. Some might be disturbed by this lack of prompt medical assistance on the part of the authorities, but this is John Ashcroft's America now. Horatio presses for answers, but Cassidy's too busy dying to bother answering questions. Frank says, "This guy's going fast." Rather than call in medical personnel, Horatio merely says, "No, you don't. No, no, you don't," then squeezes his hand around the mortal wound in a move clearly designed to get Cassidy's attention via extreme pain. And this asshole wonders why IAB's out to get him? "I want a name from you!" Horatio demands. He goes on to ask, "Is this guy worth dying for? Why don't you give Me something to get him with?" Cassidy, why don't you give him a deathbed curse? That would be more appropriate to the situation. Cassidy breathes out "Nedir Kire" and breathes his last. Horatio ponders this.
Then Horatio goes to check in with the non-shot members of his team. After establishing with Delko that Laura did get some DNA off the shirts and will have names to match those molecules soon enough, Horatio asks, "You talk to Speed?" Delko replies that he did, and that Speedle is currently charming the tech in the box. Horatio asks, "How'd that go for you? Did they discover your abiding fear that you're shooting blanks for life?" (Oh, as if.) Delko replies, "I'm just glad it's over." Horatio presses, "Did they ask about your girlfriend?" Oh, God, why are we hearing this? Is Delko dating a parolee? Does his "girlfriend" have a nine-inch dick? Is this Horatio's Nixonesque attempt to make awkward small talk? Delko replies, "I don't have a girlfriend." "No girlfriend this week?" Horatio quizzes, warming to the subject. Well, none that don't require a steady stream of small bills or double-A batteries. Delko attempts to sound like a player by saying, "The girl I'm seeing, I'm glad she doesn't have a polygraph." Because then he'd have to use the cuffs for an actual arrest? Just then, we're saved from further discussion of Delko's sex life by Cesar Rubio and Mike Tooley, two rough-looking customers who shared a floor at Raiford State Penitentiary with Sam Laskey (bald, deceased, the driver); Jeff Macher (crewcut, deceased, sharpshooter); Lester Cassidy (soul patch, deceased, explosives expert). They're the tactical man and the drug dealer, respectively. Throw in a crazy pilot and a bad-tempered mechanic and it's the A-Team all over again. I pity the fool who recaps that show. Horatio doesn't see it in a pop-culture context, but rather, "An ex-con dream team, missing only a buyer." He then goes into a reverie: "Nedir Kire." "Keyser Soze," Delko offers back. "Louis Friend," Horatio volleys. The two of them could go on all night, but for their determination to figure out who Nedir Kire is. They think he might be the buyer, and go to run his name through assorted records. They might also want to watch old cop shows and take their cue from this clue: Emoritlab.
Meanwhile, Speedle's looking distinctly unimpressed while he sits and waits for his polygraph. He fidgets a little, and then looks up at the closed-circuit security camera with a pained expression. Jack the IAB guy watches him fidget. And here I go, referencing the same loose pool of source material twice in two paragraphs, but David Simon's observations on what guilty versus innocent people do while waiting to be interrogated is right on the money. The innocent fidget; the guilty sleep.
Since we spent a whole scene away from Horatio, it's time to restore the natural order of the CSI: Miami episode and feature Him, Him, Him. We see a surprisingly low-key-looking Calleigh -- plain black top setting off straight, non-fussy hair -- explaining a computer simulation of the gunplay to Horatio. She tells Horatio she recovered 122 pieces of firearm evidence. Horatio compliments her on her work, and Calleigh replies, "Well, you know what they say: you don't know who you are until --" "All hell breaks loose," Horatio finishes. Perhaps the answer to that was "until you're in the Tao," or "until you've achieved inner serenity" or "until you've become a member of the Pepsi Generation." We'll never know, will we, Horatio? God, I hate him. There, it's out -- I loathe this character. I despise his arbitrary and solipsistic code of morals; I hate his mewling sentimentality and bone-deep, patronizing chauvinism; I detest his self-important demeanor when dealing with others; I abhor the very patterns of his speech. And the thing that galls me is that the character could have been so interesting: you could have had someone who is totally isolated from his co-workers because of these personal experiences and this moral code he's substituted for any sort of self-awareness, and that combination of heroism and pitiability would have been compelling. Or you could have had a character who's a genuine policeman in the sense that he trusts his instinct and he feels genuinely ambivalent about becoming a CSI, and watching this guy try to ride herd on a bunch of passionate evidence geeks he can't understand would have been compelling. But instead, we've got fucking omniscient Horatio Caine, polymath avenger of the wronged, leader of a subdepartmental cult, and it's boring, irritating and self-serving for someone on this show. That character is an unwatchable wasted opportunity without any redeeming value.
Okay, so that's out of my system. I feel ten pounds lighter.
Anyway, Calleigh recites, "So the round count on our two officers is fifty-four. Out of that, I got forty-five casings. Those are shown in blue." We see them as thickly clustered dots around the cars in the computer simulation. Horatio orders Calleigh to move on by saying, "Talk about bullets." Calleigh's got twelve of those, dug out of the hearse, nearby trees, etc. She concludes, "It was the usual yield -- three-fourths of the casings, one-fourth of the bullets." Horatio goes off into his own private space as he states, "The ex-cons used Tec-9s, didn't they?" Why does he bother asking when he already knows the answer? Maybe if the Miami-Dade beancounters are that worried about his profligate spending, they can just cut his staff since he doesn't appear to use them in any useful way. Calleigh confirms Horatio's statement, points out those bullets (in red), and tells him she got forty casings and eighteen bullets, one of which fatally killed Hollis. Horatio wants to know if there's anything else. There sure is: Calleigh's gone to all the trouble to match Horatio's own, personal bullets (maybe he has them monogrammed) and it turns out that he's responsible for pegging two of the bad guys. Of course Horatio is a better shot than the SWAT team members. Is anyone surprised? Calleigh strokes his ego: "It turns out, you're a good shot." Then they discuss how Speedle is not. After that uncomfortable moment, it's back to the good news: the bullet from Lynn's car came from across the street, so someone was aiming to take her out too. Calleigh chirps, "So our crime scene just got a lot bigger!" She's so unnaturally happy about that -- whatever she's on, give me some. I could live with the bad fashion side effects if I were freed from this gnawing contempt of the show's lead.
The scene starts with the polygraph tech asking sternly, "Did you come here intending to lie?" Jesus, could they get any more judgmental right off the bat? How about: "Are you a dirty, filthy liar? When was the last time you lied? Have you ever told the truth, you contemptible worm?" Speedle just rolls his eyes and replies, "No." The tech asks, "Did you take part in an officer-involved shooting yesterday?" Speedle shoots back, "Your phraseology is misleading." The man has a point. But why are they questioning him twenty-four hours after the fact, if he's the one they're so interested in interrogating? Wouldn't that only give him time to prep for the test, Seinfeld-style? The tech's irritated by Speedle's response and says, "Please answer 'yes' or 'no.'" Speedle replies, "Please rephrase the question." The tech warns, "If you fail to cooperate..." Then what? Unless his employment contract specifically states that he's required to take polygraph tests, Speedle actually has the legal option of not taking one. This woman can pound sand. Speedle takes a more diplomatic approach, saying, "Was I involved in a shootout? Yeah. Was an officer killed? Yes." The polygraph readings go by. It all means nothing. The tech asks, "Did you disclose any information regarding the narcotics transport?" Speedle answers in the negative. The tech looks startled. She asks, "The officer riding to you was shot in the head. Was his name Officer Hollis?" Speedle replies in the affirmative. She then asks if Speedle was shot in the chest. You'd never know it if he was -- I guess those Death Cutter bullets only work on one-episode actors. The tech asks, "Did your vest protect you from serious injury?" When Speedle replies in the affirmative, his reading spikes. Maybe he's lying about the emotional trauma. Again, I wouldn't know, since the people who do all the explanatory hoodoo for this show decided it was more enlightening for us to see how a polygraph machine works than to explain how readings correspond to true or false statements. The tech asks, "Did the suspects have any reason to kill Officer Hollis but only wound you?" Wow, that's unsubtle. Why not just ask, "Did you set this up?" It's less insulting to everyone's intelligence. After a series of back-and-forth shots evidently illuminated only by flashlight, Speedle decides he's had enough. He stands up, tears off the sensors, and says, "This game is over. I'm sorry, but I have an officer-involved shooting to investigate, so no time for this petty crap." My, but he's learned from Horatio quickly. The tech watches him go, noticing the spike in readings right before Speedle took off.
We then see Speedle striding down the long, dark hallway; I guess the Miami-Dade powers that be make up for Horatio-related budget shortfalls by pinching pennies on utilities. Calleigh trots beside Speedle, asking if they can talk, and he tells her curtly that now is not a good time. She responds that she just wants to talk to him before she sends Horatio her final report on the shooting. Speedle bursts out, "My gun misfired, okay? I admit it. It misfired because I didn't clean it. That's why it jammed up, and that's why Hollis is dead. Okay? And I should probably resign." Calleigh rides on over him with, "That is not true. That was an ambush. He was shot from the left-hand side and there's nothing that you could have done about it. If you were Horatio, then you could have cleaned the gun with the power of your mind and instantly teleported over to the left side for an ambush, but you're only mortal, so live with it." Speedle pays attention to what she actually said (hint: about half of that quote) and makes disbelieving noises, and Calleigh finally gets to the point: "time it could be you, and I'm just begging you -- clean your gun." Speedle sighs, all embarrassed-like, "I get it." Speedle, my cats got it and they have brains the size of pecans. Calleigh wasn't laying out the key to the book of Revelation here. He tells her that he'll tell Big Red about his slovenly firearm maintenance. As Speedle leaves, Jack comes by to take Calleigh in to see the pissed-off polygraph tech. She puts off the interview until she's done one more knock-and-talk. Jack suspects she's delaying and says, "Don't make me call Lieutenant Caine." Calleigh gives him her best glare -- kind of hard to see through the panda makeup -- and says, "I wouldn't make my L.T. take a call from you." Besides, he's too busy walking his lonely road to take any calls.
Horatio's dusting the coffin for prints when Elena comes in to see how he's doing. Answer: not well. They talk some more about this mastermind Nedir Kire, then move on to the real point of the scene. Reporters have been buzzing around Elena because, "you know, [her] husband killed in the line of duty. Drug rip-off. And now, three years later, [her] brother-in-law, a drug-heist shootout." Okay, what is with the high incidence of widows in the Miami-Dade police force? First there was Megan [beat] Donner, now Elena Caine? Is there an intradepartmental dead pool? Maybe a bowling league for bereaved spouses? Horatio quickly concludes that they're talking about Rayas, and Elena fills in the long and hostile history between Horatio and this character who was introduced a scant thirty-eight minutes ago. Elena tells Horatio that she's glad he's okay, they have a Taster's Choice moment, and then the scene ends so that Horatio can brood about his dead brother as he continues to dust the coffin in a not-at-all-symbolic kind of way.
Meanwhile, Delko's coming up empty on Nedir Kire. What a surprise.
Calleigh's off doing her walk-and-talk, and now that we've moved out of the incredibly dark scenes, we're now looking at everything through the jaundice filter. She's in an alleyway pocked with bullet holes and she manages to find a round right off the bat. Detective Frank pulls up in his car and says, "This place looks like a battle zone. Look at all the stray gunfire. I swear to God, it's like the back seat of the family wagon. If I have to tell the wife one more time..." Actually, Calleigh cuts him off before we can get into his family turmoil, and says, "I'm not as concerned about the ones going in as the one that came out...I think this gives us cause to search the place." Off they go to knock on the door. It swings open to reveal a man who's carefully cultivated that artistic look -- longish hair, sculpted facial stubble -- and Calleigh asks, "Do you always work on Sundays?" The guy replies in one of those I'm foreign! And seductive! accents, "Only when I am expecting a visit from an angel." Calleigh's not charmed: "You might think I'm the devil in just a second." Nice try, loverboy; you should have opened the door while holding a small arsenal if you really wanted to shoot your way into Calleigh's heart.
The two cops come inside, and Calleigh asks if Arty Guy saw anything. He tells her, "I was hiding behind the limestone. It sounded like Liberty City on the Fourth of July. Plus I'm sensitive and my artistic temperament can't take the senseless violence." Frank asks, "Do you own a firearm, Mr. Tomassi?" Tomassi permanently eliminates himself from Calleigh's dating pool by replying in the negative. Frank asks if they can look around, and Tomassi's about to answer no, but then Calleigh fixes him with a smile and says, "It's important to recover all of the rounds in an officer-involved shooting." He melts. Cue the search, with Calleigh poking into every crevice of the dusty lab and ending up at a stack of extremely dusty limestone slabs. It's so dusty, in fact, that she has to keep rubbing her nose in order to breathe, but she manages to dig out a shell.
Cut to Calleigh taking her polygraph. The technician apparently likes her better than Speedle, since she's actually turned on the lights in the room. The woman asks, "Did you tell me your name was Calleigh Duquesne?" Calleigh rattles off, "Yes I did. But my nickname is Lamb Chop. But only my dad calls me that now." The technician gives her a thanks for sharing look and Calleigh babbles on, "Oh! I know. Okay, 'yes' or 'no' only. Fire away." We see Calleigh's readings, which are all over the place and presumably off -- again, not like we were ever given an explanation of what a baseline reading looks like, so we can hardly use this information to deduce anything on our own. The technician asks, "Did you consume any alcohol or drugs in an attempt to influence this exam?" Calleigh denies it with a wild, pop-eyed expression. The tech asks, "Did you process evidence for dispo day?" Calleigh most emphatically confirms that she did, and we see more nonsense scrawls on the polygraph. The tech asks, "Was that drug cocaine?" Calleigh happily agrees that it was and Jack looks up, suspicious.
Within seconds, Calleigh's sitting in an empty room, wondering what the hell is going on. Jack barges in and hands her a specimen cup, barking, "We need a sample." Calleigh replies, "Well, okay. Um. But I'm not going to do it in front of you." Heh.
More seconds elapse, and we're in Jack's office. Horatio comes in, saying, "You wanted to see me?" and Jack looks up to announce, "I think we found our mole. Calleigh Duquesne just tested positive for cocaine." Well, that explains her manic devotion to Horatio... Actually, she comes in, breathlessly saying, "Horatio, I don't know what happened. I promise you, I've never done any type of drug --" Horatio replies, "I know you didn't." Then he turns to Jack, angrily saying, "She will appeal." I'd commend Horatio for sticking by his employees, but we all know that he's doing so because it helps demonstrate his superior brainpower. Jack's all, "Then appeal. Until then, she's relieved of duty." Horatio begins his demonstration with, "You're making a mistake..." Jack fails to heed the warning signs, which prompts Horatio into a full-on display of his massive crime-solving power: "You guys couldn't find your ass with both hand. Now, you should be thanking her...If it's what I think, she just cracked the case. But I won't share any details with you, because only I can know what's going on, can't I?"
And Horatio's not going to be sharing any details with us until we get a few more aerial shots of Miami. Then we get Horatio asking Calleigh how she's feeling. She's having a bad time of it is how she's feeling: "[I feel] like a hummingbird on six cups of coffee." Horatio presses further, "Describe that to me." Calleigh does: "I feel confused, angry, confused." She feels like I do when I'm recapping this show? Calleigh continues, "I know I've said this to you before, but I want to make sure that you know. I did not take anything." Horatio continues quizzing her, "Okay, hang on a second. Are your lips numb?" Yeth; her lith ah floza. Horatio asks, "What have you been doing for the last eight hours?" Hanging out with the old cast of Saturday Night Live? Writing an Emmy award-winning drama? Trying to get Robert Downey Jr.'s phone number? Calleigh rattles off, "[Frank] Tripp and I were trying to follow the mystery trajectory. We went to the tile place. I ate a granola bar. Uh, then we went back to the firearms lab." Horatio's eliminated the granola bar from the list of suspicious circs, and asks about the tile place. Calleigh tells him how she found a bullet lodged into Italian marble tile, and what a difficult time she had digging the bullet out. Horatio flashes to what must have happened, and concludes, "I think you've been dosed." You think, detective? How else can you account for a teetotaler suddenly coked to the gills? To confirm his hypothesis, Horatio tests the bullet and it comes back positive.
Now, the desultory scene where Horatio, Delko, and Frank systematically destroy sheets of marble until Tomassi rolls over and confesses his part in all this. It takes two tiles, and then Tomassi shows them. Horatio's all, "I've seen it pressed into plastic before, but this is new." We flash to how it's done: the cocaine is suspended in a plaster-like organic adhesive which lets the cocaine harden in molds, and when it's time to move the drug, they simply wash the paste solid with a solution that's less dense than the pure cocaine so they can freeze off the waste and dry out the drug. Horatio points out to Tomassi, "Nice way to move the cocaine in plain sight, unless you're just laundering the profits. Either way, we've got you for murder." Tomassi says, "Murder? It's just coke." Horatio's all, "Courtesy of a couple of dead cops, it's not." His shaky bluff rattles Tomassi into claiming that he got this stuff from Haiti. Horatio replies, "We'll see about that, won't we?" Yes, we will!
Horatio hands a big chunk of pressed cocaine to Speedle, who tells him, "I'm gonna need to talk to you later about something." Horatio acknowledges this, and then he and Speedle proceed to make a snowglobe. As the cocaine swirls around, they see bits of crime-scene tape, thus proving Tomassi wrong and tying him to the mysterical Nedir Kire. Horatio's all, "That's not from Haiti." Speedle replies, "Not unless Haiti's in the middle of our crime lab." Welcome back, Speedle.
Cut to Horatio and Frank telling Tomassi he's not nearly smart enough to pull off the dispo day disaster, so why doesn't he give up the goods? Tomassi doesn't have anything these clowns want.
So Horatio goes in to see Delko, with whom Horatio's entrusted the task of unmasking the mysterious Nedir Kire. Oh, why don't you just announce that you've given up already? Captain Irradiation is hardly a contender in the Mensa Olympics. It falls to Horatio -- who else -- to figure out what's going on with the Nedir Kire puzzle -- he happens to notice the reflection of white board where Delko wrote out the tree of connections, and wouldn't you know, Nedir Kire is Erik Riden backward! What a crafty trick! Maybe I can pass myself off as the evil Spanish recapper Llebos sometime. Horatio and Delko stare at the reflection for a while, just pondering the heft of Horatio's awesome intelligence.
After they've recovered, Delko Googles Erik Riden and they come up with...Enrique Rayas, reporting on a student cafeteria for a Newark station. Oh, come on -- a television reporter is freelancing as a criminal mastermind? What's , Jules Asner revealing her plans to wrest control of the Fed from Alan Greenspan? Trey Wingo flying to Geneva to broker a multilateral trade agreement? Incidentally, the text around the photo from which Horatio made his identification is Greeked, meaning that it's basically a bunch of nonsense words and characters strung together to give a visual approximation of how text will flow in a layout. Oh, these people don't even try anymore, do they? Anyway, somehow, in an off-screen move made for reasons which will never be explained to us, Horatio and Delko obtained the a screenshot of the clothes Rayas was wearing and are now itching to test it for GSR. Horatio's all, "He just broadcast [his false identity] all over the Miami news." Frankly, I'm incredulous that this alleged cocaine criminal mastermind who thought of everything in the dispo day setup was stupid enough to go on the air in the shirt he shot in, as opposed to, say, changing before broadcasting, but that's a small quibble in the grand scheme of things -- they're still asking us to believe that somehow, a television reporter had the free time and connections to plan an elaborate drug haul.
Cut to the mastermind himself asking appallingly inane questions about the incinerator to an anonymous hardhat during a live broadcast. Cue Horatio materializing -- does his vast array of powers know no limits? -- behind Rayas's back to say, "What people should be afraid of is Nedir Kire." Cue Rayas's prima-donna hissyfit. Frank steps in, there's a song and dance about the warrant for Rayas's clothing from the day before, and then Horatio steps over to the incinerator operator to say, "Mr. Stokes, as the owner of the incinerator, you knew the date, the time, and the route the truck took. So did you tell Enrique?" "Stokes"? Suddenly, so many things are clear. The operator blusters, "I don't even tell my wife that stuff. I told all of your detectives yesterday." Horatio cuts through the crap and reminds him, "Bob, I can be a friend on this." Bob quails at that threat; imagine having to invite Horatio to your Super Bowl party and watching him brood by the onion dip. He promptly tells all.
And now, the desultory confession scene. After Frank tells Enrique/Erik that they found the source of his dispo day informant, Erik declines to reply. This prompts Horatio to whisper, "Silence." Oh, for the...I don't have the energy to continue. Horatio then tells Erik that Bob is singing in the key of C as in "See how much I can tell you that will nail Erik's ass to the wall." Frank jumps in with, "We know you were the brains behind the coke operation. Your partner, Tomassi, already gave you up. You're on your own anyway." Erik demonstrates that his grasp of English is tenuous, and asks about the cellphone reception in the box. Horatio laughs, because he's just tested Erik's shirt for GSR and come up positive and "you not only organized the hijacking, you participated in it on the day, and I want to know why. Television station not paying you enough? Cocaine-tile business not cutting it?" Why, no. As it turns out, Erik's not motivated by filthy lucre, but by ratings. He asks, "Did you see the coverage?" Frank replies, "It appeared nationally." Erik leans forward and explaining, "And it came from a secondary market. It came from Miami." So shooting up a police caravan is a broadcaster's idea of civic boosterism? Huh? As far as career moves go, it's pretty boneheaded, as there are too many live participants left to wreck his career later. Even Horatio's incredulous: "For fame, fortune, and one hell of an alibi?" Erik has descended into full-blown madness, raving, "One ripe piece of tape, Horatio. And you and I, my friend, we are going to get everything we want." Horatio replies, "I agree, My friend. The difference is, you will be receiving yours in a six-by-nine cell." So what he's saying is that Erik's really been motivated by a deep desire for spooning? Oh, that's just wrong.
Then there's the scene we all knew was coming: the one where Horatio tells the IAB guy that the Tao of Horatio is infinitely superior to anything some silly police procedure can produce.
Since Horatio has not yet peaked on the unlikability scale, he ups the stakes by going to talk to Speedle. For someone who was quick to tell Delko to leave the Church at the door, Speedle sure does manage to seem like he's about to go to confession. After hemming and hawing for a while, Speedle is let off the hook. Horatio's all, "We were ambushed, Speedle. It happens. You gotta believe me. These things happen. You didn't do anything wrong. You're a good man. Okay?" Speedle's not buying it, but he thanks Horatio anyway. He then asks Horatio what the package he's holding is, and Horatio tells him, "This is a belated birthday present for you. Happy birthday, okay? And you hang in there." He dematerializes, the background music kicks up, and Speedle opens the package to find a deluxe gun-cleaning kit. Of course. Sometimes, Horatio brings the love. His stop will be to Calleigh, and he'll be giving her a copy of Bob Woodward's Wired with the inscription "Don't let it happen again."
Then we see Enrique Rayas descending into a mob of reporters. Oh, the irony.
Finally, we're back at the incinerator with a big truck full of drugs. Outside the gates, NORML members are keeping a protest vigil. Despite the scanty security when compared to the fail dispo run, everything makes it to the compound, where Horatio is already waiting in Standing Brood Pose #1: hands on hips, shoulders slightly cocked, a middle-distance sulk on his face. Then we see the cleansing fire, burning, burning, burning the drugs! It's a dispo inferno! The flames lick higher and higher as we zoom in on Horatio staring intently as he thinks, "The fire will cleanse! THE FIRE WILL CLEANSE!" Would that I could feel so clean at the end of this episode.