There's no such thing as a rainy day in Miami. At least, there isn't in the establishing shots, which feature glistening white buildings set against a sparkling blue waterfront, bordered on one side by long, empty highways upon which a brooding lawman can speed in the stud vehicle of his choice and on the other by verdant wetlands that the Bush administration will no doubt decide to drain and sell off for commercial development, if their current track record in re: America's natural resources and wonders is anything to go by. But I digress, and thus almost miss the schoolbus wending its way down a dusty road. It stops and disgorges a bunch of preternaturally blonde and clean-cut teenagers wearing blue-sleeved baseball jerseys and toting bright orange trash bags. I think it's sweet of the Villagers of the Damned to adopt a highway in between killing sprees. One blonde girl bids her less blonde friend to ditch this boring highway job with her, and they head off into the dry and abundant brush to smoke, since Floridians are in no danger whatsoever of epidemic wildfire sweeping across their state. The tall blonde girl pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and her shorter friend gasps, "Where did you get those?" "My mom's purse," Blondie replies. "You are so busted," the other girl continues. Yes, especially when Mom finds out her daughter has absconded with her smokes to the foot of the Appalachian Trail in Amicalola Falls State Park in Georgia, if the mountains in the background give any indication as to where this schoolbus took the children. Or maybe Mom thinks that Florida's naturally mountainous; Blondie seems to be dismissing her materfamilias's mental capacities in a series of remarks about how not-busted she and her friend will be. Blondie uses a book of matches to attempt to light the cigarettes, fails, and has to lean into the underbrush to retrieve them. I get my first good look at her shirt, which reads "Briar Bay Baptist Church: Adopt a Highway." Give the producers points for getting that detail right: the biggest adolescent hell-raisers I knew were all active members of my church youth group. Anyway, the two girls lean down into the underbrush to get their matches and apparently find something else that sends them screaming back toward the highway.
The camera gets all arty here, panning quickly from the trashbags to the bare, splayed legs of a girl clad in bikini underpants, up her torso, to her rolled-back eyes. This reminds me a little too much of a high-fashion ad -- the kind of thing that some talentless hack looking for some free publicity for his label would do, then insist is meant to be an artistic representation of un petit mort -- and the series of shots, which are accompanied by the clicking of camera, focusing on her well-manicured hands and feet, her arm flung behind her head in a classic cheesecake pose, and her vacant face, do nothing to dispel the impression that we've just witnessed a prime-time eroticization of murder. Seriously: this is the kind of segment that would fit right in with Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly series. It is amazing to me that this show -- and, to be fair, the originalCSI -- has no problem portraying dead women with such strongly erotic imagery; while it's true that we did have dead male stripper plotlines on both this show and the original, the dead men weren't depicted with the same strongly sexualized camera treatment. In fact, their deaths demonstrated the fatal results of deviant female sexuality. There's a whole thesis to be written on sexual imagery and CSI shows here, but y'all aren't here for a discussion of the forensic male gazes. You're here for the derisive comments about Horatio. So let's get to those.
Cut to Horatio looking down and saying, "Well, we've got a Jane Doe. She could be a runaway." The camera keeps clicking as Alexx says, "She's not a street kid. Not with these nails." Sevilla suggest that the girl could be a victim of a hit-and-run, but Horatio disagrees, noting that the girl's too far from the road. Alexx adds, "Looks like she's been hit by every bug in south Florida, though. Poor baby's been eaten alive. Smells like beer. You are much too young to be out drinking, sweetheart." Sevilla suggests that the beery young miss was coming home from a party, but Horatio pooh-poohs that idea too. He then commands Alexx, "Check her lividity." Alexx does not ask him for the magic word, but merely rolls the girl a little and pulls up her tee, noting, "I've got double lividity. Her blood's settled twice, meaning she's been moved." Sevilla concludes, "So it's a body dump." Horatio leans back, squares his shoulders so he's filling ninety percent of the frame, casts his gaze into the middle distance, and decrees, "So we are in search of a crime scene." Roger Daltrey immediately screams his agreement and we go to the Kim Delaney-less credits. Yeahhhh!!!!
This holiday season, it's tough to decide which commercials unnerve me more: the ones where Kirstie Alley, swaddled in a hectare of velvet and made up Calleigh Duquesne-style, bullies people into having a Christmas Thai-cathouse-style at the Pier One Imports, or the diamond industry commercials that all but state, "Only cheap jackasses don't get their women diamonds for Christmas!" And they're both on right now. It figures.
Once we're back at the body dump location, Horatio's hunkered down and staring at a track in the dirt. He calls, "Calleigh, please," and she sprints on over. I'm relieved to report that she hasn't been too badly mauled by the hair and wardrobe people today. Calleigh immediately plops down to Horatio and puts her ear near the ground. Horatio asks Calleigh to tell him about the track he found, and she replies, "Faint tread impression, knobby tire, narrow track width. Put it all together, it spells ATV." Guns, gears -- if it's inorganic, it's right up Calleigh's alley. Horatio notes that the tread seems pretty fragile, but wants Calleigh to try and make a cast of it anyway. She whips out the hair spray. Haven't we seen that move before??
While Calleigh's spritzing the sand, Speedle and Delko are entering the land of the B-plot. We hear Speedle before we see him, and he's saying something about how "Delacroix says this guy's a wharf rat." As the two of them head to a shiny silver trailer, Delko asks, "Do we have a name on him?" We do -- it's Willie Stango. Speedle adds, "His ex-wife came by to check up on him. Said he'd been ducking her calls for a week." His ex-wife must have called immediately after getting a snootful of the smell, which hits Speedle the minute he enters the trailer and causes him to fling an arm over his mouth and nose in self-defense. Delko retches a few times and comments, "It smells well-done." Speedle's pressed a surgical mask against his face by this point, and after he and Delko have rolled over the body and noted the waxy, reddish skin around Stango's mouth, Delko comments, "Oh, yeah. It looks like someone torched him." Delko waves a flashlight around the trailer -- which is none too tidy, but it's not like Stango's lack of housekeeping skills will be traced to a psychotic depression or anything -- and notes, "No signs of forced entry. Probably someone he knew." "Like a pissed-off ex-wife," Speedle comments. You just know he's at the fun table at weddings.
As Delko's looking around the trailer, he's noting lots of discarded milk cartons. He quips, "Got milk?" Speedle notices a small spill to an open carton and comments, "It's all over the place." He takes a swab, then makes a face, so we're left to conclude that the milk is probably sour. We then hear the sound of a camera snapping as we flash-focus on another puddle of milk, a carton near Stango's hand, Stango lying on his back, and a cell phone within reach of his hand. I guess we're supposed to infer, between this photographic sequence and the earlier one, that we're viewing the scene through the eyes of the CSI who's photographing it. Delko picks up the cell phone and notes that it's working, and that Stango's missed a lot of calls. Speedle thinks that checking all of Stango's missed calls is an excellent place to start. Ten bucks says that he's managing Horatio-style, and the missed calls are an excellent place for Delko to start while Speedle does something else, like email Warrick again and forward "Top Ten Ways To Know You're The Brains Of The Crime Solving Duo..." spam he got off the CSI-L listserv.
In a paradigm-shattering move, Horatio has left the skybox and is actually attending an autopsy in the same room where Alexx is conducting it. He's still standing ten feet from the gurney, but he's in the room, so that's progress. Alexx fills him in: the liver temp indicated that the girl died somewhere around 5 AM that morning, and her body is covered in insect bites. If we had Gil on the case, this would be the point where Gil began matching bug bite to specific insect, and lecturing anyone present on biological and metaphorical significance of each insect introduced. Here, I'm not so sure. Alexx continues as Horatio creeps ever closer -- the girl also sustained blunt force trauma to the right side of her head. Alexx concludes, "Blood loss could have led to endotoxic shock, but I'll have to do more testing." Horatio concludes that somebody hit the girl and dumped her. The bug bites -- and their significance therein -- go completely unremarked upon. Alexx points out that the cause of death is still uncertain and could therefore be accidental. Horatio decrees, "Teenage girl doesn't wind up by the side of the road dead and it'd be an accident. What about sexual assault?" Well, it's nice to see them address the fact that this girl was found in her skivvies, however indirectly. Alexx mentions that there was slight vaginal tearing around the opening. Then, with the saddest expression I've ever seen, she holds a diaphragm aloft. Alexx comments, "Fifteen years old and she was planning on having sex." How did they figure out she was fifteen? Horatio comments, "Well, someone was. Maybe someone who didn't get their way." I can appreciate how he's always looking for the sinister motive, blah dee blah, but inserting a diaphragm isn't exactly a random drive-by event. Unless there were roving gangs of contraceptive commandos running wild and forcibly inserting diaphragms or Norplant into unwilling girls, it's pretty safe to assume the girl inserted the diaphragm herself.
Just then, a bald labmonkey comes in to tell Alexx he's got the tox screen she wanted, but stops to gape and comment, "Cool room." Horatio curtly says, "Mmm-hmmm," then asks, "Ruben, have you seen Megan?" Ruben says, "She had court today." The Chords Of Convenience play as Horatio looks up and says, "I thought she had court yesterday." Ruben replies, "She stopped by, told me to give you this." He hands over an envelope. This is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining ex post facto departures I've ever seen, albeit in a totally accidental way. If you're going to have a highly-publicized departure, you should wring it for as much implausibility as possible. Have Horatio ask Ruben where Megan is, only to have the other man reply, "I thought you knew. She had your credit card when she was booking her flight to the Grand Caymans." Anyway, Horatio notes that the envelope reads "PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL," which would seem to inspire all sorts of snooping among people who pry secrets out of others for a living, and listens to Ruben telling Alexx that the body's BAC was 0.0. Alexx is startled: "So she smelled of beer but didn't drink any? Okay, that's odd." This from the woman holding salons with the recently deceased. Ruben counters, "Not as odd as this -- her pro time's up to about 25 seconds." For those of you who wonder, as I do, what a "pro time" is, it's the nickname for "prothrombin time," or the time it takes for a plasma sample (it's blood plasma that contains all the clogging agents, not the RBCs) to form a firm clot after being treated with the coagulation inhibitor thromboplastin. Pro Time is also the trademarked name for a kit used to determine blood coagulation time, but given that we're simply talking about how long it took Jane Doe's blood to clot, I think the reference is just to the general blood-clot test, not to the brand-name kit.
Anyway, Alexx notes that Jane Doe was a slow clotter, Ruben suggests that Jane Doe was taking a blood thinner, and Alexx counters that the body's lack of bruises belies the thin-blood idea. Horatio asks, "We've got no ID, no crime scene and no cause of death, right?" He says that like it's an impediment to solving the crime or something. Anyway, the upshot to this is that Horatio concludes, "We know she was doing one thing before she passed away." "She was breathing," Alexx concludes. "She was breathing air filled with contaminants," Horatio clarifies. Alexx replies, "I'll swab her nasal passages and sinus cavities." It just goes to show, whoever coined the saying "you can pick your victim, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your victim's nose" was wrong. Horatio takes off before Alexx can begin excavation. We do not follow him. Alexx swabs out something that looks a lot like sparkly tapioca, and the camera rushes in for a close-up. We then check Alexx's face -- not a whole lot going on -- before zooming back on the face of Jane Doe, whose eyes appear to have moved down so she's staring at the camera, and her hair is perfectly done in a little dutchboy cut. Rare is the person who looks better after their autopsy, but Jane Doe's managed it.
Horatio's off waving a black light around the lab and giggling to The Dark Side of the Moon album when Calleigh comes in and tells him the tread marks are from the DTP Mudgator's quad-claw design, which is standard issue on 650-series ATVs. Calleigh notes the scuffing on the outside ribs, and Horatio tells her, "Nice work. Have you ever played this album to Wizard of Oz? It really does match up. Freaky, man." Oh, he does not either. But wouldn't it make his character more fun if he was really was skipping departmental meetings to go check out Rush night at the local Lasarium? What Horatio's actually doing is discovering a laundry mark on the t-shirt the girl was wearing. As Calleigh explains it, "Used to separate identical quantities of clothing." Horatio replies, "An invisible laundry mark, just like our Jane Doe, who's not been reported missing yet, has she?" Horatio worked a little too hard on that metaphor, methinks. Also, I'm distracted by the question of what practical use an invisible laundry mark would have. I can see what use a visible laundry mark would have, but it seems as thought you'd have to have some pretty sophisticated laundry machines to detect invisible marks and sort accordingly. Not that it's impossible -- given that high-end domestic types have declared the laundry room the target for overpriced consumerism, laundry machines that read and sort invisible markers seem entirely plausible. I'm just stuck on the functional aspect of an invisible marker. Anyway, Calleigh has no ear for strained metaphors, so she merely tells Horatio that Sevilla's blanketed the local agencies with pictures, but no bites so far. Anyway, since institutions are required by law to register their laundry marks -- a factoid I stumbled across while doing research on laundry marks, not something that's mentioned in the show -- it should be easy enough to trace the origins of the t-shirt. But we've forgotten about the t-shirt, because there's nasal mucus to be passed from Horatio to Calleigh. The whole exchange is shot in silhouette against a light screen, so it's got this weird Alfred-Hitchcock-goes-to-the-lab feel to it. Calleigh deadpans, "Nasal mucus. And it isn't even my birthday." "Sorry about that," Horatio says unrepentantly, then flees while Calleigh realizes that yes, once again, she's doing the dirty work so Horatio can divert his attention elsewhere. I guess you don't get to be a stalker in the name of justice without delegating.
And now, the B-plot. Speedle more or less falls through the doors of the morgue, greets Alexx, and asks, "Mind if I observe?" "When do I ever?" she replies pleasantly. Oh, who doesn't love Speedle? He sidles up, and she asks, "So, Mr. Observer, what do you see?" Speedle replies, "Partial thickness burns on the lips, tongue and oral mucosa." Thanks to the generosity of the TMICam, we see these burns too, in excruciating detail. Speedle then pulls back a flap of skin and notes, "Stomach lining appears to be red and inflamed." Alexx asks, "What about the lungs?" Speedle replies, "Swelling of the main stem bronchii, release of edema fluid." "Meaning?" Alexx asks with a faint smile. "Meaning he was fried from the inside, and the heat from the burns blocked off his airway," Speedle replies.
Alexx gives Speedle a grin and says, "Not bad. Not bad at all. You know, Speed, any time you want to cross over to our side of the street..." Speedle shrugs off the obvious compliment and asks, "Do you have any idea what might have caused it?" Alexx replies, "Nah. We're running tox. But if you want first dibs on the stomach lining..." She holds the jar aloft, and Speedle says, "Well, yeah." He takes the jar and wanders off again, leaving Alexx grinning over Stango. Nice scene -- not only is it refreshing to see Alexx interacting with someone who's not going to be drawing all her conclusions for her (cough, cough, Horatio, cough), but it's fun to see Speedle working on mastering something he may not know yet.
The fun is over once we get the nostril's-eye view of what's really in mucus. As we see assorted objects that look like grains of pollen, a tech tells Calleigh, "The great thing about the nose is that it acts like a filter. Everything you breathe gets trapped inside -- spores, dirt, live dust mites." Calleigh breaks in with, "Remind me never to breathe again." Have a little more faith in the immune system, Calleigh. Anyway, the tech finds a kind of pollen that looks a little bit like an apricot. Calleigh looks up from her microscope, and her eyeliner looks as though someone rimmed the eyepieces of the microscope with charcoal as a practical joke shortly before she entered the lab. She eyes Horatio and streaks out of the lab to apprehend him as he walks by. Horatio's turned up the ID for the laundry mark -- Pharos Academy, a juvenile boot camp for girls in southwest Dade County. Calleigh exposits, "Tough love. Parents ship their kids off when they lose control. Last chance before the courts get involved." And highly controversial, although I doubt we'll get into issues like the long-term effectiveness of the boot camp approach, the accrediting issues that sometimes surround the staff and programs, the allegations of abuse, the often problematic relationship between for-profit camps and the contracts they have with local law enforcement agencies, and so on.
Instead, we get curvaceous criminal cuties running and chanting, "I must, I must, I must increase my bust." Oh, they're not really. But given that Wonderbras appear to be part of the standard uniforms, they might as well be. Horatio and Calleigh pull in with the Humvee just as some girl is being cornered and yelled at by two drill sergeant types. They make her drop and do push-ups while they drench her with water, because nothing says hard-nosed discipline like setting up a situation in which a busty girl runs around in a wet t-shirt. Calleigh and Horatio take this all in, and Calleigh comments, "At least we know what Jane Doe was running from." Just then, Sevilla comes up with Sergeant Marcus Cawdrey and makes the introductions all around. Incidentally, Cawdrey is played by geek-TV regular Tony Todd, whom some might recognize as Worf's brother Kurn on Star Trek: The Generation, or Jake Sisko in the weeparific Deep Space Nine episode "The Visitor," or the Ahab-goes-to-space Captain Metis from the guilty syndicated pleasure Andromeda. Um, not that I'm all that well-versed in who's done what on assorted space shows. Anyway, Tony Todd towers over everyone, which is amusing, and he's got a wonderfully mellifluous voice, so I'm giving this episode a B simply because he's in it. He's that delightful, and I'm that easy. Introductions made, Cawdrey gets down to business: "There's been no crimes committed on this property, I can tell you that." Horatio whips out a folder and asks, "How about a couple of miles up the road? We found one of your girls." We get an eyeful of the autopsy photo. Jane Doe's eyes have been closed since we last saw her, and her hair's looking pretty kicky. The deader she gets, the prettier she gets -- that's kind of creepy. Cawdrey says that Jane's not one of his cadets; Horatio repeats the assertion, as if Cawdrey's going to be all, "Psych! You really do know when people are lying, don't you?" Anyway, Horatio can't go off on a faulty line of questioning because he's distracted by a long-haired cadet driving an ATV. I'm more distracted by her hair; according to paragraph 1-8a(3), Army Regulation 670-1, "Hair will not fall over the eyebrows or extend below the bottom edge of the collar at any time during normal activity or when standing in formation. Long hair that falls naturally below the bottom edge of the collar, to include braids, will be neatly and inconspicuously fastened or pinned, so no free-hanging hair is visible. This includes styles worn with the physical fitness uniform/improved physical fitness uniform (PFU/IPFU)." I suppose we could infer that this place isn't going by Army rules, but it's not like the other branches of the military go for the Rapunzel effect either, and it's hard to believe a military-inspired camp would be any more lenient. Anyway, Horatio's not at all concerned with tonsorial inconsistencies; he's more interested in the conveniently parked ATV that matches the print they lifted earlier.
Cut to the ATV being dragged away by the resident CSI flatbed. Cawdrey has no idea how the vehicle got off the property, as access is strictly limited to instructors. Horatio points to the girl with the free-flowing tresses from one scene ago, who's now talking to Sevilla, and asks, "What about this young lady over here?" Cawdrey explains that some cadets are regarded as staff members. Horatio wants a list of those cadets. Cawdrey correctly points out, "These girls are minors. I can't give you anything without parental permission." Horatio's all, "We'll get it after we inform their parents they're part of an ongoing murder investigation." That's pretty rich, considering that he still doesn't have a crime scene, the body was found a few miles up the road, the girl isn't one of the camp's charges, and the only link he has is an ATV. Horatio ignores such practical considerations, however, because he's on a roll. He blathers about how the property has no fence, to which Cawdrey replies, "In life, there are no fences. We rely on a strict code of discipline. We monitor everything these girls do -- we tell them when to eat, sleep and shower." Calleigh asks perkily, "When to go to the bathroom?" Cawdrey replies, "Yes, ma'am. Extreme problems require extreme measures." Calleigh asks, "And do those measures ever get too extreme?" Horatio rolls his eyes extravagantly as Cawdrey replies, "That can never happen. We have safety protocols in place." Calleigh then hands over a photo of a shirt, and we establish that the shirt's laundry mark places it as belonging to Barracks 2.
It's party time in Barracks 2, as all the girls are sitting on the bunks in twos, gaily chatting. This must be the regimented small talk segment you hear so much about in boot camp. Just then, Horatio walks in, accompanied by Sevilla, Calleigh, Cawdrey, and Rapunzel. As he says, "Ladies..." the girls line up. We get the Cleavage Cam shot as Rapunzel barks, "Heads down." Horatio says, "That won't be necessary, Sergeant," because he is, of course, the master of every fricking situation he's in. Rapunzel corrects him with, "We have to earn the right to face others with dignity and respect, sir." Horatio looks taken aback at the concept of others having dignity and respect. Cawdrey says, "Senior Cadet Barreiro is one of our success stories. She used to steal, fight and disrespect her parents. Now she's planning on going to college." He says that like it's not possible to be Meadow Soprano and pull off the disrespecting-your-parents thing while attending college. Horatio couldn't care less, and asks about uniform shirts -- how many the girls are issued, and whether he can see them now. A locker inspection ensues, and we soon find out that Cadet Julie Morales is missing a shirt. Horatio asks her where it is, and Morales replies, "Sir, this cadet does not know, sir." Horatio says, "Maybe I can be of help to you. We believe we found the missing shirt on this young lady. Does she look familiar to you?" We see the photo of Jane Doe again, and then Morale's reaction. Either she's the girl who got doused during her push-ups earlier, or part of Pharos Academy's dress code involves damp and clingy t-shirts. Morales pauses for a moment before barking, "Sir, no sir!" Calleigh takes the good-cop approach by asking, "I'm going to go through your locker, okay?" Morales and Barreiero both look at her. Calleigh flips through things and asks Morales about a photo of her with a boy: "Is this your boyfriend?" "No. That's my brother," she replies softly. "Eyes front, cadet!" Barreiro snaps. And now, we can infer that something's up between Barreiro and Morales based on the tension between the two. Horatio and Calleigh blink at each other, and then Calleigh finds a long blonde hair the same color as Jane Doe's. Horatio says pertly, "Sergeant, we're going to have to process these barracks." "On what grounds?" Cawdrey growls. "Bad hair day!" Calleigh chirps.
As they process, Horatio notices a big splotch of something grainy on the floor. He promptly lifts a sample. Calleigh asks what he's got and Horatio says, "I'm not sure. I'm not sure about any of this." As Horatio expresses doubt, a rain of blood and a plague of frogs both descend on downtown Miami, and the token crazy the-end-is-nigh guy feels vindicated. Calleigh reiterates Horatio's doubt with, "Why would anyone sneak into a detention camp?" Cawdrey interrupts by asking how much longer the processing will take, arguing, "My girls need to get back to their routine." Horatio replies that they'll be finished as soon as they take Cawdrey's belt and pants; there's a tiny blood stain on the crotch that only Horatio and his ClueVision can detect. Cawdrey, who can't see the minute clues Horatio can, breathes, "What for?" and Horatio snits, "Why don't you tell me?"
Back at the B-plot -- remember the B-plot? We were all so young when it started -- Delko's managed to finish the busywork Speedle gave him, extracting 100 incoming calls from Stango's phone. He asks Speedle, "You have any idea yet what killed our guy?" Speedle looks up matter-of-factly and replies, "He had gas." The beauty of Speedle's delivery is that it's hard to tell the difference between when he's being contemptuous and when he's being humorous. Delko clearly isn't sure. After an awkward pause, Speedle clarifies, "Gasoline, to be more precise, all the way down to his stomach lining." We get the TMICam shot of the worst case of heartburn ever. Delko says, "Someone poured gas down his throat and blew him up." "Human molotov cocktail," Speedle adds. Speedle thinks it's interesting that the sample has trace amounts of sodium, and Delko clarifies: the sodium indicates the presence of saltwater contamination. Since there's a lot of gas around a marina, it's possible Stango owned a boat. "Could be," Delko says. "'Could' be," Speedle mimics. "Could be," Delko repeats. That's either a shout-out to some movie, or it's supposed to be their little thing -- I don't know which. The two decide to repair to the marina to find out.
Meanwhile, Ruben's busy telling Horatio that he's never fumed a diaphragm before. Horatio nods to him and the nameless lab tech and bids them speak. Ruben found two separate sets of prints on the diaphragm, so my earlier hypothesis regarding roving gangs of contraceptive commandos is still in play.
It's now time for a mini-science sequence: Calleigh sprays the ATV as Horatio fills her in on how the DNA lab is busy identifying the human blood found on Cawdrey's zipper. Calleigh breaks the news that she's found more blood on the ATV. Rather than treating this news like it's good, Horatio points out, "We still don't know where she was killed." "Or what killed her," Calleigh adds. Horatio tells Calleigh to process the hell out of the ATV. Then he takes a conveniently-timed call which tells us that Jane Doe is really Dara Winters, and her mom just filed a missing persons report. "She was a teen model," he adds ominously. Has he seen a magazine in the last two years? Is there really any other kind?
Cut to Chez Winters, where pictures of Dara in Seenzine (sample articles: "45 Ways to Meet Mr. Right," "Relationship Roulette") and in typical brooding-beauty poses adorn the wall. Mrs. Winters sums up Dara's legacy of love and laughter with, "There goes my meal tick-- I mean, she was so beautiful." Or maybe she didn't say the part in italics. Horatio agrees that Dara was beautiful. Mrs. Winters -- again, on this show, we have the Mrs. but the Mr. is conspicuously absent -- tells Horatio that she and Dara were planning Dara's first trip to Milan. Horatio decides that now would not be a good time to share restaurant recommendations, and focuses on Dara's last night at home. We learn that she left the house around 8 PM with some friends, and she was wearing a red halter top and a black miniskirt. Mrs. Winters adds, "Actually, we argued about it." Note how Mrs. Winters does not mention who took what position in the debate: red halter and miniskirt -- appropriate for fifteen-year-old or not? Sevilla asks why Mrs. Winters took so long to report her scantily-clad, just-fought-with daughter missing, and Mrs. Winters replies that it wasn't unusual to not see her daughter all morning, so she didn't begin to worry until afternoon. Horatio asks if Dara had a friend named Julie Morales. The name draws a blank with Mrs. Winters. Horatio breaks the news that they found Dara near the detention camp, and Mrs. Winters is all, "A detention camp? Why would she be there?" Perhaps because she was shooting the "Bad Girls of Pharos" calendar? Horatio raises the possibility that perhaps Mrs. Winters didn't know everything about Dara's life, and Mrs. Winters asks, "Do you have teenaged children?" Oh, watch it -- you'll set him off on a brooding jag about all the potential teenaged children who were cut down in the prime of their second trimester. As we find out how Dara was an A student who didn't do drugs or smoke -- which sounds a lot like Laura Palmer the first ten minutes of Twin Peaks -- Calleigh is busy noticing the indentation in the rug from recently-moved furniture, and is moving the furniture in question to see what's there. She whips out a cache of letters, and we begin to descend into a Peaks-ian web of deception and duplicity as Calleigh asks, "Did you know she had a P.O. box?" No, Mrs. Winters did not. The letters have no return address, and they're signed by someone named Louise. Mrs. Winters breaks down and sobs, "She was my whole life." Like a moth to the flame, so goes Horatio to a grieving woman. He puts on the frowny face and assures Mrs. Winters that he's going to find out who did this to her daughter.
Back in the B-plot, the Wonder Twins are busy walking down the Marina. Delko takes the form of someone who's really into boat engines; Speedle assumes the shape of someone who looks like he needs a week's worth of sleep, a Mach III razor, and a roll of quarters for the laundromat. Delko finishes with, "The engines on that baby cost more than your car." "Maybe more than your car," Speedle replies. Has he slapped eyes on the monster vehicle Delko was washing as therapy in the season opener? Delko and Speedle then stop by the skiff which Stango used and note that he's not exactly living large. They also note the many gas cans in the boat, and quickly come to a conclusion. Speedle: "The idiot was siphoning." Delko: "Why steal cheap gas at a buck-thirty. He could have gone to the corner pump." Speedle points out that maybe Stango didn't steal the cheap stuff.
Night falls, and Horatio's gotten around to figuring out what was crunching under his shoes on the barracks floor: salt. Calleigh quips, "So somebody's guilty of seasoning." Whoever decided Calleigh should crack wise needs to rethink that decision; it doesn't work for her, and frankly, those lines are terrible. Fortunately, she gets back to business, telling us that the pollen grains found in the ATV's air filter match the pollen grains found in Dara's nose. They're Lignum vitae. Horatio fills us in: "The hardest wood in the world. The U.S. Navy almost wiped them out during World War II using them for propeller pins." Calleigh adds, "They're very rare. The only places that they grow down here are in southwest Dade or the Keys, and there are none on the grounds of Pharos Academy -- I checked." Horatio muses that the ATV was where Dara was when she was killed, and Calleigh says, "Too bad it can't tell us what happened." Right as Horatio says something asinine like, "But it can," the phone rings.
Although we are not privy to the conversation, the presence of a composed Cawdrey in the interrogation room seems to imply that the blood on his pants came back matching Dara's blood. Either that, or Horatio's going to quiz him on the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World and make him give an oral history of the Pharos Lighthouse, completed around 270 B.C., and, presumably, the symbolic origin of the detention camp's name. Then Horatio asks, "The blood on your camouflage pants matches that of a fifteen-year-old girl you've never seen. Can you explain that?" Cawdrey says, "I already told you -- I never laid eyes on this girl before in my life." Horatio says, "Right," in such a smug, disbelieving way, I want to smack him. They go back and forth, Horatio arguing that surely he knows how the blood got on his zipper and Cawdrey saying he doesn't. He continues, "I'm very sorry for this girl and her family, but if she was in my camp, then she was trespassing." Horatio concedes the point, then adds, "Why don't we discuss the ride that night?" Cawdrey replies, "You've got it all wrong. Last time I rode that ATV was yesterday morning. I ran it out to the chapel, then to the latrine, then back to admin. Whatever you guys are thinking, I didn't touch any of these girls. I'll take a lie-detector test, whatever you want." We see a shot of Horatio looking skeptically down his nose. He is such an ass -- they're treating this guy like he's got a lock of Dara's hair dangling from his belt, and when the evidence proves he's not involved, will there be a scene where Horatio is apologizing for his approach and explaining that he's got to treat all suspects with skepticism? No, there will not. As for right now, Cawdrey willingly gives prints and a nasal swab.
In the scene, Calleigh's telling Horatio that AFIS has kicked back nothing on the mystery set of diaphragm prints. She asks if Cawdrey's prints will yield a match. Horatio's beginning to think not -- "there's no semen, and anyone could have ridden this ATV." Calleigh asks about the blood on Cawdrey's zipper, and Horatio admits that "I think there might be another explanation." We see said explanation: Cawdrey riding the ATV, stopping, opening up the area in which the keys are, inadvertently getting blood on his hands as he picks up the keys, then stopping at the loo, where the blood is then transferred to his zipper. We get another bizarre Horatio-looking-down-his-nose shot -- which really isn't a camera angle that flatters anyone -- and Calleigh asks, "Are you thinking passive transfer?" Horatio is.
B-plot time: Speedle's sitting at a lab bench and pondering the mysteries of the universe when Delko walks by and says, "Hey, man." "Where have you been? Your mother and I were worried!" Speedle replies. Well, not the part about the mother, but he is weirdly parental with Delko. Delko says he's been at the DNA lab, which is laboring under an overwhelming workload. He adds, "I got to talk to Megan about that." Speedle adds, "Stand in line. I left her three messages already." Delko says, "Yeah. Something's going on." Yeah -- like a poorly planned don't let the door hit your pirate-pantsed ass on the way out, Megan attempt at foreshadowing. God, this is poorly done. If she's being uncharacteristically hard to reach, comment on that, so the departure seems startling. This way is just lame. Speedle neither confirms nor denies that Megan's MIA status is odd -- which is weird, what with him having worked really closely with her, having given some evidence of missing her when she was out, and having sustained the general impression that he's notice if she vanished one day -- and directs talk back to the case, where we find out that Stango was stupid enough to be siphoning gas with a plastic tube and a suck-and-blow move, as opposed to using something like a turkey baster which would actually provide the suction for him. We also find out that the gas Stango was suctioning was high-octane stuff; according to Speedle, it's "one-twenty plus, got zero alcohols or oxygenates." Delko replies, "It's used for high-performance, large-bore engines. Super Vees. He was stealing from his neighbors." Speedle continues, "The thing about 120-plus is that it's very dangerous. It's got a low flashpoint -- you're not even supposed to store it in the sun." Delko replies, "You can't buy it at the pump either." Speedle muses that Stango's theft must have been harming his social relations, but Delko counters, "You wouldn't know it from his cell phone log." The point is that of the last one hundred incoming calls Stango had, seventy-four came from someone named "Motor."
Motor is something of a prat, riding his little JetSki thing around and generally inspiring ill-will among everyone who doesn't have a set of parents in Bal Harbour to fund their lifestyle. Motor comes over and, without getting off the JetSki, asks where Stango is; Delacroix replies, "That's what we wanted to talk to you about." Speedle and Delko inquire patronizingly about his engine, and we learn that Motor's got 1250 cc's of environmentally rapacious motor under the hood, but that's okay, because when it comes to penile-size surrogates, nothing is too extravagant for Motor. Or so the subtext of the scene goes. Speedle then moves the conversation around to 120-plus gas in a really unsubtle fashion. The only way he could have made the line of interrogation more obvious would have been if he had begun with, "So, prime suspect, tell us about your high-octane gas needs…" Unsubtle or not, however, the implication is lost on Motor, whose cranium is a few cc's short of full firing power. The CSIs then box Motor in by pulling up one of those super-sleek Miami Vice-style boats. Motor looks confused.
Inside, well away from the killing sun, Horatio and Calleigh are working with a computer tech, who is complying with Horatio's request to map out the area within a few miles of Dara's body dump and try to figure out where the L. vitae pollen came from. The tech exposits that the tree is short, with a heavy pollen fall rate of about 12 cm/second. Calleigh adds that the wind was moving from the southwest at three to four knots. Using this information, everyone will be able to see where the pollen's moved, and what the likely location for L. vitae trees was. Since the pollen's radius was about fifty yards, Horatio concludes that Dara took her last breath within fifty yards of the pond just inside the Pharos Academy perimeter. Calleigh notes that it's a few miles from where they found the body, and Horatio's all, "So somebody wanted her off the property, didn't they?"
Cut to a tree issuing a giant cloud of pollen. The camera slowly pulls back until we see that the tree's to a pond, and the pond is currently being dragged by long-suffering lab personnel. Calleigh's in the water with them. Horatio, also kitted out in an immaculate jumpsuit, is busy telling Sevilla how the ATV tracks tell him that "the ATV came in with one passenger and probably went out with two." It also tells him that Jane Doe was here, which is odd, because we now know that her name is Dara Winters. Just then, Calleigh finds a black messenger bag in the water. After pulling it out and dropping it on shore, she watches Horatio pull out a red halter top and a black miniskirt. The camera swoops back so we can see the pond, the long-suffering tech probing the bottom of it, and the tree issuing forth enough pollen to keep Clarinex in business through 2025, and then Horatio intones, "This, ladies, is our primary crime scene."
Back at the CSI ATV, Calleigh's back in her civvies, with a pants leg rolled up so she can put on her shoes and socks. Sevilla looks over and comments, "You picked up a few passengers." She has -- leeches. They writhe wetly on a stretch of skin. At this, Horatio falls to pieces and begins sobbing. Leeches killed his mother, you know. Whoops, there I go adding subtext and backstory to a character who's really just a crime-fighting machine. What really happens is that Horatio's all, "Yessss. A leech might leave its jaw behind. Let's use some good old-fashioned saline solution. May I?" Calleigh swoons as he sprays her leg with salt water. Horatio picks up Leech #1 and quips, "Bye." Calleigh laughs. He picks up Leech #2 and says, "Take care." Horatio has a chuckle, but before this can turn into a moment between him and Calleigh, he realizes that the salt in Barracks 2 might be related to leeches and the removal thereof.
Cut to Calleigh digging around a bucketful of leeches, telling anyone within earshot, "Can you believe these little piggies will engorge themselves to up to ten times their original size?" We get the TMICam shot of a leech doing so. Calleigh chortles to herself, "Leeches just fascinate me." Alexx cuts in with, "Leech saliva -- medical marvel, you know. It contains enzymes that expand your blood vessels." Calleigh cracks lamely, "Kind of like Viagra." Dear producers: I know you're trying to set her up as a convention-defying southern belle type, so that we're perpetually surprised and/or amused when this sweet-looking girl makes impish comments, but it's not working. Knock it off. Thank you, Sobell. Alexx merely laughs at Calleigh's comment and says, "Well, not quite. It contains a mild anesthetic so you don't feel the bite." Calleigh's been cutting open engorged leeches as they talk, and she coos, "Don't you hate it when that happens?" Alexx valiantly rises about the lame banter and exposits some more, "It also has plenty of hirudin, nature's own anti-coagulant." Calleigh comments, "My mother still doesn't believe me that they use leeches in modern microsurgery." Hey, direct her to www.leechesusa.com, which goes into interesting detail on how to use leeches for medical purposes and how to dispose of them afterward. Alexx comments, "Let her lose a finger -- she'll become a believer. Just slap this little mouth right on to any reattached limb and watch them do the housework, vacuuming up all that used blood so it doesn't cause gangrene. Which explains why there's no bruising on Dara Winters. The leeches removed the surface blood. The high level of anti-coagulant acted like a blood thinner so she never clotted. Those bites -- they bled for hours after the leeches finished feeding." Calleigh registers this without emotion. Or perhaps she's emotional, but we'll never know under the eight pounds of clown makeup she's required to wear at all times. She says, "It's the beer." Alexx asks, "What about the beer?" Calleigh explains, "The scent of beer is like catnip for leeches. When I was little, we used to pour beer on leeches and watch them whip into a feeding frenzy." Well, if you can't get to the spring break, bring the spring break to you, I suppose. Calleigh realizes that the beer accounts for why Dara had so many leeches on her body. Alexx replies, "At least she never felt it."
Cut to Horatio sitting alone, leafing through page after page of girlish, rounded handwriting. Calleigh interrupts him, and Horatio tells her, "So we've been going through the letters we found in Dara's room, and they appear to be written in some type of a code." Who is this "we" to whom he refers? Calleigh asks not; she simply states that a lot of fifteen-year-old girls do that. Horatio says, "Listen to this: 'Tell QB no more. You have to get the hell out of there.' This girl has a secret, doesn't she?" Calleigh replies, "Our leeches just gave up their secret." And their lives, too. Horatio looks up and says, "You recovered the rest of her blood?" Calleigh replies, "In over half the samples. And Lord knows how many more are burrowed out there, digesting. It was death by leech." Horatio replies, "Well, they may have killed her, but they didn't move her body, did they?"
In the scene, the girls from Barracks 2 are lined up outside, but Horatio's ignoring them in favor of calling Megan and talking to her voicemail. An anvil with the message "Another Clue Leading Towards Megan's Abrupt Departure" written on the side whizzes by, missing Horatio's head by only a few inches. Damn! Anyway, Calleigh comes out and gives Horatio the bad news that Cawdrey's completely innocent. Horatio's okay with that, what with him about to inspect the gams of Barracks 2 for leech bites. He gets no bites, so to speak, until he notices Morales dawdling after Barreiro barks, "Double time!" Horatio says, "You heard her Louise?" Morales looks up, startled. Horatio continues, "That's your nickname, isn't it?" She replies, "Sir, this cadet's name is Julie Morales, sir!" Barreiro asks, "Will that be all, sir?" Why, no -- Horatio wants to see her shins too. The ominous percussion starts in, so we are not at all startled when we see the leech bites on her calf.
Back in the B-plot, which feels as though it's taking place on a parallel show, Speedle is interrogating Motor. He's actually quite competent at it. We find out that Stango was selling Motor bad gas and trying to pass it off as 120-grade. Motor replies, "That bunk locked up my engine. It cost me three grand." Speedle concedes that he'd be pissed, then blows all the points he gets for competency by awkwardly adding, "It sounds like motive for murder." Motor has no idea where Speedle's going with this, and all we establish is that Motor wanted to talk about his bad gas, hence the seventy-four calls. Delko asks about the one call that went through on the morning of Stango's death, and Motor replies, "I star-67'd him, and when he picked up, the line went dead." Speedle and Delko do a lot of staring at each other as the scene ends.
Because it's been two minutes without Horatio onscreen, the powers that be remedy that by having him exit an elevator and walk by the reception desk, where a woman tells him there's a message for him. It's from Megan. This startles Horatio. He reads it, and says, "Um. Hang on a second. This can't be right." The receptionist says, "She asked that you try not to contact her anymore." Oh, how lame. Horatio gets all broody for a moment, then thanks the receptionist before going off to talk to Barreiro.
Barreiro's explaining, "I wanted to cut Julie a break. I was on bed check. I heard talking coming from number two after lights-out." Horatio asks, "And that's when you saw Dara?" Barreiro confirms this, adding that she didn't know who Dara was. We see a flashback in which the busty delinquents are busy giggling over the beer that Morales is drinking before getting busted by Barreiro. She knocks the beer can out of Morales's hand, and the beer ends up splashed all over Dara.
We then cut to Calleigh talking to Morales, saying, "The senior cadet is being interrogated in the other room. I need you to talk to me, okay?" Morales plays with a bottle cap and drawls, "I don't want to get in any more trouble." Calleigh pleads, "Then you just have to help us out, Julie. We just want to find out what happened to Dara and why she came to you." Julie replies, "She was my best friend."
Meanwhile, Barreiro's saying, "I told her she had to leave immediately. I escorted her to the front gate and I left her there." We see this in flashback, with Barreiro frog-marching Dara out of the bunk. Horatio's not buying it: "See, leeches need a water source, and those leech bites on your legs indicate to me that you were down at the pond." Sevilla adds that, going by Barreiro's record and her history of violence, she thinks Barreiro beat up Dara, left her by the pond, then found her dead the day. Barreiro concedes, "I found her by the pond at 0700 morning rounds. I drove up and she was just lying there." We then flash to Barreiro pulling Dara out of the pond, pulling her on the back of the ATV, and driving off with her. Barreiro insists that "I didn't want to get in trouble for not reporting her the night before. I'm sorry."
Cut to Calleigh asking Morales, "Why did Dara cut her hair?" Why is this the first time that the shorn hair and its significance in the investigation have been introduced? Shouldn't the hair have been commented on by someone during the autopsy ("Maybe her killer cut her hair as a trophy/to deter recognition/as part of an abduction scheme") or by Dara's mother when she ID'd the body? We're forty-nine minutes into the episode and the cut hair is meaningful only now? Anyway, Morales says that Dara hated her hair and her clothing. Calleigh asks, "Why was she running away, Julie? Did it have anything to do with you assaulting your mom? Or is related to another critical clue which will be introduced in the episode's home stretch, and yet provide all the motive we need to solve this case?" Morales stares at Calleigh and she adds, "We talked to your parents. They told us the whole story." Morales tosses the bottle cap she's been toying with at Calleigh and overacts, "Well, they didn't tell you my story! They didn't believe me! No one ever believed me!" Calleigh promises to believe her. Morales says, "Dara was sick of the modeling. She was sick of everything. Always having to be perfect!" Cut to Mrs. Winters combing her daughter's hair and telling her, "You're beautiful. You're going to be great," while Dara pouts. Morales says tearfully, "But Queen Bitch wouldn't let her quit." And now, the QB mentioned in the earlier letters makes a lot of sense. Calleigh's still catching up here, so she asks, "You mean her mother?" Morales is all, "Her mother made her do a lot of things." Calleigh wants to know, "What kind of things?" Cut to an unintentionally hilarious shot of Mom leaning in with a menacing expression, waving a diaphragm in front of Dara's face. "You'll use this diaphragm or else, young lady!" Dara's tearfully saying to her mother, "Mom, please..." as her mom keeps sharply saying her name. Back in the present, Morales says, "Her mom always told her, 'No choir girl ever made the A-list.'" Under the makeup, Calleigh reacts. At least, we can infer that she does.
Off in the subplot subbasement, the Wonder Twins are putting the pieces of their plotline together. Delko states the obvious -- Stango was siphoning gas as a side gig -- and Speedle replies, "That explains his milk jones. He was trying to settle his stomach." Delko passes on the dietary habits commentary to add, "Gasoline has only one use -- to ignite." "So what ignited it?" Speedle asks rhetorically. Delko brainstorms, "Maybe fillings in his mouth caused a spark." We get a TMICam shot of some truly frightening molars grinding together. Speedle pooh-poohs that idea with, "According to his dental records, this guy had perfect teeth." The two then come up with the possibility that the heavy shag carpet in the trailer generated some serious static electricity, and that caused the spark which would have ignited the guy's stomach. Speedle then muses, "You know how you're pumping gas, you're not supposed to get in and out of your car -- or talk on the cell phone?" The two of them immediately turn to the cell phone. Delko points out that lithium batteries put out 3.7 volts of electricity, and then we see a situation where Stango, after having shuffled around his carpet for a while, answers the phone and becomes a human circuit, thus igniting the gas in his stomach. Delko deadpans, "I guess he had to take that phone call." Oh, har dee har har. Delko continues, "They say these things could kill you." Dear writers: Stop with the deadpan wit. It's neither deadpan, nor wit. Thank you, Sobell.
A-plot time again, and Calleigh's busy processing a convertible -- let's pretend we already knew that they were processing Mrs. Winters's car, so we don't have to go to the trouble of reiterating the key-information-introduced-at-the-last-minute rant. She finds pollen on the seat.
Cut to Mrs. Winters demanding to know why she's at the police station. Horatio more or less ignores her, musing, "Beautiful girl. Sad eyes though." We see a picture of Dara looking sad. Mrs. Winters asks, "What the hell is this?" Horatio says, "You were out there the night Dara died, weren't you?" Mrs. Winters denies this, but Horatio points out, "We found a very specific airborne pollen on the headrest of your car which would put you within fifty yards of where she took her last breath. She was running away from you, wasn't she? To Julie. She would go wherever Julie was, so you drove out there to bring her back, to bring her back to everything she was running away from, right?" Why Mrs. Winters lied about not knowing Julie is never brought up. What the hell kind of interrogation doesn't return to statements the subject made? Oh -- I know! An interrogation that's really an excuse for Horatio to perform a monologue. Mrs. Winters stares impassively, and we see the flashback: Dara wandering along the road clad only in a t-shirt and panties, her mother pulling up and stopping, shouting, "What have you done to your hair?" This precipitates an argument where Dara's saying she won't "do it anymore, I won't go back!" and her mother bellows, "You have no choice!" and it's your typical overheated confrontation that inevitably leads to physical violence, especially after Dara threatens, "I'm going to tell! I'm going to tell everyone!" Mom hauls off; Dara runs off, trips, and hits her head to a leech-filled pond, and that's all she wrote. Horatio intones, "And then you left her there." Mrs. Winters points out, "I was expecting her to come home the day." Horatio looks down his nose, and Mrs. Winters continues, "Dara was special. She was going places. Anyone could tell. But she was throwing it all away, and for what? A date at the mall? High school football on Friday nights? Some kind of average Briar Bay experience?" Horatio fixes his gaze into the middle distance and says dismissively, "To three quarters of the world, that sounds like a slice of heaven. She was running away from you because you made her home life hell." Mrs. Winters protests, "All I did was set up auditions. I was trying to help her to succeed."
Calleigh enters the room, and Horatio fixes on a different middle distance as he intones, "You were forcing her to market herself to get modeling jobs." Market? It looked like pandering from where I was sitting. It turns out Calleigh was bringing in the results from the print lab -- sure enough, it's Mrs. Winters's prints on the diaphragm. "'No choir girl ever made the A list' -- isn't that what you told her?" Calleigh asks. Mrs. Winters protests, "You don't understand." Calleigh says flatly, "No. I don't." Just then, Horatio smarms, "I told you that I would figure out who did this, didn't I?" Cue the horrified look on Mrs. Winters's face, while I try to figure out what "this" is, exactly, as the only thing Mrs. Winters is really guilty of -- aside from whoring her daughter -- is letting her kid go running off into the underbrush in the middle of the night. The circumstances that led to Dara's death -- the being rendered unconscious right near a leech-filled pond, the beer whipping the leeches into a feeding frenzy, and so on -- may have been precipitated by Dara's running from Mrs. Winters, but the woman did nothing to actively kill her daughter. How comforting to know that the Miami-Dade PD is capable of assessing the moral culpability of those people connected to a deeply weird and accidental death, and booking those folks on suspicion of offending Horatio or Calleigh's delicate sensibilities.
Ahem. Anyway. Horatio's back at his desk, and he's reading a letter when Sevilla comes in. She says, "Me and the guys are going for a beer. Do you want to come?" Horatio asks if Sevilla will take a raincheck. She asks if he's all right, and he replies, "Megan resigned. She said that work was too much of a reminder of her husband's death." And then she apologized for the abruptness with which she developed this aversion, the complete lack of clues leading to this resignation, or anything else that would have made this look like anything other than a hasty firing. Or maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. Sevilla comments, "It's a shame. She's a good criminalist." "She was. She was indeed," says Horatio. Not that he ever bothered to share that assessment with her. He then turns Megan's decision into a personal moment about him and how much better he is: "I almost walked once." He's clearly dying for Sevilla to ask him about it, but she only says, "I'll see you tomorrow." She leaves so Horatio can brood in peace over a picture of a dead Caine -- Raymond Caine, 1968 - 1993. And the episode ends with him brooding over how he's been hurt too, but he doesn't quit, because he's Horatio Caine and you're not.