By Sobell
Hey, everybody, it's Zany Town! I bet it's craaaaaaazy in there! I bet the menu's got a loooooot of Zs! I bet it's a thinly veiled, lawsuit-proof version of Jillian's or Chuck E. Cheese's! Let's go in! It'll be fuuuuuuun!
We see what appears to be a giant bandicoot wearing a uniform left over from Hall and Oates' 1983 Try Not To Notice The Really Big Height Gap tour, surrounded by rollicking children. Then we see a children's birthday party, attended by another suffering soul trapped in a giant chicken costume and a hideous checkerboard vest. Then we get to a giant ball pen where a winsome moppet is frolicking picturesquely, stopping only to inquire in dulcet tones, "Do you see, do you see?" If this were 1936, she'd be played by Margaret O'Brien. If I were recapping Uncle Tom's Cabin, this would be the scene in which Little Eva breathes her last. In other words, it's time to set your watches and place your dead pool bets, because there is no way a kid this cute lives past the credits. The mom grins indulgently, and our tiny cherub goes back to frolicking, with a break for taking off her sweater that only serves to hammer home the point that these two enjoy the kind of mother-child bond that makes Attachment Parenting advocates weep in envy. Mom keeps a watchful eye on Ruthie until someone runs over her foot with a toy truck. She diverts her gaze for a moment -- this is what we in the recapping biz call "a plot point" -- and when she focuses on the ball pen again, Ruthie is nowhere to be found. Cue the most exploitative two minutes on television this week: the mother's rising panic as she realizes that she's lost sight of her daughter, her frantic scanning of the room, and finally, her gut-churning search. Just in case parents in the audience weren't already shuddering in vicarious fear, the sound effects department kicks in and begins adding a dislocated echoing sound to everything, just to make it creepier. As the mother searches, other women protectively grab their children, since no detail is too small to be overlooked in this sequence. Eventually, someone dressed in the hideous Zany Town uniform asks the woman what's wrong, and she replies, "I can't find my baby." The employee sprints over to a control panel and initiates a security procedure the folks at NORAD whipped up as a lark. Gates clatter down to trap everyone inside, conveniently forgetting that angelic children like Ruthie are bodily assumed into Heaven, and where there's a will, there's a way. The minute the doors are locked, the children run towards them. Fortunately, this is an excellent screening test for determining who is smart enough to live; sometimes, it pays to lag behind. Ruthie's mom stands there alone -- none of the other mothers dare go near her to offer comfort, because Missing Childitis might be catching.
Unfortunately, not even locked gates can keep out Miami's avenging crusader; Horatio comes strolling in and hears all about Ruthie Crichton, aged five, whom the paramedics just pronounced dead. Horatio commands, "Nobody leaves." It'd be kind of hard in Stalag 17 there, Horatio. The detective reveals the first puzzle to be solved for the night: to get from the ball pen to the bathroom where Ruthie's body was found, the abductor would have to get past the arcade, past a food court, and past a lot of observers. Horatio looks around Zany Town and decrees, "This place is a buffet for these creeps." Maybe Zany Town might want to think twice about including that endorsement on the marketing materials. Horatio then asks to be taken to Ruthie in the bathroom.
Cut to Ruthie, lying on the floor of the most dramatically lit bathroom I've ever seen. She's on her back in a pool of light -- Alexx better get here soon, or flights of angels are going to be taking off with the evidence -- half-dressed, and Horatio takes a moment to brood down at her. After collecting himself, Horatio begins looking around the room, noticing the recently filled trash can, the recently used sink, and Ruthie. He then walks out to collect himself with a calming brood by the stuffed animals. Horatio and the detective survey the collection of mothers anxiously guarding their children, and the detective says gloomily, "Fifty witnesses." Horatio corrects him: "Fifty suspects." Roger Daltrey screams his assent, and we're at the credits.
Once we return to the show, a dozen different crime-solving vehicles have converged on the scene, and a uniform is already rolling out the crime-scene tape. The camera pans over to the long-suffering chicken-costume guy taking a well-deserved smoke break as he answers questions. Megan and the Bob-White crew enter the building, and Horatio says, "Welcome to the forty-eight hours of your life, ladies and gentlemen." Horatio then assigns tasks: Delko's securing an extended perimeter, Speedle's photographing everything, and Calleigh's checking into the surveillance system. Speedle and Delko will be dealing with the crowd, and Calleigh will be trying to trace the killer's path electronically. Megan will apparently be working the bathroom with Horatio. Cut to him examining the scene and noticing "what appears to be glitter in the northwest quad." We see Megan writing on a clipboard and staring into her cleavage. She asks if a path's been cleared; Horatio sweeps his flashlight and says, "From the door to the body, right there." The camera passes over Ruthie, who's halfway out of her pretty pink outfit and halfway into a nondescript t-shirt and pants. We also see that her hair's been inexpertly cut. Megan and her cleavage -- we're seeing more of it in every scene, so we might as well give it separate billing -- walk over, noting, "Cut hair, boy's clothes --" Horatio cuts in, "Looks like he was disguising her, maybe to smuggle her out." Looks the screenwriters haven't checked Snopes.com lately, as they've debunked this allegedly common practice amongst the kiddie-grabbing set. I give up. It's only a matter of time before I'm recapping episodes where Horatio and Megan find someone packed in ice in a bathtub and missing their kidneys, or a woman who dies of shock after the spiders nesting in her hairdo get aggressive, or someone who dies after their internal organs get cooked during a tanning-parlor session.
Anyway, we get some black-and-white shots that are supposed to drive home the point that an adorable moppet met a sordid demise. Just in case we miss the point visually, the boy soprano from last week returns to hammer it home acoustically. Horatio finally figures out that maybe the pedophile had been planning on taking Ruthie with him, as opposed to going to the effort of cutting her hair and changing her clothes as a prelude to murdering her in a bathroom stall. Rocket scientist Megan says, "He was going to take her with him." Before her cleavage can posit a different theory, we cut back to Horatio mumbling, "Something stopped the plan, didn't it? Maybe she was screaming?" Megan and her cleavage go back to taking photos, this time of Ruthie's kiddie-friendly Band-Aid, because we haven't had enough opportunities to reflect on the terrible tragedy of the young and adorable getting killed. Horatio carries on: "Maybe the alarm system in the store." Megan points out, "If it was the alarms, we could have a fish in the net." Horatio begins pulling out the adhesive for collecting fibers and corrects Megan with, "Not a fish -- a shark."
Cut to Speedle, looking harassed. That seems to be a natural look for him. He ducks under the police tape and follows the sounds of the boy soprano to all the photographically appropriate sites for picture-taking. We establish that the gate at a back entrance is locked tight. Speedle asks if the entrance leads into Zany Town, and the uniform with him replies that there's no public access. That's not really a yes-or-no answer. Meanwhile, Calleigh is interviewing someone who looks as though he might be the manager of the joint. The yellow cap and checkerboard vest kind of undermine his authority, though. She asks if there's a protocol for the gates, and the manager stutters, "Ea-each, uh, ah, em, em, emp --" "Employee," Calleigh supplies. She thinks she's being helpful, but I always thought that correcting someone who stammers was supposed to be counterproductive, because you only made them more acutely aware of the stammer, thereby exacerbating it even more. Anyway -- each employee checks a different section of the store. As the two people keep walking, Calleigh says she noticed the stamps on people's hands. I notice that she's wearing a top which would be right at home on the set of Dynasty; I'm not sure the broad-shouldered, puffy-sleeved look is really one of those things we want to be reviving. I'm also not sure whoever dresses the women on this show should be allowed within fifty yards of a garderobe. The manager protests, "My own kids come here." Huh? Calleigh says, "I'm going to need you to calm down, because I need your help. Can you tell me about the stamps?" The man stammers, "K-k-k-k-k-k --" and Calleigh intuits, "Kid check, kid check, you match the stamp on each child's hand to the stamp on the accompanying adult?" My confusion deepens -- how was she able to extrapolate all that from "K-k-k-k-k-k"?
Meanwhile, Delko and Speedle are heading toward a babbling crowd accessorized by cranky children. Delko says mournfully, "I don't know how we're going to start this." Speedle does: "People! Listen up! We're crime scene investigators. This is a very serious situation. We're going to need you full cooperation. I need everybody to stay with their families. Please watch your children. This is Officer Delko -- he's going to take your fingerprints. I know you're all frightened. We're going to try to get you home as fast as we can, okay?" Miraculously, the crowd has quieted during this speech, and nobody's asking, "What? I couldn't hear. What did he say?" Delko directs everyone to form a single-file line behind him -- and they do. This is the moment when I realize that CSI: Miami has transcended the boundaries of the crime-solving genre and turned into science fiction, what with its overreliance on willing suspension of disbelief and alien behavior.
In the bathroom, Megan and her increased cleavage declare the northeast quadrant clear. I'm thinking that there's a direct correlation between the amount of skin Megan shows and the progress being made on the case; at the rate this case is going, I imagine she'll be walking around with a black bar covering the not-ready-for-network-exposure parts at the forty-eight minute mark. Horatio muses, "Glitter is Locard, but not from her clothes." Dialogue is incomprehensible, but not from lack of trying. What Horatio's trying to say is that Locard's Principle applies here: the glitter is something that will tie the killer to the victim, because some of it was left behind and some of it was taken away. Since the glitter isn't on any of Ruthie's outfits, it's from the killer and was therefore introduced by him. Speedle walks in, and Horatio asks, "What'd you get?" right about the time Speedle gets an eyeful of dead moppet. Speedle swallows and replies, subdued, "Ah, automatic lock-up system, windows barred, doors gated, door's units on a keyed alarm -- it's your basic kid's playground turned into a high-security prison." Horatio asks about a crime kit, and Speedle replies, "I've been overtly searching the crowd, subtly checking it out --" and I hit pause to try and uncramp my brain's central logic center, which has locked in an attempt to figure out how an overt surveillance -- i.e. one that's open and obvious -- would lend itself to subtly, i.e. discreetly and without obviousness, examining the crowd.
Anyway -- no abandoned bags or backpacks, so whatever the kidnapper-cum-murderer used to attempt Ruthie's makeover has vanished with him. Horatio then changes subjects abruptly: "Ninety-nine percent of all violent pedophiles are male. Speed, also add glitter transfer, okay?" Oh, God. Brain freezing. Can't understand flow of conversation. Affecting ability to form complete sentences. Will leave unable to recap in anything other than Bridget Jones-style sentence fragments. V., v. bad. After Speedle leaves, Horatio looms over the body and decrees, "This guy's a pro. Prior planning, no witnesses, brought everything he needed." Megan notes, "He didn't get [beat] everything he wanted." Horatio says that the abductor is probably very frustrated right now, and Megan replies, "Means he's got to [beat] look for another victim." "Unless we get there first," Horatio intones. Then he dons his cape and cowl and speeds off to the HoratioCave, where his boy ward and British butler are waiting to help him fight crime. Megan and her cleavage turn around and address the issue of the little boy's clothes: "The clothes [beat] -- they've been worn. Where would he get them? [beat] From [beat] his own family? Or, more likely, [beat] he already had them." Horatio ignores her, electing to don the Crime Goggles and turn on the Crimescope. No, really. That's what the machine is called. Megan's got on her Crime Goggles too, and she whips the UV light around, aided by her cleavage. She confirms, "Affirmative [beat] on blood." Horatio notes, "Recycled from his last victim." Think globally, kill locally, I guess.
Delko, in the meanwhile, is drawing on his people skills to fingerprint everyone. He is the only person in this episode who isn't in a bad mood yet. That'll change the minute Horatio summons him to the loo. As Delko fingerprints people, they show up in a database. Welcome to John Ashcroft's America, y'all. Just then, a yuppie in training cuts in line to announce his credentials: "I'm a third-year law student at U of M." Speedle offers his congratulations. The law student demonstrates that all that tuition isn't going to waste when he says, "I know it's illegal for you to keep us here." Hasn't he been paying attention to who the attorney general in this country is? Delko says, "You're right, actually. But as a human being, I think you have an obligation to cooperate like everyone else, so why don't you get back in line for me, okay?" It's an impressive moral stand, but Delko forgets he's dealing with a would-be lawyer. Speedle is glaring in disgust. This surprises no one, right? After Don Jackball, Esq., is escorted back to his place in line, a nervous-looking blond guy asks, "Is that true? Can I go?" Speedle, whose look of disgust has crystallized into something approaching unalloyed misanthropy, smacks an adhesive tape on the guy's chest, lifts off glitter, and says shortly, "No, you can't. You know why? Because now you're a suspect. So go ahead and get comfortable, legally." Delko smiles a little, and Speedle mutters, "Jackass." Heh.
Sonata For Dead Moppet in C minor commences as Megan and her cleavage scoop up some of Ruthie's hair. Horatio examines the lock on the bathroom door and notes that it's broken. He's all, "So how'd he keep people out? There's nothing --" and then stops as he notices the orange "out of order" cone. "This is how he secured his privacy," Horatio says, and we see a flashback of the pedophile putting down the cone, thus blocking off the bathroom from would-be intruders. He then gets to the heart of the matter: "How did a grown man steal a five-year-old girl from a public place and nobody noticed?" Megan muses that the abductor could have been someone Ruthie trusted. Horatio goes to talk to Ruthie's mom to find out. The mom is looking considerably the worse for wear, which is unsurprising. Horatio comes in and displays his usual flair to communing with the bereaved: "Mrs. Crichton, did you guys know anyone here? Somebody she would have trusted?" Mrs. Crichton tearily replies no, and Horatio takes a moment to empathize. Mrs. Crichton continues, "She was too good for this earth. Like an angel from Heaven. Maybe that's not even her in that room. How can you be so sure? Maybe she got out." Horatio just gazes upon Mrs. Crichton, being acutely empathetic. Why is she alone in all this? Where is Mr. Crichton? It doesn't matter -- he's never mentioned, not as Ruthie's father, and not as a suspect, so it's best just to drop it now. Horatio whispers how sorry he is, and the camera swings back down to the security stamp on Mrs. Crichton's hand as someone cranks up the volume on The Grief Etude in G Major. The camera transitions from the adult's stamp to the child's as we see someone stroking Ruthie's hand, and then we flash to the moment of stamping where Ruthie sweetly lilts, "We're twins, Mom!"
The camera pulls back to the scene, showing Alexx as the one holding Ruthie's hand and looking extremely stricken. Showing a lot of gentleness in the way she handles Ruthie, Alexx says, "Facial edema and petechial hemorrhages indicate raised venous pressure concurrent with asphyxia." Horatio looks down and notes, "The blue around her lips is so turquoise, Alexx." Alexx explains, "Deoxygenated hemoglobin usually is more purple-blue, but cyanosis coloring is really subjective, and who knows, under these lights?" Horatio wonders why there are no bruises, and Alexx tells him, "Ecchymosis can take up to twenty-four hours to fully develop, but yeah, we should see at least minimal erythema if she was strangled, or ruptured capillaries around her mouth if she was smothered, and I see neither." Alexx looks seriously distraught by now, but Horatio keeps on topic by asking, "So how did he kill her?" Before Alexx can answer, a uniform comes in to tell him that the brass back at HQ is beginning to hover and the media have descended. Alexx pops back into the conversation to tell Horatio that the killer took a souvenir -- Ruthie's underwear. The two of them take a moment to look upset, and then we cut to Alexx and Horatio accompanying a stretcher with Ruthie's body outside. Predictably, reporters are shouting questions. A reporter asks, "Is it true she was raped? Is there any indication the killer will strike again soon?" Horatio addresses the microphone with: "I'm not going to comment on evidence, but what I will say is this animal provided us with a mountain of evidence and we will not sleep until we've been all the way through it, because beneath that mountain lies his grave. Thank you very much." Beneath a mountain lies a grave? So Horatio's telling us Balin the dwarf did this?
Back the morgue, Alexx is on the phone saying, "I don't want you giving Tiger any more potato chips. They're not good for kitties. Okay? Now have Daddy read you a story tonight. No TV. Yeah. I love you too, baby." So Alexx has a partner and at least one child. Can you imagine what bedtime must be like in that house? "Mom, quit asking me who did this to me. I'm seven, I can brush my own teeth and put on my pajamas. Now will you let me sleep?" Anyway -- Alexx, personal life, distress at the crime scene, all the pieces falling into place. She turns back to the autopsy table where Ruthie is. Megan comes in, and Alexx's very bad, no good, horrible day is complete. Megan says, "I got the results of the blue tint on her lips. Diglucose and propylene glycol, a.k.a. good old-fashioned candy." Alexx suspects that the candy could be how the murderer lured Ruthie away, and takes off points for lack of inventiveness. Alexx and Megan hunker down to take a look at Ruthie's head and neck, and Alexx notices a bluish blotch by Ruthie's ear. In order to figure out what it is, Megan blow-dries the area, then takes a magnetized tool and what look to be colored filings, then brushes the area. After she's done, she takes a portable UV wand, and studies the splotch.
Meanwhile, Calleigh is watching the security tapes, rewinding and watching children frolicking in the ball pen, then speeding up until we see Ruthie twirling in front of a mirror before turning to talk to someone who's right off-camera. Calleigh decrees, "He must have surveilled the place. He knew how to stay out of sight." When did "surveilled" hit the lingua franca? Is this another case of the pernicious linguistic phenomena known as "verbing"? We then see Ruthie walking down the hall, led by the hand by someone who's still off-camera. Calleigh asks her headset, "Where are you?" and Horatio replies, "Walking toward the bathroom." Calleigh monitors the security film, telling him, "I don't see you...I don't see you...hello, handsome. I can see your hand." Horatio then passes a display full of stuffed ducks. We determine that Horatio's managed to retrace the criminal's steps. As he hunkers on the floor, he tells Calleigh how the perp took the road less traveled (while he was absconding with someone's else child? No!), but left a footprint they could use. They lift the print and admire it.
Megan and an unnamed lab tech are going through a fingerprint database; I use my innate ability to take observation and infer conclusion to figure out that the splotch on Ruthie's neck must have yielded a fingerprint, which is now being compared to the prints in AFIS. He tells her there's no match; Megan expresses surprise: "You're kidding. I thought for sure this guy would be a repeat." After a moment staring at the screen, Megan concludes that the print's all screwed up. The tech agrees: "There's no central pocket loop." Megan begins hypothesizing with, "Human [beat] skin is an elastic surface. Maybe [beat] the print got stretched [beat] when we moved her." The tech counters that maybe they're not looking at one finger, but a cross-section of several different fingers.
Back at Zany Town, Delko, ever the consummate host, is ushering people out, bidding them to get some rest and drive safely. You just know half the people who left went to their cars saying, "What a nice boy. So unlike that surly cop." Then he turns around and runs into Calleigh. Although her arms are full, that won't stop her from taking whatever Delko's found and running with it. We find out that there were no prior convictions on anyone in the place, and the only reason four people are gathered in a seating area is because they refused to give prints. Calleigh looks at the guy in the glittery Acapulco tee (think poor man's Steve Zahn) and asks whether he gave prints. Delko replies, "No, but, uh, you think we could arrest him based on the fact that it's a little too creepy to be in one of these places without a kid?" Calleigh contemplates this for a moment, then hands her boxes of footprint lifters to Delko, asking him if he has any (fingerprint-)ridge building lotion. Delko does. She then lets down her hair -- which strikes me as wasted effort if this guy is a suspected child molester, as she's undoubtedly too old for his tastes -- and rubs the ridge building lotion into her hands. Delko catches on to what Calleigh's about to do and laughs, because obtaining evidence under false pretenses is funny. I'm sure Mr. Acapulco's lawyer will think so later too. Anyway, Calleigh sashays on over to the guy, sticks her hand out, and introduces herself. The man -- Brad Repkin -- reciprocates, and Calleigh conveniently drops her clipboard then. He picks up her clipboard, taking care to leave a fat, juicy thumbprint on it. Calleigh confirms Repkin's last name, then pivots without so much as a fare-thee-well. She comes over to Delko, who applauds her efforts within eyeshot of Mr. Repkin ("That's right, Your Honor. She obtained my client's prints under false pretenses before charging or arresting him, and her coworkers colluded."), then hands off her clipboard and her lifts to Delko. Naturally, he ends up taking everything back to the lab for her. Oh, that nice, dim Delko.
At the back of Zany Town, Horatio and the detective are noticing the unbarred service entrance. The detective tells Horatio that anyone who wants to enter or exit needs a code to do so. Horatio asks who might have access to the code, and the detective replies that the manager and six other employees do -- "two that were on shift, and four that we had to pull in. We looked at 'em real hard. They all checked out." This doesn't surprise Horatio. Then again, nothing really does. It's hard to surprise the omniscient, you know.
Switching scenes yet again, Megan comes barreling into the morgue, inquiring of Alexx, "You [beat] paged me?" It turns out the news Alexx wants to share is that Ruthie's fifth and six ribs on her right side were broken -- "the cracked rib punctured her lungs, her lungs fill with blood." We see this courtesy of the TMI screenshot; this show still hasn't worked up to the full-bore you-are-there glory of the CSI TMICam and its loving reenactments of gruesome wounds. Megan concludes that Ruthie was fighting her captor, so the guy got on top of her. Alexx concurs: "Cause of death: positional asphyxiation." Megan grimaces and says somberly, "Intentional [beat] evil." From a child molester? What are the odds? Before Megan can also declare that child molesters are sick, sick, sick, she's interrupted by a saucy lab tech who comes in and tells Alexx, "I wasn't expecting anything unusual, but --" Alexx reads the proffered clipboard: "Butalbitol." Megan says sadly, "He gave her barbiturates [beat] with her candy." I wonder why you wouldn't just skip the middleman: why not just down the barbiturates as if they were candy? That's how I'm planning on surviving November sweeps with this show. My dolls, my beautiful dolls...ahem. Where were we? Alexx points out, "Butalbitol's a fast-acting sedative. It wouldn't take a lot to knock a child out almost immediately." I suddenly wonder how Alexx handles bedtime at home. The tech interrupts again -- "I found something else." Alexx is all over it: "Antihistamine? The poor baby had a cold." Megan, whose pharmacopathological knowledge is apparently boundless and recalled on a moment's notice, says, "She wasn't struggling. [beat] She was convulsing." Alexx notes that antihistamines are contraindicative with butalbitol. Megan says (incorrectly), "She went into anaphylactic shock." For those of you playing along at home, anaphylactic shock is an allergic reaction wherein the immune system goes into overdrive after being exposed to an allergen that it's created antigens for in response to a exposure. The immune system overreacts; anaphylactic shock typically affects the respiratory area, and can involve swelling of the mucous membranes and suddenly reduced blood pressure. Funny how neither of those symptoms are mentioned here. Oh, that's right -- because Ruthie didn't have an anaphylactic reaction. Would it kill the people who write this show to try to get the science right? If so, can we make that a sweeps episode? Anyway -- Megan and Alexx conclude that the molester wasn't trying to crush Ruthie to death, but rather to revive her. Since CPR can crack ribs, this is how her ribs were broken. Megan chooses not to comment on the intentional evil inherent in reviving the child you're about to carry off for nefarious purposes, but simply says, "He wanted his time with her."
Meanwhile, back at Zany Town, Calleigh and Horatio are going over the carpet together, flashlights in one hand, tweezers in the other. Calleigh finds a gaudy-looking ring and bags it; Horatio finds a red drinking straw and bags that. Then, Calleigh hits pay dirt, as it were, finding a partially-eaten cotton candy cone. We flash to Ruthie accepting the cone right before Calleigh bags it. Just then, Speedle comes up and tells Horatio they've got a pretty sweet suspect. It's Repkin, who, in Speedle's words, is "real hard to get out of here. He's got glitter on his shirt, no ID, and refused to give us prints." Calleigh, who's not terribly concerned about the Fourth Amendment, says blithely, "I got 'em anyway." This revelation bothers nobody. Speedle says, "Delko just called from the print lab. This guy's a registered sex offender." Cut to Horatio and Calleigh glowering as Repkin's cuffed -- without a statement of why he's being detained, and without his rights being read to him -- and Horatio asks if Brad's got a car. Instead of replying that he's got the right to remain silent, Repkin leads them to his car outside. Oh, look, it's parked right to my rant for this episode, which is: I finally figured out why I dislike this show relative to the original CSI, and it all comes down to social accountability. Gil may be many things, but he provides ethical guidance for the people he supervises, and makes it clear that everyone is accountable for their work, to the justice system and to the victims. Horatio, on the other hand, has decided he's both judge and jury, and the only accountability anyone has is to him. It's mind-bogglingly egocentric, and it decimates any moral authority he might have had. So there you have it -- CSI makes the ego serve the case, and CSI: Miami makes the case serve the ego.
Anyway -- we're at the car. Repkin asks, "You can't search it, can you? I got rights, don't I?" Horatio thinks not: "You violated your parole when you came within a hundred yards of a child. You know the rules. So shut up." Sadly, Horatio is right about that -- but the point remains that they cuffed this guy based on an illegally obtained fingerprint and ID'd him on that, so it's not like Horatio's a model of ethical conduct here. Also, this would be a fine time to talk about the way state and federal governments trample on the civil rights of parolees, but I've already gone on one self-righteous rant during this recap, and y'all don't need another one so soon. When the trunk of the car opens, things don't look so good for Repkin: it's a little girl's suitcase.
It's also enough to stick Repkin in a room with Horatio, who says, "I understand you did quite a bit of time in solitary on your first conviction." Repkin dismisses the validity of this observation: "That was bogus charge -- my bitch ex-wife, she ruined my life." Horatio points out that Repkin's daughter also made a statement that Repkin touched her during a swimming lesson. In one of the few genuinely creepy moments of this episode, Repkin protests, "I would never hurt her." Notice how it's not a denial, and how it bespeaks a world of delusion in one sentence. Notice how Horatio mows right over that and paints a picture of prison life that makes the average stint at Oz look like a trip to Club Med. Repkin points out that Horatio doesn't have anything. Horatio disagrees: "I've got footprints, I've got glitter, I've got your record, and I'm about to match a fingerprint." Wait, wait, wait -- we haven't confirmed either the footprints or the glitter, so one of two things happened here: either there's been some sloppy storytelling, or Horatio is bluffing pending final lab tests. Either one sucks. But faced with some flimsy circumstantial evidence, Repkin folds, admitting that he was planning on meeting his daughter and abducting her. "It's my visiting day," he says, leaving me to wonder exactly how "visiting day" is defined in the Florida judicial system if it entails unsupervised quality time between sex offender and daughter. Horatio, however, is busy shoving his hypothesis down our throats: "Instead, you picked up a substitute, didn't you?"
Meanwhile, in a move designed to make things look bleaker for Repkin, Calleigh's looking for him on the security camera logs; she finds him standing in plain view and, in her words, "playing pocket pool." Once she sees that, she looks sickened. Then she finds Horatio and tells him, "[Repkin] was playing pocket pool just before the alarms went full blast, on camera, the whole time." Horatio realizes that this more or less negates Repkin as a suspect as he says, "On camera the whole time." Calleigh says, "But he still violated parole, and he is still going back to prison." See, I can't get over this, because they basically picked up the guy based on information that became available only after they illegally got his print. At this point, the spin-off the CSI brain trust does should be DA: Miami, where the perpetually put-upon Joe O'Rourke (Tate Donovan) and his team of lawyers (Felicity Huffman as his right-hand woman; Neil Patrick Harris, Scott Wolf, and Marisa Coughlan as the fresh-out-of-law-school prosecutors) have to try and handle the myriad legal problems the CSI team presents with each alleged perp they apprehend. Horatio isn't content with knowing that they're putting away this guy: "He is not our guy then. Do you know how many children a pedophile molests during a lifetime on average? A recent study says 150. One hundred and fifty." Calleigh asks, "What if they're caught?" Horatio replies, "Down to 65." Calleigh points out, "Then we can still save 85 children." "Let's work for that," he replies, and wheels off.
And now, time for the part of the show that had everyone rioting on the forums, and with good reason. It's Delko and Megan, trying together to decipher the mystery of the funky fingerprints -- the prints on Delko's cone match the one found on Ruthie's neck, and they're all quite odd, as they appear to be Frankenstein fingerprints instead of natural human loops and whorls. To make a long, tedious, and scientifically questionable story short: the perp has been doing a little homemade surgery on his fingertips, cutting and grafting different portions of one fingertip to another so that his prints form a patchwork mosaic and thus cannot be easily traced. Apparently, the molester does this for the same reason he cut Ruthie's hair and put her in little-boy clothes, i.e., none known to human minds. What the molester wasn't counting on: Megan and Delko's innate love of jigsaw puzzles, which enables them to cut apart the different fingertip mosaics and reconstruct them as the prints they were meant to be. Once they've done this, they discover the prints belong to one Stewart Otis. The only good thing to come out of this sequence is the revelation that Megan and Delko play off each other well; he tones her down, and she enhances his ability to make smart observations and come to conclusions.
Meanwhile, Speedle's cranked up the Skynryd while he scrapes glitter off the Zany Town vest. I'm sure the lyrics "I know who you are, baby" and the song title "On The Hunt" are entirely deliberate. I wonder if these guys have an entire iTunes playlist composed of songs that get them in the crime-solving mood? Anyway, Speedle's rocking out and mouthing the words as he works. Anything to cut the tedium of scraping sparklies, I guess.
Night passes, and it's early morning again, if the panoramic views of Miami are anything to go by. Horatio comes into a darkened room, where Calleigh's sitting with her head down on the table. He says her name softly, and Calleigh comes to immediately with, "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry, I closed my eyes just for a second." Horatio tells her bemusedly, "Don't worry about it -- you're a morning person." Calleigh keeps going: "Horatio, I don't know what happened." Horatio reassures her that she's fine. Then he asks her to look at one of the shoe prints and tell him if she sees anything odd. She does -- all the weight in the step is in the back, which indicates that the shoes were too large. After the two of them come to this conclusion, Horatio leans in and asks softly, "What would you like in your coffee?" "Sugar," Calleigh admits with a laugh. Wow -- when these two aren't trying, they're fun to watch together.
As Horatio's either going to or coming back from his coffee errand, Speedle sees him going by and shouts from a lab bench, "How he got in!" Horatio is understandably confused, so Speedle explains, "The glitter found on Ruthie is a match to the glitter found on the Zany Town vest. He must have stolen one; that's how he got in." Horatio deduces that it's how the perp got out too. He then goes to call in the stammering manager to see what light he can shed on this phenomenon.
Once the man's in the chair (as it were), he explains away the vest with, "It couldn't have been an employee. Nobody with a record can work there." Horatio moves on and asks how the killer could have had the code to the storage entrance. Bernstein (the manager) says he doesn't know how this happened. Horatio wants to know where the code is kept; Bernstein, demonstrating why he didn't go into a field like national security, admits, "On my desk." As Horatio points out, "In plain view for everyone to see -- that's using your head."
Speedle's moved on from the glitter and found something else interesting in the dirt from the prints: Papilio aristodemus ponceanus, also known as the swallowtail butterfly, and torchwood. Calleigh pipes up, "[This] book says swallowtail's a rare butterfly. Only three have been spotted in Biscayne National Park in the last four years." Yup -- according to the Nature Conservancy, the subspecies ponceanus is imperiled globally, although as a whole, P. aristodemus is apparently secure. Horatio grabs a map so he can begin tracing location based on the eggs. Just then, Megan and her cleavage come in to share the news about Stewart Otis -- "registered pedophile, long record [beat] starting at age twelve." Horatio realizes that all they need is an address. Sadly, it would appear that Stewart's in violation of Megan's Law and has not registered his domicile as required by law. Horatio points out, "If he changed his prints, there's a chance he changed his name, so let's do a property search for the name Otis anywhere in or around Biscayne National Park." That works -- William and Margaret Otis live at 2430 Black Creek Rd., Miami, FL. . Horatio notes, "That's a quarter-mile from the park. Let's go."
The team hauls ass to get over there. Yup, it's creepy: think "hillbilly" meets "Dahmer." Horatio hollers for everyone to grab their kits and gloves and go. Cue the black-and-white photos of the scene: a coffee table covered in markers and papers with children's drawings, shelves of stuffed toys, a row of little girl's shoes. Calleigh puts down the camera, somewhat shaken. She drifts out of camera range, and we see Horatio shining his light on the walls and confirming that pedophiles have bad taste in art. Just then, Horatio notices a shelf full of tapes and quips, "Well, he's not shy about his pornography." Calleigh's back on black-and-white photo duty, snapping what amounts to a shrine: pictures of little girls on the wall and occasional table, with stuffed toys underneath. Before either she or Horatio can say anything, Speedle comes out, looking queasy. He drops a big container filled with videotapes on the floor, and comments, "This is just the tip of the iceberg." Horatio only replies, "Wow." He notices a toy with dust on it and concludes, "He doesn't live here." Megan's left with the dopey line, "He plays here." She's walking through the house, spraying it down with luminol, and she finds something -- semen, blood, who knows? -- on the arm of the couch. Meanwhile, Horatio's found an array of uniforms and a very big pair of shoes in the closet. He then walks into an alcove where Delko's staring at a number of milk cartons lined up like sentries, a picture of a different missing child on each one. Delko stammers, "I don't know...these cartons...he must, uh, he must keep them as some sick kind of trading cards." Horatio looks out the window conveniently located to the shelf, to the vast and empty yard, and concludes, "They're not trading cards. They're headstones."
Cut to everyone in the backyard at night, working under the glare of flood lamps as Alexx announces the results of their labor thus far: four children's bodies, and one partial body. She's about to head out to the office to prep an autopsy room for the remains, but she adds, "At this point, closure's the only thing we can give these families." Megan says, "Until we catch this guy." Horatio hunkers down in front of a pile of dirt, cradles a doll that was apparently buried with the body the mound is hiding, and takes a little me-time for the brood that refreshes. He then calls for Alexx to assess the body in question. Citing the sandy soil as a deterrent to bodily decomposition and noticing the relatively good condition of the body, she figures that the last little girl was killed three to four weeks ago. Alexx and Horatio figure that Otis is accelerating between kills, which means that he's more likely to slip up. At this point, having a CSI team camped out in your yard seems like it would qualify as a mondo gaffe, but what do I know? Horatio says, "He's more likely to make mistakes." Alexx leans down and says to the body, "Maybe you can tell us some of them, angel." Oh, and she was doing so well, too -- no talking to the dead bodies until the fifty-minute mark. The camera pulls back so we can see Horatio hovering over Alexx -- give him points for improvising in the field -- while the boy soprano carries on.
Back at the lab, Horatio's pulling a pair of little girl's underpants out of an envelope and telling Speedle, "This is from the little girl we dug up at the house." Which one? Speedle sighs, then looks down at the scrap of fabric to ask, "Is that blood?" Yup. Speedle says disgustedly, "This freak plays with them like toys." "Until they break," Horatio replies. After a lengthy and extensive examination sequence, Speedle comes back with the results: a carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen mixture, plus some propylene glycol, sugar, and blue dye #1. Horatio notes, "Well, there's our cotton candy." Speedle understandably wonders how it got in the underwear. Horatio's got no good answers until they realize that the cotton candy is still in raw crystal form, so the perp must be a cotton-candy vendor.
Cut to Megan and her cleavage -- and I am happy to report that we're seeing an unprecedented amount of uncovered breast, so the exposure : progress of the case indicator is apparently accurate -- coming up to a cotton candy vendor, getting a cone, and bagging it immediately. Horatio, who's been hovering in the back, says sharply, "Hey, Stewart. How's the cotton-candy business?" A plain-faced young man looks up sharply, realizing exactly what's going on as Horatio apprehends him. The boy soprano starts in again, so we know we've got the right guy, but the sliced-and-diced fingertips more or less give it away, and the Sir Golf-a-Lot uniform Stewart was walking around with certainly doesn't add any ambiguity to the case. The uniforms yank Stewart Otis off to a waiting squad car, leaving Horatio and Megan to glare the glare of the righteous, as the boy soprano teams up with a tinkling piano to drive home the pathos of whole episode like a railroad spike to the skull.
Then there's an interrogation scene, which is so brief and laughable as to not be worth recounting here. Horatio's predictably disgusted by Stewart's pornography stash, and then blames the whole child-molestation thing on it with, "It's my guess you couldn't come by the real thing, and so you put on your phony uniform and went trolling for a little girl." Well, yeah, pretty much. Any other questions? No. Stewart attempts to demonstrate the depths of his pathology with "she was flirting with me," but given that this guy's gotten all of thirty second's screen time, it's hardly got any plausibility, and therefore, no impact. Meanwhile, that damn boy soprano just keeps carrying on. Horatio then brings out the anaphylactic shock rap (which is as wrong now as it was half an hour ago), and Stewart admits that he's miffed Ruthie had the appalling bad grace to die before he could kill her. Horatio tells him, "Life, Stewart, is filled with disappointment." God knows that gets brought back to me with gale force every Monday at 10 PM.
In the closing minutes, we see Alexx on the floor, reading Hansel and Gretel -- a tale about child abduction and murder, natch -- to her two children. As she's reading, she notices that her daughter has the same type of kiddie Band-Aid on her hand as Ruthie had on hers, and Alexx loses her composure. She stops for a moment to cuddle her children, then says haltingly, "I want to talk to you guys about bad people..." The camera pulls back on Alexx collecting herself and straightening up before continuing her thoughts. It's a great scene for Khandi Alexander, and a wonderful way to end the episode.
EXCEPT THAT THE EPISODE ISN'T OVER! Argh! In what qualifies as the creepiest scene of the night, Horatio's dressed all in black, watching children play in a park. You can practically hear him thinking, I will protect you, children. You are all my little lambs, so vulnerable, and I will protect yoooooooou. Don't be afraid of the lurking man on the bench. He's here for yoooooou. And that's how the episode ends: with an emotionally disturbed man scoping out children in a park.