By Sobell
Before we begin this recap, I want to share with you one of my favorite cinema rants, delivered by Truman Capote in the movie Murder by Death: "You've tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now, the tables are turned. Millions of angry mystery readers are now getting their revenge. When the world learns I've outsmarted you, they'll be selling your $1.95 books for twelve cents."
While it's an amusing look at the economics of the day (the day being 1976), the main lesson I took away as a young girl was this: My God, does Obi Wan Kenobi make an oddly beguiling woman. No, wait, that was a tangential observation. The real main lesson I took away was this: a truly well-written, well-executed mystery lays all the clues out in plain sight, but does so in a way that manages to simultaneously entertain the audience, while permitting them the opportunity to solve the mystery over the course of its unfolding. While last-minute revelations are handy for sloppy writers, they're far more shocking if the astute reader or viewer realizes the clues have been leading to that conclusion all along. Think about The Sixth Sense for a moment or the movie Malice, which is one of the most economically-written mysteries made in the last ten years.
Why am I telling you all this now? Oh, no reason.
Day breaks over Miami, and a pint-sized hottie is preparing for his job at a morning show, wondering why on Earth he left politics. Elsewhere in Miami, a woman is sleeping while someone whispers hoarsely, "Julisa" just out of camerashot. The alarm goes off at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m., and she pops right awake, rolling over and mumbling, "¿Aure?" to a pile of pillows. Plainly, she expects someone to be there. "¿Aurelio?" she calls. As Julisa walks down the hall, her name echoes in a hoarse whisper. I imagine if she were more awake, she'd be all creeped out. After one repetition of her name, Julisa asks, "¿Que estas haciendo aqui?" Which is, of course, not at all what the closed captioning said. How nice to know it's capable of bilingual gaffes. Anyway, Julisa asks why Aurelio didn't come to bed last night, and as she walks around to the front of the chair where Aurelio is sitting, the ominous synthesizer swells and we see that Aurelio's sporting a collar made of plumbing pipe. "Ayudame," he whispers. The camera pans down to the note pinned on his chest, which looks as though William Carlos Williams composed it in PowerPoint:
this is aBOMB
deliver 50,000 dollars
in the four hours
put the money in a brown paper bag
call 555-0187
do not call the police
Ah. So much depends on a little red fuse ...
So after Julisa screams, the first thing she does is call the police. Approximately two dozen squad cars pull up, sirens screaming, along with the bomb squad action van. A man gets out of the van, his tucked-in shirt and Dockers simply screaming "loving husband and father." He orders "no-one within 500 feet!" This man, by the way, is Al Humphries; the show will take its sweet time introducing people by name, but I won't.
We then switch to the bomb scene leading the morning news on Channel 3 WORX (Channel Three Works?). Horatio watches intently. In the background Delko asks, "How 'bout a cuppa coffee, H?" and Horatio answers in a somewhat pinched voice, "No thank you." Just then, Calleigh comes in, chirping, "That smells good." Delko replies, "Cafe Cubana? It'll put the hair on your chest." "Don't you just say the sweetest things," Calleigh smoothly replies. Hmmm...bouncing into the room, coming up with comebacks instead of hissing at the light -- Calleigh's one of those morning people I hear so much about, isn't she? Delko comes slouching into the room and mumbles, "That stuff's not good for you. It will rot your stomach out." Then he pops a soda, so we can all smirk knowingly at the situational irony. Except me, because I'm smirking in recognition. Delko asks Horatio if the bombing is serious; Horatio answers by ordering, "Change the channel." Delko does: Channel 5 (WPOK) features the bomb scare, as does Channel 4 (no station ID, only the CBS Eye) and Channel 11 (station ID too small to read). Okay, so it's serious. But how seriously disturbing is it to contemplate this crew hearing about a crime from the news? I mean, it beats having a giant Horatio signal the commissioner has to light, but the news? Given that news crews are listening to the police scanners for breaking stories, shouldn't these people -- who ostensibly work for the police department -- be doing likewise?
Cut to a humvee pulling up, and Horatio jumping out. He immediately quips, "I didn't know they made body armor in triple-extra-large." Al turns around and shoots back, "They make jockeys this size too, but you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Actually, going by the way those two are smiling at each other, maybe he does...the two men grin for another minute, then do one of those torso-pounding hetero-guy hugs. Al says, "Horatio Caine, back from the dead. Found any good fiber lately?" "Just enough to keep me regular," Horatio says, before segueing into an inquiry about the crime scene. What we have is a Schedule-80 PVC collar clamped around the victim's neck, with Al going in to "John Wayne" it. Horatio looks mildly alarmed as he says, "That's not the way you taught us, big man." Big Man replies that he's got no choice, as disarming the bomb remotely isn't an option. Horatio replies that Al has the best hands in the business. And something tells me we'll be seeing those hands fly by us at 60 miles per hour in a few minutes. All that's left to seal this guy's death warrant is any one of the following: a. revealing that he's about to catch a plane to Bethesda so he can drop off the cure for cancer with the NIH; b. mentioning that a lucky lottery ticket worth millions is in his pocket, and he's going to cash it as soon as he defuses the bomb; c. popping over to appear in the opening minutes of a Six Feet Under episode. Horatio watches Al walk over to grab his kit with a fond smile on his face; as Al picks up his case, he turns back to Horatio and says, "Look, I've got to go do this thing, but let's grab a beer later. Catch up." Okay, that works too. So long, Al.
And now, time for the formality. As Aurelio trembles under his ransom slide, he tells Al, "I keep my insurance policies in a wall safe upstairs." Al says calmly, "That's good to know. I keep mine in a sock drawer." I hope someone who's nowhere near the blast zone is noting this for the survivors. Aurelio stammers, "Would you tell my wife...tell her I love her." "I'm kind of busy at the moment," snaps Al. Oh, he does not. Nor does he take the time to ponder what kind of freak explosion would blow up only one person in the room. Anyway, Al's all, "You can tell her yourself in a few minutes. You two will be knocking back mojitos in no time." Al busts out a drill, and as it begins whirring, we cut to a shot of Horatio outside, examining what looks to be an x-ray of the bomb. Immediately after a bird chirps in the still morning air, the windows are blown out in an explosion. A gust of air rifles the x-ray and then Horatio puts it down to look up, the actual sounds of glass breaking and fireballs whooshing apparently not being enough to hold his attention. He takes off his glasses, looking genuinely shaken. We then pan back to the window; the fireball has subsided, leaving a remarkably intact wall. Horatio looks stunned, and puts his fingers up near his right ear; they come away bloody. Just as he mouths the word, "No," Roger Daltrey screams, "Yeah," and we're at the credits.
And we go to commercials. Is it just me, or does White Oleander look like Divine Secrets of the Aryan Sisterhood? Did someone hire Leni Riefenstahl to make a chick flick?
Back on the show, we get a few aerial shots of Miami. A second hummer screeches to a halt on the scene, carrying the non-Horatio members of the squad -- oh, did they see the explosion on television? Is that how they knew to come? Calleigh, Speedle and Delko get out and immediately run into Megan, whose mode of transportation to the crime scene is, and shall remain, a mystery. Megan is stil having trouble adjusting to the "I'm no longer the boss of you" idea. She's also having trouble stringing together many syllables smoothly, but it's nowhere near as bad as last week. In my world, this counts for progress. Megan fills us in: "[Al] brought [Horatio] on to the bomb squad, trained him. They were close. Give me a minute alone with him, okay?" A minute? Feel free to take the episode -- you will anyway. She wanders off, and the Bob-white Club just kind of stands around awkwardly.
Inside the house, Horatio is busy looking at what's left of Al, which can't be healthy. As Megan comes in, we also see what's left of Aurelio. Hint: not much. She walks in, casing the scene, and Horatio stands up in a visible effort to pull himself together. He begins, "The victim's name is, uh, Aurelio Moreno. He's a...successful...Colombian importer. This is obviously the seat of detonation right here. The shattering effect here indicates high explosive and frag pattern indicates that the explosive was, uh, was packed up front. Everything above the neck blown away. Below remains intact." Megan finally speaks up to say, "Horatio, this [beat] isn't a great idea." Oh, Megan, you're speaking for more people than you know. Horatio wants to know if the Bob-white Club is outside; Megan confirms they are. She then says, "You should stand down, let us work this one." Horatio says very slowly and evenly, "This is a crime scene like any other." Megan tries another tack: "You should at least wait for the ME to clear the bodies." Still speaking in that hyper-controlled voice -- which is a nice touch, because it really does give the impression that he's about two seconds away from losing it -- Horatio says, "What I need you to do is, I need to get everybody in here right now to process this -- I want every hair, nail, fiber, I want every ounce of Al's blood recovered. There are no other crime scenes in Miami today." I'm sure that will come as good news to everyone fortunate enough to be committing crimes today. Megan gives him a wary look. Then he walks off, leaving her holding her bag and staring at the bodies.
Cut to Horatio explaining the three kinds of damage the room sustained: frag from the container itself, thermal effect from the release of the gasses, and blast pressure. What, the blood all over the place doesn't count? Speedle actually brings us a Minute Of Science as he says, "[The blast pressure is] potentially the most damaging. Blast pressure forces air outward in a shock front of up to 29,000 feet per second." We then see this blast pressure, pushing the window out and happening to roast a bird in its path; its piteous cry is really the cherry on that sensory sundae. Calleigh questions Speedle's science. "I happen to read books, okay?" he snaps. Calleigh rolls her eyes before asking him, "What does your book say about this?" "This" happens to be bird fricassee. Speedle has an answer: "Blast pressure has two phases -- positive and negative. When the air is pushed outward, it creates a vacuum in the center." Cut to a shot of Delko. Insert your own joke here. Calleigh asks, "So everything gets sucked back in." Well, if the TMICam explosion is anything to be believed, yes. Irked that someone else should demonstrate actual competence in their field, Horatio cuts in, "It also means the components from this device are still in this room. They're in a thousand pieces, but we should find them. So, Calleigh, let's find out who had access to the house --" the better to minimize her camera time, " -- Eric, we've got to find that ransom note --" because he can only be trusted with simple tasks, "and Speed, you, Megan and I will look for the bomb." Hint: you're starring in it. Gosh, my hostility has reached all-time highs, and I'm only ten minutes into the show. Who knows what splenetic wonders are around the corner? Megan quips, "Find the bomb, find the bomber." Investigator, find thyself.
Cut to Horatio squinting real hard at a wall. What he's looking at is a small depression, and that depression is filled with Al's giant, bloodstained wedding ring. Horatio looks all regretful before dropping the ring in an envelope. Meanwhile, Calleigh's inspecting a doorway. She notices a tiny piece of honeycomb-like fabric caught in the jamb and pulls it down. The camera then gives us the super-close-up of her eye, as if to emphasize what acute vision she has. We then switch to her explaining to Horatio as they're leaving, "the bomber came in through an unlocked window in the maid's room. Yesterday was her regular day off." Horatio deduces that the bomber knew the Moreno household routines. Calleigh fills in, "Moreno's wife said he liked to stay up late and watch TV. My guess is, he got jumped right in the middle of Letterman." Speedle interjects, "Top Ten ways to get your head blown off." Heh. Calleigh and Horatio give him identical disapproving glares. Speedle backpedals. Calleigh also mentions the fabric, which will be heading to Trace. Now it's Delko's turn to play show-and-tell: he found the note, which is okay, save for a few flash burns and some blood splatters. Everyone reads it, and Megan's all, "Fifty grand? Did you see the size of that place -- he could have asked for ten times that." Horatio dispatches Delko to the chemical processing lab with the ransom note.
This leaves Horatio and Megan alone. She asks if he's okay; Horatio claims he is. Horatio, it's okay to cry. Crying gets the sad out. Rosey Grier said so. Horatio then drops Al's wedding ring in a small evidence envelope, an action which does not escape Megan's notice. "What are you doing?" Horatio replies tightly, "I'm giving Al's wife his wedding ring back." "That's evidence," Megan protests. "I know that," Horatio replies. "You can't just give it away," Megan says. Horatio says in the same tight voice, "I am not giving it away. I am giving it back." Then he takes off. Do you think that will teach Megan the value of phrasing her arguments more carefully? Me neither.
Cut to the morgue, where Alexx is explaining, "Avulsive destruction of the face and frontal calvarium. Thermal damage to the epidermis at the edges of the defect." Snapping out of medspeak, she says, "Thought I'd seen everything." Megan expresses her surprise that Moreno still has anything resembling a head left. Alexx concurs. Then she notes that her hasty tox tests found traces of chloroform in Moreno's system. Megan realizes that's how the bomber got the collar on him; we see the flashback that concurs with her realization. Alexx then turns to Moreno and says to the fleshy gibbets where his face used to be, "You didn't know what hit you, did you, sugar?" Actually, he seemed very aware of the bomb prior to its detonation, but I'm guessing Alexx was right in the sense that Moreno did not have the benefit of Speedle's lecture prior to experiencing the two phases of blast pressure up close and personal. Trying not to look squeamish (and failing), Megan grimaces, "The rest of him doesn't look too bad, all things considered." Alexx happily throws open the skin flaps on Moreno's torso to prove Megan wrong. We see what looks like a pizza after the delivery boy's dropped the box. Megan says, "My God ... what happened?" Alexx explains: "White butterfly effect. Overpressure can cause massive internal damage. Lungs burst. Other organs turn to soup." We then get a TMICam-style reenactment, only it's the artsy TMICam, so there's the Transparent Bones Photoshop filter and the big splotches of liquid filter, and the overall effect is neither entertaining nor informative. As Alexx fusses about the body, she asks, "How's Horatio holding up?" Megan says he's fine. Alex whips around and gives Megan a look. Megan melts under the power of Alexx's scrutiny, saying weakly, "At least, that's what he told me." Still looking as though she's about to casually read someone's mind, Alexx says to Megan, "He told me he wanted to be down here for Al." Megan's shocked -- either that Horatio would deign to enter the morgue, or that Alexx would actually let him. Alexx continues, "He said he could handle it," then rolls her eyes at Horatio's willful stubbornness. Megan asks how Alexx handled it. Alexx replies, "Told him I didn't need him down here -- but I knew someone who did."
Before we go to the scene, folks, say goodbye to Alexx, because you won't be seeing her again tonight. Goodbye, Alexx! Have fun talking to the dead people!
And now, on to the people who need Horatio. No, not the remaining crime victims in Miami. There are no other crimes today, remember? We're at a house with a swimming pool, with two boys happily splashing around. Al's wife, Felicia, says shakily, "We've missed you since you left the squad." Horatio replies, "It's been too long, Felicia." Felicia smiles a little as she says, "Al was just saying, we need to have you over for dinner some time." Horatio's wearing a regretful little smile as he says, "I'd like that." And now, it's time for Felicia to work through processing the news of Al's death: "He never wanted to talk about...we always knew there was the possibility something could go wrong." Horatio leans in even closer and says, "Felicia, everything I am, I owe to Al, everything I know, he taught me." This is just what the widow needs to hear. She begins sobbing, asking, "How do I tell them? What do I say to them?" Horatio turns to her and says, "You know what, Felicia? I don't want you worrying about it. I want you to let me handle it. (now whispering) This is for you." Back off, Horatio! She's had a hell of a day already -- you getting all whispery in her personal space isn't making it any easier. He then hands Felicia her husband's mangled and bloodstained wedding band, then goes off to ruin the kids' days. I imagine he'll traumatize them for years: "Remember when Mommy sent the strange whispering guy to tell us Dad had died? Boy, did that mess me up inside."
Cut to the Bob-white Club, doing science in a montage. Because this is CSI: Miami and we cannot be allowed to forget for one minute that David Caruso and Kim Delaney have brought their "chemistry" to the show, the camera promptly switches to Megan and Horatio squinting intently at little bitty pieces of metal too. The montage skids to a halt as Horatio says shortly, "It's not here." What's not here? Is the deliberate exclusion of information supposed to pique our interest? Megan says, "Casing came back positive for TATP. Homemade explosive -- very sensitive. Wouldn't want to get the shakes." Horatio thinks that the bombmaker's a pro. Speedle replies, "Well, he sure made a beauty. Dummy switches, alternate power source, collapsing circuits ..." Complete lack of explanation over how any of this stuff works. I realize nobody wants to produce the television show linked to the headline, "Unsupervised 10-year-old Builds Bomb, Blows Up Trailer After Viewing TV Show," but there's no point in tossing around all these components if you're not going to explain why they indicate someone's a professional or how they affect the way a bomb detonates. I'm not expecting anyone to break out the Tom Clancy-style "neener, neener, I did my research" monologues, but some actual exposition where the viewer is clued into what the hell all this means would be nice. And now, Horatio's throwing a hissy over a missing component, the "action switch." Speedle protests that the Bob-white Club went through the scene on their hands and knees. Horatio's not impressed: "Let me say it again: it's not here." Speedle blurts out the sentence that will lead us all to another object lesson about how much smarter Horatio and Megan are than the people they work with: "Evidence can't get up and walk out of a room." Megan replies that it can. Cut to Megan, Speedle and Horatio watching a recording of the explosion's news footage, focusing on the fireman tramping around. "There it goes," Megan says. "So let's get it back," Horatio replies.
Well, he'll have to get it back after the commercials. In the meantime, maybe he can go find some more bereaved people to whisper at.
After checking out a few more shots of Miami's freeways, we're back in the lab with Horatio, who's peering intently at the sole of a fireman's boot. Speedle comes in with more boots and gives us a clue as to the scope of the task they're doing by noting that three separate engine companies responded to the bomb call. Horatio's not fazed: "We're going to check them all." Or he's going to check until he finds something significant, like a photocell. "This is what killed Al," Horatio says, without bothering to elaborate further. Speedle says, "I'm sorry about that, H." Ever the soul of courtesy, Horatio responds, "Yeah, me too." Then he gazes soulfully into the camera before whispering again, "Me too." It's about you, you, you, Horatio. Did it ever occur to you Al might be sorry he's dead too?
In the meantime, we have Megan to distract us. She walks in and asks, "Calleigh? You got something on the fabric for me?" Calleigh does: "Flanders mesh, size 10, 32-count Pella linen." Megan establishes that it's French lace. Delko comes in and Calleigh turns around to say, "Our bomber's quite a clothes hound. He has expensive taste." And she's telling Delko this because he knows his way around the inside of a closet? You're talking about a man who lives in gym attire. Megan raises the point that the bomber could be a woman by pointing out that a lot of women's clothing is made with French lace: "Blouses, scarves..." "Lingerie," Delko cuts in. Both women look at him, stunned. Delko shrugs: "What? Sometimes I just like to feel pretty." Kidding! He invents a cover story about buying lingerie for women on Valentine's Day. There's an awkward little moment before Megan thinks to ask about the note. Delko's been busy: "I ran thin-layer chromatography on the ink. It's a garden-variety laser printer, and you can find them at any copy shop. It made me realize I was barking up the wrong tree." Delko hands over a report and Megan says, all surprised, "You analyzed the paper." Well, what the hell did you think he was going to analyze, Megan? Anyway, Delko tells us all about the paper: "It's bagasse pulp -- a treeless fiber. It's made from sugarcane pulp, it's imported primarily from Colombia." Megan pauses for a moment to sound out that big word ("Colombia"), then says, "We need to find out if any local stores sell this." Delko's ahead of her on that: "There are four high-end stationery stores in Dade County. All of them are sold out, and they're awaiting a shipment from a Colombian import company that's owned by one Aurelio Moreno. And I did some other fact checking. There's been a string of necklace bomb cases just like this one in and around Bogota. The bombers stalk their victims for weeks, get their routines down cold. They pick only high-profile targets that are wealthy enough to pay the ransom." Everyone takes a moment to digest how easily all those coincidences came together before determining that the latest shipment of paper is impounded in Customs, and finding out who had access to it might be a good idea.
Cut to Miami's pristine waterfront district. Then cut to the inside of a warehouse. We know it's a warehouse because the lighting is terrible and there are fences topped with barbed wire for that industrial feel. All that's missing is Steve Perry assuring me that someday, love will find me and break those chains that bind me. Anyway, Delko's crouching over a flat and someone comes over to introduce himself: "Charlie Barringer, Customs." After Delko introduces himself, Barringer says, "So my boys tell me you're looking for paper." Delko tells him, "Coded watermarks, actually. It's a design pressed into the liquid paper stock. It can tell us when a particular lot was manufactured." We pull back and see that Delko actually appears to be sitting on top of a very big container, with Barringer standing. Anyway, the watermarks appear to match, so Delko asks if the area is restricted, or if anyone who likes looking for watermarks can wander on in. Barringer tells us, "Security guards, dockworkers, plus any number of Federal inspectors on a regular basis" can all wander among the goods with impunity. Delko wants to know if any of them had it in for Moreno. Barringer repeats, "Moreno?" and chomps on his toothpick contemplatively. He then continues, "That's a real piece of business. He's been investigated by the Cargo Cats...Cargo Cats, it's a name we have for ourselves on the countersmuggling task force." Did they get jackets made too? Delko asks if there's a file on Moreno -- conveniently enough, there is. The two of them have headed outside to read the file, and Delko notes that Moreno wasn't doing too badly. Barringer corrects him: "Better than all right. Nothing moved between south Florida and Colombia without going through him first." Once Delko's flipped to the back of the folder, he stops and looks at a photo, puzzled. "Who's this?" he asks, and we see an attractive young woman with a lot of hair. Barring says, "That's his wife. Lauriana." The lascivious grin on his face as he says the woman's name makes me want to take a shower. Delko smiles as he says, "That's not his wife." Barringer leans in, "Esposa number two. You didn't know that?" Obviously he didn't, dickweed. Meanwhile, Delko just looks at Barringer, but you can tell he wishes he had called him a dickweed too.
Back at the lab, Horatio's finally getting around to explaining what's going on: "For a bomb to do its job, it needs three components. It needs a power source, it needs an action switch, and it needs an explosive load." Speedle takes over, and tells Megan, "we wired in a photocell like the one we found melted into the fireman's boot." Horatio jumps in, "So, Al followed a render-safe procedure, and he drilled in, in an attempt to disrupt the power source." Horatio begins show-and-tell by drilling his bomb model. Speedle, eager to demonstrate what he's been learning, tells us all, "Once the pipe was breached, the light hit the photocell and closed the circuit." We see this courtesy of a TMICam shot that...that follows a spark down the wire to what is apparently the explosive load. Megan wonders what kind of person makes such a diabolical bomb; Horatio is more than happy to tell her. "Bombers are ego-driven. They make bombs to gain control, get revenge, sow terror. Some believe they've been betrayed by society." Maybe some bombers just like to blow shit up. Ever think of that, Horatio? Whatever happened to just plain crazy? Anyway, Delko takes Horatio's monologue as his cue to enter stage right and fill everyone in on Moreno's bigamy -- and he brings pictures to hammer the point home. The women look remarkably similar. That seems risky to me -- it makes more sense to make sure the wives look different, so you're not inadvertently confusing Julisa for Lauriana at a bad time. But that's just me. Long story short: wife #2 is in town, and Speedle wonders if perhaps this is intramarital warfare. Horatio wants to talk to the wives. Of course he does -- how can he resist talking to two more widows?
Cut to Julisa telling Horatio, "I don't know anyone who would want to hurt him. He was hard-working. Aurelio was a good man, honest. He loved his family." Meanwhile, Lauriana is telling Megan, "My husband was very devoted to family. He traveled quite a bit, but he hated to be away from us. If there was even a weekend he could get away, he would come home." Julisa has her own travel tales: "Of course he had to travel for business, but he hated it. He didn't like to be away from me." According to Lauriana, "He never wanted to leave me. I miss him so much." Julisa agree, "I miss him so much." Naturally, Horatio's there for Julisa in this, her time of bereavement. He then asks if he can swab Julisa's hand. Horatio, a hint: she's newly single, not newly stupid. Meanwhile, Megan's asking Lauriana the same thing; Lauriana pulls back her hand and we can all see that not only does she have the same manicure as Julisa, she's got the same wedding band set. Oh, that's kind of creepy. Megan tells Lauriana it's to rule out cross-contamination on the crime scene. Hey, wait -- how did they explain the crime scene to Lauriana -- "We're sorry, but your husband blew up in his other home across town?" And has she managed to not watch the news? Is she stupid as to not put the pieces together? I can see Julisa not realizing she's got company in the Mrs. Moreno department, but this woman? Ah, well -- too bad we never find out. Meanwhile, we see that Lauriana's wearing a French lace blouse.
Cut to Horatio saying, "So old Aurelio's got it coming and going." Oh, that's not creepy at all. Megan spits, "Plus he got a two-for-one discount on clothing and jewelry." In an awestruck tone, Horatio wonders, "Where does he find the energy?" I'm going to assume the prospect of two widow conquests at once has Horatio mixing up his tenses. In the meantime, the two Mrs. Morenos wait for the elevator -- Lauriana in a black top and white skirt, Julisa in a white top and black skirt -- seemingly oblivious to each other. Horatio goes to run the hand swab sample, leaving Megan to watch the two women and stare intently.
Cut to Horatio pipetting his little widow-loving heart out. He then puts his samples in the centrifuge and does a little brooding to pass the time. The results spit out. Minutes later, Megan comes into an early lab, yawning her good mornings, and Horatio gives her the results: Julisa's hands were clean, but Lauriana had trace elements of triacetone and triperoxide (TATP). This is our bomber." Only if you're on Law and Order and it's time to go to the Sam Waterson portion of the show, my man. You're nowhere near your bomber, but nice try. Megan more or less points out the same thing: "All your years on the bomb squad [beat]...how many [beat] were women?" Horatio admits it will be his first woman. So this is kind of like a tender, coming-of-age story about a boy and his bomber? He goes on to say that he's already called INS to detain Lauriana -- who, frankly, sounds like she's from Columbia, Ohio, as opposed to Colombia -- and Megan says, "Horatio, listen to yourself." He does, Megan. Every day. Horatio commands her to listen to him: "This woman is not going anywhere until I clear her." Megan rebuts, "How can anyone go anywhere with you running [beat] roughshod over the evidence? Can't you see this isn't about you finding out [beat] what happened to Al?" The two of them have a little moment where they're both being all torn up inside, and then Megan decides to play the dead husband card. "The day Sean died, I was at a scene. Restaurant shooting. Girl killed by her boyfriend. I didn't realize Sean had gone across the street to the boyfriend's apartment. He found him on the 14th floor balcony, ready to jump. Sean tried to talk him down, like any good cop would do. Guy took them over the side. I saw them hit. Didn't know who it was at first. I worked that case. I insisted on it. I wanted to be there for him. I couldn't." There's an object lesson buried in here somewhere, no doubt, but Horatio's too busy brooding to notice what it is. Megan ends with, "Grief is grief, work is work. Don't confuse the two." Parts is parts, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, and hack writing is hack writing. Whatever! Don't rely on false analogies for profundity. The point of the entire monologue sails over Horatio's head as he sulks, "You're thinking I missed something." Megan composes herself and asks, "Did you notice Lauriana's hair and nails?" No, because he was putting the moves on Julisa. Megan continues, "Acetone [beat] and peroxide. [beat] Base elements of TATP. Also of nail polish and hair dye." Would it kill the writers to stick to basic subject-verb sentence construction? I feel like Lionel Twain rebuking Sidney Wang in Murder by Death: "It! It is confusing! Say your goddamn pronouns!" Anyway, Megan continues, "Those two women [beat] didn't bat an eye on the elevator. I'm a woman and I'm telling you, they don't know each other." You're going on women's intuition, Megan? Where's the evidence for that? Megan keeps blathering on, "They probably have no idea the other exists." Given Lauriana's obliviousness to the local newscasts where her husband's death led the broadcast, or even regarding his whereabouts when he died, that's not hard to believe.
Horatio and Megan brood at each other for a moment while the piano plays music that signifies...I don't know. Apathy, in my case. Horatio's saved by the cell. "We've got another bomb," he announces.
At the bomb scene, Horatio just strides on into command central and hovers over the woman running the scene, one Ms. Cabera. "Any closer and I might have to file a sexual harassment suit," she warns him. "Yes, but it wouldn't stick. We don't work together anymore," he replies. She turns around to give him a look freighted with meaning, and that meaning is, I will probably be featured in some upcoming episode where we do get hot and heavy, and it won't end well for me. I can't wait. Horatio doesn't notice. He's too busy brooding. Cabera asks, "Why do I have the feeling this isn't a social call?" Horatio tells her he's got information for her, and she's going to have to render-safe the bomb in the dark. As he looks over the x-ray she's holding, he points out the photocell and explains how it helped to detonate the bomb that killed Al. The bomb squad head looks none too pleased at Horatio taking over.
And because you can't have Horatio without Megan...she's trotting along, talking to a detective and finding out that the victim is one Maura Burgos who's an antiques dealer. Megan probes for information that would connect Burgos to Moreno, but I'm too distracted to register; I'm too busy wondering who on Earth told this woman that low-cut spandex tops were just what she needed to convey authority in the field.
Meanwhile, Horatio's talking to Cabera over walkie-talkies, asking how Burgos managed to contact the police. Cabera tells him that Burgos used her garage door opener to repeatedly open the door and attract a neighbor's attention. Cabera warmly congratulates Burgos on her quick thinking, clearly trying to keep the woman calm. The camera zooms out and we see that Cabera (first name, Kat -- Kat Cabera? It sounds like kookaburra.) is working in a small area that's been paneled off by a thick wall of fabric. Horatio tells Cabera that the "safe arm" of the bomb -- the part without the explosives, I guess -- is on the right side, so Cabera should approach the defusing that way. Cabera acknowledges this, then begins drilling; we see the whole thing as her hand moving in a small pool of green light illuminated against the darkness. Horatio says nervously, "Now, remember -- you have to keep her calm." Without losing a beat in the drilling, Cabera says, "Hey, Maura, you know any Stevie Wonder?" She grins as she says it, and I decide then and there that what this show needs to do is ditch the Torment Twins, and put Cabera in charge. She's on screen fewer than five minutes and she's already blown Megan out the door. Anyway, poor Maura Burgos tries to sing, "Hey, baby, everything is all right, uptight, out of sight." It's the first really affecting interaction I've seen on this show. Cabera smiles tightly and pays more attention to drilling. She looks up after a bit to urge Burgos, "Keep singing, darlin'." Burgos, her voice faltering and breaking into the occasional sob, valiantly works her way through "Uptight (Everything's Alright)."
While this is going on, Horatio's watching remotely and telling Cabera to work along the seam, as that's where the frag is largest. Cabera notes, "Housing's as smooth as a baby's butt." Horatio tells her, "He used silicon gel, sanded and buffed with an electrostatic cloth." Cabera says cockily, "Trying to hide the sucker. He can't hide from us, can he, Maura?" Maura gives her a wild-eyed look as she breathes, "Uptight...out of sight." Horatio gets all tense on the other end with, "You need to stop when you feel the pressure ease up, and before you hit empty space." Cabera translates this to Burgos as, "Just a zip-zip-zip and we're out of here. Easier than a trip to the dentist." Burgos looks doubtful. Right then, Horatio has a freakout. This is the point where Cabera figures out that the entire bomb's a hoax, as sand is pouring out. She bursts out of the lightproof cocoon, saying, "I'm bringing her out." Horatio conveniently forgets who's actually heading up the bomb squad and orders, "No, you're not." Cabera walks out. Cue Horatio's freakout #2. Cabera tries to talk rationally to him, but there's no reasoning with the man -- he's worried about a secondary device. Cabera argues for getting Maura out; Horatio acts in favor of dancing on her last nerve. After a few moments filled with false tension (come on -- do you really think this show is well-written enough to pull off a second explosion and solve both of them with twenty-four minutes left? Me neither.), they come on out and it's all clear. As Cabera walks Burgos outside, she notes, "Mojito time!" Horatio wanders off to brood some. At least it's a portable hobby.
While he's still doing some warm-up brooding (far-off glances and tiny pouts), Horatio notices the little boy on the bicycle with a plain, paper-wrapped package in the basket. Oh, that's not suspicious at all. And how convenient that the rest of the bomb squad is mashing leaves for their mojitos, so nobody's watching the perimeter for suspicious types. Whatever would we do without Horatio standing ever-vigilant? The camera zooms in so we can see Horatio staring suspiciously at the kid, and then begins walking purposefully toward the kid. He calls over Bill -- whoever that is -- from his conversation with Megan and orders him to get everyone away from the kid on a bike and send out the ECM. Just then, Megan runs up. "You don't think this bomber's a little boy, do you? "All your years on the bomb squad [beat]...how many [beat] were little boys?" Horatio admits it will be his first -- oh, wait. That's not what happens at all. Megan does nothing, and Horatio walks over to patronize the boy, which doesn't seem like the most diplomatic way to treat a bomber on a bike.
He starts by complimenting the kid on his bike, and after the kid tells him it's a BMX, Horatio gives it the seal of cool. Horatio then puts down a metal box that Bill had handed him. The camera swings to Megan, who is telling Cabera, of all people, "Electronic counter measure (ECM). He's jamming every radio signal in the area." And boy, is Clear Channel pissed. Cabera, who decides not to ask why this DNA jockey is telling her her business, notes, "In case the bomber's trying to remote-detonate." Megan goes back to standing there and frizzing in the humidity. She looks like she's just come off the road production of Louis XIV and she kept the hair. Meanwhile, Horatio is boring the bomb into uselessness, telling the kid, "Back in my day, I had a stingray with a banana seat and racing slicks. But that was a long time ago. Before I left NYPD Blue, a decision people still hold over my head to this day. What do you people want? I did the Contrition 2002 tour! Hell, I opened for Aaron "Yeah, Maybe I Shouldn't Have Written 'Isaac and Ishmael'" Sorkin and he got an Emmy out of it! What have I gotten? A lot of guff from a punk-ass recapper is what!" Okay, so maybe he stops after the banana seat, but isn't my version better? We find out the kid's name is Connor -- evidently he was conceived during a Highlander marathon -- and that the bike is a little too big for him. This is because Connor just got the bike from a stranger on the condition that he deliver a package. Clearly, Connor's parents failed to follow the "don't take candy from strangers" lecture with "and don't take bikes from strangers if they're asking you deliver packages." We find out that Connor had instructions to wait for this "friend" right outside the bomb site perimeter. Well. Isn't that convenient? Horatio promptly begins inspecting the bike for sizzling fuses, clocking careening backward toward 00:00, ticking sounds, etc. Connor begins to freak out: "I did something bad, didn't I?" Bad is bad, stupid is stupid...and I don't even have the will to finish that sentence. Horatio lies to the child. He orders Connor to stay on the bike and finds a chocolate wrapper tucked under the seat. "Hey, you like chocolate." "How'd you know?" Connor asks. "All kids like chocolate," Horatio says. Then he asks if Connor likes gladiator movies too. Oh, he does not either. He's just kind of creepy about the chocolate thing. Horatio then commands Connor to get off the bike, "very slowly...in slow motion." Connor fails to blow up upon dismount. Horatio then commands Connor to walk over to Cabera and Megan. Connor looks back, silently asking if it wouldn't be better to die with the bomb. Reluctantly, he heads toward the two women.
And then -- Number Five is alive! And working for the Miami PD as a bomb defuser. Back in the van, Horatio notes the new hardware; Cabera tells him it's "Andros," but we know it's really Johnny Five. While the robot is busy neutralizing the bomb, Megan is busy adding to the burden little Connor will be unloading at the nearest child psychiatrist's office. She combs his hair out to see if the bomber left anything on Connor. As luck would have it, Megan finds a light-colored, wavy hair.
After the bomb's been blown into the gated community, Horatio and Megan finally get around to figuring out the bomber's motive, using the time-honored method of the Socratic dialogue. Guess who gets to play Socrates? If you guess Speedle, you haven't been paying attention. Anyway, Megan (aka Meno) asks, "I don't understand. If the bomber's after the girl, why plant a hoax in her house?" Horatio, a.k.a. Socrates, replies, "Calculate the distance between the house and the sign." "Couple hundred feet?" asks Meno. "I'd say five hundred feet, and that's exactly where the bomb squad would place containment and command posts, and that's exactly by the book, isn't it?" Meno asks, "You're saying this guy knows procedure?" Socrates says, "The victims were decoys; he's after the bomb squad." Then he rushes off for a hemlock mojito while Meno thinks about the merits of inductive reasoning.
Kidding! We actually go to commercial, where we learn that childless women must rely on prepackaged goods in order to feign domestic aptitude. Thank you, Hormel, for that valuable life lesson.
Back in the lab, Horatio is holding court once again among the Bob-white Club: "The first bomb, ladies and gentlemen, was designed to kill the victim and the lab tech. The second bomb was a decoy to lure them in. And the third bomb was designed to blow them all to smithereens." Calleigh gives us the "That's Deep, Clem" thought of the week with, "All those little pieces. Hard to believe they can be so deadly." Wasn't she listening during Speedle's Minute Of Science? Speedle gives her a refresher: "Fourteen ounces of Semtex brought down that plane over Lockerbie, and that's smaller than a bag of coffee. Killed all 259 passengers and 11 on the ground." Ah, Speedle, you're bringing down the room. Don't ever change. Horatio punishes the mood-killer by ordering him to swab all those little pieces. He then orders Delko to concentrate on the switches, as they're not handmade and thus can be traced. Calleigh gets to look at wires to see what the cutting tells us. Horatio gets to bark orders at people. It's so nice to see everyone playing to his or her strengths. However, after being queried by Speedle, Horatio claims he's going to find the bomber's signature.
There's another montage of everyone staring real hard at their props, and then we find out what Megan's been up to. She's been examining the hair found on Connor; there's no hair tag, and so she cannot extract any DNA. After a testy little moment, Megan asks Horatio, "You miss it, don't you? Being on the front lines." Horatio replies, "The simple answer is no." Megan continues: "I saw you out there. Why leave something you're good at?' Horatio answers, "I was too good. It was boring. I needed a new challenge, something else I could excel at. I envy you, having me to envy." Oh, he does not either; he mutters something equally self-serving about working to his full potential when yoked to a discipline he neither likes, nor respects. They all repair to the war room, where the Bob-whites tell him what they know: there were traces of chlordane, an insecticide banned in the U.S., but used in coffee-growing countries. Right around the time when we're all writing off the evidence as a collection of dead ends, Megan comes in and reveals that the hair actually came from a wig. Calleigh has an a-ha moment and remembers that french lace is often found in high-end wigs. Speedle says skeptically, "Lace on a rug?" Calleigh nods. "Shoot me if it comes to that," he requests. Everyone chuckles as they live the dream for a moment. Horatio then leads into his little psychographic profile of the bomber. Apparently, the bombs are all about him and he's a showoff. Horatio didn't have to work too hard on that profile: "Look at me, look at how clever I am." The five of them then try to figure out who in the Miami/Dade area could possibly fit this profile. Who, indeed? They decide to keep brainstorming on who this egomaniac could be, and conclude that he a) knows his way around bombs, and b) probably lost his hair during a close call of some sort, perhaps an explosion, and c) works someplace where he has access to counterfeit parts and heavy-duty insecticide. Nice of the producers to dump all this information on us at the fifty-one minute mark. Now we know for the time to tune in right around now. We have ourselves another Socratic breakdown -- if Horatio knew everything was coming through Customs, so the bomber was probably there, why couldn't he come out and say it?
They all go back to the impound warehouse in their hummers, because that won't attract attention at all. An unnamed agent immediately hands Barenger's file. Of course. Hey! Horatio knows him. Small world, eh? As Horatio goes in to talk to the suspect, alone and unarmed, Megan decides to make his last potential minutes on Earth filled with procedural nagging. You'd think that this routine would get old for both of them and she'd find a new tactic, i.e. one that works. Horatio blows her off with, "He's killing my friends and he's talking to me." Megan throws up her hands in defeat.
So do I. We learn about the Barenger/Horatio connection at the fifty-two minute mark? And now, we get the whole story. After Barenger comes out in a Mad Bomber Original, Horatio props his sunglasses on his neck and accepts Barenger's compliment of, "Nice work with the kid on the bike." Horatio replies, "Thank you. Just a couple of old bomb techs talking, right, Charlie?" Charlie agrees. Horatio then proceeds to give us all new information so we finally have a motive for all this bombing: "1998 was a raw deal for you when that bomb blew, wasn't it? You could have beaten that timer." Barenger replies, "I would have, if I hadn't had [Al] screaming in my ear." Horatio continues to lay out background and history that sure would have been useful, say, forty minutes ago: "Al made a big mistake with you, Charlie. He underestimated you, didn't he? But now you're going to show them. You picked victims to mislead the squad, made them think they were dealing with Colombian bomb ransomers, but all the while, you were setting them up. And that last device? A work of art, Charlie. Collapsing parallel circuits. Michelangelo would have been envious." Yeah, if instead of creating "David" and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he had been into crime. Horatio moves in for the coup de grace: "I did the reconstruction, Charlie, and Al should have never taken you off the squad. You were too good for that." Having played Barenger like a violin, Horatio then defuses the bomb, while I think about how much more enjoyable this episode would have been if we had been given more information about the bomb squad history, or more background on Berenger all along. What was that I mentioned earlier about, "You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it"? Bah!
The episode ends with Megan joining the rest of civilization in admitting that Horatio was right. Doesn't matter about what -- he's always right. Horatio then goes on to tell us that the thing which endeared Al to him the most was the innate sense of respect with which he treated everyone else. Too bad it didn't rub off on Horatio, but what can you do? He then thanks Megan for knowing the difference between work and grief before wandering off and leaving her to blubber while he recovers lost ground with Al's widow. And thus endeth episode #2. week: it's that land shark we've heard so much about!