Ah, Miami -- known for its bustling nightlife, its cutting-edge fashions, its Dolphins, and now, thanks to the efforts of this lousy little spin-off, its grimy adult book stores. The Dade County Chamber of Commerce must be delighted that the CSI brain trust decided to farm out their franchise here, as opposed to, say, Bangkok.
Our episode opens in one of those grimy adult bookstores, which happens to be equipped with a bank of peepshow booths. We're all adults here. We know what goes on in such places -- the women sip tea and eat scones while talking earnestly about the human condition as the men listen attentively and quote appropriate passages from The Oxford Book of English Verse. Or, more accurately, the women dance around in as little clothing as allowed by CBS Standards & Practices while their raincoat-clad clientele fish around for quarters and give silent thanks that tomorrow is laundry day. Remember, fellas, protein gets out protein.
The barrier in one such booth rolls up to reveal a not-at-all unattractive blonde lounging in a not-at-all sexy pose on a divan. "You're not going to disappoint me, are you, Ace?" she heavy-breathes at her patron. Well, if her goal that night was to be gaped at by a sweaty, open-mouthed-breathing toad of a man, then no -- no, he isn't. She removes her dressing gown. The barrier slams down. Toad Man feeds another coin into the slot. The barrier rolls up -- she's now dancing au naturel. The barrier slams down. Another coin into the slot. The barrier rolls up -- and Toad Man is slumped against the blood-streaked glass window. Ew. I don't care if laundry day is tomorrow -- ain't nothin' going to clean up that mess.
As we fade out on the woman's terrified scream, we fade up on Horatio Caine examining the body of the recently deceased. Now it's my turn to scream in terror. Because the camera is placed on the other side of the glass window and because the window is streaked with the one-time contents of Toad Man's circulatory system and because the entire scene is bathed in red light, Horatio doesn't so much resemble a remorseless crime-fighting machine here as he does a particularly malevolent Oompa Loompa. Cause of death: overindulging in chocolate. Another grisly murder solved, Detective Wonka.
The cop who helped Delko and Speedle uncover the hidden dangers of siphoning gas strides past the racks of videotapes, DVDs, and adult novelties. "No ID on him?" Nameless Cop asks Horatio. "Jeans, t-shirt, Kmart socks," Horatio says. Kmart socks are that easily identifiable? "Big spender," Nameless Cop snorts. Yeah, well, we can't all afford socks woven from gold filament, now, can we? "He saved his pennies for the peeps," Horatio grimly agrees, and that's one of those lines that probably sounded much grittier and edgier on paper. Horatio stands up and calls over Speedle, who's busy photographing one of the establishment's adult-entertainment artisans. "How old do you think the girl is?" Horatio asks Nameless Cop, who, until the carbon-dating kit arrives from the lab, guesses that she's eighteen or nineteen. This does not please Horatio. "Just a kid," he mutters, which is technically incorrect by the legal standard of adulthood, though Horatio's never been one to let legal technicalities get in the way of a good brood. Horatio posits that the weapon needed to be long enough to penetrate the back door of the peepshow booth and do damage -- something the TMICam thoughtfully shows us, since the incidence of violent stabbings is practically unheard of here in America. "The guy inside the booth must have been pressing against the wall," Nameless Cop helpfully posits. "Poised to see paradise," Horatio says. Bwah? That line made to no sense. Wouldn't you agree, Roger Daltrey? "Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah!" See? You just can't fool Roger Daltrey. Not again, anyhow.
After taking a moment to learn a little bit more about our advertisers' find products and/or services, we return to the adult bookstore, where Horatio and Alexx are poking around the body. "Sharp force injuries," Alexx says. "Three knife strikes through the door," Horatio responds -- in addition to helping various widows through their grief, he must be our autopsy-jargon-to-English translator for the night. Alexx points out that there are only two knife wounds in the body; Horatio counters that those two were apparently enough to get the job done. As Horatio and Alexx chat amicably about the victim's ID -- "nothing out of the ordinary...so far," Alexx offers -- the coroner notes that our murder victim had bad teeth. Thankfully, she does not tap into those creepy conversing-with-the-recently-deceased powers to taunt the poor fellow about his substandard dental work. "He looks Eastern European to me," Horatio offers. Yeah, well, you look like a pasty-faced jackass to me, but you don't hear me jumping to conclusions. You pasty-faced jackass. Alexx dashes off to the autopsy bay to find out more about how our victim wound up in the Great Peepshow Booth in the Sky, so we cut over to Calleigh, wielding an impressive band saw, while a man we can only presume to be the proprietor of the dirty bookstore looks on and leers. "You ever seen that video Sexy Guns, Sexy Girls?" he asks in quite possibly the most awkward conversation-starter this side of "You have an interesting bone structure." "If you go into a booth with that saw, you don't even have to take your clothes off. You'd make a fortune in tips." I'm just out of touch with what appeals to people's prurient interests these days, I suppose. Calleigh is equally nonplussed. "You're standing in my crime scene," she says, and that probably would have sounded cool and hard-bitten if it hadn't been delivered in Emily Procter's emotionally vacant chirp. I should probably pause for a moment here and confess that I don't care much for Emily Procter's acting ability -- not here, not in The West Wing, not even in The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! For the remainder of this recap, I will try to keep my searing hatred in check, since I'm sure plenty of people find her wooden performances to be absolutely delightful. I guess that's why clothes come in so many shapes and styles -- because other people have lousy taste.
The bookstore owner is perturbed that Calleigh is sawing away at the booth door. "If you take the door, I've got to close the booth," he protests. "Then close the booth," snaps Horatio, suddenly appearing in the scene so that he can watch someone else gather evidence per his contractual obligation. The proprietor skulks off muttering something about trampling on the rights of honest pornographers to earn a living, leaving Horatio and Calleigh to talk weaponry. The murder weapon was an eight-inch serrated blade -- the strike is wider at the top than the bottom, suggesting that the killer used some sort of hunting knife. "Well, he was hunting," says Horatio in an effort to spike up the pomposity quotient in this scene. "The question becomes, how did he know where to aim?" As is the case with any questions posed by Horatio, he also supplies the answer -- a small peephole bored into the door of the booth. "That looks recent, doesn't it?" Horatio asks. I don't know, Horatio...does it? You're the crime-fighting genius, aren't you? Maybe you should tell me for a change, shouldn't you? Man, this is annoying, isn't it?
We'll assume that the peephole is recent, since Horatio is now hovering over Delko as he exams the booth's various bodily fluids, blood and otherwise. "A lot of people have been in this booth," Delko observes. "Everybody but a janitor," says Horatio, and he doesn't know how right he is. A while back, a friend of mine -- and yes, I realize that beginning an unsavory story with this kind of narrative conceit usually implies that this "friend" is actually me, but take my word for it, in this case, I'm actually talking about a friend of mine -- went into a peepshow booth, sampled the entertainment therein, and left without leaving a little bit of himself behind, if you get my drift. And as he's leaving, the small, aged Yoda-like guy whose job it was to clean up the place scurried into the booth with a squeegee and a dishrag, only to find the booth in pristine condition. "No mess?" the beaming janitor asked my friend hopefully. "No mess!" My point? No matter how awful your job is, it can't be worse than that guy's. Unless, of course, you happen to muck out peepshow booths for a living. In which case watching CSI Miami is probably the least of your worries. Anyhow, Delko's discovered a hair among all the blood and other humors. "It could be from a million guys," he says. He forgets, however, that Horatio is blessed with super-vision and is able to note the hair's unusual thickness. "I don't think that's human," Horatio says. We could say the same about you, pally.
Back in the lab, Alexx is finding particularly thick hairs on the victim -- at least twenty of them, and probably more once they process his clothes. Horatio is doing what he does best -- hovering over someone else's shoulder while they do all the work -- until Alexx asks him to lend her a hand and flip the body over. Horatio obliges. Now I know what it must have felt like for an earlier generations to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon -- we've just witnessed something never before seen on television. The entry wounds, each marked numerically with black ink, are T-shaped. "Which means the killer used a single-inch blade," Horatio says, and boy, we need a TMICam shot of said knife penetrating the skin like we need an eight-inch serrated blade stuck in our backs. Alexx reveals that the first stab slipped right between the victim's ribs and punctured the left lung, filling it with blood -- thus, that blood spit-take we were treated to earlier. And treated to again, courtesy of the FlashbackCam. Thanks, CBS! I wasn't hungry anyhow. The second stab chipped the fifth vertebrae and severed the victim's spinal cord, which, if the TMICam is to be believed, is normally coursing with bolts of electrical energy. "There's your cause of death," Horatio says. "Lights out, my friend." The body, stunned into silence by Horatio's witty banter, offers no rebuttal.
While Horatio's busy trying out one-liners for the Schwarzenegger picture, Calleigh's hard at work trying to discern the murder weapon. She's narrowed it down to three -- the Gryphon M35, a recon with a tanto point, and whatever knife was used to apply the eight layers of clown make-up currently covering her face. Or an Echelon MPT. Yeah, probably that's what she said instead. Horatio ponders whether the killer was in the military, or perhaps a rogue SWAT team member bent on ridding the world of all Eastern European masturbators with bad teeth. Calleigh points out that the knife is weapons-grade "and that whoever owns it didn't get it to play mumblety-peg." For younger viewers who don't understand the reference, mumblety-peg is an old-time children's game, in which players toss a jackknife in various and sundry ways with the goal being to get the blade to stick into the ground. This game was apparently much more popular back in the days when children were better armed and lawyers didn't roam the countryside searching for class-action suits. Looking at the peephole in the door, Horatio points out that he's about six feet tall, which would make the killer the same height. Oh Lord, please let Horatio be implicated in this grizzly murder -- and let him be arrested by a blowhard CSI who pooh-poohs evidence-gathering in favor of trusting his gut. That'd be ironic enough for an O. Henry story, except that in O. Henry stories, the writing is actually good. Anyhow, while visions of Horatio being led off in leg irons dance in my head, Horatio and Calleigh figure out that the killer was right-handed and deduce how he leaned in to hide his knife-wielding from the other porn store patrons. Their flashback is about as interesting as I made it sound. "Now, people don't make a lot of eye contact in a place like this," Horatio says, "so even if he was detected, someone might just think he was wasted." Calleigh suggests that the killer definitely knew his way around the place. "There's a reason the Italians call it 'little death,'" Horatio responds. First off, it's the French who call it that. Second off, what the hell does that have to do with anything Calleigh just said? Third off, what's with all the witty bon mots this week, H? Toning up the snappy patter for Jade II: Sex Crime Boogaloo?
We're back at the club, where the not-at-all-unattractive blonde dancer from the crime scene is just leaving her shift. Horatio is waiting for her. Since I'm new here, let me see if I'm following the timeline -- in the aftermath of the murder, Horatio's had time to arrive at the peepshow booth, go over the crime scene, observe the autopsy, narrow down the list of possible murder weapons to three knives, piece together how the murder took place, try out corny action-hero lines that Steven Seagal would be too embarrassed to utter, and still arrive back at the adult bookstore to pester the dancer. Is the adult bookstore just down the street from police headquarters? Does the dancer work sixteen-hour shifts? No wonder she looks so tired. We're about to know how she feels after this crackling exchange of dialogue:
Dancer: I'm not working.
Horatio: I am.
Dancer: One of the cops.
Horatio: CSI.
Dancer: Well, you came to the right place. My whole life's a crime scene. When are you going to arrest whoever's responsible for me having this crappy job in this crappy town?
My, this whole scene feels like something written by Chandler. Dorothy Chandler. Before a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters are able to pound out a teleplay approximating this noir-ish scene, we learn that the dancer works in the same booth for the same shift every night, and that she'd never seen the guy who got killed before. The red neon sign behind her isn't flashing "LIAR! LIAR!" so I'll do it instead. Liar! Liar! Horatio also learns that the dancer -- to whom we haven't been properly introduced, I'd like to note -- works off the clock for performances of a more private nature. "Where you from?" Horatio asks. "Lake Leelanau," the Blaze Starr for the new millennium replies. "Michigan," Horatio says, which surprises Gypsy Rose Lee, 2003 edition. "Only people from home know that, and I don't make you for a wolverine," she says, clearly not realizing that Horatio knows everything. "I spend a lot of time looking at maps," he fires back. "You're a lot more fun than you look, you know," she says, clearly not realizing that he isn't. "All right, CSI," Strippy Stripperson continues. "What do you want me to say?" "How about 'I won't go back'?" Horatio asks. To Lake Leelanau? But its forested coastlines, pristine scenery, and proximity to Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay make it a must-see location for anyone with an interest in Michigan, no matter what season of the year. Oh -- he means the strip bar. "I won't go back," the dancer says, after a prolonged eye-roll. "Then again, you're paid to tell men what they want to hear, right?" Horatio retorts. I guess that's why she told you that you were more fun than you look.
The day, Delko is peering through a microscope at that troublesome non-human hair. Speedle is across the desk, doing likewise. There's much talk of fragmented medullas and how the index is less than one-third, and I know how the wife's always going on about how they don't emphasize the science enough on this show, but really -- they're spending an inordinate amount of time talking about the finer points of hair samples. Bottom line: the hair's from a higher primate of some sort. Better lawyer up, Bubbles. That mystery solved, Speedle has more important concerns on his mind. "Ever date a stripper?" he asks Delko. "I wouldn't call it dating," Delko begins, and before we can go into further detail about how Delko's on the bouncers' No Admittance list down at The Spearmint Rhino, Horatio blusters in. "Gentlemen," he says. "What have we got?" Ape hair, Horatio! Didn't you read this paragraph? "Let's assume then that the victim brought the hair to the party," Horatio declares. "From where he works or lives," says Delko, finishing the thought. Horatio orders his boy wards to check out any zoos, circuses, or animal shows in the area -- "anywhere that an Eastern European with bad teeth could have access to an ape." I dunno -- the Russian consulate? A Florida Panthers game? Is Cirque du Soleil in town?
None of the above, as it turns out -- it's a zoo. Quite possibly, the Miami MetroZoo, located at 124th Avenue and 152nd Street just south of Miami proper, and home to more than seven hundred wild animals housed in cageless subtropical environments. Of course, if we called it that, the CSI Miami producers would probably have to pay the zoo folks, so let's just call it the Miami FakeZoo. Delko is busy taking hairs off a Yakov Smirnoff look-alike and chatting him up in Russian. "You work with chimps?" Delko asks. "I could say the same about you," Yakov replies. No, he doesn't -- he confirms that he works all over the zoo, along with his cousin, who I assume is our murder victim. Delko notes that Yakov is sporting some nasty scratches on his face. Yakov tries to ham-fistedly change the subject by wondering where Delko learned to speak Russian. Hey, Sobell wrote the FAQ for a reason, Boris. Meanwhile, in another part of FakeZoo, Horatio is showing photos of the recently deceased to a white-suited PR flak. "That's Victor Ratsch," the flak says, finally identifying one of the key figures in the story fourteen minutes into the episode. "Night custodian. His cousin got him the job." The flak also helpfully notes that Victor and his cousin Vadim -- whom we will continue to call Yakov, since cultural sensitivity is not our strong suit -- were constantly fighting with one another. That seems like an odd bit of information to volunteer unprompted. Ah, well...probably not important.
Horatio's foray into the seedy underbelly of Miami zoos is cut short by a cell phone call informing him that our stripper friend from the scene will be doing her pole dance down the River Styx. We find her lying dead in the street, the asphalt around her stained as red as David Caruso's hair. "Hit-and-run," Delko declares. "She kept her word," Horatio mutters. "She's not going back." As we head to commercial, a nearby anvil plummeting from the sky crushes a family of four.
By the time we get back from the ad break, Speedle and Alexx have arrived at the crime scene. "Both legs are broken," Alexx says, as the FlashbackCam shows us how that might have happened -- a late-model sedan plows into the stripper as she screams in agony. I'm not sure which crayon-wielding monkey on the CSI Miami creative team has decided that we need to see every last detail of every last violent death, from the crunching of the bones to the squick of the stabbing, but dial it down a bit, kids. I'm tuning in each week to be entertained, not to watch Faces of Death edited for network television. Anyhow, Alex determines that Dancing Queen suffered massive head trauma, and unless she's diabetic, she has some explaining to do about the needle marks on her arms. Or she would, if not for the aforementioned massive head trauma. While Horatio broods over the realization that he was unable to save both a stripper and a drug addict from a life from of depravity, Alexx explains the basics of a car-versus-pedestrian collision -- the pedestrian gets flipped by the car and killed by the impact with the pavement. Since you can never get enough imagery of women dying horribly, we get to watch the car crash into the stripper again. Can we see that a few more times, please? I don't think I'm completely desensitized to violence just yet.
Alexx finds an imprint on the dancer's calf, which suggests that she was hit by some sort of high-end vehicle. Horatio then uses his crime-detector vision to spy a shard of glass embedded underneath the skin of the victim -- so powerful is The Big Red One's gaze that it can even permeate human flesh. Horatio thoughtfully points out the glass to Alexx, phrasing his discovery in the form of a question. "Side of the road, she's all in black," Speedle theorizes. "Seventy percent of all drivers on the road after 2 AM are over the legal limit. Could be just an accident." "Guess that's possible," Horatio says in a tone of voice that suggests it's not in the least bit possible. Foolish Speedle -- only Horatio gets to advance crackpot theories in this town. Horatio tells Delko to find the driver of the car; he's off to find out who the stripper danced for last night so he can avenge her death.
Back at the adult bookstore, the owner is explaining his tenuous relationship with his customer base. "It's not like we take roll call here. Guys come here to be invisible," the owner says. "If I looked, if I asked questions, I'd be out of business." Nameless Cop's not buying it: "The key to any business is return customers. What about them?" "I notice them even less," the owner replies. Which is how it should be. A friend of mine -- and this time, I am using a transparent narrative device -- made the occasional visit to a neighborhood video store which made up for its lack of popular commercial titles with a wide selection of edgier, adult fare. This was long before he met Sobe-- er, "his future wife." So one day, he goes into this store, and the clerk there greets him with a bit too much familiarity for his liking. And he never went back. There are certain places you want to be recognized as a regular -- bars, restaurants, certain churches -- and other places where it's just as well that everybody doesn't know your name -- hospital rooms, police stations, and adult video stores. Anyhow, the owner points Horatio and Nameless Cop in the direction of the deceased's husband. "He's a real prize," the owner sneers. "How do you spell 'pimp'?" P...I...M...oh, you were trying to be coy.
Cut to Horatio and Nameless Cop paying a visit to the P-I-M-P, a fellow by the name of Rick Breck (and doesn't that sound like the nom-de-plume of someone who stars in that edgier adult fare I...er, "my friend" used to rent?). The Brecks live in a boat down by the marina; perhaps they have the berth to Sonny Crockett and his pet alligator, Elvis. Rick Breck looks a lot like a shaggier version of Dennis Miller, only with a lot more piercings and a lot less proclivity toward spouting off esoteric pop culture references. The Brecks have been married less than a year; they do not own a car. This is why Amy -- at long last a name for that poor, dead stripper! -- walks home. Nameless Cop wonders why the Ricker wasn't concerned when his wife didn't show up after her sixteen-hour shift at the strip club. "She comes, she goes, she always calls," Rick says, a little bit too flippantly for someone so recently bereaved. Did she call last night, Nameless Cop wants to know? Rick looks around nervously -- perhaps a little bit of Dennis Miller's esoterica might come in handy right about now. "She call you?" Nameless Cop repeats. "Yeah," Rick says sheepishly. "But I wasn't here. She left a message." "Can I hear it?" Nameless Cop asks. "I erased it," says Rick, adding that the message didn't contain anything out of the ordinary. "Then you won't mind if I take the answering machine with me?" Horatio says. "Go right ahead," Rick says. "And don't bother with the formality of a warrant. It's not like there's a constitutional safeguard against unreasonable searches and seizures." Oh wait -- that's what I'd say. Rick folds like a card table and lets Horatio take his stuff.
Only after leaving the boat does Horatio think to suggest to Nameless Cop that they get a warrant. "On what grounds?" Nameless Cop wonders. "On the grounds that this is a murder investigation," says Horatio, probably forgetting that the man he's patronizing is, in fact, in the paid employ of the Miami-Dade police and therefore not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of criminal investigations. "It's a hit-and-run," Nameless Cops says in exasperation. Horatio argues that if they can connect Amy Breck's death with the murder of Victor Ratsch, they have a shot at probable cause. "The probable cause is she's a stripper, she's a junkie, and she's a whore," Nameless Cop says. "She's also a human being," Horatio fires back, and it's not like he doesn't have a good point, but I don't remember this outpouring of sympathy when the victim had bad teeth and wore Kmart socks. There's no outrage like selective outrage, I suppose. Nameless Cop is having none of Horatio's blather -- "She's also a corpse, and by God, don't you ever step on my investigation again," he snarls as he storms off. Horatio is left standing on the dock, reminding himself that not everyone is strong enough to handle his staggering intellect and limitless compassion.
Back at the lab, Speedle has determined that the shard of glass removed from Amy Breck is from a Mercedes-Benz S-series. "From this millennium, but as far as that goes, that's a dead end," Speedle says. "Okay," Horatio says. "What else you got?" "Admiration for Nameless Cop after he put your shit in the street?" Speedle suggests. No, no -- Speedle's working on the answering machine tape. He recovered the erased message using high-tech microscopy, which sounds much more professional and impressive than "freaky audio voodoo." Here's the message: "Hey, Rick, I'm on the way. Did you get stuff you promised you'd pick up? After tonight, I could really use some. Ace, hi. Don't start without me, okay?" After fiddling with some knobs and dropping out the background noise, we hear a male voice on the tape saying "hey" -- most likely the Ace that Amy refers to in her message. Ace also says, "We got a deal," right before Amy's business about not starting without her. This is probably the most coherent exchange of dialogue we've had on this show all night. Horatio suggests to Speedle that they revisit the Widower Breck to find out just what deal Amy was referring to. "What makes you think he's going to be more cooperative this time?" Speedle asks. "An old drug charge I just dug up on him won't hurt," Horatio says. Oh, Horatio, you police-power-abusing gallant -- could we love you any less?
Old drug charge or no, it doesn't look like Rick is going to be terribly forthcoming to Horatio and Speedle, on account of him floating facedown in the marina. Boy, the people connected to this case sure have a funny habit of winding up dead. Let's ponder the fragility of mortality while Jason Alexander exhorts us to eat Honey Wings.
For the third time in slightly less than a half hour, Alexx is poking at a dead body -- this one without any defensive wounds or scratches. There's foam around the mouth and nostrils that's consistent with drowning. "I'd like to see what's in his lungs," Horatio says. Hey, who wouldn't -- am I right, ladies? Though, actually, Horatio's request pertains to the cause of death. Alexx scurries off to do Horatio's bidding. "The husband's dead, the wife's dead," Horatio begins. "The Russian's dead," Nameless Cop reminds us, just in case we've lost track of this episode's mounting body count. "Yes, let's go talk to the other Russian, the cousin, before he chokes on a Twizzler," says Horatio, in a rare display of wit. Nameless Cop, Delko, and Speed stand around and try to figure out who exactly Horatio means by "we." All of us? Just one of us? Should we pair up with a buddy? Help us out here, H.
Cut to Horatio and Delko giving Yakov a going-over. "Tell him that I can see by the scratches on his face that he's been in a recent altercation," Horatio says to Delko, who repeats Horatio's question in Russian without first asking his boss what the magic word is. Yakov suggests that a lion or a tiger gave him the telltale scratch marks. "Now tell him that if I check under his fingernails, and if I can match it to his dead cousin, I'm going to arrest him for murder," Horatio says coolly. Not that such an arrest would stand up in court, since that fingernail evidence wouldn't actually place Yakov at the murder scene. The victim was stabbed through a door, remember? Makes it kind of hard for evidence to move down the blade, through the door, and under Yakov's fingernails. No matter -- the threat works on Yakov, who starts speaking freely and in English, too. "In America, you pay women to take clothes off," Yakov says. "In Soviet Union, you pay women to put clothes back on. What a country!" Wait...no. He doesn't say that at all. It's more like, "I haven't seen my cousin in two days." Horatio wants to know if the two cousins fought over Amy. "Victor never goes to peep show," Yakov says. And Yakov? "I don't have to pay money for women. At peepshow? Lap dance, you spend $5. Another $5. $20 here. $20 there. By end of night, you could have banged a hooker." Yakov points at Horatio. "He knows what I'm talking about." No doubt.
The bond between Yakov and Horatio thus established, Yakov confesses that the scratches on his face did not come from an oversized kitty, but rather his cousin Victor. "Victor stuck me with work ever since he got here," says Yakov, ratcheting up the I-am-but-humble-immigrant dialect to Topol-esque levels. "Always fight. I can't report him. He's my cousin." Two nights ago, we learn, Victor refused to feed the lions. This apparently angered Yakov. Just imagine how the poor lions feel. "So I say to him, 'The lions, they scare me. I'll do anything else,'" Yakov continues. "But no, that night he has to go. So I just lost it." We get a flashback of Yakov losing it, which involves lots of shoving and grunting and indistinct Russian expletives. Horatio wants to know where Victor had to be. "He only says to me, 'Is business,' Yakov says bitterly. "Big business, big man. All he has to do is look mean, which for Victor is not that difficult. He says I feed the lions, he cut me in. But I know my cousin. He give me $5, he's making $500. Plus, it's probably not legal." Horatio wants to know who Victor was supposed to scare. "In America, you get paid to scare people," Yakov says. "In Soviet Union, government scares you...without pay! What a cou--" Ah, screw it. Yakov doesn't know.
The postmortem on Rick Breck has been completed, with Horatio's Helper Elves discovering water in the deceased's lungs. But not salt water. "He didn't drown in the marina," Alexx concludes. "So somebody drowned him somewhere else and dumped him in the marina," Horatio says. Well, duh. That's kind of what Alexx already said, only she said it pithier. But thanks for playing along at home, Horatio. He didn't drown in city water either, Speedle says, since there wasn't any trace of fluoride, which, as we all know, is put into the drinking water by our government as part of the international Communist conspiracy to sap and contaminate all our precious bodily fluids. But Speedle did find some chemicals in the water -- pine freshener and formaldehyde. "Like on a boat," Horatio says. Like on Rick Breck's boat, the camera replies via an establishing shot. Horatio is sitting around, watching Delko take samples from the boat's toilet. Seniority has its privileges. Calleigh makes her first appearance in the episode since the ten-minute mark, as she scours the boat's furniture for evidence. "So Rick had a visitor after we left," Horatio hypothesizes, as the FlashbackCam supplies the rest of the details. "Somebody rousted him, dragged him down to the bathroom, and gave him a plumbing lesson." As Rick gets an up close and personal view of the inside of his toilet bowl, the TMICam zooms down his trachea to show us what it looks like when toilet water floods your lungs. Kind of gross, in case you were wondering. Horatio continues the guessing game: "Victor's cousin said that Victor was leaning on people, right? And that Victor worked for a big man." "King Kong," Calleigh interjects stupidly. "You know, back in Louisiana, we used to keep our animals out of the bedroom." Which a charming, south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line way of saying that's she found more ape hair. "So Victor was here," Horatio concludes. "And maybe he was leaning on the happy couple." Either that, or it was one of those trained monkey henchmen we've been reading about so much in the news.
Later that same day, Horatio and Calleigh are still on the boat. After some none-too-convincing dialogue mourning the short, unhappy life of Amy Beck, Calleigh stumbles across a high-end digital camera, complete with pictures of Amy and Rick enjoying a Pam-and-Tommy-Lee moment. "How come everybody has naked pictures?" Delko wonders, with a noticeable twinge of regret. I dunno. Precious memories they can share with family and friends? Action shots for a line of stripper trading cards? The mind reels. Calleigh, meanwhile, notes that the many angles, the fact that the photos are in sequence, the impressive use of deep focus, and the professional if workmanlike quality of the framing suggests that someone else was taking these photos. "Let's print this camera, and let's find out who took these pictures," Horatio says, which is Calleigh's cue to do just that.
Back in the lab, Speedle is still playing back the recovered phone message with the same wide-eyed obsessiveness Kennedy assassination conspiracy buffs show when doing a frame-by-frame analysis of the Zapruder film. He's discovered a mysterious clicking noise on the audio track, which occurs sometime after the mysterious Ace appears on the tape. Before Speedle can descend further into madness, the spunky lab tech who recently returned from a hitch in Quantico strolls up. "Speed, you all right?" she asks, since the printouts of the audio analysis he's running are now piling up all over the floor. Speedle hurries off to where a dot-matrix printer is busy outputting reams and reams of data. Speedle looks at one of the sheets and says to no one in particular, "Reservatrol?" Before we can figure out what exactly an antioxidant found in grapes has to do with an audio analysis -- and Jesus, could the science scenes on this show be any less illuminating? -- we're back to the Good Ship Breck, where Horatio and his acolytes are finding all sorts of evidentiary goodness. Based on carpet impressions, Horatio's able to figure out that someone placed a chair right in front of the bed -- all the better to photograph the Brecks in the act of human love. Now, this is the kind of FlashbackCam I can get behind! Horatio suggests that "we" -- or more accurately, Calleigh -- process the floor between the chair and the bed, paying particular attention for biologicals. Because apparently a roll of film isn't the only thing the photographer shot. As Calleigh girds herself for the always life-affirming task of searching for human ejaculate, Delko finds a knife behind a panel on the boat. "That's an Echelon MPT," Calleigh chirps. "I've only seen those at gun shows." Ladies and gentlemen, we have a murder weapon.
This much is confirmed by the spunky lab tech, who will be referred to as Liamette until we are given a proper name. "The question is, who handled it?" Delko says. "Obvious answer is the owner of the houseboat, but someone could have planted it." Liamette offers an apology that she's unable to discern who used a murder weapon simply by looking at it. Delko skips off like a lovesick puppy to perform tests on the knife. This is what we in the business call a science montage. And I believe the last time I recapped one of these shows, Sobell got a lot of mail wondering why I didn't identify any of the music used during these pointless musical interludes. So in the interest of appeasing audiophile readers, let's just pretend that the song playing right now is "Monkey On My Mind" by the Ben Boychuk Trio. Ask for it wherever records and tapes are sold. After much fingerprinting and techno, Delko figures out that yes indeed, Rick Breck was the fellow who stabbed Victor Ratsch. One murder solved, two to go.
Horatio goes off to hector poor Speedle about the hit-and-run murder. Speedle reports that he's found something interesting on the phone message tape. "Okay, listen to me, we need to process the residue on the headlight," Horatio snaps, since not a scene can go by without him letting the underlings know who's boss. Speedle yeah-yeahs him, noting that he's already run the Spectras -- ah, so that's what that whole Reservatrol business was about earlier. Still doesn't making any flippin' sense. No matter -- Speedle's busy playing the audio tape for Horatio so that he too can hear those mysterious clicks. After much boring argle-bargle over what the noise can be, Horatio and Speedle move on to what was on the headlight that wound up in Amy's leg -- Reservatrol, peanut shell, hayweed...elephant dung! Time to head back to the Miami FakeZoo for a chat, methinks.
Which is exactly where we find Horatio and Nameless Cop, walking rapidly toward the white-suited PR flak -- does this man own just one suit, or is he like Al Davis and Steve Jobs with just a closet full of the same outfit? -- who we learn is named Infante. We also learn that his car is missing and that it's been that way since two nights ago -- incidentally, the same time that Amy the stripper was killed. Amy's last name is also Cannon and not Breck as I assumed, and boy, doesn't this show have a hard time introducing character names in a coherent fashion? Maybe everyone should just wear nametags. Infante pretends not to know who Amy Cannon is. Horatio enlightens him: "Amy Cannon is the peepshow dancer that was with Victor Ratsch the day he was killed." Before Horatio gets a chance to get all accusatory and self-righteous, Infante's cell phone rings. The PR flak makes the mistake of answering it. Cue the accusations and self-righteousness, as Horatio snatches the phone and hangs it up. "This is a murder investigation," huffs Horatio, apparently forgetting the numerous scenes, including one in this very episode, where he abruptly ends a conversation by answering his cell phone. The producers of this show are rapidly running out of ways to make this character unlikable. By season's end, look for him to start elbowing aside old people and slapping nuns around. "Is there anything else I can do for you?" growls Infante, who's in a rush to get as far away from this blithering ass as possible. "I'll let you know," Horatio says as Infante storms off. "Don't go far. This commercial break only lasts for four minutes." I may have added that last part.
Back at the lab, Calleigh is declaiming the impressive amounts of semen she found at the houseboat. "Sheets, towels, comforters, bedside, and lampshade," she says. Kitchen appliances, light fixtures, copper plumbing, fine china, I continue, because I'm infantile. "Multiple donors, including the husband," Calleigh adds, which is a nice way of saying that Amy was popular with the fellas. And quite possibly some of the ladies. As for the swath of carpeting in front of the bed, only one person sowed his seed -- and it wasn't Rick Breck. "And the volume was more than the average ejaculate," Calleigh offers, just in case you aren't squicked out enough by this topic of conversation. "So a repeat visitor," Horatio says. Or someone who ate a lot oysters and peanut butter. Bottom line: in addition to her skyrocketing career at the peepshow, Amy was an aggressive freelancer, bringing customers from her day job over to the houseboat for some private sessions. Calleigh's off to the peepshow to see if anyone there recognizes Miami's horniest zookeeper.
Back at the adult bookstore/peepshow, techno music plays (for those of you who care about such things, it's "Who Made The Egg Salad Sandwich" by Five Neat Guys) as Nameless Cop and Calleigh pass around Infante's photo. The establishment's owner violates The Pornographer's Code by identifying Infante. What a violation of the trust a man places in his smut peddler -- you can rest assured that I...er, "my friend" would never patronize an establishment that has so little regard for pornographer-patron confidentiality.
Speedle's still listening to the phone message tape. That boy needs a new hobby. He theorizes that the troublesome clicking noise is coming from within the car. Delko, who's only enabling Speedle's madness, wonders if the noise is Amy popping her gum. Speedle dismisses this theory as the ramblings of a fool. "Maybe she's putting something in her purse," Delko offers. "Maybe you're not taking this seriously enough," Speedle screeches as he smashes a cup of coffee against Delko's head. No -- that's in the director's cut. In the actual episode, Delko and Speedle are interrupted by Horatio pounding on the door, who tells them what we already learned a scene ago -- that Infante was a semi-regular at the peepshow. And more important, that his dancer of choice was Amy. Oh, but how to determine if Infante is the one responsible for the carpet-cleaning nightmare over at the Breck houseboat? By tracking down his stolen car via its theft-deterrent device and pulling the necessary DNA sample from there, of course. Silly viewer -- Horatio has an answer for everything.
There's no real need to go into the car-finding montage, set to pulse-pounding music of Big Hair Metal Monsters and their smash hit "Turn That Crap Down." Suffice it to say, Horatio and his team find the Benz. Why they need two police cruisers to accompany the HoratioHummer down to the recovery site will remain a mystery, however. The car sports a cracked headlamp and isolated blood smears, confirming that Horatio's found the right piece of German automotive engineering excellence. "So we've got the car," Horatio says, since the obvious can never be overstated enough for his liking. "Now let's get the DNA." Delko heads for the steering wheel, since it's rich with epithelial goodness and will indicate who was the last driver. "This car has been reported stolen," Horatio says, "so we have to anticipate a mixture of DNA, right?" I don't know. Do we? If you already know the answer, why ask the question? Because you're a pompous gasbag? Oops -- now I'm asking a question I already know the answer to. Sorry.
Back at the lab, Delko is staring at Liamette like a schoolboy eyeballing a cheerleader. "You want to take notes?" she asks, barely looking up from her microscope. "You're watching me like you want a DNA lesson." Delko demurs. "I was just...uh...admiring your...technique," he says sheepishly. "Oh, I got mad technique," Liamette replies. "You got no idea." Um...we're not really talking about DNA anymore, are we? Liamette ends this awkward exchange by noting that, while some of the DNA on the steering wheel is from an unknown donor, the primary donor matches the man who left a gnarly stain on the Breck's carpet. Time to bring in Infante for a little one-on-one time with Horatio.
They tell me it's all happening at the zoo. I do believe it. I do believe it's true. That's where Nameless Cop and Horatio are questioning Infante, at any rate, with Nameless Cop inquiring as to how often Infante hired Amy as an independent contractor for private dancing and titillation services. "Define 'private,'" demands Infante, who has learned well the lessons taught by our forty-second president. "Not at her place of employment," Horatio says flatly. "None," Infante responds. "Look, if I'm guilty of anything, it's being a loyal customer." That, and masturbating, which will cost you a few Our Fathers and a significant number of Hail Marys, Spanky. "Mr. Infante," Horatio threatens, "we can confirm your DNA in her bedroom on multiple occasions." Infante tries to whistle past the graveyard. "Okay...so what? I was there. Consenting adults. Nothing illegal." You just added to your Hail Mary tally, my friend. Horatio spins a tale of the Amy-Infante relationship: it started at the peepshow, increased in frequency, and progressed on to more private, marina-based settings. We get a prolonged montage set to the tune Wocka-Chicka and his Amazing Casio Keyboard that shows Amy writhing around in various stages of undress while Infante snaps photos. Say what you will about CBS -- this is decidedly more urbane than Murder, She Wrote. "You can't possibly be here because I watched two people having sex within the privacy of their own bedroom," Infante says. He's right -- Horatio and Nameless Cop are here because they think he killed the two of them. Infante protests his innocence. Horatio's not persuaded. "We know you hired Victor. You hired Victor to muscle them." Infante, realizing the folly of contradicting Horatio, concedes that Rick and Amy were blackmailing him, and that to save the FakeZoo from embarrassment and himself from repeat payments, he sent Victor to act all thug-like. "So when they killed your guy, you stepped in and did the job yourself," Nameless Cop says. Horatio joins in on the jumping-to-conclusion fun: "A little hit-and-run, a little drowning." Infante repeats his protestations of innocence, noting that Rick and Amy were asking for chump change -- $50,000 to $60,000. "I can earn that with a private viewing with one of the gorillas," Infante says as he stomps off. Nameless Cop wants to file this case under C, for Case Closed. Horatio's not so sure. "We've got motive, opportunity, a very expensive four-wheel weapon," Nameless Cop insists. "You've got a better idea?" "I think I do," Horatio says. Horatio always has a better idea.
That better idea involves pestering Delko for the minor donor off the steering wheel. "We got a hit off the steering wheel," Delko says proudly. "Convicted felon." "Who is it?" Horatio asks. "Practically family," says Delko, as he shows Horatio the printout. This earns a smile from The Big Red One and a rare compliment for a job well done.
So who's our suspect? Why, it's the owner of the adult bookstore, of course. You know someone who would brazenly violate The Pornographer's Code would be messed up in something shady. Horatio strides in to the interrogation room and invites the owner -- identified at minute fifty-four as Mr. Davis -- to have a seat. "I'll stand," the newly identified pornographer says. "I think you're going to want to sit for this one," Horatio sneers, as he gives a rundown of Davis's rap sheet -- lewd and lascivious conduct, pandering, "and now murder." Davis wonders why Horatio's fingering him for Victor Ratsch's death. "Ironically, that's not the one we're going to hang on you," Horatio says, in what might mark a landmark moment in television history -- a relatively correct usage of the concept of irony. "You murdered Amy and Rick Breck." Davis feigns incredulity: "Why would I want to bite the hand that feeds me? Amy was a great earner. Nineteen -- looks fifteen, I couldn't keep them away." Horatio posits that Amy had a thriving side business. This doesn't seem to bother Davis, as freelancing is part of the business. "Yes," Horatio continues, "but Rick and Amy were making some real money off a blackmail scheme and not cutting you in, were they?" Davis doesn't respond; perhaps he's as annoyed by Horatio's tendency to put simple declarative statements in question form as the rest of us. Undeterred, Horatio reveals that Davis's DNA places him behind the wheel of the car that turned Amy into stripper roadkill. The FlashbackCam shows us how the whole phone message played out, with Davis supplying the voice of the mysterious Ace. If you're wondering whether we get to watch Davis run over Amy with the car again, you must not watch a lot of CSI Miami. God, how I envy you. As Horatio tightens the noose around Davis, the smut peddler looks around nervously and cracks his jaw. Hey -- that sounded a lot like the clicking noise on Amy's phone machine message, didn't it? Oh God...an hour of prolonged exposure to Horatio is making me pick up on his verbal tics. Someone shoot me now, please.
Davis tries to spin a yarn that Infante lent him the Mercedes to buy his silence, and then claimed the car was stolen to collect on a fraudulent insurance claim. Thanks to his omniscience, Horatio knows this story is a lie, though the clicking of Davis's jaw is not helping his credulity any. Off in another room, Speedle diagnoses the clicking as TMJ -- Davis cracks his jaw when he's nervous. Funny how that habit didn't materialize during earlier interactions with the police. Clues that pop up at the fifty-six-minute mark -- that's always the sign of a well-constructed narrative.
As we pan across the Miami skyline at night, a lone guitar plays -- I think it's Benny Goodlicks with his haunting solo "End Of The Show Blues." At a peepshow booth, the barrier lifts up to reveal...Horatio. Could we finally be seeing a new wrinkle to this staid, one-note character? A little bit of deviant behavior or character flaw to help flesh out what, up until now, has been a painfully uninteresting performance? Nope. Horatio's back at the peepshow to scare some poor stripper straight. He drops a couple of c-notes into the booth's slot. "Well, what do you want for this?" she asks our non-hero seductively. "I want you to take the rest of the day off," he smarms. Why? If she works the rest of her shift, she gets her regular take-home pay plus the $200 you've just foolishly given her. "What about tomorrow?" the stripper asks. "Tomorrow is what you make of it," Horatio says, lending credence to the theory that CSI Miami's writing staff has resorted to lifting aphorisms off of Hallmark greeting cards. Horatio leaves the booth and walks down a hallway lined with strippers, all of them giving him looks like, "Did you bring enough c-notes for everyone, cowboy?" Horatio turns and looks back as if to say, "There's so many of them. I can't save them all. Oh, cruel God in heaven, why I am saddled with this accursed empathy?" Then he buys a copy of Gigantic Asses Monthly and saunters off into the night.