Sniper

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and people are running the usual errands that eat up the hectic minutes before work. This day couldn't be any more normal if it tried. The camera focuses on a tour bus where a woman sitting in the back is wearing a sweatshirt saying "I love Grandma," which is more or less the sartorial shorthand for "doomed" on this show. All she needs to do now is whip out pictures of the kiddies, and a hail of gunfire would immediately commence. In the shot, a woman walks by with a child who's toting a red balloon. We're forty-five seconds into the show, and I'm groaning under the weight of all the symbolism already. The camera then lingers on three people: Photo Guy (taking pictures out on an envelope), The Man In The Ice Cream Suit (stopping to scan the headlines), and Starbucks Maiden (lots of hair, dealing with coffee in her commuter mug). They all stand still, as if transfixed by the ominous music, and then the sharp whine of a bullet starts the action rolling. The Man In The Ice Cream Suit is the first to go down, and his abrupt crumple cues the screaming and stampeding. Starbucks Maiden is -- she makes an easy target, what with standing in the middle of an empty patch of sidewalk -- and then, as if to punish Photo Guy for thumbing through his prints while others ran around and screamed beside him, the shooter pegs him between the eyes too. There's chaos, mayhem, confusion, and then -- of course -- the red balloon drifting up toward a bright blue sky in slow motion.

In the scene, enough time has elapsed for the crime-scene tape to go up, the goggling onlookers to gather, and the media horde to descend. A reporter is talking about how the investigation will look into a workplace dispute one of the victims was having, but her droning fades into the distance as Horatio and Calleigh arrive on the scene. Whoever's in charge of the Sergio Leone filter needs to take it down a notch; this scene is saturated with so much yellow, it's given Horatio the appearance of a suntan. And while I'm making petty aesthetic complaints, let me comment on Calleigh's outfit: she's petite, and she's curvy, so those overlarge bell-bottoms aren't doing her any favors. As her pants drag her toward the crime scene, Calleigh comments, "Can you believe it? It's national news and we don't even know what happened? Some alpaca herdsman in Peru knows more about our case than we do." Horatio commiserates, "Knows what to look for, he does." The two of them stop to survey the victims. The camera zooms in on The Man In The Ice Cream Suit and the neat hole above his eye as Horatio intones, "One over the left eye." We travel over to the Starbucks Maiden, whose wound looks like a gory bindhi, as Horatio says, "One right between the eyes," then we visit with Photo Guy, who has, according to Horatio, "One into the right eye. Boom, boom, boom -- and that's called the Kill Zone." Calleigh says matter-of-factly, "No messing around, clean and deadly." Speaking of no messing around, here's Sevilla to exposit a little on the unreliability of witnesses. Calleigh asks, "So how did three people get shot in broad daylight on a busy street, and nobody sees anything?" The entire Washington, D.C. metro area contemptuously shouts the answer while Horatio decrees, "Sniper."

Oh, look, The Who agree. That's why they're screaming, "Yeah!" isn't it?

Once we get back from the commercial, Sevilla is again filling Horatio in on the unreliability of witnesses, clearly forgetting that the man has a built-in ClueScope and the divine powers that come with deciding who's guilty and who's innocent. He elects to humor us all, however, by reading us the clues: "Lost shoes indicate people running for their lives." Speedle -- in another Warrickian parallel -- is on shoe duty, photographing them as if he's hoping his work can double as a freelance assignment for Harper's Bazaar. Sevilla fills us in on the victims' backgrounds, but since none of it will be especially relevant later, I'm not going to bother. Suffice it to say that the only thing these three have in common is the unfortunate manner of their demise. Horatio sends Sevilla off to get all the surveillance videos from the surrounding buildings and businesses, then asks Alexx how many bullets his underlings will looking for, only he phrases it, "How many bullets am I looking for?" Alexx -- who's looking really great in a tank top, although I do wonder if all female coroners dress as nattily as she and her ill-tempered counterpart on NBC -- tells Horatio, "Guy in the suit, the bullet lodged in his head. That man over there, same thing." She then crouches down to the Starbucks Maiden and croons, "Let's see what happened to your bullet, sweetheart. Messed up your pretty weave, that's for sure. Yeah, it went right through you." I should note that Alexx is determining this by moving her fingers around in the wound area. Horatio tells Calleigh to find the third bullet, then summons Speedle, who finishes photographing Photo Guy and wanders over, chuffing in irritation. He testily says, "Don't these people have anything better to do?" Horatio's all, "Okay, all right, remember where you are...let's get everything back to the lab. We need to start the victimology, and figure out why these three people got shot, okay?" I suppose the wrong-place-wrong-time hypothesis is going to languish for the better part of the episode. I also love how Horatio's all we-we-we as though he's going to be laboring in the vineyards beside everyone, when we really know he's going to be wandering about and brooding instead. Calleigh has Horatio wander on over to where she is, as she tells him, "I've got a divot. Victim dropped in her tracks, bullet went through her head, hit here, based on a teardrop shape, tail indicates that it traveled in this direction ..." Calleigh walks over to a wall. Lo and behold, that bullet happens to be resting against it. She holds it up for Horatio, telling him, "Looks like a .223." Horatio can take that information and run with it. He says, "Two-two-three...okay. Let's get the trajectory. You and I will work the bullets. Alexx, you and I are on bodies." That Horatio, inserting himself in all the cool action. Either that or he's cloned himself. Oh, God, please, not that. Anyway, Horatio's attention is distracted by a few birds of prey circling near a tall building. He can hear their calls perfectly, and so he turns. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have our trajectory.

Meanwhile, it's a dead man's party in Alexx's morgue. And she's brought party favors -- those long metal rods which help map out the trajectory vectors for gunshot victims. Oh, man, this completely icks me out. It's as though these people are cocktail garnishes and Alexx is skewering them for a very large, very morbid fruity drink. Yeah, it's my hang-up. Anyway, as Alexx is slowly inserting the rod into the Starbucks Maiden, she's telling Horatio up in the skybox, "Angle is downward" -- okay, the wet, slurpy, crunchy sounds have really not increased my love for this particular procedure -- "into the glabella, perforated the brain, and exited through the occipital bone." Horatio checks the results on his computer, and confirms that she does look like she's about to adorn the side of a giant, disgusting, bloody cocktail. Actually, what he does it overlay a 360-degree compass, rotate the x-axis from zero, and determine that the shot went in at a 20.5 degree angle. Alexx asks what the other angles for the other victims were -- they were 20.8 and 20.1 degrees. I'll be darned; that habit of surveying the results from behind a bank of computers finally proved useful. Alexx comments of all three, "Hard to get that shot from the ground unless the shooter's ten feet tall." Horatio adds, "Or they're in a ten-story window." That's a big difference in numbers, I think; either Horatio or Alexx should show their work so we can see how they came to their respective answers. Alas, there's no time, as it's more important for us to see exactly how the Starbucks Maiden died in TMICam. As Alexx explains, "The bullet entered her brain, shut down her central nervous system...immediately fatal," we get the bullet's-eye view of the proceedings. Alexx concludes, "Never felt a thing. -best thing to going in your slee--" She trails off as she realizes she's talking to herself; Horatio's taken off. Alexx gives an eye-roll -- this is apparently typical behavior for Horatio -- and returns to her work.

Horatio's off and hovering over Calleigh, who's cracking, "These are not your daddy's bullets. Most bullets have striations, but these don't." That's because they're Sabot bullets encased in plastic. Calleigh says, "Specialty bullets. Not illegal, but also not widely available." And then we see a closeup of the bullet exiting the gun and shedding its plastic skin as it goes. Horatio explains, "It's encased in plastic to protect the bullet, making it impossible to match up the specific weapon, right?" Calleigh takes the ammunition choice as a sign of foresight and concludes, "[The sniper] does not want to get caught." Horatio concludes, "Maybe he was just beginning. Three dead before the morning rush hour is over. Who knows what the day will bring us?"

Where they have to be is back at the scene of the crime, which they are now re-enacting with some plastic dummies. Then the contestants on The Bachelor are dismissed. I kid! They're setting up mannequins to approximate the positions the victims were in, and sticking lasers in the heads to mark the angles of trajectory for the bullets the sniper shot. Horatio explains, "These lasers should get us up close to where these shots were taken from." Calleigh and two other folk fire up the lasers. Horatio elects not to use his ClueVision around strangers, but rather, a pair of binoculars. All the lasers are pointing to the roof of the InterContinental office building. Horatio says, "Six hundred and fifty yards." Calleigh translates, "That's six and a half football fields." I had no idea snipers measured their marks in football fields. Or perhaps this is an example of that staple of explanatory writing, "Translate the jargon into everyday imagery to provide real-world context." Personally, that sort of thing never works for me: unless you've seen six and a half football fields back-to-back, using them as a way of making a distance more real is pretty useless. Anyway, Horatio muses, "One shot, one kill. This guy's either military-trained or police." Calleigh adds, "Marine Corps, probably. They're the best snipers in the world." Just ask Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald, both of whom received their firearms instruction courtesy of the USMC. Horatio says, "That is his nest up there. Let's go find out if he left us anything."

Well, the sniper left a lot of tape. According to Horatio, the sniper did so because "he didn't want the gunshots echoing in the stairwell." Calleigh brainstorms, "He would have had to disassemble the rifle and hide it in something to get it up here. Maybe it was a Winchester Model 70 or a Remington 700, I don't know. Charles Whitman disguised himself as a deliveryman to get up the Texas tower and he got up there, wheeled his guns and his ammo onto the observation deck, and killed fourteen people. He wounded thirty-one." Anyone want to bet that Calleigh's bookshelves include a lot of books about guns and the people who use them? Horatio then asks, "If I was a sniper, what is the first thing I would do?" If Horatio was the sniper, the first thing he would do is brood. Then he'd spend time creeping out the kids at a park, and then he'd go wave Photoshopped pictures around before finally getting down to business. Calleigh thinks otherwise: "You'd pick your spot. Prone position is best for shooting." The two of them eye the wall which rings the roof of the InterContinental building, and eventually conclude that the sniper was atop a maintenance entrance. Once Horatio and Calleigh are over there, she's collecting evidence while Horatio plays with his sunglasses. He asks, "So what do you get when a six-foot-tall man lays down with a three-foot-long rifle?" "Hot flashes. But that's just me," Calleigh replies. Man, if she ever gets to go to Vegas on a crossover case, it's going to take a crowbar to pry her off Nicky, isn't it? Maybe she'll even offer to be the technical advisor for his Day Of Reckoning.

Now Calleigh's getting into the act: "Climbs even higher, gets into position" -- the effect is of watching a muppet position itself -- "he waited for the right conditions." Horatio finally concludes, "Then his targets were irrelevant because the people he killed were picked at random. Meaning he picked spots and not victims. Once he hunkered down, he was up there all night, dry firing. He didn't eat, he didn't move, not for any reason." And here, we see the sniper piss. It's every bit as gratifying as you could have hoped. Horatio intones, "He waited for as long as it took." Calleigh adds, "And he didn't take the shot until conditions were perfect, like a skier visualizing the hill before the race starts." Not to be outdone in the "I can get into the sniper's head better than you" monologues, Horatio says, "Because he was waiting for his puzzle to be complete." Are we to presume that the puzzle was laid out on the sniper data card? Would we get more of this puzzle idea if we had been able to read and translate the sniper data card? Or have the writers merely piled on clichs to the breaking point?

Gah! Calleigh and Horatio still aren't done. Calleigh's all, "He used a flag or tree to gauge the wind." Horatio horns in, "It didn't matter how long he waited, because as soon as those pieces fell together, he'd be ready." Calleigh adds, "To take three shots." We then see the dead people being targeted -- spare us not one moment of the sniper's thought processes, y'all -- and the shots being taken all over again. Nothing says class like showing how the victims die in the scope. If that's not giving narrative legitimacy to a killer, I don't know what is -- and given recent events, I hope the people associated with this show are proud of being the first to bring us the sniper's-eye view of what goes on during a premeditated murder at random. Horatio then picks up the wind flag and quips, "And the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind."

Fresh from that tedious scene, Horatio walks over and asks, "Speed, whaddya got?" "Contempt for you and everyone associated with this show," he replies. Oh, wait -- that's me. He's got the one building. Horatio gives some more tedious hoo-ha about the sniper's ability to blend into a side of beef (no kidding), and wonders why the sniper chose that particular building. Then, remembering that he's Horatio and therefore knows everything, he answers his own questions with, "Targets everywhere. There's a high-traffic area on the upper left corner. Can you highlight that, please?" Speedle does, and Horatio checks the lines of sight from the building. Horatio comments, "That's his line of sight, lots of people walking around." Speedle says, "Yeah, but that's got to be 800 yards away." Ah, but what is eight football fields to this guy? Horatio turns to go, telling Speedle to load Delko into a chopper. Off-screen, Alex Rodriguez sobs in relief that he hasn't been put on the Kim Delaney train.

Cue the helicopter. In the streets of Miami, seasoned cosmopolites all stop and gape like slack-jawed yokels. Oh, like helicopters are really going to be that uncommon. Delko tells Horatio, "Okay, H, I'm in position to scramble the wind condition." This just raises all sorts of questions -- are we to conclude that Delko's also an air ace, in addition to being a scuba sensei? He's mastered all the ancient elements -- earth, air, water! Let's look forward to seeing him walk through fire! Horatio tells him, "Stay in position." Really? And what would Delko be doing otherwise, stepping out for a Big Gulp? Jesus wept over this dialogue, and so did I. Then, two squad cars and a vehicle full of forensics types pull up. Wait a minute -- this is a sniper who's been terrorizing downtown Miami, and the best the police force can spare is two police cars, a humvee full of forensics investigators, and a chopper piloted by Aquaman? Doesn't anyone remember what it looked like when they caught the D.C. snipers? Think about the end of The Blues Brothers, and then add John Ashcroft. And here -- three cars and a helicopter. I suppose we should be grateful Horatio took along backup, instead of arresting the sniper alone, then healing the sick and feeding the masses with a biscotti and a lox bagel. Horatio gets out of the humvee and begins screaming into his CB for Calleigh. She tells him she's taking the stairs. So she should be on the crime scene in about twenty minutes, bent double from the stitch in her side. Horatio tells her, "You'll be my eyes and ears," which is a blatant lie, as we all know he's omnipotent. He then incites a riot by screaming at the diners in the plaza, "Ladies and gentlemen, there's a sniper in the vicinity. I need everybody out!" Cue the melee. Not. People are just kind of ambling off, looking around bemusedly. Horatio personally guides a senior citizen out of harm's way.

This does not deter the sniper, who's now got Horatio in his scope. The forums begin chanting, "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" Someone reminds him he's right in the line of fire, so he stands still, shouting, "Listen up! This guy is one shot, one kill! If he can't make it, he's not going to take it! Eric, the wind from the chopper ruins his shot!" The camera swings back to Delko, who looks confused. Calleigh checks in and tells Horatio that the SWAT team has the sniper in its sights. The sniper -- who's dressed like a Tusken raider about to go joyriding on a bantha -- keeps aiming at Horatio. Silly man: bullets can't harm Horatio. Before the sniper can find this out for himself, two SWAT team members creep up behind him and tell him to drop the weapon. Cut to Calleigh telling Horatio, "The sniper has been apprehended. We have him in custody." I'd just like to note that she's wearing a tank top and a bulletproof vest. That seems impractical somehow. At this point, however, it's really not that surprising.

And now, the big confrontational scene: Horatio's wandering back toward the SWAT team, and as Calleigh comes out, he asks, "Nice work. Have you considered a transfer to SWAT?" "I don't look good in all black," Calleigh coos. "I beg to differ," Horatio replies. Oh, they are so having an affair. Then the sniper comes down, and as he's paraded past Horatio, he asks, "Don't you want to know why?" Horatio does not, because he's already made up the answer in his head: "You just killed four innocent people. You're evil. You enjoy death. I hope you enjoy your own." As the mouse said to the Fury, he'll be judge, he'll be jury. And with that edict, the case is over. Now it's time for Horatio to go wandering about the streets of Miami, looking at the faces of passersby and thinking, "You owe me your life, and so do you and you and you..." Yes, Horatio! Protect your lambs!

And that's it. week, Megan takes a powder. Y'all have a happy holiday (if applicable).