Entrance Wounds

We begin with one of the most awkward transitions in the history of this series: the sun rising over assorting sparkling seaside vistas, and then an abrupt cut to a darkened room, where a man is apparently attempting CPR on a woman. I say "attempting" because a) they're still standing up, and b) she's still respiring independently. Oh, wait. This is passionate kissing. As they awkwardly move across the room -- you try cramming your tongue in someone's mouth and then steering them around -- the buzzing sound of flies becomes louder. The woman pulls back and asks, "What's that noise?" "It's the waves crashing on the beach," the man replies. Well, we know why he's not thinking clearly enough to give a more plausible excuse. There's a few more minutes of free-form wrestling, and then the woman pulls back to ask coyly, "Since when do oceans hum?" He declines to answer. Technical foul, resulting in termination of play. She's all about playing Nancy Drew and trying to solve The Mystery Of The Buzzing Waves. The guy's clueless, and continues undressing. The woman, however, has other things on her mind. She stalks around the room, following the noise to its source under the bed. Then she lifts the cover and sees a dead woman covered in flies. Cue her screaming, while I wonder how these two didn't notice the smell of a dead-enough-to-attract-flies person. Did Captain Underpants dismiss that as "the smell of the ocean"? Did we miss that part of the conversation?

The woman drops the bedspread, and in a much more elegant transition, Horatio lifts it back up again. Unless he was there all along, hiding in a closet and waiting for crime to strike -- then it wouldn't be so elegant. Anyway, we get the sideways shot of David Caruso, and as he straightens up, a detective says, "A guy and his coworker found her this morning." Horatio muses that the room had to have been cleaned before the couple checked in, and the detective snorts, "Yeah, typical maid service -- scrub the surfaces." Horatio replies, "Scrubbed the surfaces but left a dead body under the bed." Well, yes. We learn that the person who booked and paid for the room happens to be the one lying naked and conveniently arranged under the bed slats so the tender sensibilities of censors won't be aroused. We also learn that she is one Susan McCreary, booked on a string of priors for prostitution, and she was probably not staying in the hotel to get away from it all. The detective glances down and comments, "Looks like she was working the street." Horatio corrects him: "Not anymore."

Bizarrely enough, Roger Daltrey agrees.

Outside, it's sunny Miami. Inside, Horatio is taking pictures of a thermostat set to seventy-five. The camera pulls back to reveal him standing to a drooping Phaleonopsis, and a voice floats from off-screen, "With her liver temp, that puts time of death between seven and nine last night." It's a good thing I can recognize Alexx's voice, or else I'd be making jokes about how Horatio's so omnipotent, even the voices in his head are expert voices. Not that I'm not going to have more opportunities to joke about Horatio's omnipotence in the fifty-four minutes. Horatio notes the wilting flower, touches it as though he's E.T., then moves on to pay attention to Alexx. She tells him that the victim was stabbed repeatedly with a slim, sharp implement. They move on to the question of where in the room the woman was stabbed, and Alexx, Horatio, and Speedle quickly eliminate the under-the-bed scenario -- okay, aside from Chucky the killer doll, who would even try to stab someone under a bed? -- and the on-top-of-the-bed scenario. This hasn't stopped Speedle from grabbing the sheets from a maid, and he's dispatched to go get the bedspread too so that he can also get the thrilling paranoia that comes with seeing firsthand exactly how many people have deposited some sort of effluvium on a hotel bedspread.

In the scene, Horatio's using an ALS to pick up more splotches on the wall. Upon looking at a long arc-shaped one, he's all, "What do we have here?" Perhaps more of the know-it-all voices in his head can tell him. Lord knows Speedle -- who's intently doing anything but acknowledging Horatio's existence -- isn't going to. Horatio then whips out a swab, douses it in phenolphthalein, and samples the area. It comes up pink, and Horatio announces, "It's blood, and somebody tried to wipe it away." Flashback to someone making a stabbing motion, the blood flying about while they do -- because, you know, that's a lot more informative than having Horatio point out that the shape and direction of the blood spray indicate some kind of spatter wound resulting from a narrow, specific slice. It's much more fun when we're forced to figure this out for ourselves. Except for the "fun" part. Alexx, who's still with the victim, says, "Not the only surface he scrubbed. Body smells like cardamom. I use it in a mean South African curry." Well, that would explain why the couple in the first scene didn't have that what's-that-smell conversation; they just figured they were in the presence of curry. In a hotel room. Alexx continues, "But it's also used in scents and in soaps."

Cut to Horatio stalking around the bathroom area and wondering if the other person in the room took the used soap with him (he did, as well as extra towels). I don't suppose asking what kind of toiletries the hotel gives out would be useful? No? Then let's just watch Speedle run an ALS over the tub after Horatio does the usual "Let's do blah-de-blah," where "let's" translates into some sort of patently insincere attempt to make the Bob-whites feel as though they're not really catering to Horatio's every whim. Actually, Speedle begins checking out the tub while Horatio examines the extremely well-stocked hotel toiletries tray. As something of a bath-and-body products junkie, let me just put in my bid to stay at this hotel for the bath booty alone, body under the bed or no. I've seen $200 gift baskets from the Body Shop that have fewer items than this array of freebies. Horatio ponders the soap while Speedle finds smudges which indicate that the victim, Susan, may have been washed by this guy. Horatio's all, "That would explain the clean body and the missing towels, wouldn't it?" That's an annoying habit of asking questions that really aren't, isn't it? The detective from the prior scene comes with an Officer Saxon and what are probably the woman's clothes, found in a dumpster outside. Horatio's all, "We'll take it from here, gentlemen." Off-screen, Speedle's probably rolling his eyes, since this "we" business usually means, "Speedle will do the tedious grunt work while Horatio stands around and broods." Speedle more or less cops to this when he fixes Horatio with a disgusted look and says, "I guess I gotta go check the dumpster now." Well, yes.

Meanwhile, the show's still taking place in Miami. We see an outdoor scene with the usual dozen emergency vehicles. Sevilla's waiting for the B-team, which means Delko and Calleigh, who disembark from one of the Humvees and wander on over. Calleigh, it should be noted, is wearing a blazer with the kind of puffed and gathered sleeves that I remember from a prairie blouse I had in fourth grade. Why do clothing designers hate their customers enough to bring back trends that make everyone look like linebackers who stumbled onto the set of Little House on the Prairie? Did they learn nothing from this fall's hippie-chic fiasco? No grown woman who has to work is going to want to do so dressed like an extra from Hair, or, in this case, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. At least Sevilla's looking good. She tells us that the crime scene we're looking at is an "attempted car-jacking and robbery. German tourist couple. They stopped for directions." You'd think that by this point, the German government would have one of those travel advisories in effect for Miami, the same way the U.S. does for war-torn regions where Americans are likely to end up dead. The wife -- who's alive and swaddled in a blanket -- is Greta Roebling, and her husband -- whom we'll see shortly -- is Werner. Calleigh groans, "Another slam from the European press. Miami: deathtrap under the palms." Yes, because this carjacking is all about Miami's international image and not, say, the victims of a crime. And by the way, while Calleigh's pulled-back hair looks good, the plunging vee of her tight top carries her whole look into a weird, sexy frontier area that I'm not sure anyone needs to explore in a recreational context, much less on the job. Delko, who's committed no crimes of sartorial semantics thus far, focuses on the actual crime scene, asking if the wife saw the shooting. Sevilla says, "No. She said a masked man approached her side of the car, then shot her husband." Delko then asks if the body's in the car, and Sevilla says with some asperity, "No. Husband fled. Shooter ran after him, and he left his body on the floor of the garage bay." Delko then asks the question on everyone's mind: "If it's a car-jacking, why chase a guy who's already abandoned his car?" Calleigh's recovered enough from the realization that she went out in public dressed as she did to say, "Well, that's the first question of many. Why don't you take the garage, I'll take the car, and we'll meet up at the body when the ME shows up?" Delko touches her arm and assents before they split. On the bright side, he's got a nice trail of blood drops to follow to the garage. For her part, Calleigh's got plenty of blood in the car.

And now, a science montage ensues. Now would be a good time to go get a snack.

At the end of the montage, Calleigh notices a security camera in the garage, which will undoubtedly come in handy later. Delko is busy photographing Werner's body when Calleigh comes in to announce, "I got blood spatter in the car, but no bullets. Also, got a smear on the rearview mirror. There's no sign of the ME?" Delko replies, "No. Stuck on the Venetian Causeway. Bridge wouldn't close. Would you believe?" In the absence of an actual medical professional, these two decide to pretend that they can determine how Werner died. Delko says he's only seeing one entrance wound -- a small one, behind the ear, that exited through the mouth. Calleigh's skeptical about anyone's ability to run with a gunshot to the head, but Delko reminds her that anything's possible. Calleigh asks if Delko found bullets in the garage; he did not, but he's got some blood patterns he'd like to show her. When they walk over to said blood patterns, we see that Calleigh's blazer is pleated and gathered in the back, thus ensuring that it's equally troubling coming and going. We all get to see the smudge on the floor, and Delko says, "Doesn't look like a shoe, but it's hard to say where it's from. And the spatter on the back of this truck is even harder to place." Not for Calleigh: "Looks like high velocity from a gunshot." Delko counters that a second gunshot doesn't gibe with what the body's telling them. Well, perhaps an ME can set y'all straight at some point.

Meanwhile, we're looking at the hapless hooker on the autopsy table, strategically covered so as not to inflame anyone's prurient interests. Alexx is telling Horatio, "Twenty-three stab wounds in all. Some of them look tentative." "Until he got the hang of it," Horatio replies. Speaking of getting the hang of things, I see that Horatio's mastered the art of being in the same room as the autopsy he's commenting on. We find out that the majority of the wounds are deep-force penetrations, and cause of death is exsanguination from a wound that severed Susan's aorta. She bled out into her chest cavity, which explains the lack of blood everywhere. Horatio muses, "[That] would have helped the killer with his clean-up. You think he would have known that?" Alexx shoots back, "You find him and ask him." Horatio smiles in response. Then he notices the traces of adhesive, and Alexx fills him in, telling him they found it on Susan's wrists, ankles, and mouth. Horatio says, "So he picked her up, bound and taped her, and then he went to town." There's no sign of sexual activity, and Alexx comments, "[The killer] went to a lot of trouble for no personal or sexual motive." Horatio asks, "How about the joy of just taking a life? That's always good."

Then he stalks out of the morgue and right into Speedle's work area. That's either a smooth transition, or a really compact lab. Who knows? Maybe Speedle's now occupying the skybox and Horatio's powers include teleportation. Anyway, Speedle fills Horatio in on his tour of dumpster-diving, then comments that the tub's pipes were a bust: "I found traces of drain cleaner, so it would have dissolved any traces of DNA he might have left." Then we get a TMICam that could double for a Liquid Plum-R commercial. We have a brief exchange about hotel bedspreads which only echoes episodes of CSI, and then Horatio wanders off in search of Susan's family members or children, the better to make her his new personal poster child for avenging.

And then Horatio goes over Susan's stuff in the second science montage of the night. He finds a fingerprint.

In the scene, he and Speedle are cruising through the halls, and Speedle's telling Horatio, "Smear on the bedspread is mold -- a type that's not found in the bungalow." Horatio thinks the killer could have brought it in with him. Speedle replies, "But not off his body -- it could be transfer from some kind of cover he brought to keep the mess down." Horatio dismisses this with, "He did get sloppy about one thing. We found a bloody fingerprint on the victim's belt." And it turns out that fingerprint belongs to Cole Judson, who had a prior knife assault on a woman twelve years ago. Speedle's all, "Not his first time." Horatio decrees, "Let's make it his last."