I say! This glittering city before me: is that…Las Vegas? Why, I believe it is!
Catherine walks through the Labitrail to DNA, where she unloads a couple of sealed samples and an accompanying true-crime story on Mia: a wife caught her husband in bed with a hooker, cut him, then got killed by him, and the hooker ran off with the gentleman's wallet. Catherine says she caught him sitting on a curb and swabbed blood spatter off his hands. Mia says she's more backed up than Interstate 15, and asks if the samples can wait until tomorrow. "He's not going anywhere," Catherine says, and leaves Mia to her backup. On her way out, she meets up with Warrick and Nicky and invites them out for a drink. They pass, pleading prior commitments. What, do they have tween daughters to go home to or something? In any case, it looks like Catherine's on her own.
But not for long, because by the time we cut to a crowded piano bar called The Highball, she's already being chatted up by L.A. Law's Alan Rosenberg, who played the ex-husband from Cybill who wasn't also an ex-Duke boy. He also happens to be Marg Helgenberger's husband in real life, which might explain why she's able to play this scene without cringing away from his squinty, craggy puss. He's leaning way into her, wearing a black leather jacket and reaching levels of smarm I wouldn't have thought possible for him. But Catherine seems to be eating it up. The blonde bartender offers to bring Catherine another drink, but she declines. Rosenberg has taken advantage of the brief distraction to start stroking Catherine's bare arm with his fingertips. Well, that's kind of forward. Catherine allows it, looking somewhat titillated by his boldness. They're swapping life stories in pickup-bar-speak, and when Catherine lets slip that she has a daughter, Rosenberg oozes, "If she's got her mother's looks, you're in trouble." He leans in and whispers something in her ear that we mercifully don't hear, but Catherine seems to dig it. Although she says she's going to be in trouble anyway if she doesn't get home. Rosenberg makes a big show of dismay at getting shot down, and writes down his phone number on a matchbook cover. Catherine drops it in her purse with a smile and she makes to leave. Rosenberg jumps off his barstool and insists on walking her to her car.
That must have been some walk, because we cut right to a few minutes later in the parking lot, where they're making out to Catherine's SUV. Scandalous! I certainly hope Catherine will be rightfully and thoroughly punished for her wanton behavior. Suddenly a chirping car alarm nearby seems to bring her back to reality, or at least remind her that every time she tries to have a little fun her life inevitably turns to shit. She pushes him away, saying, "I can't do this tonight. I'll call you." He doesn't respond at all well to the news that he's not going to get a helgenberging. In fact, he goes directly from smarmy to scary, slamming her car door while she tries to enter and snarling, "What the hell is your problem?" Catherine tries to force her car door open, but he's not moving. I don't think she's going to call him now, do you? Not after he went from Mr. Goodbar to Mr. Nutbar in nothing flat. She in fact invites him to go to hell, whereupon he suddenly releases the door and it appears to smack her in the face as it swings open. She gasps and puts her hand to her cheekbone. "You're not worth the trouble," he spits. That was the worst apology ever. He stomps back toward the bar, pissed that he came out here and scraped up his knuckles on the pavement for naught. Catherine's left standing there, holding her hand to her face and wondering how she's going to get her SUV out of a spot that's entirely surrounded by parked cars. Could I be more glad that I'm married? No. I could not.
Later that same night, the phone to Catherine's bed rings. She wakes up enough to answer it, which she'll certainly live to regret. When we see her, she's fully dressed and waking up her mom, who's sleeping on a couch in the living room. Nice. This house she's living in looks like Sam Braun's check wouldn't cover a down payment on it, and she can't even set up her mom/full-time babysitter in a guest room. What an undignified way for a parental character to make her first appearance on the show. But at least now we know that Lindsey isn't at home all alone every evening. Happy Mother's Day, from all of us at CSI. In a whisper, Catherine tells MamaCath that Grissom called her in because the graveyard shift is as backed up as Mia. MamaCath is one of those people whose nose wakes up first, because she comments on Catherine's breath: "Vodka, with an Altoid chaser." "I brushed my teeth," Catherine insists. MamaCath notices Catherine's "wound" and asks, "Did you walk into a door?" All we can see on Catherine's face is a small, horizontal scratch under her eye. I knew Catherine was tough, but if I clocked myself with a car door my entire face would be puffy. Not from the impact, but from crying about it for three hours. Catherine tells her mom about Lindsey's dentist appointment in the morning, and thanks her mom for covering. MamaCath answers with a look at her watch and a disgusted, "Oh, good grief." I hear that, MamaCath.
Catherine joins Gil, Emergency Backup David, Detective Vartann, and a differently-alive individual outside a multi-level parking garage. Gil thanks Catherine for helping out in his time of shorthandedness. Uh, don't thank her yet. Catherine quickly takes in the scene: the body is young, female, and dressed in clubwear, with a pink jacket covering the face. And a sticky red spot covering part of the jacket. Catherine comments on the clotting pattern, and Gil confirms that the victim hasn't been dead long. Vartann volunteers that the building manager IDed the body as Alice Granger, who moved there a month ago. Gil asks David to take the jacket off Alice's face. As he complies, Gil notices Catherine's owie. "I walked into a door. Can we not talk about it?" Meanwhile, David has quickly determined that the top of Alice's skull was ventilated by a small-caliber bullet, which fact he ascertains by the ooky method of sticking his gloved finger through the hole. A quick look around for shell casings comes up empty. Vartann offers that since Alice comes with car and purse not included, he's thinking carjacking. We see a Theory-Cam scene of a shadowy figure chasing Alice until she trips and falls, whereupon the killer dispatches her with a bullet to the noggin. Gil's thinks the killer covered Alice's face out of familiarity or contrition. "Maybe she knew her attacker," Catherine guesses. "Great," says Gil. "Carjacked by a friend." Vartann's cell phone rings before he can complain about his theory coming apart so quickly. Good news: the cops have already found Alice's car. Gil sends Catherine to check it out, saying he'll stay with the body and meet her there.
Catherine follows the flashing lights of a cop car to the parking lot of…The Highball. Needless to say, she's a lot more surprised to be back here so soon than any of us are. Her eyes are wide in the rearview mirror as she drives past the bar's entrance in slow motion. Glad I'm not stuck behind her in traffic.
The uniform who's guarding Alice's Saturn in the Highball's parking lot tells Catherine and Vartann that no one has left the bar since they arrived. Catherine calls for someone to come open the car, and another uniform with a slim jim is quick to oblige. The car's interior is as clean and empty as a new rental, aside from a .22 Beretta under the seat. Which would be one way to improve customer service at the Alamo counter. Gil joins them (he caught up quick, probably thanks to Catherine's slo-mo driving), speculating that the .22 could be the murder weapon. Vartann's poking holes in his own theory now: "So he shoots her, takes her car, and stops off for a drink." "He could still be in there," Gil says blithely, oblivious to Catherine's horrified reaction to what's coming . "Let's find out," Vartann says, and heads inside. "Did you hear the one about the cop and the monkey who walk into a bar?" Gil tries. "I'm not in the mood," Catherine groans. "Neither was the monkey," says Gil. That's the worst "…walks into a bar" joke I've ever heard, and I've heard all of them. I had to do that for work one time. By the time I was done, I probably would have preferred making a living sticking my gloved finger into bullet holes in skulls.
You know what, The Who? You're right. I'm not the regular recapper. But I would think all my years as a fan of you guys should count for something.
Catherine slo-mos into the bar behind Vartann, plainly freaked out at returning so soon to the scene of her near-assault. The same bartender is still there, even. A cop tells Vartann that they've checked with the customers and except for the AliceMobile, every car in the lot is accounted for. Vartann is interviewing the bartender, who recognizes Alice's photo and identifies her as a regular. She also recognizes Catherine from earlier, although she doesn't say anything to either of them. All they learn is that Alice called a cab after 2:00 AM and left by herself. Vartann says that explains why the AliceMobile is still there, although Catherine points out that it doesn't explain the gun. Vartann moves on, disappointed. Catherine whispers a thanks to the bartender for not blowing her cover, and the bartender plays it off. Catherine smiles. See, up until this point, she hasn't done anything wrong. I don't know why she's so reluctant to tell anyone that she had a drink and a shitty non-fling here earlier tonight. She should bring Gil or even just Vartann into the loop. Not because it's any of their business, or because she needs a man to tell her what to do, but because it might (ha! Might) be relevant to the case that she had an encounter at this very bar with a man who behaved in a threatening manner. That way, when it comes out -- as we all know it will -- she won't look like she's been trying to hide something. And I'd say the same thing if she were working this case with Sara and Brass's friend Annie from L.A. Homicide. But her point of no return is fast approaching no matter how much slo-mo walking she does.
And now, the first non-Catherine scene of the episode. Gil's in the morgue, going over Alice's autopsy results with David the Non-Emergency Backup Coroner. David hands Gil a tray with the bullet he dug out of Alice's skull, describing its messy path with no assist from the TMI-cam. Gil's disappointed to be looking at a .25 caliber bullet, since it rules out the .22 they found in the AliceMobile as the murder weapon. "So shoot me," David suggests mildly. He shows Gil the spot he shaved on the top of Alice's scalp to better showcase the bullet wound, and the external TMI-cam shot demonstrates how close contact with the muzzle created a star pattern when the weapon was discharged. David says the bullet's trajectory was "ten to fifteen degrees left of vertical," meaning the killer was standing over her. "Which would make him a giant," says David, "except for this." He shows Gil abrasions on Alice's knees that look to have been created by Occam's Razor. "Maybe she was kneeling," Gil guesses. "Begging for her life," David elaborates. Nice to see that Hodges's not-my-job-itis isn't contagious.
Catherine and Sara are going over Alice's clothes with a fine-toothed comb, if "fine-toothed comb" is assumed to mean "Sara's fingers and Catherine's electronic magnifying scope." Sara's chattering away all friendly-like to Catherine, who's barely in the same plane of existence, although she does manage to autopilot out a lame wisecrack. Under the scope, she finds some mysterious particles in the seam of the jacket and spaces that she'll get them to Hodges. She's all but tuning out Sara's recitation of the mundane contents of Alice's pockets, until Sara gets to one item of particular interest: "…and one matchbook." Catherine's eyes bug out like she's seen a ghost as she asks for a look at the matchbook. Sara obligingly holds it up, saying there's only a phone number written on it with no accompanying name. For those of us with short-term memory problems, Catherine flashes back to Rosenberg writing his number on a matchbook and handing it to her. Alas, the number isn't visible in the flashback. Sara says she'll have Vartann run the number down. While looking at the number Alice had, Catherine suddenly "remembers" that she has to go "pick up Lindsey," and bails. "Tell her I said hey," Sara says, finally beginning to twig to the possibility that Catherine may not be all there today. Or perhaps I should say, less there than usual.
Cut to Catherine driving down her street in daylight. Judging from the trash bins standing at the end of every driveway on the block, it must be garbage day. Catherine parks in the driveway and charges into the house on a mission. We can tell she's serious because what follows is one long tracking shot. Stomping into the kitchen and hauling out the trash can under the sink nets her nothing but an empty wastebasket. She hollers for Lindsey, asking what happened. "I…took it out, like you always tell me to? It's Thursday." Catherine gives a full-body eye-roll that ensures Lindsey will never take out the trash again as long as she lives. Lindsey asks if her mom's okay, and Catherine lies that she's great. "You sure about that?" says MamaCath, swooping into the shot and following Catherine in full harangue mode all the way to bin at the street, which is, naturally, already empty. MamaCath clings to Catherine's grille as she reaches into her truck to answer her cell phone. "Just wait till I get there," she says to the caller, harriedly. "Go, go," says her mom, all put-upon. "I'll be here when you get back." She turns and marches back into the house with a gait that isn't exactly going to make Catherine look forward to that.
In order to save time, we cut back to the Labitrail through the magic of editing rather than having another long tracking shot following Catherine back. Hodges spots Gil walking by the Trace lab and waves him in like one of those guys who direct taxiing airplane traffic. Dude, Gil's not deaf any more. Haven't you heard? Gil regards Hodges with a mixture of disgust and what the fuck…?, but approaches him warily. Hodges has determined the composition of the particles from Alice's jacket: iron, chromium, manganese, and carbon, which together add up to automotive sheet metal. Hodges explains that the process of welding releases tiny metallic balls into the air. To demonstrate, we get a little clip of someone welding amid a shower of sparks. Although there's not enough in the budget this week for the camera to zoom in on an individual spark, we can assume that each one is essentially a wee, little, white-hot speck of metal. "So you're saying our killer has metal balls?" Gil asks carefully. Oh, don't encourage him. Hodges guesses that since Alice worked at a car dealership, "she could have gotten metal balls on the job. And, just in case you're wondering, working here? I'm developing them too." He concludes with a proud smile. Gil just backs away slowly.
Catherine has arrived back in the Labitrail, where Liam the larval CSI gloms himself to her side for a quick pedeconference. He's clearly not using his pay raise on hair products. Or a haircut, for that matter. Liam tells Catherine what she and we already know about the gun in Alice Granger's car not being the murder weapon, what with it being the wrong caliber and all. But what is new information is the fact that that gun is registered to one Douglas Granger. That gets Catherine's attention. Liam lets her go before she can blow him up again.
She arrives at an interrogation room, where Vartann is already questioning Douglas Granger, who turns out to be the victim's brother. Vartann's line of questioning seems to revolve around a motive of jealousy, compounded by Douglas's impressive private arsenal, which includes a .25 and a .22. Douglas (who looks kind of like an evil George Michael, complete with stubble) says Alice might still be alive if she'd actually had the .22 in her purse instead of her car. He explains about an ex-boyfriend of Alice's named Jeff Simon, who Douglas claims had been stalking her. As he goes on, Catherine flashes on Douglas's face in much the same way that Adam flashed on Sara's last week. Does this mean Catherine wants to assault Douglas, or that the show is really digging this little stylistic tic and eager to use it at every opportunity? Back in the real world, Douglas explains that he gave Alice the gun for protection and helped her get a restraining order against the ex. Catherine asks where they can find Jeff Simon. Douglas is happy to help: "We used to be friends."
If I were Vartann, I'd quickly get annoyed with the way Catherine keeps walking behind him in slow motion while he's trying to investigate a case. That's no way to get things done. They arrive at an automotive shop somewhere, and quickly find Jeff Simon, who's busy with some steel-cutting power tool, making lots of tiny metal balls. Vartann taps him on the back, which surprisingly doesn't cause him to lose a finger. As Simon turns off the saw, Vartann flashes his badge and asks when Simon last saw Alice. "Before the restraining order kicked in," says Simon. Vartann's not buying, and wants to see Simon's truck. Catherine does another suspicious perp-flash on his face, which is beginning to annoy me even though I'm not Vartann. Simon points to his truck in the parking lot and asks them to tell Alice that he loves her and wants her back. Vartann and Catherine look at each other like, awkward, and Vartann breaks the news that Alice is dead. Simon looks about ready to fall over. Vartann makes a move like he's ready to catch him, but Simon finds a seat without severing a limb or giving himself tetanus. He looks so devastated that Catherine and Vartann seem to be buying his story now. But Catherine's still looking in the truck.
Where she soon finds something of interest: a laptop that boots right up to what looks like a GPS display with a flag at 3057 Westfall Avenue. Does that address sound familiar? Catherine calls up Gil to report her find, and adds that the GPS is homed in on the lab. Gil remarks that "you can't track a static location. It has to be something mobile." I guess that's true. Otherwise it's not tracking; it's…wasting time. Catherine says that's why she's calling. By coincidence, Gil just happens to be approaching the lab's garage, where the AliceMobile is patiently awaiting his attention. We see him inspecting the undercarriage with a mirror, whereupon he quickly locates a blinking tracker device. Gil calls Catherine back to tell her she was right. "He was tracking her car," Catherine calls out to Vartann, who's been standing there all this time and watching Simon grieve. "Bring him in." Vartann hauls Simon to his feet.
Catherine and Vartann have made excellent use of their time during the commercial break, because by the time we come back Simon is already in an interrogation room with Catherine. Vartann comes in to say that Simon's prints on the GPS transmitter that he was stupid enough to let them find under the AliceMobile mean they already have him nailed for felony stalking. It's not looking good for him on the murder charge either. Simon is still shooting for his Emmy as the grieving boyfriend, saying he was just worried about her. "So that restraining order against you is because you're a nice guy," Vartann deadpans. Vartann needs his own show. I think people would spend an hour watching him walk around cracking wise and looking sharp in his suits and his haircut and solving crimes against thin people everywhere. Simon's love for Alice doesn't prevent him from running down a list of her foibles: she "liked to party. Barely ate, hardly slept, didn't want to admit she had a drinking problem." This is accompanied by a flashback of Alice leaving the Highball and getting into some mystery man's car, while Simon watches unobserved from inside his truck. Catherine responds to Simon's flashback rather than his words, pointing out that Alice called a cab the night she died. Simon insists she got into some guy's car. He even gives a vague description of the vehicle, as well as its owner: "Maniac driver. Complete moron." Which tells Vartann that Simon followed them. Simon says he "had to," but then he was pulled over by the cops, who he says held him up for an hour at around 2:00 AM. Simon protests again that he's innocent. Catherine's had enough, and she angrily brings up the tiny metal balls they found on Alice's clothes, which proves Simon was in violation of the restraining order. Simon's not giving in, but neither is Catherine, possibly because if this guy gets cut loose it means Rosenberg could still show up and embarrass her. Which is as good a reason as any to put someone away for murder, I think. Simon says that the only thing he did wrong was failing to "protect her from that guy." Vartann asks for a description of That Guy. "Sleazy bastard. Slight build, dark hair. I think he had on a leather jacket." Sound familiar? If not, Catherine's got a handy flashback to Rosenberg in his leather jacket, the night before, getting his close-talk on with her. Sleazy bastard.
And you know what that means: time for another slow-motion Cath-walk, this one through the Labitrail. She heads into Gil's office, asking for a minute. But he doesn't have one, since there's a problem in DNA. Catherine only wants a second, but Gil's like, "First things first." Catherine follows him to the DNA station, where a very upset Mia is explaining how she found an unknown donor on Catherine's DNA samples from her earlier case, which matched a sample from the Alice Granger murder, as well as a sample from a rape case on the day shift. "Cross-contamination," Gil diagnoses. Mia says that's why she raised the alarm, and she was able to narrow the timeframe down to the last 48 hours. Catherine: "Are you saying that all the DNA evidence for the last two days has to be resubmitted and retested?" Gil says they don't have a choice, and snaps at Mia, "Document everything." He doesn't appear to be blaming Mia, at least not yet. Which I originally thought meant that this would somehow turn out to be Catherine's fault, like everything else. Gil leaves the women standing there looking at each other, and Catherine fails to take this opportunity to break bad news immediately after Gil learned that someone else may have screwed up worse than she did. Mia, in turn, needs to look on the bright side: on the show I regularly recap, she's dead.
In case you haven't picked up on the Catherine's Got Something To Hide theme we've been hammering away at, she's now sitting in her office, trying to use makeup to conceal the scratch on her face. Liam comes in with the news that Simon's been cut loose, since his alibi about being pulled over checked out. We only see him through the window of Catherine's open office door, while Catherine tries to unobtrusively dispose of her compact. Something To Hide! Catherine's Got Something To Hide! Sara crowds into the window with Liam, saying that the phone number on the matchbook matched a guy who's on his way in for questioning right now. Catherine plays it cool: "You got a name?" Not that a name would mean anything to Catherine anyway.
What means something to us is the totally unsurprising fact that Rosenberg's in the interrogation room. The pinstripe suit he's wearing is a little surprising, though. He's bitching at Vartann and Gil about the cops showing up at his office, which is embarrassing for a self-described "officer of the court." We'll learn later that he's a public defender (and thereby a CSI's natural predator) in addition to his other, numerous crimes against Catherinity. Gil quizzes him about the phone number on the matchbook. He admits it's his, although he's cagier about whether he was the one who wrote it down. "What's this about?" he asks. Vartann says it's about a homicide investigation. Rosenberg snottily asks if that's the only evidence linking him to the victim. Vartann says this'll be easier if Rosenberg just answers the questions. Rosenberg snots, "Oh, yeah? Easier for whom?" Half a point to Rosenberg for combining a critique of a cheap interrogation technique with correct pronoun usage. After some more fencing, Gil gets around to showing him a copy of Alice's driver's license. "I bought her a drink last night," says Rosenberg. And here comes Catherine, slo-mo-ing her slo-mo way down the hall as Gil asks Rosenberg for an itinerary. Rosenberg obliges: he left the office late, had a burger, got to the Highball around 11:00…"Met this redhead. Bought her a drink and --" With exquisite TV timing, the redhead in question crashes the party and addresses the subject directly: "Mr. [Rosenberg]? I'm Catherine Willows. CSI." Rosenberg snorts in disbelief. "You want to know what happened ?" he says to the men in the room. "Ask the redhead." Gil and Vartann are both like, jigga-what? They turn to look at Catherine, who just stands there, jigga-busted.
After the commercials, Vartann and Rosenberg are alone in the interrogation room -- sort of. Gil and Catherine are watching and listening from the observation room as Rosenberg bitches about Catherine's romantic conduct: "She's a bitch and a tease." Gil cuts a look at Catherine while she tries to hide her reaction. She says they should ask for Rosenberg's clothes. I'm thinking Rosenberg would have been happier about that request from her if it had come the evening. "What else should we ask him, Catherine?" Gil asks, in that totally low-key but still somehow thoroughly bitchy way that he has. Catherine picks up on his tone and defensively says she tried to tell him. Yeah, once, and not all that hard. Gil: "Yeah, but you didn't. So now I'm way behind. Is he telling the truth?" Catherine says, "He's not lying about anything that pertains to me." Gil remembers Catherine's owie and says, "He hit you." Catherine insists it was an accident. "But by the time it happened, he wasn't who I thought he was. And that scared me." Inside the interrogation room, Vartann's gotten around to asking about Rosenberg's car. But Rosenberg has decided to lawyer up before going any further. "We're done here." He gets up and slopes out. Tease.
Now, out in the hallway, Gil is telling Catherine that she has to recuse herself from the case. You think? I'd say she should have recused when the recusing was a lot better, but then we wouldn't have much of an episode. Gil points out that what with Rosenberg being a lawyer, he can claim prejudicial treatment and make Catherine's entire life public record. "I have nothing to be ashamed of," she says. Big talk, given her conduct for the first half of the episode, not to mention the fact that she was just trying to hide makeup. "We all live in glass houses," says Gil. "You gotta be careful where you take your shower." She leaves her standing there, wondering why things like that somehow sound ickier when Gil says them. If you blink, you'll miss Brass's single appearance this week as he strolls past her and distractedly goes, "Catherine." Heh. It's funny because it's true.
You just knew Ecklie was going to have to get involved in this, didn't you? Stupid Ecklie. Even his hairline irritates me. I think he might be the only balding man in the world who would actually look better with a comb-over. Catherine's in his office, getting Starr-Reported over her interaction with Rosenberg. She's being uncharacteristically patient with his line of questioning, up to a point. Finally, she says, "I went out after shift to unwind. I even invited Warrick and Nick to come along, but they had other plans." As per usual with Catherine, she's acting all defensive about the part she's not in trouble for. And, for God's sake, her "I did nothing wrong" act is kind of undercut by her silence about Rosenberg for the first half of the investigation. But anyway. Ecklie asks her to confirm that Rosenberg got angry when she shut things down. She does, and adds that she got in her car and Rosenberg went back inside. And then the Theory-Cam kicks in: Rosenberg heads back into the bar, deeply grumpy, then spots Alice, who's asking the bartender to call her a cab, and when she turns around he's right up in her space with a creepy whoosh. Catherine continues outlining her theory: Alice was drunk, Rosenberg offered her a ride home… But before Ecklie can remind her that this meeting is supposed to be about her misdeeds rather than Rosenberg's, Warrick sticks his head in to let Catherine know she has a "419" in Seven Hills. Catherine and Ecklie will just have to finish later. He looks mildly irritated at what a tease she turned out to be.
So a 419 must be police code for a new development of McMansions going up in the 'burbs. Or maybe it refers to the miniskirted body laid out on the rich, brown Vegas topsoil at the construction site. Catherine and Warrick, in their spiffy CSI vests, meet Detective Vega and Emergency Backup David, who bring them up to speed on the new victim before them: Holly Pearson, 31 and single, lives across the street. They found her locked car parked nearby, with her keys and purse in her mailbox. Oh, and her jacket is covering her face, much as they found Alice's covering hers. At Catherine's request, David removes the jacket so we can see the small-caliber gunshot wound that somebody déjà-blew in her skull. David says the location of the wound is different, and quickly ascertains that there's no exit wound. Catherine tells Vega about the Alice case, and says it might be worth finding out if Holly went out last night. Vega ducks out under the crime scene tape for a quick canvass. A look at the footprints in the dirt leading to the scene tells Catherine that both Holly and her killer were running. Catherine theorizes that Holly was accosted near her house, then made a run for it. Her theory plays out on the screen as an unseen assailant chases down Holly and kills her. And then we're back. But soft, what's this white item on the ground? It's smudged with dirt, but the official seal and magnetic strip on it are unmistakable. Catherine recognizes it as a key card to the courthouse parking lot. Warrick wonders aloud where Holly works, but Catherine already knows that Rosenberg's a public defender, so it's worth seeing if they can match his prints to whatever they lift off the card. Vega returns, having already learned from a couple of Holly's coworkers that she was at The Highball last night. Let's find out what they have to say, shall we?
Back at the station, two of Holly's shell-shocked coworkers are telling Vega about how they practically had to force Holly to hit the bar to celebrate her new promotion. "We collected numbers all night," one of them says. Catherine asks whether any of their suitors wrote a number on a matchbook. Friend #2 says they only got business cards, and Friend #1 says that Holly's night out ended when she took a cab home. Vega shows them a photo lineup. Both friends carefully examine all six faces, and Friend #2 points to Suspect #4. Do I have to tell you it's Rosenberg? "He bought us a round," she says. "Tried to get friendly." Catherine asks if they saw him again after Holly left the bar. They didn't.
David the Overloaded Coroner is standing in the hallway outside the morgue surrounded by bodies on gurneys. He's more backed up than Gil's shift. "Traffic pileup on I-15," he explains to an arriving Catherine, and we're full circle on backups. He brings her into the morgue to go over his report on Holly Pearson. To start with, he dug a .25 caliber bullet out of her melon. But the contents of her stomach are the real surprise: a bit of white zinfandel (slacker that he is, he describes it as "vintage undetermined"), and a tiny scrap of meat. He invites Catherine to take a look through the microscope. It just looks like a pink-and-red blob to me, but David identifies it as a bit of human tongue. Taste buds, to be exact. "She bit her attacker," Catherine concludes, complete with a TheoryCam shot of a pair of chompers clamping down on some dude's taste muscle. "This woman did not go gently into that good night," David says. Unlike Gil, Catherine is secure enough not to come back with a response that tells us she knows who Dylan Thomas was.
Over in ballistics, Nicky approaches Warrick, who's just determined that the bullets in both of tonight's homicides were fired from the same gun. Nicky adds that the key card they found belongs to none other than Rosenberg, who also owns every fingerprint they lifted from the card. Try to contain your shock. Warrick mildly suggests they bring Rosenberg in. If they realize the significance of the fact that the evidence in two homicides is currently pointing at a guy who's (a) at large, and (b) seriously pissed off at their boss, we cut away before that realization manifests itself in their sudden need to go out for a drink together.
As Catherine drives home in the dark, she notices a strange car parked on the street in front of her house. Well, it's not entirely strange; it matches Jeff Simon's description of the car Alice got into before she was killed. As Catherine pulls into the driveway, she sees a distinctly icky sight: Rosenberg talking to her mother and daughter on the front steps of her house. So inappropriate. And not that bright, really. What suspect thinks, "I'm innocent. And to prove it, I'm going to go over to the investigator's house and intimidate her"? Before getting out, she dials 911 on her cell phone and leaves it in the seat, probably confusing some dispatcher somewhere. Rosenberg is making some oily and obvious comment about beauty running in families to Lindsey and MamaCath, who are eating it up. Catherine approaches, making sure her gun's at her side, and tells the women to go inside the house. MamaCath apologizes to Rosenberg for her daughter's rudeness, and Rosenberg says, "I was just telling your mother about the case we're working." He all but gives her a little conspiratorial wink, like, Let's not tell her I'm the prime suspect, hey?. Dope. Catherine again orders her mother to take Lindsey inside. MamaCath finally picks up on Catherine's vibe, and starts to lead Lindsey into the house. Lindsey holds back, demanding of Catherine, "Are you going to go out again?" Catherine chirps, "No, I want to hear about your day." Lindsey's world-weary skeptic face rivals that of any of her mom's detective colleagues, but she follows her grandmother inside so she can mentally assemble the events of the day into a coherent narrative: "Well, first of all, I sure as fuck didn't take out the garbage…"
Now that Catherine's alone with her suspect, she wants to know why she's there. He in turn wants to know why she's setting him up. "Manipulating evidence to make me look guilty? All because I came on too strong?" Catherine tells him to leave, but he's not done. "I didn't get my signals crossed. You changed the play. Then you scream foul? That's some power trip, babe." Those are some gratuitous sports metaphors there, dude. "Who's the guilty one here?" he finishes. Wow. Number one: what year is it again? Number two: how many rape defendants do you suppose he's gotten off with that line of argument? Number three: he's that age, and he looks like that, and nobody ever shut him down before in his life? That's one lucky barfly. Rather than addressing his position on its non-merits, Catherine says that if he wants to talk to her, they can do it with his attorney at the police station. "You think I killed her?" Rosenberg says, moving towards her. That's all Catherine needs to draw her gun and snarl, "Back off." Rosenberg doesn't think she'll shoot. "Take one more step," she dares him. But the standoff doesn't last long, because now the gendarmes have arrived. Already? 911 is clearly not a joke in Catherine's town. "You bitch," Rosenberg says. "You came to my house," responds Catherine. Got him there. Literally. This is the last time they'll interact directly, by the way. Which is fine. Because, as is often the case with real-life couples acting opposite each other, these two didn't have a whole lot of tiny metal balls flying between them.
Does every act of this show always begin in an interrogation room and I never noticed? In this case, Catherine watches from the observation room as Gil is trying to get Rosenberg to stick out his tongue. Rosenberg's attack lawyer wants to know what this is about. "Right now," says Gil patiently, "it's about his tongue." I quit. Rosenberg makes an Einstein face at Gil, whose mood is vastly improved by the opportunity to take a photo of the bite marks on Rosenberg's licker. He leaves the suspect alone with Vartann and the lawyer.
Rosenberg's public defender gig comes into play again as he says that he advises "the dumbest guys that come through here. It's my job to keep their mouths shut." But now that we're past the last commercial break, he's ready to start talking. "I know what you're thinking: that I killed Alice Granger." That's certainly what the TheoryCam thinks. "You're a mind reader," marvels Vartann. Rosenberg says he already admitted that he picked up Alice Granger, but what hasn't come up is the fact that he gave her a ride to her house in his car. And then she gave him a ride at her house in his car. Rosenberg's attack lawyer (the same one from "Unbearable") asks if Vartann has any evidence contradicting that. Vartann brings up Holly Pearson and the fact that "A portion of your client's tongue was in her stomach." Rosenberg says he has an explanation for that too, and Vartann's sarcastic smile takes, like, five years off of him. Rosenberg flashes back to drunk-stumbling out of The Highball, where Holly was waiting for her cab. "I was drunk. Out of line. Bad couple of days, thanks to you guys. I was looking for a little release and I chose the wrong girl." And the wrong method, since the incredibly rude way he comes up from behind, grabs her, and mashes his puss against hers would get anybody's tongue bit. Including mine, by my wife. After that, Rosenberg says, Holly's cab arrived and she took off in it. The lawyer's already corroborated this with the bartender and the cab company. Vartann moves on to the key card they found. Rosenberg says it's not his, and offers to prove it by inviting Vartann to check his car, which is where he keeps his key card. "You don't need a warrant," he says magnanimously. Because warrants are for the second and third act of this show. The camera focuses on Catherine's reflection in the one-way glass as Vartann says they'll just take him up on that, since the RosenbergMobile is already at the CSI garage.
No more slo-mo for Catherine today. She marches into the garage and asks Nicky what he found in Rosenberg's center console. "Only a few sticks of gum and a pack of condoms. Why?" Catherine explains about the card key, and how, due to its absence, "It looks like we got him." She's appears to be neither elated nor disappointed by this conclusion. What's the word for somewhere in between? Botoxed? But Nicky has something to tell her: "I don't know how you're gonna take this, but I think this car was recently broken into." He shows her some tool marks on the window frame, and we get the episode's second demonstration of a slim jim in action. This time, it's from a TMIcam point of view as the strip of metal slides down into the door mechanism and releases the lock. That's great. One internal TMIcam shot in the whole episode, and it's of something mechanical? Would it have killed them to fill that car door with bile or something? In any case, now we know that someone might have broken in to the RosenbergMobile, ganked the key card, and locked the car back up so Rosenberg wouldn't realize anything was amiss until the time he tried to park at work. Which, speaking as someone who has lost a parking pass, is only slightly less inconvenient than being a murder suspect in the first place. Catherine tells Nicky to run the prints he found inside and outside of the car, and then heads out.
Nicky's AFIS search screen dissolves into a shot of flying sparks -- tiny metal balls, to you and me. We're back at the auto shop with Vartann, Catherine, and Jeff Simon, who's bitching about how he should be in the clear since his alibi checked out. Vartann has since realized that the alibi only proves that Simon lost track of Alice, which doesn't prevent him from having known where Alice lived and catching up to her at home. Catherine asks if Simon's been in Rosenberg's car, but of course Simon claims not to know Rosenberg. Vartann reminds Simon that the RosenbergMobile matches Simon's description of the car Alice left in the night she died. "I didn't know whose car it was," Simon insists. "Then why did we find your prints in it?" snaps Catherine. "Maybe someone's trying to frame me," Simon flounders. Catherine steals my line by saying, "No, but I think you're familiar with the concept." With the help of the TheoryCam, Catherine lays it out for us: Simon was driven bazoo by the sight of Alice making out in a parking lot with some doofus she met at a bar, instead of with the only person who really, truly, deeply, sincerely loved her. So he killed her. He caught up with her at home, shot her, and then covered her face. Because, as you recall from the teaser, familiarity and contrition and all that crap. Catherine says Simon was lucky that The Highball is Rosenberg's second home. So when he went back there and saw the RosenbergMobile, he broke into it and stole his unwitting rival's keycard. "Creative justice. You could get them both," Catherine says. Bad luck for Holly, though. Even though Simon had no beef with her, he followed her home and worked up the nerve to kill her and drop Rosenberg's key card at the scene to finish the frame-up. Complete with the jacket covering Holly's head. Of course, what Simon took from the RosenbergMobile is less significant than what he left there: his own fingerprints, inside and out. In short, a brilliant plan, derailed only by the fact that the criminal mastermind behind it doesn't own a pair of damn gloves. And I'd just like to say, thanks, CSI, for giving the killer my first name in the episode I'm guest-recapping. Way to make a guy feel welcome.
At the Labitrail, Mia is busy throwing away supplies in bulk. Gil comes in and asks if she found the source of the contamination. Turns out somebody at the DNA swab factory? Sneezed. Now Mia has to collect and trash every DNA swab in every CSI's every kit, vest, truck, and work station. Bummer. A new shipment's on its way, Mia says, "but until then? Do it old-school." I would have liked to see more of this storyline, but since making time for that would have required Catherine to walk at a normal speed, it just wasn't meant to be.
Gil proceeds on his merry way, wondering where he's going to find a magnifying glass powerful enough to render a double helix visible. Catherine catches up to him and trots alongside, saying, "I'd ask you out for a drink, but under the circumstances…" Gil barely spares her a glance, and it's a pretty sour one at that. Hey, Catherine, try the one about the cop and the monkey walking into a bar. "How long is this going to go on?" she asks, crushed. Gil long-suffers that he doesn't know. She was of course asking how long he's going to treat her like a radioactive, incontinent leper with Tourette's, but he's answering as if she asked how long she's going to keep blindsiding him with the results of her bad decisions. She says it was an act of omission. "How many times have we heard a public defender say that?" Gil answers. Catherine's had enough: "I went out after work. Is it a crime to want a little human contact?" "I guess that's why I don't go out," Gil says, leaving a hurt Catherine to stand there and mentally count the levels upon which that was an assholish thing to say.