The episode opens with someone preparing to show an apartment to a couple. The someone -- let's assume they're a building manager until the show or the closed captioning says otherwise -- tells the couple that the occupants moved out in kind of a hurry, but that in no way detracts from the charm of the empty apartment. Ah, but I'm thinking the blood splatters all over the walls might. "Oh, my God," says a woman whom we shall never see again. "Call 911."
Cut to Brass viewing the scene. To give a brief description of the setting: imagine your typical boxy rental apartment -- plain white walls, melmac cupboards in the tiny kitchen, dingy beige pile carpeting. Now imagine setting a blender in the middle of the apartment. Fill the blender with approximately four liters of blood. Neglect to put the lid on the blender. Then hit the "puree" setting. The result? The apartment. Brass surveys the apartment and mutters, "I worked in a slaughterhouse one summer, looked a lot like this." Not one for living in the past, he continues, "The lease is in the name of one Clifford Renteria. He lived here with his girlfriend 'til they snuck out in the middle of the night." Of course they did. When you know you're not going to get your security deposit back, why bother with the fuss of giving notice? Gil points out that the blood on the wall could be not-human. "Deer, sheep, llama," deadpans Brass. Gil continues, noting that perhaps someone went hunting, brought back a deer, and decided the prudent course of action would be to butcher and dress it in the apartment. As he's speaking, he's dropping a blood sample in what looks like a home pregnancy kit -- only one that tests for human blood. Really: it has the little window where you drop the sample, and a diagram indicating human vs. non-human results. I wonder what enzyme the test might be calibrated for -- presumably, such a test would look for a chemical reaction that takes place only in conjunction with something in human blood. Sadly, most of the legwork I did on Google only talked about using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing to suss out unique human DNA markers, so I suppose my question goes unanswered. Anyway. Gil surveys the apartment, apparently performs a series of complex geometric calculations in his head to calculate the surface area of the apartment and the volume of blood required to cover that area, then notes, "The human body has eight quarts of blood. So whomever our victim is...is dead." Brass does not look surprised.
After The Who and an interminable series of CBS promos, we're back in the apartment with Gil, Sara, and Warrick. All three are clad in baggy blue jumpsuits. Warrick is spraying down the place with luminol, and once he's done, Gil closes the blinds. The darkened room glows under a virtual blanket of blood. Sara opines that it could be a multiple, then notes she's still acquainting herself with the scene. Warrick jumps in, noting the few darkened areas on the carpet that are not glowing; he thinks the dark areas are the real evidence. Gil points to the long dark block where, presumably, the couch was, then cautions, "We have thirty seconds 'til this luminol disappears." Sara begins snapping pictures while Warrick continues to try to identify what may have been lying on the carpet. He calls Gil over, and they look at a long, rounded area. "It looks like an electric saw," Warrick says. He and Gil both look up from the splotch and at each other. "High velocity, small spray," Gil muses. The splotch fades away. It's a metaphor! I just don't know for what.
Meanwhile, there's a fire raging in the mountains. We see helicopters flying overhead, dumping water -- see, here it feels less gimmicky -- while radio commands crackle as background noise. As the camera pans down to the ground where, presumably, the fire is under control, Nicky and Catherine are walking toward a clutch of firefighters. Catherine, incidentally, is wearing white, which doesn't seem like the most sensible sartorial decision when one is about to enter a soot-filled environment. "Zero humidity, record highs, 'tis the season," Nicky says. They walk over to Buzz, who snorts disgustedly, "I don't even know where to start with this one. Take a look at that -- a scuba diver up a tree." They all stare for a moment. Nicky settles for "Wow." Catherine: "How the hell he'd get up there?" -- although the closed captioning reads, "I wonder how he got up there?" Small discrepancies like this amuse me. Nicky muses, "He couldn't have climbed up there with all that crap on." Buzz, displaying instincts honed by years of detective work, replies, "He got up there somehow." Nicky goes for the obvious: "Lake Mead is over the hill and the copters are dropping water..." We see a copter doing so. Catherine does a double-take and says incredulously, "You're serious." Nicky nods, grinning. Catherine sputters, "That's a total urban legend. We're scientists, Nicky! No way that happened." Nicky just nods and says, "Okay," while imagining the scenario in his head -- a scuba diver just minding his submerged business until a scoop descends from above. "I suppose you believe in Santa," Catherine continues, having abandoned the tactic of advocating the scientific method in lieu of the embarrass-Nicky-into-compliance strategy. Nicky, however, is unbowed.
At the apartment abattoir, Brass and Gil are getting a more well-rounded story on the tenants. While one of them -- Cliff Renteria -- did skulk away under cover of darkness; his girlfriend Allison disappeared without a trace a month earlier. The manager snipes, "If you find him, tell him he is not getting his deposit back. The blood will never come out." "Hopefully not," Gil says in his inimitable style. "That's the only evidence we have."
Back at the fire site, Catherine is crunching among the ruins, her shirt sparkling in pristine whiteness under the sun. She lays down a yellow plastic marker at a cracked pressure gauge from an air tank, then photographs it. She then walks over to Nicky, who's staring intently at an unburned patch of green and trying to suss out how that might have happened. Catherine tells us the fire has been labeled as a Class C -- "downed power lines, winds keep shifting, hot spots all over." Nicky's listening, but he's also scanning the ground, and he picks up on something: a cigarette tucked into a burnt-out book of matches. Catherine compliments him on his eye. Nicky picks up the mess with a plastic spatula, noting that the slow-burning cigarette acts as a matchbook time-delay device. "Well, don't touch it; it'll disintegrate," Catherine says. Nicky then whips out a giant can of Aqua-Net -- insert your own jokes about Texans and big hair here -- and disclaims, "That's the only reason I carry this stuff." He then coats the matchbook in the sticky lacquer (really, Aqua-Net is the aerosol equivalent of duct tape), thus ensuring it does not fall apart. Nicky continues thinking aloud: "The difference between walking and running. Guy lights a cigarette, tucks it into the matchbook, takes a stroll." We see this happening, and it's like the cigarette and the matchbook are suspended in some mood-lit room. They're doing that more this season -- random organs just kind of hanging in midair, TMICam shots where the salient detail is removed from the context of the crime scene (or body) and shot against a blank background. Again -- metaphor?
While Catherine and Nicky stare at the fire-starting device some more, we rejoin Brass and Gil as they head over to Monaco receiving -- the receiving area for the Hotel Monaco, scene for many first-season crimes -- to interview Cliff Renteria, platform manager. May I just interject here that "Renteria" sounds a franchise for apartment-hunters? Brass walks over and interrupts a DeLuise -- not Dom -- doing busywork. ["I knew he looked familiar! It's evidently one of Dom's sons, David." -- Sars] Brass confirms that this man is Cliff, then asks if he has any knowledge of the whereabouts of Allison Scott. Boy, Brass is making some mighty big inductive leaps there, if this is going where I suspect it is. Cliff says Allison has fled to the Great White North. "We just came from your apartment, and found some disturbing evidence there. Would you care to explain that?" Gil says. Looks like Gil's just joined Brass in the 100-meter Inductive Long Jump. Cliff does nothing to inspire confidence when he begins his explanation with, "He had it coming, I'll tell you that right now. Apartment stank, there were flies everywhere, no water. So I trashed the place." "Who had it coming?" demands Brass, casting about for someone who can lay claim to eight missing pints of blood. "The apartment manager, the lazy bastard. Serves him right," Cliff clarifies. Gil tries again: "Your apartment walls are covered in human blood. Are you aware of that? Do you have an explanation?" "It's my blood," Cliff says a little sheepishly. "You got a stigmata?" Brass inquires. Hee! I love Brass. "I got nosebleeds...from hepatitis C. I got blood to spare. My nose is like Old Faithful. Finally came in handy." Gil and Brass register this -- I'm going to assume that as a matter of workforce policy, they did not touch the bloody walls with bare fingers, what with Hep-C being transmitted primarily through contaminated blood and all -- and Gil recovers nicely, saying, "You expirated blood through your nose all over your apartment walls to get back at your apartment manager?" Cliff nods matter-of-factly. You gotta admire his sangfroid. Brass and Gil confer privately. Brass: "This guy blows ten quarts of blood from his nose onto the wall. You wanna ask for a demonstration?" Gil's not quite to the show-and-tell stage yet: "He's lying. Expirating from your nose would leave oval-shaped blood patterns. The ones we found in his apartment were v-shaped." Gil and Brass ask to see Cliff's apartment -- turns out Cliff's living out of an unused truck. Gil notes both an electric saw and a lamp with a blood-stained base, then says, "I'd like to move some of your furniture to my lab for a closer inspection." Cliff shrugs that Gil can take whatever he wants, as it will save him rental fees.
Cut to Sara and Warrick going through the stuff. There's no observable blood anywhere. They then don white jumpsuits, put on a Euro dance mix, and proceed to test electric saws for blood splattering patterns. It's kind of like watching the Blue Men perform, except without a) paying $90 a ticket or b) hearing the Intel jingle at the end.
It's Liam the lab tech! Who is, I'm pleased to report, wearing acceptable hair and latex gloves, given that he's been handling Cliff's blood. Well, the gloves matter. The hair only matters to me. Anyway, Liam hands over the results and watches Gil read them. He looks a little stressed out and nervous. Gil looks up and says flatly, "This cannot be right." Liam defends the results, pointing out that he always double-checks Gil's stuff, and "all the results are pointing one way." "What about the blood on the lamp?" Gil asks. "That is my run. I'm just a little backlogged," Liam says, backing away. "Well, get through it," Gil says. He really needs to work on those motivational tactics.
Gil and Brass walk down the hall, Brass saying, "I thought you said the blood on the walls couldn't be his." "I also thought the metric system would catch on," snaps Gil. It is mighty refreshing to see him wrong about something. It happens so rarely. Anyway, Gil and Brass approach Cliff, and give us a little 411 on Hep-C -- it affects the liver and assorted blood clotting functions. It also, in some cases, guarantees that America will never be free of the Judd family. The two men then usher Cliff into a room, where Gil starts with, "Mr. Renteria, I can't sign off on a case until I truly understand it. You had a beef with your landlord, and you decided to pay him back by blowing blood out of your nose all over your apartment walls. Is that about right? A day, a week, a couple of months…how long did this take?" Cliff admits it took about a month. "So you get up in the morning, you make yourself a cup of coffee, you think, 'Oh, I think I'll blow some blood on the kitchen wall today.' Get out of the shower, grab your towel and go, 'Heeeeeey, this looks like a nice spot to expirate a pint,'" Gil deadpans. Cliff explains that he only sprayed blood when his temper flared. "So you made your statement through your nose," Gil says. "Well, I wasn't getting through with words," Cliff shoots back. He then volunteers to show Gil and Brass how it worked; Brass rears back, squeamishness creeping across his features. Gil joins him. Cliff then heads over to a blackboard, tacks up a convenient piece of newspaper, thoughtfully tells Gil to back up -- and how horrified am I that Gil, who should know better than to hang out around someone with a blood-borne pathogen without taking the proper precautions -- and then expirates. The camera cuts to Brass looking repulsed.
Sara and Warrick are viewing their own handiwork -- which is derivative of Jackson Pollock, but I suppose art criticism isn't exactly applicable here -- and noting that yes, Cliff's nasal propellants are indeed making V-shaped droplets, just as blood spraying from a saw would. Sara asks Gil, "Didn't you say expirating through the nose made oval patterns?" Gil winces at being reminded of his mistake and says, "Yeah, well, as it turns out, our guy stands very close to the wall and blows almost sideways." Warrick has Gil confirm that yes, Cliff is indeed blowing blood and not, say, smoke up their asses. Gil does: "Ambidextrous. Both nostrils." Sara's face falls. "Great," she says, "our big murder's a nosebleed." Displaying uncanny timing, Liam races in, brandishing test results and declaring, "Not necessarily! This is the sample from nosebleed's lamp. That's not his blood. I don't know whose blood it is, but the amelogenin came back with something interesting -- XX." "Female blood!" Warrick says. "Our guy's girlfriend is still missing," Sara says. "Two things which may have nothing to do with each other," Gil cautions. "Or everything," she rebuts. Oh, Sara's just not going to be happy until the mangled body of Allison Scott turns up.
The B-plot fights its way to the fore, just in time for the autopsy. Catherine asks about the dead guy and David The Now Incredibly Fun Coroner says, "Jacques Cousteau." Nicky and Catherine stare at him, kind of puzzled, and he says, "Kidding. Coroner humor. But I'll tell you what I do know -- he didn't die in that fire. No carboxyhemoglobin in his blood...that tells us he stopped breathing before the fire started." Catherine speculates the man was probably killed someplace else and dumped. "Oh, he was dumped, all right -- out of a chopper! Right, doc?" Nicky says. That poor boy just can't let go. Fortunately, David's here to help: "The victim's injuries are inconsistent with a fall of that nature. No fracture of the pelvis, no compression of the lumbar vertebrae, no shortening of the body." Catherine, who has been alternating between rolling her eyes and smirking through the scene, says, "So much for your theory, Nick. Good try. So what was the cause of death?" The guy's heart apparently stopped from a heart attack. "Consistent with being scooped out of Lake Mead," Nicky says. Oh, buttercup, give it up. David explains the ins and outs the human heart: "[It] beats in a four-beat rhythm, like a fox trot. The two atria contract, and then the two ventricles." "So what happened to this guy?" Nicky asks. "Commotio cartus, or cardiac concussion. The guy short-circuited. It's rare, but I've seen it," David clarifies. We see it too, courtesy of the TMICam. Catherine confirms that the scuba diver took one to the chest; Nicky struggles to rationalize his theory yet again. He fails; the only interesting thing about the corpse is the soap residue coating his skin.
Nicky goes off to ponder soap scum -- something many of us have to do without getting paid, thankyouverymuch -- and after he takes a sample swab, Liam comes drifting in the room. Nicky commands that Liam make himself useful by dropping off the swab. Gil's attitude must be contagious. Too bad those crime-solving skills aren't. Nicky says he needs to peg the kind of soap it is and Liam demonstrates his own flair for the slippery stuff, sidling up to Nicky and explaining that owing to a wetsuit's snug fit and neoprene fabric, getting the thing on and off is easier when there's a little dishwashing liquid to smooth the passage. Nicky gives him a look; I leave it to the forum to interpret the subtext there. I'm just saying. Anyway, Liam defuses the tension by asking Nicky if he wants to maybe check the safety valve on the tank, or the pressure gauge. Nicky looks at the gauge and Liam notes, "Three thousand PSI. That thing's full." "It's like anything pressurized. These things blow for one of two reasons: too much air or too much heat." No sooner has that last phrase left Nicky's mouth than he and Liam share a eureka! moment. Nicky says, "You just made yourself useful, my friend." "Yeah?" Liam asks, looking pleased for the first time all episode.
Meanwhile, Sara and Gil charge back to the Hepatitis Haus sans protective gear. "What are we looking for, exactly?" Sara asks. "Same thing we always look for: evidence of a crime," Gil says. Well, he's helpful. We find out that Allison Scott is indeed missing; Sara asks, "What if Nose Man blew blood all over these walls to cover up Allison Scott's blood?" I reiterate: Sara's going to be jumping for joy when she finds Allison's body. She and Gil hunker down in the dark apartment and shine a flashlight all over the walls. Then Sara -- wearing latex gloves -- scrapes off the blood. There's no evidence of layered blood splatters. Sara pushes the Cliff-killed-Allison thing some more; a passel of insects conveniently shows up to bolster her theory. "Flies don't feed on dried blood," Gil notes amid the buzzing. "The room is sealed and they don't spontaneously generate," Sara adds, all excited now that the possibility of finding a senselessly murdered body is imminent. "They're feeding on fresh blood. Could be a rodent, though. Or bad garbage," Gil adds. "Or it could be something higher up the food chain like Allison Scott," Sara says. I leave it to you, the reader, to imagine my reaction to this. Sara and Gil continue to track the flies -- in a darkened apartment, using only flashlights and, presumably, their Spidey senses -- to the kitchen. They sidle into the kitchen and stand back-to-back swapping fly trivia, then turn to look at the vent which is acting as the entrance to Fly Party Central.
Then we switch from the cool bluish light of the Hepatitis Haus to CSI Central, where Catherine is hassling a tired-looking Liam for her lab results. She finds out that Liam is indeed working on her case -- maybe not the part she was interested in, which was the matchbook part -- but working on it nonetheless with Nick. Catherine charges off, no doubt to lecture Nicky about his lone cowboy crime-solving tendencies. When she reaches the lab, where Nicky is working on analyzing the air tank, she twits Greg for working the case with his "partner" Liam. "Leggo my Greggo," jokes Nicky, clearly not having ever read the memo that I renamed Greg Liam. He then goes on to add insult to injury, saying, "He's a CSI wanna-be." And he provides evidence for your urban-legend-believing ass, so treat Liam with respect there, Nicky. Having slagged their coworker, they get down to discussing evidence. Apparently, the tank exploded; Nicky's going to get the tank serial number, then use that to track down the presumed renter of the tank. "Pretty smart thinking there, partner," Catherine says.
And that smart thinking pans out: the shot is of Catherine and Buzz at an apartment, ringing the doorbell. A youngish man attempts to give them the no-solicitors brush-off and fails in the face of Buzz's implacable scorn: "Maybe you should find out what we're selling first." Catherine introduces herself as a member of the Las Vegas crime lab; Buzz does likewise, and thoughtfully IDs the guy behind the door as Jerry Walden. Jerry lets them in only after Catherine asks pointedly, "Are you missing a scuba tank?" We find out that, according to Jerry, he is missing the tank courtesy of Bruce Skeller (the guy in the tree). Jerry blathers on about how shocked he is about Bruce dying, and the two of them were lifelong friends about to go into business together fulfilling their lifelong dream of building a casino, and...he's blathering. Catherine asks why an experienced diver needs to borrow a tank; Jerry rebuts that experience and equipment do not go hand-in-hand. "Just because somebody's experienced doesn't make him any less of a freeloader." And all of us playing along at home just crossed "motive" off the Episode Bingo scorecard. As Jerry continues to blab about how no, he didn't resent his freeloading friend whom he loved like a brother, Catherine notes how an ashwood coffee table seems to be missing. Jerry punts that the coffee table just happens to be getting refinished. Crouching down to notice the splinter marks on the floor, Catherine muses, "I think it needed more than that."
Gil and Sara have finally parsed a clue and brought in some lights to study the flies' egg casings. As they're sifting through buggy evidence -- interrupted briefly by the apartment manager -- Gil plucks out a robust-looking bug. "Whaddya got?" Sara asks. "Either Paul or John," Gil replies. "A very important beetle," Sara responds. Oooh -- that's gotta sting a little if you're Ringo or George; they'll just have to dab at the wounds with big piles of cash. Gil continues, "The Silphib beetle typically feeds on decomposing human flesh." Vindicated, Sara replies, "There's a dead body in here somewhere." Gil hails the apartment manager, Mr. Evans, who has been hovering nearby, and asks if he could get permission to break into the apartment walls since the original warrant didn't cover that. "Depends...how many walls and what for," Evans replies warily. The two CSIs hedge, and Evans pushes, wanting to know if every wall in every room will be knocked through. Gil calmly replies that it's a possibility. Evans wants to know if they'll pick up the replastering costs; Sara tells him he can submit a reimbursement form to the city. Well, if they handle the paperwork with the same alacrity they bring to wedding licenses, he's good to go. Evans doesn't think so, and tells them flatly that he's not even going to ask. After Evans leaves, Gil and Sara look at the beetle and decide the DNA it'll yield is their step in the case.
Back at the lab, Warrick and Sara are ogling the beetle; Sara explains that they're testing the beetle's stomach contents (oh, good Lord, images of tiny little stomach pumps...) for human DNA. "I hope he got his grub on before you grabbed him," Warrick mutters. For a man who's only getting a half-dozen lines this episode, he's got the best ones. Sara then turns to ask where Liam is, complaining that she suspects him of having a second job since he's apparently never around. Back off, Sara.
While Sara's stalking off to persecute poor Liam, Catherine and Alpha Male Building Inspector Guy from last season are having a little tête-à-tête under the broiling desert sky. Catherine immediately pesters Alpha Male for a permit; he replies, "There goes the foreplay." And not a moment too soon for my taste. As the two of them walk the perimeter of Lake Mead, we find out that Catherine asked Alpha Male to get her a land permit for some unspecified parcel; it sold for five hundred thousand per acre. "Is there anything else you want to use me for?" he asks. Catherine feigns shock. "It's obvious that you're not here for me; you're here for yourself. So let's not waste each other's time, all right? The property was owned jointly by two men, Jerry Walden and Bruce Skeller, and at the time that they bought it, it was a steal -- fifty grand an acre. Two years later, Adventures Development comes in, they start buying up the surrounding parcels, your guys hold out until last week," Alpha Male exposits. And -- surprise -- they were not holding out for the same reasons. Jerry was all for selling, whereas Bruce was not, as he was a diehard environmentalist. "He was a real tree-hugger," Alpha Male says. "You can say that again," deadpans Catherine. Ah, CSI humor. Alpha Male sheds a small tear over the urbanization of Lake Mead -- which Bruce apparently spent every cent fighting -- then asks Catherine not terribly kindly, "Is there anything else I can do for you?" Catherine pecks him on the lips, then flits off to mull over how the evidence she got from Alpha Male contradicts Jerry's monologue on the agape he and Bruce shared.
She then flits into the graphology lab, where she rudely cuts off Ronnie the tech's complaint that the urbanization of Lake Mead is a bad thing by asking about the deed. Ronnie shows us all: using a VSE-4 machine, he can make different signatures disappear at different light wavelengths, as different inks correspond to different wavelengths. What this evidence means: Bruce and Jerry did not share pens. Gasp!
The episode's most put-upon character, Liam, enters Gil's office with the beetle test results. Gil looks at 'em and bolts -- presumably to get a warrant. He then enters the co-ed locker room where Sara and Warrick just happen to be hanging out and announces the warrant. Warrick then produces a sledgehammer from his locker -- yes, the man apparently keeps one around -- swings it all manly-like, and says, "Let's go knock down some walls!"
In the scene, carnage ensues. Warrick, Sara, and Gil are busting walls like...well, "gangbusters" seems inappropriate in this context. As they finish Wall #1, Brass comes in with a lanky blonde and introduces her as Cliff's girlfriend. "You're Allison Scott?" Sara asks, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice now that Allison's showed up alive and well. Allison reveals that she left Cliff -- something that startles Gil, who apparently can't imagine why any woman would want to leave a man who can expel v-shaped blood droplets from his nose. She then explains that she stubbed her toe on the lamp, thus explaining how that particular splotch got there. After Warrick leaves to draw blood from Allison, Gil wanders around the apartment, sighing, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." Sara looks as though she might cry. It must be terribly disappointing when your murder victim turns up still kicking. She rallies nicely and begins comforting Gil in his native tongue: "Nine dots on paper, and you can only draw four lines to connect them without the pen leaving the paper." The focus zooms around to Gil -- apparently, we're using the HaggardCam for this shot, as Gil looks particularly not-hale here -- and his mouth quirks up. "Right," he says. "Think outside the box." Sara beams adoringly. Then the camera zooms crazily, Gil does a rapid head-turn to indicate he's all super-observant, and we get a crazy 360 of the room until the rotate-o-vision stops...on the wall connected to Evans's apartment. Evans is hunching over the VCR, looking peeved about something, when the doorbell rings. He answers the door with, "Yeah? What do you want now?" Gil and Sara want to take a look at the wall his apartment shares with the Hepatitis Haus.
It's time to wrap up the B-plot! Liam produces DNA off the cigarette butt -- that's one tough little molecule, considering all it's been through -- and Nicky finds ashwood splinters in the corpse's back. The way the crime went down, as hypothesized by Nicky and Catherine: Bruce and Jerry were fighting, Jerry landed a punch that made Bruce's heart skip a beat -- literally -- and Bruce went reeling into the coffee table.
As Gil and Sara walk into Evans's apartment, they note the scented candles ("Food rotted," Evans explains) and the replastered wall ("Rain damage," he continues). Just as Gil's about to get permission to inspect the vent, Brass comes in with a new mega-warrant; apparently, Evans' wife has been missing for a while. Gil and Sara process this data (presumably, Warrick is still off giving Allison the most exhaustive battery of blood tests this side of the Mississippi), then note that Evans shares a heating vent with the Hepatitis Haus. The camera then zooms in to focus on a writhing mass of bugs. Gil takes that as his cue to begin destroying the wall. Sara stops him before he wrecks too much -- she's found a blanket with blood on it. "And Dermastidae masculatus," Gil notes eagerly. "That's Latin for 'You're hiding a dead body,'" Sara says. Actually, wouldn't variants of mort- and corpus be in the Latin for "You're hiding a dead body"? I took German in school; I'm not terribly strong in the Latin word origins. Anyway, Brass and Gil begin tag-teaming the now-mute Evans.
Meanwhile, back at the B-plot, Jerry's lawyer is busy telling Catherine and Nicky they've got no evidence. Clearly, they're not watching the same show as the rest of us. Nicky gives a short recap -- much shorter than mine -- as to what happened: "You had a dead body. So you decided to get creative. Fire season, wetsuit, liquid soap..." "You drove out to the lake, dumped the body," Catherine continues, "and lit up. Not 'cause you wanted a cigarette. You lit up with a purpose." Nicky tags in: "This gave you a head start. My guess is around the five-minute mark." "You figured the fire department would label it a hot spot," Catherine says, "relate it to the original fire, and the body would just burn up." The lawyer points out that this in no way explains the body in the tree. "A scuba tank contains compressed air. Too much heat and...kaboom," Nicky explains, while we're treated to an unintentionally hilarious shot of the body flying skyward, flippers flailing wildly as they go. After Nicky tips his hand, he gives the justice-has-been-served glare of righteousness. Then he and Catherine leave the tank and walk down the hall, talking about how much they love their jobs.
Gil and Sara apparently brought back Warrick for the heavy lifting, having him hammer through walls to no avail. After the latest hollow spot on the wall yields a long-forgotten recessed ironing board, Gil goes outside to cool off. Once there, he paces, breathing heavily and obviously checking his pulse. Sara comes out, asking, "You okay?" Ninety-five," Gil responds, then clarifies, "Normally my pulse is seventy. When it gets to ninety-five, I realize how mad I am. I have ten people working round-the-clock on this thing --" "You're too hard on yourself," says the pot to the kettle. "No, no, I'm not mad at me! There's a body in there, and that guy knows where it is!" Gil flares. Dang, but William Petersen does a wonderful job of conveying frustrated anger. Sara grins at him and asks, "What's your pulse at now?" Gil sighs. She then asks if he wants to take a walk around the block to get some air and clear his head -- and for some reason, she's having a hard time making eye contact when she makes the offer, which is intriguing. "I'm fine," Gil demurs. Sara's watching him intensely now. "Okay," she says, still smiling slightly. She then reaches out and cups his face in her hand, running her thumb along his cheek for a moment. Gil looks startled. "Chalk. From plaster," Sara says. "Oh," Gil responds, rubbing the spot vigorously lest the girl-cooties remain on his skin. "Better go wash up," Sara replies, and leaves Gil standing there, looking contemplative, before he comes back in.
Fortunately for all of us, Gil decides he really does want to wash up -- and notices there's no hot water. At this point, I'm in active sympathy with Cliff the humongous hematoma. Evans demurs that a plumber is coming by Saturday to fix the water heater; Gil reveals a knowledge of plumbing gleaned from an uncle in the trade, and heads down to the basement -- where the lights are, conveniently, out -- to check out the plumbing. Gil then tracks the hot water line, noting that it normally runs through the filtration tanks first and the heating line second, but hey, it's bypassing the filtration tanks. Could it be because...Mrs. Evans, considerably worse for the wear, is in it? Yup. "Not enough candles in the world," Brass gags, then steps back. "She nagged me," Evans drawls resignedly. Gil's head whips around, and he fixes Evans with an incredulous stare. "She nagged you?" he repeats in disbelief. Hmph. I wonder what his pulse is at now.
The episode closes with Nicky and Sara asking Gil to breakfast. He passes up their company to spend his time with his little beetle friend who broke the case. Seriously. Oh, the mystery that is Gil Grissom. Will we ever unravel it?