By Sobell
It's nighttime and there's love in the air. We know this from the diabetes-inducing techno ballad playing as the episode opens, and from the two people currently using the underside of the local high-school bleachers for a tryst. This I don't get: it's Las Vegas, and you can book a hotel room for $20 a night. What teenager is going to prefer grass stains and splinters to a cheap hotel room where there's probably free porn?
Anyway, after some groping, half-hearted protesting on her part -- she didn't exactly say, "I'm not that kind of girl!" but she came close -- and whining on his part -- he did say, "We've gone way further than that!" which only goes to show that the not-at-all-smooth or seductive tactics of teenaged boys on the make are one of American society's few constants -- anyway, for some reason, the combination of wheedling and splinters has put our titular heroine in the mood, and they're off for a little slap and tickle somewhere on the school grounds. Fueled by hormones, they sprint across the football field, not bothering to stop as two cranked-up cheerleaders perform the now-ritual sacrifice of one of their own. Kidding! Just wanted to see if anyone was paying attention, or if you're all skimming to the part where I began recapping Sara and Gil.
So the two young lovers sprint across the football field and up the stadium stairs to the announcer's box at the very top. They're not even winded. As they open the doors, however, the discovery of a dead woman on the floor of the room takes the wind out of their sails. Farewell, young lovers, whoever you are.
In the scene, Captain Exposition has arrived. One presumes he didn't run up the stairs. He's telling Gil that the dead body was ID'd by the wallet still in her purse as the 28-year-old Nebraskan Alison Carpenter. Nicky comments that Alison's a little old to be a student; Brass more or less dismisses this. Emergency Backup David's been working the body, and he begins announcing his finds: "Petechial hemorrhaging indicates strangulation." Gil comments, "She definitely died here." Emergency Backup David replies, "Yeah. Lividity definitely bears that out. She wasn't moved." Brass is more interested in the scene; we establish that the rusted-out padlock was cut and there are beer bottles on the premises, so all signs point to party gone wrong. Nicky picks up a recently-used condom -- the special effects department spared us no details in the pursuit of verisimilitude -- and comments on the lover's lane aspect of the stadium. Gil notes the defensive wounds on Alison's hands. After Brass asks, "Sexual assault," Gil actually checks her groin and notes, "She's not wearing any underwear." Continuing his up-the-skirt survey, Gil notices a long cut on the inside of Alison's leg with some wooden splinters sticking out of it. He then checks out the door, which has fresh blood at the very bottom. Gil figures that the door had to have banged into the body at some point, and says, "David, I thought you said she wasn't moved." Emergency Backup David replies, "Paramedics said they didn't touch her." That's because Hank's still on his tropical getaway with his girlfriend. Brass adds that the kids we saw at the very beginning of the episode claim not to have touched her either.
By Sobell
Gil leans in and notes that there's still sweat on Alison's upper lip, and orders Emergency Backup David to take a liver temperature. Emergency Backup David is all, "Okay, let me just finish this up..." and Gil snaps, "Now, David!" Emergency Backup David hops to while Nicky squares his jaw and watches. When David reads off the temperature -- 98.1 degrees Fahrenheit -- Nicky notes that Alison's been dead less than an hour. Gil says all ominously, "The killer's still on her."
Ah, but who is the killer? The Who would like to know.
When we come back from commercial, Nicky is sprinting up the stadium steps with a duffel bag in hand. Unlike the young would-be lovers, however, he's sucking serious wind. There's a libido/athletic performance link here, no doubt. Once he's inside, Nicky unzips the duffel, and they erect what amounts to a print chamber around Alison's body as Nicky comments, "Latent prints on skin, oil on oils, we're cutting it pretty close here." Gil knows that. Once the print chamber is erected, sheets of plastic are duct-taped to the floor, and the enclosed space is fumed so the prints rise. Then the entire thing is disassembled. Gil laments the lack of anything usable on Alison's neck, but Nicky finds a partial print on her ankle. Gil explains, "Very few sweat glands around the ankle. Prints survive longer." We then flash to the explanation for the prints -- someone tried to open or close a door, the body was in the way, so they picked up the ankle and shifted it around.
And now we're back at the Labitrail, where Catherine and Warrick are stopping by the evidence vault. It happens to be closed for the night since the evidence vault monkeys are between shifts. Catherine comments that they'll just log in the plastic container of mystery fluid believed to have been the lethal agent in a domestic poisoning case in the morning. Hey, what's the worst that could happen? Right?
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By Sobell
While putting the unknown fluid -- which glows a bright green last seen when the Guardians of the Universe were busy surprising Hal Jordan with a fabulous new ring -- into a fume hood, Catherine and Warrick diss assorted weak alibis like "DFO" (Done Fell Over) and the infamous "Mystery Dude" defense. Warrick asks Catherine, "You thinking poison?" Catherine replies, "Well, I would be if I had any interest in actually testing the evidence we got off the wife. But for now, I'll just leave the mystery liquid alone. In a room. Without telling anyone. Are you sensing a set-up yet?" And I don't see any point in further recapping whatever case Catherine and Warrick are working, because it will soon be rendered irrelevant. What is relevant is that Catherine and Warrick are apparently working double shifts. Catherine explains the economics to Warrick: "I'll take it when I can get it. These nannies do not work cheap." I realize Eddie the duplicitous pancake-making bastard is busy making worm food these days, but he never really struck me as a hands-on parent, and I dimly recall Catherine having a sister to help her out. Now she's got a nanny? Warrick asks after Lindsey, and we find out that the kid is coping with the trauma of nearly dying in a car wreck -- and watching her father go -- by fighting in school. Warrick commiserates: "I know. I've been picking fights ever since my mentor's kid died. It's weird how we've all been so affected by our work cases lately. It's like, it's almost impossible for us to have friends or girlfriends, because then we find out they've shot their husbands or something. Thank God Gil never seems to have any personal problems." Oh, he does not either.
Time has presumably elapsed, because it is now daylight outside, and Nicky's inspecting Alison's depressing little rental car with Sara. She's checking the front seat; he's got the back. Nicky picks up a pair of underpants and comments, "I got a ripped-up pair of panties, possibly the vic's. Bag that for me, will ya?" Sara does. Nicky then discovers all sorts of bodily fluid stains. Sara only scores a blister-pack for medication and a ceramic fragment. Nicky asks who's working Trace; when Sara tells him it's Hodges, he groans, "I guarantee you that kiss-ass will have the results to Grissom before we do." Sara declines to comment on Hodges. She'd rather comment on likely crime scenarios, such as Alison being carjacked, forced to a remote location, then raped and murdered. Nicky's not buying it: "Why take her all the way up to the bleachers to risk getting caught in a room with only one way out?" He's given some thought to this. Why, it's almost as if Nicky spends his spare time plotting the most efficient ways to commit a bloodbath without getting caught. Or maybe he's only trying to apply the same kind of deductive reasoning that everyone else in his shift uses to shoot him down.
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By Sobell
Back at the morgue, David The Down-To-Business Coroner is busy telling Gil that Alison died owing to suffocation from strangulation, and the pattern of small oval bruises on her throat indicates that she was strangled by hand, not by garrote. David points out that the bruises are concentrated on the left side of the neck, so the stranger did the deed with his right hand, with prolonged pressure on the jugular vein. There's a flashback to the strangulation, and although it is deeply, horribly wrong to think this, there's something inherently comedic about the way poor Alison squeaks while she's being choked -- it's like listening to Megan Mullaly have the hiccups or something. Gil comments soberly, "He must have been looking right in her eyes." David sighs, "That takes hate. I'll get a measurement of the grip size." Gil asks about the sexual assault workup, and we learn that the lab's backed up. So Gil takes another approach by noticing the bruises all over Alison's hands, arms, and torso and recalling that they're consistent with rape. David begs to differ: "I did a vaginal clock on her. Activity at eleven, twelve, and one, and that would imply rough sex, but not rape." Gil replies, "It may have started as sex, but it ended as murder." One wonders if a young Gil Grissom stood over his preying mantis tank, somberly signing the same thing to his mom as she signed back that he needed to lighten up.
Over at a squalid hotel off the Strip -- the kind of hotel, by the way, that does rent for $20 a night -- Brass is telling Nicky that Alison was a coffee-shop waitress outside Omaha, she had been planning this trip for a month, and she has no immediate family. Nicky comments, "Single woman on vacation in Vegas...alone?" Brass replies, "Yeah, weird. We're looking into it." Nicky continues looking through Alison's things -- if there's one thing I've learned from watching this show, it's to pack carefully for trips, lest total strangers make snap judgments about me posthumously after going through my carry-on -- and asks, "Who takes a tape recorder with them on vacation?" Brass deadpans, "Well, I keep one by the bed, in case I dream anything useful." That stops Nicky dead in his tracks. Brass asks, "What? I can't have deep thoughts?" Nicky honestly has no idea how to respond to that; you can tell he's kind of horrified by the idea of Brass having a soul, much less one he pours out in any artistic form. Brass then begins laughing.
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By Sobell
And now we're in the Labitrail, where Hodges has apparently been using his Suck-Up Sense to detect Gil as the older man goes wandering through the halls. Hodges unctuously slithers up to Gil and says, "Hey, boss! I just analyzed the evidence found in your vic's rent-a-car." Gil says flatly, "You should be telling Nick or Sara." Hodges smarms, "I couldn't find them. They must be on another break. Anyway! Blister-pack was methadone. Forty milligrams, former smack addict dose. And the ceramic chip? Not ceramic. It's acrylic with a quartz resin composite used primarily in dental crowns -- cheap ones." Contrary to Hodge's deepest wishes, Gil is not stopping to fling his arms around Hodges in forensic ecstasy; without breaking stride, Gil replies, "Go tell Nick or Sara." Hodges sighs.
Jacqui the fingerprint tech is busy explaining to Gil how AFIS doesn't do well with partials, so she's going to pick eight or nine distinctive features, run those through the system, and look at anything with a high percentage of matching. Her first round out, she comes up with over a hundred hits; Gil notes this, and Jacqui snaps good-naturedly, "You trying to discourage me? It's all about interpretation. Knowing what's commonplace and what's unique." Gil watches Jacqui work, and she eventually winnows her selections down to about nineteen people. Gil points out, "You're still going to have to check each one by hand." She shoots back, "You're going to have to sign my timesheet." I'd love to see what the overtime budget for this department looks like. I'd also love a less subtle hint about how overworked the CSIs and the lab staff are, and how that's going to bite them in the ass sometime in the forty-odd minutes.
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By Sobell
Just then, Liam The Lab Tech comes over and announces, "Grissom, I'm about to rock your world." Then he proceeds to talk about semen, which wouldn't fall under my definition of world-rocking, but I'm not into solving crimes. Liam tells Gil he got a hit off CODIS -- the semen found on Alison's body belongs to one Jason Kent. Liam asks, "Ring a bell? In 1987, they called him 'the Circle Killer.'" Why? Because he was a member of the Polygon Liberation Organization? Actually, we find out later that it's because the name of the high school had "Circle" in it somewhere.
Cut to a long, squalid highway, which is presumably the new home of the erstwhile Circle Killer. Sure enough, we're let into an apartment decorated in drab tones of olive and mustard, and Brass talks smack while Jason more or less takes it. Brass then arrests Jason for the murder of Alison Carpenter, what with it taking place at his old high school, but before they can cuff the guy, Gil's bobbing and weaving in a little more closely so he can examine the fresh cut on Jason's lip. Gil then asks to see Jason's hands; when he does, Gil says with a slight smirk, "Recently clipped your nails, huh?" Jason smirks more. Brass snarls, "You're such a smart guy, I bet you flushed them down the toilet." We all know that won't deter Gil. He goes into the bathroom. This is the point where I tell the mostly indifferent cats, "Oh, please, no. There's no telling what he'd get with the plunger." Fortunately, Gil finds the teensiest fragment of fingernail or skin in the clippers, so he'll take that back to the lab, where it will undoubtedly yield all sorts of clues.
Speaking of back in the lab, there we are in now in the break room. Sara's unwrapping her lunch and preparing to eat it alone. For some reason, I find it very odd that she doesn't have a peer-reviewed journal or a book with her; she's always struck me as the type who would do extra work-related reading at lunch. Sara takes a bite of her sandwich, then stops as Gil materializes in the hall. Cue her watching him as the Mirthful Music kicks in, and then she puts down her sandwich and begins following Gil while staring at him all the while. It's not unlike watching the Manson family ogle Charlie at his trial. Gil's talking to Liam about the nail clipping -- it's not exactly on the top of Liam's to-do list, and Gil quickly sets him straight with, "[The semen] only proves they had sex. The nail clippers can place Jason Kent at the murder scene. His nails, her DNA, traces of the booth, et cetera." Liam looks chastened. He replies, "Killer, victim, location." Gil reiterates, "Holy trinity, Liam. I need that." He leaves and begins walking down the hall again, a goggle-eyed Sara stalking behind him. Gil stops by Archie's lab bay, because -- hey, Archie's an aesthetic treasure and the mere sight of him lifts spirits. Or maybe I'm projecting. Gil's actually stopping by to see if Archie's begun working on Alison's tapes yet. Then Gil's back out in the hall; Sara takes off after him with a fixed expression. I half-expect her to begin chanting, "I must kill the Queen. I must kill the Queen." Gil gets waylaid by a secretary, and then by an unnamed lab tech, and Sara finally slumps in defeat. She smiles resignedly -- it's almost as if she's just awakened from hypnosis -- and begins ambling back through the Labitrail.
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By Sobell
Naturally, that's when the fume hood Liam was working to explodes.
Insofar as television explosions go, it's pretty good -- glass flying everywhere, fire blooming over the lab bench, bodies flying. The fire alarms kick in almost immediately. We see a stunned Sara lying on her stomach in the hall, gaping at the lab and obviously wondering, "What in the hell happened?" and then we see poor Liam looking considerably worse for the wear, still in the lab and struggling just to lift his head up. That struggle lasts all of five seconds, and then Liam slumps to the ground.
We get a Liam's-eye view of the goings-on as he's wheeled out on a stretcher; he's reclining sideways, so the smoky chaos in the lab seems even more disorienting. Gil's walking beside the stretcher, looking more than a little grim. As Liam is rolled outside into the bright daylight, we see other lab techs getting oxygen and holding gauze to facial cuts; an untreated Jacqui has two cuts on her cheek and worried expression as she joins other lab techs in crowding around Liam's stretcher. Based on the patter, Liam's sustained not-insignificant burns to his face and body. Gil sees Liam off into the ambulance, then wanders off where he notices Sara sitting on a curb alone, kind of shell-shocked. He comes over and asks worriedly, "Are you okay?" Sara's got cuts all over her face, but she nods, "Uh-huh." Gil checks her out, then looks down at her left hand, which is cradled awkwardly in her lap. There's a huge, ugly gash right below her thumb. Gil says quickly, "Honey, this doesn't look good." I rewind and rewatch three times just to confirm that Gil did indeed say "honey," so there it is. Either Gil suffered a blow to the head that made him uncharacteristically prone to pet names, or he's saying that "one word which will reveal his feelings for Sara" like all the promo weasels have been claiming in TV Guide, or he's embarking on elaborate mind games far too subtle and complex for my mere mortal mind to comprehend. Sara insists that her hand is fine; Gil tells her she needs stitches. Sara's not too into that, but Gil's got her by both hands. and he's summoned paramedics by asking in his normal tone of voice, "Would you take care of her hand, please?" Sara is then bundled off by paramedics.
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By Sobell
Speaking of weasels, here comes one now. Yet another officious bureaucrat hired solely to make Gil's life miserable pops on the scene, babbling management buzzwords in his cell phone. Once he clicks off, the guy -- whom we will call Mustela argentatus, or Silver-Haired Management Weasel -- clicks off, turns to Gil, and inquires, "What did you do to my lab, Grissom?" To Gil's credit, he does not answer, "It wasn't me -- it was Ecklie." Instead, Gil just glowers.
Once inside, M. argentatus orders Gil to do a complete evidence survey so they can figure out what's contaminated and what's salvageable. Because...Gil wouldn't have thought to do it himself? Because M. argentatus's niche in the office ecosystem is that of detritivorous opportunist? Gil reassures M. argentatus that they only lost an hour or two of data; M. argentatus points out, "We'll never sell that in court. Defense attorneys will rip us apart. That double movie-star murder case last year -- compromised evidence, lax procedures, mistakes..." Gil reminds him that they got a conviction anyway. M. argentatus snarls, "You got lucky." He then tells Gil he wants to know how his lab got blown to kingdom come; Gil asks with some asperity, "And who's to blame?" Major snaps to Gil! There are wounded employees out there, and it's kind of telling that this guy's first instinct is to do damage control and his second is to find a scapegoat. Gil tells M. argentatus he'll have Catherine run the investigation.
In a non-exploded part of the building, Brass is dealing with Jason Kent's very blonde, very bored lawyer. Her defense approach is to drone, "Once again, my client asserts his Fifth Amendment rights and declines to answer," every time Brass asks a question. She also tosses some attitude about how good any finding is from a blowed-up crime lab is, if only to demonstrate that she's ruthless and lawyerly and all that. It's worth noting that we have yet to see a lawyer on this show who didn't spend all their time pissing in the CSIs' cornflakes, either by bitching about how unwinnable a case is, or cockily telling them how unconvictable their client is, or by shooting their husband as he slept on the couch. I doubt the lawyers of America are crying big fat tears over this -- in my experience, they prefer to spend their free time inflicting 4000-word posts on internet message boards upon the unwary and writing officious letters to the editor that start off "As a lawyer, I..." so there's no room in the schedule for weeping over their televised portrayals -- but I can't help but wonder whether the CSI perception of the legal trade is a little skewed. Anyway, the purpose to this scene is to convey the following: Jason is hooked on methadone, courtesy of the smack addiction he picked up in the pokey; he has no teeth, courtesy of the inmates who watched Oz and took notes during the episode where Beecher cut short Robson's prized asset; the dental plate Jason wears is indeed chipped. We also get the overwhelming impression that the lawyer is sleeping with Jason, but that could just be me.
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By Sobell
Demonstrating great resiliency in the face of adversity -- as well as a hell of a cleaning crew -- the lab techs are back at work. ["Maybe they flew the 24 team out from L.A." -- Sars] Archie's explaining that he sat through some nine hours of Alison's squeaky, breathy voice, but the good stuff doesn't happen until hour three. We flash back to Alison -- who looks like Brittany Murphy would, provided Brittany a) ate a peanut butter sandwich and a kilo of pasta, and b) traded the strung-out look for dim-witted trepidation -- who's nervously telling the tape recorder, "He's suffered so much. I'm going to help him remember who he really is." Ah, the "I can save him (or her)" complex, so often entwined with the "I don't know what it is about bad boys (or girls), but I love them" fixation. I can guarantee you at least half the people in the audience are either snorting derisively or shaking their heads in rueful recognition at that one. Nicky concludes, "So she knew Jason Kent." Yes. And not just in the biblical sense. Archie grimaces as he explains, "At first I thought she was working on a book or something. Then I hit this." "This" would be an excruciating interview via tape where she helps Jason recreate his golden high school days back before that date-rape gone bad. Archie asks, "Is it just me, or does she sound like she's in love with this guy?" Nicky replies, "Maybe she was a murder groupie. Hey -- Manson, the Night Stalker -- all those guys had 'em. I think for some freaks, killing's a turn-on, you know." There's a moment where both men sit silently, each wondering, Why can't I find a girl who finds forensic lab work a turn-on? Then Archie shows Nicky the last thing on the tapes; it's Alison nervously babbling about an apartment address before Jason comes in, orders her to go, and declares the topic of Jesus Cardenas off-limits.
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By Sobell
And who is Jesus Cardenas? Why, he's a convicted felon currently serving time for possession of heroin with intent to sell and manslaughter at the former residence of Jason Kent, i.e. the Western Nevada Correctional Facility.
Out at Desert Palms Hospital -- at least, we can assume that's where this took place -- Liam is telling Catherine and Warrick that he's wiped out from nearly being burned to death and all, so if they could come back another time when he's not covered in painful abrasions, he'd be much obliged. Catherine prods a little more while Warrick sits around and looks beleaguered, so Liam relents and tells them all he remembers as unusual is the smell of burning plastic. Then we have another shot of the explosion -- hey, get your money's worth from your special effects, I say -- and we see that Sara didn't really get blown back from the force of the explosion so much as she just kind of executed this weird Martha Graham-type lurch while the explosion happened around her. And then Liam's looking miserable and pitiable in his hospital bed, although you know he's going to be milking this for everything it's worth once he's back. Catherine and Warrick thank him for his time; both are clearly shaken by seeing him like this.
Back at the Labitrail, Nicky's retrieving faxes which show the prison visit histories for both Jason Kent and Jesus Cardenas. He sits down to compare, and we discover that the two men had much in common -- dead visitors like Danny Hillman, Darren Pyne and Melissa Marlowe, should-also-be-in-jail visitors like Brad Kendall, and former crime victims like Jennifer Riggs, as well as this week's crime victim Alison Carpenter.
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By Sobell
Time elapses, and then Nicky's explaining to Gil, "Jason Kent and Jesus Cardenas had similar taste in visitors...[Alison] visited Jason thirteen times in the last eighteen months. Two times, she also visited Jesus." Gil comments, "A murderer, his groupie, and a heroin dealer. What a team." He scoffs, but I'm thinking we're looking at a Warren Ellis-style anti-hero comic book team here. Gil asks if Western Nevada Correctional uses video surveillance in their visitation room, and Nicky assures him that the footage is all cued up. What we see is pretty sordid: after Alison has a chaste visit with Jason, he leaves, she hangs out for a few moments, and then she and Jesus pop over to a semi-private part of the room for a quickie. Since Jason apparently hates Jesus, this conduct is baffling to the guys; Gil watches the footage intently and says, "Well, if you can't kill the one you want, kill the one you're with." I can't see Stephen Stills embracing that riff.
Catherine and Warrick head into the blown-out lab and proceed to treat it like a crime scene. It is not at all exciting. Sara, meanwhile, hangs out at her locker and caresses her ID with one heavily-bandaged hand. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Have you suffered a massive trauma on the job? Did you endure a physical threat to your well-being, or an emotional blow in the form of a friend or paramour screwing up your job? Then take a goddamn vacation and get your head together. Seriously! I'm not unfamiliar with either workaholism or identifying with one's vocation, but bugged-out employees aren't of any use to anyone, and thing you know, they're having PTSD flashbacks at totally inconvenient times. Take the medical leave now, save the trauma later.
Anyway, Nicky pops by the locker room, drags Sara out of one reverie into pretend-normal for a few minutes, then prods her about going to prison with him. As she walks down the hall, she has a little flashback to the explosion. She's also wearing this tight putty-colored shirt that makes me wonder if the blast knocked what little fashion sense she had right out of her head. I don't get it: Is the shirt supposed to symbolize Sara's persistent trauma? Is it a metaphor for something? Or did wardrobe seize up this week?
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By Sobell
I mean, we're at prison with Jesus now, and he's looking much more fly in his orange jumpsuit -- a guy with no say in his clothing is looking better than someone who presumably dressed herself of her own free will, so clearly there's something amiss with Sara's ensemble. Nicky asks Jesus what he can tell them about Alison, and as Jesus looks up at the camera, he deadpans, "Knew her real well, but I guess you already knew that." Heh. Sara informs him that Alison's dead, and Jesus shoots back, "I got an alibi." That Jesus, Western Nevada Correctional's answer to Robert Benchley. Sara asks -- much more politely than I abridge here -- why Alison would moon over Jason while banging him. Nicky's all, "You remember Jason -- two cells down, hates your guts?" Why, yes, that does ring a bell: "A lot of anger in that boy. Not much sense. Doesn't understand how things work." Nicky asks, "In here or out there?" Jesus replies, "Either way. It doesn't matter. This is still the U.S. of A., my man. It's capitalism, and every one of us a buyer or a seller." Sara asks whether Alison was a buyer or a seller, and we find out that Alison was, in fact, currency. "Exchange of goods for services. I gave Jason credit, he walks out of here in debt. Thinks because he's on the outside, he don't have to pay. Man who doesn't pay his debt undermines the whole system." This guy is weirdly compelling -- I want him to transfer to Oz and room with Torquemada and install a reign of terror between the Sex-Eye and the free-market philosophy. We find out that Jason's still got something of a smack problem.
That's corroborated when they get back to the lab and confirm that Jason was thrown into solitary twice thanks to black-tar heroin, and the weird thing is, there were linen fibers in the drug. Gil's all, "Linen? In a prison?" Oh, like Martha Stewart's not exploring that scenario right now. Gil asks the $100 question: "So how did Jason Kent get the heroin?" Well, we're not going to find out this scene, because it's time for Nicky to demonstrate some intellectual laziness: "You know how these guys are. All they do 24/7 is figure out how to beat the system." Gil's not listening. He sums up the situation thusly: "So what are we saying? Jesus sells Jason Kent heroin. Kent falls into debt, and pays him off with Alison Carpenter?" Pretty much, yeah. There's a pitiable little scene where Alison is stammering about how she'll find the money somewhere before Jason cuts her off and tells her to just consent to a quickie so his problems will be solved. Gosh, he's such a catch -- it's so easy to understand how she could blow all her money and free time visiting him.
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By Sobell
More Catherine and Warrick investigating the big bang. Unfortunately, they're talking to Hodges, so any semblance of adult conversation quickly degenerates into hostile paranoia on his part. I'm not using that word lightly -- Hodges is all, "You see how important I am to Grissom!" when really, nobody does because he's not. Hodges then threatens to lawyer up, and Warrick says matter-of-factly, "Start dialing." Heh.
Back to the evidence: Jacqui's managed to isolate one commonality between Jason Kent's print and the print on Alison's ankle. Gil's a little dismayed because it's not Kent's print. However, Jacqui makes his day by telling him the print belongs to Miguel Dorado, a.k.a. Mickey D, of the Las Culebras. Wouldn't you know, Jesus Cardenas belongs to that same civic organization. Coincidence, no?
No. Mickey D is very likely the heroin mule into the prison and/or freelance debt collector for Jesus on the outside. Gil's beginning to wonder if maybe Jason wasn't framed.
More Catherine investigating. She's got a layout of the Chem/DNA lab, and several sheets of what looks like overhead transparencies. She uses one to map the pan of developer Hodges was analyzing -- it's in blue dots -- and then uses one to map the fragments they found all over the lab (those are in green). At the end of the diagramming procedure, Warrick comes in. After commenting on Catherine's alacrity, he asks, "Which color chart complements Hodges's developer pan?" Catherine tells him it's the blue. Warrick notes, "That's a 180-degree array. That's not the epicenter of the explosion." Catherine shakes her head and sighs, "Hodges's pan wasn't the source. It got pushed out." Warrick asks, "By what?" and Catherine shows him the green-dot chart as we go to a Matrix-style rotato-still-motion shot of the green mystery fluid going kaboom. Warrick looks stunned, then asks, "Who blew up the lab?" Catherine replies flatly, "I did."
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By Sobell
Well. Points to Catherine for facing the music, but it would have been nice if Warrick had maybe tripped over himself to point out that he was working that case too, and thus was somewhat responsible for the decision to toss the evidence into the fume hood.
There will be time for Catherine to fume about that later. (As it were.) Now, we're with Brass and Sara, preparing to visit Miguel Dorado in his squalid apartment. Sara hangs out in the graffiti-tagged hall until the police have broken down their door and announced their presence; then she heads inside, all business. The cops are busy securing the place, but Sara whips out her gun and heads toward the bathroom, shouting, "I've got him!" She sure does. Brass immediately heads over, practically tackling Sara as he orders, "Get back!" Brass quickly subdues Dorado -- who knew Brass was all into the lifting-people-by-the-throat thing? -- and heads back over to Sara to demand angrily, "Holster your weapon. What were you doing? What were you thinking? You know that we clear the room, not you." Sara says haltingly, "I got him." Brass doesn't acknowledge her at all. He heads back over to Dorado's prone figure and announces, "You're all done, hombre."
The camera then pans to a shelf full of specimen jars, which is how we know we're in Gil's office. I keep waiting for the day someone sticks a floating head in a jar on the shelf to see if anyone notices. Gil is studying the autopsy photos, trying to pay attention to the ruler which indicates the span of the strangulation bruises on Alison's throat, but his mind is clearly wandering. When the phone rings, Gil picks up on the first ring, and the female voice on the other end tells him Director Cavallo (a.k.a. M. argentatus) is ready to see him. Gil looks like a man about to have a cigarette before facing the firing squad. Which is kind of sweet, given that he's sitting there and listening to Catherine explain how she blew up the lab. To Catherine's credit, she mentions that she worked the case with Warrick, but takes all the blame for the mistreated evidence. The lab director says flatly, "You placed this unidentified liquid under the fume hood to an active heat source?" Catherine points out that not only did she not know about the hot plate, but it's not standard operating procedure for a hot plate to be under the fume hood. Gil jumps in, "Unlogged evidence gets placed under the fume hood. A hot plate was left on. It's a lab. It's nobody's fault." Catherine steps all over his toes with, "It's my responsibility. I didn't follow procedure." M. argentatus asks, "Why not?" This is where Catherine snaps: "Because there's twenty-four hours in the day, I'm pulling sixteen for the county, spending three pretending to be asleep and the other five lying to my daughter that everything's going to be all right." You know, while I can totally understand Catherine letting M. argentatus have it with both barrels, she really could have made a different case, like, "Because while the CSIs work double shifts, the evidence locker weasels are out having a full meal at Ruth's Chris Steak House," and thus broadcast that there aren't enough hours in the day to always go by the book. M. argentatus doesn't care about her personal life; he's going to hold it against her professionally. Catherine's just screwed up big-time.
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By Sobell
Gil gives M. argentatus a peeved look, and M. argentatus delivers a lecture about how Catherine's actions have scotched thirteen active cases, because he gets off on rubbing people's noses in their puddles. Catherine asks, "What do you want to hear? I screwed up. I'm sorry." M. argentatus tells her, "Sorry doesn't cut it. You're on suspension -- five days unpaid leave." Catherine takes her leave. Gil gets up to follow -- you know, Gil has many fine qualities, but I'm thinking he's not the best-equipped to handle emotional post-confrontation recaps -- but M. argentatus stops him and says, "We're not done yet. I've heard rumors you've been kicking back Willows's reports." Gil says, "One report -- the Jenkins case. She made a miscalculation and I've asked her to reissue the report." Because M. argentatus can't let well enough alone, he snarks, "Great. Maybe she can reissue the lab explosion!" Gil gives M. argentatus a look that would curdle milk. M. argentatus promptly launches into a grand lecture on the role of every minion in his paper empire; unfortunately, he does so while in profile, since the mirror in which practices his daily patter has showed him that it's his best angle. I say "unfortunately" because Gil's hearing has made like Catherine and taken off. He tries to lip-read for a moment, then says sharply, "If you have something to say to me, say it to my face." That's an excellent dodge. M. argentatus tells him, "It's not your job to protect your people; it's your job to protect the integrity of the lab." Gil replies, "Without the people, there is no lab." Why is it he can carry off that line, but if Horatio said it, I'd be working my clenched jaw open with a crowbar? There's some tense staring, then Gil takes off.
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By Sobell
Back at El Dorado's, Nicky walks on by the putative perp and heads on over to where Sara's sifting through the stuff on the top of the dresser. I love how, even in this allegedly "slum"-like apartment, there's still a thriving perennial in a Martha Stewart enamel cachepot in plain sight; I guess every violent thug secretly thinks houseplants are A Good Thing. Without looking over at her, Nicky says tightly, "I hear you think you're indestructible now, Sara." Sara just looks up and over at Nicky without saying anything. Nicky responds, "Have you ever had a gun drawn on you, Sara?" Oh, my God, there's more continuity in this episode than you can shake a stick at. Be still my heart. Anyway, Sara has not. She looks embarrassed, so she yanks open the drawer where Dorado evidently stashes his magazines (this episode's winning prop-magazine headlines: "Can You Pass the Babemate Test?" and "A Knack for Knits." What kind of magazine is this, and how did it add the desirable violent-gangbanger demographic to its subscriber base?) and rummages around. She then finds a series of dollar bills with the heads cut out. Naturally, this prompts her to give Nicky a heads-up, and we learn that the red and blue fibers come from the dollar bills in which they were embedded. Long explanation short: the heroin was pasted on the back of one cut-out Washington head, then stuck to another bill, and then the doctored money was passed to Jesus in prison.
Sara walks over to a restrained Dorado and asks him, "Take the G.W. Bridge?" He claims not to know what she's talking about. Nicky checks out the cut at Dorado's hairline and asks, "Did you cut yourself shaving or were you thinking too hard?" Heh. It's not often Nicky gets to lord it over someone intellectually. Dorado alleges police brutality, and every cop in the room has to work hard to suppress the laughter. Nicky points out that those are actually human bite marks, and after Dorado attempts to pass them off as Brass's, we figure out that they're Jason Kent's. ["But major props to Dorado for inspiring a mental image of Brass going Pac-Man on a suspect and forcing me to pause the TiVo while I laughed hysterically." -- Sars] Brass tells him they're looking at murder; Sara and Nicky recite all the possible incriminating evidence. Mickey Dorado begs to differ. He was at the scene, all right, but only to collect a debt; Jason did the killing.
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By Sobell
Cut to Brass saying in the interrogation room, "You know, it's not a bad deal for prison. Mickey D brings the heroin to Jesus Cardenas, and you trade him the woman for smack." The blonde lawyer attempts to do a reprise of her discredit-the-source dance, but Brass runs her over and continues, "There's more. You left prison without Jesus paying your tab, and when Jesus sent his collection agency after you, you figured you'd pay him back just the way you did in the joint." Gil tags in to tell everyone that they already know Jason had sex with Alison in the car that night. Brass theorizes that it was to get her in the mood to comply with whatever favor he asked. We flash back to the scene in question: poor, dumb Alison being led up to the announcer's booth in the stadium, where her boyfriend passes her off to Mickey like a party favor. She protests, and he snaps, strangling her. Mickey gets ready to leave, moves Alison's body, and hisses, "You're going back in the joint, you freak." The blonde lawyer -- who looks a lot like Alison, which I'm sure is no accident -- claims there's no evidence to place Jason at the scene. Gil gleefully proves her wrong by demonstrating that Jason's hand span is 22 centimeters, just like the one which strangled Alison. The attorney tries one more time to claim harassment, and this time Brass discredits her by asking if she pays the rent for all her clients, or just her "special" ones. The attorney has nothing to say to that; she's currently trapped in a bad Lifetime movie about a hot lawyer who gives in to temptation and sleeps with her charming client, only to discover he's a killer, and she can't decide which is worse: her taste in men, or the fact that her life is now sordid enough to qualify for Lifetime. Jason's promptly trundled off to the pokey. Brass bemoans the prospect of going to the DA with a piece of paper that essentially depicts a connect-the-dots scenario. Gil reminds him that the rest of the physical evidence blew up in the lab. Brass gloomily predicts that Jason will be back in his lawyer's bed as a free man before too long. Gil sadly agrees.
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By Sobell
In Liam's hospital room, Catherine prepares to tell him exactly who's responsible for his current condition. Well, so long as you've got the nanny on the clock, you might as well get a few errands done before the suspension kicks in. I will be curious to see if Liam's attitude toward Catherine changes once he's back on the job, or if it'll be same-old, same-old.
Gil, meanwhile, is in his office, pulling his doctor's contact info from his Rolodex. Sara appears in the doorway, that brainwashed glaze back on her face, and asks if he's got a minute. Gil replies, "I was just leaving." Well, that's a non-yes if ever I heard one. Sara's undeterred: "Yeah, the schedule says you're off tonight." Then who's running the night shift? Warrick? We establish that they're both off tonight, and Gil says tartly, "You should be on paid leave." Yes, she should. Sara insists that she's fine. Gil replies, "You were fortunate, and I'm not talking about the explosion." Sara confirms that Gil talked to Brass and Nicky. Sara defends herself with, "They got the guy." Gil is still not pleased: "Is that all you have to say?" Actually, no. Sara asks, "Would you like to have dinner with me?" Gil looks to the left and to the right, as if to confirm that she was actually addressing him, then replies, "No." Sara shoots back, "Why not? Let's...let's have dinner. Let's see what happens." Well, for one, they could catch up on all the stuff that's gone down this season, since they've shared zero screen time. They could talk about how Sara's apparently rebounded from being crazy about Hank the duplicitous body-moving bastard and decided she's ready again. They could talk about how Gil's evidently beyond that whole date-a-dom thing. Or maybe they could talk about how, after three years of the barest innuendo, we're supposed to all of a sudden believe that Sara has been carrying a torch for the Bug Man and is willing to toss her professional reputation to the wind, compromise Gil's, and head into a hot forensic love affair. That should keep them busy until the dessert menu comes. Gil sighs as he replies, "Sara, I don't know what to do about this." Sara replies, "I do. You know, by the time you figure it out, it could be too late." Gil digests that offer -- and who wouldn't, since it was phrased so charmingly -- then watches her leave.
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