Las Vegas as the sun goes down -- just your typical panoramic shots of the Strip in its amoral splendor. The scene shifts abruptly to another kind of hell on earth -- the locker-lined stretch of a high school hallway. A bell of some sort rings, and a bunch of teenaged boys walk out. One boy bids his little friends goodbye, then proceeds to earn himself a month's worth of detention by whipping out a can of spray-paint and writing "stick" on someone's locker. I suppose that's some sort of pejorative among the under-18s? Anyway, loud rock music plays, the better to confirm our opinion that this boy is up to no good. And, since spray-painting a locker takes a lot out of a growing boy, the kid saunters into the boys' room. Once inside, he checks his hairline in the mirror, then hears a noise. Suddenly, the mirror to his right explodes; he starts, and moves to duck, but he's too slow and five gunshots pepper his back. I heroically delete my joke about harsh penalties for graffiti at Las Vegas High, and move on to note that the kid died mere inches from a urinal.
Cut to Captain Exposition, filling Gil in on what's going on: "Barry Schickel. Wallet's still on him -- with cash. A student. Recently voted class clown." Gil looks troubled by this. "Strange. People aren't usually scared of class clowns," he says. Brass calls him on the fear assessment, and Gil notes that Schickel was shot in the back. "With his zipper down and his hands otherwise engaged." "Yeah, we're looking for a coward," Gil confirms. On that note, we hit the credits. The producers pass up the opportunity to swap in "Baba O'Reilly" for this special high-school episode.
Catherine and Warrick enter the high school -- which is, of course, now swarming with crime-scene personnel -- and head down to the vandalized locker. A janitor is scrubbing industriously; Catherine puts a stop to that toute suite. After Catherine sends the janitor scurrying home to mama, Warrick comments, "I bet you were like that in high school." "Worse," Catherine confirms briskly. "Oooh. You were the girl I ran away from," he continues. "'Til you caught me," Catherine ripostes. They have a good laugh; I wonder idly if Catherine's name was on a bathroom stall in high school. Meanwhile, Brass is interrogating the poor man's Ron Silver; apparently, Schickel was a member of the football team and was just coming out of practice. Given that he was seen coming out of a classroom, I'm wondering if perhaps this was fantasy football practice where he and his little friends could sit around and pore over stats. But whatever. Brass inquires as to whether it's school policy to let the kids go to the bathroom after practice; the Beleaguered Authority Figure he's quizzing admits it is. As BAF rambles on about why the school's not in lockdown, Gil is inspecting the point of impact on the mirror. He digs out a bullet casing and sing-songs, "Brass." BFA explodes: "Excuse me -- one of my students is dead! Are we interrupting you?" Gil gives him the same mildly annoyed look a cat gives a spider and says mildly, "Yeah." BFA storms out, at a loss for rebuttal. Brass makes a crack about the nerd squad, then proceeds to head out for a round of investigation, Brass-style.
Meanwhile, a helicopter is roaring over the desert plains. The pilot broadcasts, "We have a visual, baker-one; stand by for eastern approach," and we see Sara all dolled up in a helmet, safety goggles, and a flight suit. The helicopter hovers, and I feel a digression coming on. Flash to Nicky, grinning like a kid at Christmas, in the same gear. "You're good to go," says some anonymous flight guy, and Nicky says, "Okay. He's good to go. Let's get down there!" He turns to Sara and asks, "Ready?" "I'll race you!" she screams back over the whir of the copter blades. And then they rappel down as my digression gathers force and explodes: I hate copters. I hate when shows that are typically focused on character-driven storylines (ER, Homicide: Life on the Street) resort to bringing in choppers. It feels cheap, as if someone, somewhere, didn't trust their own ability to tell a compelling story without bringing in loud toys. If you're watching MASH, where helicopters are used to impart that hey, heavy stuff frequently drops out of nowhere so deal -- fine. If you're a young Turk in an urban police department -- no. What's : Warrick scuba-diving his way to some evidence? Gil bungeeing down to pick up a clue in a crevasse somewhere?
Oh, look. By the time I finish my digression, they've hit the ground and are hanging out with somebody who is, presumably, keeper of the bag. As alpha male, Nicky gets to do the talking: "Stokes, Sidle. Did you open the bag?" "Long enough to see one gnarly-looking hand -- well, skeleton of a hand," replies the Beta Male on the scene. Sara drifts off and comes back to ask if anyone's touched anything. "With that smell?" Beta Male replies. She smiles coquettishly and coos, "I thought you Emergency Services guys were tougher than that." "We're plenty tough!" Beta Male insists. Alpha Male rolls his eyes and grins; after months of trying to score with Sara, he's clearly enjoying watching someone else flame out. "Down, boy," Sara says, still grinning ear-to-ear. Oh, love is in the air. Along with putrescence, if all the cues about smell are correct. Nicky comes over, also sporting an amused grin, and calls Sara on flirting over someone else's dead body as opposed to his own. He then offers to airlift the body -- which we have yet to see, as it's encased in a big red gym bag. Sara and Beta Male continue to make eyes at each other. They lift the body up, and that's the last we see of the helicopter, thank God.
Meanwhile, Catherine and Warrick catch up with Gil in the boys' room, pleading traffic delays for their tardiness. Gil immediately presses Warrick into service; we learn that Warrick can't tell a bullet fired from a .38 from a bullet fired from a .44 on sight. Gasp! Catherine walks off and checks her new, straight hairdo in the mirror. She looks contemplative; perhaps she's wondering if the hairdressing staff is ever going to get tired of screwing with her coif. Lord knows I wonder that every week. Her attention soon shifts from her piecey ends to something some four yards behind her -- a smudged thumbprint on a bathroom stall door. Catherine immediately recalls that the spray-paint on the locker is orange, like the paint in the thumbprint. She's off like a shot to scope out the locker connection. As she leaves, Warrick -- who manages to look cool despite holding a roll of bright pink twine and slowly unspooling it to measure bullet trajectories -- comments somberly, "Kind of weird being in a high school, huh?" "They do have a timeless quality," Gil replies. Most classic forms of torture do. Warrick asks Gil what he was in high school -- a jock or a brain. Gil looks at him and says matter-of-factly, "I was a ghost." He then shifts the subject abruptly, telling Warrick to stop in the far left bathroom stall and saying, "The shooter was standing right there." Warrick extends his thumb and index finger in the classic bang!-you're-dead pantomime, and we see the crime recreated in hazy white Flash-Back-O-Vision. Schickel falls to the ground as Gil looks on in vivid color. I begin rethinking my earlier statements about the stylistic liberties the show-runners have been taking this year; Gil seeing the dead people is a little excessive. We transition back to Schickel's blood spot, and Gil hunkers down to stare at it. He turns back up to Warrick, and Warrick says the reconstruction team's welcome to crowd into the bathroom and begin working, but he's pegging the shooter for 5'3" to 5'4".
Back at CSI Central, the big red bag with the body in it is getting X-rayed; Nicky and Sara study the tangle of bones to see what discernible clues there are. Sara asks, "Wouldn't it be easier to unzip the bag and see what shape our vic is in?" David the lab tech -- not to be confused with David the More-Fun-By-The-Minute Coroner -- gives a tight little smile and says, "I like to put that off until the last possible moment with decomps." Who can blame him? Any natural phenomenon that produces by-products like "putrescene" and "cadaverine" (both of which are deteriorated amino acids and -- hold on, because this is only the third documented instance in which I am actually putting my college education to work -- when amino acids break down, they can produce chemicals which are partially composed of molecular compounds known as sulfhydryl groups. Are y'all familiar with hydrogen sulfide, i.e. rotten-egg smell? Now imagine it on a much greater scale) is going to stink to high heaven; I'm grateful that all those "in the future, we will have Smell-o-Vision!" guys were wrong. Sara, David, and Nicky continue to examine the body via X-ray; Sara sees a coin she pegs as a half-dollar. David tersely corrects her by noting that it's a silver dollar, adding, "I've done a few of these." Well -- looks like someone got over his little crush from last season. Both Nicky and Sara blink in the face of David's experience. Nicky pegs a medical implant, and David notes a plate in the guy's head. Sara pushes to open the bag as David warns, "By the sound of things, he's been dead for about two months." She cocks her head and asks, "Sound?" Oh, Sara. You should know all this. Without going into timelines and all, all bodies inevitably do the following: rigor mortis, livor mortis, desiccation and putrefaction. The alternatives to putrefaction -- mummification and adipocere formation -- are rarer. And if this guy's slopping around, it's unlikely he turned into liquid soap (adipocere formation is when the body fats transform into a waxy, soap-like substance). But, since Brass isn't around to make faces, I suppose someone's got to act as the expository device. "You weren't here when ESD brought this in," David says. "Not for lack of trying," Nicky smirks; Sara gives him a mortified look.
We transition from the red bag continuing the squishy remains of John Doe and back to the orange fingerprint. Catherine is inspecting the graffitoed locker; a brittle-looking blonde tells her, "That's Dennis Fram's locker." Catherine asks if Dennis "Stick" Fram had his locker decorated on a regular basis; the blonde punts by noting, "I'm the school counselor. I don't know every move these kids make." Catherine's not having it: "It's obvious -- or a young man wouldn't be dead." Damn, Catherine. Warrick, meanwhile, is playing with something that looks like a walkie-talkie on steroids; it beeps quietly and regularly, and he's geekily grooving on it. Gil pops in and asks excitedly, "Is that a polymer-sensor proboscis?" "Cyranose 320," Warrick replies. "Company sent it to me gratis for a week. They figure if it helps, CSI will buy one." Gil notes that the Cyranose helps to the tune of roughly ten grand apiece, plus tax, shipping, and handling. Warrick, who's desperately in love with his new toy, tries to justify the purchase by pointing out that if the killer chewed a unique brand of tobacco, or was possessed of a unique type of halitosis, the Cyranose would pick it up. Gil's unmoved: "If that thing ran out of here and bit the shooter on the ass, the county wouldn't pick up a ten thousand dollar purchase order." Warrick, realizing that appealing to Gil's geeky side is not going to pan out, tries a different tack: "I thought it was our job to speak for the victim, no matter what it took." "Our job is to think, Warrick; machinery should never matter more than our mind," Gil rebuts. He says that now, but wait until the Necromanose 250 pops into his mailbox and he's got a handy tool for speaking with the dead. He then thinks of a solution for Warrick's technophilia: an Erlenmeyer flask, a glass tube, and an air pump. Warrick notes that Gil's solution costs roughly one percent of his. He then tries one last plea -- "absorption agent!" Gil smiles and gives Warrick a thinking exercise: "Fresh out. Improvise." He then walks out, leaving Warrick looking -- everyone together now -- beleaguered.
Gil then wanders over to offer some of his mojo to Catherine. No, it's not what you think. Catherine's filling him in: the deceased was evidently conducting a long-running experiment in which he attempted to give Dennis Fram a body-image disorder vis a vis spray-painted statements on his locker. The guidance counselor notes that Dennis always picked on Barry, but Barry would have never retaliated. "He's a good kid. He's non-violent!" she protests. "Well, then, this will be brief," Gil replies. You know, he may be coming off as typically obtuse here, but I can't help suspecting that Gil's using this case to work through some long-dormant issues concerning high school authority figures. Gil then follows the guidance counselor to her office while Catherine hovers around the defaced locker and flags down the janitor.
Dennis Fram, scared out of his gourd, is being quizzed by Gil. He's a little wigged out -- and indeed, who can blame him -- and after Gil says, "I'd like to do a test on your shirt," the poor kid's eyes practically bug out with fear while he gulps, "What kind?" "Forensic," Gil replies. Dennis gives the guidance counselor a terrified stare; she stares back, neglecting to mention how, as a minor, he really ought not be questioned without consent. Gil then opens up his forensic fun kit and tests the shirt for gunshot residue. Surprise! He finds it on Dennis's shirt. Dennis looks scared, but not surprised. The guidance counselor whispers, "Dennis!" in shock. In the understatement of the year, Gil says, "The police are going to want to talk to you."
And the police do. We come back from commercial break where Dennis -- who, in a shocking departure from TV casting tradition, really does look like an underclassman gripped in the merciless throes of puberty -- is explaining to Brass that yes, it is a coincidence that he happened to be at a shooting range the night Barry Schickel was killed. His sister will be happy to provide confirmation. Gil watches in careful observation as Dennis explains how he rents different guns every time he goes to the range. Suddenly, the sober man's Shannen Doherty bursts into the guidance counselor's office, bellowing that she wants to see her brother. Brass points out with some asperity that they're trying to conduct a police investigation; she rebuts, "My dad's back in town tonight and you'll be sorry you harassed my little brother." Because her dad can beat up Brass's dad. Brass goes to intimidate the sister -- who is also on the petite side, like her brother -- and the guidance counselor finally realizes that hey! they're questioning a minor without his parents' consent.
Now it's time for the grand unveiling of the mystery meat -- I mean, man. David warns Sara and Nicky to breathe through their mouths, and unzips the bag. It's not pretty: Sara promptly doubles over from the stench and boots in a conveniently-placed trash can; Nicky looks like he'd like to hurl, but the burdens of alpha-maleship won't let him. Sara straightens up in time to see David haul out a blackened, puffy arm. Note well that the rest of the body is not attached to it. He then pulls out a skull covered in, um, not much, and confirms that yes, that is a metal plate on the guy's cranium. David continues digging; he extracts a coin and Sara gags, "Silver dollar." Nicky's breathing deeply and willfully, and smiles with relief at being able to look cool as he says, "Gambling chip." Sara's still gagging, although she's struggling womanfully to retain her composure. With a dramatic flair, David extracts one last item -- a jacket that comes out of the bag with a fetid sucking sound. For a moment, the morgue is quiet as human goo drips off the sodden garment. David notes disinterestedly, "Pile of bones and that's it." "That's it? No organs, no tonsils..." Sara stammers. David happily shows her the organs and tonsils by upending the bag and pouring out the liquid remains of John Doe. "Human soup. Well, we are 73.5 percent liquid, right, Dave?" Nicky says, straining for joviality. David plays Alton Brown here: "Add some bacteria, a couple gases, and voila!" Sara bravely volunteers to take the jacket of the deceased -- given the absorption rate, she's probably also taking a good percentage of the deceased with it -- and examine it; David appoints himself cremator of the remains. Nicky asks about a plan B, in case John Doe's family resurfaces. David points out that a stew of decomposition can stink up a place permanently, so it's best for all parties to burn the remains ASAP. As Sara and Nicky flee the autopsy room, gagging, they run into Gil. "Let me guess: decomp in an enclosed space," he says. It's moments like this where it's easy to see why he's the head investigator. What tipped you off, Gil? Then he dispenses some useful advice in typically useless fashion: "Lemons." Sara and Nicky share my reaction: "Huh?" Gil makes a squeezing motion with his hand as he circles it over his head. "Use lemons," he elaborates. Okay, then. Thanks, Gil! Sara and Nicky give each other one final, horrified look, and then he wanders off. Sara turns back to the door and peers inside; she watches David spraying the autopsy table. On cue, Stevie Winwood and the rest of Traffic begin wailing "Can't Find My Way Home." There must be some obscure clause in the FCC regulations requiring cop-type shows to play that song every time one of the principals encounters the tragedy of displaced people dying alone and unloved. In this case, it plays as the goo goes rushing into the Las Vegas sewage system and Nicky takes the meager personal effects to a grim-faced morgue attendant; we see a long shot of the tiny box being shoved into a vast wall of tiny, similar boxes.
Warrick is blissfully ignorant of Nicky and Sara's olfactory ordeal, as he's enduring one of his own. He's hunkered down on the floor of the bathroom, using a mortar and pestle to improvise absorbing agent, when Catherine comes along and asks how the Cyranose 320 is working out. Warrick recaps the conversation with Gil and then demos the ten-buck alternative; using the air pump to disturb the air in the sample area, the air gets drawn down into the glass tube (presumably through force, since Lord knows he's not creating a vacuum on the fly) and the shock of the air's entry activates the absorption medium below, so the molecules suspended in air get trapped. Mass spectrometry will take care of the rest. Having seen this budgetary wonder at work courtesy of the TMICam (and how grateful am I we didn't get a TMICam shot of the decomposing body?), Catherine asks, "So why'd you need the expensive one in the first place?" Warrick fixes her with the kind of look all us gadget freaks give you nonbelievers and says, "'Cause it was cool." Catherine grins and says affectionately, "I'll see you in homeroom."
And we'll see Gil in another autopsy bay. He and David the More-Fun-Than-He-Used-To-Be Coroner are looking over Barry Schickel's bullet-riddled body. As David recites all the bullets' entry points, we see their trajectories being recreated courtesy of the TMICam. It's every bit as gruesome as you might imagine; the lungs and heart are especially squicky, as the bullet makes the fragile tissue pulse wetly a moment before tearing. As Gil listens to David's rundown, he notes that the placement of the bullets doesn't match the internal damage Schickel suffered. David notes that this kid is a special case; he rolls over the body with a thud -- that poor actor -- and shows Gil the multipronged wound above the guy's left nipple. "It would have killed him -- if his heart had been there," David says. "Where was his heart?" Gil asks. Buried beneath the floorboards of Dennis's locker, Gil, where its steady beating is driving him mad! David offers a less gothic explanation: "All his internal organs are on the opposite side of typical placement." Gil's thrilled, saying, "Dextrocardia? Like Dr. No?" Actually, Gil, dextrocardia is specific to the heart -- it's when it's folded in a mirror image of itself -- and is part of a larger organ-reversal thing called "situs inversus." It's quite rare. Gil and David turn back to the kid, and Gil asks how long ago the kid was forked. "Six months," replies David. Sounds like this kid ran into a lot of people who hated and feared clowns, be they class or otherwise.
Sara isn't anywhere near the circus; she's busy scraping off layers of John Doe so she can get to his jacket. Nicky bursts in and asks, "How's Liquid Man doing?" "You mean Mr. Cartsen?" she replies. I immediately warm to this scene for two reasons: first, because it shows Sara struggling with the stench of decomposition, and second, because it's consistent with her need to hang some sort of handle on her victims. Hey, some people skydive; I thrill to consistent characterization on television shows. Nicky reminds her -- not ungently -- that the guy could have picked up the army jacket and its attendant nametag at a Salvation Army; Sara points out that she's gotta start somewhere, and now she can check the VA database for any W. Cartsens with plates in their heads. She's still gasping as she scrapes away at the jacket; Nicky fishes a mystery item out. They have no idea what it is. Sara manages, "QD should be able to bring something up," mere seconds before her own lunch comes up. Nicky winces in sympathy. Sara comes back up, sniffling, and says, "Don't tell anyone?" "About what?" he deadpans, smiling. Aw.
Just then, the Emergency Services guy Sara was making eyes at pops in to ruin the moment. Sara instantly tries to put on the coquette, trilling, "Hiiii," as Nicky watches with a mixture of amusement and disappointment on his face. She asks ESG to wait outside, then requests of Nicky, "Give me a mint." Nicky grins, because watching Sara Sidle in mack-daddy mode is apparently comic gold. "You're going to need more than one," he says, smiling ear-to-ear. "Just give me!" she pleads. Nicky hands over the Altoids. ESG is exhaling and doing his pre-mack warm-up as Sara comes out with a bright smile. "This is a nice surprise," she says warmly. "I wanted to see if you wanted to have dinner," he starts. Give the boy credit for getting to the point. "Yeah! Um...when?" she replies. "Now. I'm on break," ESG replies. Well, he just lost his style points. Sara points out that gosh, she'd love to drop everything and conform to this last-minute invitation, but she happens to be working. As she's explaining this, ESG's face is screwing up into a moue of disgust and Sara cuts herself off, saying matter-of-factly, "I smell." "No," lies ESG, then amends it to, "Not that bad." Gosh, it's no wonder Sara's tripping all over herself to go out with him; he's smoove with the ladies. Sara explains that owing to the chemical qualities of human fat, the decompositional miasma has attached itself to her skin and hair. She notices that ESG doesn't look so good. "I need to get some air," he chokes, and flees. Sara watches him go, waving weakly in an effort to remain charming. As she's standing alone in the corridor, Liam the Lab Tech sidles over to her and gives her the up-and-down. "You smell like death," he states. "I've heard!" she snaps. Liam wanders off, then turns around and cocks his hip in a gunslinger pose, drawling, "You know, a real man wouldn't mind." Go for it, Sara! His hair's looking good this week. Sara smiles a little at that, but as soon as Liam rounds the corner, her shoulders slump and she sighs. Awww.
Gil is talking with the guidance counselor as they wander the spacious, sunny high school campus. He's pumping her for information as to who might have harbored animosity toward Barry Schickel. "Look, he was popular, but he was a bully. There was [sic] probably a dozen kids who wanted to see him dead." Gil looks intrigued. Cut a parade of sad-looking little boys reciting the assorted indignities Barry would visit upon them. We meet the kid who stabbed him with a fork -- this kid has an unsettling way about him too and openly rejoices over Barry's death, but he's got a tight alibi. Gil eventually releases him. The guidance counselor laments, "I can protect them from being called a derogatory word for homosexual, or the n-word, but everything else falls under free speech." Well, not really: does Tinker v. Des Moines ring a bell? The ruling where the Supreme Court decided that school districts can revisit that free-speech thing if it's disruptive to the learning process? Gil notes that nobody's blaming the guidance counselor, who says that's okay, 'cause she's blaming herself. "You know who did this, don't you?" he asks. She punts: "I listen to these kids every day. Divorce, working parents, cliques. And all they need is just one person to believe in them." Gil's not falling for it, asking, "Where does that leave Barry Schickel?" "That's your job," the guidance counselor says, all remorse suddenly gone.
When we return from commercial, we re-enter the action mid-conversation; Nicky's saying to Warrick, "Shut up! She was not!" "I saw her in action," Warrick replies, smiling. "I was what?" Catherine asks, walking into the break room. "I was just telling Nick how you were a big bully in high school," Warrick says. "A bully? Well, I guess I was, but not the kind that people want to take out a gun and shoot," Catherine admits. "No, no, you were the kind that guys fall all over themselves trying to impress," Nicky says. The light bulb over his head is blinding in its radiance. "Like you, huh? What were you in high school?" Catherine smiles. "I was dependable," Nick says carefully. Boy, that adjective evokes the kind of kid who crushed on his best female friend desperately for four years, took her to Homecoming as "just friends," and never worked up the nerve to kiss her. "Dependable jock? Dependable stoner?" Catherine presses. "Never a strap, never a smoker, just an all-around dependable guy, I guess." "He's trying to say he was unpopular," Warrick teases. Nicky hastily adds that he was popular with the right people and adds, "I can tell you I wasn't a mack-daddy wannabe with a Members Only jacket putting the swerve on all the ladies." Warrick nearly spits out his coffee from laughing before defending the sartorial honor of the Members Only jacket. Just then Sara appears -- in a new outfit -- and summons Nick back to goo patrol. Warrick asks her what she was in high school and she responds proudly, "Science nerd." Good for her! Nicky walks by her, makes a show of checking her out, and says, "You changed." He adds, sotto voce, "But you still smell." The parallels between the workplace and the classroom are staggering. Sara and Nicky take off; Catherine pins Warrick with the high school question. He replies, "Oh, I was short, had big feet, thick glasses." Catherine expresses the rest of America's shock when she replies, "You?" "Yeah! I was pushed around by all the guys, and never got any play from the girls..." "The girls didn't even notice your eyes," Catherine states disbelievingly. "No! They teased me for my eyes. Called me names," he pouts. Half of America immediately lunges forward from their seats, ready to console Warrick. Catherine tries too: "[Your eyes] are your best feature." "I didn't have a best feature. Looking back on it now, I could say that I can see both sides of it -- Barry Schickel, how he was shot and whichever kid did it. I'm not saying it was right, but I kind of understand, you know?" Warrick says. Knocked from her bully's pulpit, Catherine can only say, "Yeah."
Back in the liquid plotline, a tech says of the thing Nicky found earlier, "I wanted to hold off on this matchbook until it was dry, but then I realized --" "Human fat never dries out. It just gets waxy," Nicky interrupts. The tech then uses a super-duper forensic version of Photoshop to decipher the contents of the matchbook. It comes from Romanini's, a place which is, in Nicky's words, "a nightclub for boomers off the strip." As Nicky and Sara head out to stink up the joint -- without even saying thank you to the pixel jockey -- Buzz the detective comes by to drop off some exposition: W. Cartsen is actually Second Lieutenant William Cartsen. He is apparently a Viet Nam veteran who was wounded in action; thus the case takes on a new dimension of pathos.
Catherine decides to try her hand at graffiti, apparently testing the tackiness of the paint to ID the timeline of events and identify the phantom fingerprint-leaver; Warrick is testing all the absorptive media from his jerry-rigged scent kit. Science montages ensue. Warrick is running a mass spec on his results when he looks up to see Gil watching him from the doorway. "What's the matter? Don't you trust me?" he asks. Gil looks wounded. "I trust you," he says. Boy, that's a huge statement of affection, considering the history those two have. Warrick picks up a printout and says, "I got a boatload of chemical compounds here -- marijuana, bubble gum, cigars. It's like every guy's bathroom in America." Of course it is. "What doesn't belong?" Gil asks, then wafts off.
Over at Romanini's, a bald nightclub owner sprints over and tries to head off Buzz, Sara, and Nicky. Buzz proffers a sepia-toned enlistment photo of a fresh-faced boy in horn-rim glasses, asking, "Is this man a patron of your establishment?" Understandably, the manager says no. Nicky prompts, "Wore an Army jacket. Might have been down on his luck?" "Oh! You mean Moses!" the manager says. He elaborates: somewhere along the line, William Cartsen became one of those ill-kempt, insane homeless people that typically scare tourists and irritate locals. "The guy was ruining my business. I tried to reason with him." He narrates, via flashback, how he tossed the guy a gambling chip and told him to cash it and then move on. Sara asks for a timeline on the incident; he pegs it at about two months ago. What a coincidence!
While Sara and company are off grilling the as-yet-unnamed manager, Gil is playing Sim City, or something that looks like it: he's got the little guy in the bathroom, there are noises...whoops. Silly me -- turns out he's running a computer simulation of the likely chain of events. Brass interrupts his simulation to tell him that everyone in the earlier parade of Schickel victims was far, far away from the school when the killing occurred. Catherine appears, just in time to pile on even more evidence: she can put Dennis at the crime scene. She's off to deliver the news to the happy family now. We flash to Chez Fram; Papa Fram is insisting his son is innocent. Catherine insists the evidence shows otherwise; she lifted his print from the locker and, thanks to the spray paint, can place Dennis at the crime scene during the time of the shooting. "Dennis had to have swiped the paint within seconds of Barry putting it on his locker for the print to take," she explains. Catherine bolsters her case with the janitor's graffiti records. Brass jumps in: now that they've set up the timeline, they'd like to have a chance to inspect the two dozen weapons Papa Fram has. Pardon my lack of a weapons fetish, but what the hell would one person do with two dozen guns? Dennis immediately doubles over in pain; his sister swoops in and administers the Florence Nightingale treatment. This is not lost on Catherine and Brass.
Back at CSI Central, Warrick is waving around some test results and saying, "This does not belong in the guys' bathroom." He expresses his frustration with correctly identifying the thing-that-does-not-belong, as there are apparently ten thousand brands of "it" out there. Gil looks at the paper and asks, "You still got that ten-thousand-dollar e-nose you were using?" "Now you want my tricked-out toy," Warrick says with mock reproach. "I want the software," Gil clarifies.
Trepidation written all over her features, Catherine watches Dennis's sister mother him. Sis turns around and clarifies, "Dennis has a bleeding ulcer from being bullied by Barry Schickel." We flash to scenes of Dennis's daily degradation. "You don't know how hard it was for him. Trying to work up the courage every morning just to go to school. I thought my little brother was going to kill himself," Sis continues, her features contorted with worry. You know, I love my little brother like there's no tomorrow, and I was no slouch at beating up anyone who laid a hand on him in elementary school, but by the time he was in high school -- he was a short kid and a Magic-the-Gathering-playing band geek to boot, so it's not like he wasn't bully bait -- it was tacitly understood that we each fought our own battles. This is kind of...creepy. Catherine has a flash of intuition, asking Sis, "How tall are you?" "Five-four...with heels," she replies. Wuh-oh.
Meanwhile, Gil is carrying on about floral top notes and the complex compounds that go into perfumes. The computer chugging away in the background beeps, and "it" is identified: Chanteuse perfume. Oof, that's an unfortunate name. Gil explains to a dumfounded Warrick that the Cyranose 320's software was originally designed for perfume companies, as a tool for hacking their opponent's proprietary blends. His phone rings in mid-lecture, and it's Catherine; she's calling to tell him Sis is a suspect. "See if you can get a warrant for her perfume," he says. Puzzled, Catherine complies.
Cut to Brass interrogating Sis. She took the time to dress for the occasion. How...odd. Well, I guess everyone wants to make a good impression. She claims she was out driving around during the Schickel murder -- an unfortunate alibi -- and Brass asks, "So, what, your perfume just wafted in the boys' room off Highway 10?" Well, if it's a local highway, maybe. Otherwise, you're asking us to believe that Gil could smell her driving down an interstate in Arizona, and while Gil is good, he's not supernatural. Yet. Perhaps in season 3...anyway, Brass and Sis go round and round; she wears Chanteuse in honor of her dead mother, and so what if she does? Warrick tries to explain how the aroma "fingerprint" they isolated in the bathroom is that of Chanteuse, she wears Chanteuse, and according syllogistic logic, she's their prime suspect. It's a weak argument; Papa Fram is having none of it and orders the girl -- whom we finally learn is named "Kelsey" -- to leave with him. As soon as the Frams are out the door, Catherine says cynically, "Wears her dead mother's perfume. Nice touch." "Might be true. Scent triggers memory more acutely than any of the other five senses," Gil replies thoughtfully. Catherine's not terribly sentimental: "Well, I smell a rat in the Fram family."
In another room, the manager guy is folding faster than a metal chair at a revival rally. Long story short -- since this plotline is really more about the squick factor than any criminal scene -- the manager stuffed Cartsen in a large duffel bag, zipped him up, and rolled the bag down a very steep hill. "I figured he'd get out once he slept it off," he rationalizes. Nicky, predictably, looks saddened and shocked at this line of reasoning. "Treating another human being like garbage isn't a job. It's a choice," he says. The manager looks as stunned as if someone had just bothered to explain the Grand Unification Theory using only small words. Thus endeth the B-plot.
In the A-plot, Dennis wanders into CSI Central and flags down Gil and Catherine. "I need to talk to you," he says, his eyes the size of saucers. Whoever is playing this kid is doing an excellent job; get him on a Judd Apatow coming-of-age show, stat! Dennis explains that he had gone back to the school to pick up a book; he registered the spray-paint on his locker, then took a pit stop. He heard the glass breaking and watched the crime; he fled immediately. "Now my dad's freaking out, my sister won't come out of her room, I figure...if you can get the police to make some kind of deal for her?" Catherine swallows hard before pointing out, "Well, Dennis, you haven't explicitly said that you saw Kelsey shoot the victim." "She was in a stall! I couldn't see her," he points out. Just then, Brass comes in and drags the CSIs out; it turns out that Kelsey was "otherwise disposed." This phrase is delivered with typical Brass drollery. It turns out that Kelsey's idea of "looking out for her brother" was synonymous with "sleeping with Schickel's football coach as leverage for asking him to intervene." My God! This is like a bad Lifetime movie! They could call it Lateral Negotiation or something. Brass finishes by pointing out that Kelsey may be many things -- a strategic thinker being noticeably absent from that list -- but she's no killer. Gil goes back in to tell Dennis his sister is no killer; Dennis is relieved. "But then who was it?"
The question is answered in the last scene -- it's the guidance counselor. Gosh, if she weren't looking out for all those kids, she could have pinned this on the Fram siblings based on circumstantial evidence. Instead, what we get is an ending worthy of Agatha Christie -- information withheld from us, the audience, until the crime-solver decides we need to know it. It turns out that the guidance counselor feared that Barry Schickel might have incited someone to kill, kill, kill, just to get relief from bullies. She figured that killing Schickel herself was a way to prevent someone else from going berserk. "I just thought that one life was better than twenty, or thirty," she justifies. "Or eleven," say Gil, playing his I-have-information-the-viewers-don't card. "Tetrick High School, Tetrick, Arizona. Eleven kids shot a few days after Columbine. You were the assistant principal," he continues. "I watched them die at my feet, just because some sophomore couldn't take the jokes about his glasses," she says. Gil looks at her with no small amount of compassion and says, "It says that you were left with post-traumatic stress disorder. You might want to mention that to your lawyer." She shakes her head no, saying, "I did this for my kids." Gil reminds her that eventually, high school ends for everyone, and leaves. The cops descend to arrest her during school hours. Meanwhile, Sara showers with lemons (Liam is undoubtedly whimpering outside the door) and Nicky is signing out Cartsen's belongings, saying, "Rest in peace, Lieutenant." And in one last, unexpectedly sweet touch, we see Gil filling out a grant form for funding to buy the Cyranose 320; he fumbles for stamps in his disorganized desk, and Catherine stops in only long enough to extract a roll for him and then leave silently. As Gil seals the envelope, Warrick stops in the doorway, goes to say something, then thinks better of it, drifting off and leaving Gil alone.