It's a beautiful day on the Vegas strip/A beautiful day on the Vegas strip/Could you be my.../Would you be my...
It's a beautiful day in the Vegas 'burbs/A beautiful day in the local park/Would you be my/Could you be my/Won't you be my victim?
That's right -- we've entered the land of make-believe, where strings throb with joy as a harp plucks harmonious notes, where happy families gambol across sun-dappled lawns while engaging in the kind of wholesome family fun that godless Mother Jones readers want to take away from America, where children chase each other as they play tag, their piping voices rising in play, where --
-- where I check just to make sure I didn't inadvertently record Touched by an Angel or 7th Heaven instead, because the laughter of children is like a dagger in me. Fortunately, shortly before insulin shock kicks in, one of the children trips on a patch of improbably bare ground, gets up, and begins screaming in pain. Now that's more like it. "The dirt burned my hands!" he hollers, and indeed, his palms are getting progressively more scarlet with each wail. This may be the first time we've witnessed wounding in real time on CSI.
Cut to night, where an EMT is wrapping the child's hands in gauze. Wuh? Night didn't just fall, it drove over a precipice at 75 MPH and landed with a thud. Why, just seconds ago it was light out and this kid was yowling and he's only now getting medical attention? As an extra kitted out in a hazardous materials suit goes by the ambulance, we see Gil, Sara, and Brass threading their way through the usual thicket of emergency service vehicles, personnel, and equipment. Gil asks, "What's hazmat doing here?" Captain Exposition replies, "Kid's playing tag, takes a header in the dirt, ends up with first-degree burns on his hands." Sara's not connecting the dots: "Wait. We got a call about a dead body." Captain Exposition, relishing the return to his rightful pre-credits spot, is not about to let someone hurry his moment. "I'm getting there," he says, then continues, "So hazmat arrives, figuring some chemical spill, starts removing the toxic soil, and bam -- a shovel slams into a shoulder blade."
We then transition rather abruptly to what is now the crime scene -- a trough in the ground, illuminated by an emergency light and ringed by hazmat workers. Sara and Gil are crouched beside the body. Sara notes that the clothing's in shreds, as is the body's epidermal tissue. Gil notes that the body's viscous fluid is the consistency of dishwashing soap -- you know, I can see where it would be handy to have ordinary objects to use as benchmarks for forensic observation, but I do have to wonder if that alters a forensic specialist's perspective on said objects, like if they inadvertently creep themselves out with the Palmolive every once in a while -- and the camera swoops up to the skull, which looks like the stunt double for that guy they dug out of the peat bog a dozen years back. Gil says, "Hazmat was right. Someone doused the body in lye." Sara theorizes that whoever did this must have thought lye would destroy the body. Gil quips, "Yeah. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust -- without the wait."
And we go to The Who, most of whom are neither ashes nor dust.
When we come back, Sara's already donned a hazmat suit and jumped into the pit formerly occupied by the corpse. She's busy looking for evidence when a hazmat tech comes over and says, "Ma'am, I'm sorry but I need to neutralize the soil." Sara replies sweetly, "If you touch the soil, you'll contaminate my crime scene, but I'll let you know when I'm finished." The tech's a sucker for purty ladies, so he smiles and walks off. And the point to that was...? Gil strides on over in a matching jumpsuit and asks Sara what she's got. It turns out to be the victim's wallet; the desiccated dead guy is a Nevada resident named Bob Martin, aged thirty-one. The twenty dollars in the wallet rules out robbery. I take a moment to wonder exactly what it is our government is using to make twenties if it can withstand a lye bath. The moment passes. Gil studies the trench while Sara continues to work, training a flashlight in her general direction. She then spots something in the dirt and holds it up for Gil's inspection. "Looks like a paint fleck, or metal chip maybe," he decrees. It's not going to be much help -- the park is poorly lit, barely guarded, and quite secluded, so it's an ideal place for dumping bodies without observation.
Another seamless transition later, Gil and Sara are standing over the body with David the Dreamy-Eyed Coroner. No, really -- he's got nice eyes. David points out that the lye had a field day on the body, and we see how via time-lapse TMICam. Another first for CSI: flesh bubbling and hissing as it liquefies. Back from the trip to special effects, Sara asks about the time of death; David tells her it was approximately twenty-four hours ago. He then turns the conversation, saying, "Tell me about the car." "Car?" Sara asks. David whips back the sheet to reveal shins that look like the result of a collision with a Weber grill. "Comminuted fractures [i.e. a fracture in which the bone is crushed and/or splintered] of the proximal third tib-fib, both legs. Bumper hits right below the knees. Sure sign he was hit by a car." We then see a recreation of the accident, with the car bumper slamming into a pair of be-jeaned legs, thus prompting a wet and muffled crunching sound. We then return to the autopsy in progress, where Gil's asking David to explain all the bruising, because if Martin was struck and killed, ecchymosis (i.e. bruising) should be nonexistent. David says, "Which suggests he survived the impact. Usual injuries -- ruptured patellar tendon, laceration of the saphenous vein, and multiple incised wounds containing slivers of glass, which I will send over to Trace." This last phrase is accompanied by David delicately plucking a hunk of glass out of Martin's cheekbone; the skin on his face also looks like a Sunday barbecue gone horribly wrong. David continues, "And bruises...legs, arms, chest. What I didn't find: arterial lacerations or underlying vessel damage." "That confirms death wasn't immediate," Sara says. David's expression gets a little more grim and he says, "Correct. This guy was like a leaky water balloon. Heart slowly pumped blood right out of his body. And based on the coloration of the bruises, trauma was sustained approximately forty-eight hours before death." There's a moment where Gil, who has been listening intently, looks disgusted. The camera does a tight close-up on David, who hammers the point home with, "Three days ago, this man was injured. He bled out until he died yesterday." Gil's looking displeased, in part because he and Sara didn't find any blood.
Before they can go looking for eight pints of missing liquid, however, it's time for the B plot. After a brief shot of the Mirage at twilight, the camera swoops over the mountain ridge to Vegas's east, then down over a rocky peak that practically glows ultraviolet in the dying light. By the time the camera reaches the crime scene, it's dark and Nicky's striding into view, saying, "Lockwood." The officer -- who, had he not already been identified as Lockwood, would have been nicknamed Detective Hot -- greets Nick and tells him that a Bureau of Land Management chopper noted the body, as the aerial patrol is in the habit of buzzing Diablo Canyon to look for hikers in distress. We also learn that the victim is twenty-six-year-old Las Vegas resident Stacy Warner. Nicky and Lockwood walk over to check out her body -- she's on her back, sprawled as though she were sleeping, in the middle of a vast bare patch of land. Nicky whips out the flashlight and peers down at Warner, notes an engagement ring but no wedding band, then brushes back her hair to look at her head. There's a scrape on Warner's face, and when Nicky peels open her eyelid, the white of her eye is flooded with blood. "Orbital bone is fractured," he notes. "Could have lost her footing, hit her head," Lockwood offers. Nicky grunts an acknowledgement, then gets Lockwood to hold his flashlight while he checks out something at the corner of Warner's mouth. It turns out to be a small down feather -- kind of mysterious, given that Warner isn't wearing a jacket. Nicky tags the feather, notes the speck of blood and maggot in Warner's ear -- Lockwood notices this too, and gulps visibly -- and picks up the maggot, quipping, "Grissom should enjoy this," before dropping it into a specimen jar. Lockwood still looks a little squeamish; his expression does not improve as Nicky asks, "Hey, Lockwood, you got any food in your vehicle, hamburger, anything like that?" Lockwood looks appalled at the idea of feeding the maggot, but coolly replies, "Gum. Sugar-free." Nicky says dismissively, "Nah, gum'll kill him. I'll stop at the first place I see, pick up some jerky." Ah, it's so nice to see a nod to maggot scenes. It's also nice to see Nicky working a case alone -- I guess this year's evaluation went much better than last year's. Whatever it is, Nicky's acting competently and -- heeeeyyyyyy. He's all by himself! Nobody's around to see this at all. It figures. Anyway, Nicky hands over a tin to Lockwood, asks him to take a soil sample from underneath the body once the coroner's moved her, and heads off to buy a maggot dinner.
Back at the A plot, someone who looks like the answer to the question, "What happens to you if you spent ten years' worth of weekends drinking Bud and watching ESPN?" is acting astonished that Martin is dead. Brass confirms it for the guy. Sara asks, "Are you his domestic partner?" To the guy's credit, he does not immediately and vehemently go into Homophobic Denial How-'Bout-Them-Raiders mode, saying instead, "We're roommates. I got divorced last year" -- see, this is the part of the Bud commercial lifestyle nobody talks about -- "and Bob's wife kicked him out six months ago. He needed a place to crash, and I needed help with the mortgage. He's two months late on the rent. How do I go about collecting under the circumstances?" Sara doesn't know, and she doesn't care. She turns to Brass for assistance, given that Brass can be relied upon to answer with his customary sensitivity and tact. Brass turns to the roommate and gives him a look that's worth a thousand words. The roomie -- in the fashion of roommates the world over, i.e. the kind of person who's sure to survive a nuclear blast and go hunting for survivors so they can finally get the phone bill settled -- says, "We were roommates, not friends." We then learn that the two worked at the Tangiers together (the deceased managed a restaurant and the roommate worked in maintenance), and on Mondays, Martin would go off shift and walk over to "the university" (no word whether it's UNLV or the ever-present University of Western Las Vegas) and work in the darkroom before taking the bus home. Sara notes that Martin didn't come last Monday night; Roomie counters that he didn't think much of it, as Martin was always breaking up and making up with his wife Charlotte. He finishes the interview with, "What do I care, as long as the rent's paid?"
In the scene, Gil's on a quiet, dark street, looking at a bus shelter across the way. Sara walks up to him, rattling off the particulars from the photo lab and finishing by pointing out that Bob Martin happened to be in the darkroom on Monday night. "Good. We've got a bus to catch," Gil says, steering Sara toward the bus stop. A car speeds by, the horn honking angrily, and Gil yanks Sara back from the road. Then they remember to look both ways before crossing. Sara's flipping through photos, commenting that they're all of the same woman, very probably Martin's wife Charlotte. Gil stops in the middle of the road -- a logical move for anyone who's been nearly run down -- and notes silver flecks on the pavement. Sara promptly picks up a piece of plastic that might be a headlight cover. "This could be our crime scene," she muses. We then see the probable hit-and-run: Martin walking across the road on a foggy night; a car coming out of nowhere; the body hitting with that moist crunch, then tumbling over and over. Sara looks around and asks, "Assuming this was a hit-and-run, how does a guy with two broken legs end up on the other side of town, buried in a park, covered in lye." I'm not nearly the grammar goddess Sars is, but I'm thinking there's a misplaced phrase modifying the wrong thing there, as the sentence Sara spoke made me think the park was covered in lye, not the man. ["It's correct as written, but it did sound a little funny when she spoke the line. Maybe she didn't hit that last comma." -- Sars] Gil's still puzzled, because there's no blood. Sara wonders where eight to ten pints could have gone. And we go to commercial.
When we come back, Gil enters Liam's lab and asks, "Want to tell me about the silver flecks I found?" I'd like to know too, but I wish Gil had demanded that Liam give an accounting for his hair as well -- he's sporting something that looks as though he took a Don Martin cartoon out of Mad magazine, went to the local hairdresser, and said, "Make me look like that." It's as if he wanted to get a mohawk, but developed some sort of commitment issue halfway through. Liam's had some wrong 'dos before, but never has one so actively worked against his looks. Wow. While I've been marveling at this tonsorial aberration, Liam's been talking paint: "The melamine in the color coat indicates that it's car paint. A factory job. Body job paint contains styrene, not melamine." Gil asks what kind of car it is. Liam points out that Gil just asked a trick question -- but he can still answer: "It's not technically part of my job description, but as you know, I am always eager to expand my responsibilities. Take a look down the scope…" Gil, giving Liam a wary eyeball, since he apparently has some sort of irrational peeve against the young man, does so and notes a crosshairs insignia, which lets Liam continue, "That plastic you collected at the accident site. That mark is only found on the S-class Mercedes. It's all about branding. Now, knowing that the headlight came from a Mercedes, I was able to compare the infrared spectra with the paint spectra provided by the manufacturer. Check this out. Your vehicle was painted Sarasota Silver, only available on the S-series '99 model. I checked with the Mercedes state rep; five were sold in Nevada. Sara's tracking down the owners." Rather than applaud Liam on going above and beyond the call, Gil says testily, "You've already shared this information with Sara?" "An hour ago," Liam says airily, completely missing the look on Gil's face, "and she was way more fascinated than you were." Gil, who is limbering up for an Olympic-class reprimand, replies, "Well, I'm somewhat fascinated by the fact that I'm your boss, but you talked to her first." Liam points out that Gil was at dinner. Gil replies that he's been in the lab all day. Oooo-kay. The point of that was...? Liam's a liar and he's shooting himself in the foot vocationally because his hormones are in Gordian knots over Sara? Gil somehow missed a summons? Liam is fated to forever fail to win Gil's approval (well, at least that leaves Nicky's nights free for something else)? Gil has an irrational dislike of young men? We won't find out this episode, as Gil stalks out of the lab and runs into Sara. "I've been looking for you," she chirps. "Well, it's hard to see me if you and Liam are out ahead of me," Gil points out caustically. Sara shrugs an apology and moves on to the most important item: she's got a Mercedes owner to talk to -- Ben Weston, aged twenty-five, who leased the vehicle last week.
In a mere instant, Sara and Gil are in a large, sunny office, talking to the stunt double for Christian Bale in American Psycho. I instantly dislike him. Weston assumes Gil and Sara are here to tell him that they've found the Mercedes which he reported missing last week; Gil assures him they're here about the Mercedes, but in a different capacity. Sara asks to see a copy of his police report; Weston looks at her (this is when I notice the phone headset thingy -- how typical) and responds, "I'm a lawyer." "I didn't ask if you had sold your soul to the devil, I asked if you had a copy of the police report," she snaps. No, she does not. She stands there and lets Weston blow on his JD so the ink will dry faster, then whip out the report as if to demonstrate what a steel trap his mind really is. So he can file -- whoop-de-freaking-do. Gil has not stopped giving Weston the Inquiring Eye since the conversation started. Weston's all, "Yeah, I stopped for take-out Monday night and when I came out, it was gone." Gil asks, "Don't most of these luxury vehicles have security systems?" "Are you implying something? Because if you are, I'll bury you! I mean it!" Weston screams. Well, only in his head. Instead, he's trying to put the fear of lawsuits into Gil and Sara by asking why they're asking so many questions. Because that's their job? Gil's all, "We're investigating a possible hit-and-run." Weston replies, "You think the bastard that stole my car hit someone?" Well, no, because they weren't working under the assumption that it was a stolen vehicle, but nice attempt to deflect all suspicion somewhere else, slick. Gil dodges the questioning and begins inspecting the diplomas Weston's prepping for decoration: "Ignatius High, Nevada State University...you a local?" Nevada State? Where is that -- Elko? Oh, wait -- if Weston's all "I love this town," we can probably safely conclude that Las Vegas now boasts three universities within city limits: UNLV, University of Western Las Vegas, and Nevada State. Weston's all, "I studied my ass off in law school. Passed the bar my first time." Gil coolly congratulates him on a job well done. I can only assume Sara's not speaking in this portion of the scene because she's trying to choke back the mocking laughter.
We find out that Weston will be working in criminal defense: "Everyone deserves representation." Gil agrees: "Yes, they do. Would you happen to remember what clothes you wore yesterday?" Weston does: "Blue pinstripe, light-blue oxford, gray tie -- gift from my girlfriend. First week at an associate firm like this, you tend to pay attention to your wardrobe." Especially if you're the first generation to crack the professional tier, as I suspect Weston might be -- everything he's said so far suggests a driven kid with a work ethic that exceeds whatever advantages his parents may have been able to offer him. But I could be reading into that. Sara recovers the power of speech and asks to look at those clothes. Weston's all, "Really? Well. You need a warrant." Sara gives him a "Really? Well. I don't care" look. Weston caves instantly, because men are putty once pinned under the Sidle gaze. "I'm a nice guy," he says (good thing the camera's on him, and not on Gil's face straining against an incredulous expression), and turns to produce some dry cleaning courtesy of the one-hour place downstairs. "Nice suit," Sara says. "Thank you. I just bought it," Weston replies. She notices the oxford shirt has a few holes, and cracks, "I hope you didn't just buy the shirt." Weston makes noises of dismay. Hmmm. Must have been a Thomas Pink. Or maybe the lye reacted with whatever was used to clean the shirt and ate holes in the fabric; I have an entire collection of perforated tees, courtesy of pool chlorine (which is caustic) splattering my shirts, then hitting the wash. I'm just saying. The same kid who has been at his law firm -- and the office building with the dry cleaners -- for twenty-four hours, is all, "I've been meaning to change dry cleaners." "Or maybe you got lye on the shirt. Lye is a caustic. It reacts with water, and eats right through fabric." "And maybe they should call you Sara SNIDEL if you're gonna keep at me like that," Weston shoots back. Oh, come on. You know he doesn't, but it's fun to pretend. He finally snaps only after Sara asks him to take off his shirt, because "lye can burn through fabric; it can also burn through skin." Weston says, "You want me to strip, you're going to need a warrant. But since there's no basis for your request, you can forget about it." Cut to Gil, who's been giving Weston the same look he usually gives to a maggot wiggling in the grip of a pair of forceps.
And now, the B plot. Emergency Backup David opens the drawer holding Warner's body and says, "She drowned." Nicky replies, "This is the girl I found in the desert, man." Emergency Backup David -- who's sporting a sharp pair of glasses and a deadpan expression that would do Daria Morgendorfer proud -- says, "I am aware of that. She drowned." Nicky tries again: "That's not possible, Dave-O. She was found at Diablo Canyon, miles from the nearest water source. Lake Mead's maybe twenty miles away." Space and time are irrelevant to Emergency Backup David: "Desert, no desert, I don't care. She drowned." There's a small moment where Emergency Backup David catches the dismayed look on Nicky's face and says, "If it's any consolation, she dry-drowned." Nicky immediately wonders if this is another one of those practical CSI jokes, like the time Warrick sent him out for a sample of snipe DNA. Emergency Backup David clarifies: "Happens in about ten percent of all cases. When drowning occurs, the larynx closes involuntarily [the closing of the larynx in this fashion is called laryngospasm; the phenomenon as pertains to dry drowning is called apnoea], preventing air and water from entering the lungs, resulting in hypoxia, a reduced concentration of oxygen in the blood, and ultimately ending in suffocation. Thus, water's kept out of the lungs -- dry drowning." As Emergency Backup David is explaining this, we take a trip with the TMICam down through Warner's mouth, through her trachea and to her larynx, where we can see things closing and liquid pooling. Because the folks who run this show want to make sure they get their money's worth from the TMICam, however, Emergency Backup David then launches into an explanation of wet drowning for us while we watch it happening on a very personal level: "In wet drowning, hypoxia also occurs, but the larynx relaxes and water floods the lungs. Still, the question remains: how does a girl drown in the middle of the desert?" Another key difference between dry drowning and wet drowning -- dry drowning is basically a variation on suffocation. The windpipe closes, the body gets no oxygen, and you die. In wet drowning, the water in a victim's lungs interferes with the transference of oxygen, so it's a whole different type of hypoxia. Interestingly, dry drowning is often associated with sudden immersion in cold water; perhaps temperature will play a role in tonight's crime. Anyway -- going from the look on Nicky's face, David's question has triggered some unpleasant Grissomian flashbacks. "She doesn't," he says. Then, because we have to transition somehow, Nicky begins testing possible answers to David's question. We'll call the first one, "The fiancé drowned her, then hauled her lifeless body to a remote location, erased all evidence, and escaped detection."
Cut to the fiancé -- who does, as forum posters pointed out, look like Chris Kattan on steroids -- protesting that he didn't file a missing persons report on his intended because she wasn't really missing. "As far as I knew, she was on her solo trek in Diablo, working on her NESTFs." "NESTFs?" Lockwood asks. As this scene progresses, the camera pulls back so we can see that the deceased didn't live in a house so much as she lived in a gym that happened to be in a residential zone: there's industrial gray flooring, workout equipment all over the place, and a lap pool out back. The fiancé clarifies -- "Sorry. National Extreme Sports Trainer Finals. I had mine last week. Did it [sic] in three days total, so I didn't expect her back for at least two more days." I wonder if the NESTFs are necessary for getting into the NESTAs -- the National Endurance Sports Trainer Association -- or if they're away to avoid getting sued by NESTA for trademark infringement. Ahem. The two men digest this, and then Nicky asks if he can have a look-see. Fiancé assents. Nicky immediately heads toward the pool and takes water samples. He also notices a tiny scrape of blood on the side of the pool, and swabs it. He calls Lockwood out. Lockwood takes one look and immediately calls, "Mr. Hudson? You own this house with Stacy Warner, is that right?" Hudson agrees, looking pretty alarmed. "Any idea how this blood got there?' Lockwood asks. Hudson does not. Nicky's all, "Stacy had a head trauma wound. You wouldn't know anything about that either, would you?" Hudson says vehemently, "I'd never hurt Stacy!" Nicky, who appears to have taken over questioning from Lockwood, gets a little tough: "No? Then how do you explain the domestic disturbance call to this address two weeks ago?" Hudson doesn't really explain it at all, but blusters, "We told the officers it was nothing." Nicky replies, "I don't know. The neighbor who complained said you were really yelling at Stacy. Said it sounded abusive." Hudson defends himself with, "We're sports trainers. We say some really crazy things to get each other to do one more lap in the pool, one more crunch." And when that doesn't work, out come giant syringes filled with horse amphetamines. Cut to a flashback depicting domestic bliss Hudson-Warner style, where Stacy's doing crunches while Hudson yells, "Are you a liar? Are you going to give me more? Are you weak? Are you worthless?" Are you insane for wanting to marry this guy? We get Hudson's alibi for the week -- he was at the Big Sky triathlon -- and then the scene's over.
Back at the A plot, Brass is leading Gil and Sara through a junkyard while explaining that he got a hit on Weston's Mercedes based on a call from a tow guy named Sullivan. They all stride purposefully toward the chop shop's office. Once in the interior -- crammed with auto parts organized in a fashion that only makes sense to automotive idiot-savants, and lit with sickly green fluorescent lights -- we hear, "Yeah, I got a call. You want a wrecked S-class? You betcha." The camera zooms in to reveal the speaker, and going by the hair, it would appear that Noel Gallagher has finally crossed the Atlantic to join his brother Liam. It figures those two would extend their brawling to the law-enforcement arena, Liam on the side of good, Noel on the side of being questioned by a gimlet-eyed Grissom. The brothers do have something in common. Anyway, Noel's explaining that the parts of an S-class Mercedes are worth four to five times the blue book value of the car. There's a healthy incentive for making sure that car gets stripped real quick-like. Brass asks if Noel got the driver's name. Noel shoots back, "Someone throws you three hundred thou in used parts, the one response is 'Thank you very much.'" Sara, who didn't make the connection about the parts being more than the sum value of the whole, asks where the Mercedes is now. Noel cordially invites her to take a look around. Gil quips, "Aristotle said something about the whole being more than the sum of its parts. He didn't work in a chop shop. We want all the parts." Like Liam, Noel can only gaze upon Gil with admiration.
Well, Noel managed to scrounge up the seats, because Gil and Sara are inspecting them now in the lab. Sara finds trace amounts of blood; with some asperity, Gil reminds her that they still have some eight to ten pints to account for. Sara grabs the luminol and goes to town. The seat practically glows in the dark. Gil quips, "Well, you do know how to light up a room. Location of the blood on the seats and the dash indicates that the victim was inside the vehicle." Sara suggests that the driver hit Martin, stopped, and put him in the front seat. Gil wonders where they would have gone from there. Sara replies, "Well, not to the emergency room. Not to Sunset Park for forty-eight hours." She then outlines the tests she's going to do -- send the car swabs for comparison with Martin's DNA. If they find any blood that's not Martin's, maybe there's an injured joy-rider and possible suspect out there.
In the scene, Nicky's standing over a light table and looking at the pool sample. Warrick comes in behind him and quips, "The one day I'm due in court and you pull a drowning in the desert." Warlock's sartorial smartness -- blue shirt, blue tie, blue eyes -- more than makes up for my temporal confusion, as I've always been under the impression that he and Nicky work the night shift, and unless Las Vegas's justice system has assumed the same twenty-four-hour accessibility as its hospitality and matrimonial industries, it seems that one of two things is going on: either these guys don't really work in shifts as much as they simply work for as long as necessary, or the writers were grasping at straws to explain Warrick's absence. Nicky asks how Warrick's hot date with justice went, and Warrick says with some asperity, "It went great. The judge recessed right before my testimony. So I'm on call, Catherine's on call, and more importantly, the recapper's less confused because she's now assuming that I spent all day in court and then came in to check my email or something." Warrick flips through Nicky's case file, then says, "You're making progress. The blood from the poolside matches the female victim." Nicky debunks the you're-making-progress theory with, "The problem is the small amount of blood found in her own home isn't enough to prove anything. People bump their heads, scrape their knees all the time." Warrick commiserates. Nicky's now brainstorming aloud: "That musclehead boyfriend? He's a little shady. He's hiding something, I can feel it." Yeah, he's hiding five hundred tablets of dianobol behind that fifty-gallon drum of creatine phosphate in the living room. Actually, Nicky and Warrick are talking evidence; Nicky's compared four different water samples from assorted Vegas locales where one would be likely to be drowned, but none are consistent with the water found in Warner's stomach. He's also collected some rocks from under her body, and a goose feather. Warrick picks up a sample baggie and notes that the item inside looks like basalt -- "Didn't it say somewhere that [BLM] found [Warner] at 1500 feet?" "The desert, yeah," Nicky says. Something's not square there; Warrick says, "You only find this rock at high altitudes like 4000 feet." Nicky asks if Warlock's sure. Warrick tells him, "I went on this field trip up to Table Mountain in my senior year -- Rocks For Jocks. Don't ask me why I remember any of this." A photographic memory? Anyway, Nicky's about to go in search of basalt. He leaves Warrick to wait for court. This means it's got to be light out, yes? Now my sense of time is all shot to hell.
Unfortunately, the shot's an interior one, so I've got no outside clues. Sara's telling Gil that all the blood she sampled in the car belonged to the victim. Gil's quite excited about that -- and by the visible blood drops under the passenger seat of the car, and the radiated spatter the blood drops made while falling. Gil narrates, "Blood pooled on the floor mat. As blood pooled down, the impact splashed the blood drops upward?" as the TMICam rolls. Sara asks where the blood came from -- which is apparently Catherine's cue to come in bellowing, "So Liam said you were processing an S-class?" She then relays a pathetic story about her ex-husband, his automotive window shopping, and her participation therein. It really says volumes about the kind of men she goes for -- volumes written in a language not suitable for a family publication. Anyway, she surveys the car parts, smug in the satisfaction that her ex would cry over the waste of a good Mercedes, and asks, "So if this car were stolen, the ignition lock would be punched, right?" Not from this angle, it's not. The looks on Gil and Sara's faces as they realize that a) Catherine is right, and b) they overlooked this simple thing are priceless. Having thus deigned to appear and corroborate this "court" thing she and Warrick are going to, Catherine takes off, leaving the stunned Gil and Sara in her wake. Gil can't take his eyes off Catherine. Sara looks down and tries to recover with, "We-we would have caught that." Gil looks at her and says, "We were distracted by what we were looking for." He seems almost bemused to have learned something from Catherine. Sara asks, "How did the thief turn the engine over without breaking that lock?" Gil muses that perhaps there is no thief.
There is, however, Weston, who's now singing a new tune entitled, "I was too embarrassed to tell you that I left my keys in a car that costs eighty thousand dollars, and I don't want my insurance company to know either." Because Gil, Brass, and Sara fail to hum along with the chorus, he takes it again from the top. Sara's not having any of it; she asks, "Take off your shirt, please." Weston reminds her she'll need a warrant. Lucky for her, she's got one. Weston's all, "I can call Judge Scott, contest your grounds." "But you won't," Brass says, but his eyes are really saying, Try, and you'll give me an excuse to give you the crunchy beatdown you so richly deserve. Brass is very eloquent like that. Sara smiles and says, "You want to refuse? One of us will take it off you." You know the moment this gets out to the lab techs, they'll all be even more hopelessly in love with Sara. Weston also succumbs to her charms. First, he plays coy, only rolling up his sleeves, but then strips to the waist once Sara reminds him what the warrant covers. As Weston stands shirtless before everyone, we can all see the diagonal abrasion from where a seatbelt must have cut into his torso with considerable force. Brass points out that they've got enough for a hit-and-run; this prompts Weston to swing into the B side of that new tune, this one entitled, "Did I forget to mention that thudding noise I heard as I drove to get takeout?" Sara's not a big fan of the alibi-remix school of rap. Weston's quite emphatic that his car was stolen, so he is in no way responsible for anything that the car may have done. Brass arrests him anyway, and escorts him out. After he goes, Sara says, "I hate lawyers." Gil says testily that they need a warrant to search Weston's house, so as to find something that keeps him off the street.
You could always try the great outdoors -- we go to a shot of the Las Vegas area, as seen from the top of a mountain a long way off. It's lovely. Nicky and Lockwood would think so too if they weren't having a miserable time on a near-vertical hike. Those vultures circling overhead can't help either. Lockwood mentions that he's all for retracing Warner's steps, but misery likes company, so why can't they get some cadets up there to share the fun? Nicky points out that Warner's not a mediapathic victim (i.e. a little kid or a mass casualty), so it's unlikely they'll get any concerted staff effort. Nicky then consoles Lockwood with, "Exercise is good for us, right?" "The air feels thin to me," Lockwood shoots back. The two continue to scale the ridge, and as he's pausing to catch his breath, Lockwood notices a tattered down jacket hung up on a nearby jut of sandstone. The down is leaking out and fluttering away. The two men scrabble to a position immediately below the jacket. Lockwood remembers that Warner was wearing several layers of clothing; Nicky checks the jacket and says, "This is a men's extra-large. It's too big for her." Maybe she liked wearing her clothes big? He rifles through the pockets and finds a printed ridge map. It's got an email header on it -- to Matt Hudson, per his request for a trail map -- and Nicky's all, "Property of Mr. Muscles." He and Lockwood have an impromptu brainstorming session. Nicky thinks, "Maybe he left for his marathon a day later than he said he would. He followed her out here, they started arguing, no neighbors around to call the cops...she manages to fight her way free, finds higher ground, he follows her and takes her down." As Nicky narrates this, we see it happening. I personally doubt it, given that Hudson looks like the kind of guy who wouldn't bother pulling his mother out of a burning building if it meant jeopardizing his health before a race, so there's no way he'd hike a tough trail just to kill his girlfriend. Lockwood, however, takes a different approach to debunking Nicky's theory: "He drowns her with canteen water? I'll let you run that one by the D.A." Nicky's up to it. He tells Lockwood, "You should try describing a scuba diver up a tree. This is nothing. Nah -- the evidence tells a story." Lockwood wonders why Hudson would be so dumb as to leave his jacket behind. Nicky, releasing feathers to the wind, says, "Everybody thinks they have a plan 'til things start to go wrong."
Well, if confronting Hudson with his jacket was Nicky's plan A, it just went wrong. Let's hope he's got a plan B. Hudson insists he gave Warner the jacket for night layering, as extreme hikers aren't permitted to carry bedrolls. "That's what makes it extreme," he finishes snidely. Lockwood wonders how the jacket came to be hanging from the rocks. Hudson doesn't know: "I gave it to her to take care of her. I loved Stacy." Nicky asks him to "help us out here, man. I've got prior disturbance calls, her blood on the pool, her body drowned in the middle of the desert with your jacket nearby, your map." Hudson's idea of help is to say, "That's my trail map. I'd like it back." Nicky gives him an evaluating look and says, "No. No. It's evidence now. You can put a request in for it when we complete our investigation, okay?" Hudson slings a little 'tude when he asks, "Am I free to go?" Lockwood serves it back with, "You're not under arrest." Hudson takes off so he can go drink some MetRX and count his muscles in the mirror. Nicky's thrilled to have something new: "He doesn't want me to have this map, and I want to know why." Off the map goes to the document dungeon.
And off Sara and Gil go with a warrant. They meet Weston in his driveway. Brass, who's standing to Weston's left, says glumly, "He made bail." Sara's not surprised. I'm curious as to where the money came from; I can't see his new employers ponying up, and unless his girlfriend's pulling down the money shift at Spearmint Rhino, he doesn't seem to have a whole lot of cash on hand. Brass hands over the warrant with something approximating a smile. Gil says, "We'd like to start in your garage." Weston's all, "Really?" He gets in Gil's face and says, "I'm filing a complaint with your supervisor. You're harassing me." And you've just made a tactical error, Weston. Don't you know Gil is the smartest man in Las Vegas? Do you not read the news? Are you not aware that Gil is something of a cult figure in law enforcement circles? You're in over your head, grasshopper. Gil gets an expression which indicates that he's about to learn young Weston a thing or two, and says, "If you're a lawyer, you should know the legal definition of harassment. Investigating a crime doesn't quite fit that criteria. However, a false accusation of harassment within earshot of my colleagues can be construed as slander. I know the law too -- and I've actually been in a courtroom too." Burn!
Having sufficiently cowed Weston, Gil and Sara enter the garage. There's a car inside, with the kind of muddy marks a dusty car left under the sprinklers might have. Gil, remembering that he and Sara walked by a block's worth of lawns being sprinkled on the way over, asks, "This was parked outside?" "Now that's a crime?" Weston snits. "You tell me, Mister I-passed-the-bar-on-my-first-try," Gil shoots back. No, he doesn't. He ignores Weston. Brass asks Weston for the keys; Weston's all, "It's a rental. You're not on my policy." "I'm a safe driver," Brass assures him. After Brass pulls the car out, Gil and Sara look at what lyes beneath. Geddit? What lyes…? 'Cause it's all...folks, I apologize, but you knew, given the episode title, that this was coming. Just be grateful it took me forty-six minutes to get here. Anyway, Gil and Sara study the intensely clean patch of garage floor. Gil hunkers down for a sniff and rules that the area smells like bleach. Sara, who remembers this drill from a prior case, says, "I'll check for blood." Gil's wondering why Weston would leave the rental outside with the sprinklers on. "Maybe the garage was full," Sara offers. She then swabs the floor and finds evidence of blood.
Nicky's down in the document dungeon with Ronnie the paper geek, who's asking him what to look for on the map. Nicky replies, "Alterations, erasures, changes in paper content. This guy was really nervous about me having this map." Ronnie says, "I'll test the components of the inks and then bombard the paper with different wavelengths of light. We'll see what's up." Nicky thanks him, then runs off to talk to Grissom. Prepare to watch all the competency he's exhibited up to this point vanish into thin air. Nicky asks Gil about the maggot; Gil replies that it's from the family of sarcophagids (FYI: order Diptera, which specializes in carrion habitation and is dependent on ecological conditions for lifecycle), but that's as far as he got, as the maggot was exposed to a freezing temperature pre-pupation, and thus its growth was stunted. Nicky's all, "But we found the vic in the desert." Gil says mildly, "Well, maybe it was a very cold night. Mucho frío." Señor Grissom sambas off as Nicky mutters, "Muchas gracias."
He then heads to a computer lab; Liam hangs out in the doorway and swoons. Nicky notices this and tells Liam to come in. Liam plays coy before dashing to Nicky's side. "So I heard about your cold maggot," Liam says. I take a little break to consult The Unabridged Dictionary of Euphemisms. No dice. Nicky says ruefully, "News travels fast." Liam then gets to his point: "So I was thinking. To most people, Las Vegas means 'the Strip.' But it really means 'the meadows.'" Nicky has no patience for the history lesson, pointing out that he's trying to calculate barometric pressure. Well, it's p = mass/volume = nNaM/nRTP, where you're taking into account the change in air density as corresponds to height over time. Unless Nicky enjoys doing differential equations to find the rate of pressure change over time, he's better off finding software into which he can plug numbers. Oblivious to Nicky's mathematical meandering, Liam continues, "My point is, Nevada is a basin-and-range state. Down in the desert basin, hardly any rain. Up in the mountain ranges, it's forty inches a year. That's more than Seattle. That's more than San Francisco. That's more than --" "Yeah, yeah, I see where you're going. Last week in Vegas, perfect weather. Warm, steady barometric pressure, but out in Diablo, two days before I found Stacy Warner's body --" "The mountain shadow effect," Liam finishes. I have no doubt we'll soon be learning what that effect is, as soon as we get tired of whizzing around the computerized 3D topological map. I'm thinking it involves sudden rainstorms, if those clouds in the map are any indication.
Out in the parking lot, David the Dreamy-Eyed Coroner is asking Gil, "This is Ecklie's Mercedes?" Gil says, "Well, actually, I sold it to him five years ago. It was in much better condition then." I wonder how Gil got the car. An as-yet-unacknowledged ex-wife who used to buy her love bug expensive toys? An impulse purchase after inheriting his mother's estate? A midlife crisis? Whatever it is -- Gil once had a Mercedes and now he does not. No word on what his current mode of transport is. Sara comes out and say that she checked with the guys in auto detail and -- surprise, surprise -- she learned that if you fill up a car with enough blood, it's going to begin to leak through the bottom. Gil asks David if the dicing wounds with glass were limited to the upper torso. David confirms it. Gil notes that those wounds are consistent with a head-on crash. Sara begins imagining the scene: "The head of the victim crashed into the passenger side of the windshield...I'm thinking that the car clipped the victim here" -- she points to her shins -- "he was catapulted" -- she climbs on Ecklie's car to demonstrate -- "and was positioned something like this" -- she's prone on the windshield. We then see the accident in real time.
Gil picks up the thread: "So now he's bleeding and his blood is dripping onto the mat." David says in horror, "The victim bled out for two days." Gil says that the victim could have been conscious until he lost a third of his circulating blood volume. David confirms that that's the point where hypovolemic shock would set in, after approximately twelve hours. "So it's possible he was wedged into the windshield of Ben Weston's Mercedes, which was parked in Ben Weston's garage." Sara says grimly, "We know where Bob Martin was. Where was Ben Weston?" Gil's face twists contemptuously as he says, "My guess? At work, making a good impression." We see a shot of Weston laughing evilly at something. Probably chortling at the interest rate the devil is charging on his soul. David takes all this in and says with a shudder, "Sometimes, I'm glad I only deal with dead people." He leaves, and Sara notes that the tow truck driver was very probably lying about the extent of the damage to the car.
Cut to Brass questioning Noel as to the veracity of his prior claims. We learn that -- surprise -- there's a link between Weston and Noel, as they went to the same high school; Weston was the one who snitched on Noel during a prank, leading to Noel's felony conviction. I bet Weston also used to report people to the IFC honor council in college. He seems like the type. After Brass threatens to make Noel an accessory to murder, Noel flips faster than a Russian gymnast and fingers Weston. Apparently, Weston unloaded the Mercedes under the guide of "making it up" to the guy whose life he hobbled six years ago. Yes, if "making it up" means "making you a possible accessory to first-degree murder."
Sara's opening a trunk to look at something, and Liam sidles up to her, saying, "Just remind yourself: I usually bring the case home." This time, all Liam's done for the case is point out that there's no specific evidence. He can find blood, but he can't tag whose it is owing to the bleach's degradation. Liam asks Sara if she's looking at Weston's rental. She is, because she's hoping that it was used to transport the body to the park. Sara says they haven't been able to find any fibers or blood...and then she shines her flashlight on the screw cap leading to the spare tire, thus finding some powder.
Wrapping up the B plot, Nicky's passing weather wisdom on to Lockwood. Lockwood's asking, "So this shadow effect, the barometric pressure strikes down, the temperature strikes down --" "The humidity spikes up," Nicky continues, "the warm air condenses." Lockwood realizes that the mountains then get a flash flood. Nicky confirms that on the night Warner died, the mountains saw three inches of rain in twenty minutes. We cut to what probably happened: Warner was scaling a ridge when the rain hit. She slipped, caught herself, but was dozy from the blow to her head, then got hit in the face with a gout of water. Since her faculties were already diminished, she was drowned in the flood water and her body was carried to the base of the canyon. As Nicky's explaining this, we see Warner's body being washed to a spot right near his feet; the effect has a phosphorescent, translucent quality that broadcasts how we're probably seeing what the CSI sees. Since the CSI's seeing dead people, I dub this the Osment Effect. Look for its return in subsequent episodes. Nicky then gets a call from Ronnie: the map's been tampered with.
Cut to Muscles McAthlete, who can't be bothered to interrupt his workout to process the news regarding the nature of his fiancée's death. What a catch -- good thing he's available now! Nicky says, "[Stacy's death was] an accident of nature, yeah. But you still had a hand in her death." Hudson has no idea what Nicky's talking about. Nicky invites him to step off the treadmill and shows Hudson the altered map; he made a meadow look like an impenetrable ridge, thus falsifying the trail and leading Warner to explore much more dangerous alternatives up the mountain. Lockwood comments, "If she had a good map, she might have been able to find her way out of the highlands by nightfall." Hudson protests that he never meant for his fiancée to die; he only wanted her to have a worse race time than he did, which totally justifies violating her trust and placing her life in danger. But the good news is, he did win the race. What's a dead fiancée compared to that? Hudson then wants to know if he's being charged with murder. Lockwood regretfully tells him no: "You altered the map, but you didn't make it rain." Nicky adds, "What you did isn't a crime. But it is criminal, isn't it?" They leave Hudson to stand there and get distressed over how he didn't maintain an optimal aerobic heart rate during that exchange.
But I bet Weston's heart is racing. He's in the tank, arguing that Gil and Sara's evidence is circumstantial at best and their physical evidence is pathetic. Gil then whips out Weston's cell phone and tells Weston that Noel found it in his car. "I hope he didn't make any long-distance calls," smirks Weston. He reaches for the phone, but Gil smacks his hand with a grin, chiding, "That's evidence." Sara enters then and Weston cracks, "Hey, it's a party." "And I brought the music," Sara shoots back, holding up a tape recorder. Gil continues, "You'll be happy to know there were no long-distance calls made on your cell phone. But there was one call made -- to 911, at 2:30 AM on Tuesday morning, while your car was still in your possession." They then play the tape; it's the victim pleading for help, but the cell phone location isn't logged, so nobody can get to him. The operator tries to get information, but Martin can't give any, given that he's stuck in the windshield of a garaged car and halfway out of his mind from the pain. Gil asks Weston, "Explain to me, Ben, how does a lawyer rationalize something like this?" Sara tags in, and going by the tone of her voice, she's barely keeping her temper in check: "You know the law. You hit a guy. It was an accident. But you let it escalate -- first-degree murder. I spoke with your senior partner. It was your first day on the job. Big firm. Big welcome. How many drinks did you have that night?" Weston's sitting there, stunned. Gil tags back in: "Let me guess. You wanted the alcohol to wear off before you called it in, right? Have a cup of coffee, sober up, then call the cops? But unfortunately, Bob Martin woke up." We then flash back to Weston entering his garage, where Martin -- battered, bloodied body suspended in glass like a sadist's idea of a paperweight -- begs for help. Weston turns and closes the door again. Gil is continuing his relentless narrative: "What do you do now? You can't walk into the emergency room: 'Hey, this guy was bleeding to death in my garage while I was eating moo shu pork.'" Just then, a uniform comes in for Sara; she tries to buzz him off, but the guy insists that it's relevant. She leaves for a moment; Weston's now hunched over the table, looking trapped. He tells Gil, "I sacrificed to get where I am. My whole life was leading up to last Monday." Gil says without sympathy, "It's tough, huh? Fifteen years to build your dream, and a fifteen-second phone call destroys it."
Sara's outside with the roommate, looking at a piece of paper. The roommate says he found it while packing up Bob's stuff, and he figured the CSIs would want it. She thanks him numbly and heads back inside. She then hands the paper over to Gil, who puts on his glasses to read it. He looks over at Sara, whose expression gives away nothing. Gil then takes off his glasses again -- it's really kind of cute -- as he pins Weston with a look and says, "When a driver hits a pedestrian, the presumption is, the driver is negligent. When a driver's been drinking and he hits a pedestrian, it's no longer negligence, it's reckless homicide. But when a pedestrian intentionally throws himself in front of a moving vehicle, the driver's no longer responsible. Legally, he's off the hook." Gil pauses a moment to let that sink in; I know that for some people, being off the hook for an automotive death legally does nothing to diminish their sense of responsibility. I strongly suspect that Weston is not one of these people. Sara clarifies, "This suicide letter was written by Bob Martin to his wife Charlotte. When you hit him Monday night, it wasn't an accident." We see Bob stepping out in front of the car, fear in his features. Sara twists the knife a little, telling Weston, "You were off the hook." Gil finishes, "Until you let him die." Weston looks stunned at how this has all turned out. Sadly, the episode ends there, so we don't get to see him get booked for murder, then wonder which of his coworkers he could persuade to defend him.