The lights at night / are big and bright (clap-clap-clap-clap) / upon the Strip in Vegas! / But soon they fade / we're up a grade (clap-clap-clap-clap) / far from the Strip of Vegas!
In other words, we transitioned really quickly to what appears to be a road that's going uphill somewhere. The mists roil in such a way as to suggest we are but moments from Ann and Nancy Wilson telling us how dreams go on when we sleep at night, and Brass is busy expositing at the top of his lungs: there was a BOLO out for one Lori Kyman, they've found her vehicle, but Lori is nowhere near it. Sofia hears this and wryly comments, "FOS." "What's an FOS?" Gil asks. "Another gratuitous TLA," Sofia explains. "What's a -- oh, stuff it," Gil sputters. None of that actually happened, you know: Sofia explains to Gil that FOS means "Friend of the Sheriff," and adds, "How else do you get listed as a missing person so quickly?" Brass glances over with a look like, "So cynical! Gil, if you don't ask her out, I might." Gil examines the car and notes that the doors are locked, there's no key in the ignition, and no sign of struggle -- ergo no sign of foul play. Sofia observes a flat tire and a few smudges on the truck, but that hardly changes anything. After some nameless extra pops the trunk at Sofia's behest, the music swells dramatically, and we see...nothing.
Sofia starts with the thinking aloud: "So, she gets a flat. There's no gas station around. It's a Lexus, so there's no On-Star. She must have had some kind of emergency roadside service." Well, I do. It's called "I know how to change my own damn tire in under ten minutes." However, if Lori was dependent on the kindness of AAA, she contacted them telepathically, as her cell phone log fails to show anything other than a checking-in-with-the-spouse call at 9:30 PM. Sofia thinks, "Maybe some good Samaritan offered her a lift." Gil sourly adds, "And evidently didn't take her where she wanted to go."
The Who don't care where you're taking them. They're still trying to figure out who you are.
When we get back from the opening credits and commercials, we see that the Kymans, in addition to being FOS, are also FOM. That would be "full of money," if the house is anything to go by. Sara and Brass are talking with Mr. Kyman and Lori's best friend Amy. We find out that the ladies were having a girls' night out to help Lori share those housebound post-partum blues. Amy tells them the girls went to "The Top Floor," and Brass looks at Sara and notes with a wink, "That's to O'Shea's." I'm sure someone in the forum can explain why that's significant. Anyway, Sara peels Amy off so she can talk to her, while Brass works on Mark Kyman.
We find out that Mark manages the steak house at the Tangiers -- and what is it with that casino? Do they have their own in-house bereavement counseling group, what with the incredible number of employees and loved ones who turn up dead there? Anyway, Mark got home at 9 PM; his mother-in-law had been taking care of baby Joey.
Amy tells Sara, "[Lori's] in love with her baby. She wouldn't go anywhere without him." Sara is giving the baby a look like, "Small, pink, wet, noisy...who in their right mind would love that?" She suspends her bafflement to ask, "What about Mark?" Amy tells her, "Mark loves her. He would never hurt her." Sara points out, "When a wife disappears, it's protocol to look at the husband." Amy rolls her eyes and sighs before saying, "I promised I would never say anything. Before the baby was born, she suspected he was cheating. But then Joey came, and last night at the club, Lori said things were great." Wow, Amy's sure selling the whole husband-and-kids package. Sara's eyes get even narrower. She asks if anything unusual happened at the club, and Amy relates a flashback in which some barfly kept hitting on Lori. Badly. With the line, "Can I ask you a question? It's critical. Am I your type?" Lori proves that she's no great wit because instead of answering, "No, I'm more into serifs," she's all, "I'm married." Her would-be swain claims she's lying because she's not wearing her ring. Yes, because the ladies love it when you challenge their rebuttal and call them a liar. It's a wonder this prize didn't have women clinging to each appendage.
Back in the present, Amy's saying that God's Gift to Women also goes by the name "Brad." Sara wants to know if Lori always runs around without her wedding ring. As the camera focuses on Joey happily gumming some chew toy, Amy explains that Lori had lost some weight and was taking the ring to get resized.
In the other part of the house, Brass is prodding Mark to go through his story once again. Lori called at 9:30 PM to check on the baby: "She said she missed him. She said she was going to be home by 11. I passed out on the couch waiting for her." Amy is backing up this narrative, saying the ladies stopped drinking at 10 PM and left an hour later. Sara asks about Brad, and Amy tells us that evidently, when you're God's Gift to Women, hints apply only to other, lesser mortals. Brad came sliding over the car on the power of his own slime and graciously offered Lori one last chance. Instead of rolling over his toes with her car, she just giggled. Not that it will help her now, but Lori could have used a copy of Gavin DeBecker's The Gift of Fear; if nothing else, she could have gotten rid of the idea that she owed this persistent jackball politeness. Amy says Brad seemed harmless. Well, if you consider a one-man campaign to eliminate couth in America harmless, then yes.
Matt is now wrapping up his story: he woke up at 2 AM and there was no Lori. He called her on her cell phone and got no answer, so he called Amy, and then he called the cops. Brass tries to figure out if Mark's been out of the house since he got home from work. The answer would be: No. Like us, the Kymans are a one-car household. Just then, Lolita Davidovich comes in and asks if there's been any news. Brass takes in the big pink rabbit fur jacket and the pink purse, and his look says volumes. None of it is repeatable in polite company. Mark then introduces LD as "Diane, Lori's mom." Brass babbles, "Diane, I want you to know we have every available police officer out looking for your daughter." Well, he babbles for him. Before Diane heads off to seize the baby, Brass confirms that Diane was in the house last night before Mark came home from work (Diane says she was), and that Lori talked to both Mark and Diane when she called at 9:30 PM. Diane rushes off in a cloud of pink, and Mark stands there looking dazed. He asks Brass what to do, and Brass replies, "I'd take care of your family, Mark. And if Ms. Sidle asks, volunteer your fingerprints and DNA." Mark looks confused by this. Because it hasn't occurred to him that this sort of thing might be useful for getting him off the hook, or for implicating him. Mwa-ha-ha!
Meanwhile, the B plot has begun. The victim: excellent actress Jane Lynch. The crime: woeful underutilization of her comic skills. I kid! Well, not about the underutilization. She's playing a park ranger who's there to serve up exposition pie. The first victim: this guy whose carotid artery was ripped to shreds by a bear. The second victim: the bear, which was shot twice in the head and sports a deep stomach cut. Both have been dead for less than 24 hours.
Nicky has sensibly stopped gawping and is actually gathering evidence. He's found broken branches with directionality that faces away from both the victim and the animal, and upon one of those branches, there's a piece of torn khaki fabric. "The vic's wearing jeans and a nylon vest. This means somebody else was out here, and they were running for their life," Nicky concludes.
Cut to the morgue, where the fakest fake bear model that ever faked is lying on the slab. Disney called -- they'd like the star of the Country Bear Jamboree back. That's how fake it is. Anyway, Catherine comes in and says excitedly, "I had to see for myself. You're going to autopsy a bear?" David the Bearish Coroner informs her, "It's called a necropsy, and as the head coroner, it falls under my purview. I'm going to write an article for the journal. They love this sort of stuff." I wonder to which journal he's referring -- the Las Vegas Review Journal? Can you imagine him having a weekly column like "The Coroner's Corner"? Anyway, David does not bother explaining to us all that the difference between an autopsy and a necropsy is that one is done on humans and the other on animals. He just gets down to business, telling Catherine of the dead body one slab over, "I can confirm he was killed by an angry bear." Fearless calls like these are why he's the head coroner. Catherine looks at a slab full of shredded hunter, then returns to the infinitely more interesting dead bear.
David tells her, "As for the bear, two bullets to the head. The first -- non-fatal -- was a straight-on shot. Bears' foreheads are sloped, so the bullet ricocheted off the skull, leaving a copper jacket, which peeled away and embedded in the hide." David pulls it out while Catherine takes a look at the dead bear's eyes. She looks up again, bothered. David continues, "The fatal bullet entered in the ear, lodged in the brain. I removed it already." Catherine picks it up and notes, "It's lead -- no copper jacket. So the copper jacket had to have come from the rifle. But this is from a handgun." "So [the hunter] shot one bullet from his rifle and another from his pistol," David shrugs. Catherine points out that Dead Shredded Hunter had neither a pistol nor a knife, so the bear's big gaping stomach wound is a mystery too. David points out that the gallbladder was removed post-mortem, and adds, "I can't tell you why." David is not up to date on the ridiculous atrocities men will commit.
For those of you who are also wondering what the big deal is, a quick and dirty explanation: bear gall bladders manufacture ursodeoxycholic acid (URDA), which has been shown in some tests to treat liver and gallstone problems. Although URDA can be synthesized from cow gall bladders, practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine often contend there's no URDA like bear URDA. Since bears are getting scarce, and people are beginning to say, "Wait...you mean there's an alternative for manufacturing this chemical and you're not using because...why?" there's a hot market for wild bear gall bladders. Note I said wild; a concurrent practice that's sprung up to meet demand for URDA is bear farming, in which bears are raised in cages and milked of their bile twice daily. Critics contend this shortens the bears' lives considerably. Bear farmers, naturally, dispute this. The upshot is, we're facing a plotline in which we'll have to admit, once again, that when it comes to the way we treat other species on this planet, we're not covering ourselves in glory.
Poor Warrick is left to sift through Shredded Dead Hunter's personal effects. Unsurprisingly, they are shredded as well. Nicky comes in and tells Warrick he ran the vic's prints, to no avail. Warrick's feeling testy. He asks, "We found this guy 25 miles from civilization. Where did he come from?" Nicky figures that Dead Shredded Fred had company, so it's likely the missing guy drove them both out there. Warrick hands over Dead Shredded Fred's watch and comments that it's pretty high-end. Nicky counters that hunting's not a poor man's sport. And yet it's how a lot of poor people worldwide feed themselves and their families. Funny, that. Nicky then comments, "U.S. presidents still hold up dead ducks for photo ops." Well, if you're talking about that kind of hunting...not to jump the gun here or anything, but there's a distinction between the kind of photo-op hunting politicians do and real hunting.
But I get ahead of myself. Warrick's having himself a moment of cognitive dissonance because "[the watch] doesn't match with the guy's clothes. They're kind of raggedy. Dirt-stained. I could smell the B.O. from the guy's shirt from here." Nicky explains, "Some hunters think soap and deodorant tip off their prey. The truth is, body odor's much more pungent." Before we can get into a more nuanced discussion of hunting culture and ethics, Catherine comes in to dryly comment, "Robbins confirmed our vic was killed by the bear." Nicky grins and cracks, "Okay. Case closed." Catherine curbs him before the post-case party gets started: "Not quite. I spoke with the ranger. There's no way a Kodiak bear just wanders into Nevada, so whoever smuggled him in could be charged with homicide." Warrick snorts, "How's that." Catherine turns toward the camera and explains, "The bear could be considered a lethal weapon." So could your lips, Catherine. Tell the dermatologist to go for a more natural look time -- you're making Melanie Griffith look subtle here.
Cut to Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, saying. "Screw." Unfortunately, Sofia's right behind him, so she's all, "The magazine? The incredibly crude come-on? Context?" Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, explains, "Tire's valve stem was unscrewed two full turns." Sofia concludes, "A slow leaker. Print around the fender." Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, does so, and sure enough, there's enough of a palm print to run a scan on in the super-duper database. And sure enough, up pops Brad Himmel, or as we referred to him earlier, God's Gift to Women. Interestingly enough, Brad's been convicted on a drunk and disorderly. I've always wondered how one gets convicted of being drunk and disorderly. Can you introduce new exhibits into the court, like your copy of Organizing from the Inside Out? Can you call in expert witnesses? Does E! do a re-enactment after each day in court? Don't bother to tell me the truth here. It will undoubtedly fail to live up to what I imagine the court testimony is like.
In the scene, Brad is explaining to the un-amused Brass, "Yeah, I was in the Top Floor. I hit on a lot of girls. You can't arrest me for that." Well, yes. Criminal stupidity. Dork and disorderly. Brass asks Brad to stop with the ladies' man shtick and begin talking about Lori Kyman. Brad keeps on making friends as he smirks, "Yeah, I remember Lori. Said she was married. Yeah, right. You dress up like that -- you're looking to get some." Yes. Because all women are whores who want it All! The! Time! Everything they're doing, they're doing with the express hope that someone like Brad will come along, sweep them off their feet, and give them four and a half inches of heaven.
Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, is looking like he'd like to swap out his Y chromosome right about now. He dryly informs Brad that his palm print was found on the fender of Lori's car. Brad's all, "So? I walked her back to her car. I am a gentleman." True. All gentlemen assume women are only out in public with the express purpose of trolling for sex, right? Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, wants to know if the walk out to the car is when Brad messed with Lori's tire. Brad's amused all of a sudden: "Is that what this is about?"
Brass turns from the window and deadpans, "I don't get out much. Why would you do that?" Brad smirks, "I was hoping it would go flat on the way home, and then I'd come along and fix it for her." God as my witness, if the creep that harassed me in a bar came along as I was changing my flat tire and offered me assistance, he'd be finishing his proposition around the cold metal of the crowbar I'd have slammed into his mouth. Who thinks damaging property and stalking is the way to a woman's heart? Brass more or less arrives at the same endpoint of disgust with, "And then she'd be so grateful for the rescue, she'd sleep with you?" Brad grins, "Seemed like a good idea at the time, yeah." Oh my GOD, he is repellent. Either this guy's a very good actor, or -- I can't bring myself to finish that thought. I just hope the guy didn't prep for the role by going Method. Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, pulls the conversation away from the "genius ideas I had while drunk" direction and back toward the "so did Lori's tire go flat, or what?" thread. Brad admits that Lori's tire didn't go flat as planned, so he took it as a personal rejection: "How long can you follow someone, right?" "She never made it home," Brass growls. Brad realizes all of a sudden that he's been implicated in a woman's disappearance. That wipes the smirk off his face. As Brass gets ready to scare him some more, a deputy comes in and does the job for him by saying they've just found a dead body a lot like Lori's. Brad looks distinctly alarmed. Brass turns to Brad and nails him to his chair with "Make yourself comfortable."
Cut to what we're supposed to assume is Sutor, Nevada. It looks...well, like not-Nevada, but what else is new? Emergency Backup David is busy examining dead Lori as Brass and Sofia walk over. He explains, "Liver temp's 60 degrees, so given the ambient temperature, her DOD's roughly 36 to 40 hours. One AM last night." Sofia gets a good look at the local fauna and squats down to look at Lori's neck. She pegs the finger marks there with "bruises on the neck suggest strangulation." There wasn't any attempt to hide the body -- Brass suggests, "Maybe the suspect was in a hurry. Or he just didn't give a damn." From the depths of the couch, Mr. Sobell suggests that perhaps Brass could consider being a little more gender-neutral with the pronouns. Sofia figures they should probably tell the family. Brass sighs, "How do you tell a little boy he'll never know his mother?" I'd...put it off, is what I'd do. He's a baby. His ability to comprehend complex sentences is probably limited.
When we get back from commercials -- and wow, does Survivor look like a double-dog drag -- Sofia and Gil are examining Lori's body in a morgue that was recently kitted out with those natural-spectrum light bulbs. Well, that'll keep the corpses from getting Seasonal Affective Disorder. Sofia notes, "She was dumped under a white birch. Her hair is full of tree pods and vegetation." Gil adds that there are red fibers and blue fibers on her dress. Sofia finds white powder on both palms; Gil adds that he's got a brown hair with a follicular tag. "A person's entire identity balled up in a few nanograms of matter," he adds. Sofia doesn't even look up as she counters, "Assuming one's identity can be wholly quantified by DNA." Gil thinks that "genetically, it can. We're completely programmed as soon as the sperm hits the egg." Sofia makes sure she understands where Gil's coming from with, "So we're defined at the cellular level?" Gil replies, "More or less." Having cleared that up, Sofia moves in to demolish the argument with, "No. Identity is the totality of our life experiences. Our brain neurons process our relationship to the world and to each other." Without breaking flow in his examination, Gil says, "I stand corrected. DNA is not who we are, it's what we are." Sofia adds, "What we are never changes. Who we are never stops changing." Gil sounds distinctly put out as he grunts, "Yeah. Whether we like it or not."
Meanwhile, back on the thread that manages to both depress and enrage me, Catherine goes to see a man about a bear. Specifically, she goes to see David, who tells her he's fluoroscoped the bear and discovered a microchip. He removed it, called Animal Control, and borrowed a magnetic reader. Surprise, surprise, the bear was part of the Clark County zoo.
Cut to the "Clark County Zoo" -- I'm guessing the Southern Nevada Zoo wanted nothing to do with this plotline. The nebbishy zookeeper is all, "A bear from our zoo? Are you sure?" and then he is all shocked when Catherine shows him the photo -- "That's Tippy! Oh, my God, what happened?" Warrick's all, "How can you not notice a bear is missing, fool?" Nebbishy explains that according to the animal broker they were dealing with, Tippy was supposed to have gone to a good home at the Columbus Zoo. Catherine's all, "Come again?" and Nebbishy explains, "Animal broker. Visitors want to see babies, the brokers find other zoos to take adults." Yes. Other zoos. And if you believe that, I've got a surplus bear to sell you. Nebbishy speaks well of the dead bear with "Tippy was so gentle, he'd eat grapes out of my hand." Yeah, well, so long as you weren't trying to shoot him, I imagine he was delightful. Nebbishy then gets all helpful and offers to pull broker Ken Bovitz's license and documentation. Catherine and Warrick can also call the USDA -- they're the ones who license animal brokers in this country. In theory, they should be able to explain why it's cool to license people who are evidently misplacing bears, right?
Back on the A plot, Sara's giving the tire a workout to approximate exactly when Lori's tire would have gone flat because, as she tells Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, "Grissom wants me to disprove the account." From the depths of the couch, Mr. Sobell notes, "That's out of character. Grissom probably said, 'Let's see if the account can be disproved.' There's a difference." Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, wants to know how long she's been there. Well over three hours, so far. Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, points out, "She left the club around 11. Time of death was between midnight and one AM." Sara concludes that Lori died before the tire went flat.
And in the plot that enrages and bums me out, Warrick's giving Catherine a considerably less detailed explanation of why ursine gall bladders are in demand than the one you got from me. And then Catherine spills that the zoo in Columbus had never heard of Tippy. And neither had the U.S. government. Surprise, surprise, the documents were fake. Nicky comes in right then and gooses the plot along by telling his coworkers, "We may have found our hunter. Uniforms found an abandoned Mercedes. Plates came back to a Rod Hollis, who had hunting tags that included permits for hunting wild goats, deer and bighorn sheep." Catherine asks, "What about Kodiaks?" Nicky points out, "That would be a no." He does not add, "Because Kodiak, alias the Grizzly Bear, Brown Bear and Alaska Brown Bear, alias the Ursus arctos horribilus, is classified as a threatened species in the lower 48 states, so nobody's getting no permits for shooting no bears down here. Does this look like CSI: Nome? Because that's where the bear-shooting is."
Gil heads over to talk to the Widow Hollis, who is not exactly all torn up over the loss of her soul mate. She explains, "To be honest, I haven't seen my husband in over a year. He made it big in venture capital. Retired at 32. That's when we started having problems. The officer said Rod died while hunting. Can I ask what happened?" Nicky explains, "He was mauled by a bear." Mr. Sobell and I both have to pause the TiVo and laugh hysterically, not because being disemboweled by an angry omnivore seems like our idea of a fun time, but because back whenERkilled off Kellie Martin, we told all our non-TV coworkers who too intellectual to own a TV but not too intellectual to care what happened on ER that Kellie Martin died from being mauled by bears. Yes, in the ER. They've had everything else in there -- why not bears? The real point here is, at last, years after we sighed and said, "O! If only someone on TV would die from being mauled by a bear!"...someone did.
Anyway, Nicky presses on a little, adding. "Ms. Hollis, I have reason to believe there was somebody else out there with him. Any idea who?" Nope. As she explains, "In our circle of friends, he was the only one who owned a gun. We used to fight about his sport. I showed him studies about how the animals suffer. Hunters don't always get center shots. Well, I guess brutality begets brutality." Nicky ponders those words to grow on.
Back in the A plot, we're establishing that yes, Lori was strangled already, but in a refreshing change of pace, she appears not to have been sexually assaulted. Gil notes the red splotch on an arm and asks if it's a burn. David replies that the lack of tissue reaction makes it a post-mortem burn -- "If she were alive at the time, it'd have a red edge. This one is bland. It burned the skin subcutaneously, so it had to be hotter than 150 degrees." Gil looks up as if to say, "Hotter than 150 degrees. Hey, I'm hotter than 150 degrees. It says so on Slate." Well, really. He's going for a Eureka moment, but lands in a patch of ineffable smugness.
In another part of the A plot, Sofia makes all of Hodges's dreams come true by coming over and asking him to talk. It's such a pleasant change from the usual, where people are begging him to shut up. Hodges opens with, "You kind of inundated me with work. I should be cranky. But I don't get cranky." No, he only gets delusional and self-congratulatory. Hodges continues babbling; he found baby powder (fun fact: baby talcum is, in fact, talc-free). He asks, "Did your victim have her baby with her at the club?" Sofia answers in the negative. Hodges suggests that the baby powder might have been on Lori's hands when she left the house, and Sofia shoots that down with, "She was drinking, so she was probably peeing." Hodges takes the chance to make a cheap shot with, "And unlike some of the men in this lab, whose initials are Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, and Why, God, Couldn't That Have Been Me?, she probably washes her hands. So the baby powder shouldn't be there." Sofia is mildly amused at Hodges's prattle, but she wants to move to the fibers. The blue ones are a synthetic berber carpet, and the red ones are trilobal. We all know what that means -- it's from an automobile. Hodges says, "My guess, she's been rolling around in a trunk." Sofia asks him to be more specific, and Hodges grins, "You bet." It's amazing how productive Hodges is when he's driven by his loins. He continues, "It's Wilton wool. Very high-end. And given the unique shade of red, you're looking at the world's fastest four-seat coupe -- the Bentley Continental GT."
Cut to Brass and Sofia talking to the world's most forgetful valet. He's making the not-so-subtle suggestion that he'd remember better if only he were bribed. This valet is remarkably stupid, since he's making that suggestion to cops. Brass gives him skeptical looks until he caves and admits that yes, a Bentley was at the club. Tragically, he can't remember anything beyond that.
But that's okay, because the plot whips us right along to a police-station meeting between Sara and best friend Amy. Yes -- Amy's the one who owns the Bentley. It was a gift from her daddy. Sara asks if she can take a look at the car, and Amy's all, "Why?" Sara explains that they found fibers on Lori's body that may be traceable back to a Bentley. Amy shrugs it off by pointing out Lori was in her car all the time in the week, and Sara spells it out: "The fibers we found are from the floor or the trunk." Amy gets it, and hands over the keys. Sara then asks Amy if Lori used the ladies' room at the club, and yes, she washed her hands. Amy gets hostile and snaps, "Lori was like a sister to me. Investigate me all you want. But when you're done, take a look at Mark." Sara's all, "Do tell." Amy grits, "I know what I said. That was before [Lori] turned up dead. I'm not saying he did it, and Lori -- she never said anything. It's just sometimes, um, he can get rough." Sara asks, "And you know this because…" Amy gives her the universal don't make me say this out loud look and Sara realizes, "You were the other woman! And here I thought I was the only romantic cliché on this show with the pining after my boss." Amy's all, "One of them. I'm not proud of it." Nor should she be. If she loved Lori like a sister, imagine how much respect she has for the marriages of people whom she considers only casual acquaintances. Sara asks if Mark got rough with Amy, and Amy says, "That's why I ended it." As opposed to, say, crippling guilt over abetting in the cuckolding of her pregnant friend. Sara glares daggers. Judgmental little daggers. I was going to make a crack about how lucky Amy was to get Sara as the mother confessor, but then I remembered that both women have discovered their significant others cheating on them. As has Brass. This is the wrong department to expect a sympathetic ear from if you're the Other Woman.
Sara sublimates her rage by processing an entire car. Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, skids in just as she's finishing. To ease the heartbreak of missing an opportunity to fondle pricey car parts, Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, notes that the trunk of Amy's car is carpeted in black, whereas Lori was covered in red fibers. And then Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, salves his pain some more by asking for some hot dish: "I don't mean to pry, but...you want to talk about what happened between you and Ecklie? I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm a good listener." Sara rolls her eyes, then decides, oh, why not? She tells him, "I blew up at Ecklie. It was very unprofessional -- and very satisfying -- and now we're moving on." Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, looks vaguely disappointed that Sara didn't add any tales of how she and Catherine had a bikini-clad mud-wrestling match to resolve their differences. But Sara thanks him for asking, so it's not like she slammed the door shut there.
Sofia and Gil are back at the Kymans' place. They came for a sample of the baby powder, but decided to stay and check out the blue berber rug in the nursery. As Gil clips a sample of the carpet, Mark has a little fit of paranoia that they're setting him up and is all, "I love my wife. I miss her." Gil gives him a look that telegraphs how very little he cares for our human emotions.
Would that Sara were so emotionally well-calibrated. As she saunters on through the Labitrail, she sees Gil and Sofia sitting together at a conference table, chatting and chortling. The look on Sara's face suggests that the only way this could possibly get worse would be if Catherine and Ecklie showed up to provide blow-by-blow coverage of the conversation. Sara steels herself at the door, then interrupts the two of them with, "…A-HEM. DNA from, uh, Lori's shirt came back. It matches her husband." Sofia's delighted: "That could be probative." Gil, not so much: "Or casual transfer unrelated to the case." Sara then hands Gil the trace results, which is how we all know that someone must have locked Hodges in a closet away from his latest lady love, Sofia, and that the baby powder on Lori's hands matches the powder at her house. The conclusion we all draw from this: Lori came home from the club before she was killed. Gil's all, "Which contradicts the husband's story." Sara says wryly, "I hate to state the obvious, but maybe the husband's lying." Sofia, who is unencumbered by the baggage that goes along with conducting a husband-questioning session with Sara, decides to take that premise and run it out. This is how we get a flashback of Mark strangling Lori while baby Joey watches. Sofia then states, "Mark killed her, drove her out to Sutor, dumped the body." Gil pokes a hole in that line of speculation: "One problem: Mark doesn't have a car, and the carpet fibers we found on Lori's clothing are inconsistent with her Lexus."
Sara bounces back with another theory: "Maybe she and Mark had a fight. Maybe she found out he was fooling around -- again -- she took off, drives around, tire eventually goes flat, and a stranger comes along and abducts her." Sofia says, "SKEPTICAL! DOES NOT SURVIVE EXPOSURE TO LOGIC." Oh, I'm sorry. That was the subtext. It kind of took over. What Sofia really wondered about were the odds on Bentley-driving perverts. Gil figures they're not as low as one might imagine. Sofia smirks at that.
But now, time to switch back to the plot that enrages and depresses me. Ballistics Bobby confirms that the first bullet -- the one ricocheting off the bear skull -- came from the hunter's rifle. The second bullet came from a .357 magnum revolver. Warrick's taken aback by this, and only looks more shocked after Ballistics Bobby reveals it's the same pistol used in a 1998 robbery where the suspect was arrested, but released on insufficient evidence. The gun was returned to the suspect, one Aaron Colite.
Cut to Casa de Colite, which is every bit the gracious manor you'd expect. Not. Aaron Colite's place is a dump, and his radical plan to spice it up with a little frozen bear bladder isn't quite the gracious touch he no doubt hoped it would be. Aaron's no prize either. He cheerfully tells Nicky and Warrick he killed the bear. Warrick's eyebrows shoot up and threaten to establish independent orbit around his skull as Aaron spins his web of lies: he claimed to be out hunting, when he happened upon a man being mauled by a bear, and he rushed in to kill the bear, and "by the time I shot the bear, the guy was already dead." Warrick's all, "You just admitted to the felony killing of a bear. Why didn't you report it?" Aaron claims that his law enforcement experiences have made him disinclined to repeat the experience. Only not in so many words. Also, "there was nothing I could do about it, so I took off." This guy is such a swell specimen. It's only too bad that he's not the one who snagged his leg on the brush.
Once Nicky's back in the Labitrail, he's strolling along with Catherine as she tells him the bear was heavily doped. He sighs and says, "I think I know what's going on here, Catherine."
Cut to some truly appalling footage of a rhino being inexpertly shot -- it's staggering across the screen and bellowing in pain. Catherine watches, horrified. Nicky explains, "They're called canned hunts. Going on all over the country." Catherine watches the rhino attempt to struggle to its feet -- as do we -- as she chokes, "I'm sorry. There's no sport in that. That's just sick." Lady, you have no idea. It's hard to narrow down exactly what the most repellent aspect of canned hunting is -- is it the zoos that sell their surplus animals to hunt brokers without fear of ever getting sanctioned by any accrediting body? Is it that these animals are frequently drugged, hand-raised in cages, or shot while feeding? Is it that hunters -- many of whom are happy to tell you how they're very conservation-minded and respectful of wildlife -- are mostly quiet on whether slaughtering doped, captive animals is a sportsmanlike practice or not? (There are some exceptions, such as The Boone and Crockett Club and the Izaak Walton League.) Or is it that politicians roll over for rich people who want to shoot big game without big skills? Really, there are so many morally culpable parties in addition to the venal thugs who operate these canned hunts and the dickless wonders who participate in them. Lord knows there's enough blame to go around. But if you watched this and were sufficiently aghast, you can always work against canned hunting by helping out the Humane Society of the United States. They're on it.
Believe it or not, that was the short version of my rant. And on screen, Nicky's even more succinct, watching the rhino lurch pitiably before it finally collapses and concluding, "You don't have to go to Africa to hunt big game anymore. If you've got the money, the big game comes to you." Catherine's still horrified: "And they drug the animals?" Nicky replies, "To guarantee a kill, yeah." Catherine concludes, "But in our case, both the hunter and the prey ended up dead." Nicky replies, "Something went wrong." Yeah -- the bear didn't have a chance to take out the animal broker and the canned hunt operator too.
Meanwhile, in the GilCave, the bearded one is working when Sara pops in. Oh, Lord, are these two going to have A Scene every week? But wow, I do like Sara's top. I wonder where she got it. Anyway, Sara comments on how Gil's filling out reports. Gil dryly replies, "They tell me it's my job." Sara takes a seat as Gil asks if she's doing okay. Well, she hasn't run into Catherine during this episode, so that's got to count for something. Sara confirms that she is doing okay, and thanks Gil for his concern before getting back to work-related matters. Her DMV search yielded five Bentleys with red interiors in Clark County. Two are leased, two are privately owned, and one is owned by a boutique car rental agency. And quelle coincidence, the Bentley was rented by Lori's mom, Diane. Since Diane returned it the day after Lori disappeared, Sara's managed to snag the car.
And now she's unleashed Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, on it as a reward for his earlier compassion. Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, is beholding the car and moaning, "If you added up every cent I've ever made in my life, I still wouldn't be able to afford half this car." Sara rains on his parade with, "I don't see why you'd want it. The insurance premiums are sky-high. Not to mention theft, scratches --" "It's art! And I'd have every girl in the neighborhood after me," Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, protests. "Not when they saw your apartment," Sofia adds slyly. Sara's put out by this -- "You saw Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son's apartment." "Well, ever since he set up his web cam…" Sofia replies. Oh, she does not. She actually quips, "Who hasn't?"
Anyway, Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, pops the trunk. Everyone gazes upon the freshly-vacuumed red interior, and then they whip out the super-vacuum. Everyone cleans out the car to a montage. I want an electronica montage every time I have to clean the house. Is that wrong? The point to the montage is so we can see that Sara's found a seedpod similar to the one in the victim's hair. Sofia muses, "Same shape, size, color. Too bad we can't ID this pod and tie it to the tree." Ah, but you can. Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, says, "Plant DNA's no different than human DNA. In fact, a plant genome is larger. I'm on it." The camera cuts to Sara looking...I have no idea how she's supposed to look. Elated that Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, proved Sofia wrong on something? Infatuated with Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son? And if it's the latter...the mind, she boggles. Sofia's thrilled: "If we can prove the pod came from the dump site, you know what that means?" "Lori's mother is a viable suspect," Sara replies.
Grasshopper, Gil's Number Three Adopted Son, returns to his DNA-sequencing days briefly, and at the 47:30 mark, he finds out that verily, the pod did not fall far from the tree. This explains why, mere seconds later, Diane and her lawyer are staring insolently at Brass in an interrogation room. Diane begins by explaining that she needed to rent a car, and Brass comments, "At a grand a day, a Bentley's a little extravagant. I usually rent a Taurus." The attack lawyer, who looks like the dinner theatre analogue to Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were, looks taken aback to be in the same room as someone who's not at least tooling around in a borrowed Lexus. Diane simpers, "It's a fantasy car. Ever since Amy got hers, it's been a fantasy, so I splurged." Brass wonders if the vehicle was ever out of Diane's possession -- nope. Just as we get around to asking whether Diane ever drove the car to Sutor, the attack lawyer remembers she's not just getting paid to sit there and hum, "Memories / light the corners of my mind / misty, watercolored memories / of the way we were…" She asks where they're going with all this, and Sofia explains, "We found a pod on the hood of the vehicle which affirmatively matched the plant material we found in Lori's hair, all of which came from the same tree in Sutor." The attack lawyer goes after the reasoning behind all this ("Your witch science is black magic! When comes the cleansing fire, you will burn!"), but the camera focuses on Diane looking worried, so let's linger on that. Sofia smacks the lawyer down with, "We also collected a number of errant hairs from the vehicle that are also consistent with Mark and Lori and Joey's DNA, but not yours." The lawyer smugly says, "You don't have a DNA sample of my client for comparison purposes." "No, but we have her daughter's," Sofia says, then regains the upper hand in the conversation with, "You're not Lori's biological mom. Are you?" Nope. And Diane claims, "Ever since Lori's father died a few months ago, she's all I had. Look, Mark is devastated and I really should get back to my grandson --" "Before you go, could we get a DNA sample?" Sofia asks. Brass practically swoons over this. The attack lawyer starts in on the "You do not have to do --" but Brass distracts her so his new crush Sofia can cram a swab in Diane's mouth.
After the two women hurry out, Brass and Sofia have a quick confab. They've got nothing to arrest Diane on. Sofia's still on the unexplained evidence placing Lori back at the house prior to her murder. As the two walk out of the room, it becomes incredibly obvious that the producers are running out of ways to hide Louise Lombard's pregnancy -- they're blocking this scene so she's effectively a floating head. Anyway, the possibility that Mark and Diane are in this together is bandied about. From thence, it's but a quick leap to the suggestion that sex was a motive -- "Hello, Mrs. Robinson!!" Brass cracks -- and then we slide into TMI as Sofia speculates that the Bentley may have been an aphrodisiac, since she endured similar erotomania after a college boyfriend got a Harley. And why is it that everyone in this office feels like it's okay to talk about their sex lives? Is it in the employee handbook? "Dress code: business casual. Etiquette code: beyond casual."
Anyway, it turns out that Sofia's experience was universal, and Diane returned the car after having taken more than one kind of ride in it. Incidentally, there's also a tiny piece of burnt skin on the undercarriage.
Meanwhile, back in the plotline that enrages and depresses me, Ronnie the QD guy is coming through again to explain that a) the documents from the alleged animal broker were forged, and b) the forger was not bright enough to know that the copy machine upon which he made his forgeries had the charming practice of embedding all its copies with a serial number less than a millimeter high and visible only in blue light. Therefore, the forger may be traced from the copy machine he used. And wow, that revelation creeped me out -- you can now be tracked via your photocopying activities. There's no such thing as privacy anymore, is there?
We go back to the zoo, where Nebbishy is all, "You think the forgery was made here in the zoo on our photocopier?" Catherine corrects him with, "We know it was." Warrick chimes in with, "Mr. Tracy, tell us about canned hunts." Nebbishy Mr. Tracy replies, "A wild animal is released into a controlled area where a hunter paid a fee to kill it. The promoters guarantee a trophy, so no kill, no pay. They're illegal in Nevada. Is that what happened to my bear?" Warrick's got a look like you would know, jerko. (By the way, Nevada is one of the few states that prohibits canned hunts of mammals; the others are California, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Fortunately for canned hunters, they've got over 1000 other options in the rest of the U.S.) Anyway, we find out that Aaron actually used to work at the zoo, but was let go six months ago. Warrick points out, "The evidence places Aaron at the crime scene." "So you're thinking he forged the broker's document and took Tippy under false pretenses?" Mr. Tracy says. Nope. Warrick says, "We spoke to your distributor. Your copy machine was installed only two months ago. We think you created the false document." To make a long story short, Nebbishy passes up the chance to distract the CSIs by tossing one of them in a nearby lion pen, electing instead to listen as they explain to us that he and Aaron conspired to set up Tippy's terrible death, then watched as Rod biffed the act of shooting a tranquilized bear. When Rod raced over to claim his "trophy," the pissed Tippy dispensed a little karmic justice. Sadly, he died before eviscerating the other two culprits.
Nebbishy Mr. Tracy whines, "You can't prove I was there." Ah, but they can -- since he's the one who fled the scene and gouged himself. Warrick gets the confirming scratch by being all cool with, "I got the judge on speed-dial. You want to save me some time here." Mr. Tracy sure does. Well, the scratch, combined with the fat chunk of money freshly deposited in his bank account, more or less prove that this guy sent the animal he used to hand-feed grapes to its violent death. That's pretty twisted. Catherine tells him, "You're looking at grand larceny, and obtaining property under false pretenses." Warrick says calmly, "That's about 20 years there." He does not add, "And after sexual predators, animal torturers are about the least-liked people in prison." Catherine adds, "I'm recommending to the D.A. that he add another charge -- second degree murder...for the death of the hunter." You can hear the air quotes around "hunter." It's only too bad we didn't hear whether he's going to be charged with anything for engineering the slaughter of a threatened species. Which probably says more about our current legal codes vis-à-vis animals than it does for the writing on this show.
And now we hurtle toward resolution of the A plot. Sara's busy talking to God's Punishment to Women, Brad. Surprise! It turns out that prior to flattering Lori with his sui generis brand of charm, he was boning her stepmother. Sing it with me -- "Lori's mom has got it going on…" From the tender recitation of that encounter ("I banged the cougar"), it's but a quick comment to the real reason Brad's there: his cell phone records show that he was chatting with Diane the night of Lori's murder.
Cut to Diane denying that she knows this man. Sofia says, "You've never seen or spoken to this man," and Diane denies it again. So Sofia casually asks, "Do you remember the men you have sex with?"
Back in the Sara/Brad conversation, Sara's explaining that things look bad for Brad because he called Diane after Lori left the club, and he's already admitted that he followed Lori out of the club…
Sofia says, "It was all a set-up. Brad was going to strike up a conversation with Lori at the club, and on her way home, abduct her, and then one or both of you were going to kill her. But when you got his call, you went to Plan B." Diane and her lawyer attempt derisive laughter here and it does not faze Sofia at all. Diane insists she left the house, drove home, and went to bed. Sofia begs to differ: "You never left. Mark fell asleep in the living room and you waited for Lori to come home." And then she strangled her while Lori was mid diaper-change.
Sofia continues, "Lori's body was too heavy for you to carry, so you called Brad." We switch to Sara telling Brad when he got the call. Brad's all, "Which means I never killed her, like I told you." "Brad, be quiet!" his attack lawyer hisses. She's regretting taking this case in exchange for a night with a himbo. Sara says brightly, "I never said you did. But you did help get rid of the body and that is conspiracy after the fact."
Cut to Diane's attack lawyer, who's stopped humming "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" long enough to point out that Mark surely would have heard his wife being strangled. Sofia says placidly, "The living room's at the other end of the house. He was asleep." "Prove it," Lawyer Lowenstein spits. Sofia says she doesn't need to, since Lori's skin on the Bentley's exhaust pipe, combined with her on-the-record admission that the vehicle was never out of her possession, more or less nails Diane. Much like Brad did. I would imagine the satisfaction level is about the same.
Meanwhile, Sara's tightening the noose around Brad's neck, and when she tells everyone that prints in Lori's Lexus indicate that Brad's the one who set it up to look like abandonment, the attack lawyer caves and asks if there's a deal to be made. Sara wants to know why Diane wanted Lori dead. Brad didn't know; he wasn't getting paid the princely sum of $4000 to get his questions answered, he was getting paid to move bodies. Sara's arched eyebrow speaks volumes about what she thinks of Brad's bargain-basement pricing.
The two women are stalking through the Labitrail when Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, pops up with the motive. While they were doing the heavy lifting, he was calling the family lawyer and finding out that the late Mr. Hoyt, who was worth $50 mil, left the estate to baby Joey -- and named Lori trustee with a $2.5 million stipend. With Diane to step in if something happened to Lori. Sofia peels off before Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three, can suggest a fun-filled evening of candles, wine, and incense in celebration of closing a case.
Instead, he merely asks Sara, "She's fitting in pretty well, huh?" Sara gives him a look like, "Yes. And she's even usurping my place as Gil's cerebral crush. Now if you excuse me, I have to go interrupt them. Awkwardly. It's my new thing." And she stalks off. Poor Grasshopper. All those candles, wine, and incense, and nobody to share them with.
Sofia's popped into Gil's office for a chat. He tells her, "You did a nice job on the case." Instead of saying thanks, Sofia says, "I just wanted you to know that I've enjoyed working with you." Gil turns around to face Sofia and says, "And I've enjoyed working with you as well." Sofia explains, "It's time I made a change. I don't like the direction the lab's headed." Gil is still not getting that this is goodbye. He takes off his glasses and says derisively, "You mean Ecklie? You can't pay attention to him --" "No, you've got a good team, but I was a supervisor. My demotion was undeserved, and every day, I'm reminded of that." Gil gets it now. Then he quirks an eyebrow at Sofia until she asks, "What?" He replies, "Well. Someone once said, 'What we are never changes, but who we are never stops changing.'" Slap that saying on to a picture of a sunset and you could convince Ecklie to replace his poster reading, "Learn to embrace change, and you'll begin to recognize that life is in constant motion, and every change happens for a reason. When you see boundaries as opportunities, the world becomes a limitless place, and your life becomes a journey of change that always finds its way." But why bring Ecklie into such a nice scene?
Sofia smiles at Gil, and he says to her, "Let's have dinner, shall we?" Sofia draws closer and smiles...and the screen goes dark. As does the wine-red rage of thousands of thwarted S.S. Geek Love swabbies, no doubt. At least we'll find out week whether Sofia's well and truly gone, right?