Due to adult content
Viewer discretion is advised.
Hey, don't blame me -- I'm not the one who forgot the comma between the dependent clause and the independent one. It's almost poetry, isn't it? You could go e.e. cummings-style with it:
she said
(or believed she did)
that …
discretion
(does anyone have anyanyanyfreethought now, we all listen to TV)
is
advised.
Or you could just go with a haiku:
You under 18?
Then don't watch, unless your mom
Gives you the okay.
In any event, the warning isn't meant to make you think of poetry. It's supposed to warn you that tonight's episode is all about being able to vote and drink legally, since it has adult content in it. Oh, wait…"adult" is a euphemism for "sexual," isn't it?
Let's get on with it! There aren't nearly enough sex-related murders on this show. The episode starts off with some really atmospheric piano music, if by "atmospheric" you mean "hitting two minor keys at measured intervals to make everything sound creepy," and Gil in a pristine, sleek house. Naturally, he's alone and it's dark. We see his bootie-clad feet carefully shuffle down the hall, and he trains a flashlight on everything as he goes. The victim's house is, of course, spotless. Not that murder victims will be relieved about much, what with meeting a violent, involuntary, and untimely death and all, but maybe knowing that their houses are spotless for the CSIs might be good for some peace of mind in the afterlife. For Type-A murder victims, anyway.
The piano plunks, we see two wine glasses laid out as if the victim was expecting company, and Gil continues on down the hall, carefully noting the footprints in the carpet. He reaches the boudoir, which could double as a rest stop on the annual Danaus plexippus winter migration circuit, notes something red spilled on the carpet, then heads into the bedroom, where there are clothes on the bed and closet opened so we can see that the victim's almost as much of a Container Store fiend as I am. And then we head into a bathroom the size of my guest bedroom, where the victim is doing balasana, a.k.a. child's pose, in the shower. There's a lot of blood on the floor, but we're really supposed to notice the butterfly tattoo on the small of her back, peeking above her thong line. I send up a small prayer that the victim does not behave like notorious butterfly-loving celebs Drew Barrymore or Mariah Carey -- both of whom maybe grasped the whole emerging-from-the-cocoon-of-addiction-into-the-beautiful-wings-of-sobriety metaphor a little too fervently to their pneumatic bosoms --or else we're looking at a plausible justifiable manslaughter here.
Anyway, Gil checks out the thong, the butterfly tattoo, and the woman. She's brunette and youthful. He hunkers down and stares at her for a while until her features begin to look like Sara's. Yeah, that'll help him work on the case.
Gil comes outside and stares at Sara until Brass comes over and asks if Gil's ready, and Gil replies, "For now, nobody enters this house except CSI."
And then The Who kick in, wondering who this hallucinating stranger who doesn't issue punchy taglines before the credits is.
When we get back, Gil is handing out assignments. Warrick gets to go through the cars, since that will give him something to do without actually giving him screen time, thus fulfilling the unwritten Law of Subplot Subbasement on this show. Brass tells Warrick to skip doing the VW, as it belongs to the victim's friend, who apparently called it in. Warrick comments sympathetically, "That's too bad. This'll be a day she'll never forget." Gil then tells Sara to take the perimeter. Naturally, she decides to disagree with him in front of everyone else: "What? You just did a one-hour walk-through. The perimeter can-not be a priority." Gil repeats himself: "I need you to work the outside. Catherine and I will work the inside." Sara heads off without another word. Way to go, Team Player. Catherine tells Gil she'll go talk to the friend. Is this happening before or after she works the inside with Gil, or is there another Catherine Gil was referring to? Whatever it was, Gil directs Catherine to find out where the friend walked and what she touched in the house. Before she does, she gives Brass a heads-up on a guy hanging out across the street with, "He looks like he has something to say."
Brass heads off to talk to the neighbor while Catherine talks to Kelly McNeil, the victim's best friend and discoverer of the body. Kelly explains, "Deb and I were best friends. We were supposed to get together yesterday. It was our day off." Catherine takes in the scrubs and asks if Kelly and Deb are nurses. Yep -- they work at Desert Palm Hospital. Anyway -- Kelly and Deb made lunch plans, but Deb ditched her for Michael, this surgical intern she's been seeing for a month or so. Anyway, Deb was AWOL from work, so Kelly let herself in with the spare key and found the body. Catherine asks if Kelly touched anything, and Kelly replies, "No…I walked in, I saw her, and I ran out." We get the Osmont-cam view of Kelly beating feet, thus explaining the footprints in the hall. Catherine asks, "This…Michael? Is he just a guy, or somebody special?" He was somebody special. Kelly hasn't seen him at the hospital either; she figured both Deb and Michael were playing hooky.
Meanwhile, Sara and her long scarf go ambling around the perimeter. Sara finds a whole lot of nothing interesting.
Brass is talking to the neighbor, who tells him, "Moved in about two months ago. Single girl, alone in the house. Got my attention. I'm running for captain of the neighborhood watch; I'll probably have to self-appoint myself, but I'll put out a flyer about shutting doors, locking windows -- you know, the thing is, you just don't think it's going to happen to you. Know what I'm saying?" Brass is giving him a look that clearly says, "No." He finally says, "Listen, Pike. Stop talking. I've never seen someone so excited about their neighbor getting killed." Pike decides not to shut up at all, saying, "Listen. I know the business of everyone on this block, all right? Who's cheating on his wife, who's behind on the bills, whose kid's gonna become the Manson." Well, that seems to be going a little above and beyond the duties of block captain. Brass asks him to stick a cork in the American Beauty monologue and talk about Debbie Marlin. Pike smirks, "You know what they say about nurses." That there's a critical shortage of them in the U.S.? That they're among a hospital's most overburdened workers? That they're underpaid? No. That "they like to party." This is where I would love for Laverne from Scrubs to bend all the laws of space-time-network physics and come by just long enough to smack Pike on the back of the head. Pike bitterly adds that because he's not a doctor, Debbie wasn't sending any sugar his way: "It's like a frickin' doctor auto mall over there. You know -- hunky surgeons, board certified, lots of dough. If you want my opinion, I think they were dropping quarts." Dropping quarts of what? Blood? Is this like the time I didn't know what "bling-bling" meant? Anyway, Brass has had it with the "Why don't the hot nurses talk to me?" diatribe, and asks if Pike noticed any cars out front. I'm surprised Pike doesn't whip out a logbook; he has to rely on his memory for the "black Mercedes, E320, 2004 model, been there about a month. Rolls in all hours. I'm figuring on-call booty call. That kind of thing. Of course, I'd know more if that brazen hussy hadn't closed all her windows." Or maybe that last sentence is just the subtext running through this whole conversation. Anyway, the last time Pike saw the Mercedes was two days ago around lunch, with a possible afternoon snack, if you get his meaning, and I think you do. Pike needs to develop his own sex life instead of living vicariously through others. Brass walks off, presumably in search of the hottest shower he can find so he can scrub the dirty feeling away. But first, he's on the phone to a peon directing them to find a 2004 black Mercedes registered to Michael Clark, MD.
Sara comes over to the car Warrick's working on and says, "I have absolutely nothing. How are you doing?" Warrick's got a lot -- like a backseat full of perishables. Let's hope it's the cool season in Las Vegas, or that car's going to stink. And condoms could disintegrate too. In any event, after a throwaway comment about how the condoms are no big surprise (what, because she was between the ages of 13 and 73?), the real excitement comes from realizing that Deb was interrupted as she put away her groceries.
Meanwhile, back in the house, Gil has resumed squatting to the body and waiting for the hallucination to arrive. Catherine comes over, checks out the body, and comments, "One thing I can never get over with this job: anything can happen to anybody." "That's why we're here," Gil replies. That's deep, Gil. You just keep thinking -- that's what you're good at. Catherine checks the body again, appears to notice something, then notices Gil's face and wisely decides to swallow whatever it was she was about to say. Instead, she looks around the giant bathroom. I take it back: it's not as big as our guest bedroom. It's as big as our living room, plus our foyer and dining room. Catherine comments, "I bet the bathroom is the reason she bought this place." Or maybe she liked the idea of having really nosy neighbors. Gil looks around and crankily asks, "What am I smelling?" Catherine thinks it's bleach. She goes on to note that the arterial spray was neck-high, so Debbie was standing when she was attacked, and the highest gush of blood was where there was the most volume. We see all this in flashback. Gil notes, "Definite lack of lividity. She must have bled out." Catherine reasons that the killer had to be super-bloody, but there are no footprints or handprints. Gil comments, "She looks like she was placed in this position." Catherine wonders, "What's the message?"
Sara and Warrick have followed the food to the kitchen. They're now checking out Deb's fridge and making much of nonfat milk. Apparently, Deb unloaded and put away her groceries a bag at a time, which seems counterintuitive to me: why not bring them all inside, sort them by location, then go from station to station, so you only have to open and close the fridge, freezer, and pantry once apiece? Or am I a little too Type-A about my groceries? Mr. Sobell thinks so, since I have been known to sort my groceries by food group on the cashier's conveyor belt and give the bag boy (or bag girl) instructions on what should get bagged with what for maximum unpacking efficiency. Anyway, Sara checks out the Carr's water crackers, the no-doubt-rank-by-now Brie, and coupons with no receipt. Warrick and Sara then back-date the likely grocery trip by checking the date on the milk carton (Jan. 23), noting that it's "eight days from now," reasoning that milk is delivered daily and people reach back for the freshest in a ten-day window, so Deb was in Pendale's on the 13th, which was the last date anyone saw her boyfriend's car out front.
Back in the bathroom, Catherine is processing the sinks while Gil sits in the tub and tries to swab out the drain. They test the swabs for the presence of blood, and find it in both the sink and the tub. Catherine sums up, "So there's blood in all four drains, followed by bleach." Gil asks, "He kills Debbie in the shower, so he washes up in both sinks, and in the tub? Why?" "The answer is in the drains," Catherine replies.
Lucky Sara! She's dispatched to go find that answer. She sidles underneath the house, unscrews the U-joint in the pipes, and collects a lot of reddish liquid. The camera then zooms up the same pipe to where Gil is still poking around the drain. Catherine, meanwhile, has switched on the UV and is blanketing the place with luminol. Gil says incredulously, "He cleaned every place but inside the shower?" "We're never going to know where the blood ends and the bleach begins," adds a disgusted Catherine. Gil asks, "Where's all this blood coming from?"
Meanwhile, at Desert Palms Hospital, Kyle Secor is busy telling Brass how Michael's on his surgical rotation, and the intern was scheduled to assist this morning, but he was a no-show. Brass wonders if it's like him, and Kyle Secor assures him, "It's completely out of character. See, half these interns come in, they're so scared, they couldn't carve a turkey. I have to give them scalpels with training wheels. Clark was different. He, uh, he's a real artist. A steady hand. Yeah. He has a gift." Brass asks if Clark was socially gifted outside the OR, and Kyle Secor allows that Michael may have had a way with the nurses, then asks why a cop's nosing around asking questions. You'd think he'd know that from his gig as Timmy Bayliss on Homicide: Life on the Street. Brass delivers the news about Debbie, and adds that Michael Clark is missing: "You don't have to be a brain surgeon to guess what I'm thinking." That this kind of dialogue on its best day doesn't begin to touch Homicide's on its worst, i.e. all of Season Seven. Yeah, I'm still holding a grudge over that. But it's nice to see that Kyle Secor finally figured out something to do with his hair so he doesn't look like a big dork. Anyway, he's conveniently paged away after saying, "I hope that you're wrong about Dr. Clark." Brass watches Kyle Secor go.
Catherine's poking around the cabinets and noting that there aren't any cleaning supplies; she concludes that the killer took everything Debbie had and used it. Catherine, Gil, and Warrick head outside, kick off the CSI booties -- why are they making a big deal about them now, when the CSIs have been galloping in and out of crime scenes with impunity for the last few years? -- and head out to the alley where all the trash cans are to see if the killer threw away any incriminating evidence.
They come up empty on the first few trash cans, and then Gil notices a trash can with a lot of flies buzzing around. Because he's got that PhD in entomology, he can understand what they're saying: "Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzazz!" It's a tonal language; the key's in how you inflect the buzz. So Gil is the only one who notices the flies, which means that his ear operation actually gave him super-hearing, or the writers got a little lazy. Anyway, Gil opens the trash can, waves away the bugs (they tell him to buzz off) and hauls out a Ziploc bag full of…something bloody, as the music swells dramatically.
Catherine begins snapping pictures of the mystery meat while Gil and Warrick make boo-boo-kitty faces. Then Gil says, "There's gotta be more," on the closed-captioning while Gil on the screen looks kind of wild-eyed, and then Gil wanders on down to see exactly how many more of these surprise packages are in other trash cans.
Answer: a lot. It's now full daylight, and the CSIs are finding that Ziploc seals in more than freshness. In fact, Warrick reports, "I think I found the victim's internal organs." Catherine gives him a hand -- someone else's -- and he concludes, "This guy meant business." Really? Because all of us civilian types were under the impression that dismemberment and Ziplocking were purely avocational pastimes. Catherine holds up another package -- as it were -- and calls out, "I think I can confirm the victim's male." It figures Catherine would be the one to fish out the tackle. Warrick looks over, horrified. Gil, meanwhile, has sworn off meat to examine a vacuum cleaner bag. Catherine continues fishing out bags of people parts as Warrick reports that they have the victim's clothes, neatly folded. And then he finds the guy's face, and then, only then, does he come to the conclusion that maybe Brass has been wasting his time looking for Clark elsewhere. Just then, Gil pulls out a particularly pink and chunky bag and sighs in disgust.
Meanwhile, back in the lab, Sara's filtering away. Well, she is the vegetarian who's totally off meat, so maybe Gil sent her there before she developed another work-related dietary condition. Wait, that makes no sense -- it's not like she's a cannibal and Gil's all, "If she fishes this guy's kneecaps out of the recycling bin, she's off animal-based protein forever!" So I have no good explanation for why Sara's missing all the fun. She's picking crap out of the filter and examining it when Liam comes over and says, "I heard about the shower. A nurse, huh?" Oh, not again. Sara sighs, "Multiple hairs, multiple donors." Liam leers, "Looks like she had a few 'friends' over." Where is he getting his impression of nurses -- the local adult video store? Someone needs to tell him that Naughty Nighttime Nurses isn't a documentary. Sara nearly does after Liam continues, "A little Nurses Gone Wild." It's too bad she stops short of pulling his lower lip over his head and snarling, "Let's see you ask a nurse to go wild fixing that."
Anyway, the two of them switch to all-business when Liam notices that the hairs are all blanched thanks to the bleach, and Sara adds that any DNA left has probably been denatured. We zoom in, courtesy of the TMIcam, to see the bleach sundering all the little phosphodiester bonds between the A/T and C/G base pairs. Back on the human scale, Sara checks the segment of pipe she took back to the lab, and happens to find a single hair with a skin tag. O! Happy day!
Down in the morgue, Emergency Backup David is busy shuffling the Ziploc bags around like he's assembling the world's wettest jigsaw puzzle. David the Sanguine Coroner is coolly noting, "[Deb] was exsanguinated. Time of death is anybody's guess." We find out Deb had a deep incised wound of the anterior and lateral neck, transecting both carotids and the anterior trachea, with a cut likely made by a scalpel. Then he loses interest and heads on over to Michael's body, saying, "Dismembering an adult male with this precision, without cutting through the bone -- 12 hours, minimum." Catherine comments, "Half a day -- that's patience." Or a serial killer's uncanny time-management skills at work. But I don't think we'll be seeing another multitasking murderer in this episode -- it's not sweeps yet. Anyway, David decrees, "There's a perverse elegance to this butchery." Catherine breathes, "I'm not so sure I see it that way: a killer with knowledge of anatomy, whose tool is a scalpel. I think the butcher was a doctor." She orders Emergency Backup David to do a ten-card for Jacqui to confirm Michael's ID.
Back in the apartment, Gil is playing with some glass butterfly statue and looking all Jamie Gumb with the butterflies and moths and what-have-you, before picking up a framed photo of Deb partying hearty like nurses apparently do. He shakes his head, studies the picture some more, then has himself an Osmont-cam moment where Deb's sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to him; he can see her reflection in the mirror. She turns around to look at him, and then there's a flash and it's an out-of-focus Sara staring at Gil in the mirror; he's trying not to look at her. Gil does some more staring at who-knows-what until his cell phone rings and snaps him out of it. Sara says, "Hey!" and Gil replies, "Sara. Um. Hey, listen, I'm in a bad area right now because I'm hallucinating something fierce and you're all over my subconscious. Can you call me back later?" Or something like that. Sara shares the skin tag news, and he's all, "Lob it at Liam, okay? Look, I gotta go -- the you I'm hallucinating is giving me the mother of all dirty looks. Don't mess with my head by showing up in person."
Sara deals with this apparent rejection by returning to the familiar -- i.e., taking the chance to destroy a car. It's Michael's car; Warrick informs us that it was found in the long-term parking at McCarran Airport. I'm not exactly spoiling you for the remaining 30 minutes of the episode when I tell you that we never find out exactly how it got there in any way that makes any sense whatsoever. Just…go with the car's discovery, okay? In any event, they don't destroy the car, but fog it instead so they can get prints, and discover that the driver wiped everything but the passenger seat clean, and whatever he put on the seat to prevent those all-incriminating Thigh Prints from getting laid down, he took with him. The "whatever" turns out to be a black plastic bag, handily rippable for adjusting the seat. Warrick and Sara realize the doctor was a relatively petite 5'9", and the seat's pushed back a little far even for the 6'2" Warrick, so they're looking for a really tall killer. Hey, remember that scene where Doctor Kyle Secor towered over Brass? I'm just saying.
Anyway, Brass isn't around to provide that kind of information, so the CSIs all hang out in a conference room and set down the timeline for the killings -- it's pretty much this show's version of the Tru Calling "in the last 30 minutes, here's what happened" dealie. And we finally find out that Nicky has not in fact been with us all the while, virtually undetectable to the human eye since he's whittled himself down to near-nothing, but is actually off on a business trip somewhere, a factoid Sara recites with no small amount of resentment. Gil is dialing it in -- no, really. He is. He's apparently still in the house, all the better to retrace Deb's steps and imagine them Osmont-camera style while Catherine, Warrick, and Sara sum up Deb's final hours: she went grocery shopping, prepped the house for a big date by lighting a billion candles everywhere (and finally, the formless mass from the pre-credits walkthrough is explained: it's a melted candle), and because the door was open, there was no forced entry.
The CSIs in the Labitrail leave Gil to continue imagining that he's hanging with Dead Deb so they can talk to Liam, who tells them that the hair Sara found matches "the bags of flesh" everyone dug out of the trash, and Jackie just confirmed that the prints belong to the late Dr. Michael Clark. Gil looks irritated by this turn of events; Catherine asks, "So all our efforts have been toward identifying another victim?" Gil's voice comes out of the speakerphone: "Michael Clark." I suppose it's worth noting that Sara's face is reflected in the table as he says this. Then the camera switches to Gil standing in the house, asking, "But can we place him dead at the house?" He looks around the preposterously tidy bedroom as he asks this. Liam tells Gil they found Clark's arm or leg hairs in the tub drain. "The abattoir of choice for dismemberments," Gil quips. That seems a little hasty: how do we know Michael wasn't seriously addicted to Lush bath bombs, or that he and Deb didn't bathe a deux? Anyway, somehow this all turns into Catherine deciding, "Michael Clark was dead in the tub: we just don't know how he got there." Gil says he tested the carpet leading to the bathroom and it's negative for blood, leading Sara to conclude that all the violence took place in the bathroom. Catherine counters, "The bathroom is big, but it's not big enough to kill two at the same time." Gil wanders in to have a little Osmont-cam moment where he sees Deb lighting candles in the bathroom. It's also worth noting that all his imaginings of her show only a brunette doing all this, the better to stoke our suspicions that he's imagining Sara as the victim here.
Gil stares at where Deb/Sara would be and drones, "She lights the candles in the shower. Her back is to the door. He grabs her from behind and slits her throat. Then he positions her body so her face is the first thing the boyfriend sees." As Gil recites this, we see him positioning the body, and although I can't be sure, it looks an awful lot like Sara as the woman he's positioning in the shower stall. Creepy! The camera then flashes to the boyfriend walking in and seeing the body.
Catherine asks, "He spends seconds killing Debbie. Why does he take so much time cutting up Michael Clark?" Gil replies, "Most likely because Michael Clark was the real focus of his rage." And then just in case we don't get it, we see Gil looking down at the body in the shower one more time, looking at a face we can't see.
Gil's still in the house alone, working on the hall carpet to see if he can find anything. After some time has elapsed, we see Catherine walk in. She looks down and asks, "Don't tell me you never went home." Gil looks up and replies, "Okay." Heh. Then he adds that he just got started in the hall, and there are other rooms that have yet to be done. Catherine chides, "You know you lose your edge after 16 hours. You're into your third shift. I mean, I'm all for overtime, but this is just plain greedy." Gil admits, "My knees can't take this anymore." Catherine asks, "Have you eaten anything?" "What'd you bring?" Gil asks hopefully. Catherine shrugs, "I'll see what's in the fridge." Gil calls after her, "We have to replace that, you know!" I'm honestly not sure which part of that exchange I'm more delighted by: the matter-of-fact way the CSIs go rooting around the fridges of their victims, or the implication that, apparently, gwarfing the food of the deceased is common enough that Gil (or someone else) had to make the "if you eat it, replace it" rule.
Back at the Labitrail, Warrick is going through the vacuum cleaner bag, picking out knots of hair and other objets d'trash. He coughs, and Sara comes in chuckling, "Hey, black lung!" Because it's all fun and games until your bronchioles go necrotic. Warrick says dolefully, "I've been sifting through this trash for about six hours. You coming to rescue me, or make fun of me?" Make fun of him, really, although Sara calls it "just looking." We see that Warrick's sorted out what he finds into assorted petri dishes; Sara wants to know what the white fibers are. Warrick figures they're from the spare bedroom, but Sara points out that the spare bedroom wasn't on the killer's entrance or exit plan, so why would he have vacuumed in there? Warrick doesn't know, but the white fibers are near the top of the bag, so they're among the last things he vacuumed. Warrick did find a butterfly pendant ground into the white fibers; it appears to have snapped off something. Sara concludes that the killer was in the spare bedroom.
Back at the house, Gil is sitting at the patio table in the yard, finishing off a container of yogurt and sucking down a soda. There's an open jar of peanut butter in front of him. Catherine plops down across from him and says, "Now that we fed you, we should probably talk about a shower." Gil gives her a look, and Catherine dryly clarifies, "I mean, at your place." Gil puts her off with, "As soon as we find some evidence, I promise." Catherine counters that Gil will be in better shape to find said evidence with fresh eyes. Gil's not happy about that. He puts down the empty yogurt cup, sighs, and asks, "Just talk it through with me, would you? What do we know?"
Catherine thinks for a moment before replying, "The bathroom is where things got started. Candles, oils, steam shower. Cleaned up, oiled up --" Cut to Gil sucking on his finger as he eats peanut butter, an image that has put me off peanut butter on my whole-wheat waffles for a week now. "Sexed up," Catherine finishes. "Let's go back to the bedroom," Gil proposes.
And because this is the episode where humor's throat was brutally slashed too, the producers biff the wonderful opportunity to break out some salacious-sounding Casio chords while Gil and Catherine don the UV goggles and go through the room again. Instead, we just get mournful minimalist music. There's nothing on the top sheet, and nothing on the fitted sheet. Catherine comments, "She changed her sheets for her date. I would." Yeah, well, we know you'd do a lot of things for a date. Gil's poking around the mattress, and he finds a scarf tied to one of the handles included on the side. He calls, "Hey, Cath? Got silk?" Hee! It's nice to see he hasn't completely regressed into the humorless automaton he was last season. Also, how much do I love that he calls Catherine by a nickname? I love the platonic friendship these two have. Note how I'm emphasizing the platonic friendship aspect of their platonic friendship. I just think it's cool to see two people of the opposite sex working together without the tiresome contrived sexual tension or "we're bickering, so that must mean we're sublimating our hot carnal passion for one another!" nonsense that runs rampant through other co-ed workplaces on television. Anyway, Catherine also finds a long red scarf, and we instantly flash to Deb all tied up and groaning in ecstasy. Note how Gil can't even imagine Sara in this capacity. Catherine says, "I don't mean to embarrass you, but some guys need leverage." She pulls back the bedclothes so we can get a look at the foot board. Gil seems genuinely surprised by Catherine's observation: "They do?" Catherine tells him that not every species mates in a way that ends with the female decapitating the male, and goes to dust for prints. Or something to that effect.
Warrick calls right then, and tells Gil he found a broken butterfly pendant in the guest bedroom. Gil ambles on back to check out that room; according to the closed-captioning, he says, "I haven't checked the spare bedroom," but on screen, we see Gil walking away and saying, "Let me check again and I'll get back to you." Gil enters the room, done in Early Butterfly Overkill, checks out the photos of Deb with Michael, then opens a jewelry box painted with butterflies to find a boatload of butterfly bracelets, one of which bears the tag, "Love, Dr. T." Anyone else who's flashing back to the Robert Altman movie, you may join me in the corner so we can rock back and forth together. Gil also finds a sole jeweled butterfly matching the link Warrick found in the vacuum bag.
Meanwhile, Catherine's found a toe print. She comes into the spare bedroom and tells Gil she'll have Sara compare it against both victims. Gil shares his discovery. Catherine comments, "Butterfly, huh?" "She had a collection," Gil says with exaggerated guilelessness. "From her…gentlemen callers?" Catherine wonders. Gil theorizes that maybe the killer was talking his gift back, adding, "Maybe he finally ran out of patience and got sloppy." Sloppy enough to leave a length of transparent filament, even. Gil holds it in his tweezers and says happily, "And this is why I didn't leave."
Back at the Labitrail, Sara's printing Deb's well-pedicured toes. She eventually scoots up and checks out Deb's face, and seems a little wigged out by what she sees there. Then she stops by the locker room, where Catherine appears to be changing into civilian footwear, and asks after Gil; Catherine tells her he's still at the crime scene. Sara tells her the toe print belongs to neither Deb nor Michael, and Catherine replies, "Well, we know she was fishing off the company pier." Ooh -- the only thing more awkward than Sara and Gil talking about their non-relationship is Catherine obliquely commenting on it. Oh, wait. Things just got more awkward: while Sara was standing there trying to figure out if Catherine meant anything by the company pier comment, Catherine brings up how Debbie looks like Sara. Sara lies that she didn't check out Debbie's face, asks Catherine to tell Gil about the toe deal, and sprints off. Catherine watches her go with a "Was it something I said?" look. I can answer that one: Yes.
Cut to Catherine and Brass in a room at Desert Palms, footprinting the surgical staff. One guy cracks, "There's probably a little bit of all of us in Debbie's house." Because she liked to fish off the company pier, you see. And she was a nurse, so she liked to party. And because coming out and calling Debbie a whore who got what she deserved when she planned to have sex outside the confines of a religiously recognized marriage is a little too direct. Anyway, Jacqui's there, doing print ID on the fly. Because it's perfectly okay to demonstrate a double standard when it comes to passing judgment on sexual behavior, Dr. Kyle Secor looms over Brass and tells him, "Police aren't the only ones with a code of honor. Some of these men are married, and if this gets out…" What is this, the Hippocratic Oath of Philanderers? Brass assures him that if word gets out at all, well…you know what they say about surgeons: they like to party. Oh, he does not either. Anyway, Jacqui pegs a Dr. Tripton as the match on the toe-print. Brass tells Dr. T, "I'm afraid your patient in pre-op is going to have to wait a little longer." I want to see Brass waltz on in and tell the patient that too.
Dr. T is now in an interrogation room, spinning a tale of how he gave Debbie a ride home, she offered him a cup of coffee, he just happened to take his shoes off because she didn't like shoes in the house because of some "Feng Shui thing" -- and here Catherine interrupts him to ask, "So you Feng Shui'd your way to the bed?" Dr. T claims, "She was provocative. You take your coat off, she has her clothes off. And rather than make my coworker feel awkward the day by declining her proposition, I did the polite thing and slept with her." Or maybe he just stopped after the whole "it was that brazen siren!" defense, since we all know that a woman who loves sex is amoral in its pursuit and totally to blame if a married man forsakes his vows and takes her up on her offer. So then we flash back to a nearly naked Debbie (she's covered in butterfly tattoos and a gauzy sheer shirt with wing-like sleeves) writhing atop the poor, traduced doctor as she holds on to the silk ties. So this must be the adult content the warning was all about.
Back in the present, Catherine snaps, "Let's talk about what's not open to interpretation: yours were the only prints not found in the house." Brass adds, "Michael was on your rotation. He was on your surgical team the day he was killed. You called in sick, surgery was cancelled, freed him up to be with Debbie -- who also had the day off. What luck!" Dr. T claims to have taken the day off to attend a few of his children's events, so they would stop waking up his wife and whispering dramatically, "Mother, there's a strange man in your bed, and we don't like him as much as the other one!" Or something to that effect. Then there's a little bit where we find out that he gave Debbie a bracelet, because "I figured if I gave something special to her, she'd give something special to me." Like the gift of not giving his wife grounds for divorce? How can he possibly make the "slut came on to me!" argument if he's dropping gifts on her first? Dr. T disgusts me, especially after Brass concludes, "So it was a long-term relationship."
Hey! As it turns out, that wasn't a thin filament Gil lifted from the bedroom, but a gray hair, with an oily film on it. Liam tells him, "Propylene glycol -- active ingredient in Rogaine, for male pattern baldness. Personally, I don't use the stuff, but my paternal grandfather, Papa Olaf, he was Bruce Willis at age 16. Lucky for me, baldness comes from the mother's side, so I'm safe --" Gil interrupts him, not to ask if Liam meant that propylene glycol was the predominant ingredient in Rogaine as opposed to the active one (which is the vasodilator minoxidil), but to snap, "Please! I'm very tired." Liam switches gears, hypothesizing that the killer is either going bald or trying not to, and may also be using Propecia (active ingredient: the testosterone-converting enzyme finasteride): "I ran the hair through mass spec and got four peaks: ethyl alcohol, propylene glycol, minoxidil and finasteride." Liam rattles on, "But wait -- there's more, and it's a family secret. Sexual. Happens to less than two percent of users. Papa Olaf was one of the guys who needed hydraulics." Gil looks uncomfortable knowing this about Liam's forefathers, then stalks off in disgust.
He runs into Catherine, who comments, "The prodigal CSI returns. Get any sleep?" Not yet, says Gil. Catherine fills him in: Dr. T has been released into the wild following his sex alibi. Gil asks, "You got a take on him?" Catherine replies, "Balloon head, but credible, like most adulterers." Gil asks about baldness and gray hair, and Catherine answers in the negative to both, as Dr. T only had a receding hairline. He was, however, left-handed.
Gil then hops down to the morgue to see if all those assorted Clark parts can reveal some clue as to his killer's handedness. Gil urges, "Forget science: what's your hypothesis?" That right there is a sign that Gil is punchy from lack of sleep. David hypothesizes away: Michael was laying face-up when he was killed and butchered, and the cuts favor someone who was left-handed. He adds, "That's not going to hold up in court." Gil doesn't care: "My mind's on a left-handed, Propecia-using surgeon who's probably on staff at Desert Palm." Yeah, I can't wait to see how that sentiment gets spun in court.
In the shot, a spiky-haired, UV-goggles-wearing Liam is beaming red light down on the heads of the seated and peeved surgeons. When he gets to Dr. Kyle, the light bounces off in a "Got Glycol?" kind of way.
And now a tired and sullen-looking Gil is busy glaring across the interrogation room table at Dr. Kyle, who's saying somewhat pissily, "There was no need for the light show. All you had to do was ask." Brass says, "Good! Since we're being completely honest: Are you losing your hair?" Dr. Kyle says coolly, "I'm a 48-year-old man. I'm not unique." Gil replies, "Your hair is, though. We found it at the crime scene. Minoxidil absorbs infrared light." Dr. Kyle takes a sip of his coffee and says, "I take Rogaine and Propecia. Again, not unique." Brass tells him that they think Deb and Michael were killed by a left-handed, Propecia-using surgeon, and Dr. Kyle points out that it could be any one of a number of people. Dr. Kyle's attack lawyer also slings some attitude in Gil's grizzled direction with, "If you're quite through wasting time, I think the doctor would like to get back to the business of saving lives." Gil and Kyle glare at each other for a while. Gil has no idea what he's up against; Kyle used to get glared at by Andre Braugher, whose glare qualifies as a nuclear-grade assault. Such glowering as Gil does is pretty mild by comparison. Brass whips out the link to the butterfly bracelet, and Kyle puts on his glasses to verify what it is, and asks what became of the rest of it. Brass skips answering that in favor of noting, "Funny thing is, the bracelets from all the other guys she slept with are still intact." Kyle replies, "All I can tell you is, when I gave it to her, it was in one piece." He then smiles. Gil sulks in response. There's a little bit about how there's no more evidence, but there is a theory. The lawyer points out it's not admissible in court, and Kyle says, "No, no, no, no. It's worth a listen." Brass tells him, "We think you killed Debbie Marlin because she rejected you, and Michael Clark paid the price." Kyle kind of snorts at that, and the lawyer snottily thanks him for his time and his theories, but they really don't have a case. By this point, Gil's face is so puffy with scorn, he looks like he's having an allergic reaction to Kyle.
As Kyle is strolling out the door, Gil slings a monologue in his general direction: "It's sad, isn't it, Doc? Guys like us, a couple of middle-aged men who've allowed their work to consume their lives. The only time we ever touch other people is when we're wearing our latex gloves. We wake up one day and realize that for 50 years, we really haven't lived at all. But then, all of a sudden, we get a second chance. Somebody young and beautiful shows up, somebody we could care about. She offers us a new life with her, but we have a big decision to make, right? Because we have to risk everything we've worked for in order to have her. I couldn't do it, but you did. You risked it all, and she showed you a wonderful life, didn't she? But then she took it away and gave it to somebody else and you were lost. So you took her life. You killed them both, and now you have nothing."
Dr. Kyle begs to differ. He stops looking stricken long enough to say hoarsely, "I'm still here." "Are you?" Gil counters. Dr. Kyle takes off, leaving Gil to sit in the room and slump in the chair while the ghostly visage of Sara Sidle stares down at him from behind the two-way glass and thinks, "Well, there went that storyline. I'm joining Warrick in the subplot subbasement, aren't I?"
Or maybe she looks upset because this is the end of her "relationship" with Gil. Say what you want about Sara catching this monologue and realizing that Gil was carrying a torch for her too; the whole point to his speechifying was to point out that he was unwilling and unable to risk his career or alter his life for someone he was sweet on, and this seemed a lot like closing the door on the possibility of these two ever getting together. I'm calling it: on January 15, 2004, the S.S. Geek Love hit the iceberg of plot resolution and sank. If Sara was on a little piece of board, floating around the wreckage of the S.S. Geek Love and hanging on to Gil as he bobbed about in the water, he'd be the one yanking his wrists out of her hands, saying, "Feel free to date other people," before sinking into the briny depths of workaholism.
And as far as monologues in the presence of the perps go, this was pretty out of character for Gil, being all me-me-me instead of focusing on the case, the evidence and the victim; he's always been the one who got characterized through the way he chose to approach the perp instead of ramming the perp on to his personal template. Maybe he was tired, maybe he let the case get to him a little too personally -- something I seem to recall him reeling in other people on, so why didn't someone like Catherine twig to it now, since she does know him? Whatever it was, we basically watched fifty-odd minutes of Gil working a case, only to ditch any actual work in favor of some self-identifying psychobabble at the last minute.
Plus: it really wasn't a very good monologue, if the goal was to try and cajole Dr. Kyle into confession. Let me just give you a sample of the kind of monologue that used to be dropped around Dr. Kyle in a past life:
You want to trust me. I know that. But you're holding back that little bit. Tell me what happened. I'm not going to write it down or anything. I'm going to sit right here. You see no...I have no pen in my hand. Nothing up my sleeve. Please, don't look at me as a cop. Look at me as a friend. Look at me as a friend. 'Cause that's how I'm looking at you. As a friend. Not as somebody that committed murder. Not as a really vicious person. Because you're not. I think a lot of you. You told me about your drinking and about being an araber and everything else. I got problems too. Hell, we all got problems. Tell me what happened. I'll believe anything that you say.
Now, granted, every episode on TV can't be the Emmy-winning "Three Men and Adena," but that monologue demonstrates how intensely personal the cop delivering it is willing to get to solve his murder, and how he never forgets that his job is to get a confession. Gil's monologue? Lonely, in a sort of Spoon River Anthology kind of way. But nowhere in there is the drive to nail the perp; it's self-indulgent you-are-me rhetoric, and ultimately meaningless in the context of Gil's job -- or in the context of his character's past motives and methods. Sure, this is the stuff Emmy clips are made of, but I think the ending of this episode ultimately betrayed Gil as a character, and did few of the others any favors either.
And now, I'm taking off the cranky pants for two weeks. See y'all during sweeps.