I suppose I should be all a-twitter over the rain damping the Vegas night sky, but honestly, the minute before this aired, CBS showed a promo where that Cold Case chick appeared not sporting a coif by Cuisinart, and that's more or less blown my shock circuits for the night. So it's raining. Big, gusty, sweeps-worthy torrents of rain. We see a plague of rats go scurrying out of the drain, squeaking loudly in indignation, and then we see a pair of men's legs following closely behind. Excellent! We're going to see the Pied Piper's murder.
The guy runs in slow motion, and through flashes of lightning, we see that he's dressed none-too-nattily. He's also just a little too slow: as he exits a drain pipe into an open culvert, a gush of water takes him out. He struggles to his feet, and the camera switches angles back to the drain so we can all be appreciative of the awesome power of water, ya-da, ya-da. We then see one of those head-mounted flashlights Miss Alli mentioned in the Amazing Race recaps. It's bobbing around the water, which is probably not good news for its erstwhile wearer.
As it turns out, the wearer currently has his face smooshed against a grate in the drainpipe, so my prognostication was correct. Four years of watching this show has paid off.
Then Gil's there, taking pictures of the guy. By this point, the water and the grate have done a number on his face; think of the texture of ground beef, and you're about there. Catherine wades on over and trains her flashlight on the body before asking who found Hamburger Larry here, and Gil tells her the police did, when they were sweeping the area looking for vagrants practicing either their water-treading or breath-holding skills. Gil helpfully points out all the special features that have given Hamburger Larry his nickname -- beefy texture, toes worn away to bloody stubs -- and concludes with some pique, "He lost all his points!" Mr. Sobell wonders from the depths of the couch if that makes him a ten-point underdog. Catherine comments that Hamburger Larry's been treated "like a rock in a tumbler."
And then Emergency Backup David floats on over with, "I'm sorry I'm late. I stopped to get my waders." Awww. Also, I like to imagine David the Supervisory Coroner giving an evil little cackle before saying, "Of course, you'll be the one who's hip-deep in runoff in the sewage drain. Enjoy!" Emergency Backup David rifles through the body's pockets: there's no wallet, but there is a little vial filled with a milky white substance. Gil then calls everyone's attention to something that may be slightly more relevant to the immediate investigation: the giant wooden spike sticking out of the corpse's neck. The brain trust immediately wonders if that could maybe been a factor in the guy's death.
Just then, Warrick comes over. Tragically, the powers that be declined to exploit this opportunity, so he's not wading over clad only in a Speedo. He provides a little backstory: he's apparently talked to every resident in the area, but they've all failed to recognize Hamburger Larry. Gil says smartly, "At least we know where he came from." He flashes his light dramatically so we can see the miles of tunnel that are (presumably) about to be searched. Catherine gives Gil a despairing look and asks, "Aren't we at least going to draw straws?" Gil's all, "Nope. It's good to be the supervisor!"
Catherine and Warrick go trudging through the miles of pipes. Watch out for the Morlocks! It's all very atmospherically spooky and claustrophobic with the dripping water in the enclosed, graffiti-riddled pipes, and the flashlights moving around. Warrick shines his light up at a grate and comments, "We must be under the freeway by now." Wow, those are some powerful deductive instincts he has. Or just Gil-in-Season-Three hearing, as it would be impossible to miss the thundering 18-wheeler that passed over their heads. Catherine is not impressed, and telegraphs this by asking, "Did I ever tell you the city paid me a dollar a square foot to rip out my lawn and replace it with rocks because we're in a drought?" Warrick's all, "No, because how often do we talk landscaping?" Oh, he is not. Nor does he ask, "And the DESERT CITY of Las Vegas is freaking out about a lack of water because…?" Nor does he say, "It's so cute how, after four years of episodes where rain washes away evidence, provides us with excuses to wear pea coats, and generally misleads first-time viewers into thinking the show's set in Spokane, TPTB think mentioning a drought is enough to convince folks we know the show's set in a desert." Instead, Warrick provides the first real howler of the night by saying, "This city was not made for rain." Well, it's a good thing it only rains every fourth episode, then.
The two CSIs continue to wander around the pipes. Somewhere over the course of their travels, it stops raining, so they're only hip-deep in runoff, as opposed to being hip-deep in runoff and drenched from above. Warrick stumbles upon an alcove that's clearly been set up as a vagrant's home; a desultory sweep of the flashlight reveals the vagrant on the watery floor, lying with arms akimbo. Warrick calls for Catherine, who takes in the scene and promptly radios Gil to let him know they've got another body.
This is news to the body. He starts. Catherine and Warrick start in response. The music gets all loud and scary, just in case you didn't start in sympathy to the all the starting on screen. The guy says peevishly (and quite possibly drunkenly), "Back off, Unabombers! I'm taking a nap." Well, he doesn't resort to name-calling, but really, who wouldn't want to when two people dressed like the Unabomber -- or like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable -- are busy rousing you with a well-placed Maglite to the eye?
And then I start, because we go into the credits without Gil's attempt at a clever bumper line. What show is this? And why isn't it using "Reign O'er Me"?
We get back from the commercials, and the vagrant's complaining that all he wants to do is sleep. Warrick's not unsympathetic, but he's got to drill the guy on whether or not he knows Hamburger Larry. Unsurprisingly, the vagrant's got better things to do than make friends with every beef-faced body that floats his way. Warrick's incredulous, and the bum graciously explains, "Someone comes down here who don't belong, I mean, bad stuff can happen, okay? I just want to go home, okay? And you can't make me leave my house." Warrick assures him nobody's going to make him do anything, then asks if he'd like some coffee. The bum's all, "As long as it's decaf, one sugar, two cream -- no skim. And hot. You know, lawsuit hot?" Warrick's all, "Go bother that nameless uniform off-screen."
Then he strips down to his wife-beater so he can be Catherine's clothing twin, and they continue to wander the watery maze. Catherine finds an aquasock -- prompting Mr. Sobell and I to break into song with, "Swimming through the sewer/ face in a grate with dumb intent…" since there is never a bad time for a Jethro Tull joke -- and its mate in short order. "Kind of upscale for a tunnel rat. So the vic was barefoot, full of murder weapons. Bum kills him and takes his body, or finds the body and takes the socks? What was the guy doing in here in the first place?" Warrick theorizes that perhaps Hamburger Larry had a yen to go picking on homeless guys, and it backfired on him in what the tunnel rats would call Exhibit A in the investigation "Karma: actual phenomenon or merely a species of chameleon?" Catherine reasons, "The way the body was ground down meant the water took him on a pretty long ride." Warrick gives a tight smile before pointing out that they're already wet, so they might as well continue slogging through the rainwater.
Aboveground, it's sunny and dry again. An old man is sitting on a bench, conducting a civil debate with himself as he reads the racing column. Catherine yells up from the vicinity of his shoe soles. He looks down through the grate and asks, "What's your problem, sweetie?" Catherine shouts up that there's no problem; she just wants to know what street she's on. It turns out she's on Industrial, just south of Tropicana. Catherine thanks him, and he snaps that he's not holding the bus. Oh, ha, ha.
It turns out they've only slogged a mile or so from their starting point. Warrick gloomily points out, "There's 300 miles of storm drains in the county, so we only have 299 to go." I'd rag on him for being an aggravating factor in the workplace, but he's wearing a wifebeater and looking fine, so he gets a pass this time. Just as the two of them are dickering about which way to go, Warrick happens to discover some sunscreen on a lanyard. This prompts them to keep going upstream.
Meanwhile, back in the lab, Gil and David the Dry Coroner are beginning to autopsy Hamburger Larry. David makes a long incision in the torso, and Liam the Lab Tech looks away for a moment. Gil watches him intently. He might actually be smiling, but the beard obscures it. Then Liam turns back to the body, just as David peels back a big flap of skin. There's a steady drip, and David tells Gil, "I'm going to need the drain pan," as he rolls the skin back. Liam watches the drip pan handoff; it's clear he's expecting the body to begin gushing great gouts of blood. However, David's merely using it to catch a leak, commenting, "This town isn't built for rain." Gil is watching Liam, who is just staring absorbedly. The autopsy commences, blood flying everywhere as David saws through assorted body parts. Liam cringes at the noise, but is otherwise cool. Gil keeps watching Liam. Gil seems like he'd be the most unnerving supervisor to work for ever. David continues his enthusiastic digging, lifting out assorted bones and whatnot, then gesturing Liam to come closer. After snipping some tube or other (I don't really care which one), David decrees, "In the end, that's all we really are." Liam surveys Hamburger Larry and looks distinctly unimpressed. Gil's all, "If you're going to be sick, be sure to do it in the general direction of this video camera, so I can mock you in staff meetings by replaying the tape over and over." Actually, Gil tells Liam to take his barfing to the sink. Liam doesn't look up from the body as he says dully, "I don't feel sick." David slices open the throat, and Gil instructs, "Take a look at the trachea. What do you see?" Liam sees foam -- "like the head of a beer." Gil gives him a look, and Liam apologizes for not immediately coming up with some sort of abstract and condescending metaphor a la Grissom. Gil's all, "No -- it's a good analogy." David explains that it's pulmonary edema -- fluids in the air passages -- and then he and Gil school Liam on how this is usually a sign someone drowned, provided they can rule out heart failure and drug overdose.
Warrick and Catherine emerge, blinking, from a drainage tunnel into daylight. The two speculate as to how much overtime they've got to be earning on this cross-city jaunt, and as they exit the tunnel, Catherine heads into some conveniently-located driftwood and finds a helmet. Inside is a casino employee ID -- Hamburger Larry is actually Calvin Berkowitz, lifeguard at the Tangiers. Wow, people who work at the Tangiers have a funny habit of showing up dead. ["And how." -- Sars] Catherine asks, "So what's Calvin doing down here?" Warrick hauls out an inner tube, and Catherine exclaims, "Oh! So he's a moron." Oh, she does not. But she might as well. Warrick explains that young Calvin went surfing Vegas-style -- he went out in the rain, jumped off the edge of the culvert into the rushing water mid-rain storm, and hit his head on something. Catherine wraps up this story at the unprecedented 15-minute mark by concluding, "This isn't about drugs or beating up homeless dudes. It's just plain stupidity." Well, that's true, but I'm still a little bummed we never get to find out what was in that vial they found on Calvin. Warrick's all, "Well, that's what happens when you don't have a decent beach in Vegas." Actually, what happens is you move, since only an exceptional idiot would move inland and be all, "What? I'm several hundred miles from any ocean? How can I possibly parlay this into a suicidal act?"
The two finally make it out into fresh air, and Catherine realizes this is right where she found Lindsey. "Who?" Warrick asks. "I don't know. I'm just reading what it says on that big cue card over there," Catherine replies. "Really?" Warrick says. "Yeah, right where Eddie's car went off the road," Catherine continues. "Who?" Warrick asks again. "Look, I'm as much in the dark as you!" Catherine snaps. "Last I checked, I was following the evidence to Krycek's pants." Oh, I wish. Seriously, writers, I kid about the massive lack of continuity because I love. Or because I can. Pick whichever makes you feel better when you're cashing your big fat residual checks.
Anyway, it hits Catherine that wandering around a major sweeps-period site is going to affect her deeply, so she wants to skedaddle. She begins to climb up the steeply pitched culvert, then turns and conveniently slides into Warrick's arms. That's a smooth move, right there. Warrick's all, "You all right?" Catherine laughs that she is, and he's all, "Whoa." Oh, Warrick. Who would have guessed that you picked up your moves at the Keanu Reeves School of Woo. The two are inches from making their working relationship a lot more complicated when some guy in a hard hat comes along and yells, "Hey! You two CSI?" Catherine -- understandably -- reluctantly swivels out of Warrick's arms. Warrick replies that they are. "Then maybe you two should act professionally," the guy scolds. Oh, he does not either. Instead, he's all, "I got something you'll want to see."
Cut to the two of them, considerably more dressed. The hardhat guy is explaining that they're rehabbing sewers, since the noxious gases generated by the contents have begun to eat away at the concrete. Then they found bones, which don't look like the usual tiny squirrel and cat bones. Catherine and Warrick try half-heartedly to duck out of this, then cowboy up and begin working the case. "We're going to have to flush the line," Catherine concludes.
Cut to a giant pipe being lowered into the sewer line. Warrick watches it descend and asks, "You guys get a lot of jokes about this?" "What do you think?" the hardhat guy shoots back. "I think you should cut to a shot of a train entering a tunnel, or a rocket blasting off into space. It'd be a lot more subtle," Warrick shoots back. Or maybe he just kind of smiles. Anyway, Warrick's at one end of the line, Catherine's at the other, and the idea is to shoot water with such pressure as to drive other bones and detritus into the screen at the mouth of the pipe in the sewer area Catherine's currently watching. The water rushes -- think of the train, or the rocket, since we're dealing in that imagery anyway -- and Catherine waits for it to subside before checking out the screen. Sure enough, she's got some human bones.
Cut to Warrick and Catherine unrolling a schematic of the sewer system across the lighted conference table. Brass is sitting quietly at one end of the table, wondering how it's possible that he's been denied a single expository line thus far. What's the point of being Captain Exposition if you don't get to fill us in on the case? Catherine circles the sewage vault where the bones were found, and Brass asks, "How do we know the bones didn't just wash in off the street?" Warrick explains, "The wastewater sewage is a closed system. It's completely separate from the storm drains. Someone must have flushed it down a toilet, a sink, a tub, or tossed them directly into a manhole." Citing the aged appearance of the bones, Catherine hypothesizes that perhaps a grave robber was getting rid of his leftovers. "Or a serial killer with a lot of patience," Brass says. He's a regular glass-half-full guy. Warrick's all, "Two hundred thousand service connections serving half a million residences. Sixteen hundred miles of pipe, gravity fed…" Catherine rallies the rest of the optimism crew with, "If we're going to find out where these bones came from, we've gotta work our way up."
Which they do by playing Tron. Well, not really, but that's what their spiffy computer-generated graphic meant to show the CSI team's progress looks like. Also, there's no dialogue, only electronic music, so you can totally see where the Tron thing came from, right? Also, there is the usual montage where people work while looking quite fetching in front of the camera. And the bones, they keep turning up. When Warrick turns up a humerus, Catherine concludes, "Well, large bones wouldn't travel as far on down the line as small ones, so at least we're getting closer to the source." And if they keep going, they might find Sara and Nicky trapped down there too. Where are they?
Catherine notices all the plumbing trucks nearby and comments on how there appear to be lots of backed-up toilets, and Warrick heads off that line of speculation by breaking out the plumb-fu: "I don't think the bones could have come from any of these houses. Residential sewage lines are only four-inch pipes, and they make a 90-degree turn before they connect to the main. Look at the size of these bones. They're too big to make that turn." Catherine stops looking at Warrick's bones long enough to concede his point. They realize the blockage is from the main line, and there's one more vault down the street.
Cut to them looking in a vault and finding a lot of big bones right there. Catherine leans down and crows, "Jackpot!" before reeling back and coughing. Yeah, that hydrogen sulfide gas the hardhat guy mentioned earlier don't smell pretty. Neither, I imagine, would lingering traces of putrescine or any other eau de sewage. Warrick is impervious to the odors, so he heads down to check it out. He notices a water line stain, so he asks Catherine to drop down his fluorescein and his glasses. Ah, fun with a new fluorochrome (or molecule used to mark the presence of a chemical)! According to the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Volume 45, Issue 5 (September 2000) page-turner, "The presumptive reagent fluorescein for detection of dilute bloodstains and subsequent STR typing of recovered DNA," fluorescein is handy because it's nearly as sensitive as luminol, it can be detected in a lighted environment, and its reaction persists longer. That could come in handy, but even handier -- the stuff reacts with fecal matter. I don't know how, exactly; if it works like luminol, then the glowing is the result of an oxidation reaction, but I don't know if the catalyst is iron (hemoglobin) like it is with luminol.
Anyway, the point is that Warrick sprays the wonder chemical, the walls glow, and everyone draws the conclusion that the water rose because a human body blocked the pipe until it disintegrated sufficiently to crumple under water pressure. Warrick concludes, "I don't think we're looking for a grave robber. We're looking for a murderer."
But first, they're looking for exposition. And quite possibly those other two people they work with. Gil and Catherine find the former, courtesy of David, who has deduced that they're eyeballing the skeleton of a male, one who received two impressively deep and forceful stabs to the torso, if the gigantic score marks on his ribs are anything to go by. As for where the missing Young Turks are --well, maybe some sewer worker somewhere will get lucky.
Brass has other things to concern himself with, like fending off a police groupie at the presumed crime scene (the sewer vault). This is not nearly so fraught with romantic potential as one might think: the groupie in question is one avoirdupois-laden young man who comes bearing doughnuts and coffee. This whole thing failed to be funny, made me excruciatingly embarrassed for all participants in the scene, and imparted only one key plot-advancing tidbit: there's a lot of pets missing in the neighborhood, and a kid or two with a habit of dropping firecrackers down the sewer at 4 AM.
Back at the Labitrail, Liam's pounding the bejeesus out of dem bones, dem bones, them sewer bones, hoping for some DNA. Sara finally deigns to show up, sliding across the lab bench to say, "I heard you finally lost your virginity." "Nicky lied! We only cuddled," Liam blurts out. Oh, he does not. He merely looks at Sara with a deer-in-the-headlights look. Sara grins and asks, "First autopsy. How was it?" Liam replies, "It was fine. How was your first time? How did you react?" Sara admits that she puked, and Liam looks relieved. He points out that he didn't boot. Sara congratulates him with, "Way to go, tough guy." In the hands of two other characters, that moment could have been twee. Here, it's nice. She asks him what he thought, and Liam admits that it was weird seeing a body all laid out, with David pulling out insides until it was an empty husk. "Were you expecting a ball of light?" Sara asks. "No, I was expecting a pissed-off little alien to burst forth and skitter off into the bowels of the morgue," Liam shoots back. He does not. He reveals how shaken he is with, "Doc Robbins said, 'That's all we really are.'" Sara shows that the PEAP counseling has sunken in with, "It's what you do with it that counts." And that's one to grow on.
Gil and David have a moment with dental x-rays, which they use to determine the victim's age: because the victim had incomplete formation of the second molar root tips and his wisdom teeth hadn't come in yet, the men conclude that their mystery bones belong to a teenager. They've sent the dental records for what is likely a Caucasian boy to NCIC. Gil also reveals that there's no way to get DNA from the bones, what with them being too degraded. "Maybe Catherine will get lucky with Missing Persons," David offers.
Or maybe the first missing person she finds is Nicky. He's on computer duty, trolling through the records of missing people for her. There's 47 male Caucasians between the ages of 12-16 missing in the greater metro area; Catherine wants to narrow it down by geography. They stick to a two-mile radius from the sewer vault, and end up with three boys: Travis Giles (missing six weeks); Phil Griffin (missing 11 weeks); Barry Newsome (missing 11 months). Catherine rejects them all as not being missing long enough, as the bones suggest someone who's been missing for quite a while. Nicky widens the search radius to five miles.
And now it's time for a little of Gil's hands-on work; he's got two vats of water on a heating element: one of them is clear, and the other has just had some amber-colored fluid introduced. The strings of whimsy are playing in the background as Liam appears. Gil tosses him a sample cup and says, "Fill this up for me, will ya?" Liam heads off to do his master's bidding, and the strings get especially whimsical in his wake. Gil's dropping fetal pigs into his vats of solution by the time Liam returns with the cup. Gil comments, "That took a long time. You may need a prostate examination." "Damn it, Nicky's exaggerating! All we did was cuddle!" Liam protests. Oh, he does not. He snaps, "My prostate is fine. I'm not a soda fountain." Gil then hands over a bucket and says, "Hopefully you are, 'cause I need a number two as quickly as possible." I guess he thought the highly technical term "stool sample" was inappropriate in a professional context. Before Liam runs off to eat a kilo of beans in hopes of rushing this request, he asks why Gil's collecting effluvia. Gil explains, "The body was found in a sewer, ambient temperature 80 degrees. The corrosive chemicals caused the body to decompose faster than normal. I want to find out how much faster. Today." Liam walks out of the room grumbling, "This is some kind of CSI hazing -- make me appreciate blood and semen more." Oh, just you wait for the awkward moment when Gil asks you to produce those.
Back at the neighborhood which has been declared the likely crime scene, Brass is finally fulfilling his sworn duty as Captain Exposition, telling Sara and Warrick that everyone in the neighborhood was all, "Hmmm, most likely to be a cold-blooded killer? Local high school bully Owen Durbin." As the three of them walk over to the Durbin spread, Sara asks how they're supposed to get through the door, what with there being no actual evidence linking the bones to the Durbin household. Brass is all, "Don't question the warrant gods."
Cut to Pa Durbin blustering, "Illegal use of fireworks. This is crap." Brass sticks to his guns by pointing out that there've been a lot of neighborhood complaints. Durbin's all, "Nobody's complained to me." Brass replies that it doesn't matter, because the search starts now, so grab the family and vamoose. Durbin does not go gently into that good street; he tells Brass, "Anything that happens in here? Your fault." Brass watches him go and thinks that so far as it goes in the "belligerent jerks, ouster thereof" category, it could be worse. Sara and Warrick head inside.
The house is just…I want all those dreadful, annoying, controlling, unoriginal home-makeover types to descend on it en masse, if only because they could actually use their powers for good instead of annoyance and clean the dusty clutter out of the place. At the very least, one of them would look at the closet full of ammo Brass just uncovered and ask, "Now do you ever use more than three types of bullets regularly?" Brass only concludes that many types of ammo means many types of weapons stashed somewhere. Sara and Warrick embark on what is essentially the firearms version of an Easter egg hunt -- "I got a shotgun under the couch!" As if the place weren't already in dire need of an overhaul, it's also featuring the inhabitants of a regional forest, stuffed and mounted on the wall. Even more unsettling: the creepy collector's cabinet full of those dolls people buy to put on display. What was this, the Franklin Mint's Ghastly Gun-Totin' Girls collection?
Sara misses this because she's busy discovering a pea-sized stain on the dusty stairs. She does a phenol test to confirm that it's blood as opposed to barbecue sauce. Brass says he's going to go get the warrant amended for blood evidence collection, and until then, the CSIs have to stop searching. While Brass is out and about, he's also going to get Animal Control to round up the vicious pit bulls we've been hearing so much about in the back yard. Brass takes off, and Sara looks around with an expression more commonly found on ninth-graders waiting for the parents to take off so they can hit the liquor cabinet.
"So, no searches," she says. Warrick snorts, "Yeah, right," and they continue to head on through the house, looking around with the flashlights in an elaborately casual kind of way. Sara opens a closet door -- oh, look! Another gun! What a surprise! -- and begins searching it bottom to top. Warrick comments on how well-stocked the closet is, and he doesn't mean in the "we went to the Container Store and came back with approximately 100 yards of Elfa shelving" sort of way. As Sara continues to check out the floor area, Warrick directs his attention upward, the better to notice the explosives stored casually to some knick-knack thingy. Cue Warrick's "Oh, shit!" face. In the tone of voice reserved for people who think they're keeping their cool, but are still quite obviously freaking out, he says, "Sara…" Proving that her people skills have improved somewhat, Sara grasps that Warrick's perturbed and says, "I'm not touching anything," as she continues to peer at the bottom of the door. However, her people skills haven't improved to the point where she grasps the scope of his perturbation, so Warrick says slowly and as calmly as one can while one's in mid-mental freak-out, "No. Put your stuff down, and step away from the closet." And Sara's people skills completely fail her here, because she fails to grasp Warrick's state at all; she's like, "What?" Warrick leans down, and grasps the back of her vest smoothly and slowly as he repeats, " Put your stuff down, and step away from the closet." Sara looks up as Warrick tugs her back, and we see that there's not one, but six pipe bombs assembled in the closet, nestled against photo boxes and whatnot. That must add an exciting new aspect to any closet-reorganization project.
Sara finally grasps the danger they're in and backs up slowly until she's standing to Warrick. She turns to him and says, "Word in the lab is, you were giving Catherine some action when she merely tripped. So how about a little sugar for Sara?" Oh, she does not. But she should. Warrick is pretty freakin' hot here. Almost as hot and competent as my new TV boyfriend, Sayid, over on Lost. You all need to watch that show. Seriously. It's excellent. Anyway, Sara does not use the time to look at Warrick in a whole new light, because she is using it to take advantage of his distraction -- he's busy radioing in a request for the bomb squad -- to try and retrieve the blood evidence she found on the door before the bomb squad comes and detonates the place (and, presumably, the evidence within). She's crouched down, trying to unscrew the door hinges, and it's not going very well until Warrick comes over, lifts her up (he's handsy today. Not that anyone seems to mind), and holds the door while she unscrews the hinges. It's stuck, so they have to pull the door out while a pipe bomb wobbles menacingly. The whole count-to-three-and-pull thing is very nerve-wracking, but they manage it. As he holds the door, Warrick's all, "Can we get out of the damn house now?"
The bomb squad arrives during the commercial break. The lead bomb squad investigator, Rick, bids Warrick to remind him what's on the scene thus far, and we reiterate that there's six pipe bombs in the linen closet. Rick's all, "Back up, boys!" That includes Warrick too.
Back in an interrogation room, Brass is asking why Pa Durbin, the world's scariest life insurance salesman, is busy storing pipe bombs in the linen closet. Brass wonders if there's any ideological motive attached, or if Pa Durbin just likes to see things get blowed up real good. Durbin attempts to dodge the question with "I've never been arrested for anything. I've never hurt anybody." "Nice try, but the question was 'What are you doing with six pipe bombs?', not 'What sort of harm have you perpetrated in the past?'" Brass shoots back. Oh, he does not. Brass asks if maybe Pa Durbin's not concerned that the missus could blow herself sky-high when she's putting away the sheets, or that young Owen could be out a hand or two if he grabs the wrong knick-knack. Durbin's all, "I don't know about you, but in my house, there's rules. Terry and Owen know what to do and what not to do." Translation: he runs them with all the consistency, compassion, and consideration of a meth-using dictator. Brass declines to debate the merits of assorted domestic-management strategies and focuses instead on the 6-36-year sentence Durbin could be serving for his multiple counts of a Class B felony. He also mentions that murder could add on another 25 to life. Durbin's all, "Somebody gets blown up, it's got nothing to do with me. I told you not to go in my house." Yeah! And women shouldn't complain if they're harassed because they shouldn't have been out in public dressed like that anyway! Brass points out that they found blood in the house, and Durbin rounds the corner from petulant quasi-libertarian to full-on, black-helicopters-following-his-every-movement crazy with, "Then you must have put it there." Brass is implacable: "How about this -- we found a body in the sewer in front of your house. Did we put that there?" Score!
Cut to Gil acting all managerial with Sara, asking, "So what were you trying to prove with this door?" "A murder," Sara shoots back. Oh, she does not, but she's close enough. Gil points out that Liam couldn't pull any DNA from the bones, so there's nothing to connect the body to the blood she found. Sara then serves Gil: "Not yet [there's not]. I don't have a death wish, and I'm not a drunk, in case you were worried." Gil rather lamely replies, "I'm not worried, I'm concerned." Oh, save the hair-splitting for beard maintenance, Gil. Sara calls him on that too with, "Isn't that kind of the same thing?" Gil distracts her by prying the lid off the container filled with Liam's intestinal contents, plus one pig, marinated at 80 degrees for who knows how long. It's pretty gross-looking. It's all pretty dramatically disintegrated…
Cut to Gil effectively telling Nicky that all his legwork's now useless and irrelevant. For the sake of those of us playing along at home, Gil explains, "Tissue in a sewer decomposes 20 times faster than normal. The victim could be missing as little as five weeks." Gil speeds off again, leaving Nicky standing in the middle of the Labitrail with a baffled expression. He's probably wondering where he's been all episode too.
The producers then throw us a bone by showing how Nicky runs another computer search and ends up with a record we saw 20 minutes ago: that of Travis Giles, missing six weeks.
Back in front of the Durbin home, we see a big, presumably blast-proof or blast-tight container labeled "BOMB SQUAD" where the bomb squad is stashing the pipe bombs. Sara's itching to head back inside. So in the time it took for these guys to sweep the house, Sara went back to the lab, stashed her field gear, got the table logged as evidence, processed the evidence, got lectured by Gil, collected her field gear again, headed back to the crime scene and flagged down Rick the bomb squad guy? Watch out, serial killers! You've met your time-management match in Sara Sidle. Catherine suggests that the bomb squad clear the house an area at the time, and her team will process behind them. "The scene will still be under my authority," Rick says. "I don't have a problem with authority," Catherine lies. Just then, the squad detonates the pipe bombs. You just know the HOA is going to have a field day with this at the meeting.
Nicky's still in the Labitrail, and he's talking to Travis's paternal grandma. We get the boy's thumbnail history: his father skipped out, his mother the junkie lives in Salt Lake and neglects the boy. Nicky offers a sympathetic ear, then asks if maybe Travis ran off to see his mom. It turns out he did -- as he had a history of doing -- but he never showed up. Nicky then goes 0-for-2 on whether Owen and Travis had enough of a social history together for Ms. Giles to recognize the boy, and whether there's anything of Travis's around the house that could give them a DNA sample. Then, because this conversation isn't awkward enough, Nicky says, "Look, I don't know how to say this, but --" "Don't bother. I know he's dead," Ms. Giles answers flatly. Nicky looks like he might cry.
Brass is now talking to the other two members of the Durbin Gun Club and Incendiary Society, a.k.a. Terry and Owen. Wow, that is one unpleasant-looking kid. It's seriously distracting, how this kid looks. How are the other people in this room not involuntarily recoiling every time they clap eyes on him? Perhaps they're listening to his sullen litany of lies about Travis and mentally debating whether to put the bag over the kid's face, or his personality. Anyway, Brass pulls Terry Durbin aside to tell her that sometimes, kids feel uncomfortable admitting to horrific crimes if they're afraid Mom's going to turn to them and gasp, "Owen Durbin! You are grounded, mister! No television for a week." So maybe she should take off and let the advocate hang out. Terry's all, "I can't do that, because then one morning, I'll be in the shower, about to shave my legs, when I happen to notice that my husband's replaced the Lady Bic with a pipe bomb."
Back at the Durbin Gun Club and Incendiary Society headquarters, Catherine and Sara have forsaken the investigation in favor of sitting together on the stairwell and doing each other's nails while they gossip about which coworker they think is cuter -- Warrick or Gil. Oh, they don't either. But what does it say about the direction of this series that I've got to throw that caveat in there? The two CSIs are actually mapping out the blood spatter on the stairwell; from the looks of it, someone was assaulted at the top of the stairs, and bled all the way down. Catherine calls Brass to share the discovery, and to ask if he's got a position in the "Who's cuter?" debate.
After taking that call, Brass invites Terry and Owen to chit-chat about all the human blood spattered all over their stairwell. Owen -- gah! Get a bag over his head, pronto! -- suggests that perhaps the dogs bled all over the place. What, are pit bulls the hemophiliacs of the canine world? Terry tries to back up the lie with, "[The dogs] fight a lot." Brass raises a skeptical brow. Back at the house, Sara points out that neither dog shows any signs of recent injury, but she's willing to trace the type of blood to rule out that possibility. Catherine's all, "Don't bother. The lowest point of entry is at 46 inches with a downward spatter. Even if these dogs could walk upright, they couldn't have done this. The kid's a liar."
And now it's time for the montage that gives us the illusion of time passing, progress being made, and stories being told. Warrick's avoiding the hen party upstairs by noticing a pickax propped up to the garage outside. Sara's noticing the massive, Se7en-type collage Owen's pasted on his door. Gil's noticing Rick hanging out in the garage where he was hoping to poke around for evidence. He also notices the detonation cord just lying around, and Rick assures him that you've really got to want that to go off for it to do any real damage. Gil does not look reassured. He asks what he should worry about then, and Rick replies, "If you ever see me running, make sure you keep up."
The montage music kicks up again as Sara enters Owen's room. It's decorated like a maiden aunt's idea of what an angry teenaged boy would like. And Warrick's busy finding what looks like an amateur work of taxidermy: a furry pelt nailed to a blood-stained, bullet hole-marked board. Nice. Inside the house, Sara notes all the dead fish in the aquarium, just in case we haven't gotten the point that this kid likes to torture animals, then digs out a box from under the bed. It contains videotapes. Outside, Warrick notices an ash barrel on the back patio, and uses a handy pole to poke around until he finds a pair of smallish boy's sneakers and a set of neatly folded boy's clothes.
Inside the garage, Gil notices a cardboard box holding two bleach bottles. More importantly, he notices the faint bloodstain in one corner. He tells Rick to watch his step -- which seems kind of odd given that the bomb-squad guy would be used to treading lightly -- and gets all excited because there might be some blood evidence on the floor. Just then, Warrick comes in and shares his news about the clothing: "I'm thinking he was killed in the house, dragged out the back, and then dumped." Still thinking of the blood evidence -- and the possibility that perhaps the body was chopped up before it was dumped into the sewer vault -- Gil suggests that maybe the corpse took a detour to the garage.
Gil dispatches Warrick to bag the evidence, then follows the blood droplets to a poky corner of the garage, where he happens to notice what is probably the murder weapon. Rick happens to open the fridge that's wedged right to where Gil's reaching. Lo and behold, it's filled with jars that make him freeze in dismay. We then replace the Warrick and Sara scene from about twenty minutes ago, with Gil in the Sara role. Rick -- he of the "If you see me run…" comment -- tells Gil to get out pronto, and Gil's all, "But my evidence!" Rick's not having that. He makes plans to detonate the liquid explosives in place.
Cut to Gil telling the CSIs in the house to grab everything they think they need before beating feet. Because you can't spell "Gosh, he's hypocritical!" without G-I-L, there's an extra-special warning for Sara too. She scoops up the tapes and scampers; Catherine and Warrick also grab their evidence and flee. And then, Rick blows up the house. Yeah, the local HOA is definitely going to be sending an angry letter to the Durbins about this.
Durbin's going to be dealing with his own anger first. We see him being frog-walked through the Labitrail, cuffed, and he rails, "Sons of bitches! I'm going to sue your ass into the ground, I hope you know that. Yeah, I'm going to own you! I'm going to own this whole place! In fact, maybe that's where I'll live! I'm just going to move in here." Somehow, I don't see him gracefully accepting the modernist lines of the Labitrail.
Catherine, who has changed from her while field-work tank to a navy one, asks Brass if Durbin lawyered up. Brass replies, "Yeah. He stopped talking after I told him we blew up his house." Imagine that. He then reveals that Terry and Owen are still in play, but they need a smoking gun, as it were. I'm guessing those ashy clothes and shoes will have to do.
Oh, yay! It's a group meeting. I love other people's group meetings; I'm only a conscientious objector if it involves me directly. Gil says it's probably safe to figure that the murder weapon was a huge, honkin' knife, and shows his snaps of the knives he was forced to leave behind in the Durbins' garage. Catherine provides a little bit of a downer by pointing out that her casts of the marks to the ribs don't really do anything other than rule out a serrated blade. Sara shares that the videos she recovered are distressingly murder-free and may in fact merely be old home movies. Catherine asks skeptically, "A teenage boy with a box full of home movies under his bed." Sara replies apologetically, "It's weird, I know." Warrick notes that he couldn't get anything off the clothes that links them to the blood in the house, and they don't have any way to establish that the blood was Travis's.
Enter the Tooth Fairy. Or, to be more precise, Ms. Giles, who comes with "the only thing I have left of Travis's" -- his baby teeth. Just in case we don't have enough empathy for the victim or the people he left behind, Ms. Giles poignantly recalls, "When he was little, I used to be his tooth fairy." Well, it worked on me. Sniff!
Within 30 seconds, Catherine's announced to Terry Durbin that the DNA from Travis Giles's baby teeth matches the blood samples lifted from the house. Brass invites Terry to tell them how the blood got there. She's all, "Kids get hurt all the time. They fall down, cut themselves. They get nosebleeds." You mean like, fall down on other people's knives and cut themselves? Darn those thoughtless youth of today. The camera pulls back to show Owen -- gah! My kingdom for a bag over his head! -- and he's looking petulant as Brass calls Terry out with, "You're telling me a kid you've never seen, who's not even friends with your son, got a nosebleed in your house." Terry looks down, as if to say, Well, when you put it like that, it does sound kind of stupid… Brass says, "You're lying! You know, we can make this quick because I've got enough to arrest you now." And then the camera swings into a close-up of -- urrrgh! I take it back about the bag over Owen's face. I'm going to put one on mine! -- Owen, and the kid spins an implausible story about how Travis came over to buy a knife one night, decided to run off before paying for it, then tripped and fell on the knife, stabbing himself twice before falling down the stairs.
Catherine's all, "Pardon me, but you've already exceeded my RDA of bullshit. Try telling the truth for a change." Terry's all, "Don't you call my son a liar," and Catherine rolls on over her with "Travis was stabbed twice. That's not possible if he fell on the knife." The camera zooms back -- gah! The bag! Now! -- then focuses on Brass as he tries to goad Owen into making a confession. Owen again claims it was an accident, and Catherine shoots back that dumping the body in the sewer under cover of darkness more or less obliterates that argument. Terry insists that Owen didn't dump the body in the sewer, and Catherine spits, "He didn't do this alone. We found the victim's charred clothing folded. Kids don't fold anything -- mothers do. You helped him clean up the mess." Brass snickers, "That's kind of funny, 'cause you're not much of a housekeeper." Owen threatens, "If you talk to my mother like that again, I'll kill you." "Kid, I've been staring at your ugly mug for what feels like eternity. Death holds no fear for me now," Brass shoots back. Oh, he does not. He takes the momma's-boy ball and runs with it, all the way to a booking. Terry's all, "Don't you say another word, baby," as Owen generously offers to put Catherine out of her misery too. This could all be avoided if you followed my simple pleas: BAG! FACE! ON HIM! NOW!
In the penultimate scene, Brass is unwinding with a cocktail in Gil's office, moonlighting as Deputy Denouement. Owen's getting murder, and his mother's being charged as an accessory. Pa Durbin's getting felony explosives. Brass comments, "It's a family value pack." No doubt some enterprising attorney's making a pitch for the Durbins' business with that very argument. Gil passes judgment with, "Well, it's appropriate. One way or another, they each had a hand in it."
And we see how in the last scene: it's one of the home movies Sara pulled out from under Owen's bed. We see Pa Durbin tying a frog to a board. There's a firecracker tied to the frog's back. Terry asks if they have to record this, and Pa Durbin's all, "Just keep the camera on, will ya?" He commands a younger Travis to watch, and then we pull back to see Sara watching the tape; we hear a croak and an explosion. (That would be my temper you hear going ka-boom, as animal abuse is one topic where I am not at all rational, and prone to suggesting that an appropriate form of retribution would be to do unto the tormentor as he has done unto others.) Meanwhile, Gil explains to Brass, "Violent environment, oblivious mother, disturbed child…" Project much on the mother issues, Gil? It's likely this woman was cowed into submission. Back at the Sara Sidle film festival, we see Pa Durbin bidding the fruit of his loins to give a vat full of explosive chemicals a good stir. Meanwhile, Brass says, "But you know, no matter how bad your kid turns out, it never changes how you feel about him." Gil credits the biological faculty of unconditional love as species-perpetuating adaptation for that, an unintentionally humorous remark for those of us who remember that Brass's daughter has none of his DNA, and an unintentionally ill-considered remark coming from someone who has no doubt worked plenty of child- or parental-abuse cases where the unconditional love was missing or entirely absent. Is he suggesting domestic violence is a mutation that selects for inferior genes? But whatever -- we get that Gil isn't capable of feeling like us normal humans.
The episode closes with the closest the Durbins got to unconditional love -- Pa egging his kid on as he steps on a short and illustrious career of killing weaker creatures and blowing stuff up. Sara looks all serious. Well, carrying around all those unspecified family issues can be hard. I only hope the burden gets lifted some time around sweeps.