Previously on C.S.I.: we established who the folks of CSI are, and how well they love a good crime scene.
For once, we see Las Vegas by the harsh light of day; more specifically, we see the view you'd get if you were crazy enough to stand on a sand ridge outside the airport and gaze at the strip in the harsh light of day. The camera then takes a leisurely sweep over a lot of arid sand -- sand so dry and so hot, I'm compelled to get up and blend a giant margarita -- and stops at the dusty blade of a shovel tamping down sand. Gradually, the focus pulls back to reveal a shirtless pile of beefcake attached to the shovel. He wipes his forehead in the manner of a man in a beer commercial expecting the blast of the Rockies and a wave of Coors to chill him, then walks off.
Just then, we follow the camera beneath the newly-tamped dirt where -- surprise -- a wellspring of beer does not dwell but a woman does, and she's none too pleased about it. After flicking a lighter to confirm that yes, it's dark, and yes, she's trapped into a crate underground, the woman begins screaming. Normally, I'd make a crack about the stupidity of wasting your oxygen supply in this sort of situation, but I'm gripped by dual fears: the fear of being buried alive, and the fear of having to watch yet another piece of entertainment featuring a serial killer or some other type of homicidal individual with a taste for baroque and elaborate death rituals. I could still be scarred from watching The Cell, where I spent the whole movie wondering why Hollywood serial killers tend to rival Martha Stewart in terms of time management and creative ingenuity when it comes to their little torture chambers and routines. Really -- digging elaborate pits and sewing bathing suits made of skin, or building giant Lucite fish tanks with closed-circuit televisions are not exactly spur-of-the-moment improvisational acts. If these people are together enough to evince a talent for multitasking, you'd think they'd realize that their time and energy are better spent toward, say, building a giant omnimedia company devoted to fetishizing housework, or aspiring to a reign of terror on the Food Network as a television chef.
But I've digressed. The woman is screaming, and in the shot, we find out that she's some rich guy's wife, and the kidnapper is asking for two million dollars. The millionaire -- who is a bona fide Hey! It's That Guy -- is named Mr. Garris, and he's pretty edgy. You'd be edgy too if Gil and Nick were playing the ransom demand over and over. After he snipes about that, Gil admonishes him to listen to the tape. "I don't hear anything," he says in frustration. "Right," Gil says. "Where do you hear nothing in Las Vegas?" Okay, Gil? Not the time for Zen mind games. Just come out and tell it like it is. Fortunately, Gil heeds me. "The desert, and judging by the low-frequency buzz in the background, probably near power lines." Nicky flexes his jaw in agreement. "How'd you hear all that?" Garris asks anxiously. "I listen," Gil replies. Is there some sort of C.S.I. edict that every opening sequence be a paean to his supernatural skills?
Just as the brass gong is about to chime in the background in tribute to Gil's Zen master listening skills, Brass clangs through the environment yammering about the FBI. Garris is instantly spun up again and anxiously asks if his wife Laura -- who is, I am guessing, the woman currently screaming in a crate underground somewhere -- has any chance of survival. Brass replies, "It's a three-hour window. A ransom message with a short fuse means that the victim's situation will cause her to expire by or before the deadline, regardless of what we do." "In a car trunk, that sort of thing," Nicky helpfully supplies. Boy, the Las Vegas Metro Police should just lend these two out to a trauma ward; their manner with frantic and grieving people would go over real well when they deliver the news of a loved one's death. "You guys have got to move!" Garris blurts out. "Mr. Garris," Gil interjects. "It's been my experience in these situations that if you want to go fast, go slow." Come to think of it, Gil in a trauma ward wouldn't be much better.
After the credits roll, we're back in the Garris house. Sara is in her element, sussing out a crime scene and lording it over a junior crime-scene tech. Nick comes up behind her, and she says, "You're standing in my crime scene." "No," Nick replies, "you're standing in mine." "You're doing audio? I wanted that." "I outrank you." "On a technicality. Who'd Grissom handpick to work here?" "Heh. Keep telling yourself that." You got your peanut butter on my chocolate, I got my chocolate in your peanut butter -- whatever, you two. Just grab a ruler, take your territory issues outside, and settle the issue for once and for all. Nick leaves and Sara kills the lights. She then flashes a UV glow stick at the door jamb, looking intently at a series of dark marks.
The scene changes to Brass, king of bedside manners, asking Garris if his wife has "any shady friends." "No, she surrounds herself with quality people." So I'm guessing Laura doesn't spend a lot of time hanging out with the showgirl community. We then learn that Garris and his wife are both health nuts, and he'll pay anything to get her back.
Meanwhile, Gil's hanging in the window of Nicky's crimemobile, advising him to get the tape to audio and tell the techs to run a reverse algorithm on it. Nicky assures Gil he knows what to tell the guy, prompting a skeptical blink of the eyes from Gil. Ah, Grasshopper, there is so much you don't know. "You've been a CSI III for what, two weeks?" he asks. "I got it under control. Swear. Later," says Nick. Whatever.
Gil returns to the bedroom where Sara is reciting what she thinks happened on the scene as she dusts for prints. "Cursory call -- looks like a professional job. Our guy bypasses the security system, surprises the wife in the back hall, drags her in here. She grabs on the doorway -- signs of struggle. No signs of sexual assault. He's in, he's out. Probably egress through that door." As Sara's going on, Gil's ignoring her, checking out the photos of Laura Garris -- who looks like a brittle, high-maintenance brunette -- and kneeling to examine a few clods of dirt on the floor. Sara notices him playing in the dirt and testily inquires, "Excuse me, is my evaluation interrupting you?" "No, no, no," Gil says absent-mindedly. "I barely heard you." Hee! I wonder why I don't really like the Sara character. I normally think Jorja Fox is a fine actress -- she certainly made ER more interesting and I was sorry she didn't become a regular on that show or The West Wing, but her character here just rubs me the wrong way. I can't quite put my finger on it yet.
"Glad I have a healthy ego," she responds. "You find something interesting?" "Dirt." "You're so technical, I can hardly keep up, but..." "But, out of context, it's just dirt." Sara sniffs the air and smells something sweetish, like bad cologne. After asking Gil if he wears it -- he doesn't because it interferes with the job -- they notice a white rag soaked in the scent. "Halothane, maybe," Gil says. "We'll confirm it in GC mass spec." Hey! I've used mass spectrometers. They're pretty cool -- they'll examine molecules for certain characteristics, like weight, and let you diagnose unknown compounds based on what qualities they share with known products. At last, all those college chem courses have finally come in handy. Gil asks Sara if she wouldn't care to amend her assessment, noting that a professional wouldn't leave a halothane-soaked rag behind. "I keep trying to be your star pupil," she says archly. "Sara, that was a seminar. This is a real case." Hmmm. There was a seminar, a few drinks after the seminar, one thing leading to another...based on Gil's behavior around Holly Gribbs, he seems like he has a thing for, um, mentoring saucy brunettes.
Gil then turns his attention to the Garris spread, noting that there's no dirt anywhere nearby. Therefore, the kidnapper must have tracked it in when he made off with Laura. Gil tells Sara, "We follow the dirt." She shakes her head ruefully.
Cut to a street. A small sneaker is lying on its side on the road, the light from a siren playing over it and a yellow tag to it. We see a girl being zipped into a body bag and loaded into an ambulance. As the ambulance leaves, Catherine asks, "How many hit-and-runs have we had this year?" "Too many," Warrick replies. "One thing I can't stand is a punk coward." Ah, the foreshadowing. Catherine looks over at a scooter lying in the crime scene. "My daughter wants one of those scooters. Says she's the only kid in the world who doesn't have one." Catherine, for the love of God, keep it that way. The streets of San Francisco are choked with people bobbling about on scooters. The kids are menaces and the adults look ridiculous. ["Same thing in New York. Every day, I nearly get knocked down by a kid on one of those damn things. Kids today…" -- Sars] Even more asinine than the little metal scooters are the big motorized ones. There's a woman on my ferry every morning who lugs hers onboard and off, and as she goes flying down the road, she looks like something out of a bad science fiction movie from the 1970s. Please, Catherine, spare your child's dignity. And by the way -- your softer 'do is much more flattering.
Warrick watches Catherine head over to the scooter, clearly concerned. As she kneels over the scooter, looking defeated, he says, "You want me to take this one alone?" Catherine evinces surprise at Warrick's unusual compassion, and he says that the Gribbs affair has forced him to assess how he works with partners, and he's turning over a new leaf. Catherine thanks him, then asks if he wants to sketch out the scene. Warrick recites the likely events -- which we are, thank God, spared from seeing in imaginary flashback, since an episode featuring a woman buried alive and a little girl flying twenty feet in the air might be a bit much -- and Catherine notes that the car paint on the scooter is the only clue they have, and not much of one either.
Back at Chez Garris, Brass is telling Garris not to pay the ransom, a suggestion he does not take well. After exchanging a few words with Garris and learning that he's not nearly so reassured by the idea of a forensics lab working on his wife's case as Gil thinks he should be, Gil heads back to the lab. We see a microscope-eye's view of the dirt, shot through with gold and silver squiggles. Gil tells us that the cyanide is there because gold miners blanket an area with cyanide powder, and the gold is drawn to the surface. Sara snidely asks how a forensics guy knows so much about dirt -- you'd think after Nicky's question last week, Gil's colleagues would just accept that the man's a repository of strange information and not ask questions -- but Gil humors her and tells her, "I had a case five years ago. We found a skeleton in an abandoned gold mine. I thought it was a murder. Turns out the guy passed out drunk, and the cyanide leached into his system." "Gruesome, Grissom," Sara replies. Gil says calmly that every case teaches him about the . The light bulb goes off over Sara's head, and she realizes Gil was looking at the dirt to narrow down the possible number of locations where Laura could be. She looks at a map and comments that there are hundreds of gold mines in the desert; Gil tells her there are only three within the range of both the power lines and the ransom drop zone.
The cool chick coroner is back! It's too bad she's back to show Catherine and Warrick their hit-and-run victim. After crisply observing that "the bad thing about this job is, you stop asking why," she directs their attention to a giant, nasty bruise on the girl's haunch. Nasty doesn't do it justice -- it's mottled, livid, and pulpy-looking and a few especially dark marks stand out. Warrick gazes at the bruise and we go to flashback -- a nondescript car bumper caroming into the child's side as she screams, and Catherine takes a deep breath, clearly trying to compose herself. "Plate numbers," she says. The driver hit the child hard enough to drive the license plate into the skin, leaving a lasting impression. Warrick says he'll call the DMV and run a cross-check on all cars with the color paint they lifted and the characters 4 and J in the license plate.
Gil and Sara are in a helicopter, sweeping over the desert and scanning its surface using an infrared camera. They notice a pack of coyotes running; the white-hot forms moving through the desert look pretty cool. Meanwhile, Brass is at a driving range, watching a row of men shoot golf ball after golf ball. Good thing the coyotes are nowhere near there -- in high school, I used to work at a driving range near Quantico, and I was always calling the local park rangers to kick out guys who would aim for the deer that wandered into the range and stayed, apparently transfixed by the floodlights. I can easily imagine the same breed of jerk aiming for the coyotes. But I've digressed -- that breed of jerk is waiting in the car instead: Brass is eying all the golfers suspiciously. We surmise that this is the drop point for the ransom. Garris confirms that, driving up and dropping off a leatherette briefcase in a trash can before driving off. As Brass is eying Garris suspiciously -- what, is he expecting Garris to drive back five minutes later and pick up the money again in some sort of boneheaded double-cross move? -- Nicky slides into the car, scaring the hell out of Brass. "Grissom told me to hook up with you. He says the drop place will be a crime scene." Brass sighs, and settles down to wait with Junior Crimefighter for the scene to unfold.
Meanwhile, Gil and Sara are scanning the infrared and looking for signs of two-legged life. So far, nothing. Sara notes that this is the last mine, and they've circled it twice. "Yeah, well, we'll circle it again." Gil replies, agitated. The scene switches back to the driving range, where a guy is letting his German shepherd water the trash can. Nick plaintively asks if they can rush the guy. "Why? He's walking his dog," Brass replies. "He's taken five minutes," Nick shoots back, clearly suspicious of any animal owner whose charge isn't clearing its bladder with alacrity. "Dogs take their time," Brass responds. "Do you want to be rushed?" Could Brass be a dog person, honing his observations on the canine toilette after one too many three a.m. trips to the backyard? As the two men watch golfers wandering about, a beefcake-looking guy wanders by with his bag of clubs, causing Nicky to murmur, "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty." Ah, Nick's a cat person, then? Brass tells everyone to watch the muscle-bound non-golfer.
Cut back to the helicopter; Grissom notices something on the infrared and notices a moving body. "My God, she's below the surface," he says. Sara bosses the helicopter pilot, ordering him down. Much kinesthetic drama ensues for the few minutes. They get out of the helicopter, and then -- over the noise of a whirling chopper blades -- scream, "Mrs. Garris, can you hear us?" Because this is television, where normal laws of physics do not apply, she hears their voices underground, over the chopper, and begins screaming in reply. Gil and Sara dig her out, improvising shovels with handy rocks, and pull the bound and shaking Laura Garris out of the crate. She looks like hell; they hand her over to conveniently waiting EMTs -- I'm not even going to hypothesize how the ambulance got there so quickly -- and Gil turns his attention to Sara. "You okay?" he asks, caressing her cheek. Sara nods: "It never ceases to amaze me what people do to each other." That moment over, Sara turns back to hectoring crime scene people and Gil tells Brass they've recovered Laura.
Nick and Brass are still watching Beefcake Vance pace around the trashcan. As he sets down his clubs and extracts the bag, eight hundred police officers converge on the scene and arrest him. "Look at the bag! It's not even leather, why would I want it?" Beefcake says. Ladies and gentlemen, we're just found a surefire leading indicator of a good economy -- petty thieves who judge found loot on its quality. In a recession, he'd be taking that bag in a heartbeat. "I can think of about two million reasons," Brass says.
Catherine and Warrick are walking up the stairs of a small, well-tended bungalow. They knock on the door, and a mild-looking older black man, bald and bespectacled, glances at them warily. "Can I help you folks?" he asks nervously. We learn that he's Charles Moore, that he's told the police his car was stolen, and that Catherine has a warrant to look in the garage. The three of them go to the garage, open the door, and see the car, grill mangled. Both CSI investigators turn back to Charles, who promptly confesses in a wavering voice: "It was an accident. I saw the girl, tried to brake and accelerated instead. I get confused. I shouldn't have left. I was wrong. Is she okay." Catherine informs Charles that the girl died; Warrick adds that he'll be charged with manslaughter, a felony hit-and-run. Charles looks up, his face a rictus of grief and horror.
Incredulous, I check my watch -- how can the CSI squad have solved all their cases twenty-two minutes into the show? Are they going to a half-hour format? Will my recaps get shorter? Alas, no -- the scene is in the CSI kitchen, where Catherine is pulling out a birthday cake decorated for her little girl Lindsey and asking Warrick if he also thinks Charles gave himself up too easily. Warrick theorizes that Charles confessed out of overwhelming fear. Catherine's reply is cut short as Gil rushes in, face suffused with glee. "Look at the present I'm getting your daughter for her birthday!" he says, obviously dying to show her. "What's the rule around here? How long do I have to be here before I start kicking in for gifts?" Sara asks. "When the spirit moves you, so I guess in your case...never," Catherine shoots back. Add her to Nick's little I-don't-like-Sara club. Sara grimaces into her coffee as Gil burbles, "I got her one of those junior chemistry kits I got when I was six. I almost blew up the whole house!" He starts laughing delightedly -- it takes, like, ten years off his face. Gil should laugh more often -- not that it would be appropriate for many of his on-the-job conversations. Catherine testily replies that she hopes he can return it: Lindsey doesn't want a party this year. Nick then wanders into the kitchen, asking, "Hey, Catherine, what time is your little girl coming by?" "She isn't," Catherine shoots back. "But I got her a chem set," Nicky says, pulling out the same set Gil has. Oh, the comedy. On one hand, it's really sweet that Catherine's co-workers take such an interest in her daughter; on the other hand, how creepy could this kid turn out if she's showered with gifts from overenthusiastic forensics specialists year after year?
"You keep that -- you might learn something," Sara says. "Stop flirting with me," Nicky says, deadpan. Yow! Two burns in five minutes. "No, really, Cath, when's the party?" Catherine snaps and tells everyone Lindsey doesn't want a party. We're spared further histrionics when a beeper goes off and everyone immediately dives for their gadget to see if it's theirs. It was a nicely choreographed moment.
Sara is looking at the dusty crate that held Laura. She notices that it's from Garris's winery. Meanwhile, Gil's talking to Laura, who's sporting quite a shiner; she tells him the kidnapper grabbed her from behind and knocked her out. Gil gently asks for a blood sample; he tells them the scratches on Laura's arm might lead to blood samples in Beefcake's -- who, we learn, is actually named Rundle -- truck. Garris asks why the wife has to be subjected to blood tests; Gil calmly replies that there's a profound lack of evidence otherwise, and concrete proof via a blood sample would go a long way in convicting this guy. Laura rallies: "Whatever it takes, to put this guy behind bars, I'll do." From the fierce look in her eye, I somehow suspect that perhaps Laura knows who her kidnapper is after all. Could the CSI guys be pawns in her little game?
Sara dusts the crate for prints. She lifts one, intact, and smiles. Meanwhile, Rundle is stonewalling Brass in the interrogation room. We find out that Rundle is Garris's personal trainer, and gets paid the big bucks to come out to his spread so Garris doesn't have to sweat among the hoi polloi. We also find out that Rundle muscled some vineyard crates to Garris's garage a few weeks ago. I'm busy trying to figure out why Garris has a vineyard. Unless he's fond of driving out to the Inland Empire to check on his vineyards, there's no way Garris could possibly be making wine: Las Vegas is a desert. Nothing grows there. If Garris is a wine mogul, his business is elsewhere -- which leads me to wonder: why does he live in Las Vegas? Let's desert this line of inquiry; it's making my head hurt. Back on the show, Rundle claims not to have met or known Laura Garris -- which seems, to me, to be a big red flag that the two are doing a little personal training of their own -- and Brass lets him go, frustrated because they've got nothing on him so far.
As Rundle is mouthing his way out the door, he runs into Gil. "Didn't I see you on the news tonight?" he asks. "Digging up Jack's wife? Hope you find the guy," he finishes, and swaggers off, presumably to down his afternoon dose of horse steroids. Gil watches him go and asks Brass how it went; Brass says, "Kid didn't give us anything, except the tape that'll break the case open." Gil asks, "Did you let him know you were recording him?" Brass replies that Rundle did, and he has no idea what "these science types can do to a tape." Gil pockets the tape and leaves. Score one for science.
Warrick and Catherine are examining the hit-and-run car. Warrick asks Catherine to guess Charles's height. Catherine estimates him at about six feet. Warrick replies, "Well, old people must love hugging the steering wheel, 'cause this seat is pushed way up." He goes to get in, and ends up folded into the seat with his knees around his ears. Warrick then observes that as a six-footer himself, the mirror isn't helping him at all. Catherine asks him to start the car; when they do, the resultant blast of rap music blows her hair back. "Nobody over nineteen was the last person to drive this car," Catherine says. Warrick sighs.
Nicky ambles into the audio lab and asks how the tape simulation is going. The tech -- who is, in keeping with C.S.I. tradition thus far, much hipper looking than your typical lab monkey tends to be -- turns around, wowing the audience with blue and yellow lines meant to show the ransom tape and Rundle's voice print. Audio fun and games continue; we find out that Rundle is clearly the guy leaving the ransom. Gil asks, "Now where's my spectrograph so the defense attorneys can't claim that the alterations were altered?" The tech, who really should be wearing a t-shirt reading, "I was a college radio DJ," pulls up a screen, and the blue and yellow lines merge into one green one. Nick says, "There's something wrong, there's just a green line," and Gil catches him up on the wonder of primary colors mixing to produce other shades. He also notes that the green line indicates a perfect match; Nicky eagerly picks up the ball and runs down the field with it in the wrong direction. Sara's sudden appearance, asking for Gil's help because she's got something that could be big, spares Nicky from a lecture, but he's left with the admonition that he still has work to do. As Gil leaves, Nick plaintively asks College DJ Guy, "What'd I do wrong?" Without taking his eyes off the green line, DJ replies, "I'm not going to spoil Grissom's fun; this is how he teaches all you guys." The scene fades out on Nicky looking contemplative, or confused. It's such a thin line for him.
Cut to Catherine and Warrick talking to Charles. As he's stubbornly evading directly answering the question, "Was anyone else driving your car yesterday?" a young teenaged boy comes in. "You okay, Pops?" he asks, evidently concerned for his grandfather. We learn that the boy's name is James, he's an approved driver on Charles's policy, and Catherine pulled him out of school to ask him some questions. "You like Mos Def?" Warrick asks. "Did you hit that girl with your grandfather's car?" Catherine asks, clearly eschewing the small-talk option. Something crumples in James's face and he sits down. Charles looks over at him, tense and wary. "Pops ..." Charles says. "Son." "Let me tell them what happened." "No." "They need an explanation." "They'll get it from me." Old man and young lock eyes, and James defers to his Pops. Charles spins a story about James helping him see in the car, confusion ensuing, and fear that Charles could lose his license thanks to his long track record of moving violations. It sounds patently false, but both men are sticking to it. Catherine and Warrick are not convinced, but there's not much they can do about it. They signal the police to take Charles back to his jail cell. "I'll come see you with a lawyer," James says, voice shaking. "Just not during school hours," Charles replies. James assures him that won't happen, then rejects Catherine's offer of a ride, telling her he'd rather ride the bus. We also find out that James has no other family than Pops. Oh, the writers are setting this up as a wrenching storyline, damn their dark, manipulative little hearts.
After Catherine watches James leave, she and Warrick agree that James was driving solo that night. Warrick wants to go back to the car and find the proof. Catherine is lagging; Warrick asks why. "It's just that we've got so much power in this job, and we use it to catch the bad guys. Just once, I'd like to use it to help the good guys like Mr. Moore and his grandson." "And what? Forget about little Renda Harris?" "No, what I'm saying is, putting James away isn't going to bring her back, Mr. Moore is clearly willing to do the time, and her family gets closure." In other words -- Catherine wants to fix the evidence so it's a surefire conviction for Charles. Nobody except she, Warrick, and the Moore men will know. Warrick is having none of it: "we gotta follow the evidence, even if we don't like where it takes us. You start making deals with the devil, and you don't get to walk away." Coming from someone in a corrupt judge's back pocket, that kind of rhetoric could be bitterly ironic later in the year. But I'm just extrapolating. The two partners agree to go back to the car.
Grissom is teaching young Nicky to listen to tape again and again. Nicky is not playing eager pupil, but Grissom shoos him off, then goes to talk to Catherine. He asks if she's feeling better after her birthday blowup, and she replies, "I worry that I'm making her weird. You know?" The high priest of weird replies, "No." "I work twenty-four-seven. I have no time for my friends. My daughter rarely sees me having fun. And all of a sudden, she doesn't want a party." "And that's because of you?" "I'm her mother. She mimics me." "Then she'll be fine. Look at you." After that nice moment -- and really, it is nice to see the two of them evidently enjoying a long-term friendship -- Sara comes along to ruin the fun. "Hey Grissom, could you come tape me up?" Gil looks over at Catherine; he looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "I love my work," he says. "It shows," she purrs as Gil walks off.
In the scene, Sara is sitting in Rundle's truck, one of those giant red macho numbers with plushy sheepskin seats. Hands duct-taped together, she illustrates how impossible it would be for Laura to be both bound and unconscious in the front seat of the truck. Since she's found hair fibers on the front seat and sheepskin fibers on the back of Laura's arms, she concludes that Laura was conscious and was riding in the truck willingly. Brass comes along and tells Gil that Rundle -- whose first name, it turns out, is Chip -- just got a lawyer, and is willing to make a deal. Gil tells Brass to spike the deal; he's deduced that the only thing Chip has to offer is willing accomplice Laura Garris.
Nicky's reporting back to Gil on the tape. Unfortunately, the approval he so eagerly seeks is not forthcoming; Gil curtly accepts the tape and tells Nicky to remember the experience. Nicky's face falls noticeably.
Meanwhile, back at the plotline determined to break my heart, Catherine is examining the car's front wheel, and notices a tooth chip embedded in it. She calls Warrick over to look at it; he agrees it's a tooth. "When you want a clue, you can't find it. When you don't want it, it's as big as Dallas," she says ruefully. In the scene, they're asking Charles if they can look at his teeth. "Fine, look at my teeth," he says, laying his dentures on the table. "Give 'em back when you're done." And that's about the point where I decide that recapping this blow-by-blow is going to do me in. To wrap up the rest of the plotline: confronted with the tooth chip, and clearly consumed by guilt, James confesses. Charles interjects that he's still the cause -- he always asks James to call him after dark and check in. Switch to flashback where, in the manner of many newly minted drivers in their teens, including yours truly, James is cruising along happily and listening to music at ungodly-loud levels. He remembers to call Charles, whips out the cell phone -- something your typical teenager didn't have twelve years ago when they were learning how to drive, I might add -- and is in the middle of a loving, normal conversation when some child, riding her scooter unsupervised after dark, darts out into the road without looking. Okay -- hit-and-runs are awful, and I'm not letting anyone off the hook here, but a) where the hell were the little girl's parents? And b) didn't they teach her to look to the left and right before crossing the street? In my house, we were drilled on traffic safety. I'm not saying that James isn't also to blame, since he should have pulled over to have his conversation, but that his victim wasn't exactly a model of mindful behavior.
Anyway -- kid darts out, James reacts slowly due to multiple distractions…and swerves away just a few seconds too late. Since, you know, the writers had to milk that whole "when errors in judgment turn well-meaning people into accidental murderers" plotline. He went home, told his Pops, and Charles, thinking that his boy had a bright, college-bound future until half an hour ago, decides to take the hit for his grandson. The boy's got his life in front of him, one mistake shouldn't penalize him for life, et cetera. Catherine and Warrick make some reassuring noises about the case for a lighter sentence -- what with Charles's bright future and his loving grandpa -- then regretfully charge James with felony manslaughter. Everyone heads down to lead James to his cell. Before he goes in, he puts on a front of false bravado in an effort to make his grandpa feel better, tells Charles he'll be fine, says goodbye in an extended embrace, and tries to compose himself to walk into jail. Warrick, looking like he'd rather be doing anything other than this, stops James, gives him a small pep talk, and writes his cell number for James to call anytime (a move that prompted my husband to snort, "Because the phone system in prison is so extensive," while I blubbered like an infant and shouted, "Shut ubp!"). Thus endeth the sucker-punch plotline. I hope you're happy -- writing this has made me teary again.
Back at the plotline where Bad Things Happen To Deserving People, Gil is listening to Nicky's tape when Sara comes in to tell him that Laura's blood sample is noticeably missing halothane, the presence of which should be in her blood since she was presumably knocked out with it less than forty-eight hours ago. Sara muses, "So she and Chip faked her kidnapping, which makes no sense at all..." "Because she ended up in a box underground..." Gil interjects. "With a black eye." Sara finishes. "But why?" Gil answers, "Greed."
In the scene, Laura's working that outraged-victim vibe: "That's ridiculous. I didn't even know Chip Rundle, except that he's Jack's trainer." Gil inquires as to whether or not Laura and Chip became good friends; Laura says no, then turns the Bambi eyes on her husband -- "Jack." A-ha! We now know Garris's name five minutes from the end of the show. "Jack, no!" "I believe my wife," says Jack. "Thing is," says Gil the professional killjoy, "I tend not to believe people. People lie. The evidence doesn't lie." Sara jumps in: "You and Chip made a plan to run away with your hard-earned millions" -- insert a long, meaningful look here -- "Jack. Divorce is too long and too messy. The plan was surprisingly well thought-out."
We flash to the execution of said plan -- Chip comes up behind Laura, claps a hand over her mouth, she turns around, jumps on him, and wraps herself around his beefy torso. Then the two of them carom around the house, having fabulously cinematic-looking foreplay while knocking things over. The whole set-up, from cuckolding the husband to setting up a false scene, reminds me of the movie Malice. Chip drops the cloth on the patio on the way out, Laura still clinging to his torso like a libidinous chimpanzee.
Back in the present, Sara is continuing, "You're in, you're out. On the way you made sure to drop the halothane so we'd know you'd been unconscious. A real victim. She's anything but." While she talks, Laura draws away from Jack, holding herself erect and very tense. Her expression is unreadable. She asks, "Oh, really? Then how did I end up buried alive, scared to death?"
"We're getting to that," Sara replies. She continues to sketch out the scene, hypothesizing that the two drove out of town. Chip stopped to call in the ransom message, with Laura still in the front seat of the truck. "Whatever. This is your thing," Laura replies icily. "Pay attention. It's about to become yours," Sara snipes. I'm going to take a wild guess that she never plays "good cop" in those good cop/bad cop scenarios. Gil jumps in, and sketches out the moment when she ended up in the box. Chip and Laura are bopping through the desert in flashback -- the red-tinged palette and washed-out lighting really works well with that peculiar air shimmer you see in the desert -- and he's feeding her a line about switching cars when she stumbles over the crate. She pulls back, eyes wide with sudden understanding, and turns around to look at Chip, who then punches her in the eye, a two-in-one move that renders her unconscious and gets her in the submerged crate. Gil finishes the story; we see Nicky coming in with the tape and a speaker in his hand. Laura waffles -- "I don't remember" -- and Sara cheerfully says, "Guess he figured why settle for one million when he can dump you and have two million." Jack turns to look at his wife and stammers, "L-laura?" "Jack, it's not true. I had no part in it!"
Nicky, displaying his usual impeccable sense of timing, tells everyone the super-enhanced tape is ready to play. Jack, who looks more rattled in every shot, listens to the tape. Nicky plays DJ, while Gil plays science nerd and waxes enthusiastic about the science techniques used to extract and enhance the background noise. Back in imagination-flashback -- and remember, folks, the red palette makes it different from the blue-tinged recollection-flashback -- Chip's dictating his ransom message while Laura hears a car coming. She urges, "Chip, hurry up." Gil plays the tape, pointing out Laura's enhanced vocal print.
Jack rears back, stunned. He turns to Laura and says, "You're my whole life." "Please, Jack. Your work is your life. How else do you think I started sleeping with Chip under your nose?" For someone who's benefited greatly from her husband's lucrative workaholic tendencies, Laura's remarkably short-sighted. Jack ponders the revelation that his marriage is a sham while Nicky commands the uniforms to cuff Laura. This is the third week in a row where he's gotten to play Avenger of Justice on some female perp -- does Nicky have unresolved mother issues, maybe? A profound fear of women? The Aristotelian view that women are functionally incapable of rationalizing and recognizing empirical ideals, and thus are prone to "mindless" behavior like bearing children or felony crimes? We'll find out in subsequent episodes, I guess.
As the cops are cuffing Laura, she's wildly crying out that she's got plenty of dirt on Chip, he deals steroids --oh, big surprise there -- and stolen credit cards, buries women in the desert, et cetera. Gil cuts her off with, "We already have you both. For about twenty-five years, minimum." Laura blinks in resignation, continuing the C.S.I. trend of acting though your eyelids. Gil blinks a few times for good measure too, trying to get in the last word.
Jack watches the cops load his wife into the car, and turns to Gil. "There's one thing you didn't explain in there. As soon as you dug her up, why didn't she turn Chip in?" "Preservation," Gil replies. "She rats on him, she rats on herself." The scene ends with Laura looking at Jack. He gives her a last anguished look, then strides into the house, presumably to call the first divorce lawyer he can find in the Yellow Pages. Sara, still sporting her relentless-maiden-of-justice look, sees them off.
In the last scene, Catherine and Lindsey are eating Popsicles in a park. After some lighthearted talk about Lindsey's friends making her cards, Catherine asks, "Hey, Lindsey, why didn't you want a party?" "I see my friends every day. I never have a chance to be alone with you." Oh, twist the knife in your mother's heart a little deeper, would you, kid? Catherine, momentarily stunned, replies, "Oh...wow...I really like being alone with you too. I like this more than you will ever know." Just then, a little boy goes by on his scooter. Lindsey asks if she's getting one for her birthday. Catherine replies, "When you're forty." "Mommy!" Lindsey protests. "That's not fair." "I know," Catherine says ruefully. "Life isn't fair." Which, frankly, is not the sort of thing the average six-year-old is dying to hear on her birthday -- but given that this kid is slated to turn out weird, it might be just the thing. And thus endeth another episode of C.S.I.
week on C.S.I.: Nicky and Sara entertain the possibility that perhaps fraternity pledges might be hazed by their would-be brothers. No!