Tonight's episode is brought to you by the letter A, as in "atmosphere." Boys and girls, "atmosphere" is what you get when you show several dizzying close-ups of Las Vegas casinos at night while a boy soprano and an ominous string recording moan in the background. We zoom into a plush hotel room, where a guy in his mid-forties pours himself a vodka on the rocks and drinks despondently. The boy soprano starts singing again in a language other than English, which is always a dead giveaway that something bad -- be it run-of-the-mill murder or some apocalyptic Schwarzeneggerian interpretation of the Second Coming -- is about to happen. The man and his drink take a trip into the bathroom, where the water's been running. The mirror is steamy, so our unnamed gent wipes it clean with the sleeve of his very nice white dress shirt. We see his face as he stares into the mirror. Oh my God, it's Al Gore! Or at least an actor who looks a lot like him. Al stares in the mirror with a haunted expression; the actor may be trying to convey the whole Thoreau rap on quiet desperation, but all I can think is this guy is probably vexed by dancing images of Florida's electoral college members. Al sighs deeply, then hears a noise behind him. He turns his head and his expression turns from vague malaise to specific dread.
Cut to Gil walking down a hotel corridor lit by cool, blue recessed lights. Brass greets him with, "You're going to love this." As the two men enter the swanky hotel bathroom, Brass continues: "Ring any bells? Rub-a-dub-dub, dead man in a tub, sleeping bag for easy clean-up, open window so the stench alerts the neighbors..." "It's Royce Harmon all over again," Gil says numbly. We flash to a montage of Royce's bloody hand holding a tape recorder. Gil muses, "Whaddya think, suicide note in the same place?" "You tell me, Karnak," Brass replies. Gil leans over the corpse and withdraws another microcassette recorder. Gil presses a button and a garbled message plays. Brass asks what language the message is in, and Gil replies with the obvious: the message was recorded backwards. "Would you excuse me for a minute?" Gil asks, and Brass ushers everyone out. The uniform asks if Gil's okay, and Brass provides a recap of Episode 1 for him. In the bathroom, Gil's jimmying buttons to play the message forward; I wish, for a moment, that this serial killer in the making would display a sense of humor and perhaps leave a message comprised of old Twin Peaks dialogue from the Black Lodge, but we know from Hollywood that most serial killers, in addition to possessing Martha Stewart's knack for time management and handicrafted displays, also have her obvious lack of humor. So the message merely says, "My name is Stuart Rampler. I reside at 818 Boeing Hill Court, Las Vegas Nevada. I'm 43 years of age, and I'm going to kill myself. I just can't do it anymore. I love you, Mom." Gil furrows his brow; this all sounds familiar. I do a quick check of my first recap and confirm what Gil's thinking. This suicide note is the same, word for word. Gil sighs and looks at the mirror. He gives his reflection a menacing gaze and says, "You're back."
As the credits roll, I ponder the likelihood of the serial killer actually being an alternate personality of Gil's. It would be a hell of a plot: Gil being confounded by his own alter-ego at every turn while his colleagues gradually realize what's going on. Unfortunately, the odds of this happening are pretty slim.
Gil's tearing through the lab, dispensing evidence to techs left and right, clearly disturbed. As he enters the main lab, he sees Nicky and Warrick playing Madden Football 2000 and ribbing each other as the Forty-Niners crush whatever team it is that wears the white jerseys and gold pants. I'll be damned if I know who's playing whom here: the only uniforms I can make out at a pixilated distance are the Packers and the Raiders, the latter because I live less than five miles from the Raiders' practice grounds and the former because my father is an ardent cheesehead. Gil snipes, "Do you want an assignment slip or a pink slip?" Warrick mumbles a little, and Nicky asks Gil if the killer from the Harmon case has struck again. Gil hedges, then gives them their assignment: "410, reckless driver at Hoover Dam. Car went over a cliff, anonymous caller. Could be foul play." Warrick and Nicky promptly begin alpha-male posturing, and Gil snipes at them to work with each other, not against each other. He then charges into his area, where Sara and Catherine are standing by the fridge, probably looking for a Diet Coke behind the assorted chocolate-covered cicadas and specimen jars. Gil announces that the three of them are going off the board; when Sara inquires, "Off the board?" Catherine fills her in, telling her that it's slang for working on cold cases like the Harmon one. Gil recaps episode one yet again, then shows photos from the Harmon and Rampler murders, noting that there is little to no difference in the details of the crime scene. Sara marvels that the killer is good; Catherine corrects her by noting the killer is very good, and recaps the whole latex-hand-thumbprint thing for Sara since, you know, Sara was still working for the San Francisco CSI and dealing with the dual frustrations of the country's worst housing market and Terrence Hallinan, the DA who doesn't deliver. Sara reiterates her opinion on how devious the murderer is, and Gil uses that opportunity to segue into the night's assignment: he and Catherine are going to visit the coroner, and Sara will go back to the hotel and dust the bathroom with Gil's own special print powder, Red Creeper. Sara takes the tin and marvels over how very red red creeper is, and Gil tells her, "Serious case, serious print powder."
Nicky and Warrick are walking toward a cluster of ambulances, emergency workers, and other signs of mayhem. As they get closer, they have to scream to be heard over the assorted machinery that's peeling back the doors and hood of a crumpled car. As a bunch of firemen lift off the hood, both investigators notice that the front seat is empty and the only person in the car is in the back seat. Warrick shouts, "Where's the driver?" The fireman shrugs. Nicky says, "I'm thinking DUI?" Warrick's ears prick up. "You calling it?" Nicky turns from Warrick and happens to notice something among the grass. "I'm calling that beer bottle." He goes over and uses a pencil to pick it up. "How do you know it's from the car?" Warrick asks. "It's still cold. Foam in the bottle," Nicky says, grinning. What I want to know is how that bottle managed to survive a car crash where the car went over the guard rail and tumbled several hundred yards to its eventual stop. Warrick, however, has other things on his mind.
Gil and Catherine are in the morgue. The older, bearded-and-bald guy says he's read Klausbach's report on the first staged suicide; this is scriptwriter-speak for "We couldn't get the actress back, so we'll just refer to her in the third person." He pulls out Rampler's body and points out something unusual: Rampler was shot trying to protect himself, and there's a muzzle stamp on his temple, indicating that the killer had to force Rampler into the tub at gunpoint. Gil acts out the likely scenario -- including a visit from the TMI-cam as we see the bullet go through Rampler's hands and into his living guts -- leading to Rampler's getting into the tub. Catherine notes that Harmon didn't fight back, but Rampler did. Gil replies, "We know how he gets his victims into the tubs, and we know he kills them." "That's not a bad start," Catherine replies. Yeah, but you could do better: I'd like to know exactly how the killer has intimidated two healthy, grown men into taking off their clothes, reciting a suicide note, crawling into a sleeping bag in the tub, then sitting there while they get shot. What's going through these guys' minds? Are they resigned to being shot, or do they hope that if they play along, they'll live? And how fearsome must this killer be if his victims aren't fighting back? Or is that just human nature: you come face-to-face with a nightmare, and you lose your ability to react?
Unfortunately, not only will we not find out the answers, we won't even have time to ruminate on the questions: it's time for the Warrick 'n' Nicky Hour. The two are overlooking a pristine-looking Lake Mead. Nicky's using something like a scooter to calculate the path of the car; Warrick's standing at the twisted guard rail and listening to Nicky lay out the evidence for him. After Nicky points out some widely spaced footprints and asserts that "he bailed," Warrick asks, "Who?" Nicky replies, "The phantom driver," and takes us into a green flashback -- I'm wondering if the different colors are supposed to indicate different types of speculation or recollection -- of a guy in the back seat demanding another beer of a driver, who snipes, "You've had enough." Since driving Mr. Drunky provides a handy set of distractions, the driver almost collides with a tractor-trailer, overcompensates, and ends up with the car teetering precariously on the precipice. Driver gets out, leaves the drunk in the back seat, and sprints away, thus missing the chance to see a car go ass-over-teakettle down a near-vertical slope. Warrick pokes a hole in Nicky's theory by asking where the phantom motorist has gone; Nicky answers irritably, "That's why we're here. But he left his buddy hanging out to dry, I can tell you that." Warrick points to a second set of tire tracks and replies, "Then how do you explain car number two?" Nicky replies that the car pulled over, picked up the driver, and took him to the hospital. Warrick punctures Nicky's theory some more, pointing out a second set of footprints, evenly spaced, that lead to the edge of the cliff where the car went over. He then offers his own theory: "This is a crime, not an accident." Nicky assumes gamecock posture and asks, "You care to back that statement up? My phantom driver against your criminal?" "How much?" Warrick responds. "Fifty," Nicky replies. "I don't get out of bed for less than a bill," Warrick shoots back. Yeah, you and Linda Evangelista. Nicky smiles, and the two shake on it. I notice a third set of tracks on the crime scene; it's the Gambler's Anonymous wagon, and Warrick's just tumbled off the back.
Sara walks into the hotel room with her crime-solving kit in hand and greets the detective by his last name, Evans. I'm thrilled by this introduction; this is the only detective we ever see working a case, and it's nice to know what to call him. Evans gives the backstory, answering the one question all anal-retentive viewers had: why was a Las Vegas resident staying in a hotel? The answer: Rampler rented a hotel room for only one night because his house was being fumigated. That out of the way, Sara asks if Rampler had anything unusual in the room; Evans produces a bunch of utility bills in response. He comments that it looks as though Rampler tried to wrap up loose ends before he died; Sara responds, in the same tone of voice one might use with a very slow date, that he didn't know he was going to die, so preparing his estate wasn't exactly on his list of to-dos. She flips through the bills, noting that one has an upside-down stamp. Neither she nor the detective can determine any semiotic meaning there, so she moves into the bathroom and begins using Gil's red creeper on it. As Sara works, she muses about how much she loves bathrooms, and shares the reason with Evans: "Last time I printed a hotel bathroom, I had over a thousand prints." Evans looks squeamish; he's probably calculating the impact a hermetically-sealed RV would have on his vacation budget. Sara continues to work, then instructs Evans to close the door and hit an ultraviolet light. As the rim of the tub glows red, Sara's expression grows incredulous, then frustrated. "He wiped it clean," Evans notes. "Not only did he wipe it clean, it's sterile," Sara replies. "This guy's a real pro." As opposed to all those amateur serial killers who leave a crime scene messier than they found it -- whatever. This serial killer, like so many Hollywood serial killers before him, is apparently something of an anal-retentive sort with too much time on his hands. I mean, really. It takes me a good two hours to clean my tub and you can be damn sure there are still prints on it; how long must it take to sterilize a hotel tub where, presumably, thousands of prints once lay?
Cut to commercials. Most of CBS's shows look tedious, but That's Life looks well-nigh unwatchable. I mean, the commercials for Walker, Texas Ranger and The District make it obvious that either show could be a lot of fun if you treat it like a drinking game, but That's Life doesn't even have that going for it. Mamma mia.
Back to the show: a plain-faced woman in her sixties is rebuking Gil with, "I thought you were going to tell me that you caught him." Gil tells Mrs. Harmon that they think her son's killer has struck again, and they need her help. Catherine explains how: apparently, they've played the recording for Harmon's girlfriend, and she confirmed that the suicide tape was Harmon's voice. His mother refutes this, and both investigators take turns gently telling her that they need to be certain of the voice, and they'd like to borrow anything she has with her son's voice, if possible. Mrs. Harmon falters for a moment, then finds a talking picture frame her son gave to her last Mother's Day. She brings it over and presses the button; we hear, "Hey Mom, it's Royce. I know you're always complaining you don't hear my voice in the house anymore. Well, now you can listen to it any time you want. I love you, Mom." "I love you too," she whispers, and mists up in tears while Catherine and Gil stand by.
Back at the Warrick 'n' Nicky show, the two men are walking down the hall of a hospital getting the information on the drunk in the car. "The name's Walter Bangler, he'll make it," the doctor replies briskly. We learn that Bangler's got a subdural hemotoma, compound fractures, and other contusion-type injuries related to being in a car when it goes plunging over a cliff. The two investigators look at the unconscious Bangler as the doctor -- who's doing a wonderful job of conveying how very tiresome it must be to treat people whose injuries were caused by their own stupidity -- tells them that Bangler will be unconscious for at least another twelve hours. Nicky sighs and rubs his head; Warrick leans in and notices that Bangler's tan lines reveal him to be a habitual watch-and-pinky-ring kind of guy. Nicky requests Bangler's personal effects, presumably to look for the missing hardware. Warrick shakes out a manila envelope and a thin, empty wallet falls out. "That's it?" Nicky asks, and Warrick smirks before replying, "That must have been some hell of a fall to knock his watch and his ring off, and take his money. So whaddya say, want to up the stakes another hundred?" Nicky says, "To what, a deuce?" For a crack investigator, he's pretty slow on the uptake, what with 1+1=2 and all.
Cut to a petri dish where a stamp is floating. Liam the lab tech tells Sara he's got the Rampler DNA profile ready, and all he needs is something to compare it to. Sara finishes fishing with the floating stamp and hands over a pipette full of fluid, telling Liam she'd like to find out who the licker is. All sorts of machinery whirls in time-lapse. Liam tells Sara, "According to the DNA, Stuart Rampler licked all the right-side-up stamps." Sara asks about the upside-down stamps and Liam tells her, "It came back unknown." "He's toying with us," Sara says.
Meanwhile, in the timesome, tiresome Warrick 'n' Nicky show, Warrick comes in just as Nicky's finished supergluing the entire car. Warrick asks Nicky if perhaps he's being a little extreme; Nicky, never one to underestimate the value of a dollar, replies that so far as he's concerned, the wager between him and Warrick amounts to war. Warrick tells Nicky he's checked six different medical centers, and there's been no sign of anyone who might fit the phantom motorist's profile; LVPD is tracing the 911 phone call as they speak. Nicky shares his homework with Warrick: the car was rented three days ago to Bangler. Warrick jabs Nicky: "You find his watch and ring?" Nicky replies in the negative, and Warrick begins chuckling. "My pockets are getting fat!" he exults. "No, he travels light," Nicky shoots back, perturbed. "There's only one change of clothes in the suitcase." Warrick is undaunted. "You see all that money in there?" he continues. Nicky's having none of it, and snaps, "A'ight, the fumes have settled. Give me a hand." Warrick joins him in pulling back the tarp covering the car, and both men stare at the fingerprints on the steering wheel. Nicky grins and says, "You can run, but you can't hide."
Cut to Gil and Catherine in some office made entirely of textured glass blocks. "What's a Disco Placid?" she asks. Gil tells us that Disco Placid is the improbable nom de plume of a jazz producer who does sound analysis for Gil; unlike the genre for which he's named, Disco has perfect pitch. "He's gifted!" Gil enthuses, and Catherine steels herself to meet whatever entity has earned that accolade from Gil. Cut to a skullcap-wearing African-American guy singing along to Bill Withers with great feeling. Gil and Catherine enter, and Disco rises to meet Catherine. Bill continues oozing musk in the background as Disco and Catherine exchange smoldering looks and murmur pleasantries. Gil's eyeballs ping-pong between the two; disturbed by the smell of flaming pheromones, he barges into their moment with, "How are the sound comparisons coming along?" Disco shows him: an analysis of Harmon's suicide note as compared to his message on the picture frame reveals the recordings to be from the same man. Gil looks rueful. Disco reveals another discovery: he put both suicide notes in the computer, stripped and analyzed all the tracks, and noticed something. A close listen reveals what it is: the fluttering of a script dictating what the suicide note should be.
In the scene, a pretty brunette print tech tells Warrick and Nicky about the prints in their car. They found Bangler's prints, with some specks in the whorls. Both men profess puzzlement.
Back on the Harmon/Rampler case, Sara's telling Gil and Catherine that she's dug up some interesting information on both victims: both are single white males in the forties, with an August 17th birthday, born one year apart. Catherine muses about the likelihood of a backwards pattern; Rampler (b. 1957) was born before Harmon (b. 1958), his message was recorded backwards, the stamp on the envelope was upside down. I stop to marvel yet again at the attention to detail that most serial killers on television seem to have. The investigators muse a little and Gil says, "He's sending us a message. To go forward, we must go back." After dispatching Sara to find out what happened on August 17, 1956, Gil goes to check on the print results from Rampler's mini-recorder. He asks the tech -- the same one who dealt with Warrick and Nicky -- for the results, and she complies, noting that the print is actually two overlapped thumbprints. Gil asks her to separate them and she does; the first produces a match, and the second produces the label "compliance." "How can that be?" the tech asks, and runs to the printer as Catherine says incredulously, "Compliance?" and Gil fills in, "Someone within the department." The tech looks up from her printout, obviously uncomfortable, and requests that Catherine leave the room. Gil snaps, "Anything you say to me you can say to her." The tech does: the first print belongs to Paul Millander -- the latex limb-maker from Episode 1 -- and the second belongs to Gil. Gil's jaw drops, and Catherine freaks. Eyes rolling faster than the cherries on a slot machine, Catherine rambles, "Wait a minute, somebody got a hold of your prints?" "How?" Gil demands tensely. "I wear gloves at every crime scene. I was printed for the job, we all were." Catherine continues, "Somebody's obviously making this personal. They could have got your print from a glass at a restaurant, from a latex glove you discarded at a crime scene that they're turned inside out...oh, God." Gil stares at the print screen and murmurs. "I get it. Whoever did this is telling me he's got me under his thumb."
In a much less creepy plotline, Nicky and Warrick banter leadenly over the evidence, raise their bet to $300 -- since, you know, Warrick's gambling has never gotten him in trouble before, so it's okay for him to blithely lay down money on the job -- and discuss the robbery scenario. Warrick outlines his case: the man's on vacation in Vegas, yet there's no money in his wallet; the tan lines indicate that he didn't go without his watch or his ring for too long; his face was bruised before he had his Toonces moment. We go into another green speculative flashback: Bangler, speeding down a curvy mountain highway with beer in hand, gets diverted by a guy in the road and ends up teetering on the cliff. The robber makes small talk by asking how Bangler is, then whips out a gun and demands his valuables. He punches him a few times for good measure, makes him get in the backseat and buckle up, then runs around and pushes the car over the cliff. "He lays in wait. He robs him. He tries to kill him. But he lets him buckle in?" Nicky says, effectively reading my mind about the plausibility of that little scenario. Warrick replies with the possibility that the robber didn't expect Bangler to live, and set up the scenario only so it would look like there was a second driver. The two bicker some more about the relevance of footprints and tire tracks.
In the scene, Gil's walking into a warehouse. We see his silhouette wending past assorted latex monstrosities: if a humanoid torso can be folded, spindled, and mutilated, the results have been rendered here. Classical music wafts through the air, and I instantly have a eureka moment: we're about to meet the killer. After all, in addition to their masterful attention to small details, their creation of a sinister code of semiotics and penchant for killing, all Hollywood serial killers are raging epicenes. Deep down inside, they're all dying to be recognized as criminals of culture and taste, as opposed to those mass-murdering yahoos two cells down. Gil walks into the warehouse as the strings throb with emotion; the camera pans over assorted body parts as he passes by and doves coo in the background, since no symbol is too insignificant to be omitted here. As Gil walks over to Paul Millander -- who's clad in white, natch -- the two exchange greetings and Millander says, "Hey, it-it's the forensics guy! I'm sorry, I forgot your name." Riiiiiight. Gil reintroduces himself,and the two swap banal pleasantries. Gil then asks what Millander's working on, and the craftsman shows him: a latex face, one half normal, the other half twisted into a goblin's grimace. Millander stammers, "You-you like it? I call it Good and Evil." Gil smiles, trying to put Millander at ease, and says, "Yeah. It reminds me of our supervisor on days." I snap out of the shock I went into at seeing yet another obvious symbol of the killer's tortured superego and laugh: Grissom's not above slamming Eckley. Millander asks why Gil's there; Gil tells him he's there to talk about that first staged suicide. "How's that going?" Millander asks, a little too casually, and Gil replies, "Not too good. That's why I'm here." Millander offers Gil some instant coffee, and as he bustles off to prepare their International Coffees moment, Gil begins tentatively drawing Millander into his web: "I envy you, Mr. Millander. I do. You can work by yourself. No one around to bother you. You just do what you do. No one around to bother you. At all." "It's all I know how to do," Millander replies noncommittally. "I started out doing ice carvings but the artwork never lasted." Gil chuckles and gets down to business, asking Millander for a list of his distributors, saying he wanted to track down the people who had purchased the hand via their credit-card numbers. Gil, putting aside for a moment the screamingly obvious fact that Millander's the man, consider this little factoid: someone who's smart enough to sterilize a bathroom and fake prints will not pay for a murder weapon with a traceable credit card. He'll do it with cash. Millander shoots Gil down, and finishes with, "I-I don't crunch numbers. I just spook the children." Gil, who's no slouch at creeping out the short set, says, "I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do it well." The camera pulls back to the two men in profile: Millander's bathed in the window's light, and Gil's in the dark. My eyes cross as I'm again overcome by the incredible symbolism of it all.
Warrick's a shoehorse! Who knew it? He's been flipping through a book of shoe soles, trying to match his footprints to a known shoe sole. He finally hits paydirt with Converse All-Star soles, size 11. Nicky busts his chops for not knowing what a Converse All-Star looked like, then says solicitously, "You look tired. Want me to make you a bottle, go night-night." "Want me to clack that jaw, make you go night-night?" retorts tough-love proponent Warrick. Nicky reveals his hand: he tracked down the tire prints, found out they belonged to the tires on a 1999 Bentley, and muses to Warrick, "How many people you think drive that kind of price tag." Cut to Brass: "Three. I did a DMV search. " And it turns out a Bentley was reported stolen last week, but they found the car clean last week, so no evidence.
Brass then moves on to dispense more good news in Gil's general direction: Rampler's account has had a few ATM withdrawals in the last few days. Gil notes excitedly that ATM cameras take a picture every three seconds, so they'll be able to sync up the time of the withdrawal with the images in the security camera. Again, Gil: if this guy is as good as you keep thinking he'll be, he's not going to be on the ATM's security camera. But hope springs eternal in the Grissomian breast.
Meanwhile, Nicky's swabbing Bangler's clothes, looking for the cause of the mystery blue dust they found. As they take the results to Liam, he asks, "So, what's the pot up to?" Warrick replies, "We don't bet on cases." "Sure you don't," replies Liam. "So who's winning?" Both our boys reply, "I am." "Fiends," Liam says, then tells them their blue dust is pool cue chalk. The two scurry off for another round of wild speculation, complete with physical re-enactment of the likely events. Nicky, who's still pushing for the friend bailing on Bangler, ends his hypothesis with "Like a laxative...it works." Warrick, who's still pushing for a criminal set-up, counters with, "Like a canary...it sings." Then the two have an O. Henry moment, confessing they like the other's theory better. Nicky wonders if both their theories could possibly be correct.
Cut to Gil watching the tape: a befuddled bum is being handed a stack of placards, which he displays to the camera. He's no Michael Hutchence. The images flash by: an empty hand, a dove being squeezed in a fist, a dove flying free of an outstretched hand, a rising sun behind a cloud. As the images repeat, the team discerns their meaning: "Life is like holding a dove. You hold it too hard, you kill it. You hold it too soft, and it will fly away." Catherine asks after the bum, and Gil turns the direction back to the symbolism of the flipping cards. "What does the dove symbolize?" Sara muses, finishing, "Peace." Catherine follows her lead: "I don't think it's peace in terms of civility or unrest. I think it's peace as in 'peace of mind.' What do you have to attain to have peace of mind?" She thinks for a moment, then gasps, "Justice." Gil looks like he's just had a eureka moment: "I'm going to keep doing this over and over again until I get justice." The three investigators look at each other.
Gil enters the tank where the bum is. Brass tells Gil how they found the bum -- by bribing other bums with hamburgers -- and requests of the transient, "You wanna tell him how you were approached?" "You know, I think better when I eat," the guy replies shiftily. "No kidding," Brass says unsympathetically; Gil, never breaking eye contact with the bum, says, "Jim, call the steak house at Circus. Get this guy a porterhouse." Brass twits the guy about his steak, and the bum requests it rare. Brass goes to make a retort, then shuts his mouth and continues dialing. Whatever.
Warrick and Nicky are waiting on a bench in the hall at the hospital; if we didn't know they were waiting to talk to Bangler, you'd think they were waiting to find out that they'd become fathers. The delightfully pissy doctor arrives to usher them into Bangler's room, saying, "Two minutes. That's all. Understand?" The two investigators enter Bangler's room and ask him how he is; he responds in a voice that makes Harvey Fierstein sound mellifluous. Nicky leaps into the conversation with, "I'm going to come right out and say it: what happened to you isn't right. The person responsible needs to be brought to justice. Tell me who that person is. Who was driving that car?" Warrick rolls his eyes, and Bangler looks nervous. "Who the hell are you guys?" he demands. The two introduce themselves, and Warrick pitches his theory. Over the two minutes, Bangler blows both their theories out of the water: he got hustled in pool, had to pay up with everything he owned, got bruised in the process, and left with a drink in his hand. As he rounded a bend in the road, he nearly ran into a tractor trailer; he overcompensated and the car ended up teetering on the edge of the cliff. Displaying the same knack for simplistic cause-and-effect reasoning that many drunks have, Bangler reasoned that it would be less damaging to crawl in the backseat and buckle himself in that it would be to stay in the front seat when the car plunged downhill. We see the fall from his perspective. The two detectives realize they've basically pushed on the bet, and agree there are no winners or losers. As they shake on it, Nicky's pager goes off and he says they've got to go investigate a robbery. "Double or nothing?" he says hopefully, and Warrick replies, "You're talking to the wrong guy." The two investigators lope off into the distance, another subplot wrapped up neat as a pin.
Back in the tank, the bum's just finished his steak. Gil asks him how the man approached him; the bum replies, "He walked up to me. Told me he'd give me a hundred bucks if I flipped some cards." "He pay cash?" Brass asks. "Mmm-hmmm. Hundred dollar bill." "Do you still have it?" Gil asks. The bum gives him a you've-got-to-be-kidding look. "How tall was this man?" Gil asks. Feigned dumbness on the part of the bum, then, "A hair taller." Gil asks, "What else do you remember about this man?" which prompts the bum to wax poetic: "He had a narrow chin. His eyes were blue, deep-sea blue. He had jet black hair, Spock-like ears, pointed nose, bushy eyebrows, sunken cheeks with a bad complexion, almost pock-faced. Thin as a soda-cracker and his clothes were wrinkled like he slept in them. When he spoke, he spoke with a --" "Stutter," Gil spits out. "Yeah," says the bum. "Paul Millander," Gil whispers, and then, increasing in volume, continues, "He set me up. Son of a bitch! I had him and I let him go!" The bum looks nonplussed; Gil flashes back to the scene from the pilot episode where he's interrogating Millander about the hands.
Cut to Gil and Catherine walking down the hall, talking about how Millander picked up Gil's prints from the latex hand during that first visit. Sara and Brass are following behind, scurrying to keep up. Gil instructs Sara to dig up anything she can on Paul Millander, telling her he'll be on a headset so she can contact him immediately with any information. Brass goes to rustle the troops.
Cut to Sara doing research on Millander: no address on file, no criminal record. She searches for his business, "Halloweird," and comes up blank. Catherine instructs Sara to change to a newspaper index and run a search; Sara replies, "I got something on the newspaper index. Two hotel security guards exonerated in staged suicide; boy's testimony shaky. Paul Millander, aged ten, testified that he watched in a closet while his father John was escorted by two hotel security guards into his own bathtub at gunpoint, where he was found shot to death. Official cause of death --" "Suicide," Gil finishes. "Check the date." Sara does -- "Catherine, you were right. August 17, 1959. It's a pattern." "So he was killing men that were born on the same day his father died," Catherine says. Gil looks pensive as he realizes what Millander's idea of justice is. He and Catherine pull up to the warehouse, which is empty but for a brace of doves cooing and a stool with a note for Grissom on the seat. I snicker at the stool pigeon reference; Gil and the eight hundred SWAT members behind him are a lot more somber.
Gil opens the envelope; the note is blank. "What's that mean?" demands Catherine. "We have nothing," Gil replies furious.
Back at the LVPD, a receptionist is answering phones when a male voice asks, "Is Mr. Grissom in?" "No," she replies, "he's out on assignment." The camera pulls back to reveal Paul Millander casually leaning in; a secret smile plays about his eyes. He does look creepy, I'll give him that. "Do you want to leave him a message?" the receptionist asks. "No," Millander says, the smile breaking out and traveling down his face. "Just tell him a friend stopped by." "A friend?" repeats the receptionist, either because she's trying to pry more information out of this guy or because she's amazed Gil has friends. "A friend. He'll know," Millander replies jauntily -- without a trace of a stutter -- and walks off. The focus switches to the security camera in the room's corner, and we see him walk over to the camera, smile, and give a snappy wave before exiting the police station. The camera goes black and the episode is over.