Since we're now pretending that CSI does not begin with desultory shots of Las Vegas at night, the show opens with two party girls wending their way through the side streets of Las Vegas, apparently lost. How anyone can get lost in Vegas is beyond me -- point the car at the shiny lights and drive, people -- but these two have managed, which, frankly, does not provide a ringing endorsement for their mental capacity. As they're giggling about shortcuts, the car gives a sickening thump and runs over something. The brunette in the passenger seat tells her friend to stop the car. "It was just a pothole," the driver protests. "I think you hit someone," she counters. Cut to the brake lights going on.
In the scene, the usual phalanx of accident vehicles have ringed the scene and Gil is hopping out of the CSIMobile. He walks past the party girls -- who are looking justifiably horrified -- and Sara joins him in time to hear Buzz the investigator give the exposition: "Blonde behind the wheel; girlfriend called in. Vehicular manslaughter." Um, thanks, but I like it better when Brass does it. Gil nods, looking pensive. Warrick -- who either took a separate CSIMobile or mastered the art of teleportation when nobody was looking -- is snapping pictures of the crime scene; Sara leans in and asks, "Taillight?" Yes, Sara, it is. You'd think that someone who dismantles vehicles on a regular basis would be more conversant in car parts. Gil shines his flashlight on a six-pack of "Heisler" beer and inquires, "Have you been drinking, Warrick?" No, Gil; Warrick's inappropriate behavior is confined to gambling during working hours, not consorting with call girls, or inciting cuckolded spouses to homicide. Warrick grunts in the negative: "No, man, I'm having a block party. I marked it where I found it, over in the sidewalk over there." Incidentally, that sidewalk is in Laguna Beach, California, if the websites all filling me in on the genesis of Heisler Beer are correct. Gil and Sara forego hiking to California to gaze at the sidewalk, opting instead to hover over the body on the street. Gil leans down and draws back the body's sweatshirt, then notices the tire treads arrayed perpendicularly on the body's torso. "Two distinct tire treads. One wide, one narrow," he intones, failing to add, "and how they got on the body below its layers of clothes is a mystery I will reveal only after I've made my usual attempt at pre-credits gallows humor." Sara looks at the body and drawls, "Given the extensive bruising by the wide treadmark, the victim was killed by a larger vehicle, not that compact." Gil then calls out, "I wouldn't book those suspects just yet. I think they ran over a corpse."
And with that, the weakest opening line ever, we segue to The Who. And then we cut to commercials, where I find out that Pier One has sunk to an even lower level of kitsch by employing Kirstie Alley to hawk their wares. Not that decorating in Early Thai Cathouse was ever my thing; I just think that if you're a company best known for wicker furniture, Kirstie Alley is not what you need to class up your image.
But back to the show. Gil and the gang are standing around their CSIMobile and doing a whole lot of nothing in particular when Catherine and Nicky drive up in a second CSIMobile. Nicky leans in and explains where they're off to: "We got a call about ten minutes ago, shooting at Vegas Grounds Coffee Shop, Eighth and Main, multiple fatalities..." "We want this one," Catherine interrupts. "You guys get over there. Keep me in the loop, keep the media out of it," Gil replies; Sara looks stricken that the case she's working on is only the second-creepiest case of the evening. But Catherine's not finished yet; she collars Gil and asks, "Remember about three months ago I applied for the American Academy meeting in Chicago. Well, the deadline for your approval is at the end of shift today." "It's not a problem," Gil says dismissively. Catherine's not buying it: "Well, there's important papers to be presented --" "You don't have to explain. Consider it done," Gil interrupts. Catherine and Nicky drive off to their multiple murder.
Cut to the morgue, where David the unfun coroner is standing over the body and telling Gil they've got an ID for the hit-and-run based on prints: Brian Clemonds, 22 years old, born in Las Vegas, and Deaf. "You can tell he's Deaf by his fingerprints?" Sara asks, intrigued. "Actually, yes. He was printed as part of a state aid program in '81. To confirm, I examined his ear canal." And now, the CSI-cam takes us to yet more territory unexplored in prime time: the time-lapse deformation of the malleus, one of the three small bones of the inner ear. No kidding -- we see the bones knot and turn a mottled grey-black. And for those of you who may be wondering, as I was, why the malleus matters: people who can hear do so because their malleus is hammer-shaped and thus can work with the anvil and stirrup bones to transmit the vibrations of the tympanic membrane to the inner ear. There's a much longer explanation I could give you about how the vibrations parse the frequency of sound through inner-ear membrane displacement and hair undulation, but the explanation I just provided for what the malleus does and why it matters when it's deformed is far more exhaustive than what CSI gave you. See the lengths I go to for you people?
Gil, who is all-knowing and therefore needs no explanation of the malleus, notes that there's a college for the Deaf in Las Vegas about a mile from where Brian was found. "So Brian takes a walk, crosses the street, doesn't hear the car, gets creamed," says Warrick, displaying all sorts of sensitivity and tact there. Sara picks up the thread enthusiastically: "The vehicle, probably a truck or an SUV based on the tire tread, takes off. Along comes the compact and -- thump -- runs over his dead body." David, true to his role as the unfun coroner, takes the air out of that theory by pointing out that Brian's bloodied knuckles don't have any relation to the injuries one sustains when one is hit by a car. Oh, and by the way, the blood on his knuckles probably isn't his. Gil perks up noticeably at this news. Warrick and Sara prove the elasticity of their hypothesis by positing that the fight somehow led to vehicular manslaughter. Gil asks if David's sent the blood down to the lab for DNA testing, and David replies, "When you find the suspect, you'll nail him with his own body fluid." Gil then asks if Brian's family has been notified; David answers in the negative.
Back in the B-plot, Catherine and Nicky are about to head into the shot-up coffee shop. Nicky displays his flair for homespun gibberish, commenting, "One person's dead, it's a shame. More than one, it's a party." O-kay. The two of them head into a coffee shop that resembles the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Nicky wanders over to one of the bodies, picks up the headphones of the Discman that's fallen to it -- I guess those babies really are good about not skipping tracks when they're jolted -- and listens for a moment to a Casio gone mad. "Speed metal. Couldn't hear a bomb go off over this," he comments, as the closed-caption reads, "Papa Roach. Couldn't hear a bomb go off over this." It occurs to me that nothing will be more fun than watching CSI -- a show that has memorably mangled the closed captioning by running it backward and providing dialogue that never appeared in the episode -- and trying to see how well they caption a show about a Deaf dead person. And then it occurs to me that perhaps I need to try and expand my definition of "fun."
Speaking of fun, that's Brass's cue to come in, quipping, "Welcome to the caffeine wars. I got four dead, one on the way to the hospital." The caffeine wars? He couldn't come with anything punchier, like A-froth-alypse Now? Barista Dogs? The Good, the Bad and the Latte? Catherine and Nicky continue to view the carnage before them, making nary a comment about the peril of getting between a caffeine fiend and his fix, and Catherine stops at a male body. "Hey, I know this guy," she says. Well, she must not like him, 'cause she's not all too distraught at the sight of his bullet-riddled corpse. "I bet you do. Who doesn't know Frankie Flynn? He used to own the Orpheus, lost his gambling license a few years ago?" Brass says. I check the clock to confirm that Brass has indeed fulfilled his contractual obligation to provide exposition by 9:15. Lying a few feet away from Frankie Flynn is his obviously incompetent bodyguard, Al Robson. Since the cash register is still intact -- as are the picturesque sacks of coffee beans -- Brass is positing that whoever shot up the joint wasn't interested in money or mocha. The CSI team moves behind the counter and looks down at the crumpled body of a young barista. "She's probably still in high school," says Nicky. Yeah, he's the sensitive one. Catherine and Nicky then move in the storage room and see another girl huddled by the back door. "Ahhh, bless her heart," Nicky says. Okay -- we get it. Give him any more of a bleeding heart, he'll be a hemophiliac; then where will your crime scenes be? Catherine tries to outline the probable string of events: "If it was a hit, the shooter followed Flynn through the front door, shot the muscle first, then Flynn, then some poor kid minding his own business. The girls were last. Four dead, one still alive." Just then Brass's beeper goes off; make that five dead. Make me irritated and confused: what kind of a hitman goes hog-wild and takes out the baristas?
Ah, it's Gil, the bearer of bad news. He's at the Clemonds house, telling Mrs. Clemonds he's with the Las Vegas crime lab. "Crime lab?" she asks, dread trembling in her voice, and he replies, "May I come in?" Well, if she didn't know what was up before, she surely does now. As Mrs. Clemonds closes the door, Gil notes the large school bell set close to the floorboards; Mrs. Clemonds notices him looking at it and begins to explain what it does when he cuts her off: "The bell sends vibrations, which reverberate on the floorboards so he knows that someone's at the door." After that moment -- one in which we, the viewers at home, can wonder if Gil's encyclopedic knowledge extends to the adaptive technologies many Deaf people use, or if this is all somehow related to the secret about Gil this episode will reveal -- Gil delivers the bad news. Mrs. Clemonds, understandably, does not react well. "This is my fault. When I was pregnant, I had the German measles [rubella] and the virus took away his hearing." Gil rushes to assure her that Brian's death is not her fault, which would be good and all, except Gil's definition of "reassurance" is to say, "We think he might have been murdered." Exactly who is that supposed to comfort, Gil? "Would you like to talk to a family services counselor?" Gil asks, and Mrs. Clemonds laughs bitterly, telling him, "Talking is overrated, Mr. Grissom." I think we've found our theme for this evening.
Cut to the morgue, where David the unfun coroner justifies his joyless perspective: "It's been a hell of a night. First the Deaf kid, now the hit. It's going to take a while to process all these bodies." Catherine has no pity. "What do you know about Flynn?" she asks. "I always start with the celebrities," he replies, proving that even unto death, the beautiful people get all sorts of perks we hoi polloi will never know. Long story short: gunshot wounds to the head and stomach; the shooter could have spared the ammo given that Flynn was on a fast track to death, courtesy of the invasive colon cancer he was suffering. They move on to the little people, namely one twenty-year-old Erin McCarty. "I wonder if she even knew she was pregnant," David muses. I wonder why we need to know that, and then I realize that the writers have just revealed the ending to the case. I honestly don't know why I bother sometimes. Catherine, however, has to pretend she doesn't think this information is particularly pertinent, and so we find out young Erin was living at home with her mom and she was six weeks along. Catherine, if I were you, I'd see if Mama McCarty has a .357; I know if I had been single and pregnant at age twenty, my mother would have killed me before anyone else could do the job. But that avenue goes unexplored; Catherine just shakes her head in a manner calculated to suggest that maybe, just maybe, she hooked up with Eddie the duplicitous pancake-making bastard after she was a little pregnant too.
Back at the crime scene, Nicky's snapping photos and taking swabs. He's also digging bullets out of the wall while Brass notes, as I did earlier, that Robson the bodyguard clearly wasn't doing his job. Brass is then summoned by some nameless uniform to talk to the coffee shop manager, Brian Kendall. Kendall looks nervous -- no doubt wondering how he's going to explain this one to his insurance company without mentioning the words "Starbucks" and "vicious market tactics." The point of this scene is to set him up as the caring manager, especially when he asks after Erin and Alice (the other young barista) and replies to the news with, "I can't believe they're gone."
The day, we're at the unnamed college for the Deaf in Las Vegas. Sara and Warrick are in the president's office with a sign interpreter. As Sara says, "Dr. Gilbert, we need your help," the interpreter signs along. At least, I hope that's what she's doing; it would have been nice for the show to provide those of us who don't know American Sign Language (ASL) with an interpretation, especially since ASL has some really neat idioms that don't neatly map to spoken English. The camera pulls back on Dr. Gilbert -- a thirty-ish woman with a pissy, pissy expression and the most frightening eyebrows I've seen on anyone outside of Peter Gallagher. "Brian Clemonds was murdered," Sara says to the interpreter; Dr. Gilbert's eyes narrow in irritation. Warrick leans forward and asks Dr. Gilbert, "Was he having any difficulties?" before settling back to watch the translator. I don't blame him; a few months ago, I had to cover a high-tech speech given by one of the computer industry's better-known megalomaniacs, and the whole time he was speaking, I kept watching the ASL interpreters on stage, looking for some indication that perhaps they had foregone the speech and were signing, "The man's madder than a March hare! He has a complex system of tunnels built below his company headquarters so he can escape from his enemies! He spends his evenings ranking his enemies in order of importance and rolling around on stacks of unmarked Benjamins!" But I suspect Warrick and Sara are simply watching the interpreter because they're curious, and feeling a little helpless over their perceived inability to communicate effectively with Dr. Gilbert. Sara continues her bass-ackwards method of questioning, and Dr. Gilbert says, "I'm severely deaf and I can communicate fine. I'd appreciate it if you look at me when you speak to me. I wear a hearing aid, and I can read lips. You could have asked if I needed an interpreter." Okay, I can see where she might be irked at the way Sara's handling herself, but the interpreter might be there for procedural reasons, not because Sara and Warrick mean to slight Dr. Gilbert. Sara, to her credit, looks Dr. Gilbert in the eye and says, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you." That horse has left the barn: Dr. Gilbert barrels on, saying, "There are 152 students at my school. We live together. We study together. We eat together. We're a family, and Brian is dead." Cut to Warrick -- who is having a mighty good wardrobe day in a blue shirt that brings out his eyes -- who says, "Dr. Gilbert, we're just trying to follow protocol here. We'll need to talk to his friends --" "See his records," Sara jumps in, her zest for crime-solving obliterating any cultural sensitivity she may have picked up in the last ninety seconds. "The crime didn't happen here. It happened out there!" Dr. Gilbert replies, and Sara counters that she's not accusing anyone; she just wants to solve the case. "Send someone else, someone with more understanding of this school, of my students," Dr. Gilbert commands. Warrick tries to reason with her, pointing out that evidence is time-sensitive and they're here now, but Dr. Gilbert won't let a little thing like solving the crime that occurred "out there" get in the way of her cultural crusade, and she kicks them out by angrily signing to the interpreter. Warrick and Sara look panicked at this, which is precisely the intended effect.
And now, a digression, since it's been some three thousand words and I have yet to veer off into something only marginally relevant to the episode: between the bungled investigation of the robbery/murders that took place at Gallaudet University last fall; the ongoing controversy in the Deaf community over the impact of cochlear implants in Deaf children and whether the technology constitutes an invasive attempt to wipe out Deaf culture; and the wonderful book Train Go Sorry, in which Leah Hager Cohen revealed the multivariate experiences students had at the Lexington School for the Deaf -- well, CSI had a wonderful opportunity to illustrate some of the debates within the Deaf community and the idea that hearing people are not all that and a bag of chips, and what they'll probably do instead is point out that, oh, there are huge communication obstacles but Deaf people really aren't that different from those of us debatably lucky enough to be able to listen to Eminem. Okay -- digression over. Those of you who surf these things only because you want to find out what happened on the show can resume reading.
Anyway, Sara and Warrick flee the splenetic Dr. Gilbert and her hypertrophied eyebrows, drive back to CSI Central, and promptly run into Gil. "How'd it go at the college?" he asks. "They're not cooperating," fumes Sara. "We didn't have a warrant so she kicked us out," explains Warrick. "What did you do?" Gil asks incredulously. Sara replies, "What did we do? We met with the president" -- "superintendent" in the closed-captioning, I'll have you know. No wonder Dr. Gilbert's pissed; she's seeing a different show than the rest of us -- "She was kind of hostile," Warrick says tactfully. "Like it's our fault we can hear," Sara says, less than tactfully. Get the woman a copy of Seeing Voices; A Journey into the World of the Deaf, stat. Gil gets a steely look on his face and says, "All right. Let's go."
Back on campus, Gil is steering Sara and Warrick back to the admin building. He barges on in to Dr. Gilbert's office and introduces himself, noting, "You kicked my people out of your office." "Well, I'm kicking you out too," she says, still determined to make sure nobody solves this crime. And then Gil busts out the sign language, giving an impassioned little speech while, presumably, saying approximately the same thing in ASL: "Your student is dead. Don't you want to know who's responsible? I do." Warrick and Sara give each other the universal sign for "Will wonders never cease?" Dr. Gilbert knits her formidable brows and says, "Your people can't solve this crime." Gil signs back, "Why? 'Cause they can't understand the victim? Help them understand." She's having none of this cross-cultural outreach: "When a Deaf person meets a hearing person, the hearing person just says, 'I am normal, you are not.'" Gil replies, "Is that what you think I'm saying? A student is dead. Maybe you feel responsible. Maybe you're angry. But don't be angry with us. We want to help you." Dr. Gilbert decides now would be a good time to drive a tough bargain, saying, "If I agree to cooperate, you will include me in your investigation?" Oh, why not? She seems like such a people person! Having sufficiently placated Dr. Gilbert, Gil asks for the file, and we cut to him standing in a records room while Dr. Gilbert says, "I did nothing wrong." By "nothing," we learn, she means, "failed to move Brian away from his violent, misplaced-anger-having roommate Paul Arrington, despite Brian filing six complaints." We find out that Paul's anger is due to having lost his hearing less than a year ago; Gil asks to speak to Paul, and Dr. Gilbert says that Paul neither reads lips nor signs -- leading me to wonder exactly how freakin' useful it is to have him at a school where those are two of the primary means of communication -- and getting through to the angry young man will be a challenge. Gil replies, "You don't need to hear or speak to communicate, or to commit murder."
Gil, Sara, and Warrick are lounging outside the fishbowl, waiting for an interrogation to take place. Sara says to Gil, "So, you gonna tell us where you learned to sign?" "No," says Gil, cutting her dead. Sara, if you want an answer to your questions, learn not to ask yes-or-no formats. It would also help if you didn't call Dr. Gilbert "a wack job," accurate observation or no. Gil replies, "Sara, you see deafness as a pathology. For Dr. Gilbert, her deafness is not her handicap, it's her way of life." Sara stammers, "I think you might be siding with her," and Gil replies, "As long as you see it as us versus them, you're going to have a lot of problems on this case." Very nice, Gil. Now be sure to pass that along to all the folks who prefer to see the world in Deaf-versus-Hearing terms. Dr. Gilbert comes in with Paul Arrington, and Gil escorts them into the tank for the interrogation. Sara and Warrick watch outside; she snits to him, "What was that all about? Grissom signs." "Do you know what he drinks when he goes out?" Warrick replies. "He goes out?" Sara asks. "Exactly," Warrick responds. "Who knows anything about that guy?" Sara looks pensive; clearly, she's dying to find out more about Gil. The two CSIs then get distracted by the cool science toy: Gil is attaching a headpiece to Paul for a visual polygraph, which apparently logs his brain waves and checks for abnormal oscillations. Gil does a few test photos to see what Paul recollects, then begins flashing photos of the crime scene. Dr. Gilbert looks horrified -- leading me to wonder what exactly she expected when she asked to be included in the investigation -- and reaches out to comfort Paul. As she turns to go, Dr. Gilbert snipes, "If you want to find the killer, look outside the school."
Cut to Gil staring at the assorted oddities in his office. The scene is incredibly quiet; as Catherine comes into the room and begins mouthing his name, it becomes apparent that he's got industrial-quality earplugs in his ears. Catherine screams his name -- it comes through very muffled -- and he pulls out the earplugs; we immediately hear all the ambient background noise that CSI Central generates. "Sorry, I was thinking," he tells Catherine. She looks puzzled, and I strain mightily not to go for the obvious response there. "About what it's like to be deaf?" she asks. "About what it's like to hear," he replies. Ah, that Gil, always looking at the world in his own unique way. Anyway. Catherine harangues him about the paperwork he promised to do -- and which he admits to forgetting -- for the American Association meeting in Chicago: "You missed the deadline. No Chicago for me. This is the one meeting I needed to attend. I don't always want to be second banana. I can probably do your job; I know that I can do Eckley's --" "I forgot," Gil says again, continuing, "I am so sorry." He looks genuinely remorseful; it's a whole new look for him. I'm liking this scene, if only because it actually shows how he and Catherine have a long friendship backing their working relationship. Catherine's face softens a little and she says, "Make sure you submit the paperwork by the end of the day." "I thought you said it was too late?" Gil replies. "Well, I knew you'd forget. So I upped the deadline, added a buffer. Don't forget again." Gil looks like he can't decide if he's relieved not to have blown the deadline, or dismayed that she knows him that well.
Sara and Warrick are now dealing with the evidence that does not require any involvement from abrasive Dr. Gilbert -- she's looking at tire treads from Brian's torso that she's photographed and scanned so she can match them against a tread CD database of over 11,000 treads. Warrick is looking at Brian's clothes and he notices...lice. After establishing that a) Brian did not have lice, and b) there were no stray hairs on him, Warrick concludes that Brian's attackers had lice. Gil sweeps by to check on his troops, and Warrick pings him on the lice; our entomological genius is unsurprisingly unhelpful. Before Warrick or Sara can say, "Hey, Bugman, where's your powers of deduction now?" The Lab Tech Formerly Known As Liam, Yet Whom I Cannot Bring Myself To Call Greg Yet (TLTFKALYWICBMTCGY, or TLTFKAL for short) caroms into the room and asks Gil to come on down because he's found something good. He then prepares to sprint back to the lab, but takes a moment first to make large, melting goo-goo eyes at Sara. She nods and smiles, as if to say, "Yeah, I'm the CSI Pin-up. Whaddya gonna do?" Gil tells her to stay on the treads, and collects Warrick.
And now...now is where I make a crucial narrative decision. Oh, we've been having a lot of fun with lengthy descriptions of assorted scenes, and my little digression back there, and it's a loquacious barrel of laughs. But I just looked at the clock, and I have to catch a cross-country flight in four hours, and I've yet to pack, so I'm gonna have to employ some brevity here. Because, really, these recaps are as much about me as they are about CSI, right? Feel free to help me maintain that delusion. Anyway, I'm going to employ some brevity when it comes to the plotline about which I could not care less: the coffee-shop shooting. You can't blame me for not caring -- I figured out the motive and the suspect twelve minutes into the show. So, here's my new, brief recap of this scene: Catherine and Brass investigate a red herring, i.e. Brian Kendall used to be a waiter at Jimmy Flynn's casino and he has a nine-millimeter Glock. I move on.
TLTFKAL is dragging Gil and Warrick to his lab, assuring us all that he is the man. Warrick and Gil indulge him by making a few reasonable guesses about why TLTFKAL is the man -- all of which are variations on the "you actually did your job and we will reap the benefits" -- before TLTFKAL tells them the wonder he has wrought: a glowing blue pigment called pyoverdin. "Pyoverdin!" Gil exclaims, then goes on to fill the rest of us in: "a pigment excluded by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is a bacteria occasionally found in the bloodstream." Or, more commonly, in bodies of water, soil and certain plants and animal tissue; I actually did my undergraduate research in aquatic microbiology, and P. aeruginosa was one of the organisms I remember dealing with extensively. But that has nothing to do with this scene, other than to establish that the killer could be hosting the bacteria for any one of a number of reasons. Warrick testily points out, "So our killer's a glow stick?" "Haven't I done enough for one day?" TLTFKAL replies. Sara rescues him right then by excitedly telling everyone that she matched the partial serial number of a taillight found at the scene to the tread, and they've got a vehicle: a Ford Explorer -- a P235-75 -- and as luck would have it, only one Ford Explorer P235-75 is registered in Las Vegas.
Dr. Gilbert is back at CSI Central, asking Gil if he really did find the car that ran over Brian. Yup -- the SUV's registered to 18-year-old Adam Walkey, no priors. "I promised to keep you informed," he says. "You kept your word," she replies. It's only 9:32, so let's see if Gil's record remains unblemished.
Back in the "It's Lousy to be Me!" portion of the investigation, Warrick is running a magnifying lamp over the SUV's driver's seat and seeing lice everywhere. He'd better not lean too close; it's not terribly hard to catch lice, even little computer-enhanced ones like the ones we're seeing. Sara looks up from watching Warrick's voluminous coif waver ever-closer to the Lice Zone to see Grissom escorting Dr. Gilbert through the garage. "So that's why Grissom's late," she says speculatively. "You just don't like other women in his life," Warrick replies. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," she replies. Oh, it's a funny, 'cause it's about a Deaf woman and...actually, it's not very funny at all. Gil, Sara, and Warrick all make an elaborate show of assuring an almost-pleased looking Dr. Gilbert that they have a suspect.
Cut to the suspect, looking somewhat panicked. Adam Walkey's attack lawyer is busy spouting out about the Fifth Amendment and Gil smoothly cuts in with, "I don't need him to talk. I just want his blood." Hee! The requisite warrants are produced, and Gil taps a vein and searches young Adam for lice.
Back at the plot to which I am utterly indifferent, Nicky and Catherine basically replay the what-if scenario -- complete with laser paths -- that they deployed earlier this season. I recapped it then; I don't have the willpower to do it twice. Long story short: the men weren't the first people killed, but the last, which blows the hit-men-stroll-into-the-shop-and-blow-it-away theory.
Gil, Sara and Warrick are walking through the halls of CSI Central, bemoaning Adam's lice-free condition. TLTFKAL pops up again to let them all know that Adam is, however, infested with P. aeruginosa, so it doesn't look good for him. TLTFKAL starts the DNA comparison they'll need to hold Adam, and Warrick comments, "It's just like Dr. Gilbert said: the killer came from out here." "Dr. Gilbert can afford her personal bias. We can't," chides Gil, foregoing a golden opportunity to talk about the perceptions the Deaf community has about the hearing because it might mean talking about himself. He then tightens the screws, noting that they won't be getting any convictions on the strength of glow-in-the-dark bacteria.
Plot where I couldn't care less: Nicky and Catherine are confirming that when a twenty-year-old girl lives at home with her parents -- and ostensibly doesn't date -- being pregnant can be a problem. "If the guy was Mr. Right, she would have told her folks, which means he was Mr. Wrong," Catherine says. In Las Vegas? What're the odds? Nicky and Catherine head down to the morgue to grab the fetus for a DNA sample.
Meanwhile, Sara and Warrick are doing what they do best: dismantling a car. More specifically, they're dismantling an SUV. Sara notices a piece of Brian's sweater caught on the muffler; Warrick processes that information and says, "There's no way this car was moving forward when it hit Clemonds. "Who drives backwards on a downtown street?" Sara asks.
Gil is doing the Interrogation Tango with Adam and his attack lawyer. After announcing that they're going for first-degree murder, Adam's attack lawyer lets Adam make a statement. The statement he makes: "I may have hit something." Gil is as underwhelmed as the rest of us, and promptly cuts through the vague disclaimers by pointing out that the vehicle is infested with lice, the victim's sweater had lice on it, and yet, Adam is parasite-free. So who was in the SUV with him? Just as Adam is giving up the name of Mark Rucker, Dr. Gilbert bursts into the office, saying, "I want to see him. I want to see the coward that killed Brian!" I'm pretty sure what she's doing is an excellent way to throw a case on some sort of technicality, but again, we've already established that Dr. Gilbert is all about going on a cultural crusade as opposed to actually assisting in solving the crime. Dr. Gilbert continues, "What happened? He scare you? Talk a little funny? Make a lot of noises? Scream? Or maybe he just looked at you the wrong way!" "Get away from me!" Adam yells, moderately freaked out that this woman is busy shouting in his face. I'm freaked out too -- up close, those eyebrows are even more distracting. It's looking at Bert's long-lost Muppet cousin. "You make me sick," she signs as she goes, and Adam rolls his eyes in response. Gil steers her out, looking pretty pissed. "You offered to help with my investigation and now you're compromising it!" "You found the killer," she replies. "Who says it was a hit-and-run, not murder! He has a witness," Gil replies, ever the investigator considering all the angles. "Who will lie for him!" Dr. Gilbert replies. Gil pushes his point: he got Adam to give up his witness (Mark), and now Mark is the other suspect.
Plotline I-don't-care: ballistics has figured out the deal with the gun, namely that the barrel's been replaced. To quote Nicky, "Son of a bitch swapped the gun barrel out?" Well, yeah. And now they've matched the ammo to Brian Kendall's ammo. Speaking of shooting -- blanks and otherwise -- Catherine is engaging in one of her favorite pastimes: interrogating an adulterer about his transgressions. Brian Kendall is denying everything vigorously until Catherine asks for his DNA and Brass backs her up with a court order. Brian begins modifying his story.
And now we meet Mark Rucker, who has waived the right to counsel in exchange for the chance to hang with Gil. Mark's talking tough until Gil says, "I have just one question: does your head itch?" Then the panic sets in and Mark says, "Do I have to answer that?" Gil combs some nits and lice out of his hair -- eew -- and uses the evidence to get Mark to admit to what happened. "Well, it was around midnight and we were listening to the radio..." and then we are taken into a flashback that plays like a live-action episode of Beavis and Butthead as Adam and Mark argue over the radio station, and spend so much time doing so that they ignore all signs that they've mowed down a human. "And that's the truth," Mark says. Gil informs him that the evidence says otherwise; Mark rolls his eyes. Gil breaks it down for him: "Do you know what lice eat? Blood. I'm pretty sure I can prove that the lice on Brian Clemonds came from your head." Mark tries to modify his story a little to explain the lice; again, Gil is not buying it. "Let me tell you what I think happened: you and Adam saw Brian walking out of a liquor store. You're underage; maybe you want him to front you some beer. Brian doesn't respond. Then you got out of the car. You started taunting him, and then everything escalated. The blood on the victim's knuckles led us to Adam...stray hair led to lice, which brings us to you. It would have ended there, but as you were driving away, something caught your attention. You backed the car up and your took off." We see a flashback of the poor, battered, and still alive Brian getting up; he's yelling incoherently as the closed captioning reads, "Please don't hit me, please don't hit me." So Rick throws the SUV into reverse and puts the pedal to the metal. Back in the tank, Rick is finally realizing that he might need a lawyer. Gil gets ready to launch into a tirade, but the arresting officer reminds Gil that the interrogation's over because Rick's requested counsel. "Fine. Just this: you want to know why Brian Clemonds ran away from you? It was dark, you were shouting at him, and he didn't understand what you were saying. Brian Clemonds was deaf. He was afraid of you." Rick has a big ol' "huh?" moment as the implications hit him. Gil continues, contemptuous and implacable: "But you were more afraid of him, weren't you?" We get it: fear and ignorance kill.
Last gasp from the plot that will not die: Nicky points out how the spent ammunition at the crime scene matches Kendall's ammo stash. He came to kill Erin and got a little carried away. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement for gun control right there.
Gil is sitting in front of a fountain with Dr. Gilbert -- who, for the president of a college, appears to have an abundance of free time -- and explains what happened to Brian. She sadly notes that they killed him because he was different, then tells Gil, "You don't see us as different." "You're not," he replies. I bite down on the comments to be made about culture as being an inherently divisive entity, and figure that y'all can refer to my digression above. The camera swoops around in Rotat-o-vision, and Dr. Gilbert replies, "Who taught you to sign?" Gil smiles fondly and says softly as he signs, "My mother." "Tell me about her. And use your hands; you're a little rusty," she says, smiling. Gil does, and episode ends with the two of them carrying on a graceful, animated conversation.
week: Gil and company investigate what happens when joggers and mountain lions meet.