Over the cliffs and through the dunes, to Brentwood we will go. Kidding! We're apparently in Las Vegas. You remember Vegas -- lush, green Vegas, where the emerald carpets of grass roll beneath a verdant canopy of trees? Right? Anyway, a garderner's truck pulls up, the gardener pops out -- Big Gulp in hand -- and gathers together his tools to begin the task of taming the dense native foliage of desert Nevada. If you ask me, his talents are wasted: if he can do this kind of landscape work using only a few gardening tools and a millionaire's payroll, imagine what he'd do with, say, Mars. NASA has much better toys and a much bigger budget. Two big beautiful yellow labs greet him at the truck -- evidently not a normal occurrence -- and he walks through the open gate to the patio door where the dogs are stationed, baying their little canine hearts out. He peers through the blinds and registers a pair of inert legs laying on the floor. Fortunately, the legs are attached to a boxer-shorts-wearing body (hey, with this show, never assume anything); unfortunately, the legs and body appear dead.
Cut to an exterior shot of the mansion, or, as we'll be referring to it for the duration of this recap, the crime scene. Catherine strides through the crowd, CSI equipment kit in hand, looking very businesslike as she enters the house. I reflexively begin looking for Brass, or, as we'll be referring to him for the duration of my recapping career at Mighty Big TV, Captain Exposition. Instead, Catherine nearly trips over Gil; a burly plainclothes officer raises a cautionary hand and she peers down to see Gil lying on the floor, peering intently while he surveys a few square inches with a penlight. In daylight. Anyway, Gil raises a latex-gloved hand to Catherine in the universal "shush" sign, she squats down to see what he's found…and we're all sucked in as we learn that Gil has been looking for a missing contact lens for the detective.
That little errand dispatched, Gil and Catherine walk toward the body. Catherine provides us with a little backstory: the house belongs to Tony Braun, son of Vegas business giant Sam Braun. As she's speaking, the camera pans over family portraits. Gil cracks, "He was Steve Wynn before Steve Wynn." "You bet your ass," responds Catherine, who it appears has usurped not only Brass's role as Captain Exposition, but also his back-up duty of delivering the episode's most vaguely profane lines. "Sam came to Vegas when Vegas was dying. Built three casinos in a year. Had ties to Bugsy Siegel." Gosh, Catherine's up on her local business titans. Why, oh, why do we suppose that is?
In the meantime, Brass finally makes his long-anticipated appearance, gushing with praise for the observational skills of the gardener. Who is this man and what have they done with Captain Exposition? As Brass talks, we see Tony's body lying on the floor. Gil hunkers down, notes the empty pill bottle by the body's inert fingers, and says, "It all seems very neat and peaceful, doesn't it?" Catherine registers the half-empty wine glass and the sheet of foil crushed into a vee and says, "Chasing the dragon." I immediately begin snorting -- owing to a chance viewing of a Lifetime movie of that same name, starring Markie Post as a soccer-mom junkie, I now associate the phrase "chasing the dragon" with jittery divorcees shooting up in minivans. Someone needs to invent a tough new street phrase for indulging in heroin and heroin byproducts.
Anyway, Catherine gives us all a recap on how to take heroin, and Gil notes that apparently Tony chased it with a couple dozen Xanax. "So the rumors about Tony-boy are true," Brass begins. "Drug overdose," Catherine continues. "If only life were that simple," Gil opines, and we go to the credits. I am sorry to note that, despite reports of their having been added to the cast, neither Liam the Lab Tech nor David the Unfun Coroner appears in the opening credits.
When we resume the show, Gil is still kneeling beside Tony while Sara snaps photos. She hands off the film to a random crime scene tech and orders, "Eight rolls, two copies. This is hot; put a rush on it." She then hunkers down to Gil, looks intently at the carpet, and picks up an earring back with a pair of tweezers. Man, that's a handy skill to have; Sara needs to come over to my place some time. Gil registers her find, then notes that Tony has adhesive on his wrists. The two of them conclude that Tony had company, and then Sara asks the question we've all been waiting for: "A guy ODs, where's the body fluids? Urine, vomit, excrement…" Gil muses, "Did somebody clean him up?" See, it's logistical details like that that separate your typical killer from a perfectionist. Well, that, or maybe it wasn't an overdose. Sara sweeps her flashlight over Tony's torso, noting three small red marks, and comments, "Interesting love bites on his chest." "Curious, isn't it?" Gil agrees in a dreamy voice. Oh, that's a new tone. Are we to infer that he and Sara have been having an extended dialogue of the nature of love bites? Sara shoots him a look and then notes that the body is posed. She asks Gil when he figured this to be a homicide as opposed to your run-of-the-mill accidental overindulgence in wine, heroin, and Xanax; Gil replies, "When I saw the TV on."
Outside, Nicky and Catherine are fussing over the dogs. Catherine comments that she wouldn't leave such lovely canines running about unsupervised; Nicky replies dismissively, "You're talking about a dog owner on heroin. How responsible can he be?" Ummmm, responsible enough to hire a dog walker? He had a gardener, for heaven's sake; I imagine he also had the financial wherewithal to retain someone to keep the dogs from bothering him while he was chasing the dragon. Catherine continues in her role as Madame Exposition by pointing out that, according to the gardener, this one morning was the first time in five years the gate had been left open. She thinks that that observation, plus the lack of signs of forced entry plus a dead body, equals something significant. She just can't articulate what.
Yay, it's Warrick! He's looking beleaguered, of course, as he surveys a bureau-top festooned with assorted drug-taking paraphernalia. "A heroin addict's confetti. Must have been going on a binge," he muses to the silent plainclothes investigators behind him. He then peers into the balloon and, thanks to the miracle of TMICam, we do too. "Black tar heroin," Warrick continues, explaining the dark and sticky residue on the inside of the balloon. "This is the difference between a Cadillac and a Pinto." As Warrick comments on the plentitude of drug props in the room -- and the paucity of evidence to explain how a dealer would have gotten in -- Jerry Stahl's name flashes on the credits. A nice little example of timing; I wonder if it's on purpose. Brass comes in and asks Warrick if he can get a print of those balloons; Warrick turns around and says confidently, "I can get a print off of air."
Down in the kitchen, Sara's digging through garbage cans for evidence. She dumps out the kitchen can again and notices a box of saltines with -- surprise! -- duct tape inside. Well, that's handy. On the outside of the house, Nicky's scoping out the side door and its embedded doggie door, preparing to fingerprint them. I'm going to assume that this scene will eventually bear fruit and move on with the show by jumping to the morgue. Gil walks in on David the unfun coroner peering at the sole of his shoe. Oh, sure, it doesn't sound all that remarkable when I write it like that, but consider this: the shoe is still on his foot, he's sitting down, and his foot is currently perpendicular to the ceiling. As Gil greets him, David swings his foot back into a normal position, thus ending this week's episode of "Fun With Prosthetics," and immediately launches into the post-mortem of Tony: "His lifestyle was no secret -- sex, drugs and a big bankroll." He continues by saying, "Whatever he did went up his nose; his nasal cavity looked like raw hamburger." On cue, the TMICam provides ample visuals. Eeeeew. Gil notes the abrasions around Tony's mouth and snidely asks, "Hard to shave when you're stoned?" David doesn't exactly dispute his hypothesis, but he also adds that such marks may also be a result of someone placing an object over someone's mouth and smothering them. Gil leans in and notes, "Petechial hemorrhaging…also a sign of suffocation." David plays devil's advocate, noting that petechial hemorrhaging (burst blood vessels in the eyes, for those of you who only now began playing along at home and missed last year's Festival Of Forensic Factoids) can also happen under innocent circumstances. David and Gil continue to banter over the corpse. "It's hard to OD on just inhaling heroin. I know he was restrained, which leads me to believe someone forced him to ingest lethal amounts of heroine and Xanax," Gil says. We shall see.
Back at the scene of the crime, uniformed officers are festooning the front porch with police tape when a low-rent blonde comes barging in, braying, "Boy, are you lucky my lawyer's on a golf course. I've been standing out here in this heat for hours answering stupid questions. Here's your answer: this is my house." "Who is this?" Catherine asks. "It's Braun's squeeze. She's an ex-stripper too. Perhaps you two met in a professional capacity?" Brass replies. Oh, that's priceless. Catherine asks where this woman has been for the last twelve hours, and Brass says, "Quote, out, end quote." Welcome back, Brass. We've missed you. As Catherine and Brass continue to scope the tart, she videotapes what's going on, probably as evidence for whatever civil suit she will inevitably file against the LVPD for pain and suffering later. She just has that look about her. Janine (the blonde's name) begins copping an attitude with Brass and Catherine; Catherine responds by beginning to fingerprint her.
Catherine takes off from the crime scene -- and, presumably, Janine -- and heads for a casino. She asks the desk clerk if she can see Sam Braun; the clerk replies politely that Sam isn't seeing anyone right now. "Can you tell him Catherine Willows is here to see him?" Those are apparently magic words; Sam comes right down, looking quite bereft. He looks at Catherine a moment, then says, "Mugs?" Catherine turns around and hugs him tight. Cut to the two of them walking through the casino, Catherine's hand on Sam's arm, with him saying, "I remember the first time I saw you. You didn't have any clothes on." I bet she hears that a lot. Catherine replies, "That was a long time ago." Sam continues fondly, "I would have taken you home with me right then, if I could have." Catherine gives him a look that's no less fond and says, "I know, but you were married! And I was a baby! It would have never worked." That little moment -- which is, going by the looks on their faces, something of a running gag -- over, Catherine asks Sam how he's holding up. I ask the heavens why in God's green Las Vegas Catherine is still permitted to work on the case if she's got personal ties. ["Seriously. It's not the first time, either." -- Sars] Before Sam can reply, some punk who looks like he should be off cheating on his GMATs comes over and complains to Sam -- his father -- that the pesky press has descended, thus throwing valet parking into disarray. Sam shoos him off and walks Catherine over to a quiet corner of a casino bar. Sam shares a little anecdote, then says tremulously, "You know, even when Tony was juicing, he could run circles around these college Harvard types. And I'm not saying that just 'cause he was my kid. Tony was the best damn casino exec this town has ever seen, and just between you and me, I couldn't hold a candle to him. And now he's dead." Catherine nods, looking teary, and says, "Sam, the bigger the pedestal, the bigger the target." Sam looks away and says grimly, "Nobody shoots at that target without going through me." Catherine snaps into investigator mode, saying, "Well, that's business. What about personal?" "What do you mean?" Sam asks, suddenly all-business himself. The two of them establish that -- surprise! -- Janine is something of a gold-digger. Sam says darkly, "If I know her type, now that she has the gold, she'll be going after the silver." And if I know my murder-in-Vegas incidents, we're about to be sucked into something approximating last year's Binion murder trial. I'd say more, but that might ruin some of the surprise.
Back at the lab, Gil is sitting in front of a fume hood, preparing to lift fingerprints from the pill bottle. A montage of lab technique shots ensues, and then Gil is sitting at a huge LCD display with Catherine, matching up the fingerprints he lifted off the bottle against Janine's fingerprints. Oh, this is all coming together too, too neatly. And then, thank God, we go to commercial.
When we come back, Gil is strolling through the halls of CSI Central, sipping at a paper cup of coffee and wincing at the taste. Just then Warrick comes barreling by. "Have you seen Brass?" "Not tonight, no. Why?" Warrick manages, "Print off air, orange balloon, cyanoacrylate. Dead bang, drug dealer!" He bolts off, leaving Gil wobbling slightly in his wake, and Gil nearly bobs into Sara, who chirps, "Ooh! Ooh! Watch it! Evidence!" "Where did you get it?" Gil asks. "Cracker box, it was all stuck together mucky-muck. I don't want to ruin it for any potential prints, but I saw this TV dinner commercial and it hit me: I'm going to put it in the freezer." Gil watches her go, clearly thinking, "My protégés are now stranger than I am. I couldn't be prouder!"
Then he heads into the break room where the slow kid -- excuse me, I mean Nicky "Cows Drink Milk" Stokes -- is sitting. Gil asks if Nicky's tried any of the coffee; Nicky answers in the negative; he's too busy clawing at the bug bites on his legs to bother with coffee. Just as Gil picks up a fresh pot of coffee to try again, Liam the lab tech enters stage right at around 30 mph, calling, "Oh, don't touch it, that's my pot!" Once the blur solidifies into human form, we see Liam looking very…un-Liam-like. The hair. The hair. It is literally beyond my capacity to describe the tonsorial abomination currently affixed to Liam's scalp. Nicky in his worst moments last year had better hair that Liam does right now. Gil gives Liam a slightly appalled look -- perhaps he's just getting his first glimpse of the "haircut" in question -- and says, "'Your' pot?" Again, I love how William Petersen can convey punctuation such as quotation marks through inflection alone. Liam launches into an explanation of how he's all about the $40-per-pound coffee, but it's lost on Gil. The two men then remember Nicky's in the room and turn to him, which Nicky takes as a cue to begin complaining about his bug bites. "You're putting alcohol on a bug bite? That's like putting butter on a burn, man. It's an old wives' tale," Liam says. "This from the guy who told me to put hemorrhoid cream on my acne," Nicky shoots back. Gil -- the same guy who routinely frolics among the larvae and keeps his snacks in a specimen fridge -- looks aghast. "It worked, didn't?" Liam asks, then flounces off with his $40-per-pound coffee. Gil walks over to magically intuit whatever creepy crawlie bit Nicky; turns out Nicky got bit by chiggers while crawling through the ferns in Tony's back yard. Gil directs Nicky to coat the wound with nail polish, as that will seal off the bite from air and keep it from itching. Nicky goes back to staring at his leg and cursing the day he took dermatological advice from Liam. On the way out, Gil and Nicky establish that Nicky lifted prints that place a human entering or exiting the doggy door. Gil directs Nicky to check his set of prints against Janine's.
Cut to David the Unfun Coroner swirling the contents of Tony's stomach in a jar. Yum! It turns out that Tony inhaled and ate heroin, and there was Xanax in his system…but Gil's not happy. "Where are all the undigested pills?" he asks, adding, "Most ODs die before digestion's complete." Catherine looks over at David for a reply; he does not disappoint. "My guess is someone smashed them up, dissolved them in red wine, which I did find." Gil and Catherine begin doing the forensic equivalent of jazz improv, tossing the likely scenarios for Tony's overdose back and forth and gradually concluding that the heroin would have made him tractable, trussable, and, ultimately, killable via a hundred Xanax smashed into red wine. Actually, given the average volume of a bottle of red wine, it sounds like mashing a hundred pills into it would result in something that's not drinkable, but perhaps slurpable through a straw. David interrupts my reverie about Xanax smoothies by pointing out that at most, there were maybe fifty pills in the wine infusion. Gil and Catherine look appalled.
Out in Las Vegas's bustling industrial district (or the left-over set of a Pat Benatar video, take your pick), Warrick and Brass are having a heart-to-heart with Tony's old dealer, who has bravely faced the pain of losing his best customer so he might selflessly continue to serve the rest of the heroin-consuming public. They learn that, contrary to Janine's reports, she did not flee Chez Tony the minute the dealer showed up, but stuck around long enough to give him thirty Xanax. Well, that's eighty pills accounted for. Cut to -- oh, rapturous joy unbounded -- Janine protesting that she just happened to drop thirty Xanax down the sink. "I've never heard that before," Brass cracks. Hee! The two of them continue their tiresome interrogation of Janine, which I would recap, except that the actress is giving me an aneurysm. Between the nasal voice, the on-again, off-again Noo Yawk accent, the line readings that seem to be a byproduct of the San Fernando Valley Academy of Dramatic Arts and Nailtiques, and elaborate eye-rolling -- frankly, I don't have it in me to keep rewatching the scene so as to recount it in meticulous detail. Just suffice it to say that Janine is enough to either drive someone to substance abuse, or to explain their escalating habit.
Cut to Catherine barging down the halls of CSI Central with a dummy in her arms. An actual mannequin. I'll save the jokes about her love life for a future episode. Meanwhile, Gil's checking his watch and demanding of Liam, "It's been twenty-four minutes." Liam replies, "It's not a baked potato, it's Braun's blood. Given all the impurities in his system, it might take a little extra time. Did I ever tell you I used to live in New York?" Whoa. Change topics much? Gil testily inquires, "Is this going to be a short story or a novel?" Just then, a printer beeps, and some lovely lab results printed in bright colors come sliding out. Liam gets distracted by the coolness of science for a moment, explains that heroin has a half-life of nine-and-a-half minutes before metabolizing to the more chemically stable morphine, then runs the numbers by Gil: Tony Braun didn't have enough of either Xanax or heroin in his system to kill him. "There's addicts walking around Times Square with more in their systems," Liam says. "So Braun should still be walking around," Gil muses, looking unhappy about this. He heads toward the door, off in hot pursuit of another hypothesis, when he turns around and asks Liam, "and the point to your New York story was…?" "I was going to tell you about another way to take heroin. A suppository up the coolie -- you stand on your head and let gravity…forget it," Liam replies. I'm going to guess that little nugget of information is Jerry Stahl's contribution.
Gil and Catherine are standing over the dummy, with Gil venting over how Tony didn't die of an overdose. "So I figured. Why bring the dummy?" Catherine asks. "Robbins opened up Braun; his lungs were compressed. Remember Burk and Hare, the two nineteenth-century Scottish body snatchers who made a living intoxicating innocent victims and suffocating them? Sold their cadavers to teaching hospitals, got away with it too until a medical student discovered his fiancée on a slab?" Well, no, but I will from now on. Catherine replies, "Was that part of the Sherlock Holmes Fan Club kit?" Gil doesn't deign to reply. Instead, he and Catherine begin riffing on the likely scenario for Tony's death, set to flashbacks: Janine set about administering an overdose, but then the gardener showed up, and she panicked and realized she didn't have enough time for an overdose to take effect. "Burke would lean on his victim's chest, right? Covering his mouth and nostrils," Gil says. Catherine picks up the thread: "But when you're doing drugs, you're a slob, and when you're being manhandled, you're even sloppier, like this." Catherine knees the dummy's chest to demonstrate, and she looks up at Gil. "He was Burked." Before they can get all spooked out about that, Brass calls in on the cell; he's in Blue Diamond, digging something up.
Cut to Blue Diamond, which is a desert. There's some rangy-looking schmo digging in the sand; Brass comes over to sweetly inquire as to why this guy happens to be digging on private property, and gets nothing by way of an answer, except that the guy's name is Curt Ritten, and apparently he has a mandate from Tony to begin digging should Tony die under mysterious circumstances. Well, that's handy. Brass commands Curtis to go stand someplace other than the big, subterranean vault he's just uncovered, and everyone traipses downstairs to gawp at the shelves and shelves of silver bullion. Gil breathes, "A sable cloud turns forth its silver lining to the night," which, if I'm not mistaken, is from John Milton's poem "Comus." The benefits of a liberal arts education pass unremarked. Everyone's too busy staring at the shiny things.
Back at the CSI ranch, Sara's taking her duct tape out of the freezer and dusting for prints; she is rewarded for her diligence. As she's surveying the prints, Warrick comes by sporting three rolls of duct tape found in Curt's truck. The two CSIs commence checking the ends of the tape against the ends of the wad o' evidence found in the trash can. As Warrick peers at the edges of the tape, Sara asks Warrick why on earth anyone would bury twenty-three tons of silver bullion in the middle of the desert. "'Cause he was smart," Warrick says, and gives us all a lesson in the vagaries of market speculation, continuing, "For the past twenty years, the value of silver's gone to nothing and the commodity brokers are going to charge you a storage fee per troy ounce and there's only one thing worse than losing seven to eight percent on silver a year, and that's losing nine to ten percent because of some stupid storage fee." Okay. We've got that -- why would you want to have all that silver in the first place? Sara reads my mind and asks, "What good's twenty-three tons of silver coupons when you're dead?" "Depends on who's doing the clipping," Warrick replies. He then looks down at the latest alignment of tape-to-tape and crows, "Oh, we got ourselves a positive association! Roll to tape, Curt to Tony."
Curt's not looking too good right now, and the glow from all the silver in the below-ground chamber is doing nothing to improve his complexion. Then again, getting arrested by Brass might do that to anyone. Curt protests that he's only carrying out the dear departed's wishes, and Gil interjects, "It appears we may have physical evidence connecting you to the murder of Tony Braun." Curt protests his innocence with regards to Tony's wide-ranging pharmaceutical collection, and Brass goads Curt into revealing that Curt's the one who built the underground vault, and he was on pal-around terms with Tony, going over to the house to hang out and watch football.
Back above ground and many miles away, all this information about Carl has duly been relayed to the CSIs back home; combined with the long arm of the Braun family, the world's fastest warrant has just been issued for Carl's apartment in Vegas. Catherine and a plainclothesman enter the dimly-lit flat. Her Spidey senses tingling with the detection of adultery, Catherine drifts over to a chair where a skirt is carelessly draped -- the same skirt Janine was wearing a few scenes ago, incidentally -- and says to the detective, "I thought you told me Carl's wife lives in Carson City?" "She does. They both do. He just stays here when he's working," he replies, staring at the skirt. Both of them freeze as they hear a door creak. They walk down the hall and toward the bathroom, where the shower is running. When they get to the door, who should appear but Janine? Of course. Janine -- who looks like a wet cat in her current après-toilette garb -- gasps with surprise. Well, that's one person, at least. "How'd you get in here?' she demands. "I don't have to ask you that question," Catherine snits.
Speaking of shocking developments, the fingerprints on the tape don't match up with either half of fun couple Curt 'n' Janine. Sara and Warrick hector the poor tech Mandy to say it isn't so. "This thing must have a virus," Warrick finally says. "Maybe you have the wrong suspects!" Mandy shoots back. Oooh, tempers are running high. "That's easy for you to say -- all you do is scan prints all day and hit enter," Warrick snipes. Oh, now, Warrick, that's uncalled for. Mandy thinks so too: "Look, I'm not your beast of burden. Sara, this is your thing." She rolls her eyes and prepares to huff out of the office when Nicky – displaying the most unfortunate timing ever -- comes twinkling into the office, singing, "Mandy, give me something dandy!" Mandy hands over the doggie-door prints and leaves before she's tempted to throttle anyone. Nicky stares in puzzlement at the results -- the prints for the doggie door came back for Walt Braun, the weaselly little man we saw earlier. He's Tony's brother and a pit boss at the Tangiers (all pit bosses are required to have their fingerprints on file).
We transition into Gil and Catherine thinking through this latest development; Gil asks, "He's family. Why is he using the doggie door and not the front door?" Catherine snorts, "Go figure. The more evidence that shows up, the more this case doesn't make sense. We have two suspects in custody, and neither of their prints are on the duct tape." "Or on the doggie door, but the brother's are." And the prints on the tape are unrecognizable. Brass comes over while they're chewing on this dilemma and finally fulfills his role as Captain Exposition: "Apparently this Janine got around." No! Say it isn't so! Long story short -- they have nothing to hold Janine on, and they're going to hold Carl until he can post bail. And they're also going to try and figure out how a piece of duct tape from Curt's truck ended up wrapped around Tony's wrists without Curt's prints on it. Knock yourself out!
Speaking of knockouts -- as in the knock-down, drag-out variety most often seen on the Jerry Springer show -- Janine comes sashaying down the hall, braying, "Curt, we're out of here! Come on!" just as Curt is trying to make nice with the wife who drove down from Carson City to bail his sorry cheating ass out of prison. Curt tells her, "Bonnie, take it easy," which is exactly the wrong thing to say. Bonnie, needless to say, does not take it easy, demanding, "You choose: me or her." Janine rolls her eyes. Curt cranes his head back to look at her and says, "Sorry, Janine." She shrugs and says, "I've heard that before. Call me." Brass leads the happy couple over to bail processing as Catherine and Gil watch, bemused.
You can tell the plot's really moving toward resolution, because the scenes are getting shorter: Gil's in the Tangiers talking to Weasel Walt about his fingerprints on the doggie door. Walt's a little incredulous that Gil would bother doing this face-to-face; Gil gives him a guileless look and says, "It's a quirk. I always like to discuss fingerprints in person." Walt spins a story about a brotherly dinner out and a missing set of keys; swell sibling that he is, he wiggled through the doggie door and let in his brother. Gil asks why the door wasn't set with an alarm, and Walt smugly replies, "When you're a Braun, there's nothing you can't replace." "You can't replace your brother," Gil replies. Walt tries to look really sad and fails spectacularly, possibly because he's distracted by his leg itching. Gil notices too. "What's wrong with your leg?" he asks. "Mind if I take a look? I'm an entomologist. I know all about bugs." Walt pulls up a cuff and Gil says neutrally, "Chigger bites. You might want to put some nail polish on it, keep it from itching." He then pulls out a camera and asks, "Do you mind if I take a photograph for my bite collection?" Oh, Gil, get a new line. You did this last year with the straw collection too. Also, is deceiving someone into giving you evidence entirely legal? Walt's oblivious to Gil's thought processes, shrugging, "Whatever rubs your Buddha." Gil gets his snap and prints it out as the detective drills Walt on his life. "My life's pretty routine," Walt shrugs. Glaring up from the photo, Gil says darkly, "It might just get a little more routine."
Back at CSI Central, Gil says, "Nick, I need your leg. Show me your bite." I take a few moments to compose myself, tamp down the temptation to work blue, and resume recapping. Nick's all, "Oh, it's fine, I got some cream for it." Gil asks again and Nicky bares his calf. Gil compares Nicky's healing bite marks against the photo he took of Walt's bites. "What time did you log in at the Braun house?' he asks Nicky. He quickly figures that, based on the time Nicky entered the yard and got the bite and based on the state of the bites, Walt can be placed at the scene of the crime during the time of the murder. Of course, he figures this out while we're treated to a computer rendition of a chigger biting into skin. Nicky speaks up: "I don't know, boss: are chigger bites and doggie-door prints enough to get a man arrested for murder?" Gil glares at him and leaves.
In the scene, Gil and the geek squad are sitting around, eating Chinese food and trying to put all the pieces of the case together. Brass discloses motive: according to the terms of Sam Braun's will, his vast empire would go to Tony. Tony promised to take care of Walt -- since, you know, most serious drug addicts are sterling characters -- but changed the terms of the agreement recently so that Janine was cut in on the largesse. What that meant: the previously fifty-fifty ratio is now seventy-five (Tony and Janine)-twenty-five (Walt). Sara concludes that Curt was digging up the silver to protect Janine's interest. Gil asks what's still open; Sara notes the earring back. Cut to Janine, who explains that she's a "dangle gal," not one who wears studs. Janine also explains she employs a maid who vacuums every day -- except for her day off, which happened to be the day Tony was killed. Conclusion: whoever lost the earring did so while killing Tony. Fast cut to Catherine and Gil hovering over Greg as he runs a test on the earring and tells them the earring came from a woman. Catherine and Gil riff on what woman would be present, have access to Curt's truck, and have motive…
It's the wife, Bonnie, working in league with Walt. This is kind of like Presumed Innocent, only with sidekicks. Gil, Catherine, and Brass go to work on her; they lifted her prints off the bail check and found -- surprise -- that they matched the prints on the duct tape. Brass spells it all out: she and Walt worked together to restrain and sedate Tony, then panicked when the gardener showed up, so they suffocated him. Bonnie lost her earring in the initial fracas, and didn't notice until later. Gil notes mildly, "Sometimes, in our job, our biggest break comes from the smallest circumstance. It was the maid's day off, but not the gardener's." "That's the thing about murder," Catherine sighs. "You never think to have a back-up plan." Unless you're a serial killer, of course. Those guys think of everything. Catherine then asks the question on everyone's minds: how on earth did the writers manage to connect all these dots in the last three minutes of the show? The answer: adultery and mutual loathing. Funny how these things can bring people together at a cocktail party when they're watching a gold-digger who's cheating someone out of his inheritance mack on someone else's husband.
Cut to Catherine walking with Sam; he's got his arm around her, and she's wearing a dress that flatters no-one. Sam's saying mournfully, "I loved one son more than the other…they're my sons. I made them, I raised them, and one kills the other." "You still got me," Catherine replies. Sam looks at her and says, "You know, I should have married your mother." Catherine says, "Considering I was six months old when you two lit the flame…you had plenty of chances." Oh, so I'm thinking Catherine's mom was Sam's long-time mistress. "It just wasn't in the cards," he says sadly, and the episode ends.
week: Gil tells people it's molecularly impossible to disappear.