Viva Las Vegas, the land of sparkling casino lights and speeding SUVs. A silver SUV speeds down a street; the woman behind the wheel looks furious. We see a train approaching, its whistle blowing, as the crossing gates lower. "Come on, come on, come on!" the woman shouts. A dog is barking, no doubt adding to her tension. The crossing gate lowers completely, and the woman slams on the brakes with something like a sob. As the train approaches, her car inexplicably lurches forward. We hear her scream in terror, then see the train...
And we pull back onto a tight shot of the tracks, where sparks are flying from the mangled rails. Catherine and Brass walk by the twisted wreckage. Per his contractual obligations, Brass is filling all of us in: "Paramedics pronounced twenty minutes ago. Megan Treadwell. I ran her plates -- thirty-three tomorrow." Catherine sets her mouth and intones grimly, "One-on-one with the train -- did she think she could beat it?" Presumably, the question is being directed at Megan's body, which is being borne aloft by a team of extras. She's remarkably intact for someone who took on the 7:20 from Albuquerque and lost. Then again, this entire crime scene is remarkably intact -- a freight train going 55 miles per hour could take up to a mile and a half to stop once the brakes are applied. I bet you thought that last sentence was going to end in a math problem, didn't you? Catherine shrugs, que sera, sera, and heads over to the train's engine. Gil is over there, giving the cowcatcher a look-see with a flashlight. Catherine follows the beam of light and notices the SUV's door handle embedded in the metal. "Point of impact, passenger-side door," Gil says. "Dead center," Catherine replies. I smell a set-up for a witty closing line coming. Gil asks, "The question is, 'Why did the SUV cross the tracks?'" Catherine replies: "To get to the other side." Gil looks at her, pissed that she stepped all over his pithy closing line, aaaaaaand...we go to the Who.
When we come back, Catherine's climbing down the engine of the train (Number 4007, for all you trainspotters in the crowd) and Gil -- who has apparently been off conducting a conversation with the dead body, as is his wont -- comes over to up the stakes a little in tonight's plotline: "The sheriff says we're holding up trains all over the country; this entire railroad division depends on keeping the main line open." Catherine replies, "Well, it's not like we can take this back to the garage." Gil's not unsympathetic, but since Evil Ike is, you know, evil, his first priority is not solving the crime but rather clearing the tracks. Catherine has approximately two hours to process her crime scene before the rails begin running again. If she needs to reach Evil Ike, he'll be up at Eagle's Nest checking train tables. After Gil delivers the bad news, he heads out. "Where are you going?" Catherine asks pointedly. "Suspicious circs in town; this one's all yours," he tosses over his shoulder as he walks. "Thanks, but you gotta give me some guys!" she calls after him. "Sara's all you get!" he shouts, still walking away. "All I need," Catherine sasses back.
Cut to a shot of a lovely illustrated book: the left side is a Magritte-like illustration; the right, a page of dense text headed by the word "cavil." Incidentally, a cavil is a frivolous objection; I can't help but notice the subtext here in my recap and wonder. Anyway, another extra hustles up the stairs as Buzz fills in Gil as to why he -- and by extension, we -- is coming into a book vault while an alarm is clanging. "Burglary in progress call. Once we made the entry, we found the victim downstairs," Buzz explains to Gil as they cross around the second-floor balcony and hustle down the stairs. As the men move to the lower floor, Buzz continues, "Never knew this place existed. " "The Western States Historical Society. It's not on a lot of tourist maps," Gil replies.
The alarm stops abruptly as the two men finally reach the bottom floor. They're in a wood-paneled reading room; glass-fronted display cases and bookshelves line the walls, and several glossy wooden tables with reading lamps fill the center. It's a very un-Vegas-like place, although I suppose it fits some set designer's idea of what a historical society's quarters should look like. Gil testily notes that he needs to know where the alarm was coming from; Buzz ripostes that his sources say it was coming from downstairs where the body happens to be. The guys head down another set of stairs -- literally entering a sub-basement -- and we establish that this subterranean bunker is climate-controlled in order to preserve the books. As Gil's reeling off the temperature settings, they look at the prone body in the fenced-off rare books cage. As we see everyone charge in to examine the crime scene, Justin from Party of Five hovers in the background anxiously. Perhaps sustained contact with Neve Campbell left lingering trauma. But enough about him -- for now. Gil and Buzz hunker down with some paramedics; one intones, "Ten-forty-eight. Red foam, blue tint." "The red foam could be from blood in her lungs...edema? Skin is cyanotic -- maybe a blood disease? Leukemia? Meningitis?" Gil ventures. You know, reading over the quotes I've transcribed thus far, I can't help but wonder if I've somehow stumbled across Sentence Fragment Theatre. As Gil examines the body, Michael Goorjian looks increasingly distressed; finally, as Gil moves to adjust a book that's blocking his path, Justin from Party of Five speaks. "Don't do that. These are very rare books." Gil looks over, and Buzz fills in, "Aaron Pratt, librarian. Only other person here when the alarm sounded." Gil puts on his listening face and asks slowly, "Did he tell you what he was doing here?" "Oh, yeah. Watching her," Buzz replies. Meanwhile, the man in question happens to be hovering in the door and, as of yet, has evinced no signs of deafness, so he can undoubtedly hear what's going on. And even if Aaron were deaf, I'm sure Gil could translate his unique brand of Socratic dialogue to ASL.
And in the scene, Gil and Buzz seem to have remembered that Aaron is a witness and thus can be pumped for information. He is seated, and saying, "I wasn't watching her. I always say goodnight to Veronica because I have to leave at 8:03 to catch the 8:10 bus. It's three blocks away. And sometimes, the bus comes at 8:08 so I have to rush to catch it." The interesting thing about this piece of dialogue is the method of its delivery: Aaron is rocking back and forth, very slightly, but with a distinct, steady rhythm. When he speaks, he doesn't make eye contact. He's also not terribly aware of the volume of his voice -- it's as if he doesn't recognize that pitch and volume convey different contextual cues for intended communications -- and while his words are precisely chosen, his phrasing and enunciation are off; he's stressing every third syllable or so. Gil is listening to Aaron -- no doubt noticing all the things I did, except in real time as opposed to repeated Tivo viewings, because...well, because he's Gil. "So you went down to the basement to say good night," he prods. Aaron responds with what would appear to be an exact repetition of the conversation he had with Veronica, complete with a mimicry of Veronica's speech patterns. He then volunteers, "Sometimes she walks me to the bus." Gil asks if Veronica walked Aaron to the bus that night -- kind of an obvious question, what with her lying in a locked book cage a floor below, but whatever, that's just my little cavil -- and Aaron tells us all no by means of mimicking that exchange. The upshot: Veronica told him she had to stay behind and finish working. Gil watches with a fascinated look. Aaron continues: "Then a Uniball pen rolled across the desk, fell on to the chair, hit the floor and stopped rolling at the waste basket." While Aaron says this, we see, in succession: the pen falling from Veronica's limp fingers and across the desk, Gil's rapt expression, the falling pen, and Aaron finishing his recitation. The camera pulls tight in on Aaron and he says, "Then water...water falls into her eyes." "You mean she was sweating?" Gil asks. "From her forehead. Lots," Aaron clarifies. We get an arty aqua-cam shot of Veronica's eyeball. "And then she grabs her stomach with both hands," Aaron continues. Cue the cleavage-eye's view of Veronica clutching the afflicted area as she grunts, then a shot of her face as she gasps Aaron's name. Aaron mimics her gasp, then says, "Then she put on her new face" -- here, he contorts his face -- "Shelley's Frankenstein, up and down, flopping around like a salmon on my uncle's fishing boat." We get the flashback of Veronica having seizures. "She was convulsing," Gil says. "I couldn't help her, because the cage is locked and I don't have a key," Aaron replies matter-of-factly. Just then, Nicky interrupts by coming over and saying, "Hey, there. Warrick's got three residential burglaries so..." So I mention this because that moment there? The first and last mention of Warrick Brown through this whole episode. How appropriate that it takes place mere yards from the apparently climate-controlled subplot subbasement; perhaps if we were to revisit the crime scene and have the camera pan to the left a little, we'd see Warrick there, chained to the wall and looking beleaguered.
Enough bitching. Gil begs Aaron's pardon, then walks off with Nicky to exposit some. "According to Buzz, this guy's body language indicates he's guilty," Nicky says sotto voce. "I think he's autistic," Gil rebuts. "Autistic? Like Rain Man?" Nicky asks. Oh, you sweet, stupid Texan. Try autistic like the subjects of Oliver Sacks's book An Anthropologist on Mars or autistic like Temple Grandin, whose memoir Thinking in Pictures, And Other Reports From My Life With Autism does a fantastic job of conveying how she processes external stimuli before responding to them -- don't try autistic like gimme-an-Oscar Dustin Hoffman. Feh! Gil smacks Nicky down a little more gently: "Rain Man was a savant -- extremely rare. Aaron is a high-functioning autistic man with superior right-brain abilities." Nicky looks at Aaron for a moment, then turns back to Gil: "Kind of sounds like you." Gil looks askance at Nicky and banishes him to the crime scene in the basement. Ah, well -- at least Nicky can chat Warrick up down there while Gil realizes that yes, he is pretty right-brained, what with that portion being the one theorized to favor holistic thinking and intuitive processing -- both hallmarks of Sensei Gil's Zen Master Crime-Solving Style. Nicky, on the other hand, is left-brain all the way. I'm ambidextrously addlepated just thinking about this.
Meanwhile, aboveground, Sara and Catherine are chatting about that not-so-fresh feeling you get when you have to rush through a crime scene. I have to say, their rapport has improved considerably since they visited the Carnival of Crime. Just then, an adorable scruffy dog comes bounding down the hillside, stopping at Sara and Catherine's feet and looking up with limpid eyes while it whimpers winsomely. Both women coo at the dog. For one sickening moment, I battle the irrational fear that we're viewing the end result of a memo that started with: "Wouldn't it be swell for the CSIs to have a crime-fighting canine mascot! It could sniff for clues! There could be a wacky subplot where the dog accidentally ate a key piece of evidence! It could rescue a CSI from a dangerous crime scene!" Then I realize...oh, thank God, the dog is merely evidence -- Maverick the dog, who lives on Martingale Street in Henderson, Nevada. "That's not that far from here," Catherine notes. No -- in fact, Henderson is, like, a city block or two; it's mainly known as the home of the Citibank billing center. Sara hefts the pup and tells it, "Come on, boy, let's get you home." She's definitely an animal person.
While Sara's talking to the animals, walking with the animals, grunting and squeaking and squawking with the animals, Brass is busy talking to the train conductor, squawking with the -- who am I kidding? This is Brass. He and the crusty old engineer are trying to agree on a timeline for the sequence of events. According to Clem the conductor, one moment the SUV was on the right side of the crossing; the , it wasn't. He finishes, "With all due respect, we have the right of way out here." Wow. You've got a dark side to you, Clem. As Brass and Clem finish up, Sara comes by holding Maverick. "That's not yours, is it?" Brass asks. "I am collecting evidence," Sara says, with an extraordinary amount of dignity for someone holding a winsome little dog. I want to see her try that trick with your typical house cat on its way to the vet's office. ["Well, in that case, she wouldn't have any trouble getting a blood sample. From herself." -- Sars] She asks if Brass has managed to come up with an address for Megan Treadwell yet. Brass sure has -- she lived at 855 Martingale Street. Well, whaddya know? Megan had a passenger.
Back in the A-plot, Gil's wandering into the morgue and asking David the Intermittently Fun Coroner if he finished with Veronica (or, as Gil dubbed her, "Our Lady of the Library"; incidentally -- and returning to last week's theme -- the patron saint of libraries is St. Jerome, who also happens to be the patron saint of archivists. St. Catherine of Alexandria is considered the lady of the libraries, but only in a pedagogical sense, and is therefore unsuitable to the context of this week's crime. And I'll stop with the hagiography now). As it turns out, Veronica did die of cyanosis; in David's words, "blood was unable to oxygenate her tissues." We then get the trippiest TMICam shot ever -- Veronica rising from her slab to open her mouth and give us a good look at the oxygen-starved tissues lining her trachea. After we return from that little trip, Gil muses, "That explains the blue face. Underlying cause?" "The blood in her lungs -- asphyxiation's out. I found vomit in her throat, bloody stool, hemolysis and some irritation of the mucous membrane on her tongue. I won't know more until I get the blood tests back. It could be blood-borne disease," David finishes. Mmmm mmm mmm -- nothing like some blood-borne pathogens to prompt a big freak-out. "I'm thinking about homicide," Gil says. "Then you know more than I do," David replies. Gil purses his lips, as if to convey yes, yes, I do know more than you do.
Nicky, meanwhile is diligently dusting for prints. I strain a little to see if I can make out Warrick manacled to a back wall -- "three burglaries," indeed. Feh. As he's quietly puttering around, someone who looks like the result of a Hollywood cloning project that used Kevin Spacey and Gil Bellows as source material comes in, disregarding Nicky's admonitions not to blow the crime scene because, hey, he's Stanley Hunter. The name fails to bowl over Nicky. "The curator?" Stanley tries again, as if expecting Nicky to clap his hands to his cheeks in girlish glee and shriek, "Omigawd! I have your poster from American Museum Beat on my bedroom wall!" Stanley's expectations visibly deflate. Nicky remains unmoved. Nevertheless, Stanley presses on: "Do you have any idea the damage you're causing? Dust? Flashbulbs? Do you see that? Right behind you? That is a seventeenth-century text by Johannes van den Avelen." Nicky nods with a look of feigned awe. Stanley's on a roll: "It's one of two volumes in the world. Now, do you go to the Louvre and put your hands all over the Raft of the Medusa?" Probably not, since the Louvre has a) an international reputation as a repository for the creme de la creme of Western culture, as opposed to being an obscure repository of Western U.S. history, and b) it has an actual security system peopled by trained guards. But let's not contemplate the temerity of comparing the Louvre to the Western States Historical Society. Let's contemplate Stanley's innate jerkitude. Nicky has, and he's decided to deal with this by summoning Buzz: "Officer, Mr. Hunter here would like to give his statement to Detective O'Reilly." Mr. Hunter would not. He would, instead, like to remind us all that we're mouth-breathing philistines incapable of going into orgiastic frenzies over his collection: "These are masterpieces, one of a kind." Fortunately for us all, Gil has beamed in from the morgue in time to say, "They're evidence in an active criminal investigation -- also one of a kind." Stanley looks dismayed.
Cut to Gil eyeing the moth-eaten oriental carpet, then the concrete floor dappled with the shadows from the fence, then the Uniball pen Aaron spoke of lying to a trash can. Gil picks it up and says, "The good news, Nick? We had a camera in here?" Poor, sweet, stupid Nicky rises to the bait: "There's no surveillance system." Gil replies, "There is -- Aaron Pratt. We just have to figure out how to get the film out of his head."
Oh, thank God, it's commercial time.
And after that all-too-brief respite, we're back on the B-train with Sara and Catherine. They stalk around the crime scene, planting numbered cones and taking pictures to a backbeat that has me inadvertently humming the asinine new Budweiser commercial jingle: "Here's to the lab techs running assays, here's to the ME's slicing stiffs, this Bud's for yooooooou..." Clearly, the rigors of recapping during sweeps are beginning to get to me. Catherine notices a piece of headlight and calls out, "Filament." "Train probably busted out her headlights. First thing we check when we get to the tow yard," Sara responds. Rather than bag and label the evidence, Catherine elects to slip it in the pocket of her fitted leather jacket. It's a nice jacket. Meanwhile, Sara's noticed something funny about the skid marks -- one set is going forward, but there's a second, darker set. "Looks like the tires were spinning in place...in reverse," Sara muses. We see this briefly in flashback. "Burning rubber, going nowhere," Catherine says, since it's apparently her job in this episode to be the jaded veteran of many a crime scene. "So which set of skid marks are telling the story?" Sara asks. "Maybe they both are," Catherine replies in her best Grissom imitation.
Back in the Louvre Las Vegas, Gil is inquiring about the chemical composition of the book-restoring fluids. Stanley replies, "We're not dealing with the far ends of the pH range. Old book pages are slightly acidic; the acid eats away the paper. We neutralize them by a solution that's slightly basic." Gil nods, as this primitive Earth science is innately obvious to him: "To reach seven. Neutral pH." Stanley replies, "Exactly -- Imidazole. Fifteen percent ammonia. That's the sort of thing we work with here. It's all about preserving the books. No -- not that you can even assign a value, but do you have any idea how much each of these books is worth?" Gil shakes his head. Stanley's off and running: "The first printed book was a Gutenberg Bible. It sold at Christie's for $5.3 million. Lewis and Clark's Elk Skin Journal sold for $500,000." In a way, that's kind of appropriate, what with the entire Lewis and Clark expedition mandated by noted bibliophile Thomas Jefferson. However, on a nitpicky point: There were several Lewis and Clark journals bound in elk skin, not just one. Also, the first printed book was not the Gutenberg bible, but the Diamond Sutra, printed in China around 868 A.D. But this is just me being a history-of-communications geek. Anyway. Gil listens to this recitation of hardbound riches impassively, then asks, "All of that, and you never thought about beefing up your security?" Stanley points out that all rare books were kept in a vault, and scanned through a coder (I'm going to assume he meant a bar-code machine) before being carried out. If they were to be read, the book was then carried to a special room upstairs; otherwise, the book was restored in the cell Gil and Stanley are currently occupying. We infer from the conversation that Veronica's chief talent was book restoration. The book she happened to be working on as she died was a British botany text from 1787 worth an estimated $300,000.
After Gil finishes with Stanley, Buzz collars him. "We got a situation. You know that weird guy --" "He's not weird, he's autistic," Gil interrupts. "Whatever," Buzz says, displaying precisely the sensitivity I should hope all law enforcement officers have toward people who fall outside the medically defined parameters of "normal." Buzz goes on to say that not only was Aaron first on the scene, he was also filching several rare volumes. That can't be going over well with Stanley. Gil drifts on over to Aaron and says, "'But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at. I am not, what I am.'" "Othello, scene I, lines 61 and 62, Iago to Rodrigo," Aaron responds. "Very good, Aaron. Now, you want to tell me how Othello ended up in your briefcase?" Gil asks. Aaron replies that it's his favorite Shakespeare tragedy; he's looking extremely flustered. "I like Hamlet myself, and I bet Mr. Hunter is into King Lear. He's very concerned with property rights. He tells me the rare books are kept in a vault and they're not allowed off-site," Gil replies. You know, I am somehow not surprised that he's into Hamlet, but I do wonder what it says about his upbringing. Over the course of the conversation, Aaron says that Mr. Hunter doesn't like him, and Mr. Hunter breaks rules all the time. Apparently one of those rules involves eating lunch in the office -- Aaron begins reciting the menu, ending with, "And Veronica." Well. That's not something I think they'll be showing in flashback, if you know what I mean. Gil asks Aaron to clarify. Aaron does: "She's eating, and he takes her sandwich, and he puts his hand on her breast --" Well, what do you know? We are going to see Stanley have Veronica for lunch after all. "And then he puts his tongue --" Gil cuts in sharply with, "Aaron, I get it. Did they know that you were watching them?" Aaron gets agitated again.
Sara and Catherine are examining the silver SUV in a junkyard; Sara's noting that the filament Catherine found isn't from this particular car, but another one. At the back of the car, Catherine's noticed both a paint transfer on the bumper and a lack of rubber on the right rear tire. Meanwhile, Sara's moved to the car's interior; she sees a cell phone in the driver's side wheel well, and a bag of gourmet dog biscuits. She also notices that the car's emergency brake is on. "Maybe she had to engage it -- you know, I'm thinking that another car was involved," says Catherine. "The engineer didn't mention anything about a second car," Sara rebuts. "Maybe he didn't see it," Catherine replies.
Meanwhile, Nicky is working at a giant light table, sorting through the chemicals from the library. David comes up to tell him something and immediately falls in love: "Great room! Great table! I could use this...lay out all the body parts, get a real overview...is that a light under there?" While David is dreamily reciting his autopsy-related fantasies, Nicky's looking up at him with an expression composed of equal parts amusement and unease. "Do you have something for me?" Nicky finally asks, leading David to exposit that Valerie was poisoned by something they have yet to identify. Not that Nicky's been identifying toxic compounds in the meantime or anything -- he's too busy looking amused when David says again, with covetous fervor, "I love this table."
Back on the B-train: Sara and Catherine are busy examining car-parts with high-powered microscopes. It is now sufficiently late that I am no longer questioning the premises of any of this; I'm just gonna go with it. Anyway, Sara's noting that there's no glass on the filament Catherine found at the accident site. She explains why this is significant: "If a guy's driving along at night with his lights on, gets hit -- glass breaks and fuses to the filament. Instant evidence. But there's no glass in the filament; his headlights weren't on." Catherine comes over to the microscope to confirm. She and Sara have this exchange:
Catherine: Black car, lights on ...
Sara: Easy for our engineer to miss.
Catherine: So he hit our SUV. Accidental or intentional?
Sara: Hard to tell.
Catherine: Maybe not.
She then dials the cell phone.
While Catherine and Sara are piecing together the car accident that may not have been an accident, Nicky and Gil are invading Aaron's privacy -- I mean, going through his apartment. It looks a lot like Gil's. I wonder if that's intentional? Nicky is busy thumbing through Aaron's mail, and Aaron immediately ignores Gil and begins telling Nicky to leave his mail alone -- "I have two bills due tomorrow, gas and electric, and I have to mail them on my way to work. You're messing everything up!" He's quite emphatic about this. Nicky looks a little taken aback -- perhaps he's hip to the online bill-paying thing and is mystified by Luddites who use stamps and envelopes and such -- and Gil defuses the tension by sending Aaron into the kitchen for a glass of water. Nicky asks, "Is this guy the real deal?" Gil looks intently at Aaron for a moment before replying, "I think he's incapable of deception, Nick. I think we're witnessing displaced anxiety. I mean, look around. Everything's in precise order. Order provides comfort. His whole life is based on routine; without it, he can't function." You know, I wonder if high-functioning autistic folk are a target market for the Franklin-Covey crowd, given that the company's entire raison d'etre is to provide fetish objects for people craving orderly, routine lives. Someone should look into that.
Anyway, Nicky excuses himself to scope out the bedroom while Gil turns back to Aaron. After Aaron rattles off the water's bona fides, Gil resumes the line of inquiry he was pursuing before we all got distracted by the bill fiasco: "How did these books get here?" Surprise, surprise -- it turns out Veronica brought them. It turns out that Stanley had her for lunch, then Aaron had her for dinner: "We date. We have dinner -- roast beef, baked potato, organic broccoli, Acacia pinot noir. Shakespeare in Love, DVD, Miramax. MCMXCVIII." Presumably, he goes on to recount the exhaustive marketing campaign that netted Gwyneth Paltrow an Oscar, but we don't see that because we've cut away to Nicky rifling through Aaron's nightstand. Back in the main room, Gil asks, "You two were involved with each other?" Aaron lets him have it: "Why don't you think she would date someone like me?" Gil tries to cut in with, "Nooooo. You told me Veronica was involved with Mr. Hunter." Aaron's still on his first train of thought with, "I have a master's degree in library science and an English degree from UNLV. Some people like Mr. Hunter treat me like a freak. But Veronica didn't. She loved me. Not him." Gil is a little nonplussed by this revelation, and Nicky calling him back to Aaron's room so he might gaze upon the shrine to Veronica Aaron set up -- for once, I'm eschewing hyperbole for a flat declaration; it is a shrine -- only makes him a little more uneasy. Gil then quotes more Othello (Act V, Scene 2, Lines 1-7): "'Yet she must die, else she betray more men. Put out the light, and then put out the light.'"
On the B-train, the lights are coming on...some tasty-looking audio tech is catering to Catherine and Sara's every whim by splitting out the assorted tracks on the 911 call Megan made shortly before her death. The transcript of the call is disturbing enough: "Oh my God, you've got to help me. Please, help me. I'm in my car, there's this maniac and he's following me! Help me please! Oh, God! Help! Please! Stop! Help!" but the addition of the train whistle in the background and the dog's yelping certainly don't decrease the discomfort level any. Catherine looks visibly shaken as she listens, and her voice trembles a little as she asks the tech to isolate assorted tracks so she and Sara can identify as many background noises as possible in the hopes of finding an auditory clue. As they replay the call, the sound of a car straining as something crunches its bumper is apparent. "Two engines," the tech notes. "Separate them out," Catherine commands. "SUV. Sounds like any regular four-cylinder," the tech clarifies. We hear the high, straining noises of a car moving forward while the brake is thrown -- anyone who's ever accidentally left a parking brake on knows what I'm talking about -- and Catherine looks progressively more sickened. She then leaves; Sara takes the time to pat the tech on the shoulder, saying, "She definitely likes you," before following.
A freshly coiffed Liam -- the racing stripes are gone, but now he looks as though he's prepping his hair for a Robert Smith tribute pouf -- asks Nicky conversationally, "You ever see Attack of the Killer Tomatoes? 'Cause there's something in your victim's blood looks like one of those Heirlooms. It's a large, ugly, globular mass. You know, it's probably a protein, 'cause that's the largest mass of anything in the body, except organs." Nicky asks, "But it's foreign. How'd it get in there?" If this were an episode of Sesame Street, that would Liam's cue to begin singing, flanked by a chorus line of soft foam Muppet enzymes. But we're on CSI, so he begins lecturing instead: "Cart before the horse, Nick. First you identify it, then you figure out where it came from." Liam pulls down a bound reference volume. Nicky ribs him, "I always thought you kept your porn in there." "I move it around," Liam replies, without missing a beat. He then geeks out: "Okay -- now this is a 66 kilodalton globular protein, composed of two disulfide-linked subunits, A and B. I know what y'all think of me. I'm just another pretty face who got to where I am by sleeping with Catherine --" Liam's drawing what look to be crude representation of alpha helices, and at that crack, Nicky gives Liam and the drawing a skeptical look. Liam continues, "But seriously...Phi Beta Kappa, Stanford. Can I help it if I'm hip? Full ride. Now, eyes forward: A and B chains link together to form a large three-dimensional structure of these beta sheets and helices." Translation for those of us who did not take molecular biochem: proteins are big collections of amino acids, with four levels of organization. The primary level is the sequence of amino acids; amino acids are basically collections of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, so it's really convenient how the acids are linked to each other via a nitrogen/hydrogen bond called a peptide bond. The secondary level is the way the sequence of amino acids arranges itself in physical space -- either as an alpha-helix (the bonds between different hydrogen atoms of the protein's peptide bonds make the protein coil into a spiral) or as a beta-pleated sheet (instead of coiling, the hydrogen bonds make the amino acid chain turn into something resembling a sheet of paper). The tertiary structure is what Liam was interested in -- how the secondary structures of the proteins relate to each other, as this physical relationship is unique from protein to protein and lets someone identify a specific protein. The quaternary structure, which I'm only mentioning in the interest of completeness, is what you get when multiple proteins aggregate to make a complex protein. And oh my God, I think I just flashed back to fall semester 1992 and went into some sort of fugue writing state. Let me just wrap it up this way -- think of a protein's four levels of organization as metaphorically mapping to: the letters in a word, the words of a sentence, the sentences in a paragraph, the paragraphs in a book. And now, back to the safe, sane world of mocking Nicky and Liam.
Which is kind of easy after Liam gulps that the protein is ricin, a plant-based biotoxin. Nicky is taken aback -- this is the episode of the assorted CSIs being thrown for loops -- and asks Liam to clarify. He does not, choosing instead to tell us how the protein gets absorbed into the body: "B chain binds to glycoside residues, which trigger endocytotic update of the protein, which internalizes the toxin and begins..." Cue the Nicky freak-out. I'm betting nobody opens mail around him either. "Biotoxin as in anthrax, smallpox? I was at that crime scene for eight hours, man!" Actually, to get nitpicky, there's a difference between a straight organic protein compound and a pathogenic organism, but...whatever. Nicky's wigging over the idea of his body the temple being defiled by a toxic intruder. Liam rebuts that it would take two hours for ricin symptoms to show, and forty-eight hours before one would die from ricin. Nicky demands to know what the symptoms are. "Sweats? Cramps? Convulsions?" No to all. "Then you're fine!" Liam says.
David and Gil consult on the ricin; we establish via TMICam that the ricin got on Veronica's tongue. "You're probably looking for a powder," David said. Cue Nicky, all kitted out like Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak, taking biohazard samples from Louvre Las Vegas as a funky backbeat plays.
Back at the B-train, Catherine and Sara are reconstructing the last day of Megan's life as they stand around the table David so covets and survey the belongings -- groceries, a purse, the doggie biscuits. On Megan's last day alive, she and Maverick went to work (she was lucky enough to work someplace that let her bring the dog), then she picked up some gourmet doggie biscuits. Catherine and Sara teleport to the scene, where a red-haired waitress type is earnestly explaining that traffic-related brouhahas are not uncommon; parking is scarce, and vehicle flow poorly managed. She exposits, "This guy was almost psycho...[he] yelled so loud, I came outside just to check it out. He said something like --" "'You could have killed me, bitch.' I heard it too," a second barrista checks in. Brass asks Barrista #2 if she saw the incident. She replies, "Kind of. I mean, I didn't hear a crash or anything, just brakes. It seemed like she backed out, didn't see him. Happened right over there." We all flash back to what might have happened. "And that [mishap] set him off?" Catherine asks. Barrista #2 asserts, "The last thing this guy needed was coffee." We flash to the guy screaming, "Pull your head out of your ass and use a mirror!" Ugh. Catherine asks if this golden-throated charmer is a regular; Barrista #2 replies, "Double latte, tall, Monday through Friday, between 8:30 and 9." Brass asks if this guy has a name. Barrista #2, who may just put Brass out of a job if she keeps up the exposition, says, "I think it's Croft. He works right down the street as a CPA. He's always telling us how to streamline our business." Catherine asks how Megan reacted -- we flash to her telling Croft to go to hell; he responds by unleashing a stream of FCC-approved invective, then getting in his car and peeling out. Clearly, this is not someone who handles confrontation with anything approaching cool.
Speaking of cool heads under pressure, Gil is busy looking at the book Veronica happened to be working on. O, improbable situational irony -- it happens to be opened to a picture of the castor bean, the plant from which ricin is derived. "Technically speaking, it's a spurge, not a bean. Ricin is made from the husk; castor oil is made from what's inside." Liam replies with, "Which makes two people who know that -- you and the guy who wrote the book." "Three, actually," Gil corrects him, "someone knew how to turn this spurge into a poison." Just then, Nervous Nicky comes in and asks, "Shouldn't you be looking at [Aaron's book] under a fume hood?" Gil doesn't see a need -- they got the book from the apartment, not the Louvre Las Vegas. Nicky counters that there's nothing stopping Aaron from whipping up a biotoxin in his kitchen; he is roundly dismissed. "You're not feeling sorry for the guy, are you?" he asks. Gil begins to do a slow boil. "Hey, man, he is autistic," Liam says. Nick: "Anybody else would be in a jail cell right now." Gil wheels on Nicky, and the younger man leaves.
"Yes, I've heard of ricin. Georgy Markov, 1978. Bulgarian political refugee in London. Assassinated by injection with a ricin pellet shot out of a black umbrella. Died two days later," Aaron says. He's in a questioning tank, talking to Gil and Buzz. "Not too different from the way Veronica died, is it?" Gil asks sharply. He continues, "I found [the botany text] in your apartment. What if I also told you I found your fingerprint on this page?" Well, I don't think Aaron would have the same coronary Stanley would over the defilement of a $300 grand book, but it might be fun to see. Aaron says immediately, "Page 153. I don't touch that book anymore." "But you did touch it," Gil presses. "Why are you mad at me?" Aaron asks. "Answer the question," Buzz barks. "I don't touch this book anymore! It doesn't feel right!" Aaron insists. "Ever since you killed Veronica," Buzz adds darkly. "I loved Veronica," Aaron says. Gil's mind has looped around to something else, something Aaron's been repeating. "What do you mean it doesn't feel right?" he asks. Aaron elaborates, "Like my new bus pass. Smooth. Feel the page -- it used to feel like my old bus pass after a month. And now, rough." The background music is cued to Gil's impending realization -- he really is a right-brain kind of guy -- and he asks Aaron if he told anyone about the shift in page texture. "Yes. I told Veronica, and I told Mr. Hunter. She said that sometimes the books feel that way after they've been restored. [Mr. Hunter] said, 'Get out of my office, Aaron, I'm having my lunch.'" Stanley was lunching with Veronica again -- Gil walks us all through the details. This time, Stanley and Veronica fought; we flash to him saying, "You did what?" before landing a right hook and screaming about his reputation and how he doesn't want to have it damaged. Dude, you already have a rap as a guy who hits chicks -- exactly what's going to come out to further lower your rep? Inexplicably, after this Ike-and-Tina-style discussion, Veronica resettled on Stanley's lap and declined both his offer of a hard-boiled egg and the idea of salt on the egg. To quote Aaron, "No sex, no food, no salt." Meanwhile, Nervous Nicky is busy Outbreaking around Veronica's apartment. He finds a salt shaker and the music swells ominously.
Cut to Gil and Buzz talking to Stanley. What we find out -- Veronica was the forger. Oooh, twist. Gil goes back to his "reliable witness," Aaron, at the original scene of the crime, and resumes questioning him on the chain of events leading to Veronica's death. Aaron repeats the Uniball story verbatim -- go back a couple of pages and look it up if you're that curious -- and Gil says, "Aaron, when you look at things, you see pictures in your mind. Tell me the first picture you see of Veronica in this cage. Tell me something you haven't told me. Tell me what Veronica was doing before you said goodnight." Aaron, who is clutching the cage nervously, says, "She pulled out a canvas bag. Then she looked around."
Gil: Why was she looking around?
Aaron: She was deciding something.
Gil: Tell me what "Veronica deciding something" looks like.
Flash to us seeing the picture through Aaron's eyes. Cut to Nicky -- who has since shucked the Level-5 biohazard gear -- elaborating on what he found in Veronica's house. Answer: the wherewithal to kill herself via negligence. Nicky found a castor bean under the fridge, and a dozen masticated Uniballs; we go to a flashback of Veronica cooking up a batch of ricin and accidentally getting some on a pen. Nicky runs off with pen samples to get them tested for ricin via ELISA.
Wrapping up the B-train: the less-than-lovable Croft claims to have sold his black Excursion, and when Catherine and Sara confront him, sneers, "You've got nothing." Au contraire -- Sara and Catherine have the Excursion, and have noted from the front bumper that it appeared to have sustained contact with a silver car. It's not looking good for Cranky Croft, and when Catherine finds coffee all over the driver's side and the dash, and a coffee cup with lipstick on the lid, it looks even worse. Sara says, "She threw her coffee at him." Catherine's going one better: "Croft chases her from the parking lot. Caught up to her at the light. They said their screw-you, screw-yous. I think I know the word that made her throw the coffee." Sara: "I hate that word." I go to the tape; as to what Croft is mouthing? I think I'll punt. I'm sure you'll understand. Sara fills in the step: "The lid didn't fit; she nailed him. The light turns green; the chase is on." Catherine picks up the story with, "Now she's got a problem. She's got a pursuit on her hands and she's the pursued. So she calls 911. Somehow, she loses him." Sara's empathic: "And she's still spooked. All she wants now is to get home." She then stops for the train -- only to have Croft come up behind her and ram her into the path of an oncoming train. Over a parking lot exchange! Talk about your cautionary road rage tales. The saddest part of this story -- well, second saddest, when you factor in my grief over missing the inevitable Sara-style beatdown that Cranky Croft will suffer -- is that Megan didn't get out of the car because she didn't want to leave Maverick to die. I suppose she was also afraid that Croft would go after her as a pedestrian too, but I do admire something about a woman who won't leave her dog in danger while she gets away, even as I think: it's a dog! They follow their owners! If it were a cat, you'd have a whole different set of problems.
In the last scene, Gil is explaining the chain of events to Aaron: Veronica made the forgeries, left the originals at Aaron's house so he could take the blame if necessary, then intended to kill Stanley but, um, missed. Aaron is visibly upset, and inadvertently knocks some of Gil's sample jars over. He and Gil put them back and Gil says gently, "I like order." "Me too," Aaron replies. He continues, "That's why I was scared." "Scared?" Gil asks. "Of Veronica. Of being in love. I was stupid. I thought she loved me...'Then must you speak of one that loved not wisely.'" "'But loved too well,'" Gil picks up. "Othello, Act 5, Scene 2, Lines 343 and 344," Aaron replies. "But Othello killed Desdemona," Gil reminds him. "I didn't kill Veronica," Aaron asserts, his eyes teary. Gil smiles paternally. "No. You didn't." And on that tender note, we end the episode.