Caged

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.