You've Got Male

The show opens somewhere outside Barstow on the edge of the desert; judging from the rolling green fields and lush foothills, the drugs have definitely taken hold. I remember saying something like, "I thought this show took place in Las Vegas. Maybe I recorded the wrong thing..." And suddenly there was ominous music all around us and the scene was filled with what looked like a woman riding horseback through those green fields. And a voice was screaming, "Holy Jesus! Who changed the setting of the show to the bluegrass fields of Kentucky?"

Then it was quiet again, in part because there is only so much one can crib from Hunter S. Thompson before one crosses the line from parody to plagiarism. Anyway, the woman notices that her horse is especially nervous, and asks her mount, "What is wrong with you?" Surprisingly, the horse fails to answer in standard English. She dismounts at the corrugated metal pipe that's making the horse nervous and looks inside; a very still female figure is hunched in the pipe. The horsewoman presses her hand to her mouth in horror. Some time later -- like, an entire day later, since the golden Kentucky afternoon appears to have given way to a dark Nevada evening. Gil, sporting a CSI baseball cap, peers into the pipe and makes a moue of disgust, then straightens up to tell Brass, "A girl in a culvert pipe at a highway construction site in the middle of an alfalfa field. You got anything to add?" Brass, who has been shaking his head in profound appreciation of Gil's imagery, sighs, "Nothing as poetic. Road crew took off at 3:30, body was discovered at 5:15." Gil asks who found the body, and Brass points a thumb back in the general direction of the horse, expositing, "Our friend Flicka." Gil notes resignedly that the horse stumbling across the body scotches his theory of "Whoever finds the body is the first suspect." Before Brass can comment, Sara calls Gil's name, and he walks over to the pipe where she's standing. Gil asks her what she's got and Sara replies, "The one thing you don't want to find at a murder scene." Gil shines his flashlight to an area slightly to the right of the pipe and says, "A second body."

The Who plays as I ponder how the corpse-finding horse managed to completely miss a body out in the open in favor of finding one in an enclosed place.

Back on the show. David The Occasionally Fun Coroner. We learn that both women died around the same time -- approximately 12 hours ago -- but Gil's not too happy that David's not being more precise, snarking, "My uncle Phil used to say you can't kill two birds with one stone." "All I can tell you is cause of death," David shoots back. The brunette has an injury to the cervical spine; in David's words, it "looks to be hands-on." We get to see how the cervical vertebra snapped, courtesy of the TMICam. Gil and David concur that yes, someone snapped the brunette's neck and she died instantly. The blonde, on the other hand, died in a much different matter, she had cut glass in all her many incised wounds, as well as abrasions on her neck that look a lot like fingernail marks. Thinking ahead, David's already swabbed the abrasions for foreign DNA. As for the cause of death? Severed brachial artery, leading her to bleed out. I should note here that we get to see the severing, and the resultant bloody geyser, in glorious TMI-o-Vision. Gil's brow furrows, and he decrees, "Something doesn't seem right." He goes on to point out, "Look at the brunette. Her elaborate tattoos, perfectly dyed hair. Multiple body piercings...it tells me she craved attention." David, thinking that these things could also indicate someone who slavishly followed prepackaged alt.culture trends, shrugs. Gil continues, "The blonde, however, seems almost prosaic. She doesn't even have pierced ears. She didn't shave her legs." David, who's riding that poetic vibe Gil began back before the credits, says, "A wildflower and a wallflower." Gil muses, "What do our dead flowers have in common?"

Meanwhile, on the forest world of Endor, the sound of Ewoks hooting is visible as the camera pans down and...I'm sorry. This is still CSI. It's just...CSI set in a deep green forest. Exactly how much territory does the Las Vegas CSI jurisdiction encompass? Like, up to Lake Tahoe? Idaho? Alberta? Anyway, Nicky and Catherine have wandered from the desert to this verdant glen, and a random park ranger type is explaining how he happened to stumble over the seated corpse we are all looking at. "He should have been wearing his orange vest," opines Ranger Rick. Yes, but at least the dead man is not wearing the beret Catherine currently has perched atop her head; it's as if she's going to leave the crime scene, then head down to City Lights to listen to Allen Ginsberg read Howl. Nicky notices that the bullet went straight through our dead hunter; Catherine adds that the man bled out. I snap my fingers in appreciation of her observation. Nicky picks up the hunting rifle and notes that it's a Winchester 70. As he's admiring the stock of that fine weapon, he notices Emergency Backup David The Coroner (not to be confused with David The Variably Fun Coroner, despite the two of them having the same job; apparently, the main David is kept in the morgue, while Emergency Backup David is appropriated for autopsies on-the-go) unsheathing what looks to be a meat thermometer and sticking it in through the bullet hole. Aghast, Nicky asks what Emergency Backup David is doing; Emergency Backup David replies that he's checking the liver temperature so he can gather a data point for estimating time of death. We see the entire process. Nicky muses that "there should be a total of five bullets; four in the magazine, one on the chamber. All five accounted for. This rifle was never fired."

Catherine is snapping photos of the blood-covered leaves. Emergency Backup David finally has a reading on his meat thermometer; the temperature is 88.6 degrees Fahrenheit (or 31.11 degrees, for you Celsius-using types), which means that the body's been cooling for about ten hours. The ranger does a little elementary math and states that the man would have died around 2 PM. Catherine then roots around the dead man's pants, finding a wallet for a James Jasper of Las Vegas, NV. Nicky asks when hunting season started; the ranger exposits that deer season started the week before, and he saw a record number of permits. Well, let's assume that they're talking mule deer -- as those are the only deer listed for hunting on the Nevada Division of Wildlife hunting schedule page -- and assume that we're using "any legal weapon" (the Nevada Division of Wildlife's words, not mine). Hunting season began on October 6 this year, so this episode takes place in mid-October. Or perhaps it takes place in TV Time, where things like hunting seasons, federal holidays, and other calendar-based conceits are all highly fluid. If y'all want to go hunting in Nevada in 2002, get your permits in now before wild turkey season starts. Anyway -- we're five minutes behind the episode, which is what happens when my curiosity gets the better of me, so it's time to catch up. So: Catherine muses that a hunter, properly clad in his safety orange, shot at a deer; the deer ran, but the bullet kept going until it hit the non-safety-orange clad hunter. Nicky prods at the theory and the body simultaneously by pointing out the conspicuous absence of a bullet in either body or tree.

Meanwhile, several hundred miles away in the desert stronghold where CSICentral is located, Sara is interrupting Gil's reverie to tell him she's finished processing the crime scene. Gil hands her a cookie. No, no, no. Sara tells Gil she's processed the crime scene, working from the victims out until she hit the highway, and she found nothing. This doesn't perturb Gil, as he has made an inquiry of AFIS and come back with the goods: the brunette victim is one Joan Marks, felony shoplifter and stay-at-home slacker. Warrick has been dispatched, off-screen, with a warrant to check out the address.

Back in the jungle, Nicky is using a pair of infrared goggles to look for things that might seem amiss out here in the thickly wooded Nevada forest. I'd go so far as to suggest that the thickly wooded forest itself -- and the attendant chirping of frogs and other small nocturnal wildlife -- is out of place, but I can only harp on the whole "I thought Las Vegas was in the desert?" thing for so long. Anyway, Nicky spots a bullet embedded in a tree trunk and calls Catherine over to look at it. "How do I get it out of there without damaging it?" he wonders. Catherine chirps, "You know what the textbook says: if you're not a hundred percent sure how to collect it, bring the whole thing in." I'm sure the people at Earth First! love that attitude. Nicky and Catherine crane their heads back to behold the mighty tree. "I'll figure it out," Nicky comments.

It's now daylight; Sara and Gil are walking up the driveway of a prefab suburban house. They enter the garage, and Sara slides behind the wheel of the car housed therein. "Twelve hundred miles and it's an older model. The driver doesn't get out much," Sara notes. Gil rifles through the glove compartment and discovers that the car is registered to Donna Marks. The two of them talk about how maybe it would be smart for one of them to go to the DMV and maybe see if Donna Marks and Joan Marks are somehow connected when, surprise! Warrick makes an appearance, saying he's already beaten them to the punch. Donna's the blonde wallflower corpse. She's also Joan's sister. Gil chortles, "Well. We now know what they both have in common. Genetics." And here I was going to go with, "They're both murdered." Silly me. Warrick -- who has used the thirteen minutes of this episode where he's been off-camera wisely and efficiently -- reveals that the house used to belong to Donna and Joan's mother, and Donna's been living in it alone since Mother Marks died. Joan apparently lived in Henderson. He then takes Gil and Sara to the back yard, saying, "The real action's out back."

Indeed -- nothing but shattered patio-door glass and a few numbered cones. "If the highway's the dump site, this is the primary scene," he tells his seasoned coworkers. Gil confirms Warrick's assessment, reminding us all that Donna's cuts were filled with glass. "She went through that door," Sara notes, in an unusually obtuse moment. This isn't the most subtle exposition. Warrick assumes the position -- beleaguered, that is -- and tells us all that he'll be seeing us at the 48-minute mark, as he's about to begin collecting glass and fitting it back into the door frame to work out the body's point of impact, force, et cetera. Gil asks Warrick if he likes puzzles; Warrick sighs in return that Gil's the puzzle guy. "Here's a hint," Gil says helpfully. "Work from the edges. Once you've got the corners, the rest is cake." Actually, no. What he says is, "When they cool sheet glass, they lay it out on tin." Warrick's no dummy; he quickly deduces, "So the side that kissed up to the tin will fluoresce under a UV." Sara notes with some empathy that Warrick's going to have a long couple of days in the lab. Warrick, choosing to avoid contemplating that thought, diverts the conversation by pointing out the bloody imprints he's found and logged. The three investigators share information; Sara found blood on Joan's shoe, so if the blood matches up, that places her at the house, possibly stepping in the blood, and thus helping set up a timeline for what happened. Sara also notes that if Joan stepped in Donna's blood, that implies that Joan was healthy enough to be walking around while Donna lay injured and bleeding. Nobody comments on that; Warrick is looking down at his puzzle while Gil walks over to the fridge and surveys the take-out menu collection. He then opens the fridge -- which is a veritable garden of take-out containers.

Gil and Sara do a sniff test -- the family-sized portions of sweet-and-sour pork in the front are still fresh, but the single-sized portions in the back are stale. Gil asks Sara: "Increase in appetite, or perhaps a guest?" Sara has no answer for him. They enter Donna's home office -- she's got quite a nice flat-panel display and several other expensive home electronics items. Gil leans down and grabs something off the desk: "Universal remote. She could do everything she wanted from this chair but cook a roast." Sara notes that Donna may cook like she does -- by calling takeout on speed dial. There are other similarities: "She's a catalog junkie. We're on the same mailing lists." And I'm right there with you ladies. I hate shopping malls, I hate recreational shopping, and I hate having to mash my schedule into someone else's idea of business hours, or battle the hordes in line, or duck salespeople when I'm not instantly making up my mind. So far as I am concerned, God invented catalogs and e-commerce websites as a boon to keep me from becoming some sort of retail terrorist. Oh, look -- I've digressed. Can you tell the holiday crowds are beginning to get to me? Anyway -- Gil begins putting the pieces together: "Catalogs, the internet, takeout, 1200 miles on her car. Agoraphobic maybe? Or she just doesn't like people?" Coming from Gil, this is a rich assessment. Sara tweaks him for it while I stare at the screen, wondering what the world has come to when those of us who are moderately introverted and/or misanthropic are being mocked by bug-racing, roller-coaster-riding Gil Grissom of all people. Sara says she'll haul in Donna's PC, go through her email, and check in on her social life. She then wheels toward the bathroom off the office and notices, "Hey, the toilet seat's up; there was a man here." Well, there's one piece of data for your social-life investigation.

Back in the B-plot, Catherine and Nicky have returned from Sherwood forest and are roaming the halls of CSICentral unencumbered. She's barreling down the hall in a smart black leather blazer (oh, I so totally want her leather jackets) and the side-parted hairclips of someone who's growing out her bangs (and I so totally commiserate on that front). She runs into Nicky -- who's having another good wardrobe day in a turtleneck J. Crew would undoubtedly call "aubergine" -- and Nicky tells her that one of the Davids called James Jasper's death cut-and-dried: the bullet severed an abdominal artery, and he bled out. Nicky further exposits that the bullet went front-to-back; Detective Vega (who has apparently replaced Buzz, much to my lamentation) has the widow. It's time for Catherine and Nicky to talk to her. Cut to the widow in question telling everyone in a tear-hoarsened voice that her husband left early before she got up, and when he failed to appear before suppertime, she assumed he had bagged a deer. Vega asks skeptically, "He took a day off in the middle of the week," and the widow Jasper admits that she and the spouse had both been laid off recently; James had worked as an auditor in the insurance business. Catherine asks how James had taken his recent unemployment; the woman responds that he handled it fine, except when they had to ask his parents for money to pay the rent. She begins rambling, in the shocked way people do when they've just been told someone they love died, "That was hard on him. I...I have to call them. I haven't called them. I..." Mrs. Jasper rises, and Catherine puts a hand on her knee, grounding her, then asks if James was an experienced hunter. The wife reveals that he was, and that he had been hunting since he was a kid: "He always looked forward to deer season, but with the baby and all, he's missed the last few. It's me, isn't it? I encouraged him to go. I thought that it would help him take his mind off things. What am I going to do?" Mrs. Jasper breaks down again. The menfolk exchange deeply uneasy looks, clearly uncomfortable with this display of grief. You'd think, in their line of work, that they'd figure out how to handle it after a while. Nicky valiantly tries to return to a line of questioning and asks about James's safety vest; the wife supplies that James was usually very careful, so not wearing a vest doesn't sound right.

Meanwhile, Gil is off to harass Liam The Lab Tech, hovering over the younger man until Liam peers up from him microscope to say, "If you're here about the blood on Joan Marks's shoe, I already told Sara, I'm backed up." Gil acerbically corrects that he's here for the DNA samples from Donna Marks's neck. Liam can deliver -- he ran a DNA profile on the victims, and he asks rhetorically, "What do all sisters have in common? DNA." Gil asks incredulously, "You're saying that Donna's sister scratched her?" Liam meows and hisses until Gil's unamused glare causes him to stop. Liam recovers with, "So. Did I solve the case?" Gil disabuses him of any notion that he did. In another part of CSICentral, Sara and Brass are walking down the hall and swapping legal research. Apparently, Joan Marks and her boyfriend Gavin Pallard swapped more than bodily fluids; they also swapped restraining orders. "Want to find out why?" Brass asks. Sara grins back, "Don't mind if I do."

And here's Gavin to tell us. He's pointing to a shallow scar bisecting his cheek vertically and drawling, "See this? Didn't get this French kissing. Joanie had a temper. Punctuated her sentences by throwing furniture. Made it hot, you know? We'd break up to make up." Brass asks about the last break-up; Gavin reveals that despite the restraining order, Joan came back over to Chez Gavin three times because his sexual magnetism surpassed even the boundaries of municipal law. Sara asks when Gavin saw Joan last; he replies that it was the morning before, if by "saw last," you mean "caught out of the corner of my eye as I ducked a flying coffeepot." Gavin then exposits that Joan took his T-Bird when she left, but now that she's not exactly in a state to be hitting the highways, he'd like his car back. Sara and Brass respond to this in their own inimitable fashion. Sara then pushes to find out if Gavin knew Joan was going over to her sister's house; Gavin can't conceive of Joan doing such a thing voluntarily, adding, "Oil and water. Joanie liked action. She was a partier. Last party Donna went to was her third birthday." Sara asks if Gavin's been over there recently; he replies in the negative, since apparently he finds computers, and the people who spend inordinate amounts of time on them, boring. Before Sara dismisses Gavin, she asks to see the bottom of his shoes. "I like the shoes. I like them enough to get a warrant," she grins. Unfortunately, we don't get to see Gavin's response.