Felonious Monk

The bells, the bells, sanctuary, sanctuary!

Or, in plain English, we see the Strip, and then we pan over to Steve Wynn's Nirvana. I kid! We're looking at a Buddhist temple which has mysteriously appeared about three blocks away from the Luxor, if the PhotoShopped backdrop is any indication. The bells, the bells. It's all very tinkly and serene. We hear chanting, and the camera takes us inside to view several monks, all kneeling and chanting. We zoom around so that we are seeing one monk from the front, his hands clasped together as he meditates. We see a gloved hand pulling a trigger, and the monk opening his eyes and looking up with a serene acceptance. In the instant, the camera switches to a candle being splattered by blood. We hear three more shots as the camera pulls back outside again.

Seemingly an instant later, Gil and Sara are disembarking from a CSIMobile and walking up the path to the temple. As they walk, Gil is telling Sara, "Wherever you live is your temple, if you treat it like one." "State your source," she shoots back. "Buddha," he replies. As if it's going to be anything else when you're walking into a Buddhist temple. Nicky meets his two co-workers near the foot of the stairs leading to the temple, telling them that the paramedics just pronounced four dead with no witnesses. We see a living monk in saffron robes standing about twenty feet back, on the staircase; his importance is confirmed when Nicky says, "Guy in the robe flagged down an officer." That's our Nicky -- if he's not regarding unfamiliar situations with fear, he's viewing them through the cloudy filter of ignorance.

And now is as good a time as any for me to write an elaborate and digressive disclaimer: despite Buddhism being one of the world's major religions (an estimated 700 million adherents and counting), I'm ridiculously ignorant about most facets of it. I know the extreme basics: Buddhism had a single founder, Siddhartha Gautama, who renounced worldliness in favor of enlightenment, the middle way, and eventually Nirvana -- which translates to a liberation from all desires, cravings and becomings. I know there are apparently several different denominations (to use a Christian word) of Buddhism: the Hinayana, Mahayana, Lamaism, and Zen Buddhism; these differ in their approach to how literally one interprets what the historical Buddha said and exactly how divine he was. I know about the eightfold path, the four noble truths, and the Great Wheel. But beyond that, I'm a big ol' Nicky; I haven't read any of the scripture, and I really don't know enough about the ways people practice Buddhism to be able to assess how well the show does or doesn't treat it. I apologize in advance.

Anyway -- moving away from my ignorance of Buddhism and back toward Nicky's: Gil corrects Nick by pointing out that the "guy in a robe" is a monk. Nicky responds, "Yeah? Well, he's a quiet monk. Non-native, from Thailand." Sara and Gil both roll their eyes and brush right past him. They also walk right past the monk, who is standing, motionless and contemplative.

As they enter the temple's main chamber, Sara notes that the smooth, low-pile rug will make it difficult to get prints, so she'll have to dust-lift. Gil orders them all to hug the walls. They walk together in a spaghetti-like clump, surveying the four monks who are neatly laid out as if separate arms on a compass, hands folded on their chests. Gil looks down and says, "One gunshot to the head." "Times four," supplies Nicky. Well, at least he's good for remedial math, if not Zamboni calculus. The camera zooms up so that we can see the monks laid out: they're in their robes, on melon-colored cushions, and those are centered on a circle of yellow silk. The effect is quite striking, almost like a human flower with nothing at the center. The three black-clad CSIs skirt the tableau, looking at their surroundings. Sara inventories, "Gold statues, money trees, there's a lot of loot to leave behind." What do you know? It is Steve Wynn's Nirvana Casino and Hotel! All we need are cocktail waitresses dressed like Buddha and the commercial desecration of another non-American culture will be complete. Gil, assessing all the loot left behind -- to say nothing of four bodies arranged on the floor -- decrees, "This wasn't a robbery. This was a hit." Nicky hunkers down to look at the bullet holes as Sara and Gil shine their flashlights along the scarlet-colored walls. Gil's light stops on a crudely chalked-in sign; he tells us it's the "placa," or gang sign, for the Snakebacks, and this reminds him of a case five years ago where a group of German tourists were murdered by a gang. Ah, the Snakebacks -- Sara's familiar with them. Or at least she should be; here, however, she merely blinks and asks, "Gang-bangers? At a Buddhist temple?" Gil looks contemplative. Nicky interrupts by pointing out the stippling at the edge of each gunshot wound. "Close range; it looks like they were shot one at a time," he continues. Sara looks down, merely curious. Nicky asks the question on all our minds: "How do you get one vic, let alone four, to lie still while you put a bullet between their eyes?" "They were praying," Gil explains. Nicky, who's entirely too comfortable with the idea of sinners in the hands of an angry God, says, "For mercy." Gil, who's a little more broadminded about the idea of mettabhavana, says, "For whoever was shooting them."

And we go to The Who, which startles me immensely because I'm riding a George Harrison groove after that opening. And for the record, mettabhavana is a meditation practice that develops loving kindness toward all sentient beings (definition adapted from Nyanatiloka's Buddhist Dictionary).

We're back from commercials -- my word, but Baby Bob surely has to be proof that the source of the world's evil radiates outward from some network executive's office -- and Gil is in a Zen garden in the back, hopping from stone to stone lest he disturb the meticulously raked sand. I do like how Gil is educated enough about other religious practices to be conscious of treating their places of worship respectfully. Anyway, as he's scanning, he notices a rifle laid down in a cluster of wood. He picks it up.

Cut to an LVPD PR disaster in the making -- Buzz, who under normal circumstances I would be overjoyed to see, talking to the loneliest monk. "What can you tell me about the victims?" he asks. The monk -- whom we're going to call Ananda because that's what the captioner has seen fit to do -- replies, "We came from Thailand to share Buddhism here in Nevada." Buzz is not impressed by Ananda's missionary aspirations: "But you didn't share the last couple of hours together. Where were you?" Ananda replies, "I was at the bank. We're raising money. We're raising money to build a school. I was making a deposit." Buzz asks where the other monks are; Ananda replies that they're on a retreat, and due back on the morrow. Gil interjects politely, asking Ananda, "This is a high-crime area. Have you had any problems before, like break-ins or burglaries?" Ananda, blinking furiously under his bald cap, says, "The past is in the past." "Don't try and out-Gil me! I wrote the book on incomprehensible aphorisms!" Gil screams. Oh, come on -- of course he doesn't do that. He merely blinks and cedes Ananda the point, then continues, "But sometimes [the past] leaves its fingerprints on the future." Gil then pulls out the gun. Ananda blinks some more.

In another plotline far, far away, Catherine enters a smoky bar populated by portly middle-aged men. After she affectionately asks one man, "Aren't you on duty?" I deduce that she's entered a cop bar. She then moves past a phalanx of younger men -- rookie drinkers, I guess -- and warmly hugs someone named Jimmy Tadero hello. D-Day! Is that you? The movie said you were never seen again! Catherine notes his highball glass and asks, "Attitude adjustment?" Jimmy clarifies, "For the wife. Says she can't face me without it." But thanks to our friend booze, these two can stay happily married. Aren't you glad you repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, America? Catherine's wearing a strained smile as she asks how Mrs. Tadero is doing. Is she in Al-Anon? Jimmy replies that the missus is counting the days until he retires, then deftly changes the subject so he's complimenting Catherine on the Logan case. Catherine makes a lovely little "oh, it was nothing" gesture. Jimmy pushes, saying she really did well. Catherine smiles and tells him, "I had a good teacher." They toast each other and drink. So let me get this straight: the guy is Catherine's mentor, they have an unspoken history together, and he's about to retire. There's no way this can end well. I wouldn't even be surprised if Jimmy were all, "And after we have our drinks, I'm going to cross this eight-lane highway to cash in my winning lottery ticket, then drop off my patent application for the world's best mousetrap in the mail before going home to the wife. If only this shooting pain in my left arm weren't bothering me..."

Anyway, Catherine moves on from the Logan case to ask Jimmy if he watched the same televised confession she did. Jimmy confirms that he did. Catherine asks Jimmy what he thought; Jimmy replies, "I've always regretted that the jury didn't give him the chair, but I'll take cancer so long as he's gone." Cut to the world's most ghoulish newscast: Dwight Kelso in a hospital bed, admitting that he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but he didn't kill Stephanie Watson. Catherine looks thoughtful; Jimmy, however, is unburdened: "Deathbed denial. Bargaining for a better seat in hell." Catherine was apparently swayed by the television confession, and wonders if maybe Kelso didn't kill Stephanie; Jimmy's quite certain Kelso did. We see a flashback of the probable crime -- a leggy woman exiting a strip club and getting stabbed without preamble. She dies inches from a rain puddle where the strip club's neon sign is reflected; as the killer walks off, the puddle is disrupted. Catherine's still on the what-if track, but Jimmy, who's getting quite vehement about it, points out that witnesses saw Kelso harassing Stephanie in the strip club, and Kelso had a knife cut on his hand. Catherine, who seems to be a little soggy, says, "Maybe I'm afraid if I accept it, it'll be over and Stephanie will really be dead." Jimmy watches Catherine's face with some concern, then pats her hand briskly. "What never lies?" he asks. "Delta House?" she responds. "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" he continues. "Wait...I thought you were the guy with the tank," she says, confused. They agree that the evidence never lies.

Cut to Catherine and Warrick, kitted out for a trip to Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, in a cold-storage facility. Catherine's explaining, "The statute says that once the convicted party is executed or dies, the evidence can be destroyed. It-it's not here." Warrick tells her to chill. "Yeah, well, people make mistakes," she replies. Warrick tells her that that's why we have computers. We all pause for a knowing chuckle. He finds the box of evidence for her. They then decide to examine the evidence in the frozen wasteland of the evidence room, as opposed to going someplace warmer. Catherine twirls a miraculously unfrozen G-string in one hand and muses, "This was my old life." Warrick has the beleaguered look of a man who might have heard this story once or twice. "We all have a past. You used to strip, I used to blow obscene amounts of money in casinos. Vegas is a bitch goddess, with you and I her unwilling supplicants," he says. Well, the part about "we all have a past." The rest was inferred from his long-suffering look. Catherine looks at pictures of a dead, dead Stephanie and tells Warrick, "She was my best friend." Before we can see Warrick's expression become even more beleaguered, we slip into a grainy flashback where a young woman who's wearing entirely too much bikini to be a stripper swings through her routine and stoops over to ask Catherine if they're still on for the night. Catherine, who's wearing a truly hideous wig -- we're talking hair that Suzanne Somers wore during her Ab Roller days -- ditches her girlfriend for Eddie the duplicitous pancake-making bastard. Catherine snaps back into the present with, "I never saw her again." Warrick shakes his head, trying to banish images of K.C. Koloski from his mind. He then asks, through chattering teeth, "What exactly are we looking for?" Catherine exhales -- I'm surprised we can't see her breath -- and replies, "Peace of mind that we got the killer." "I'd start with this," Warrick says, holding up a big bloody knife. Well, that's one jumping-in point.

Meanwhile, Buzz is interviewing someone who, as he says, "Forgive me, English is my second language," puts many native speakers to shame. We establish that David is the part-time cook at the temple, he works there three days a week, and he doesn't have a key because "no need. The door is always open. I told the monks...too trusting." Buzz concurs. He then asks if there's a history of gangs harassing the monks. David replies, "A couple months ago, I saw spray paints on the back wall -- gang signs. I wanted to file a police report but Ananda told me not to." Buzz wants to know why not. David smiles resignedly: "I told you --" Buzz supplies the answer: "Monks are too trusting."

We then get a visual tour of the temple -- and of the CSIs gathering evidence -- to music that would not be out of place in a kung-fu movie. Why is it that whenever any aspect of Eastern culture is integrated into American TV, someone has to make with the bamboo flutes and gongs? We see Sara using the miracle of static electricity to lift prints from the carpet in an unprecedented TMICam that practically goes down to the electron level, and finding a boot print. We also see the room painstakingly marked off in a grid, with Sara moving over each square to lift evidence. Meanwhile, Nicky rummages through the monks' belongings. He sees a boom box and pulls out a stack of CDs -- fittingly enough, Madonna's "Ray of Light" is there. He also examines a wand with bells on it, tossing it down in incomprehension. Sara, meanwhile, peers at the statues of Buddha and the bloody candles, looking for anything amiss. She finds it in a blue smear on a gold statue, then notices a wad of gum pressed where the third eye would be. Nicky, still on snoop patrol, rummages through a desk, lifting a stack of ledgers to pull out primetime's idea of a porn magazine: a woman holding her breasts underneath the title, "Big Bodacious Babes." For the curious, the magazine taglines read: "Can you pass the Babe Magnet Test?," "Hollyland Boy Toys for Big Boys," "Surviving the Hustle," and "A Knack for [whatever Nicky's thumb is covering]."

In the scene, Nicky's expressing outrage that monks read porn. He's so indignant, he messes up his pronouns: "You hide one thing from your brothers, maybe he was hiding more." So says the former frat boy. Sara points out, "Just because you're stashing trash doesn't make you a killer." Nicky testily points out, "I'm talking it out, Sara. What'd you find?" Sara found boot prints on the prayer room rug; she then asks Nicky the xenophobe, "Monks don't wear boots, right?" He agrees, then adds, "Or read porn. Or commit murder." Sara continues, sharing her two other discoveries and arguing that they lead her to suspect that this was an outside job. Nicky, who really is ten kinds of testy here, is all, "Hey, whatever -- outside, inside. Why shoot four people, then leave the murder weapon behind the temple where even a blind man could find it? And I hate taking off my shoes." Good grief -- Nicky's an old maid in britches. He's got more hang-ups -- no peanut butter! no exposure to radiation! no taking off his shoes! -- than anyone else in his shift, and in a shift that includes a pathological gambler, a workaholic afraid of human intimacy, and Gil, that's saying a lot.

In the morgue, the monks are laid out in a neat row; David The Incredibly Zen Coroner is explaining to Gil, "All were shot in the third eye -- the sixth chakra, the vortex of consciousness." David then goes on to explain how he acquired his decidedly non-Western view of human physiognomy: "I was a Gray's Anatomy man until I lost my legs. I started getting phantom pains no drug or exercise could control. I started studying the chakras." Gil takes all this in and replies, "Well, I do know that the seven chakras correspond to the body's seven energy centers." David explains further, "Each has a color and a vibration. Muladhara, the root chakra, keeps us in the grounded in the physical world." (It flares, yellow and tangerine, by the groin) He continues, "Svadisthana, seat of sexual energy" (red and yellow petals, by the navel), "Manipura, melting pot of spiritual and earthly desires" (a swirl of purple, green, red and yellow, by the notch in one's breastbone), "Anahata, the loving heart" (an orangey-yellow sunburst radiating from the heart), "Vishudda, where feelings are given expression" (a periwinkle flower radiating from the hollow of the throat), "Ajna, the third eye" (a kind of pink-and-orange circle radiating from the spot a little bit above and directly between one's eyes), "Sahasrara, the crown connecting the mortal human to the timeless universe." At this last one, the computer-generated psychedelia arches out as if to personify it. Gil commands, "Let's go back to the third eye." Terrible band. ? David reiterates, "Ajna, the hub of higher consciousness." Gil asks David, "If someone were threatened by that consciousness, that would be a logical target, yeah?" David says, "There's a very good chance your killer's a Buddhist." Gil looks as startled as one can look when one has already achieved a enlightened awareness of crime-fighting. ["Or been numbed nigh unto coma by excessive exposition." -- Sars]

Cut to an extremely subdued Liam explaining to Catherine, "This is where Ecklie swabbed the blade fifteen years ago. [The blood is] your friend's. Stephanie Watson. We got the second blood from the handle end, perfect match to Dwight Kelso, the guy convicted for Stephanie's murder." Catherine, who's looking a little soggy again, quietly thanks Liam. Liam's about to practice his sensitive-guy rap in preparation for this week's installment of Exercise In Futility: The Courting Sara Sidle Story, but Catherine announces that she's taking the knife to trace. Liam follows, asking confusedly, "Did I miss something?" Catherine sets the knife under an infrared and points out a third, extremely weak blood sample. Catherine remembers, "Fifteen years ago, we figured, why light up something you can't analyze in the first place." Liam reminds us all that we can replicate DNA like crazy now, even from tiny blood samples. Catherine makes the new, weak sample Liam's number-one priority.