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.
And it's time to check in with ballistics. Nicky's in his element here, explaining to Gil that yes, according to the lans and grooves on the bullets tested (and found), the rifle found at the crime scene was indeed the murder weapon. Nicky also tells us that he and Sara found prints on the rifle; they match someone who, in Nicky's words is, "bald, wears a robe, and likes his co-eds bodacious." My, but Nicky's Texas drawl was apparent there -- as was the cold he's apparently suffering from. I kind of like the new raspy voice. Gil sighs, "One survivor, one suspect." Nicky, who's been reading Zen and The Art of DNA Sequencing, cracks, "And a whole lot of bad karma."
Cut to Ananda, telling his side of the story. Before I transcribe this, I'd just like to get one peeve off my chest: who decided that "serene Thai monk" was apparently synonymous with "stilted idiot delivery"? Would it have broken the Bruckheimer bank to hire a dialect coach, as opposed to going, "You've seen Dragon's Seed on TCM, right?" We're still with Ananda, who's alternately blinking and explaining, at a speed that wouldn't outpace any continents which happen to be drifting right now, "I entered through the back. The rifle was on my desk. I walked into the prayer room to ask my brothers about the gun. I returned to my office, placed the weapon outside, and went for help." Nicky, ever sensitive to cultural differences, decides to catch Ananda up on the finer points of the Las Vegas criminal code by telling him, "Tampering with the evidence is against the law." So is rearranging the bodies so they're resting, as opposed to laying in crumpled heaps, but you don't see anyone going into hysterics over how the crime scene was compromised that way, do you? Ananda tells Nicky, "The temple is a holy place." Nicky's all, "Maybe" -- and here he should be glad that Buddhism doesn't have the concept of an Old Testament-style God ready to visit pain on the unbelievers -- "but a crime had been committed there." Ananda, speaking even more slowly than usual so that Nicky can catch on, says, "Please understand: I was adhering to my teachings." Gil displays a heretofore hidden streak of sanctimoniousness (well, in this episode, anyway) when he asks, "Do your teachings allow you to keep pornography?" Ananda blinks a few times before explaining, "Someone left the magazine at the temple. I kept it, in case this person came back." Nicky openly doubts this. Thank you, Ugly American! Ananda gathers his composure and explains, "If you are no longer attached to seeking pleasure, then pictures of naked women mean no more than pictures of waterfalls. I abstain from erotic behavior not because we believe sex is sinful, but because preoccupation with worldly pleasure diverts us from the path." Nicky looks duly chastened. Gil comments, not unsympathetically, "It's got to be a lot easier to be a monk in a monastery on a mountaintop than one on Las Vegas Boulevard." Ananda looks like this is the first time that idea's ever occurred to him.
And now, back to the B-plot. Liam's found something on the knife. We're momentarily detained from seeing what he found, because Ecklie's swooped in for the obligatory moustache-twirling and obfuscation. Naturally, his opener involves paperwork -- "I just signed off on an authorization to destroy evidence" -- and he asks Catherine why she's excavating old data. She sasses him. For the first time ever, I come to the conclusion that it must suck to be Ecklie: he's always being second-guessed by someone on Gil's shift. Ecklie follows Catherine into the evidence room, where Warrick is busy re-examining evidence. The upshot: there was a glove at the crime scene. And yes, it fit, so the jury didn't acquit. The hang-up now: the glove wasn't photographed at the scene, but logged by Jimmy a few days after the murder. Hmmm. Why on earth could that be? Catherine runs off to find out.
Meanwhile, Sara and Gil are hunched together, looking at a computer mock-up of the rifle Gil found in the Zen garden. Sara brings up the prints on the rifle: "You know, when a shooter holds a gun, he grips the barrel and he wraps his index finger around the trigger? Ananda never fingered the trigger." Gil asks about Ananda's prints; Sara confirms that they're on the weapon, but they're not where they should be. It looks instead as though Ananda held the rifle by the stock, barrel down. So that's one possibility eliminated -- although, since Nevada doesn't require anyone to register rifles, the rest of the state's population is still in the suspect pool until further evidence eliminates them.
And the chewing gum Sara found is currently with Liam over in the DNA lab, where he's testing it for saliva, so that he can extract DNA. Again, we've got the bamboo flutes and metal bells. I wonder if it's any accident that as Liam put test tubes into the centrifuge, the entire thing looked like yin and yang. Nicky's on graffiti detail downstairs, gesturing to a chunk of recently-removed prayer room wall and explaining to Gil that the presence of the placa is somewhat odd. Gil's not following: "Bangers tag homicides all the time." Nicky explains further with, "But after those German tourists were killed, the Snakebacks were pretty much wiped out. The cops really came down hard on those guys. Twenty-seven were put away for murder, weapons possession, drugs, you name it." I name it? How about rape and assault? Too bad Sara's not around to remind us of how that sentencing hearing went. Confronted with the facts, Gil chooses to go cryptic, quipping, "So what we've got here is a Warhol." Nicky gives Gil a puzzled look, wondering what the placa has to do with an overrated social climber in a fright wig. Gil clarifies his deliberately opaque statement: "Well, it's not a real soup can, it's a painting of a soup can." Nicky tosses out the possibility that someone tagged the placa because they're a gang member wannabe; Gil points out that gang membership is considerably less exclusive than, say, Nicky's old fraternity. Nicky concludes that he's been looking at a false clue. Before Gil can pick up the shattered pieces, David The Emergency Backup Coroner interrupts with, "Excuse me, sir?" Gil turns around, briskly commanding, "David, stop calling me 'sir.' What's up with the Air Force?" David confirms that Gil has a hot date over at Nellis Air Force Base that evening. Nicky asks, "Why?" Gil turns around and snidely says, "I'm enlisting." Because he's all about not telling anyone anything. Nicky gives one of those feeble laughs that indicates he thinks his boss is being a big chucklehead.
Gil has since repaired to what looks like the GrissomCave to take a super-secret video conference call from the Air Force; the brass on the other end (not our Brass; Captain Exposition apparently has the week off) explains that, post-9/11, geosynchronous satellites have been monitoring military institutions and their surrounding areas. The Buddhist temple is less than two miles from Nellis; Gil wonders what the chances are that they may have picked something up. The officer replies, "We can see a postage stamp on the sidewalk outside Lenin's tomb." Gil's eyebrows shoot up as he replies, "Cool." Awww, that was so cutely geeky! We then see the satellites at work, zooming in on the area around the temple and a license plate reflection in a car hood.
Okay, we've all had a good laugh. Let's get back to the scene: Catherine and Jimmy are looking over the fifteen-years-dead crime scene -- Jimmy vows that the day Stephanie was killed was "the worst day of my life," thereby speaking to a deep passion he felt for the victim. Catherine then walks Jimmy through the crime scene, trying to figure out where the glove fits in the story, and when it fails to fit neatly (not discovered that night, owing to a melee, but eagle-eyed Jimmy spotted it later), they have words. Jimmy stomps off, insulted that Catherine would accuse him of planting evidence. Boy, is he gonna be pissed when he finds out she's been testing his planted evidence too.
Meanwhile, Liam's been identifying the substance in the mysterious blue substance Sara lifted off the statue way back when. After dissolving it in a clear solution and studying the results against a print-out, he murmurs, "I thought so." Cut to Gil shuffling through photos, interrupted only when Nicky comes in. Gil gives us all a rundown of the traffic woes in the neighborhood surrounding the temple. Nicky's amused, then turns to his primary task: being the bearer of bad news. Hutchins Sr. was in Laughlin with the wife during the murders, and his alibi checks out. Nicky is about to begin quizzing Junior as to what he might have been doing when Dad was out of town. Before he can do so, Liam comes in, announcing, "Results from the colored material found at the crime scene. I'm trying to be humble, but once again, I have the case breaker." Liam hands over a piece of paper to Gil. Gil gives Liam an unamused look, then examines said piece of paper. Nicky, who is hovering, rapt, behind Liam, gives Liam a quizzical look. Gil then looks up with mild surprise, saying, "You may be right. Paintball paint." Liam feigns modesty; Nicky casts upon him a warm and indulgent glance that may be interpreted any number of ways.
We're at the local paintball emporium with Nicky, Gil, and Sara, and they've pulled Hutchins Jr. away from his game for questioning. As Hutchins Jr. walks over, Sara can't help but notice his footwear. As Nicky's commenting that Hutchins Jr. got off easy by "only" getting shot in the chest, Sara's studying Hutchins Jr.'s boot prints against the ones she lifted, and Gil's pointing out that with Dad in Laughlin and the truck at the crime scene, the evidence is pointing to Hutchins Jr. knowing something about the murders. Having matched the boot prints, Sara looks up and asks, "You were there, weren't you?" Hutchins Jr. clears his throat and looks back to see Gil and Nicky staring at him contemptuously.
Cut to Hutchenses père et fils in the fishbowl with Gil. Hutchins Jr. says, "I've never been to the temple. Never." Gil points out that the evidence begs to differ: "This boot print says you were." Hutchins Sr. commands, "Tell him who you lent your boots to. Tell him or they'll accuse you of something else. And tell 'em that we know this sort of evidence is exactly how they faked the moon landings too." Can you guess which one of those sentences I made up? Hutchins Jr. tells his dad that he's not in the habit of lending out his footwear, then spins a story about how he and his friends visited the monastery for kicks a few weeks before the murders. Gil says, "Our dust lifter is only effective on very recent prints. I think you were there the day of the murders." Father and son exchange looks; then Hutchins Jr. speaks again: "It was a...it was a week ago when I went there with my friends. But Tommy, he copped a statue. I went back to return it, and I was removing my boots when I looked inside, and saw them laying there. I wanted to call the police, but I knew if they found me there, they'd think I did it." We flash to Hutchins Jr. discovering the bodies, then back to the present. Gil is leaning back in his chair, cogitating a bit before asking, "How'd you know to remove your boots?" Hutchins Jr. doesn't reply. Gil continues, "You'd been there before." Hutchins Jr. concedes, "Maybe." Hutchins Sr. says, "What are you accusing my son of now?" Well, of being a liar, mostly, but you should have been able to infer that one on your own, acquainted as you are with acrobatic leaps of deduction between seemingly unrelated observations, sir. Hutchins Jr. says slowly, "They were my friends." His paterfamilias takes this about as well as can be expected. After Hutchins Sr. leaves, Gil gives the boy a quizzical look; Hutchins Jr. responds, "Someone once asked the Buddha, 'How do we escape the heat of a summer's day?' And the Buddha said, 'Why not leap into a blazing furnace?'" Gil looks sufficiently impressed by this statement. This is an unprecedented second time in an episode where someone's managed to get even more metaphorical than Gil.
Oh, hell, it's the B-plot. I feel terrible for having such a rotten attitude about this -- I mean, Marg Helgenberger's doing a great job with emotionally volatile material, and I love Bruce McGill unconditionally, even with full knowledge of his participation in Black Sheep, Bagger Vance, and Wolf Lake, but this is just...I mean, they're using those government satellites to broadcast the resolution of this storyline. Anyway, in this scene, Warrick's isolated another blood sample on the glove; he's run amylase tests and found human saliva. "Well, blood mixed with saliva sounds like a mouth injury," Catherine decrees. She asks Warrick if he checked the samples from the weapon Ecklie collected. Warrick confirms amylase there too. Catherine asks, "Well, how did blood from Kelso's mouth end up on the glove as well as the knife?" Warrick gives her an I'm not going to hold your hand look, and Catherine concludes -- shock of all shocks -- "unless it was planted."
Cut to the inevitable confrontation: she accuses, Jimmy denies. "I helped the evidence along," he says. "Good evidence doesn't need help," Catherine shoots back. She then steels herself to ask for Jimmy's blood -- Bruce McGill's outraged reaction is especially nice here -- and explains why: "We isolated male blood on the murder weapon. It doesn't belong to Kelso." Jimmy is indignant that Catherine would think he killed Stephanie. Catherine surprises nobody by revealing that Jimmy was in love with Stephanie ("That was no secret...") and had recently had his proposal of marriage rejected ("...but the ring was. Three carats and she turned you down"). Jimmy concedes, "You're good. You are." Catherine says, "I'll go get a warrant." Suddenly bitter, Jimmy snarls, "You go get a warrant. Yeah, you do that!" Catherine departs, leaving Jimmy drinking alone at the cop bar.
Back at CSICentral, Liam's explaining to Gil that matching food in the gum could be a problem, and wouldn't it be easier to give him a suspect to match everything to. Gil snaps back, "I can't give you what I don't have, Greg." Liam resumes cutting the gum into tiny pieces to do an analysis.
B-plot: oh, sweet God, let this be wrapped up already. Warrick comes in bearing the envelope with results of Jimmy's DNA sample compared to the one on the knife. Catherine's suffering intense bouts of indecision, alternating with acute guilt over doing this to her mentor and gusts of moral conviction that she's doing the right thing. Incidentally, Marg Helgenberger's acting is superb here. After listening patiently to Catherine tell a story about what a great guy Jimmy was, Warrick asks if it would be easier on her if he opened the envelope. He reaches for it and reads it.
Cut to Catherine going into the tank to talk to Jimmy: the blood sample is a total mystery, not matching anyone in CODIS, and therefore she's going to conclude -- based on that, plus the amylase test, plus the hinky situation with the glove -- that not only did Stephanie's real killer get away, Kelso served a lifetime sentence for a crime he didn't commit, a sentence based entirely on false evidence. They have the following conversation:
Jimmy: I screwed up. You wanna hear me say it. I liked Kelso. Maybe I was wrong.Jimmy: He was a scumbag! He copped to another murder!
Catherine: [inhales] Yeah. You were.
Jimmy: So now what?
Catherine: You know "now what."
Jimmy: You're not serious.
Catherine: You put a man away for life on planted evidence, Jimmy.
Catherine: Scumbag or saint, what you did is a capital crime. You can't play with evidence, especially in a murder.
Jimmy: I could get life in prison if you turn me in -- do you know that? Maybe even the death penalty! Do you know that?
Catherine: [shaking her head, tearing up] What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to look the other way? Do you want me to dummy [up] my report?
Jimmy: I can't believe you're doing this to me. I gave you your career.
Catherine: I earned my career. And you did this to yourself -- you fabricated evidence, Jimmy.
Jimmy: You were two steps away from turning tricks! This is the thanks I get?
Catherine: I danced. Period. And instead of feeling sorry for yourself, think about this: while you were out there planting evidence on a case you couldn't break, Stephanie's real killer got away, and he's still out there.
Of course, by this point, I was derailed by thinking, "Hey, about fifteen years ago, Catherine was hooking. Of course, it was on a different network, and back then it looked like Dana Delany was going places, but hey...it got Marg an Emmy then. Why mess with the classics?"
Anyway, Catherine turns Jimmy in after informing him that he's the one who sold his integrity, so who was really the whore here? And after Jimmy gets arrested, she's kind enough to drape a coat over his wrists so nobody else sees his cuffs, then leans in to tell him, "You can hate me all you want. I'm going to see you through this." Jimmy nods, bitter and broken.
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas's thriving Little Bangkok, Ananda is wafting through the crowds, smiling beatifically. As Ananda gets to a crosswalk, Gil pulls up in a CSIMobile and quips, "If you see the Buddha on the side of the road, kill him." Ananda replies, "Because the true Buddha is inside of us, so that is the false Buddha. Or a tired monk who doesn't drive because he can't control his anger." Well, it's refreshing to see Ananda cracking wise, but nothing beats the old joke: "So the monk walked up to the hot dog vendor and said, 'Make me one with everything.' The hot dog vendor did, and the monk asked for his change. The vendor replied, 'Change comes from within.'" Anyway, Ananda hops in the car. Gil informs Ananda, "We've cleared the father. The son has also been cleared." Ananda deduces that Gil's looking for his help, then adds, "You know my religion better than I know your science." Oh, Ananda, get used to it. There's nothing that Gil doesn't know better than the people around him. It's why he looks so tired all the time; he's worn out from the burden of being so much smarter than everyone else around him. Gil talks about chewing gum -- Liam found traces of curry and saffron in the gum -- and Ananda reveals that the monks ate curry and saffron for dinner.
They repair to the kitchen. Gil is holding a rather large container in his hand and commenting, impressed, "It's the real stuff." Ananda explains, "The neighborhood kids thought we imported drugs. We just imported spices." Gil determines that the five monks ate together. Before they can get into the specifics of the meal, Buzz comes in, chews out Gil over not leaving his cell on (Gil peevishly replies, "We're in a temple," to which Buzz looks around and grunts in recollection), and proceeds to accuse Ananda of embezzling a thousand dollars from the school fund, as bank records show a deposit of twelve thousand dollars instead of the thirteen thousand the monks raised. Gil notices that the account was opened the same day as the murders, and asks Ananda where the money was before that. Ananda replies, "In a box, in my office." Cut to Gil opening a beautiful carved-wood box, now empty, and noticing a small pile of curry powder at the bottom. "Curry powder! Your temple employs a part-time cook!" he exclaims. Ananda's face shifts slightly and he says tightly, "Mr. Suddahara moved on." Gil asks, "After you caught him with his hand in the till? Why didn't you tell us about Mr. Suddahara before?" Ananda replies, still sadly resolved, "Just because a man steals doesn't mean he also kills."
Except that in this case, it does. Which makes no sense, if you ask me -- why would you kill the four people who didn't witness the crime and leave the one person who's likely to report you alive? After the routine confession, Gil asks David Suddahara, "I'm curious about one thing: why did you shoot them in the sixth chakra?" It turns out to be entirely unintentional; David replies flatly, "I shot them between the eyes."
In the scene, Gil's walking across the walkway of the temple courtyard and entering the temple. He walks into the prayer room and sees Ananda and Hutchins Jr. chanting together, two small figures in a too-big room. Gil catches Hutchins Jr.'s eye, then discreetly leaves the two to their meditation. Meanwhile, back in cold storage, Catherine's pulling down the box of Stephanie's evidence, writing on the side, "Do not destroy. Case unsolved." And thus does the episode end, two portraits in grief, framed by senseless acts.