We open with a shot of Vegas, because someone at CBS is apparently worried that the audience might think they've tuned in to a rerun of The District otherwise, then swerve out to empty roads in the desert. The camera focuses on a tour bus speeding along the road, then swoops inside. A soignée woman is leaning over her seat and talking to a balding guy with a why, God, why me? look on his face, telling him, "Come on! I earned this vacation! Have you ever been married? When it's good, it's great. And when it's over, it's even better. Uhhh-hmmm?" He smiles a little, and she settles down in her seat. The camera moves down the aisle and lingers on a youngish man in a suit, rolling dice across the copy of some generic book about gambling. He looks across the aisle and says, "I'm telling you: the seven comes up every six rolls. I got a system." One man just nods; the other queries, "You know what casinos say about guys with systems?" "What?" asks Systemic Stan. Heckling Hal replies, "Welcome." One row back, a portly, balding fellow snits, "He doesn't know what he's talking about. Everything you need to know about craps is right in this book." His wife, who looks as though she should be taking marital advice from the woman a few rows up, continues cross-stitching as she says, "I was talking to Shirley. She said the only way to make money in that town is slots." Well, if Shirley says it, okay. I vaguely remember seeing the best-selling book Shirley on Gambling. Chapter One: What Is The One-Armed Bandit? The camera and I lose interest and move on: first we see the driver steering the bus -- "ship of fools, bus of yokels," the husband opines -- then we go back to the interior, where we see a young man damaging his hearing, then an old man playing Gameboy and announcing his score to his disinterested wife, who'd rather inflict photos of her grandchildren on a captive audience. Well, now that we've seen pictures of little Tyler walking, I feel like I know everyone. I now have a personal stake in these people's lives. I hope the bus doesn't crash or anything; I wouldn't be able to cope.
In other, less wholesome parts of the bus, a couple is canoodling to the lavatory. The door opens, and a dead ringer for Bruce Springsteen -- provided Bruce was both hungover and about ten seconds away from giving in to homicidal impulses -- staggers out, a bottle of Thunderbird in hand. As the bus driver benignly announces their location -- forty miles outside Vegas -- Bad Bruce heads down the aisle, arousing suspicion in all who behold him. The bus driver continues with his amiable patter, then resumes driving. Bad Bruce sits down in the front seat and offers the driver a swig; the driver declines with, "No. I know my limits." He then demonstrates that he does not know the speed limit, flooring the pedal and grasping the wheel of the bus in preparation for some serious driving. The wheel begins shaking violently; the bus driver looks alarmed. We see assorted passengers looking up, concerned -- even the canoodling couple disengages and looks around to try to figure out if they're still to a bathroom (yup) -- and the driver fights to regain control of the bus. We switch to the exterior of the bus: a tire goes flat and the bus begins swerving, its bulky body swaying precariously atop tires that are barely on the road. Inside the bus, people are flung to and fro, making the usual assortment of panicky noises. The bus swerves wildly, and we see it running on the rims of the tires, then veering into a concrete barrier. We switch back into the interior for a moment to see panicky people, then watch the bus run off the edge of the road, bouncing down the cliffside. Tyler's Grandma! Systemic Stan! Ebullient Ex-Wife! Noooooooooooo!
Okay, I've collected myself.
We then see the red glare of a flare, and five backlit silhouettes. From San Francisco, coming in as a science geek CSI 3, it's Sara Sidel! From another planet, acting as tonight's primary and chief forensic guru...Gil Grissom! You know her as the ex-stripper with uncanny instincts -- it's senior CSI Catherine Willows! Coming in to represent Texas: he's tan, rested, and ready for ridicule, Nick Stokes! Aaaaaand coming in at six-foot-four, it's Warrick Brown! Give it up for yooooooooour Las Vegas Crime Scene Investigators! The crowd goes wild...sorry, y'all, but I saw them standing there and instantly flashed to the Chicago Bulls introductions, circa 1995.
Anyway, the entire team is looking down at the bus -- now resting on its side and illuminated by two emergency floodlights -- as rescue personnel bustle around trying to make sense of the chaos. We see someone rushing toward the car pinned under the bus, then return to look at the CSIs' somber faces. Gil is holding his crime scene case like a blankie as he stares down. Down at the scene, a fire chief is telling two rescue workers, "We do not touch this car until everyone is off the bus." The CSIs watch somberly as workers hustle to tend to the wounded, or lay out body bags with brutal efficiency. Sara comments, "I feel so useless." Without taking her eyes off the scene below, Catherine replies, "It's still a rescue operation." All five of them look as though they wish they weren't there -- or that they had arrived an hour later. Warrick mutters, "Well, we're not running this show." Nicky says, "Not yet!" Atta boy, Nicky. It's good to have goals. Gil weighs in shortly before the credits with: "They do their job, and we do ours."
Cut to The Who, failing to take this episode as a cue to break into Magic Bus.
When we return from commercial, Dylan's Grandma is in a c-collar on a stretcher, weakly calling for her husband Walter as she goes. Gil, Sara, and Warrick watch her; then Gil snaps to, briskly saying, "I want everyone thinking worst-case scenario. The highway's finally ours. Cones and pictures, skid marks, loose asphalt, anything and everything." Warrick nods his understanding. Sara points out, "It's a pretty wide highway out there. Are we clear to call in for help?" Gil replies, "Every Las Vegas CSI is on their way here." Warrick kicks in, "Cadets?" Gil gives the go-ahead to call the cadets in to help. Warrick and Sara head off, and Gil begins walking around the disaster scene. We see Walter (the Gameboy-playing grandpa) laid out on a body bag; a few corpses down, a woman last seen osculating at the back of the bus is sobbing wildly over the body of her boyfriend. Gil hastily moves on. He surveys more carnage, and we zoom in on Nick asking someone, "You the only trauma doc?" Without taking his eye off the person he's working on, the other guy replies, "That's right. Lucky me. I personally black-tagged six. My line of work, that's a bad night." Nicky briefly empathizes, then asks the doc to point out the bus driver.
We zoom over to the bus driver, looking dazed but sitting up, his shirt soaked with blood from where the seat belt presumably cut into his torso. The doc comments, "Big surprise. Only guy on the bus wearing a seat belt." Nicky clarifies, "The only one on the tour bus required to wear one. Thank you." As Nick prepares to head over to talk to the bus driver, Liam dashes onto the scene, breathlessly announcing, "I got here as soon as I could." Nicky, noticing the lack of a centrifuge, autoclave, or any other lab equipment nearby, asks what Liam's doing on the scene. Liam replies, "All hands on deck -- that was the call, right?" Unfortunately for Liam, Gil happens to be standing nearby, and he clarifies, "Crim[inologist]s with field training." Liam pleads. Dad relents, wagging a stern finger in Nicky's face and saying, "I'm not walking him every night. If you want a dog, he's your responsibility." Actually, Gil tells Nick to make sure Liam doesn't actually collect evidence or do anything else to contaminate the crime scene. Nick nods, wondering how a nice guy like him who follows the rules gets to baby-sit while Warrick's making time on the asphalt with Sara. Once Gil leaves, Nicky tells Liam that he'll be taking Nicky's notes. He then comments of Liam's lack of outerwear (Nicky's in something big and quilted; Liam's in something thin and flimsy), gives Liam a look, and stalks off. Liam follows.
Meanwhile, Brass is having a quiet conversation with someone amidst the chaos; we find out that Brass has been talking to the bus company owner, Larry Maddox. Catherine walks on over, Brass fills her in, and she comments about Maddox: "Got here quick. That should tell you something." That he's conscientious, perhaps? That in this day and age, he's all too aware of how the headline "Bus Owner Sleeps Through Tourist Tragedy" will affect his business? Brass shrugs it off and dons his superhero identity, Captain Exposition: "He coughed up the passenger manifest, including the driver, Martin Draper. Twenty-four passengers, one PAL." Catherine clarifies for us that PAL means Parolee At Large, not to be confused with COACHDCAL, or Convicted Of A Crime He Didn't Commit At Large. We learn that our new pal is one Calvin McBride, recently of the California State Penitentiary, convicted of aggravated assault. He was in seat 1-C. Calvin was evidently paroled last week. "And already over state lines," Catherine notes. "It was news to his parole officer," Brass remarks. "I'm sure it was," Catherine replies. I have to wonder why this was news: are parolees normally in the habit of calling their officers to let them know they're leaving the state when they ought not to be? Or are parole officers perpetually surprised at recidivism? Brass heads off to begin matching names and faces to bodies.
Cut to Sara and Warrick doing a sweep of the asphalt. Down at the scene, Catherine and Gil meet over by the bus; she apprises him of the Camaro driver's status (dead). Gil says quietly, "Yeah. I heard." Then he perks up a little and says, "But I think I know why the bus pulled to the right." The camera follows the beam of Gil's flashlight and rests on a nest of shredded rubber. Catherine comments appreciatively on the scope of the tire blowout, noting that the opposite tire is still intact. Gil muses, "Newton's Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tire to rim. Rim to axle. Axle to suspension. Suspension to frame. And the lower radius rod arm, which connects the axle to the frame..." Catherine leans over and correct him: "Not anymore." Apparently, a snapped radius rod arm is to blame here. And on a slightly related note -- is anyone really surprised that Gil happens to know his way around the undercarriage of a commercial bus? I fully expect him to investigate a UFO landing at some point and look at an overturned spaceship, saying, "The matter/antimatter fusion core connects to the combustion chamber. The combustion chamber connects to the warp drive. The warp drive connects to the anti-proton shield generator..." But that's a future episode. In this one, the two CSIs reason:
Gil: If the rod arm broke while [Draper] was driving.
Catherine: Driver tried to maintain control, veered to the left.
Gil: Turning the wheel is probably going to make things worse.
Catherine: Putting pressure on the right front tire, causing it to blow. The bus then veers to the right and goes off the road.
Gil: And we're back to Newton. The theory's correct -- if the rod arm was the first action.
Catherine turns away to check out the Camaro while Gil remains by the bus. She peers around the wreckage, then leans in the window and takes a look at the male body inside. Suddenly, his hand shoots up, scrabbling desperately -- Catherine instinctively grabs his hand in hers and assures him, "We gotta get you some help." She then shouts for rescue. Cut to the driver being carried out on a gurney; he's still holding on to Catherine, so she's trotting beside the stretcher, asking the man what his name is. He just gurgles a little. The EMTs pry Catherine's fingers from the victim's and lift him into the ambulance. Catherine's left standing there; she looks at her hands, covered in blood. I hope her hepatitis vaccines are up to date.
Meanwhile, Liam and Nicky are talking to Draper, who's saying, "This has never happened to me before. The wheel just sh-sh-sh-shook out of my hands." Nicky asks Draper, "How long after your scheduled stop in Barstow?" Draper says dazedly, "We...always stop in Barstow. McDonald's. The, uh, train station one." As Draper's speaking, he's taking off his glasses and rubbing his increasingly sweaty face; Liam's scribbling notes and watching Draper anxiously. Nicky patiently says, "I understand that, Mr. Draper, but how long after that did the wheel start to shake on you?" Draper blinks, clearly trying to get his bearings: "Uh...I don't...uh, I don't, I don't know." Nicky asks, "Sir, are you okay?" Draper tries to chuckle weakly as he says, "No, we're behind schedule. I gotta get back to the bus." This is the point where I begin to wonder if Draper has sustained a concussion of some sort. Draper tries to rise, but Nicky and Liam keep him from taking off. Nicky, still calm and polite, says, "Wait a second. Mr. Draper, have you had anything to drink tonight?" Draper looks down at him, puzzled, and doesn't say anything. Nicky, trying to communicate what happens to Liam a la telepathy, tells everyone, "I'm going to perform a preliminary field breath test. Keep an eye on Mr. Draper for me, won't you, Liam? Mr. Draper, just sit tight." Draper, who looks increasingly more disoriented, struggles to say, "I gotta...I gotta go." Off-camera, Nicky assures him, "It'll only take a minute. I understand, I understand. Just hang tight." Draper protests, "There's people." Nicky assures him that he understands, and bids Mr. Draper to blow on the end of the breathalyzer. Liam, still keeping a hand on Draper, watches Nicky do this somewhat anxiously. As Draper tries to exhale, he ends up coughing instead -- coughing up blood, and a lot of it. Nicky immediately swings into action, holding up the collapsing Mr. Draper and telling Liam to go get some help. Liam is busy doing his best deer-in-the-headlights impersonation. Nicky shouts his name a few more times, getting more demanding each time and yelling, "Get some help!" Liam stands there, frozen.
Go, Nick! I mean it -- we usually see Nicky as this slack-jawed bumpkin who couldn't reason his way out of a paper bag, and it's really refreshing to see him excelling in an area of crime scene investigation. In this case, Nicky's innate empathy for people comes in handy in taking control of a scene and talking to witnesses -- and he had to do so while also Liam-sitting. Go, Nicky! It's your episode!
When we get back from commercial break, Liam and Nicky are climbing down the escarpment, away from an ambulance and back toward the accident scene. Nicky is telling Liam to quit apologizing; Liam says, "But I feel bad! I just froze up!" Nicky replies, "That's why we have field training. No disrespect, but you're not qualified to be out here." Liam says that he was thrown off by the blood: "Pre-collection, it's so different." Nicky agrees, and tells Liam, "I remember my first time in the field. CSI-1, green as could be. Initial call was a robbery. I get there -- triple homicide. Blood all over the place. Mother and two kids." Liam asks, "How do you deal?" "You just do," replies Nicky.
That bonding moment over, Nicky and Liam return to the bus, where Gil is still studying the undercarriage. Nicky asks what's ; Gil replies, "Well, we're missing a passenger. The only one unaccounted for is an ex-con named Calvin McBride. According to Brass, he wasn't admitted to the hospital, and he's not in any of the body bags." The camera swings back to Nicky, who asks if the PAL may have disembarked at Barstow; Gils tells him that CHP is looking into it. Behind Nicky, Liam stops shivering long enough to ask, "Anybody check the bus?" Nicky turns back to give Liam a look; Liam shrugs. Gil looks at them both for a moment; both men look back at him. Nicky takes off his bulky parka and sighs, "I'll find out." He then prepares to climb inside the bus. We see Nicky walking along the bottom -- what used to be a row of windows, mind you -- and shining his flashlight on the detritus he sees there: the sampler that Sylvia's friend was working on, the walkman the kid was listening to, the gambling book one of the men was reading, the photo album with Dylan's pictures. Nicky also sees a lot of blood.
Back outside the bus, Liam is bouncing up and down to try to warm up; Gil tells him that he did good by saying, "Firefighters only look in the obvious spots." Liam asks through chattering teeth, "Just out of curiosity, what are the un-obvious spots?" Gil (who is wearing an exquisitely deadpan expression here) says, "For bodies? Walls. Hot-water heaters" -- and here I scream, "Argh! Redundancy! You don't need to heat hot water!" before resuming my transcription of Gil's inventory -- "stuffed in the box spring of a hotel mattress. I found a head in a bucket of paint once." Liam, who now looks cold, uncomfortable, and squeamish, chatters, "I get the picture." Meanwhile, Nicky gets done with inspecting the bus's loo and concludes that McBride's not on the bus. He does, however, find the bottle of alcohol that the scruffy man had been drinking. Nicky, who doesn't know that the bus driver declined to tipple, tells Gil, "I never gave the bus driver a breath test." In all fairness, it would have been hard with all that blood pouring out of Draper's mouth. Anyway, Gil bids Liam to "bag [the bottle], take it to the lab and swab the rim for DNA." Grateful to have been given an excuse to leave the crime scene for familiar territory, Liam does so. Shortly before Liam takes off, Gil tells him, "You should be wearing gloves." Liam looks crushed as he replies, "Sorry." Gil shrugs him off and returns to figuring out where McBride might be. Nicky notes, "Seat 1C was the only seat with an unobstructed path through the windshield." Gil begins looking around, then asks Nicky, "Where's the other half of this windshield?" Nicky, bless his heart, looks troubled about not being able to answer. He and Gil begin looking for the glass -- find the glass, you'll probably find McBride. They soon find a sheet of glass with the usual spider-web pattern of cracks, and a huge splotch of dark blood at the center of the web. "Laminated safety glass. Pops in, pops out," exposits Nicky. Just a few feet further, Calvin McBride lies sprawled on his back. Gil's all, "I'm afraid our ex-con just got the death penalty." Nicky reminds him that the opportunity for getting the snappy one-liner in before the Who began playing happened twenty minutes ago.
Meanwhile, Catherine's down at the hospital, telling someone at the admitting desk, "I don't know his name. He was one of the victims in the bus crash -- he was in the Camaro, he was driving the Camaro." She then spies the man in question being wheeled somewhere and bolts from the desk, following the gurney as medical personnel try to shake her off. She asks the man his name. "Eric. I just wanted to surprise her, that's all. If I don't make it, please tell her I'm sorry," he gasps. This is the point where medical personnel block Catherine from following him further by pointing out that she's about to enter an operating room and they don't need no unsterile CSIs crowding the joint. Catherine looks crushed. That hairdo certainly doesn't help; when J. Lo did it for the Oscars, at least she had the good sense to make it all curly-like, thus inspiring some (okay, me) to shriek, "My dolls! My beautiful dolls! Nobody gets in Neely O'Hara's way!" whereas Catherine simply looks like she's having a bad hair day. I sympathize with the need to keep one's hair out of one's face, but there are other, equally utilitarian hairstyles out there that don't make one look scalped.
Back on track here: Gil is still at the accident scene. It's daylight, and he's commanding some brawny people, "I need the two front wheels: axles, suspension, all of it. The entire front undercarriage." He then turns to do something else, and is distracted by the sight of a non-CSI on the scene. Gil goes over to tell her, politely, that she's at a crime scene and it's off-limits. The woman turns around and sniffles that she was on the bus. We can tell because she's got all sorts of facial abrasions and one arm in a sling. There's a silent moment, and then Gil asks, in a tone parked halfway between confused and annoyed, "Why are you here?" The girl has no good answer for him; Gil watches her break down.
At the top of the scene, on the stretch of road leading to the accident, Sara is walking along the pavement collecting evidence, and Warrick is taking photos of the skid marks along the concrete barriers. As Warrick hunkers down to look more closely at the barrier, Sara tells us all what her issue is with evidence collection: "There's shreds of rubber everywhere. Between the crash and regular highway traffic, this might as well be the Indy 500. This could be from any vehicle." And yet, she's still going to have to bag it all. Warrick also has a few misgivings of his own: "I doubt this bus body-checked this K-rail." Sara walks over, registering the multiple skid marks in the road. She crouches lower to study the skid marks, and begins imagining the bus's likely path as it swerved in the road; we know this because we see, like, the Phantom Bus swerving. As Warrick walks over to her, the bus drives right through him and keeps going. Just as the Phantom Bus drives toward Sara, the wind blows her hair out of her face and she snaps to. Warrick stops snapping pictures long enough to comment, "You got that 'Sara' look." Sara, without taking her eyes off the skid marks, replies, "You mean that 'Grissom' look? Second set of skid marks -- Camaro." In the meantime, Warrick has a theory to bounce off of Sara.
Warrick: Grissom said the suspension gave on the bus, right? Broken rod arm. I'm thinking when that rod arm hit the pavement, it made this great first impression.Sara: Taking out anything in its path. The bus crosses four lanes of traffic and only takes out one car behind it?
Sara: If this is the bus, the bus begins to slide right, the driver over-corrects.
Warrick: Crosses the highway, slams into that K-rail.
Sara: Meanwhile, the Camaro's holding steady in the right lane, heading straight for us.
Warrick: Bus bounces off the K-rail, heads back towards us.
Warrick: Someone upstairs was looking out, big-time.
While this entire conversation is taking place, we see each of the events Sara and Warrick are describing. I have to say, those two together are like Gil and Catherine: The Generation; they just bounce right off each other.
Back at the Labitrail, Gil's hurrying toward his office. He passes Liam's lab bench without comment. Liam, however, has been waiting for Gil, and rushes out with, "Hey, boss! I had a feeling you were coming. I ran the DNA on that whiskey bottle. You'll never guess. It's not the bus driver, but I do have an answer behind door number two. Seat 1C. Calvin McBride. He's an ex-con; I found his DNA in CODIS." Gil says, "Good." Then, he looks up and asks, "Did you enjoy being in the field?" Liam, still thinking back to the Draper incident, asks, "You heard about it too?" Gil's not following: "What?" Liam stammers, "I-I messed up." Gil says, "No." Liam replies, "Then I enjoyed it just fine." As he turns away from Gil, there's the faintest hint of a smile playing about his lips; you just know the minute Gil walks off, Liam's going to be grinning like a loon and making like Peter Benton in the ER with the punch-in-the-air thing. Gil watches Liam walk off, smiling slightly. I suspect that Liam just passed some sort of test there; some lab monkeys are more suited to a controlled environment, but Liam wasn't bothered by the chaotic element of the crime scene so much as he was disturbed by his own inability to respond to it.
Meanwhile, Nicky and David The No Doubt Overbooked Coroner are standing over Draper's body in the morgue. Nicky expresses incredulity over Draper's non-intoxicated state. Nicky asks for an explanation for Draper's incoherence and slurring. David replies that it was a result of Draper being hungry, explaining, "Driver's medical eval, taken last night. Martin Draper, forty, overweight. One of fifteen million people in this country suffering from Type II diabetes." Without looking up from the medical evaluation, Nicky asks if Draper was on medication. David explains, "Primary course of treatment would have been exercise and weight loss to lower blood sugar." Nicky comments that Draper's physique belies a gym membership. David explains that Draper was dieting -- "crash dieting. I didn't find any food in his stomach. He hadn't eaten anything in at least six hours. An empty stomach invites hypoglycemia." Gil comes in with, "The symptoms of which can mirror intoxication." David immediately switches into quiz-show mode, pointing at Gil and inquiring, "And in extreme cases?" "Loss of consciousness and seizure. Do I pass?" Gil replies. Of course he does. We find out that Draper died from massive injuries and internal bleeding. Now that we've eliminated a drunken driver from the list of suspects, Gil and company will be turning their attention to the bus.
Warrick, meanwhile, is still at the scene with Sara. As he snaps pictures of assorted parts all over the road, he stops to photograph a bolt that looks as though it's been sheared. He then picks up the bolt and walks over to Sara, asking her to check it out as well. They teleport to a lab, where they test the bolt's composition. What they see on the screen causes them to exchange a meaningful look of some sort.
In another part of the Labitrail, Nicky's telling Gil that he just got a copy of the bus's service report, and the vehicle was allegedly in perfect working order, serviced the week prior to the crash. Gil invites Nicky to look down at the undercarriage on the floor and asks, "Does this look like it's in perfect working order?" Nicky is forced to concede that it does not. Just then, Warrick and Sara come in to share the news: they've got a three-quarter-inch bolt with a hex head that says it's a grade eight. Sara explains that bolts are graded according to their hardness, and a grade eight is supposed to be stronger than steel. Gil asks if Warrick and Sara did a Rockwell Hardness test; Warrick replies, "I hit it with a true-blue. It's not a grade eight. It's a grade five." Well, someone screwed up something, then. Gil digests this news and inspects the remaining bolts, musing, "Often when there's one, there's another one." Sara wonders if the bus company was using bogus bolts. Gil notes that inferior bolts would cause the suspension to give, thus forcing the bus to veer all over the road, and hypothesizes, "If the sheared bolts were the first action..." Warrick interrupts Gil reaffirmation of Newton's Third Law by pointing out, "No, the bolt snapped halfway through the skid, after the bus hit the K-rail." Gil demands proof; Sara supplies it with, "Gouge in the road." Gil begins thinking of Plan B.
Gil: Broken rod arm, maybe?
Nicky: Okay. Driver hits the brakes, initiates the skid.
Gil: Why'd he hit the brakes?
Nicky: Another vehicle.
Sara: Nope. Only two sets of skid marks on that stretch of highway.
Warrick: Yeah, and that Camaro's skid marks place it behind the bus.
Gil: So I ask again -- why'd he hit the brakes?
Nicky: Man, there could be a million reasons.
Gil: Fortunately, we're just looking for one.
Okay -- let me just say how much I love this episode. This may well be my favorite episode of this show, and here's why: the team is working together, which I always appreciate; we get to see how they enter a crime scene and begin making sense of it; we see how they reason through the evidence and process assorted theories. It's not often that a television show manages to make deductive thinking look interesting, but this episode's really made it exciting, and managed to engage all of the viewers in the act as well.
I'm sure all of you are like, "What...? Where are the obtuse comments and snide asides? I don't read these things to get my daily dose of sweetness and light." So back to the recap we go. Catherine's busy in the waiting room when Brass comes by to tell her that the kid in the Camaro didn't make it. The "kid," incidentally, is thirty-two. His name is Eric Kevlin and he was a resident at the UCLA Medical Center; he was apparently driving to Vegas to surprise his girlfriend. Surprise her how? With his superior time-management skills? I thought the whole point to being a medical resident was some sort of highly-educated indentured servitude -- it's supposed to be all sleep deprivation and doctoring and whatnot. None of these spontaneous road trips to Vegas! Bah! Brass and Catherine talk about something they find curious: apparently Kevlin signed a pre-op Do Not Resuscitate order (DNR). Brass is all, "That doesn't make sense for a young person." Actually, it makes perfect sense for anyone, regardless of age. I signed a living will with a standing DNR the moment I turned eighteen, and everyone in my family knows it. I can understand where a doctor would be especially adamant about one: he'd be in a position to see the long-term effects of a persistent vegetative state on the human body, he'd have seen the immense financial strain precipitated by long-term medical care for those in a persistent vegetative state, and he'd have seen people grappling with the decisions to be made when someone they cared for faced spending the rest of their lives comatose on a respirator versus dying. Signing a DNR short-circuits those probable outcomes, and some people prefer it that way. Now if I can figure this out, why can't Brass and Catherine?
Warrick is at the bus company garage, talking to Maddox. Maddox is pointing out that the company had a perfect safety record. "Until last night," Warrick replies. Maddox rebuts that in any transit business, accidents are inevitable. He does not add, "But, I assure you, we do everything possible to reduce their statistical probability." Anyway, Maddox is all, "Accidents are inevitable," and Gil pops into the frame to say, "Criminal acts, however, are not." This immediately puts Maddox on the defensive: "I've got a family. Sometimes they ride my buses. I don't take a chance with their lives or anybody else's. I screen all my drivers, zero tolerance for drugs or alcohol, I keep strict maintenance records, vehicle inspection every forty-five days as required by law. You're not going to find anything criminal here." Gil begs to differ, handing over the sheared bolt and drawling, "I believe this belong to you." Maddox inspects it, saying, "Bolt, grade eight, sheared. That doesn't happen." Gil contradicts him yet again. Warrick steps in and says they have many questions, all of which spring from observing that the suspension didn't hold. His Small Businessman's Righteous Wrath undercut by the implacable stares of Gil and Warrick, Maddox says that he buys all his parts from reputable vendors. Gil and Warrick aren't interested in all the parts -- just the ones that broke, i.e. the bolts. Maddox supplies, "Brillway Bolt Company. I just switched...they were low bid." His face falls as he realizes how his decision affected the bus accident. Warrick piles on the guilt with, "The consequences of saving a buck." This is like the anti-10-10-220 commercial. Maddox grounds the fleet, presumably to remove all the faulty bolts.
Meanwhile, Sara is suffering her own private hell as she matches up umpty-jillion shredded pieces of rubber against the bus and Camaro tires. At least she has some pleasant background music to keep her company as she does so. The music keeps playing as Brass questions people at the rest station in Barstow. A gas-station attendant reports that Marty Draper was a regular; a female attendant points out that she was being ogled by someone who bought a lot of turkey jerky. She also noted a fight between a couple. Brass then talks to a mechanic (note: he's the only one wearing a nametag. It reads "Sean") who can recite the particulars of the bus route. Sean did not notice the couple fighting. The background music kicks up again as Sara continues to work with the rubber tire fragments, swabbing the pieces that match for chemical residue.
While this is going on, Nicky's managed to slide into the Camaro for a look around. Catherine comes over, and they comment on the lack of a wallet anywhere on Eric's person; Nicky has a flash of intuition, reasoning that sitting on a wallet for four hours would be uncomfortable, and therefore it's likely that Kevin took it out. He finds the wallet in the beverage caddy. Now why can't Nicky display these thinking skills around Gil, Warrick, or Sara? Does he have performance anxiety? Is he self-sabotaging? Are they so collectively brilliant that anyone else's IQ falls when in their presence? It's a mystery to me. Anyway, once Catherine gets the wallet, they flip it open, and there are many, many pictures of the girlfriend in the wallet. Nicky recognizes the girl from the accident scene.
Cut to Nicky and Catherine at the girlfriend's bedside. Catherine's all, "He said he wanted to surprise you." The girl nods weakly, then says, "He did. In Barstow, at the rest stop. It was supposed to be a girls' weekend." We go to flashback, where we learn that Eric is a mite bit possessive, needy, and insecure. The woman expresses remorse for having yelled at the man who explicitly ignored her plea for space and, as a result of deciding to follow her around, ended up dead as a result. Catherine and Nicky move on to solve the mystery of the DNR. The girl explains, "It's because he was a doctor. He saw it every day, people hooked up to machines, waiting to die. He swore he wouldn't want anyone he loved to go through that. And if his life was at stake, he would make the hard decision so no one else would have to." They all fall silent, thinking, "Hunh. The recapper called this one ten minutes ago."
Back at the Labitrail, Gil is reviewing photos of the asphalt, looking for the groove that would indicate the snapped rod and thus back up Warrick's timeline and probable sequence of events. He looks giddy to be doing so. Meanwhile, a greatly subdued Liam is doodling at his desk while Sara paces back and forth, waiting for results on those swabs she took. Liam says, with some small amount of irritation and residual embarrassment, "I thought I told you I'd page you with the results." Sara replies that she prefers to wait. She stops pacing long enough to get Liam's attention and say seriously, "You're really good at what you do." Liam rolls his eyes a little and searches for a response, as Sara's watching his face intently, but before either one of them can say anything, there's a beep and her results spit out of a printer. Sara looks down, then says to Liam, "Sabotage," before watching her go. Liam looks thoughtful, and not too unhappy. Either he's finally realized the only person holding his inexperience in the field against him is him, or he's realized that he doesn't need to be a CSI in the field to have his colleagues' respect, or he's decided he's happiest being a lab tech. Any one of those three works, really.
Gil looks over the blueprints, sighing. As Sara walks in, Gil tells her excitedly, "I finally know the first action that initiated this skid. The right front tire came apart. When it blew, it left an indentation in the pavement...the treads from the right rear tire obscured it. The driver overcorrects, but since there's no more tire, all that force is displaced on the suspension system. The bolt snaps, the rod arm breaks, and the bus broadsides the Camaro." Sara pulls a Gil by reminding him that he's got the how, but he needs the why: "Why did the tire come apart in the first place?" Gil looks a little lost: "I don't know." Sara can barely contain her glee when she says, "I do. Chloroform inside the tire." She hands over the lab results for Gil. Gil responds, "Newton's Third...with a twist."
The CSIs are doing laps through the Labitrail, catching each other -- and, by extension, us -- up on what's going on: the chloroform was an act of premeditated sabotage, and whoever did it used chloroform because it destroys the elasticity of rubber. The goal: to find out how long it takes for this to happen, so the CSIs can figure out when the chloroform was introduced and go from there. Gil wants a big treadmill. Nicky: "For what?" Gil: "So we can exercise a bus." Performance anxiety, I tell you. Warrick is dispatched to get the treadmill and set up the bus. Sara goes off to deal with Trace. Gil, meanwhile, heads off to talk to Catherine and Brass, who are busy looking through the passengers' background files and trying to determine if any of the passengers had motive for sabotage -- or provided it for someone else. Nothing jumps out. Gil's suspicious of Eric's girlfriend Tracy; the three CSIs reason that since he was unhappy about her going to Vegas, since he was following the bus, and since he had access to chloroform, Eric may have sabotaged the tire in Barstow. Catherine's all, "Eric Kevlin was a nervous boyfriend, but he wasn't a criminal." Gil points out that Eric's got motive, access, and opportunity. Catherine runs off to check the Camaro for chloroform. After she leaves, Gil and Brass discuss the odds-on favorite among the sabotage suspects. Brass pins it on Maddox with, "He's been way too helpful." Brass just went on my list for that -- I like Maddox precisely because he's the kind of scrupulous, responsibility-taking small business owner who expects and enforces high standards. The man's done nothing but demonstrate that he takes the idea of personal and professional accountability seriously. Brass can go suck an egg for casting aspersions on Maddox.
Sara's in Trace, talking to Vincent, a nicely snide lab tech who informs her that he has exactly three minutes and five seconds for her. She's good with time management, so that's fine with her. Vincent comments, "I heard Sanders broke out of here, fared poorly, and disgraced us all." Okay -- like Liam or no, that was really funny, especially with the twin ideas that a) the lab techs are like housecats looking for any opportunity to escape, and b) there's some sort of lab tech cabal that's waiting to lynch Liam for besmirching their rep. Sara quickly corrects that misperception; Vincent looks up, surprised. Then, mindful that the clock is ticking, Sara gets to the point; she found chloroform, and she needs to know how it got on the inside of a tire. Vincent asks, "You ever hear the expression 'pissing up a rope'?" "Not in a scientific context, no," Sara replies. The tech clarifies: "I don't know if you can urinate up a rope, but you can urinate against a rope, and the urine will dribble down. Answer your question?" It does.
In the garage where they've set up the bus, Warrick is bending over the right front tire and telling Gil, "You know we're going to have to document this for The Journal of Forensic Science, right?" Warrick, Sara, and Gil set up the experiment: a tire with the same maintenance record as the one that blew, some chloroform (introduced into the tire by means of a glass stirring rod), and then, time to start the bus and see what happens. Warrick and Gil watch Sara do this, impressed by a woman who knows her way around a tire gauge, and they both notice that Sara used her left hand to stay steady while sabotaging the tire. Sara runs off to fingerprint the right rim of the tire to see if they can nail the perp.
Time has presumably elapsed. Sara's dusted and found a match for Sean Nolan; Gil and Warrick are bus-sitting and playing a game of chess. Warrick's cell phone rings, and he tells Gil, "Sara. She's at the print lab. She needs me." This last sentence is delivered in an almost-teasing manner -- is Warrick tweaking Gil? -- and as Warrick gets up to go satisfy Sara's need, he checkmates Gil. Gil hunches over the board, wondering, "Has the pupil become the master?"
Sara's all giddy because the print matches former bus driver Sean Nolan. Meanwhile, Nicky and Gil are figuring out that the tire should blow at any moment; Sara and Catherine come by for the show. The tire blows right on schedule, and Gil decrees that this confirms the sabotage-in-Barstow theory. Catherine cuts the celebration short by pointing out that this in no way implicates Eric, as his car came up chloroform-free.
Warrick visits Maddox and learns that Maddox fired Nolan for having pot in his locker. Hmmm. Motive! Warrick gets all the bus maintenance records from Maddox.
Cut to Catherine, Brass, and Warrick in Barstow, having a look around and talking about the futility of finding a saboteur in a rest station. Just then, Warrick rings Grissom, telling him that the fired Nolan has been working in Barstow for two months and -- quelle coincidence -- three of Maddox's buses have had blowouts in that time, all of which have gone through Barstow, and only one of which had the faulty bolt. Gil hangs up and listens as the rumblings of the deus ex machina recede into the distance.
The three CSIs then head over to Nolan, quickly pin him as the suspect -- with a side trip from Gil into the probability of Julius Caesar's breath being all over the world -- and confirm when they use a hand-held detector to pick up traces of chloroform on a tire gauge. Nolan confesses, citing revenge as the motive: "I have one joint on the weekend -- on my time -- and I got jacked as a junkie." Dude, if he responded this way, maybe he needed to smoke a little more to mellow out some. He had figured that even if the tires blew, the suspension system would hold. "There's a first time for everything," Brass quips, and arrests him. Gil and Catherine debate the charges (second-degree murder), concluding that anger (Nolan) and greed (I'm pinning that on the Brillman bolt company, which charged for a doctored product) led to all those deaths. Catherine, Brass, and Gil walk off, and the episode ends with another bus -- presumably one that won't blow up -- pulling in to the rest stop.