We begin the episode with a warning that viewer discretion is advised, which I personally think is entirely too vague. If you're going to warn people, warn 'em -- tell them, "This episode contains gruesome violence/sexual acts typically found only in Joe Eszterhas's imagination/depictions of people using controlled substances and enjoying it/rabid misogyny/complete disregard for your intelligence/completely self-indulgent writing..." You get the drift.
Having warned the more delicate flowers in America's television-watching audience off tonight's episode, the camera then moves in for a shot of the Vegas skyline (casino of the week: New York, New York), then zooms out to what is one of Vegas's swankiest neighborhoods -- houses the size of hotels fronting acres of rolling green grass. Clearly, these people are so rich, they can import their own non-desert ecosystem. We then flash to the gate where there's a for-sale sign, and then to a couple walking past the fountain toward the double doors of the house. The woman burbles, "Wow. I love it already! I can't believe we're doing this. Is that the lockbox?" She's easily distracted by shiny things. The man tells her the realtor gave him the combination. Oh, that's not reassuring at all. After establishing that neither the realtor nor the owners will be coming by, we head into the house. Big, airy foyer with double staircases, all sorts of swanky interiors, et cetera. The man says, "Wait until you see the master." As they enter the room, the woman -- whose shirt seems to have a gaping problem across the chest area -- is all, "Oh. My. God. This is gorgeous." She flops on the bed, and the man flops to her, grinning mischievously. "What?" she asks. "Wanna snoop around?" he replies.
Evidently she does, as the following few scenes basically sum up the paranoid fantasies of anyone who's ever had their house on the market: the man and woman rifle through closets and drawers, try on clothes, and generally behave like boors. Then they cap the experience by having a quickie.
Cut to the woman bouncing down the stairs, buttoning her shirt and holding her shoes in her hand as she says, "Oh. My. God. I could get used to this place. I could! You're an animal!" The guy tells her the backyard is the best part of the house, and in anticipation of still more inappropriate things-to-do-in-a-house-you-shouldn't-be-in behavior, the woman asks, "Really? Is there a Jacuzzi?" She bounds outside into a beautifully landscaped patio and pulls out her stock line: "Oh. My. God." As she's standing there looking at the pool, blood begins dripping down from an unknown height and landing on her blouse. The woman stands there for a minute, then gradually notices what's dripping before looking up at a blood-drenched awning in horror.
And now it's night. The blood is coming from a very attractive woman in what looks to be some underwear and a robe, body splayed very dramatically. Gil is snapping photos -- we see one framed all arty-like. Then we see Gil standing on the balcony overlooking the woman, with Catherine on one side. Brass comes up with another photo, and launches into Captain Exposition mode: "Cal and Monica Newman. Owners of the house. My guess, second marriage." Catherine says, "'Cause she's a babe and he's..." "He's, uh, got a good sense of humor." Gil's not smiling. Catherine finds a bullet casing -- .380 auto caliber -- and Gil moves the flashlight down so we can see the gun near Monica's hand. Gil notes that Monica's got a gunshot wound in her right temple, and asks, "Women don't usually shoot themselves in the head, do they, Catherine?" Catherine replies, "Well, gunshots do a number on your face, so women typically prefer pills." Unless you're Dorothy Parker; then you're going to be having issues with pills, as well as razors, rivers, acid, guns, nooses, and so on. Brass wants to know if they're calling the woman a murder, a suicide, or an "or what." Gil implies that it's contingent on the whereabouts of the husband and how much he knows. Catherine drawls, "Well, do the math...dead female spouse plus missing husband equals murder."
Cue The Who, which I can barely hear over the roaring in my ears. Catherine...allowed to have...last pre-credits line? Wha-- ? Huh? Has the world gone mad?
Once we return, Nicky is on some kind of hydraulic platform, cutting the canvas around Monica's body. Warrick hits the button to lower Nicky, and as he and his cargo descend in fits and starts, Nicky recites the basics: "White female, multiple bruising. Bullet hole to the temple doesn't help. .380 auto on the side." Warrick does a quick survey and notes quietly, "Yeah, somebody manhandled her pretty good before they killed her." Both men pause for a moment, looking somewhat somber.
Over on another part of the patio, Gil's poking around a planter when he notices an incongruous collection of cigarette butts. Gil shines his flashlight directly up and notices an open window with a tiny tear in the corner of the screen. I love how he automatically does that; it's a nice detail that shows us how the CSIs work, as opposed to having them give us the John Madden-style play-by-play. Brass says, "Reminds me of my daughter. She used to throw butts out the window too." Ellie sounds like a ray of sunshine, doesn't she? I wouldn't be surprised if Brass recollects her pulling the wings off butterflies too. Anyway, the cigarette butts let us segue into finding out that Cal Newman had a son, Max, age fifteen. They also let Gil collect some DNA for testing. We also find out that Cal left the office to get lunch, and never came back. A survey of the place -- a garage filled with three cars that haven't been driven recently -- isn't giving any clues as to his whereabouts.
And their night isn't getting any easier: Meet Augie Heitz, the mullet-sporting real estate salesman who's somehow gotten past the crime scene tape so he can smarm at Gil and Brass: "Someone died, I know. It's a terrible thing. But we've got people knocking down awnings, stomping through the flower beds. How am I supposed to sell this house?" Oh, Augie, selling that house is the least of your worries. If I were you, I'd be more worried about the look Gil is giving you -- or, if you're feeling contemplative, I'd be worried about your lack of a survival instinct. Gil gives Augie a look that should be setting those survival instinct klaxons blaring, then points out acerbically, "This is a crime scene." Brass then diverts catastrophe by asking if Heitz has seen his client lately; Augie replies, "You're kidding. This is actually part of the service I provide. My clients never have to see me." There's a sort of sick genius in that -- imagine being so irritating that people pay extra not to have to deal with you! Brass ignores the breathtaking innovation of Augie's business model to ask if he always engages in the illegal practice of giving out the combination to his clients' lockboxes. Augie pleads poor time management: "It's a hot market. I had a fish on the line, potential bidding war. Look...I only give out the combination to people I really trust." Like Anne Heche or Robert Downey, Jr.
Meanwhile, Catherine's dealing with two of Heitz's trusted compadres: "All right -- I read rooms for a living. That closet was tossed. The carpet lit up. So I'm going to ask you again: what were you doing in there besides copulating?" The couple we saw earlier is dumbstruck; the woman can't even manage an "Oh. My. God." Finally, the man -- who resembles kind of resembles Chad Lowe -- tries to be all, "It was my idea." Catherine's not here to debate the epistemological origins of the school of screw-in-a-stranger's-house thought. She only wants to know if the laptop they found powered up on the vanity was unmolested by the happy couple.
While Gil's inspecting the rest of the planters, Nicky's working poolside -- the pool lights, by the way, are on -- and he sees a trickle of red liquid which he'd like Warrick to check out. Warrick comes over to the edge of the pool, and Nicky asks, "It's a little thin for blood, isn't it?" Warrick agrees, and to test the not-blood theory, dips an ungloved finger in a trickle, then tastes it. One of these days, someone on this staff is going to do that and really regret it. Warrick notes that it tastes like sugar, and Gil wanders over to tell them, "Erythrosine. Red dye number three." Nicky muses, "Hummingbirds do like the color red." Warrick's not sure whether to be impressed or frightened by that Gil-esque moment: "You've been watching way too much Discovery Channel. This guy needs a girl." I'm so thrilled by the continuity in that detail, I almost forget to question the wisdom of Warrick (hobby of last known amorous interest: chasing the dragon) advocating that Nick spend his free time with girls (last known result of spending free time with a girl: a murder investigation). Almost. Nicky notes that there are no visible footprints; Gil correctly counters that lack of visibility doesn't discount someone having been out there. He orders Nicky to grab the ALS, and sends Warrick to check out the cabana.
Nicky wanders out of the scene, the better for a harried-looking Sara to come charging in. She walks over to Gil, who's crouched by the pool, and apologizes for not coming sooner. Gil says rather petulantly, "I paged you two hours ago." Sara explains, "It's my day off. I was up in Pahrump at some vineyard. You told me to get a life, remember?" Gil feigns ignorance: "Did I?" Sara's expression abruptly shuts down: she hauled ass from somewhere near the California border (Pahrump's northwest of Las Vegas, near Death Valley) for this? Gil says matter-of-factly, "I'm sorry, but I needed you. Dispatch called in a 419 at Alfred Packer Memorial High School. You're on your own." Sara, who's probably been consoling herself through the long drive back with thoughts of working a case so big she had to be paged on her day off, realizes she's been called back to work a run-of-the-mill job. "On my own," she confirms. Gil looks up at her and helpfully clarifies, "Solo." "I wasn't asking for a synonym, Roget," Sara snaps. Riiight. She just kind of gives Gil the are you for real? look we so often see on, oh, everyone else who deals with Gil, and wanders off toward Packer High. Gil puts on the glasses he got from Bono for his birthday, and proceeds to pay achtung to the crime scene.
Unfortunately, people won't let him. As Sara stalks off, Nicky says indignantly, "Solo?" Sara shrugs at him to indicate that she's no happier about this than he is. Nicky turns to Gil, puts on his Bono shades, and asks, "So does this mean when I come in on my day off, I get to work solo?" Gil says shortly, "Process." Nicky does so, finding two sets of footprints via ALS -- one pair that looks to be a size ten leading from the house, and a size twelve from the pool. Gil decides their task will be figuring out which pair of footprints belongs to Cal Newman. Just then, Warrick comes out and announces, "Looks like the husband pulled a Clark Kent and left all his clothes behind." And here I thought pulling a Clark Kent meant staring longingly at your bald, evil friend while millions of viewers swooned. Warrick notes that he's also got Cal's wallet, credit cards and keys. Before Gil can wonder at how this all ended up in the pool cabana, a grating, gurgling noise distracts both him and Warrick. Nicky mentions helpfully, "It's the pool. It's been doing that all night." And the noise in no way set your crime-solving senses tingling, Nicky? No wonder you don't work solo. Warrick correctly concludes that the filter seems to be malfunctioning, and Gil asks if anyone's checked the pool. "First officer said it was clear," Nicky says. He's not really making a compelling case for working unsupervised here, especially since the first officer apparently learned the definition of "clear" on Opposite Day. Gil snaps, "Does that pool look clear to you?" Nicky, who realizes that at the rate he's going, Liam will be working solo before he does, concedes that the pool does not look clear. Gil then looks at the camera, shattering the lens with the power of his glare, and snaps, "One of you guys is going in." Then he disappears, presumably to extract whatever crawled up his ass in the last five minutes and stick it in a specimen jar.
The mirthful strings of machination kick in, and Nicky and Warrick determine who goes in by playing scissors-paper-rock. Warrick picks rock, Nicky picks scissors, and yet another actor's clothing is sacrificed on the altar of ratings. "I'll go in the pool," Nicky calls for effect -- I personally think that he should have volunteered to go in anyway in a damage-control effort -- and peels off his shirt, leaving his heavier clothing on. I don't get it. I just don't get it. Standing around in wet pants is a thousand times more uncomfortable than standing around in a wet shirt, and yet both Nicky and Warrick pull this. It is beyond my comprehension. Come to think of it, if you're on a job where going in the water is apparently a routine part of your workday, why wouldn't you either tote swimming goggles, or a bathing suit? It's not like the pool is going anywhere, and I would think that being able to see underwater would be a bonus in evidence-gathering. ["Plus, Nicky in a Speedo. Juuuuust saying." -- Sars] Anyway, Nicky heads underwater, toward a shadow he sees in the cloudy depths, and is rewarded with his efforts by coming face to face with Cal. Nicky pops to the surface and sees something almost as off-putting: a glowering Gil, backed up by a doleful-looking Warrick. He dutifully reports the presence of a body.
Meanwhile, over at the soccer field at Alfred Packard High, Detective Lockwood is asking Sara if she liked her dinner enough to see it again. Sara looks even more thrilled than ever to have been paged on her day off. The two of them walk toward the field, brightly lit by a score board (the home team lost, 3-2), and Lockwood tells us the victim is one Mandy Kirk, age seventeen. Emergency Backup David is there; he's not looking too good at the moment. Then again, neither is Mandy. "Eviscerated!" Sara exclaims, suddenly a lot less irked at having to work a case solo. Lockwood suggests that a wild animal might have done it, recalling that Animal Control picked up a mountain lion in Henderson recently. Emergency Backup David reads my mind by pointing out, "Suburbs are encroaching on the hinterlands." It perpetually amazes me -- and not in a good way -- that people can put up their McHouses because they want to get away from it all, then get all het up when the population that's already there has the nerve to continue living in the area. Suck it up -- you're the one moving into something else's territory. Sara puts on her gloves and says, "It's a cheerleader." "It"? Sara continues, fishing a scrap of something red out of the abdominal cavity, "She had to have good lungs. How come nobody heard her scream?"
Possibly because they were distracted by the bright lights of the Vegas skyline. We get a shot of the Paris casino and the Bellagio. Then we're in the morgue with poor Mandy. Emergency Backup David's notes brightly, "Didn't have to do much of a Y -- attack did it for me!" I'm guessing Emergency Backup David is a glass-half-full kind of guy; he'd probably be thrilled to autopsy someone who was drawn and quartered, because all the pieces would be small and easily manageable. Sara notes, "Died of exsanguination." For those of us who don't collect the terms for assorted means of death, Emergency Backup David clarifies, "She bled out. Internal organs -- spleen, liver, heart -- all sustained multiple mastications." Sara asks Emergency Backup David if he was able to isolate the species. Indeed he was; based on a tooth mark on her left ninth rib -- which we see up close and personal, thanks to a TMICam shot that takes us to the marrow -- Emergency Backup David has concluded that they're human. Sara looks up, nonplussed. Emergency Backup David, who's used to the CSIs questioning his calls (remember the dry-drowning diagnosis?), points out the bridgework on another area, which gives the impression of a premolar and adjoining molar. Sara, still recovering from the whole human-teeth thing, asks shakily if David can tell the age from the impressions. "No, but I can tell you this: it's one demented individual," Emergency Backup David says. Actually, he tells Sara he can ballpark the age to somewhere between sixteen and thirty, which is about when the wisdom teeth erupt. Since there's no evidence of a wisdom molar on this impression, it suggests someone rather young. Or someone like me, who never had their wisdom teeth erupt. But I've said too much. Sara thanks Emergency Backup David and heads out to see who at Alfred Packer High channeled the school spirit, but David stops her at the door: "I found an infection in the mucus overlying the large intestine. This girl suffered from the E. coli bacteria." Sara asks, "E. coli? Unsanitary conditions?" "Or a bad burger," Emergency Backup David adds. Sara realizes that whomever had Mandy tartare now also has E. coli. And that is why you should always order your food medium to well-done when you dine out: so Sara cannot trace you back to a shocking act of cannibalistic murder. And also so you can avoid spiked temperature, vomiting, lower GI irritation, the works. That's one to grow on.
And now it's time for Nicky to flex his biceps and lats as he labors to insert a pool hose in the water. On the other end, a fire truck begins pumping out the water. In the shot, Nicky works his triceps and trapezius muscles as he helps screw a smaller vacuum into place. Hey, if he's going to go to all the trouble of flexing, I can only return the favor by documenting it. As the pool level gets lower, Nicky puts on more clothes. By the time the pool is empty, Nicky's telling Warrick, "I mean, I don't get it. She's not even slated to work, she comes in on her day off, and she gets to work solo." Oh, Nicky, let it go. Did you learn nothing from the whole "the pool is clear" incident? Warrick shares my sentiment: "You're still harping on this solo thing. You know every time you work with me, you learn something." Nicky laughs it off, but you know on the inside, he's crying. Crying, and revising his list of who feels his wrath first on Judgment Day.
At the front of the house, Catherine is dealing with a repellent teenage boy who wants to know why he can't go in his own house, since the presence of multiple law enforcement vehicles and yards of crime scene tape yield no clues. His mother -- who, going by her hair, is apparently visiting us from 1995 -- tries to help the situation by explaining how she's Cal's ex-wife. ["Damn. She got over The Flash fast." -- Sars] How this is supposed to help baffles me, especially when she's all, "We have the right to an answer." Catherine points out, "We have the right to protect the crime scene." Max asks again, "What's going on?" as the words "crime scene" apparently failed to register. Think, boy! If it were a burglary, would there be so many cars here? Catherine is called away from this awkward conversation by a female deputy, who asks her to find someone to identify a body. Catherine taps the ex-wife for the job. Max asks, "What about me?" and his mother answers a little too tidily, "Oh, no, honey. You stay here." She pats his face absently, then turns to follow Catherine.
Down at the bottom of the pool, Gil's examining the body: "No skin separation. Minimal gaseous buildup. This guy's been in here under twelve hours." That fits the timeline Brass is constructing, as Cal left the office around 1 PM that afternoon. Gil walks over to an area just above Cal's head and lifts off a plastic cover. Brass asks what it is, and Gil answers, "It's an anti-vortex filter." Brass shoots back, "Hey, I'm from Jersey; we swim at the shore." Gil clarifies what a vortex filter does: "It's designed to keep his hand out of that pipe. But it's missing a few screws." Before Brass can make an editorial comment about anyone missing a few screws, Catherine comes over with Wife #1 and asks, "Ms. Newman, is this your husband? Sob once for yes, twice for no." Or something like that. Ms. Newman sobs once. We have a winner! Gil looks up, annoyed at the sight of a human being displaying emotion.
In the scene, Archie The Incredibly Hot Lab Tech is busy peering intently at something on a computer. My first thought is, of course, porn. Then I see that he's taking a virtual tour of a house, and I'm vindicated: there's no porn like real estate porn. I myself have been known to keep a few copies of Arts & Crafts Quarterly under the mattress. Catherine comes in and gives Archie her deep and sincere appreciation for his before-and-after photos of the crime scene. Archie makes like Elvis and says, "Thaynk yeuuu, thaynk yeuuu verra much." Then he returns from Graceland: "I got this off the hard drive of the computer you recovered from the crime scene. Looks like a Peter Croft sculpture." Catherine's impressed that Archie knows his fine arts, and asks if he collects. Archie points out that lab techs aren't exactly pulling down the dough required to amass an art collection, and concludes, "Guggenheim's as close as I get to something like that." Catherine says brightly, "Oh, I haven't been yet." Archie replies, "Really? Well, if you want a tour, I know a docent." Catherine gives Archie the once-over and says quietly, "A docent." I think she's taking that as a blow-off. Ah, well -- it's Archie's loss.
She recovers with, "So you think that's legit?" Archie zooms in on the statue -- it's one of those rounded primitive fertility-looking things -- and says, "House like this? Not a knockoff." Catherine disagrees: "You'd be surprised. The rich go cheap to stay rich, know what I mean?" Archie misses the cue to debate the veracity of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and shows Catherine that the Peter Croft sculpture happens to be missing in the post-crime scene shot. As Archie says, "They don't call them open houses for nothing." Catherine muses, "Put your house on the market, your privacy's up for grabs too." Archie confirms, "The Newmans unlocked the door for anyone with Internet access."
While millions of people with personal websites are now wondering if they should have maybe not posted the photo tour of their house, the camera swivels over to Alfred Packer Memorial High. Sara's walking through the hall, saying flatly, "Soccer bunnies. What are soccer bunnies?" Lockwood explains: "Each cheerleader is assigned a soccer player. She's his bunny. Gives him gifts before the big game, places his wake-up call." Sara comments, "Sounds sexual." No, Sara -- it sounds sexist. Do the female athletes get Peter Rabbits of their own? Are there boys assigned to stroke the egos of the female soccer players? Or is it a case where the male athletes get feted, while the girls are relegated to lumpy practice fields and hand-me-down equipment? I'm just wondering here. Anyway, Lockwood claims the principal said that the bunny thing "was all good, clean fun." Good, clean, 1950s fun -- like red-baiting. Sara comments, "I'm not sure the principal's up to speed on teenagers' sexual habits." Or what decade he happens to be administrating a school in. As Sara and Lockwood walk through the halls, it's a veritable frenzy of teenaged grief. We learn that Mandy was Chuck Darwell's soccer bunny, and when Lockwood called Chuck's cell phone this morning, he claimed he had hooked up with Mandy after every game except the night's. Sara wants to know where Chuck is. As luck would have it, Chuck's been rushed to the hospital. Insert your own upchuck joke here.
After a shot of New York, New York and the Excalibur (huzzah!), we head back to the subterranean recesses of the morgue, where David the Landlocked Coroner is telling Gil that Cal's autopsy yields very few surprises, what with the cause of death being drowning and all. Gil points out that Cal's right hand was caught in a pool filter, but David eliminates the drowning-by-filter-trap theory by pointing out, "Lack of bruising, no bleeding wounds indicates the circulatory system had stopped. This was postmortem." We see a flashback of how it might have happened -- Cal was floating, he drifted over toward the filter, and it sucked him down. Gil wants to know about the marks on Cal's chest; David's not too sure. They're definitely perimortem, but aside from eliminating the possibility of a rash and concluding that we're looking at an abrasion, there's not much to go on. We also learn that Cal had several broken ribs and a bruise on his forehead. "He could have taken a bad fall." Gil gives him a look and points out, "Or he could have been beaten." Wow, nobody is spared when Gil wakes up on the wrong side of lab bench. We then move on to Monica; David's sent a sexual assault kit to DNA, but cause of death appears to be just a single gunshot to the temple. "I'll know more later," David says. "You always tell me that," Gil replies shortly. David gives Gil a look and says, "Yes. I do." He then moves on: "Depth of bruising gives us a timeline. Apparent thumbprint on her neck came first. The prints on her hands came second. Major impression on top, some kind of recoil bruise on her palm." Gil gives David another look and says, "She didn't shoot herself. She had help." We see how in a brief flashback.
And then we see Monica wandering around on a video recording, clad in a bikini and romping around the pool, working from a script that could have only been conceived by someone whose idea of erotic entendres comes from WWE Smackdown. Archie and Nick are riveted. When Monica asks, "Wanna come by and take a dip?" both of them nod. Catherine punctures their little fantasy by noting, "Quite the saleswoman." And then we go from the pool scene to Monica sitting on the couch in a posture that makes me mutter, "Please, God, no Basic Instinct remakes..." She's in a robe and, by the looks of it, not a whole lot else. Monica's all, "It's got to be a fantasy of yours." Um, no. I like my real estate porn with pergolas and porches, not perky paramours. Archie laughs delightedly: "Double feature!" Onscreen, Monica pivots away from the camera and drops her robe, purring, "You know you want this," provided that "this" is a woman clad only in a thong. This is about the point where I wonder what kind of a moron Augie Heitz is -- the market for single men who are rich, yet stupid enough to buy a house based on a sales pitch combining This Old House with The Red Shoe Diaries, can't be that big, and I can't imagine some other rich guy turning to his trophy wife as they're reviewing the tape together and saying, "You don't prance around nearly naked on camera any more." So exactly who is this supposed to be selling the house to? Nicky couldn't care less about the marketing focus: "Blam." Archie says, "You can say that again." Nicky does a double take, and obliges: "Blam." Catherine asks them both to get their minds back on the job. As Monica turns back around so she can tell the camera, "I probably shouldn't even be saying this, but sex is on my mind all the time" (no! you don't say!), we find out that Catherine's got crime-solving on her mind all the time. After she notices a figure in the background, Archie blows up the frame and we see...the idiot himself, Augie.
Cut to Brass confirming Augie's identity and telling us that there have been robberies in a half-dozen of the houses he's listed. Nicky clicks back to a close-up to Monica and opines, "Looks like Augie was helping himself to a little more than the artwork."
Meanwhile, in the A-1 plot, Sara and Lockwood are talking to Chuck's dad in Chuck's hospital room. The senior Darwell takes the intimation that his son's a cannibalistic killer about as well as you'd expect. Fortunately, right after Darwell, Sr. boots them from the room, Lockwood notices a big bag of vomit that a nurse is labeling. He takes the bag from the nurse and tells Darwell, "Anything he threw up no longer belongs to him. PD -- public domain." Sara then takes the bag and gets in Darwell's face to inform him, "It's going to tell us everything we need to know."
We're now in Augie's office, where he's busy trying to divert attention from the assorted larceny incidents by protesting, "I thought this was about murder." And then he answers the phone, which does nothing to endear him to Brass and Catherine, especially after he hangs up and asks insincerely, "I'm sorry. Where were we?" "At the part where you resist arrest and I'm forced to kick your ass until your head falls off," Brass replies. Or not. Actually, they were at the part where they try to get an explanation from Augie as to how his face ended up on Monica's sales pitch. Augie insists he's done nothing wrong; after Catherine sarcastically asks if he's innocent, Augie smirks, "I admit to having lust in my heart." Brass shoots back, "Lust doesn't live in your heart." Catherine steps into the conversational pause to tell Augie she wants a DNA sample. "My DNA is your DNA," he replies, proving that he knows to nothing about what DNA is. Shortly before Catherine inserts the swab, Augie points out, "I can tell you about at least one guy other than her husband that saw Monica in the buff on a weekly basis."
Cut to the guy in question, being asked by Warrick, "You must get a lot of ass on a job like this." The man replies, "I'm a pool guy. It's one of the perks of the job. One minute I'm scooping leaves, the , I'm staring at --" "Yeah, I get it," says Warrick, who looks like he's regretting his career choice right about now. We get down to the Q&A, and find out that Cal had a temper; he was always arguing with his son, Max. We flash to a scene where it looks like Cal is waving around some photos and asking, "What are these? Where did you get these?" rather heatedly. Pool Guy says, "I thought the old man was going to beat his ass, but Newman just screamed some more and took off." Having digested this, Warrick then checks out the cab and notices a few pool filter screws that probably should have been at the bottom of the pool. Pool Guy quickly says, "I can explain. I removed them screws from the filter so I'd have an excuse to go back." Warrick asks, "You mean, like, a leave-behind?" Pool Guy grins happily at this meeting of minds: "Yeah. I figured the more she was around --" "The more she'd want you." Given that "she" was all "I have sex on the brain 24/7!" I'm thinking that Pool Guy maybe expended a little unnecessary effort here. Warrick interrupts Pool Guy's grinning to inform him that the lab's going to want more of him too. Pool Guy replies, "Take whatever you want. I got nothing to hide."
Nicky is sifting through the detritus in the pool filter -- mostly leaves -- and picks out a filling. Gil, who's sitting in front of him, asks, "Anything from the pool?" Nicky reports on the filling. He also reports that the chemicals in Cal's lungs match the chemicals found in the pool water, and the match between the abrasions and the side of the pool. Gil, who's taking a microscope break to read says suddenly, "Mildew!" Nicky's understandably confused. "Aureobasidium pullulans. One of the very few fungi that can commonly withstand the desert temperature." Nicky realizes that the fungus gives them a possible transfer, and we flash to the hummingbird feeder (excellent source of nutrients) dripping onto the pavement. Gil then makes my heart go pitter-pat by saying, "And here's the basic chemistry of the transfer. Add sugar water spoiled from the heat. Mix in human biofilm, you've got yourself an all-you-can-eat mildew buffet." We see the fungi extending their little hyphae as they reproduce, and then we zoom from the microbe-eye level up to human size as a person walks through the roiling cauldron of mycological activity. And then, they're possibly in for a world of hurt: A. pullulans is linked with all sorts of ailments, including a few specialized skin infections, but, to quote the good doctors Pritchard and Muir, "The pathogenicity of Aureobasidium remains limited and uncommon." ("Black fungi: a survey of dematiaceous hyphomycetes from clinical specimens identified over a five year period in a reference laboratory." Pathology. 19:281-4.)
Gil and Nicky are busy trying to figure out if they can track the killer by assessing the A. pullulans density throughout the house (I wish them luck; what's to say that the deceased didn't track it in too?) when Liam comes in. "Normally, I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but Mr. Newman's sperm had company. Bad company." And Liam can't deny. He hands over the sheet and tells Gil, "Look at D7 -- three alleles." Gil points out, "Genetics only gives you one from each parent." Across the country, hardcore CSI viewers are all turning to the people forced to watch the show with them and smugly predicting the plot twist. Liam's all, "That can only mean one thing -- ménage d'allele." Nicky's all, "She was cheating on her husband." Gil asks about test anomalies, and Liam replies, "Percentage is too high. We're looking at a minor and a major sample." We establish that the minor donor is the husband. The major donor? Viewers are shouting it as Nicky incorrectly guesses, "Pool man." Liam shoots it down. Nicky tries again: "The realtor?" "Ibid," Liam replies. We go to commercial as Liam says the donor is still unaccounted for. All the smarty-pants viewers roll their eyes. ["Except the ones who swooned when Liam used the word 'ibid' in conversation." -- Sars]
Back at the Casa de Copulation, Nicky and Warrick are trying to make a remake of Monica's thong video. Tragically, both parties remain fully clothed and unbethonged. Nicky's behind the camera, and a short-tempered Warrick is in front. Oh, wait -- Warrick's playing Augie. No wonder he's cranky. Nicky keeps telling Warrick to back up, and Warrick says, "If I go any further, I'll be in the closet." Nicky orders him, "Well, go in the closet." I pause the television to inform Mr. Sobell, "You realize this represents a major step back for all those Warrick/Nicky fan-fic writers out there?" "You realize you're a freak?" he replies. Warrick opens the closet, and there's a life-sized cardboard cutout of Augie in there. Warrick snorts, "Oh, you gotta be kidding me." He brings it out for Nicky's perusal, and the poor guy snaps, "What the hell is that?" Warrick rolls his eyes and shrugs, a gesture that sends the cutout clattering to the floor. He then whips out a very large sales poster and comments, "These slime will do anything to sell a house."
Cut to Catherine and Gil flanking Archie back in the Labitrail. Archie's explaining, "Sometimes, reflections beget reflections. I figure if I could get a glimpse of the Augie cutout, maybe I could get a glimpse of the cameraman." Archie directs everyone to check out the lamp, and then, as he focuses in on it and rotates the image, Catherine pegs the cameraman: "Her stepson, Max." She turns to Gil: "Did you get any DNA off the cigarette butts?" Gil nods. Catherine suggests they get Liam to compare that DNA with the major donor in the sample. Across the country, people are sitting on their couches and snorting, "About time."
In another plotline, poor Sara is busy identifying various items in Chuck's vomit. She's looking understandably less than pleased, but the way her mouth is working, I'd guess that she's also begun to sympathize with Mandy. As she works alone, Liam comes over and asks, "Driving someone else's porcelain bus?" Sara answers, "Suspect's dinner from last night." Liam's got Sara's mail from the coroner, and Sara asks him to read it to her. Liam steps in. Sara holds up a piece of greenery and asks Liam what he thinks it is: "Caesar salad?" He looks down at the report and continues, "And Pele used an interesting dressing -- PCP." Sara looks up and promptly replies, "Angel dust. Hallucinogen." Liam clarifies: "Well, it acts like one. PCP's such a powerful drug, it's in a class all its own. Dissociative anesthetic." Sara make sure she gets it: "Brain disassociates from the body." Liam brings the point home: "After it takes you through the paces." To quote a line from Neal Stephenson's Zodiac: "PCP is amazing stuff, man." We find out that Chuck took a dose that was off the charts, and it's somewhat surprising that he's still alive, much less in some command of his faculties. Just then, Sara fishes out a large gobbet of flesh. Holding it aloft, she asks Liam slowly, "Tell me this is raw chicken skin." Liam answers quietly, "Well, it's raw. And it's definitely skin."
Speaking of skin, it's back to the Monica plotline. Max and his mother are sitting in the tank with Brass and Catherine, with Ms. Newman insisting, "My son was nowhere near that pool. He was on a field trip to --" "Red Rock Canyon. I know. I'm getting that," Brass replies. He continues, "What I'm not getting is this." "This" is a photo of Monica in the altogether, climbing up a similarly unclad male torso. Ms. Newman sputters that the picture is disgusting, and finishes primly, "Whatever Cal wanted to do behind closed doors, that was his business. This is not for my eyes, or for his eyes." Max is looking a little uneasy here. Brass knows why; he puts down another picture -- this one of Max wearing only his stepmom and a big smile -- and asks, "It's not the first time, is it, Max?" Ms. Newman looks as though she's about to throw up. Sara's lab bench is down the hall, to the left -- it's apparently her day to deal with everyone's vomit. Max asks, "Can I plead the Fifth or something?" Actually, yes. But it would make for a very short episode. Catherine says, "We found two sperm donors in the sample from your stepmother: your father's and yours." All the smarty-pants viewers turn to their captive audiences and say, "See?" Ms. Newman recovers enough to say snappishly, "Now I know why you were spending all that time at your father's." Max begins, "Mom, look --" before his mother slaps him. She's got a good arm. Catherine and Brass both look somewhat shocked. Max tries again, "Mom --" and she turns back to him, hissing, "I don't want to hear a word from you." Brass says, "Well, let me lay it out for you," and proceeds to spin a scene we see in flashback: Max swimming around the pool and minding his own business when Monica decides to join him. Her bathing suit, however, elected to sit that one out. Back in the tank, Brass is saying, "You must have felt like you won the lottery, and the only thing standing between you and the winning ticket was your father." We then flash to pere et fils Newman having a watery showdown that ends in death. Catherine asks, "What's your shoe size, Max?" As luck would have it, he's a size twelve. And then we flash to Max, having acted out one part of his Oedipal nightmare, having the what-now? discussion with Jocasta. Only this time, she's elected to skip the suicide part and simply blow him off, telling him this was but a fling. And in flashback, Oedipus reacts to this by shooting Jocasta in the head. Ms. Newman says flatly, "That's not possible." Brass asks, "How come?" Max says, "Because I can't swim." His mother backs him up -- traumatic pool accident as a child, inability to swim as an older child. Brass and Catherine look at each other, each thinking, "Well, it's on to Plan B. Do we have a Plan B?"
Now that Sara's got her human skin, she was able to get a warrant for an odontological impression from Chuck. Chuck looks miserable, which could either be the aftereffects of PCP followed by a virulent intestinal infection, or from taking in Sara's shirt, which provides an eloquent argument for a comprehensive North American tie-dye ban. Sara then says, "Your temperature is spiking. Of course, you didn't know Mandy had E. coli when you ate her, did you?" I imagine intestinal microflora aren't something that These Kids Today talk about, even when they're not coked to the gills. Chuck protests that he would have never have eaten his soccer bunny, but Lockwood brings out a sledgehammer and begins bludgeoning us with the Just Say No theme by saying, "You would on PCP." Sara explains what your brain on PCP is like. Strangely, it doesn't involves, eggs, frying pans, or angry young women belaboring metaphors. It does involve a TMICam shot of an electrified brain, and the explanation that PCP disrupts your brain's synaptic firing processes, so your brain is on overload. Or, as Sara puts it, "It's like your brain is on constant DSL." Lockwood places Chuck and Mandy at the soccer field, and Sara asks Chuck if he remembers anything. We get a brief, grainy, green-tinted shot of Chuck crouching over something and gnawing, but Chuck insists that he's not the one to have killed Mandy. Sara says, with some degree of sadness, "Lieutenant Lockwood is going to arrest you. We'll assign you an advocate." You may also want to assign him a vomit basin, too. He doesn't look so good.
Back on the A-train, Gil's asking how someone who can't swim would drown their father. Catherine tells Gil to let go of Max as a suspect, and the two of them recap what they have: there was Cal's blood on the underside of the pool ledge, and abrasions on his chest, so that implies a struggle in the water with someone who can swim.
Nicky's having his own struggle in the lab as he looks up from a sheet of results and bellows, "You can-not be serious!" Warrick comes in, asking, "Hey, John McEnroe, where's the game?" Nicky's frustrated because all the prints in the house came from people who had a reason to be there, "so all I've got is an errant blond hair, a tooth filling, and some detritus from the pool!" Nicky laughs a little crazily, prompting Warrick to say, "Don't get your panties in a bunch. So we got the blond hair, the tooth filling, that's it, huh?" Oh, and a scrap of white neoprene. "Like, in a wetsuit, neoprene?" Warrick asks. Yup. Since the victim wasn't a diver and the son can't swim, the possibility of a wetsuit calls for a brainstorm. Since we're already on the downward slide in this episode, it's more like quick brain showers. Anyway -- the conclusion is that perhaps they should start thinking hitman.
Hey! It's the vaguely Chad Lowe-looking guy from way back at the beginning of the episode! He's calmly drinking a glass of water while Gil watches him intently. I'm reminded of David Simon's passage from Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets that read:
"Rule Number Four in the homicide lexicon...states that an innocent man left alone in an interrogation room will remain fully awake, rubbing at his eyes, staring at the cubicle walls and scratching himself in dark, forbidden places. A guilty man left alone in an interrogation room goes to sleep."
Or, if you want to take away the abridged version: innocent people fret about the prospect of talking to law enforcement. The guilty already think they've gotten away with murder. This guy screams "guilty." And wincing a little as the cold water hits an exposed nerve in his tooth doesn't do much to dispel that impression.
"Tooth hurt?" Gil asks with false concern, then produces a small bag, noting, "You might need your filling, which we found at the bottom of the Newmans' pool." Brass smirks that they also found his fingerprints and his hair. The man -- let's call him Chet Lowe, for lack of a formal name -- says a little too evenly, "You'll find me all over the house. I wanted to buy it. I was everywhere." Brass hypothesizes that perhaps running around everywhere was part of Chet's strategy. Chet's sticking to his diligent-house-buyer argument. He turns to Gil and says, "Caveat emptor, right?" Oh, you don't bring out the dead languages around Gil without expecting to be bested. If it involves the word "dead" -- dead languages, dead people, the Grateful Dead -- Gil will undoubtedly be well-versed in it. Gil replies, "Caveat venditor. Let the seller beware." Brass cuts in: "Your prints came back military -- Navy SEAL." "Ex-Navy SEAL," Chet corrects, looking a little disturbed at having to admit that. Brass mumbles, "Oh, yeah. You rang the bell. You had the physical tools for the training, but not the character." Chet is staring intently at Brass the whole time, which does nothing to dispel lingering suspicions about his character. He finally says, "And if you had anything more than a filling and a piece of neoprene, we wouldn't be here." Gil zooms back into the conversation, saying, "Berglund. That's a Scandinavian name, isn't it?" Ding ding ding! He's Chet Lowe no more! Berglund says, "That's what my parents tell me." Gil nods and grins.
Sara is not grinning -- and it's the grin of others that's doing her in. She can't get Chuck's dental impressions to match the ones made on Mandy's ribs. As she exhales in frustration, Liam comes over and says, "Hey. Heard you nailed Soccer Boy for the murder." Sara explains, "Not exactly. No match on the plate." Liam suggests, "Well, maybe there was someone else with them." Sara leaps up from the table, saying, "Someone getting sicker by the minute."
Having assisted one case, it's now Liam's turn to help solve another. We see Gil trundling through the Labitrail until he finds Liam changing into his street threads in the locker room. Gil says, "I need you to take off your shoes and socks," to which Liam responds, "See, now we're getting into this whole strip forensics thing, and I'm not so sure I can hang with that, even if you are my boss." Gil just gives him a puzzled look, then asks, "Your mother's maiden name is Hojem, correct? Hojem is Norweigan?" Liam is touched that Gil knows this, and explains, "Yeah. And my grandfather got tossed from Norway for getting my grandmother pregnant before they got married. To this day, he still tells me, 'Som man reder sa ligger man.'" Gil and Liam look at each other for a moment before Liam realizes that he's finally stumbled across an area with which Gil in not familiar -- Nordic languages. Liam translates, "One must lie in the bed which one has made." Gil smiles a little as he says, "That's true. Right foot first, please." As Liam's peeling off his shoes and socks, he's joking, "Are you sure you want me to do this? Things could get loud in here." Gil merely smirks slightly. Oh, he's about to do something that will amuse him greatly. Liam asks, "You wanna tell me why you're doing this?" Gil only hands him a new pair of socks -- evidently leaving few of the footwear variables to chance -- and replies, "It's an experiment. Put these on, and come see me in six hours."
Back at Alfred Packer Memorial High, Sara and Lockwood have found their second assailant -- Nicole Exmoor, who has apparently been unable to stop throwing up. Sara asks, "Did she have an explanation?" Lockwood replies, "She said that she ate something that didn't agree with her." Really, couldn't the whole case be summed up thusly? Anyway, Sara and -- inexplicably -- Lockwood are in a fully occupied girls' locker room, talking to this minor without anything resembling a legal guardian or a court-appointed advocate nearby. Sara asks Nicole if she's at all familiar with E. coli, and offers to test Nicole's blood for PCP. Nicole, who looks miserable, sniffles, "Chuck bought the weed, not me. This guy told him it was a really great high." Sara looks at Nicole, wondering for a moment why anyone would bother taking an unnamed source at his word when it comes to controlled substances, then crouches down to show Nicole pictures of Mandy's ribs. What, is she trying to start a fresh round of booting? Apparently so, if Nicole's reaction once Sara starts pointing where she thinks Nicole's toothmarks are on Mandy's ribs is anything to go by. Once Nicole stops heaving, Lockwood says, "Ms. Sidle can make an impression of your teeth, or you can help yourself by explaining what happened." All alone, without benefit of legal counsel or a guardian. I realize Nevada enjoys a judicial system so flexible as to be almost yoga-like, but surely the good men and women on the bench in Vegas are going to dismiss this testimony based on the manner in which it was gathered? But Nicole, whose thought processes lend themselves more to smoking something based on hearsay than to questioning whether it's a good idea to talk to the heat, spills the whole story.
She and Chuck were having a post-game tryst, and to get in the mood, they smoked a little PCP-laced weed. Mandy, unfortunately, stumbled on the scene just as things were getting interesting between Nicole and Chuck. Cue Chuck dropping Nicole on the field to go do damage control with Mandy, and Nicole promptly entering a drug-fueled psychosis. Then she apparently attacked and eviscerated Mandy, with Chuck following. Sara helpfully provides the explanation -- "It's called psychological detachment. It's a function of PCP." Cut to more hazy flashback -- Chuck vomiting (wait...how did they get any of his dinner the day if it was upended all over the field?) and Nicole looking extremely unkempt. That ring of blood around her mouth isn't helping. Nicole's all weepy and protesting, "I feel like I'm having a really bad dream." Sara borrows the sledgehammer from Lockwood and swings it at Nicole, saying, "I was at Mandy's autopsy. It was not a dream." Nicole sobs some more, and Sara looks miserable. She looks over at Lockwood, who's not exactly beaming either, and Lockwood says, "I'm placing you under arrest for the murder of Amanda Kirk." You know, if this had been going on in a locker room when I was in high school, I can guarantee you that there would have been a ring of spectators watching the whole scene, not this occasional-girl-drifting-in-and-out thing. Nicole sobs even more, and eventually manages, "What's going to happen to me?" "You ever see Oz?" asks Lockwood. Oh, he does not either; he just assures Nicole that the DA will figure it out. A female sheriff leads her off, and then Sara rushes through a line reading so quickly, I'm convinced she just wants the moment to be over: "Hey, Cyrus, the time someone says experimenting with drugs is harmless? Remind me of this." Will do. Would you prefer the reminder with the subtlety of a frying pan slamming the point home into a half-dozen AA-grade eggs, or without?
Six hours must have elapsed -- Liam is hobbling into Gil's office and demanding to know, "What did you do to me?" "You had a reaction!" Gil says delightedly. Liam sits down and says grimly, "I'm hazmat meat! Quarantine, here I come." He props his feet up on the desk, and Gil sees that the right foot -- the one he swabbed with a suspension of A. pullulans -- has broken out in eumycotic dermatitis. After establishing that he's not going to die from this (Gil: "It's a mildew-induced skin rash"), Liam looks at Gil with betrayal writ all over his face and says, "You infected me with mildew?" Gil ducks the troubling office-politics aspect of his actions and hands over a tube of hydrocortisone, telling Liam, "Follow the directions. It'll clear it right up."
And now, for the moment of truth: Gil is happily telling Berglund, "It's called Aureobasidium pullulans." Berglund is unmoved by the beauty of taxonomic nomenclature. Gil then produces a warrant to see Berglund's feet, and as Berglund is taking off the shoes and socks, Gil explains that the mildew was all around the Newmans' pool, and it evidently induces rashes in people of Scandinavian descent. "It does so in a predictable progression, which provides us with a valuable timeline." Berglund's looking pretty dismayed. I'm quite intrigued: why should one population be so much more vulnerable to this? Anyway, as Gil looks at Berglund's feet, he can't quite wipe the triumphant look off his face as he says, "You have the rash. And size twelve feet." I think it's kind of cute that Gil gets so happy when he's learned something new and put it to good use. Berglund huffs and flops back in his chair, and Gil -- not bothering to hide the smile at this point -- wags a glove-covered finger and says, "Let me tell you how you did this."
How Berglund apparently killed everyone is thusly: he put on the white wetsuit and slipped into the pool shortly before Cal came out. I can only conclude that he had used the lockbox combination to let himself in and was hiding in the cabana so Monica couldn't see him. Once Cal was in the pool, Berglund attacked him and drowned him. He then went upstairs -- still in the wetsuit -- just as Monica was coming out to the balcony to see what all the ruckus was about, snuck up behind her, and shot her.
Berglund doesn't deny this. He simply says, "You're still going to have to convince a jury that I killed two strangers for no reason." Gil peels off the latex and asks, "You ever been to the theatre? There's a play called Six Degrees of Separation -- it's about how all the people in the world are connected to each other by no more than six people. All it takes to connect you to the victims is one degree." Berglund finally looks as though he realizes he's in trouble.
Cut to Ms. Newman deliberately mispronouncing, "Berglung? No, I don't recall ever having met somebody by that name." Catherine, who's monkeying with a laptop over in the corner, asks if Ms. Newman recalls ever living in San Diego. Catherine says casually, "Oh, it just might help jog your memory. San Diego's a military town. Your sister married a guy in the Navy, right?" Ms. Newman neither confirms nor denies when she asks, "Did you really bring me in here just for this?" Catherine says they can go someplace else, if they'd like -- like the house Ms. Newman has for sale. Catherine explains that she didn't have enough evidence for a warrant, but nothing's stopping her from perusing the virtual tour Ms. Newman put up online. Lo and behold, there's a picture of Ms. Newman with Berglund. Ms. Newman recovers nicely, saying, "So what? I know him." Catherine says, "You hired him to kill your ex-husband and his new wife." Ms. Newman says flatly, "Picture doesn't prove anything." Catherine admits that it doesn't -- but it did give her access to Peter's financial information, where she found a loan application the two conspirators signed together. Catherine wraps it up with, "Payment for the hit -- he gets your house, you get your ex-husband's money." She also gives us one to grow on with, "The thing about murder for hire? There's always a paper trail." And that is why you should always stick to oral contracts sealed with a pact to become blood brothers whenever you're looking for someone to kill somebody for you.
The very last scene centers on Sara stopping by Gil's office. He's flipping through a report, and she gauges the right moment before she says, "Good night." Gil looks up and politely says, "Good night, Sara." She tries to smile a little, and almost makes it out of eyeshot before Gil calls, "Hey." Sara stops instantly and turns around. Gil says, "Nice work on the high school case." I'm thinking that in Gil's world, this is his idea of an apology for being peevish about her getting a life. We are talking about someone who has no idea how to connect to his coworkers in anything other than a work-related capacity. He nods, she smiles, he smiles back and then resumes the paperwork. Sara hovers for another minute and says, "I'm, uh, I'm sorry I missed your page. It's just, um, you tell me to get a life, and I get one, and then you expect me to be there at a moment's notice. It's, um, confusing." Well -- Gil wasn't expecting this. He takes off the glasses -- a sure sign he's thrown -- visibly tries to gather his thoughts, then looks up to see an empty doorway. This is what happens when two people with thwarted social skills try to have a discussion. It also happens to be the end of the episode. The final lesson of the night: never, ever take your eyes off the person you're talking to, or they'll vanish.