This episode opens with Radiohead, which means that it's already got a B simply on musical merit alone, and then we see an aerial shot of the Strip with the Flamingo, the Paris, and the MGM Grand visible in the distance. Rest assured that sandwiched between the Paris and the MGM Grand is the Aladdin, where I spent last weekend. Insofar as casino hotels goes, it gets points for having a bathroom larger than the kitchen in my apartment, and for having the kind of tub where you can stretch out, maybe do a little yoga, and still keep everything submerged. These criteria are important: the only nicer hotel bathroom I've had in Las Vegas was in the Mandalay Bay, and frankly, for what those rooms go for, it had darn well better be nice.
But we're not here to talk about tubs -- we're here to get our freak on with Radiohead. Get your freak on, y'all. We switch to a residential-looking street in Vegas, where the cab driver Rajeeb Khandewahl is discreetly checking out the attractive woman in the backseat. He then turns down the radio -- goodbye, Radiohead -- and the woman takes the opportunity to comment, "Last time I was out here, this was all desert." Khandewahl replies, in perfect, unaccented English (this observation is important later -- I'm foreshadowing here), "One day, I'm looking at a cactus, the day, a mini-mall." Khandewahl asks what brings the woman out, and as she replies, "Work," she looks up and sees a kid stumbling into the crosswalk. She screams, "Stop!" and Khandewahl slams on the brakes with sufficient force to send her rocketing into the back of his seat. The sound of the brakes screeching is enough to attract the attention of a bunch of bikers gathered outside the neighborhood watering hole. The wheels of the car stop on the kid -- unfortunate, that -- and the cab comes to a stop. Cue twelve angry, drunken men preparing to come over and give the crisis the benefit of their collective wisdom. Khandewahl checks on his passenger, then heads outside to see how the kid is. Short answer: disemboweled. That's not usually what happens when you're hit by a car, unless you're an extra in Death Race 2000. The cabbie takes one look, then heads back towards his cab. Reason # 3,456 why I would never make it as a successful member of an angry mob: I assumed Khandewahl was going to take advantage of the dispatch radio to log the accident and call for help. These folks assume otherwise, and fueled by wrathful ignorance, they proceed to beat him senseless. I'm not going to bother giving a blow-by-blow, as it were; just suffice it to say that it's a barbarous spectacle.
Cut to the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle. Gil is walking over, and Brass asks, "Where's your posse?" Gil replies, "I have no idea -- I was actually on a date." Brass looks around to make sure the assorted crime scene personnel don't suddenly go flying into orbit, as Gil's mention of an outside social life has undoubtedly knocked the world off its regular axis and begun disrupting things like gravity and magnetic poles. The two men walk over to the scene, where Emergency Backup David is crouched over the disemboweled kid, and Gil says in dismay, "My God. What am I looking at?" Brass dons the mantle of Captain Exposition and says, "Taxi hit a kid crossing the boulevard. The crowd over there saw the driver, Rajeeb Khandewahl, try to get away, so they pulled him out of the front seat of the cab and they beat him up. I mean they...beat him up bad. He's on his way to Desert Palm." Brass sounds shaken -- this speaks volumes about the degree of whupping Khandewahl endured. Emergency Backup David waits for a moment, and then says of his subject, "His insides are on the outside." That doesn't sit right with Gil, who asks, "Did you move this body, David?" Emergency Backup David replies, "No, sir." Brass notes that Auto Detail hoisted the cab off the kid, and Emergency Backup David says defensively, "Yeah, but I supervised. No one's touched him." Gil then asks Brass if he's ever seen anything like this before. "What do you mean?" Brass warily replies. Gil continues, "How many hit-and-runs have you pulled?" Brass has seen too many to count. Gil asks, "How many times have you seen the victim's viscera exposed?" Well, counting now, I'm guessing once? Brass confirms, "First time." Gil replies, "Well, first time for everything." Aaaand we go to The Who.
Once we're back, Emergency Backup David is talking about that time in forensics camp when he -- wait. Wrong conversation. He actually telling Gil, "My science teacher used to say that your small and large intestines could stretch across the Brooklyn Bridge. But in reality, only twenty-five feet combined." Gil, who's sitting on his forensics case, comments, "Fiction is often more compelling." Speaking of fiction, it's time to talk to the eyewitnesses. Gil says dismissively, "Testimonials, Jim? I don't consider that evidence." Evidence snob. Brass checks the rope of viscera one more time, and comments, "But easier to clean up." Speaking of cleanup, Emergency Backup David's about to do with the guts.
Cut to Brass talking to the very shaken cab fare. She's explaining how she's in town on business, was planning on staying with a cousin, and she saw the pedestrian lurch off the curb, but she didn't think the pedestrian saw the cab. We also find out that the reason the cabbie didn't see the pedestrian was because he was looking at his fare in the mirror. Brass asks when Rajeeb tried to drive away, and the fare corrects him, "No, no, no, no -- he got out of the cab to see what happened, then he freaked, and he got back in, and he reached for his radio. That's when the guys attacked him." Brass asks, "His radio? He -- he wasn't fleeing the scene?" The fare repeats emphatically, "No. He was calling for help." Gil, who was watching this exchange with some interest, then turns his attention to the cab and radio as Brass begins asking about the mob. The fare replies, "You always think you'd be a great witness, but...there were so many of them, and it happened so fast." We see another version of the attack, this time from her perspective in the cab. Gil looks disgusted; this scene can't have helped reduce his normally benign misanthropy.
And neither does the conversation with the mob. I forget who said a mob is only as smart as its dumbest member, but it's appropriate here. One man says, "We're heroes, man." A second says, "They have no respect for our laws." And those laws include the one permitting people to beat the crap out of anyone on the flimsiest of suspicions? Brass, who's already looking harried, asks, "Who?" A third mob member drawls, "That damn cabbie." Brass shoots back, "Why? Because he's not from Vegas?" Who is? That place reflects Nevada's average population, eighty percent of which (as of the 1990 census) were originally from someplace else. Another mob guy replies, "Because he's not from here, this country." Brass says heatedly, "And you know that because you saw his birth certificate." Yet another member of the Mensa mob comments, "We didn't exactly need to see it. We only need to make a false inference based upon a premise that has dubious and unsubstantiated origin." Or maybe he just stopped after that first sentence. Brass says, "Tell me what you did see." The same guy replies, "He hit the boy." The first man to speak interjects, "Then he hits his brakes, and I figure he's going to stop and do the right thing." And that would be performing gastrointestinal surgery in the street? Loudly swearing a citizenship oath as he hurries around to the back of the cab? Another guy says, "Instead, he jumps back into his cab." Clearly, this man is unacquainted with the miracle of talking wires, and thus cannot grasp the concept of radio communication. One guy says, "Hey, if it wasn't for us, he'd have gotten away." True -- because none of them can read a license plate or the number a cab typically has on its side, and thus call the cops with that information. Another eedjit says, "Citizen's arrest, yo." Guy Number One says, "People are going to want our autographs." The sad thing is, given the amount of pseudo-celebrity the merely notorious garner, he's probably right.
Gil, palpable waves of contempt rolling off him, interjects, "I don't want your autograph, but I would like your photograph and a bit of your DNA, so line up." The mob goes to protest, and Brass snaps, "Look, the guy that you 'arrested' is in critical condition. That makes you all suspects in a battery." The bald guy says, "Figures. You know, we do something good, you guys try to turn around and pin it on us." What else is included in their definition of "good"? Kneecapping people who violate the ten-items-or-less rule in the express lane at the grocery store? One guy comments, "If we were wearing badges, you'd be throwing us a tickertape parade." Or we'd be prosecuting you. Just ask Clarence Mabanag, Jude Siapno, and Matthew Hornung of the notorious "Oakland Riders," or Rafael Perez, one of the problematic CRASH unit cops brought down by the LAPD's Rampart scandal. Brass merely settles for saying, "If you're wearing badges, I'm playing left wing in the NHL." One guy says, "I know my rights -- I don't have to give you squat." Brass decides that he's through being charming: "Let me tell you how this goes down if you don't cooperate. You all get a free ride in the cruiser down to the station, where I hold you there until the warrants clear. So what's it gonna be? It's your choice. Line up, single file." Go, Brass! It's your eppy! Go, Brass! Get your perp on! Gil steps in, raises the camera, and with the barest of smiles, aims at one of the guys and quips, "Say 'cheese'!" Then he begins the swabbing.
Then, after a baffling transition wherein we see the top of the Bellagio while slot machines tinkle in the background, we zip to the hospital, where a nurse is saying of the much-injured Rajeeb, "He's critical. Ruptured spleen, collapsed lung, fractured ulna, possible intercranial bleeding. Doctors are still waiting on the labs." Gil asks about Rajeeb's clothing, and a nurse directs him to the top shelf, commenting, "They're ripped up pretty bad." Well, whatever didn't get torn in the fracas would have been cut open by the EMTs on the ambulance. The nurse says hesitantly, "He said he killed a boy -- ran over him?" Gil asks, "Did he say anything else?" No, he did not. Gil looks at Rajeeb, troubled by any one of a number of things: the fact that Rajeeb failed to mention the viscera, failed to give an account of who hit him, or focused on what he had done and thus shown how mistaken the yahoos back at the bar were.
Cut to Liam's lair, where a tense-looking Liam The Lab Tech is moving a crate of stuff to a lab bench. Gil comes in and says puckishly, "Gene Rayburn," then looks at Liam expectantly. Wow, is that unnerving. Where is the abuse? Liam turns around -- boy, does he look hassled -- and says, "What?" Gil replies, "Point of reference." Liam replies, "Uh -- Match Game. Nipsey Russell, Fannie Farmer. Game Show Network. Look, I, uh, don't have time for you. Ecklie's got a multiple, Warrick tells me his home invasion is my top priority, and I'm still backed up on Catherine's no-suspect rape. One servant, many masters, you know what I'm saying?" Gil replies patiently, "Liam, this is your DNA lab. You are the master. We serve you." Gil then gives Liam an adorable look. And when I, who have never really subscribed to the "William Petersen: Adonis made manifest on Earth" school of thought, think Gil's being cute, you know he's being cute. Liam turns to Gil and says, "Well, your stuff just made it to the top of the pile." Gil smiles -- will wonders never cease -- and produces his request: Rajeeb's clothing, from which he'd like to trace the individual DNA from Rajeeb's attackers. Liam then finishes Gil's scene-beginning reference by quipping, "Get ready to match the stars."
And now, time to visit David the Karatephobic Coroner. Gil bops on in and says, "Okay, Doc. Tell me something I don't know." David complies: "In the fourth grade, I dropped out of karate class because a kid half my size made me cry." Gil looks over his glasses and clarifies, "About the body." David gives a small smile and continues, "No pedestrian fracture. Almost without exception, when a pedestrian is hit by a car, there's certain expected wounds in the lower extremities, most significantly, the pedestrian fracture. Tip of the triangle always points in the direction the car was moving." Incidentally, we see the pedestrian fracture courtesy of the TMICam -- the car bumper striking a pedestrian's shins, and the bones cracking in response. David continues, "His tibia's intact. In fact, there's no bruising in the lower extremities." We see the intact bones in all their unbroken TMICam glory. Gil asks, "So there's no fractures, no bruising. Cause of death?" What, "guts all over the road" doesn't count until someone makes it all legal-like? David says, "Ah -- chest was crushed, multiple rib fractures, and uh, hence the white bucket you and David filled with his intestines, they literally popped out." Gil deduces, "So he wasn't hit by the taxi, he was run over." Which we see. David then continues, "Well, he would have died anyway. He was stabbed." David pulls back the sheet to show us the gory wound. He then sticks his fingers in it, commenting, "Clean, incised wound to the abdomen. Five inches deep." David mimes the stabbing action, and then we see the TMICam shot of the stabbing. Then we morph back to the body. Gil then asks how much time elapsed between the stabbing and the running-over. David can't say, nor can he tell us who this kid is. Fortunately, a woman had called over to missing persons and reported her son missing, so if we're all very lucky -- woman and boy excluded -- there will be a match.
Meanwhile, in a tranquil suburb somewhere in the San Fernando Valley -- or, as we like to call it on this show, "Las Vegas" -- a giant SUV pulls up. Sara gets out, wearing a bulletproof vest clearly designed to protect onlookers from the tie-dyed shirt she's wearing. Well, at least Nicky's not the only one running around in the vest now. She saunters over to Gil and tells him, "You know, you pulled me away from a forensic anthropology seminar, right? It's required. It's part of the continuing education program --" Gil snaps, "Well, I'm sorry, but everyone seems to have something to do today. I've got a teenager who was run over by a taxi. He wasn't hit by it, that's not what killed him. He was stabbed fatally. For now, I have no ID, no suspects, and no primary crime scene. I need you." Sara smiles, and asks, "How can I help?" What woman wouldn't melt after a recitation of a teenager's gory death?
Cue a big ol' investigating montage where Gil and Sara wander around looking for the trail of blood drops after Sara concludes that the stabbing took place elsewhere, and not near the crosswalk.
Even after the commercial, they're still walking the blood trail, if by "walking," you mean, "stopping every few feet to drop a marker and take a photo." Fifty-five blood drops later, they're at the edge of a grassy sward in a local park. Gil wonders where they'll pick up the trail. Sara figures the playground is right out, but "my money's on the basketball court." She and Gil exchange meaningful eyebrow raises, and then wander on over to the court. Totally off-topic here, but I love the music they're using in this scene -- it's like bluegrass gone techno. Meanwhile, Gil and Sara are trying to put a timeline on this event: the park gets dark at five, the kid was clearly there after dark, and in that case, he would have been hanging around wherever there were lights. Sure enough, when Sara and Gil head over to the lighted portion of the basketball court, they find blood droplets. Sara says, "This is our primary crime scene." And now, on to answer the pressing question, "Where is the knife what did this?" Sara looks around the park, mouth dropping open as she realizes that they're going to have to work the entire space. Gil comments, "It's a big dump site," and Sara struggles for composure as she says, "I'll, uh, order up some scent dogs, get some uniforms."
Back at the morgue, we do have a match between the mom reporting the kid missing and the kid on the slab. That's got to be a parent's worst nightmare.
Hey, it's Warrick! Only twenty-one minutes into the episode, even. Which reminds me: Where is Nicky? Where is Catherine? Are we going to cut to Catherine on the phone, listening to some know-it-all in Miami talking her ear off about an old case while she writes "GET ME OFF THE PHONE" on old reports, makes paper airplanes of them, and throws them at passersby? Anyway, Warrick comes by and asks, "You working that case where some mob beat up an Indian cab driver for hitting a kid?" Sara clarifies, "Cabbie didn't actually hit the kid -- he was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Warrick then asks, "Do you think [the mob scene] was racially motivated?" Is it somehow going to make the bruises hurt less if it's not? Sara replies, "I do. White mob. White kid. Dark-skinned cabbie. I don't like the math." Warrick looks away, brooding -- please, God, not the brooding -- then says morosely, "We've got to wait for the science, don't we?" Sara smiles ruefully as she says, "I'm trying." Warrick, who really seems shaken up, says, "That's the job. Good luck." As he leaves, you can practically see the thought bubble over Sara's head reading, Well. That was awkward.
And now, it's time for Brass's day to get a little worse as a deputy escorts grieving mother Ms. Branson in to see him. She marches in and demands, "Have you arrested that taxi driver?" Brass replies, "He's in intensive care." Also, why is she not asking whether they've arrested whomever stabbed her kid, since that would seem to be a contributing factor to his death? Ms. Branson rants a little bit about the taxi driver -- understandable -- and Brass gently reins her in before buckling down to the truly unpleasant part of the conversation: "Your son was stabbed in Haskell Park, and you live on Loring Avenue. My best guess is he was on his way home when the accident occurred...the taxi didn't kill your son, but someone did. Did Todd have any problems that you were aware of, any problems at school?" Ms. Branson cuts him off to deny any problems: "He's a great kid. He's athletic, he's popular, he's a good student. We moved here from Portland nine months ago. He fit right in." We find out that Todd had told his mom he was going to a friend's for dinner, but hadn't called, which had raised alarm bells later. Man, if it were my parents, they would have been calling over to the house in question if I didn't check in: I wasn't allowed to leave the house until I had debriefed them on where I was going, who I was going with, what I would be doing, how I could be reached, and when I would be home. I had to call in if I was traveling somewhere or changing plans, and any failure to comply led to restriction. The first weekend I was in college, I nearly passed out from the giddy freedom of being able to go somewhere without factoring an extra half an hour for the parental pre-departure routine. Anyway, Ms. Branson, who's clearly more lenient than MaBell and PaBell were, says ruefully, "You know teenagers." Brass replies, "Yeah, I do. And they often don't confide in their parents, I know." Ms. Branson decides to confide in Brass: "I've been on the run from my ex-husband. He's threatened to kill me and my boys. I just try to stay one step ahead of him." We find out that Mr. Branson showed up outside Todd's school in Portland; the Branson family boarded a bus out of town that evening. We also find out that Mr. Branson called a few days ago, and she was planning on disappearing again this weekend. Brass asks, "Why didn't you call the police?" There's a long minute where she looks at him, agonized, and he says resignedly, "Because you knew we couldn't protect you." She nods almost imperceptibly. The Piano Of Police Futility tinkles in the background.
Back to Sara becoming one with the great outdoors. At least there's plenty of grass and an abundance of lush old-growth trees to block out the sweltering desert sun. She gives one of Todd's shirts to a scent dog, and it heads off in one direction. Gil wanders in another, sporting a metal detector. Sara ambles over once she hears a whine. She asks Gil, "What d'you got?" Gil reminds Sara that she's the one with the gloves and therefore in a position to paw through deciduous detritus. She does, and finds a gun. "Looking for a knife, uncover a gun." Gil asks in an ironic sort of way, "What is happening to our parks?" Ask Mark Rey, the Undersecretary of the Interior; he just helped craft a plan to "streamline" planning in national forests and parks, which would drop the requirement for environmental impact statements whenever forest managers wanted to introduce logging or livestock grazing on federal lands, and greatly reduce the requirement for ecological and species diversity in federally-managed ecosystems, because I think his answer might be something along the lines of, "What's happening is that the government is helping to subsidize the logging and cattle industries by letting a limited handful of owners treat federal lands as private properties, which makes no sense economically since it's not like the timber or ranching industries are particularly positioned for growth, and that more money can be made in the long run with eco-tourism and outdoor adventuring, but anything to stymie Clinton-administration favorite the Sierra Club!" Only he'd phrase it somewhat less bluntly. And I appear to have wandered off-topic here -- sorry about that. But in my defense, Gil really did ask about what was happening to our parks. While Gil and Sara ponder that question in a lot less political fashion, the dogs go nuts in the bushes. Sara and Gil mosey on over to see what the fuss is about. Sara says, "Dead body, twenty yards over from where our vic was knifed. You think they're related?" Gil muses, "Well, they're related by geography, but for now, it's just a dead guy in the park." He tilts his head, and Sara looks at him, pondering anew the ever-relevant question, "What is happening in our parks?"
We don't find out. Instead, we see Sara in the lab, spraying a puffy blue parka for either blood or gunshot residue -- I couldn't read the label on the bottle, so I can't tell. Just then, Catherine walks by, holding a few rolls of wrapping paper. Sara's all, "I thought you had a few days off," and Catherine replies, "I do, but I left these on my desk. I'm on my way to Circus Circus with five nine-year-olds." Oh, man, The Lindsey Age Conundrum is now hopelessly unrecoverable: we found out in Season One that she was celebrating her sixth birthday, and unless CSI takes place on a planet where the years are 245 days long, they're no way the kid should be turning nine now. Eight, yes, especially if she's in the third grade, but not nine. The only other explanation is that Catherine's taking a completely unrelated gang of nine-year-olds to Circus Circus. Oh, wait. Catherine says, "It's Lindsey's birthday." Well, we're officially fucked on the age thing. ["Unless Lindsey skipped second grade, meaning that it's actually her eighth birthday but many of the other kids in her class have turned nine already…? No, that doesn't work either. Never mind." -- Sars] Catherine continues that she's wrapping a bridal Barbie for her daughter. I liked it better when Gil and Nicky were picking out the presents and getting her chemistry kits. Sara asks, "What's a bridal Barbie?" clearly never having been to the FAO Schwarz in the Forum Shops over at Caesar's, where an entire wing is devoted to Tango Barbie, Bridal Barbie, Dynasty Barbie, Gone With The Wind Barbie, Developmentally Stunted Adults With Too Much Time And Money On Their Hands Barbie, and so on. Even more disturbing, the FAO Schwarz there has this whole Roman Empire theme, so the Barbie alcove is flanked by life-sized Imperial Barbie pillars where stola- and palla-clad vixens with improbably pert noses smile vacantly at the shopping masses.
Anyway, Catherine ha-ha's Sara's crunchy sensibilities and notices that Sara's been testing for gunshot residue, which she's found. Sara tells us she was testing Todd's jacket. Catherine adds, "So it means he may have fired the revolver you and Grissom found in the park." I love how Catherine always waltzes in on her day off or her court date and advances the case in passing. Sara replies, "Yeah. Too bad GSR testing can't tie a vic to a particular gun." Ah, but maybe Gil can. Who can take the GSR, and tie it to a vic? Who can take the evidence and solve crimes really quick? The Grissom Man can, 'cause he knows a lot of things, and breaks the case open wide. Catherine tells Sara that Gil's down in Ballistics, "meditating over your revolver. He didn't even look up." Sara gets a wide grin and gasps, "Excuse me," before running off. As she passes Catherine, the older woman smiles slightly.
Sara charges into Ballistics, where Gil is peering intently into a scope. She chides him, "You could have waited for me." This sails over Gil's head. He gestures for her to check out what he's seeing in the scope. It's burnt skin. Gil theorizes, "I think someone palmed the cylinder gap." For those of us not intimately acquainted with gun parts, it means they cupped their hand over the barrel, for reasons known only to them. We see the firing and the burning via TMICam. Sara says, "Todd Branson had GSR on his jacket. If we could get his DNA off this revolver, we could tie him to this." Gil pooh-poohs the idea: "Burnt skin is useless for DNA." Sara's got him on this one: "What about sweat? There's a seventeen-percent chance of DNA recovery from a shooter's perspiration." This is news to Gil: "Seventeen percent?" Sara's in her glory here: "Yeah. New paper out of Australia. You haven't seen it? Seventeen percent chance of DNA recovery from the grip of a gun, sixty-seven percent chance from a cigarette, thirty-two percent chance from the brim of a hat. [pause] Would you like a copy?" Gil pretends to mull this, then says, "I don't need one. I have you." Hee! I love it when Sara's coworkers tweak her over her stat-supported geekery. Gil then instructs Sara to swab the pistol grip and get it to DNA. She just stands there, puzzling whether Gil's teasing her about her stat-spouting like Warrick and Nicky, or if he's hinting at something else. She eventually settles for deciding -- wordlessly -- that Gil's being his usual opaque self.
Speaking of Nicky, where is he? Since he's not here in this episode, let's all assume that he drew another Night of the Pifflings case, and is using his free time to build an elaborate to-scale model of the Labitrail, which he is populating with little clay dolls modeled after his coworkers. Their tiny limbs are fully articulated, and we see him carefully placing them around assorted areas of the lab, then squeezing some red-dyed Karo syrup around them and muttering, "Assuming I catch him by surprise, the blood trail is going to leave a fine spray on the wall from the first bullet, but a bigger splotch once he turns his head..." Or maybe he's just writing in his Rage Journal. Who knows? We certainly won't, since it's not like Nicky's coworkers even remember he exists in this episode.
Back in the morgue, David's bending to the enviable task of examining a man whose chest cavity has been blown wide open. Gil comes in and asks if David noticed whether or not Todd Branson had burn marks on his palms. David replies in the negative, and adds that Mr. Gaping Chest Wound has no burns, but his right palm is of interest for other reasons. The main one would be the big incision wound, which, as Gil says, "is a common injury among knife-wielding killers." David moves on to the cause of death: "A bullet. It's lodged in the left ventricle. I was contemplating my method of extraction when you arrived." Gil replies, "You reach in and pull it out." David ripostes, "Not if it's only a jacket fragment." Gil muses, "Maybe a frangible bullet, designed to fragment on impact." I love the word "frangible." However, in doing a little legwork on frangible bullets for this recap -- what they are, how they work, whether or not they're used widely and why or why not -- I gotta say, the marketing text for ammo sites kind of scares me. According to frangiblebullets.com, "the frangible bullet is 100% safe." I'm going to assume they mean for the shooter. As to why you'd want to use these bullets, the following reasons are most commonly cited in the popular literature and marketing: reduced exposure to lead, as many frangible bullets rely on a copper/tin composite; greater control of trajectory; less chance of injury from flying bullet fragments (again, we're working on the assumption that there's less chance of shooter injury here); and "the increasing demand for environmentally cleaner, safer, healthier and lead-free ammunition." There's just something delightfully absurdist about the quest for safe and healthy ammunition. Happiness is a frangible bullet.
Anyway, frangible bullets are old news to David, who harrumphs, "That would explain the shattered femur; it's covered in copper dust." We see the shooting, the environmentally friendly shattering of the femur, and the gory wound. David comments casually, "I'll remove the heart, peel back the myocardium, and get you what's left of that bullet." Gil's already over the bullet and has moved on to other things, like the x-ray of the dead guy's dislocated shoulder. He asks about the shoulder, and David tells him that the muscles were torn, but there was no inflammatory response. Gil deduces that it happened post-mortem. Just then, Emergency Backup David bursts in: "Excuse me. I'm off to the hospital. Taxi driver didn't make it." David comments, "Another one for my table." Gil purses his lips, then comments, "Emerson once said, 'The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.' The beast is up for murder."
And a boy is up for basketball. A kid is busy playing in his driveway when Brass approaches him with, "Hey, buddy, how's it going?" The kid thinks it's going well enough to lob Brass the ball. We find out that this is Eric, and that he's about to move. Brass says sympathetically, "Yeah, I moved around a lot as a kid. It's not easy. So, you going to be seeing your dad?" "My dad's dead. He died when I was two," Eric says flatly. Brass files this information away for future reference, passes the kid a business card, and exits.
Meanwhile, in Ballistics, Gil's having a tête-à-tête with Bobby the ballistics tech, who's telling him, "These were originally used in indoor shooting ranges where lead build-up's a problem. Less toxic than lead." We establish that the bullet fragment recovered from the victim's heart matches the barrel-score patterns on a bullet test-fired from the revolver found at the park. Sara comes in, and Bobby proudly tells her he made a match to her revolver. "Nice," she tells him, then turns to Gil and tells him that she made a match to the gun via NCIC, and it turns out the gun is registered to Jonathan Ruarch of San Jose, California.
Cut to Ms. Branson tearfully saying, "John's my ex. Is he in Las Vegas?" Brass replies only that he found a gun registered to John in the park where Todd was stabbed, and adds, "When I spoke to your son Eric, he told me that his father had died years ago." Ms. Branson says, "That's what I told both my boys. I told them John was killed in a car accident. It's not easy to lie to them like that. Every time I move, I have to make up some crazy story. I just want them to be able to sleep at night." And they're able to do that because the prospect of their mother uprooting them seemingly at random won't induce any sort of anxiety at all? I realize her intentions are good, but I still think it would be better to be up-front with the boys. Gil makes a face, but returns to the business at hand, saying, "Ms. Branson, we also found a dead body in the park. A white male, in his mid-thirties." "Do you think it's John?" she asks, almost eagerly. They don't know -- but they do have a photograph of the man on the autopsy table, which they hand over. Thankfully, it's from the neck up. Unfortunately, it's not John The Psycho Ex, but rather Ms. Branson's current beau, Stewart Bradley. Wow, does she have bad luck with men.
Sara, whose luck with men I won't ponder at this moment, is back at the park. A train whistles in the distance; at least the powers that be are consistent about the train activity in this town, what with them having been featured prominently in two episodes. Sara's walking the same path that Todd must have taken, and as she tramps through the grass, she notices a pattern in the leaves. Sara returns to the edge of the basketball court and begins snapping pictures of the pattern. I don't know what I'm more impressed with: her workaholism, or the fact that the patterns in the leaves are still there a few days and several dozen law enforcement personnel tramping through the area later.
Some time later, she's back at the lab, looking at a map of the park spread over the light table. Gil sidles over and asks, "Where have you been?" Carving "Sara (hearts) Gil 4-ever" into a spare lab bench, maybe? Sara tells him she went back to the park, because she "kept thinking there must be some physical evidence connecting the stabbing to the shooting." She's got it. Gil's amazed: "Drag marks?" Sara explains, "Leading from the basketball court to Stewart Bradley's body. We know Todd was bleeding, but there were no blood drops around the drag marks." "So you're thinking someone else was there?" Gil asks. He then brainstorms, "Well, the revolver was registered to the boy's biological father. But they haven't seen each other in ten years." Sara asks, "Assuming Todd fired the gun, how did he get hold of it?" Gil theorizes that John gave Todd the gun behind Ms. Branson's back; Sara counters that Todd might not be the shooter. Gil concurs, noting that GSR only places Todd around the gunfire; it doesn't definitively make him the shooter. The two of them like John as the shooter.
And heeeeeeere's Johnny. He's an eye-rolling bald guy with a bad attitude. Brass tells him, "You don't scare me. According to your ex-wife, you're some kind of monster, threatening her life, setting her car on fire in Boston and breaking and entering in Chicago, showing up at your kid's school in Portland. I don't know. I thought maybe you'd be like the guy in Sleeping with the Enemy." For those of you who are now wondering, "Speaking of that guy in Sleeping with the Enemy, what's he been up to?" the answer is, "A whole lot of stuff you're not likely to catch unless you're living outside the States." Behold the terrible power of a bad Julia Roberts movie: it exiles people from America and makes them take the lead in an Italian miniseries about Count Dracula. Anyway, Brass moves in a different direction, commenting on how John resembles Gumby, provided you like your Gumbys hairless and glowering. John replies, "If this is about my ex, cop pulled me over outside Moapa. Jane lives in Vegas. I didn't violate any damn court order, all right?" Brass notes that John's pretty familiar with where Jane lives. John shoots back, "Is that a crime?" Brass replies, "Yesterday, your son Todd was murdered, and that is a crime." John stops looking at Brass, focusing on some inner point and reacting to that instead. He does this for a bit, and Brass smacks the table, saying, "HEY! John, baby. I'm not talking about the weather, man. I'm talking about your son." John replies, "I haven't seen that kid since he was in his diapers. I didn't kill him, if that's what you're going to." Brass moves on to Stewart Bradley, noting, "He was shot with your gun." John asks, "Which one?" Brass is all, "Revolver. Smith & Wesson." John insists that he doesn't have a Smith & Wesson, and Brass tells him the gun is registered to him. John says it got stolen, and Brass hassles him over not filing a police report. He then spins a scenario in which John gulls Todd into bringing Stewart to the park, but John whips out a receipt proving that he was in Taos, New Mexico the night of the murder. Gil wanders in to see John's hands, which are clean of burns, and after they agree to hold John on some outstanding speeding tickets until a better suspect comes along, John is escorted out of the episode.
Some time later, Gil's power-walking through the Labitrail until he gets to the library/lounge area where Sara and Warrick are hanging. Gil leans over Warrick and asks without preamble, "What do you weigh?" It's a testament to how familiar Gil's odd questions are that Warrick doesn't even react when he deadpans, "That's between me and my trainer." Gil testily asks, "Do I have to get a scale?" Warrick caves: "A buck ninety-five, give or take a doughnut." Gil turns to Sara, who says, without looking up from whatever she's reading, "Don't even ask." Gil then turns back to Warrick and asks, "Warrick, would you lie down on the floor?" Warrick doesn't look up from whatever he's writing to reply, "I don't get paid enough to play dead." "Please?" Gil persists. Heh. I have the feeling the staff does this to him for kicks. Warrick puts down his pen and sighs. Sara smirks slightly, and then Gil pulls her into the act. "Sara, grab Warrick's right arm. See if you can drag him across the room." Sara asks, "This has something to do with the case, right?" Oh, who cares if it does? If you get the opportunity to drag Warrick anywhere, woman, take it! Gil manipulates Sara into doing his bidding by asking, "You don't trust me?" Sara drags Warrick. Gil stands there as, off-camera, Warrick groans, "You're such a drag," and Sara laughs.
Gil then spots a petite woman chit-chatting by the water cooler, tells the young Turks to stay put, then collars the woman. "Excuse me, hi. Judy, right? Judy, would you like to be part of a little experiment?" Judy looks up at Gil and stammers, "I-I-I'm a secretary. Besides, I heard what you did to Liam's feet." Gil promises Judy she'll keep her shoes on, and herds her toward Warrick. He then asks Judy to take Warrick by the right arm and drag him across the room, which she does, albeit in fits and starts. Warrick grunts, "I like it gentle," after one particularly forceful jerk. Once Warrick's been moved a few yards, Gil releases Judy to the Labitrail, and explains the purpose of the experiment: Stewart was about the same weight as Warrick, and if a child was dragging him toward the woods, he would do so in fits and starts, which explains the post-mortem dislocated shoulder. After Warrick leaves, grumbling about chiropractors' bills, Gil and Sara launch another flight of fancy, this one featuring Ms. Branson as the one who offed Stewart in a fit of maternal rage after he stabbed her son. Since we're only at the forty-eight-minute mark, however, we can all rest assured that we're in for at least one more significant plot twist.
Cut to Brass and Gil having the great good timing to catch Ms. Branson as she's loading up her SUV, Eric already seat-belted into the front seat. Brass allays Ms. Branson's worries about her ex catching up to her by telling her they've got John on unrelated charges, so even if she stops to chat, she'll still have a day or two head start. Gil then frays Ms. Branson's nerves further by asking, "May I see your hands?" He sees them -- no stab wounds, no burns. So much for that hypothesis. As Gil's looking, he notices Eric eyeing him nervously, so he zooms in on that. Gil walks over and says casually, "Hi, pal." It's kind of unnerving to see Gil attempting to establish a rapport with children; I prefer it when he's openly discomfited around them, as Gil has always struck me as someone who wasn't terribly comfortable being a child, and thus can't relate to children. Brass comes over and tells Eric, "This is Mr. Grissom. We work together." Gil asks to see Eric's hands. Eric's not moving. Ms. Branson says, "We have to get going." Brass replies, "As soon as Eric shows Mr. Grissom his hands, you're on your way." "Palms up," Gil says, and the kid produces his hands. The left one has a long vertical burn on the palm. That timely departure is looking a lot less likely for Ms. Branson now.
We're then whisked to the interrogation room, where Brass and Gil are sitting with Eric, Ms. Branson, and a child advocate. Gil says, "Eric. I need to know how you burned your hand." He looks at his mom, and Brass directs him, "Look at Mr. Grissom, not your mother, okay?" The advocate, Ms. Karpell, says, "It's okay to answer the question." Eric tells Gil he burned it on an iron. Brass and Gil explain how that's a lie, and the kid swallows, staring steadily at Gil, and spins a story about how he followed his older brother Todd to the park, where Todd had arranged to meet Stewart. Todd yelled at Stewart, "I am not leaving my friends 'cause of you!" and a tussle ensued in which Todd pulled a gun, Stewart pulled a knife, and Eric happened along just in time to wrestle for control of the gun, but too late to prevent either the fatal shooting or the lethal stabbing. Then Todd stumbled off and left Eric to deal with the body. "I was just looking out for my brother," he finishes. Gil and Brass are both suspicious of the story, but it's plain that neither of them is certain how to attack it yet. Fortunately, Sara, who had entered quietly during the conversation, steps in to rescue them. She swabbed the barrel of the gun, and that 1 in 5.88 chance paid off -- she found DNA, and it was male DNA, but it wasn't Todd's. Instead, it was someone related to Todd. We find out that what really happened was that Eric snapped over the prospect of moving again, blamed Stewart, arranged to meet him in the park, and then, when Todd arrived at the park to stop the confrontation, the kid got himself stabbed by Stewart in a three-way mix-up for his troubles. We also learn that Ms. Branson had owned the revolver in question -- why she didn't mention earlier that she had one of her ex-husband's guns, and why she didn't mention earlier that she thought he had somehow stolen it, as she mentions here as her explanation for why it went missing, are two questions that are unanswered -- and that Stewart had started carrying a knife on her advice, as protection against John. Their plotline ends with Eric being escorted off to juvie, where he will no doubt hone his killing instinct through years of gang in-fighting, only to be released with few positive social skills and even fewer job skills at age twenty-one, but the parting shot of his small figure escorted by several adults is quite chilling. Ms. Branson is left alone to weep in the room, fully realizing how her actions led to her son's and significant other's deaths, and her remaining son's incarceration.
And now, it's time to get six minutes of justice for Rajeeb Khandewahl. Y'all are all saying, "Who?" Go ahead -- skip back to page one and refresh your memories: Radiohead-loving cabdriver, beaten to death by an angry mob? Remember him now? Gil walks into Liam's lab and asks him where they're at. Liam's all, "I paged you, like, ten times." Gil replies, "I was busy." "Well, so was I," Liam replies. Sassy! This is so much more fun than goofball Liam and Gil the disapproving father figure. Liam processed all the DNA from Rajeeb's clothing, then compared it to the DNA from the mob, and managed to reconstruct the events. Because I'm all squeamish about watching someone get beaten to death, I'm not going to elaborate on who did what. The intro's pretty snazzy, though: Gil looks at the board and says, "All I see is a sheet." Liam replies, "What I do is art, and now I'm ready to unveil it." He then makes a quip about The Match Game and recounts all the jackballs who were exercising their Constitutional right to beat the bejeesus out of anyone who looks different from them. Wait -- there isn't any such right? Then won't it be fun to see what happens when these guys realize that. Gil and Liam briefly commiserate over the fact that only six of the twelve men can be pegged on specific actions based on physical evidence. Gil ponders this.
Then he goes outside and breaks out the Osmont Cam to reconstruct Todd and Rajeeb's deaths.
Cut to Gil telling the camera, "The mob mentality relieves individuals from having to distinguish between right and wrong." Actually, he's talking to Brass, who replies, "Anonymity shields them from prosecution, though." Gil says disgustedly, "Yeah, six of them, to be exact. Unfortunately, physical evidence is limited by human action." Brass reminds him, "Well, nothing's absolute, Gil. Even forensics." Gil says, "Well, this is as far as we can take it. It's up to you guys."
By "you guys," we mean Brass, and he's talking to Baldy, telling him, "The physical evidence confirms that you're the 'hero' who pulled the guy out of the cab." Baldy replies, "I'd do it again, too." His lawyer attempts to do damage control. Brass tells Baldy he's up for first-degree murder, and finishes by saying, "For the record, he didn't hit that boy. He wasn't trying to flee the scene. He was trying to reach his radio to call for help. You know who the real hero of this is? Rajeeb Khandewahl. The taxi driver. So. What does that make you?" Three guesses, the first two don't count, and I'll spot you the first letter. The attorney asks if the DA's willing to deal. Sure -- so long as Baldy hands over the other eleven people. Cut to Gil watching and nodding in satisfaction, and the episode ends on that note, with Gil watching how old-fashioned police work fills in the gaps that forensics can't.