We open with one of the coolest transitions we've seen on this show: the colorful neon skyline of the Strip morphing into a series of perfume and cosmetic bottles on top of a bathroom counter. The camera passes the counter and goes down the hall to the bedroom, where we see a hamper and a treadmill blocking a barely-open door, and focuses on a sleeping woman. We hear a few rustles and rattles, which are enough to wake up the woman. She rolls over -- it's worth noting that she's in full makeup and lip gloss, which makes me suspect that either she went to bed massively drunk, or the makeup artist forgot that every chick magazine on the planet harps on its readers to wash off the war paint before bed -- and listens for a moment before walking downstairs toward her living room. She's wearing the kind of strappy camisole and boy-cut briefs that all but signal the serial killers to fire up the chainsaw and sprint in her direction. The woman notices lights on, her ceiling fan on, and a fresh drink with a moisture ring on the coffee table, and right before she takes a deep breath to begin screaming, her -door neighbor beats her to it.
The camera zooms through the first apartment's door lock, goes down the sidewalk to the house, and zooms in through that keyhole, twisting and turning until it comes to rest in the bedroom, where another nubile young lovely is screaming for help as she struggles beneath her black-clad assailant. The assailant sprints out moments later.
Cut to the sirens going around as Gil, Brass, and Catherine arrive on the scene. Gil asks, "Dispatch says breaking and entering, and sexual assault?" Brass clarifies, "Well, he never touched the first girl. The bedroom door was blocked." Gil asks for clarification, and Brass explains about the treadmill blocking the door, then points out that the two apartments are adjacent and they think the girl in the second one has physical findings. Catherine asks, "You think?" Brass elaborates, "The girl locked herself in her bedroom. Won't let anyone with a Y chromosome within fifty feet of her." He says this like a victim of sexual assault has never behaved this way before.
Catherine then saunters into the apartment, introduces herself, and asks nicely for everyone to clear the residence. A uniform does a swaggering sidle toward Catherine and tells her, "I'm first officer, ma'am. I can't leave the scene unless I get an order from my commanding officer." Catherine reflects on this in the time it takes to remove her hat, and tells the first officer, "The victim's well-being takes precedence over everything else. Right now, this is Joanne Crooks' apartment, not our crime scene, so...there's the door." As everyone leaves, Catherine awkwardly thanks them. She notices Joanne's door opening up.
Meanwhile, Brass and Gil are checking out the first woman's apartment. She locks her doors every night, but fat lot of good it does if you leave the window open just enough for people to reach in and unlock the door. It is astounding that the design which places the window so close to the door was approved; surely architects are aware of safety considerations, if not developers, who are aware of how much money they stand to lose if prospective tenants notice the security hazard. Anyway, we establish how this guy got in. Brass is all, "Crime of opportunity, huh?" Gil pulls back the curtain to look at the window and notices the giant face-print on the outside, which prompts him to say, "Yeah -- except someone was watching this girl."
Well, we'll have to find out who after the credits.
Catherine is easing her way into Joanne's bedroom, assuring her that all the guys have left and it's just her. Joanne tells Catherine that she's already been through the drill -- she doesn't know what the guy looked like and it was pitch black. As Joanne talks, she strips her bed. That's gonna get in the way of evidence collection. Catherine comes further in the room and says, "I'm not a cop; I'm with the crime lab. I'd like to, ah, process the bed sheets." Joanne doesn't think so. Catherine asks if she can take samples from Joanne; Joanne shoots her down. Catherine begins a harder sales pitch with, "Look, I know this is really horrible," and Joanne interrupts with, "I just want to get the bastard off me, okay? Off of my things. Don't you get that?" Catherine says levelly, "Washing away evidence hurts any chance of finding out who raped you." Joanne counters that she wasn't raped; she woke up and the guy was on her chest. To make her point, she shows Catherine a lock of her hair and says, "Look at this -- it's not hair gel." Catherine points out, "If you let me recover that evidence, we can stop him from doing this to somebody else." Joanne mumbles, "Maybe I'm selfish. I don't know -- I don't really care about anybody else right now." Catherine, to her eternal credit, does not shoot back, "Wanna bet that's what the person victimized right before you said about this too, princess?" Instead, recognizing that the benefits to society at large aren't going to win Joanne over, Catherine says, "Well, then let's get him for what he did to you." Them's the magic words, and Joanne cedes her sheets.
Outside, Warrick is taking plaster casts of the footprints outside the window. Gil is busy lifting the face-print from the window and imagining what the perp saw while he was waiting to make his move. I'm distracted once again by how nice everyone's pajamas are. Where are they getting these cute things? I don't even care if the camisole-and-boxer thing is serial-killer bait; I've got a maglite beside the bed, and no problem at all flinging a cat in someone's face if necessary. Just tell me where to get those pajamas. Okay, where were we again? Oh -- Nick calling Gil over to show him a crusted-over semen stain. As Nicky says, "It confirms your theory he's been watching her for a while," Gil wanders off. Nicky turns around to continue talking to Gil and chuffs in surprise as he notices he's talking to thin air. Undaunted, Nicky follows Gil over to the window, where Gil tells him, "He's been watching a lot of people." Nicky, unfortunately, turns his back to Gil as he explains, "There are hedges outside every one of these apartment windows. That's built-in concealment. Yeah, this guy was having his own little peep show." And Gil's having his own little deaf moment, because he's totally unaware that Nicky was talking, and wanders off again. Either that, or Gil's picked up the habit of wandering off the minute Nicky opens his mouth. Nicky shrugs at Warrick, who shrugs back.
It's Night Court! But there's no Dan Fielding in sight. Sara lets herself into the courtroom as the lawyer -- blonde, pretty, articulate -- says, "I would like to thank you for working late into the night. During this trial, you have heard people portray the defendant in glowing terms. He may be all of these things. He certainly seems likable. That doesn't change the fact that he got behind the wheel of his car legally drunk, and drove through an intersection, killing Shelley Daniels, a twelve-year-old child." This is the point where the camera pulls back and we see that the lawyer has been delivering her speech from a really bitchin'-looking wheelchair. The lawyer continues, "When you go into that jury room, I ask that you seek justice and return in a verdict of guilty. Not for me, not for His Honor, not even for Shelly Daniels. I ask because justice itself demands it. Justice is greater than our personal feelings. Than revenge. Than pity. Do not shrink. Do not disappoint, but rather...embrace it. Thank you." In the audience, Sara smiles. The judge sends the jury to the jury room, where they will play the slots of justice and weep over the oratorical miracle they just witnessed. The lawyer wheels back to her table, and Sara comes over to ask, "Where do I sign up?" "Oh, I wish you could," the lawyer responds. They then get down to business: People v. Archer's coming up this Thursday, and Sara's quite excited about it, as she's prepped all week. The lawyer tells Sara she's handed the case over to another D.A., Greg Rubio. Sara protests, "Melissa, we've been building this case together for six months! What's going on?" Melissa tells her, "I'll be dead." Well, that's a pretty good excuse.
And now, the sensitive music plays as Sara and Melissa have themselves a little chat. Sara's all, "I never felt comfortable asking you about --" "My wheels?" Melissa says. Oh, she's so plucky! Sara adds, "I mean, I know someone broke into your house, shot you and your husband --" "Made me a widow, left me a souvenir," Melissa adds, fingers going to the lump in her neck where the bullet presumably is lodged. The TMICam helpfully shows us how the bullet got there, complete with squishy-sounding thump upon impact. Melissa explains that at the time she was shot, the doctor told her that removing the bullet would have killed her, but in the last few years, the bullet's migrated. She continues, "Last week, my voice gives out during a cross, I have trouble swallowing, hand starts to shake. My neuro calls it a traumatic basilar artery aneurysm. He has to 'clip' the artery." Sara rallies and says, "If they're fixing the artery, that's good." Melissa says, "The operation's delicate. The odds are...low." How low can you go? Try a one-in-ten survival rate. Melissa sticks out her hand and shakes Sara's, saying, "I've really enjoyed working with you, Sara." Then she wheels off. What an inspiring story of determination! I'm sure this person whom Sara obviously admires has no skeletons in the closet, nothing that will present an ethical dilemma or a crushing disappointment later in the episode. After all, only Gil and his mentor, Catherine and her mentor, and Warrick and his mentor were freakish aberrations in this staff of six. No doubt Sara, Brass, and Nicky will dodge this bullet, so to speak. Brass won't discover that the partner who taught him everything was, in fact, Himmler. Nicky won't have to apprehend his visiting fraternity brother for that showgirl rape spree. They all have social lives where the people they like and admire with don't do the perp walk, right?
Okay, y'all can stop laughing now.
Back at the Labitrail, Catherine's asking Liam the lab tech -- who's ditched the Manchester United 'do in favor of that old standby, bedhead -- if he's gotten anywhere with the semen sample she got from Joanne. Liam tells her, "Low volume. No sperm." Catherine tells him that's impossible; Liam asks if she'd like him to doctor the sample, if she knows what he means. Oh, he does not. He tells her, "I knew you'd say that," and hands her a report. Catherine reads it and quips, "Oh, the trailer before the movie." She then goes in to talk at Grissom while he's having a hearing lapse.
We hear everything Gil-style: Catherine saying, as if from the bottom of a very deep bathtub, "Grissom? That must be some good evidence." Gil tries to cover with, "You have evidence?" This throws Catherine for a moment; you can literally see her filing away this observation for later before continuing, "No. It turns out that the semen in the vic's hair was pre-ejaculate" -- and then her voice snaps into clarity -- "which, of course, carries no sperm and therefore no DNA. So, I got this poor woman's hopes up for nothing." Given that a simple Google search turns up the phrase "there can be sperm in pre-ejaculate," I'm really surprised that this inaccuracy made it into the show. Anyway, Gil tells Catherine he's gone back to the crime stats and pulled up all the reports on peeping Toms in a two-block radius over the last year. There's a lot of them -- eight. Catherine notes that they're unsolved, and asks if any of these women gave a description. Gil reads off derisively, "He had 'raccoon eyes,' and that's about it. Plus nobody called in any follow-up reports." Catherine muses, "I guess half the problem's the name -- 'peeping Tom' sounds so innocuous, when in fact, peeping is the first step in the evolution of a sexual predator." Gil replies, "I'm afraid our Tom is on an escalated pace. Tonight was his first breaking and entering, with an immediate second B&E, plus what appears to be his first sexual assault." Catherine replies, "We know what road this guy's on. It's a matter of time before he rapes, murders." Gil decides that maybe they should find this guy. You think?
In the scene, Catherine briefs everyone on what's going on: "Victim's profile -- both women are single, under thirty, live right door to each other in a large apartment complex." After Warrick asks if there's any cross-referencing with the guys in their lives, Catherine tells him that's a dead end, then continues, "Doreen Bainbridge works in the corporate field, and Joanne Crooks is a dancer, so it feels like completely different social circles." Gil adds, "But they're in the predator's comfort zone, which means he probably lives in the area too." He then nudges everyone else to share info. Warrick tells them that he's working on the plaster shoe prints, but the casts are still wet; Gil tells him to blow-dry the casts. Nicky starts, "The semen sample I recovered is still being processed in DNA --" "Not anymore, " Liam says. He adds, "I'm done, and no jokes about me being fast in this department. The ejaculate outside the first girl's window -- spank high? The good news is, it does have DNA." Nicky asks whose, and Liam tells him it came up empty on CODIS. Catherine muses, "It's possible this guy is so new, he doesn't have a record." Liam replies, "Well, I can tell you this about him -- really low sperm count. The sample hardly had any swimmers." A little too quickly, Nicky replies, "That's probably from excessive masturbation. The guy's been outpacing his ability to produce sperm." As Nicky talks, first Liam, then Warrick level long I-don't-wanna-know-what-the-source-for-that-is looks in his general direction. Nicky finally asks, "What's the problem?" Warrick replies, "Yeah, you'd know, spanky." Nicky shoots back, "Just a hunch." Liam helpfully adds, "Hey, that can happen to any guy." Warrick snorts, "Yeah, not outside some poor woman's bedroom window." Catherine's amused by this, but Gil -- whose ejaculatory habits are clearly not on the table for discussion -- puts a stop to the frat-boy talk.
Down in the morgue, David The Organized Coroner is pushing a body into a drawer. Watch that body go -- it's the first and last corpse you'll see this week. Sara comes in and asks if he's got a minute. For her, he does. David deadpans, "Some people actually do die of natural causes in Vegas, you know." "So I hear," Sara replies. They then segue into what Sara really wants -- a brief overview of traumatic basilar artery aneurysms. David tells her, "It's a rough procedure. The basilar is the chief blood supplier to the brain stem. Here, I'll show you. They put the patient under hypothermic arrest, meaning the heart will be stopped and blood artificially circulated. The objective is to increase blood pressure so the aneurysm can be clipped. Imagine taking a knife to a balloon. The neurosurgeon has just under an hour. One slip, and the artery ruptures, causing a catastrophic brain hemorrhage." As David talks, we see the artery in question. It's -- well, what can you say about an artery? It loved Beethoven, Bach, and me? No, wait. It's an artery -- it's basically wired into everything in the general vicinity of the neck. We go over the mortality rate for the operation -- and although it sucks to be the patient, I can't imagine being a surgeon with a .100 batting average is all that life-affirming -- and Sara thanks David.
She then heads to the hospital, where she finds the doctor under whose care Melissa evidently is, and introduces herself. Dr. Winters, still thrilled over the rare one-in-ten outcome, says, "She pulled through. No change in mobility, but cognitively, she'll be sharp as ever. Not quite ready to entertain visitors." Sara's as excited as we have ever seen her. Wow -- she obviously cares about this person, and values Melissa's presence in her life. There's no way this episode will end in a way that makes Sara think of their friendship as a sham! Sara's beaming ear-to-ear, and only calms down enough to ask if the doctor removed the bullet. He sure did. She asks for it, adding hastily, "I'm with the crime lab. It's the only evidence we have in a cold case," but not backing that up in any way with, say, her ID or her badge or anything. The good doctor takes her at her word -- maybe he's still giddy over one of his patients actually living for a change -- and scampers off to get the bullet.
The music abruptly changes, and we're in the middle of a Vidal Sassoon commercial. Warrick wielding a blow dryer on a pan of dirt does nothing to dispel that impression. He eventually manages to dry off the cast and determine that the Tom wears a size eight shoe. It's all very discoriffic.
Catherine checks in with him, then goes in to visit Jacqui and ask about that print. Jacqui says, "The deposition pressure's heavy. The guy was really pressing hard on that window." "Well, with one hand, anyway," Catherine wryly adds. The two women smirk, then look at the print, which is really distorted. Fortunately, there's magical software that uses assorted algorithms to nudge the distorted areas back into shape -- it uses the rate of slippage from the normal ridge to the distorted ones -- and the resulting print yields a hit on Justin Lamond, age eighteen, a pool boy at the Tangiers. Mr. Lamond happens to live one block from the crime scene too.
Within seconds, Catherine and Brass are at the Galleria where Lamond spends his lunch hour. They manage to find the kid as he's going up an escalator right behind a young woman in a miniskirt. Lamond looks incredibly guilty and furtive. Brass checks out Lamond and snorts, "How can you miss him? Kid's pitching a tent." As Lamond gets off the escalator, Catherine, Brass, and some uniforms immediately surround him. Brass does the talking: "Come with me, Justin. Nice fanny pack. I'm a wallet guy myself, but I can change. Mind if I take a look at yours?" Lamond instantly snits, "I'm not doing anything." Brass begs to differ; he pulls out a small video player and tells Catherine, "Pack's a camouflage. And check out the tip of his right shoe." We see the blinking camera light, and then the wires leading the player which Catherine is watching. She says incredulously, "It's a spy camera. What, you can't peep in apartments during the day so you come to the mall to sneak some thrills?" Lamond's all, "I don't know what you're talking about," and attempts to go. Nice try. I'm still stuck on the camera get-up, as it's only confirmed why I'll never be any sort of committed fetishist; it's too much like work, what with all that equipment and all the effort required to get your yayas.
Back at the Labitrail, Bobby's examining Melissa's bullet and commenting on how much tissue is attached: "This must have been in your victim for a while." Sara elaborates, "Three years. Prosecutor friend of mine walked in to find a guy shooting her husband, then he turned the gun on her. She just had it surgically removed." Bobby comments on the amazing qualities of a human body; regrettably, his lab coat blocks me from reciprocating. Oh, wait. He's talking about its response to a bullet: "Tissue forms around the bullet, protecting the body from the leaching of the lead." We see this process in Technicolor TMICam glory as he rhapsodizes. Then Bobby is brought up short by caution: "Did you get approval from Grissom. I don't want him walking in on me." Sara nods hastily without making eye contact. Bobby says reprovingly, "Sara Sidle..." Sara grins and protests, "Yeah! I did!" Bobby smiles back and says, "All right -- just checking." He then commences bathing the bullet in an enzymatic detergent to slough off the tissue, and when that doesn't quite do the job, he sticks the beaker with the bullet in a vibrating water bath. As Sara watches the last pieces of tissue fall away, she protests, "Be careful with that bullet -- it's my only evidence!" Over the whir of the machinery, she explains how the husband's bullet was a through-and-through, so it decimated on impact with the couch frame. Well, that's convenient. It's as if someone who knew their way around building a case on evidence thought about how not to leave any. But I'm being unnecessarily suspicious here. Anyway, Sara gets her bullet, and Bobby gets a new to-do with tracing the bullet.
In another part of the building, Brass is asking how long Lamond's been videotaping women without their knowledge. He replies, "It's only breaking the law if you record their voices." He's right, although I'd be curious to see whether that law changes once the practice of furtively catching the frank-and-beans show on tape violates someone's sense of public safety. Brass compliments Lamond on his smarts, and Lamond responds, "Come on. Look at the girls out there -- tight tops, short skirts, bellies on show. They so much want it!" The real irony here is that Lamond's never actually talked to a girl, so what they do and don't "want" is about as real to him as a chaotic evil elf with +18 charisma.
Brass then decides it's time to do a cinematic retrospective of Lamond's work. Frankly, he strikes me as derivative -- Joel Schumacher did it better, but he also had men in rubber suits to work with. After this film review, Lamond's all, "You guys are looking at me like I'm some sort of scab. I don't do toilets, fat chicks, blue veins, crushed stuff. Just low-tech voyeur." What is he expecting -- Brass and Catherine to admit that he's challenged their artistic sensibilities? Or for them to take off their clothes and help him the letter that will begin, "I used to think your letters were made up"? Brass skips the cinema critique and asks if Lamond knows Doreen Bainbridge; after he denies it, Catherine points out that they found his fingerprints on her window. Brass adds that there's a little "love graffiti" on the wall outside. Lamond protests, "I spy. I don't engage." His entire catalog of moral distinctions seems roughly analogous to someone who argues that he kills and eats drifters because nobody will miss them anyway. This is in the point in the conversation where Catherine realizes that he's recording her ass, takes Lamond's shoe prints and, after discovering that he's a few sizes too big, turns the little perv over to Brass, who promptly books him for sexually motivated offense, indecent exposure, and gross lewdness. Go, Brass!
Then Catherine walks down the hall to see Warrick. I suddenly feel so guilty about pausing the TiVo every time he's on the screen. It's my job, man. And he's asking for it. Yeah, that's it. Anyway, Catherine and Warrick talk shoes -- or, to be more accurate, the shoe print Warrick made. He tells her, "I pulled some trace materials from it -- yellow substance. It may be paint. Tell me what you think." Catherine hunkers down in front of the scope Warrick's been sitting at and notes that the yellow paint has reflective glass in it. Warrick thinks that it's road paint. "So our suspect stepped in wet maintenance paint," Catherine says. "And that stuff dries pretty fast, so he must have stepped in it on his way to the scene," Warrick responds. Catherine figures that the paint could tell which direction the guy came from, and runs off to go talk to a guy she knows in the local department of transportation. Am I the only one who suspects that Catherine's got a paramour in every civil service department in Clark County?
Some time later -- let's assume Catherine's already made her phone call -- Catherine wanders into The Den Of Secrets And Deafness and asks Gil if he's still tracking peeping Toms. Nope -- he's busy checking building architecture. This guy has a type -- cheap one-bedroom places with a lot of foot traffic outside. Gil notes, "Every apartment has sliding doors and windows. Not one sash, not one French [door]." No wonder they're so easy to break into. Catherine tells him, "And he gets there on foot, from east of Avon." Ah -- Catherine did talk to her guy in the department of transportation. Gil turns and says eagerly, "You found his epicenter?" "Closing in on it. The city painted double-yellows down Taylor Road last night, started at ten o'clock at Avon Avenue. The paint crew goes three miles an hour. That puts them at Taylor and Cedar -- the victims' apartments -- at approximately twenty after ten, just before the attacks," Catherine replies. Gil looks briefly impressed, as Catherine's just solved the equivalent of an algebra word problem off the top of her head without scratch paper. He then takes this information and begins entering it into the computer: "Predators usually enlarge their comfort zone in a spiral pattern outward --" and after widening the circle to include this new data, Gil hits a key, and all the potential targets begin popping up on the screen. He exclaims in dismay, "My God -- look at all the C-level apartments. PD's going to have to triple their presence." "Quadruple it," Catherine counters. The two of them then narrate what will happen as we get a perv's-eye view of his likely activities, complete with scantily-clad women wandering around apartments that evidently did not contain window coverings.
Gil: He hit two apartments in one night. He's become compulsive.Catherine: Predators get smarter with every attack. It's been in the news, he may be wearing gloves this time.
Gil: Yeah, he's evolving. Perfecting.
And we get the predator's-ear soundtrack of the proceedings as he pants, heading in for the attack. The scene ends with a black glove rising in menace.
thing we know, the phone rings, and Gil answers. On the other end of the line, Brass tells him that the peeping Tom just graduated to rape. There's probably not a Hallmark card for that. Brass bids the team to come out ASAP. Gil's definition of ASAP includes entering the address of the victim in the database -- 490 Kildare Road -- and seeing that it's right within the comfort zone.
As Catherine walks off to head over, she asks Gil, "Aren't you coming?" "You can handle it," he replies without looking at her. Catherine gets a thoughtful look, and you can tell she's filing this away for future study: "High-profile case, technicalities. This can't be why you do this, why you hang back and hide out." Gil gives a tiny nod in her general direction and acknowledges that she's onto something without saying so directly: "You look better on camera." Knowing what a blow to his vanity Gil's unphotogenicity is, Catherine gets the message: "Right. I didn't think so."
The thunder rolls ominously as Catherine heads over to the scene, and when she catches up with Brass, he asks where Gil is. "Supervising," Catherine replies shortly. I am looking forward to the day she and Gil have it out over his hearing loss. Anyway, Catherine continues, "So I was listening to the radio on the way over here, and they're calling him the Sliding-Door Rapist." Brass is actually more interested in the victim, Susie Spiegel: "There was penetration this time. She said he was polite; he wore a condom." Catherine's incredulous: "'Polite'? More savvy -- that's evidence for us to work with." Brass is commiserating when a woman's voice rings out, "Hey! Over here! Police!"
We instantly switch over to where a woman is pinning a man to the ground, saying derisively, "Come on, you pervert!" He gasps, "I can't breathe," and she tells him to tell it to her foot -- the one lodged in his kidneys: "You're not such a hotshot once a real woman gets ahold of you." I love this girl! She needs to go work for Lady Heather, stat. She'd fit right in. Anyway, Brass hauls ass over there and tells her, "Slow it down, Xena, it's all right." She protests, he calms, and eventually we get everyone separated. My new favorite one-episode character -- played, by the way, by Leslie Grossman, a.k.a. Mary Cherry -- beams and tells Brass happily, "I got him." She then turns to the guy and informs him, "You are dead!" Her, I like. She's got what my Pop-pop would call moxie.
Meanwhile, Sara is gazing at an old crime-scene diagram and imagining the many scenarios in which her friend is victimized by an unknown assailant. No doubt Sara's onto something, and we can look forward to many more episodes where she and Melissa bond, eat ice cream together, and generally have a relationship that won't end in resentful loneliness for a CSI. Right? Nicky wanders in during the middle of this and says, "Heard you reopened the Winters case." Sara asks him if he knew Terry Flannery, who had been the CSI on the case. Nicky replies, "Flannery. He retired and moved back to L.A." Sara then hands over pictures of the exit wounds in the husband's back, asking Nicky what he sees. He looks at the blotch and says, "I see a bunny, and it's having a carrot with its friend, and then -- I can't talk about it anymore." Oh, he does not either. He says, "There's a definite abrasion ring." Sara's having trouble squaring that, as the only way you get those marks is if the victim's back is pressed against something, and Flannery evidently missed this. She wonders how. Nicky replies, "There are two CSIs you never want investigating your murder. The one on his first week, or the one on his last." Or the one partnered with Warrick, what with those having a tendency to need CSIs of their own. Anyway, Sara goes back to shaking her head at Flannery's slipshod work; Nicky watches for a moment before asking, "Does Melissa know you're doing this?" Sara ducks with, "I don't want to get her hopes up." Nicky gets a chance to whip out those people skills he has, and offers this insight: "She's been through a lot. You know how some victims are -- they don't really want to know what happened, you know?" This possibility has never occurred to Sara, but since the suggestion comes from Nicky, she discards it within seconds. Her pager interrupts her reverie.
It turns out Bobby was paging her -- a bullet from the same gun was recovered from a liquor-store robbery in Henderson six months ago. Cops recovered the gun and the shooter, one Roger Wilder.
Cut to a truly cool scene -- everyone in shadow, standing in stark relief against a pale blue background illuminating a gridded wall and reflective door. It's visually elegant and spare, and perfect for highlighting a one-on-one discussion. The discussion is between Roger Wilder, who's currently sporting a prison-orange ensemble, and Sara, and they're discussing Six Degrees of Melissa Winters. We find out Melissa prosecuted Roger for assault five years ago and got him sentenced to four years in prison. Roger only served one year, however. Sara continues, "Well, the trial transcript says at the sentencing you yelled at her, 'What goes around, comes around.'...So was it just a coincidence that three weeks after you got out of jail, Mrs. Winters and her husband were shot in their own home? We recently recovered a bullet from Melissa's head. It happens to match a bullet recovered from a gun that you used in your latest felony. You know what we call that? Corroborating evidence. I guess I'd keep my mouth shut too. Three years have passed -- you don't have to say anything, but I have to tell you that evidence persists. A fingerprint, a fiber, a hair. If I find one shred of physical evidence that places you in the Winters' house, there is not a jury in Clark County that will not give you the death penalty." Garbo finally speaks: "I went to her house. Not to kill her -- I wanted to see the look on her smug-ass face when she realized I knew where she lived...no one was there. I busted in, thought I'd mess the place up, give her a nice welcome home." As he recounts his mayhem spree via flashback, he tells how the gun he used just fell from the coffee table he broke. Sara's incredulous. Roger could not care less about her reaction.
Now we're back with Mary Cherry, who's saying, "Everybody tells you to get more involved with the community, but once you do..." Brass reminds her that she busted someone's lip, broke his tooth, and sprained his finger. She replies, "Jujitsu. Shotokan. They act on their own. I am just a vessel." That settles it -- I gotta get me some of that jujitsu. All I can do is Pilates, and it's not like I can use The Hundred in self-defense. The camera then moves down to the guy in question (Brian Krakow, all growed up -- and out -- for you My So-Called Life cultists), who's really banged up. He's asking if he should maybe see a doctor. ["What he needs to see is a new agent. First he rapes Julie onFelicity and now this? Krakow, we hardly knew ye." -- Sars] Catherine delays the medical treatment until he answers a few questions, like what he was doing at those apartments. Apartment-hunting, he replies, as if checking out a new place through the windows in the dead of night while there's a rape alert in the neighborhood is the most optimal way to research a relocation. Meanwhile, Mary Cherry's recounting, "I was on my way home from spin class on my bike, and then I saw him in the bushes around Jennifer's place, and I guess I thought the guy would be scary, you know, Night Stalker scary, but he was more like a wet French fry. I knew I could take him." Downstairs, Catherine's reminding this guy that Mary Cherry (or, as they're calling her on the show, Wendy) just wiped the floor with him, and insofar as that apartment thing goes, "There's always availability, so that gives you a plausible excuse any time, anywhere, doesn't it?" She then compliments him on his shoes and discovers that he's a size eight-and-a-half. After checking out the shoes and finding nothing, Catherine asks, "How would you feel about allowing me to look at all your shoes from home. I mean, it'd be strictly voluntary." The guy smarms, "I'm not comfortable with that." Way to deflect suspicion, buddy. Catherine says as much. Brian pleads that he values his privacy, then asks if he's free to go. He sure is. The minute the guy hits the door, Catherine says, "Oh, uh, Mr. Reed. If Wendy attacked you and you're innocent, I think you might want to file charges against her. How come you didn't?" After a panicky moment where we can practically see the Shit! Shit! Shit! thought bubble over this guy's head, he scrambles to improvise with "Oh, yeah, I want to. File charges. Yeah." Catherine replies, "I wouldn't want you to do anything you couldn't believe," but eventually Mr. Reed insists with slightly more conviction that he wants to file.
The thing we see is Brass somberly telling Mr. Reed, "Once you sign that complaint, it becomes a binding legal document." And it gives them an excuse to test her clothes for his blood, thus getting his DNA. Catherine then heads in to talk to Wendy, who's a little disbelieving: "He's filing charges on me? Ridiculous." Catherine tersely says, "Agreed. Now may I please take that swab?" She gets an oral swab. When Catherine asks for the jacket, Wendy says, "That's great. You know, the guy's out there raping women and I'm the one getting strip-searched by police." She's also pissed because the jacket's from Nuala and that's ninety dollars she'll never see again. Catherine replies, "Wendy, I can't discuss an ongoing case, but what I can tell you is if we're going to get this guy, it will be because of what you're giving us right now." This mollifies Wendy.
Downstairs, Sara is analyzing the photos of the crime scene; we see Mr. Winters lying supine on the couch, the blood from his entry wound having trickled down his shirt toward the floor. This doesn't sit right with Sara, who eventually tracks down Nicky to think aloud in his general direction. The gist of her thoughts: "Roger Wilder said he was inside Melissa's house, which is true. He described the exact layout of the room, but he found the gun when he destroyed the coffee table, and I have no evidence to disprove that." Nicky tells her, "Well, go for logic. Some guy breaks into the Winters' house, shoots 'em both, and leaves his gun behind? Why?" This is a silly time for me to be asking, but who is the gun registered to? Wouldn't that shed some light on its provenance? Anyway, Sara ponders Nicky's insight. Nicky asks, "If it was really there, how come CSI didn't find it?" He's stumped her again, so she moves on to the other thing that's bothering her: "I knew something was off when we saw that shored wound. It didn't match up with Melissa's account. If her husband was standing up, like Melissa said, when he was shot, blood would have dripped down from the entry wound to the belt buckle." Nicky drolly observes, "Gravity only runs one way." Sara unfolds the shirt, and concludes, "This blood stain, only way it's going south...he was laying down." Nicky catches Sara's distressed look -- or The Strings Of Sorrow playing in the background -- and discreetly makes his exit. Melissa lied? No! I totally did not see that one coming. Shocking plot twist!
Okay, y'all can stop laughing now.
In a happier plotline -- you know, the one involving a serial sex offender -- Catherine is wandering about when Liam accosts her, promising results from Wendy's clothes. I think Wendy would be flattered to know that Liam is calling her Kung-Fu Lady. After emphasizing the personal cost his labor of love for Catherine demanded -- no dinner -- Liam says, "Your apartment hunter, that girly-man, left his double helix behind at another crime scene." It's a five-month-old B&E, and at the time, there was nothing to compare it to. Well, there is now. Liam wants a little sugar from Catherine, but she wanders off and leaves him unfulfilled.
And now, time to destroy a friendship, as well as the life of a plucky wheelchair-bound lawyer. But since that life was built on lies, eh, no loss, right? Anyway, Sara enters Melissa's hospital room, and grins nervously, "Hey! You did it!" "I beat the odds. I got lucky," Melissa rasps. "Lucky and smart," Sara says, now very much ill at ease. Sara admits, "I re-opened the case." Melissa knew that. Sara says, "I know what you did, Melissa. I, um, examined the evidence. Your husband wasn't freestanding in front of the couch struggling with some stranger." In fact, he was napping in front of the NFL when Melissa plugged him. Sara lays it all out: "You had a CSI who was about to retire, predisposed to the testimony of an honest prosecutor like you, especially since you got shot too." Sara's voice nearly breaks at the end of that sentence. We then flash back again where Melissa sinks to the ground after having shot her husband, and makes the critical mistake of leaving the gun on the floor so her husband can summon the wherewithal to reach out and return the favor. Melissa finally says, "I didn't understand why I couldn't move my legs." Lady, read the forums; they don't get it either. In fact, they don't understand how you could have gotten paralyzed the way you did, what with your wound not squaring with basic human anatomy at all. But that doesn't matter right now, since this scene is less about solving a crime than it is about Sara conclusively proving that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. And about introducing the troubling specter of an overloaded legal system, as anyone Melissa put away sues for retrial by someone who didn't manage to kill their husband and lie about it.
Where were we? Ah, yes, the confession scene. Melissa managed to drag herself over to the coffee table and hide the gun, thus dodging the GSR tests. She explains, "I thought I could go back, that I could get rid of it." Sara replies, "Somebody else did that for you. I almost had him arrested for a murder you committed." Melissa then introduces the seeds of her defense for her upcoming trial: "You would think an attorney could come up with a great case against an abusive husband, but I -- I was ashamed. I didn't want people to know what he did to me." Sara's not exactly sympathetic about motive. She says, "All your closing arguments, all your big talk about justice. I fell for all of it." Melissa points out she's always believed in justice, and still does. We find out that she never expected to live through the operation, and she's also not too surprised that Sara dug up the truth on her. Sara's near tears as she says, "I guess I'll be seeing you in court," and there's a sad, come-back-Shane moment when she leaves, and then the deputies come in to arrest a recuperating paraplegic. We get another shot of Sara silhouetted against another blue wall as she struggles to compose herself.
In The Den Of Deafness, Catherine and Gil are talking about his escalation chart and how it's not really escalating at all. Gil says, "I had figured Taylor Reed was branching out, widening his circle. But after last night, I think he's pulling in, going back to his original comfort zone." That would be the zone where Wendy is not kicking the crap out of him, I'm thinking. Catherine asks if one of the original burglaries was at Appian Way, since that's the robbery Reed's been linked to, and Gil hastily makes an adjustment. They've narrowed the epicenter down to Appian Way, and Catherine's all about going back to that crime scene to see if there's anything they can tie to the assaults. Gil says, "De-escalation. If we can't get to where he's going, get to where he's been."
Apparently, one way of doing that is to dispatch the young, hunky CSIs to talk to the nubile neighbors about a possible crime situation. When in doubt, send Nicky and Warrick to break the news -- people are so busy looking, they're not at all bothered by what they're listening to.
Another way to do that is to send Brass and Catherine to Appian Way. As they walk up the entryway, Brass says, "Help me out -- what's a delicate way to say, 'We'd like to turn your apartment upside-down and look for five-month-old evidence'?" "You're the poet," Catherine shoots back. Heh. They're consoled by the occupant at least being up, if the lights on are any indication, but both are shocked when Reed answers the door. He tells them he's just moved in. Catherine says they'd like to come in, and he's okay with that, then begs their pardon for the mess, a jumble of half-packed boxes. Catherine surveys the apartment with her flashlight, and as she does, she says, "I'm going to take a guess here. This apartment came on the market five months ago. The old tenant was bothered by the breaking and entering, the bloodstain that you left behind -- you moved into the apartment you committed your first crime in, didn't you?" She circles Reed and says, "You weren't looking for another apartment. You were looking for a…" She notices the hunk of hair torn from Reed's scalp, and concludes, "Another victim. You got something to hide, Reed?" She sics Brass on the guy while she walks down the hall, finds the missing piece of scalp, and then opens a door and finds the tenant of the apartment bound and gagged on the floor of the bedroom. Catherine assures her that everything will be okay, and that wraps up that plotline.
Sara, meanwhile, is brooding in the locker room, but instead of talking to Nicky, who's been hanging with her the entire episode, she talks to the one person on staff who's going to offer scant, if any, comfort: Gil. Sara says, "The cops read Melissa her rights in the hospital room. You think you know somebody." "I never think that," Gil says matter-of-factly. Sara looks over at him and says, "Ever?" Gil has no reply. She continues, "When I was a kid, I was playing hide-and-seek one day, and I found this plastic bag underneath my big brother's bed. I thought it was a bag of dirt, so I took it to my mom. Found out it was his bag of weed. He was grounded for a year." Gil helpfully reminds her, "The best intentions are fraught with disappointment." Sara asks him, "Emerson?" "Grissom," he replies. Gil is a rock, Gil is an island. And a rock never weeps, and an island never cries. Thus endeth another CSI.