Special thanks to Wing Chun for the index page poll.
This episode begins with a startling degree of verisimilitude -- loud, guitar-heavy music blasting as a car tears down the highway. Who hasn't been there, done that? The car -- a SUV, really -- then pulls onto what looks like a surface street, swerves wildly to hit one parked car, then swerves again to hit another. It's like watching someone play San Francisco Driver, only with real cars instead of pixilated ones. And it's not going to be anything like watching me play until this guy starts swerving to hit bicyclists on purpose. The cops want to prevent that sort of misanthropic misfortune, so they've put a few cars on the tail of the SUV, and a helicopter. Everyone's having an adventure as the car slices across a parking lot, decides to drive through, rather than around, a culvert, goes through another just for kicks, and eventually ends up on a two-lane road. Don't ask me where: my Las Vegas road skillz include finding such far-flung destinations as the county offices, my wedding photographer's office, and the In 'n' Out by UNLV, but otherwise, I have no idea where anything is. I usually just aim for the nearest neon sign and improv from there. This guy seems to be adopting the same strategy, but he's eschewed observing such niceties as lane lines, stoplights, or even roads -- he eventually ends up parked at the entrance of the Plaza Casino. Not just on the curb by the door -- at the door. Detective Lockwood, who was apparently in charge of making sure that this car chase dragged on long enough to cost millions of dollars in damage, gets out of the police cruiser, gun drawn. He orders the driver to roll down the window and fling the car keys out, but the driver's listening skills seem to be about on par with his vehicle-handling finesse. The detective repeats, "Cut the engine and throw the keys out the window!" The driver decides to cut the engine and stagger out of the car instead. As he slowly turns around, Lockwood is taken aback -- the driver has a giant wooden stake protruding from his head. Lockwood stares down, perhaps wondering if the man was victimized by a particularly inept vampire slayer, or if this is some new form of body modification gone awry. The man doesn't provide any answers, preferring instead to drop to his knees, then fall over.
Cut to Gil making his way through a gaping crowd; even in Las Vegas, a guy with a stake in his head is more compelling than a casino advertising the most liberal "21" in town. Lockwood's with him, and as the two of them finally fight their way to the actual scene of Stakehead's death, Lockwood tries for a Chandler-esque world weariness with, "Death -- the cheapest show in Vegas." I get the feeling he was shooting for Raymond Chandler, but he ended up at Chandler Bing. Gil actually does manage to sound jaded when he replies, "That doesn't surprise me -- you remember the MGM fire? We found people burned to their slot machines because they wouldn't leave the action." What an ignominious way to die. On the other hand, it does provide support for those Darwinists among us. Lockwood replies, "Only in Vegas." Or Atlantic City, should any of those casinos begin burning. Now I'm nitpicking. Anyway, Gil and Lockwood finally get to the body, and Gil whips out the flashlight to verify that yes, there is a stake sticking out of the guy's head. He says as much: "This guy's got a piece of wood sticking out of his head." What, you were expecting fine china? Lockwood tells us that Stakehead is Alex James, age 42, if the wallet ID and SUV registration are anything to go by. Lockwood asks how James was able to drive; Gil replies, "I once saw a guy walk fifteen blocks with three bullets in his face." So what you're saying is that the human body is a mysterious thing? Lockwood tells us the victim was traveling west on Flamingo Avenue, presumably to head to nearby Desert Palms hospital -- the only hospital in all of Las Vegas, if its many references on this show are anything to go by. I'm betting Western Las Vegas University sends its medical students there for their residencies. Gil replies, "I don't much care where he's going. I want to know where he's been."
And then, we go to credits. Wow, that was kind of a non-tagline. I can't believe there was nothing about "I'd stake a bet that he was in trouble" or some other belabored pun meant to showcase Gil's detached and superior way of looking at a gruesome and cryptic scene. Not even a homonymic "Would that I knew how where he came from" crack? I feel so...let down.
After we come back from commercials, we see a few shots of the casinos from above -- the Mirage and the Venetian feature heavily -- and then we're in a parking garage where liveried footmen are helping the beautiful people out of limousines. The beautiful people are ignoring them so they can concentrate on their cell phone conversations instead. Having thus established that a) most rich people are repellent, and b) they're also allergic to going through hotel check-in with the hoi polloi, we find out that c) Catherine and Warrick are coming in this way, with Catherine commenting on how "this makes us VIPs tonight." As if to underscore her point, a bag flunky comes along to try and take their kits. Catherine warmly thanks him and points out that it's not really luggage.
Once the two of them are in a bare concrete hallway -- I'd think the austere institutional look would be repellent to VIP types, but maybe this is some sort of reverse-chic thing where the more personality-free and drab the entryway, the more exclusive it is -- they meet up with a security person of unknown provenance who fills them in. They're dealing with a kidnapping case; they'd like to keep it low-profile, and away from the FBI, an understandable urge since the FBI would inevitably send in an ennui-riddled jackass named after one of twentieth century's greatest symbols of modern alienation, or a cherry-pie-snarfing man who has visions of dancing midgets, or two paranoid conspiracy freaks, and then nothing would get done. Catherine points out, "Until we know the victim was taken over state lines, the FBI has no jurisdiction. Do you have any contact from the kidnappers?" There was a ransom note left at the front desk, probably with one of the myriad hotel employees dressed like French mimes. What exactly is the theme of this casino? Do the slot machines feature someone pantomiming jubilee instead of ringing when you get lucky? We'll never know. Warrick asks who's been kidnapped, and the security guy tells us that Tavian Tombs's five-year-old son has been taken. Warrick tells us that Tavian Tombs is a high-profile professional basketball player.
He's also a highly pissed professional basketball player, if his tirade at his personal security team is anything to go by. As Warrick and Catherine enter the suite, the suit-wearing Tavian is facing a few similarly-attired men, snapping, "You people make sure something like this does not happen. Where the hell was everybody? Out spending my money? You're supposed to be the head of security, and you let my son get kidnapped right from under my nose." Catherine picks that moment to interrupt, and he rounds on her with, "You better have a good reason for being here." "We're here to find your son," Warrick replies. The camera swings back to Tombs. He's not too impressed with this. Catherine elaborates, "We're with the crime lab, and I'm assuming that that's our ransom note." The note in question is crumpled in Tombs's hand, and he replies, "That's my note, my kid, my show." Oh, please. Warrick steps in again with, "Look, I've seen you take out three guys on the glass and still finish. I'm not here to bang boards with you. I'm here to do my job. It's your son, it's your call." This apparently has an effect on everyone in the room -- Tavian's main squeeze (and, one presumes, the mother of the missing boy) finally crosses the group of people to tug on Tavian's sleeve, and Catherine's Mommy Sense kicks in and prompts her to notice the two boys playing with the PlayStation some feet away; one of the boys is much younger than the other. Tavian finally hands over the note, and Warrick reads, "I have Isaiah. Bring $5 million to the northwest corner of Telfair and Juniper, 4 AM." Catherine wants to know how many people touched the letter. Answer: A whole lot. Well, there goes the "maybe we can lift the prints" option for fingering the kidnapper. Catherine asks if the ransom note came in an envelope, and Tavian's crackerjack head of security replies, "Yeah. I threw it in the wastebasket." Gosh, it's hard to see how any child could have been snatched from under his alert, detail-oriented nose. Warrick rolls his eyes as Catherine pulls out the envelope. Then we establish that Brass is interviewing the nanny in the room.
The nanny is explaining, "We were at the carnival, me and the boys." We flash back to said carnival, with the boys pressed up against the fence around the carousel while a clown who makes Tim Curry's character in It look like a gentle jokester makes balloon Chthulus. She continues, "They wanted to ride the carousel. I said no." Brass observes that she gave in. The nanny, who's sitting hunched over on the bed and radiating a kind of numb misery, says flatly, "Special weekend. Dad's in town. Everybody's together. Trust me, they don't understand 'no.'" We see Isaiah riding the merry-go-round, smiling and laughing while the nanny gets distracted by the Chthulu Clown on the sidelines. When she turns back, Isaiah's missing. Cue the understandable freakout, with the nanny asking frantically, "Jason, where's your brother? Jason? Jason, where's your brother?" Back in the present, the nanny says, "He was right there. I swear to you, I looked everywhere. But I knew he was gone, so I brought the kids back here and had to tell Tavian." Brass adds, "And his wife." The nanny snorts derisively and informs Brass, "They're not married, and even if they were, it'd still be Tavian's show." Brass comments neutrally, "A woman who knows her employer." This time, he earns her scornful stare: "I should. He's my brother."
While Brass is digesting this information, Tavian's busy berating another one of his lackeys, this one apparently responsible for producing $5 million out of thin air. Catherine asks skeptically, "The casino's fronting the ransom money." Nameless Security Guy from a few scenes back tells us, "Mr. Tombs has a multimillion-dollar tab with us." Catherine looks around, somewhat incredulous at this turn of events, and says, "We strongly advise that you don't turn over the money." Warrick adds, "At least let us mark it?" Tavian asks if Warrick knows how long it would take to mark $5 million, then plows ahead with, "The kidnapper knows -- longer than the drop-off time. Now, the letter said the corner of Telfair and Juniper. That's where this bag is going." He then turns back to the pile of money. With an attitude like that, why did anyone bother to call in the law enforcement officials? Did Tavian require a larger-than-normal audience for his displays of control freakiness? ["My guess is that someone on the writing staff did a lot of reading about the Lindbergh case recently." -- Sars]
Back on the sidewalk in another plotline, Lockwood's looking through the SUV for piles of sharpened wooden pikes and other possible weapons while Gil and Nicky confirm that yes, that is a head with a wooden stake sticking out of it. Nicky comments, "Sharp force trauma. Shouldn't we get the spike out of his head before we try to get any prints off it?" Gil replies, "I'm afraid if we try to remove it, we'll eradicate the prints." Wow, that was surprisingly civil for a Gil/Nicky interaction. I wonder if Gil's feeling okay. He goes back to looking at the stake, then exclaims in frustration, "We're not going to get any prints off this." "Well, he sure is dirty!" Nicky replies. How does that increase the odds of prints? Oh, hold on, he's brainstorming: "He isn't homeless. This is his car, right?" Gil replies in the affirmative, then announces he's going to scrape the guy's nails. He then gives the guy a forensic manicure and discovers there's gold in them thar cuticles. Nicky hands Gil a bindle, and the gold nail cruft is logged for further investigation. Lockwood takes that moment to share his discovery of a .38 special -- the gun, not the band, although that would explain an awful lot -- and Nicky and Gil swap meaningful looks.
Warrick, however, is only staring at the ransom note. Whatever he's looking for isn't there; when Sara comes in and announces, "Catherine wants to know if you have anything. She can't convince Tavian to change his mind about the ransom money," Warrick only shakes his head. All the elements of the note are mass-produced, so there's nothing he can see. However, he can smell something, so that's his cue to put the note in a fume chamber and attach a vacuum suction sweeper to pull out the air in the chamber, thus pulling out any ambient odor particles and trapping them in a charcoal filter, where they can be extracted by means of titration with a solvent and what I suspect is liquid chromatography (the practice of extracting the target compound from other compounds for identification purposes). I guess that grant for the Cyranose didn't come through. Warrick caps his examination of the note by spraying it with a reagent that confirms that, yes, many, many people handled it.
Fortunately, David The Vampire-Literate Coroner has no such problems. Instead, he's got a body with a stake in the head, and the ready quip, "Looks like something out of Nosferatu." "Yeah, only the wooden stake is in his head, not his heart," Gil replies, and remarks off-handedly, "I've never seen that before -- a wooden stake embedded in the high parietal scalp in the midline." That's probably a good thing. David asks Gil casually, "Hold his head down firmly, would ya?" then counts to three before pulling out the stake. We see the wound in some detail, although not in TMICam -- yet. Gil's busy gaping at the stake while David leans in to assess the anatomical damage: "Regular puncture defect to the scalp, laceration to the sagittal sinus. The wound track stops at the falx cerebri, no gross penetration of the cerebrum. That stake is what kept him driving." I got curious as to where exactly the stake went, and from what I was able to see, it went through the vein-rich superior sagittal sinus, tore through the septum that separates the brain halves while encasing them as a protective layer (the falx cerebri), then neatly punctured the gray matter (a.k.a. the cerebellum). Gil points out that the stake tamponaded; David replies that the excessive force with which the stake was driven into the head caused the stake to act like a plug for all the assorted bits and pieces that would have normally shifted around and leaked out. David notes, "The spike probably stuck between the brain hemispheres, most likely lodging into the parietal bones [which held it] in place. They say it's a game of inches -- a centimeter to the left or right and he would have died instantly." That actually seems preferable to driving around in a disoriented frenzy while being peripherally aware that your head now resembles a martini olive, but I've always been picky about quality-of-life issues. Gil points out that anyone with this kind of head trauma probably would have died during surgery; David cheerfully counters that maybe the operation could have prolonged his life by an agonizing hour.
In a less uplifting conversation, Warrick's telling Catherine that Tavian's entire entourage fondled the ransom note in an effort to make things as difficult as possible for law enforcement personnel who might want to actually apprehend the kidnapper. Well, he didn't add all that stuff about Tavian's low-IQ posse. Catherine turns her attention to the liquid extraction results -- that thing Warrick was doing with the filter, the solvent, and the liquid chromatography -- and we find out we're looking for a menthol smoker.
Well, we'll be looking for him or her after we look for whomever's about to walk off with the Mime Casino's $5 million favor to Tavian. Warrick and Brass are sharing a car during the stakeout. Theirs is not the party car -- no small talk or singing along to the dispatcher's greatest hits for them. A truck stops to deliver newspapers, and everyone's briefly excited, but Brass tells them to stand down. When the truck takes off again, Warrick and Brass look at the duffel bag of cash still sitting on the sidewalk beside the park bench, and Warrick says nervously, "We're way past the drop time here." Brass agrees, but says, "Let's give it a couple more." Then his yearning for human connection overwhelms him and he asks, "What's your take on this -- inside or outside job? Also, do you think I look better in earth-toned suits or things in the blue family? I can never decide if I'm a Fall or a Winter." Warrick disclaims any knowledge of that Color Me Beautiful business (and if you believe he and Brass really talked about warm and cool skin tones...), and replies, "I think it's just some freak with a nicotine habit and access to a laser printer." You know, some of my best friends fit that description. Brass turns his attention to Tavian now: "Did you see the action he got? One phone call and $5 million gets delivered to his hotel room." Warrick puts it all in perspective with, "That money's not doing him any good now." Just then, Tavian's head of security ambles toward the gym bag, bald dome gleaming under the lamplight. Warrick gapes, aghast at the brazen display of public idiocy. Or maybe I'm projecting a little. Nah -- he's really pretty taken aback by this. He says to Brass, "Oh, man. It's just gone bad." Well, so long as it's blown, it's okay for people to go tearing out of a car, yelling, "Hey! Hey! What are you doing?" which is what Warrick and Brass do. When they finally meet up with the guy, Brass demands, "What the hell are you doing?" He explains, "Tavian wanted me to be sure the transfer got done." Tavian's conduct here is equally stupid and egomaniacal. Brass replies testily, "That's our job -- not yours, not Tavian's." Warrick is even less diplomatic, practically shouting, "What are you concerned about here -- the kid or your job?" The guy says defensively, "I didn't do nothing! The guy took the money, didn't even show. I've been here all night, just like you." Brass sets him straight: "They spotted you. You understand? The kidnappers saw you. They made us." As the guy protests again that he was only following a higher power (i.e. Tavian), Brass stalks off to answer his cell. Going by the look on his face as he listens, his night just got even worse.
In the scene, as we see assorted police vehicles ringing an abandoned lot while the team crouches over a small, huddled figure lying limbs-akimbo in the dirt, we see that everyone's night just got worse. Warrick shines his flashlight on Isaiah's face, and his own face twists as he announces, "It's him." He then moves off to take the perimeter of the scene, leaving Catherine to observe that the body's in an unnatural position. She adds, "His body's also coated [with dirt]. Makes me think whoever did this didn't even stop the car." We see a flashback of a car driving by and flinging the body out. She says, "Something had to have gone wrong." You think?
Some time later, Tavian's mother, who doesn't even warrant a proper name in Tavian's world, is sitting on The CSI Couch Of Grief; an impeccably dressed Tavian settles for glowering before walking out to the Labitrail hall to inform Catherine that, criminal investigation possibly leading to the apprehension of the person who did this be damned, he wants the body. Catherine manages not to comment on Tavian's breathtaking ignorance and/or arrogance, and explains to him, "I'm sorry, but in a crime like this, an autopsy's mandatory. Evidence from your son's body may lead us to the suspect." Tavian cares not for her non-Tavian "logic" or "mandatory" "rules." He says, "You're telling me what I can and can't do?" Well, yes. I believe many people beyond basketball referees, sports agents, and coaches can -- they're called "law enforcement personnel." Keep this up, Tavian, and you'll be meeting another class of people who are the boss of you called "unamused circuit court judges." Catherine informs Tavian that he really isn't the one making the calls on this, and he stalks off, presumably to reassert control over his world by making a flunkie do the high jump on his command.
Off in a happier plotline -- and who would think that a story featuring Head-Wound Harry would be the fun one? -- Nicky and Gil are standing at a lab bench, staring at opposing microscopes. Without looking up, Nicky asks Gil, "How you doing?" "I got scat," Gil replies. "Feces?" Nicky clarifies. "Yup," Gil responds. "Under the fingernail?" Nicky prods. "Yup," Gil repeats. "He wiped his own ass?" Nicky inquires squeamishly. Gil actually cracks up and smiles, and explains patiently (for him), "No, Nick, it's not human. It's scat." The name alone identifies it as non-human; Merriam-Webster defines scat as "an animal fecal dropping," probable root scatology (Greek skat-, skOr, excrement; akin to Old English scearn dung, Latin muscerdae, mouse droppings), or the study of excrement for biological purposes of taxonomic classification or diet. Hell, paleontology even has its own scat specialists who study coprolites to see whether dinosaurs got enough fiber in their diet. You'd think Discovery Channel Boy would have picked this up already. Still, all things considered, it's one of the warmer Gil/Nicky scenes. Gil goes on to mention, "It could be from a bat." Nicky, trying out his new vocabulary, says, "Bat scat." Gil corrects him, "Bat guano." Nicky's not exactly worried about developing a coprocentric vocabulary. I'm more intrigued by how Gil was able to identify the guano; he never struck me as someone who was really into the possibilities of organic fertilizer. Anyway, Nicky tells Gil he's got, "Douglas fir with a side of God-knows-what. I'm no geologist, but these splinters are intertwined with some kind of mineral." Gil wonders if the mineral is sparkly. Nicky replies that it is. Gil then asks if maybe Nicky isn't projecting a subliminal wish to be a fairy queen's consort onto the evidence. Oh, he does not. He comes over to look at Nicky's slide and tell him he's looking at quartz or fluorite. This news fails to cheer Nicky up, as it just reduced their search area to most of Nevada's abandoned mines and quarries.
Speaking of gloomy second-string CSIs, here's another one now. No, it's not Sara contemplating her chemistry-free and mysterious coupling with Hank. It's Warrick. Catherine comes into the spare lab where he's staring off into space and tells him, "Why don't you let me handle [the autopsy]?" Warrick replies, "Thanks. I'm not ready to deal with another murdered kid." This scene more or less confirms that this episode takes place chronologically before "Lady Heather's Box." While I had initially attributed Gil's cheeriness to his mastery of car doors and eventual foray up Lady Heather's front steps, I see now that we're merely witnessing some sort of personality blip on his part, while Catherine is far too chipper for someone dealing with a profoundly affecting personal loss and Warrick is still hung up on the Aimee case. Anyway, the scene ends with Warrick picking up his share of the workload on the case by promising to process the evidence.
The camera then follows Catherine and Warrick down to the autopsy bay, where Warrick is hovering in a doorway while David explains to Catherine that there's no apparent cause of death, but he's running a full tox screen. Warrick walks off as Catherine asks about the foam around Isaiah's mouth. David replies that it could be pulmonary edema, and he found bruising on the lower extremities, "but these injuries are few days old; the bruises are in the first stages of healing." Catherine suspects that the leg bruises could have come from rough-housing with his older brothers, but the bruise that circles the chest and body is a mystery to her. David says wearily, "I've seen this before. Did you find rope at the scene?" Catherine admits that they haven't found the scene, but she now realizes that Isaiah was restrained with a rope.
Meanwhile, Warrick's lifting fibers off Isaiah's clothing. This is more or less just like my morning routine with the cat hair all over my clothes.
A lint-free Gil and Nicky are actually outside and striding into the salvage company owned by the erstwhile Alex James. Lockwood helps them make an impressive entrance by forcing open the corrugated-metal door and announcing, "Las Vegas police. I have a warrant!" Then he runs off to clear the area. Nicky walks over to an old slot machine and, chuckling, asks, "When's the last time you saw a dinosaur like this, lemons on the reels." Gil ages himself by replying, "Not since Sam Braun ran the town." Remember Sam from "Burked"? Nicky writes it off as "Old Vegas," then moves on to James's home-loaded buckshot pellets. Gil's more interested in the melting furnace used to liquefy precious metals. Lockwood brings over a baggie of gold nuggets and some pawn tickets; he and Nicky puzzle over those while Gil wanders off. He announces what's caught his eye: "Topographical maps of the Sierra Nevada -- Delmar Quadrangle, Lincoln County. La Madre Mountain, Clark County." He then calls Nicky over to observe the blood spatter and bullethole in the map; Nicky peels back the map to look at the wall and confirms that it's through-and-through. Then he finds a medium-caliber shell casing. "This is our primary crime scene?" Nicky asks, puzzled. Gil reminds him that Alex James actually had a stake in his head. Nicky counters, "Yeah, but he had a .38 in his car." Gil realizes, "We're looking for another body."
And now, we're being introduced to a piece of evidence we'll never see again as an awkward transitional device to pull in a character we have yet to meet. Cut to Brass brandishing a casino chip as a floor flunky argues, "It was a tip." Brass laughs at that, knowing that even excruciatingly correct folk who are up on their luck don't go that wild with the thank-yous. He also laughs because "if it was a tip, you wouldn't have had to lose the bellman's outfit to cash that in. Now, where'd you get it?" The bellboy folds like a Gap t-shirt: "Tavian is always surrounded by women. Guys too, but they want autographs. The chicks, they want something else. Now, usually his boys turn them away, but this one got through. There were definitely chicks a lot hotter, but I guess when you can have anything..." The woman in question is quite attractive, so this bellboy can pound sand, unless by "attractive," he means "fashions by Mojo." We find out that the two of them fought -- Tavian is evidently a deadbeat father to a boy named Tramelle, and he responds by flipping the chip at her. The bellboy defends his taking of the chip by talking about what the casino taxes him and how Tavian, in addition to his other reprehensible behaviors, is also a lousy tipper, and when the opportunity to pick up the chip came in, he was there -- "Get out of the way, 'cause Kevin's coming through." Brass could not care less. He takes the chip and walks off with the floor manager, asking about the blonde in question (so we can assume that the flashback was recounted verbally, since nothing Kevin actually said mentioned her hair color?). The floor manager plays dumb, and Brass says, "Big casinos honor each other's chips. How are you tracking these? Bar code, embedded transmitters, what?" The floor manager feigns deafness for a moment. Brass is undeterred: "Look, it's okay. It's easy for the guys in the lab to figure this out. We'll let the other casinos know you helped us out." This does it, and the floor manager tells Brass that the woman in question is Bridget Willis and she's on Tavian's list, whatever that is. Brass thanks him and hands over the chip.
Nicky comes in and announces to a map-studying Gil that Ballistics matched the spent round to the gun in James's car. Nicky also reports that Gil was right about the splinters on the stake, and there was quartz and fluorite. He puts down the lab results and Gil reads off, "Dolomite, barite, calcite, antimony." Nicky points out, "Well, the mass spec dug deeper -- arsenic and cyanide. Now, as of late, that's what's used to extract gold." Gil is not elated by this news. He asks, "Do you have any idea how many mine shafts there are in the state of Nevada?" Nicky smiles as he responds, "Yeah -- hundreds, including gold and silver mines in Nelson, Searchlight, Goodspring, you name it. I've got Lockwood running a background check on our vic -- maybe we'll get lucky." His optimism is so adorable, even if it's based in nothing resembling reality.
Lacking a graceful way to transition from the Labitrail to a townhouse facing I-15, I'm just going to tell you that's where we end up . It's the residence of the fresh-faced Bridget Willis, mother to Tramelle. Catherine and Brass introduce themselves, and Bridget places her hand on the shoulder of a rather tall youngster, stating, "You're here to talk to my son, Tramelle." Catherine remembers that she saw Tramelle when she was in the Tombs suite learning that Tavian's entire entourage had handled the ransom note. Catherine remarks, "We already have [talked to Tramelle]." Bridget invites them inside anyway, then explains how it is that Tavian has a well-dressed squad of incompetents and she has a townhouse in a rotten location: "I was in college. He was 'the man,' Mister Final Four. I thought I'd won the lottery. Then I got pregnant and he went in the lottery, so...take a look around. Guess what we fight about." Brass guesses, "Money." Bridget's put up the children's toys scattered throughout the room, and she sits down on the couch, saying matter-of-factly, "He's rich, I'm not. I've accepted that. But he does have responsibilities." "Tramelle," Catherine says. That sentence travels with only one or two items of carry-on baggage, so I'm sure this takes place while Catherine has deadbeat dad travails as opposed just plain dead dad troubles. Bridget opines, "A weekend here and there doesn't make a father. Tramelle's not one of his 'boys' -- he's his son. Kid comes home with an armful of presents and a broken heart every time." As Bridget says this, she fiddles with a green pack of cigarettes, changes her mind about smoking, and tucks them away. I notice that we're only thirty-give minutes into the episode, so either this plot resolution just became remarkably straightforward, or we've met our red herring for the night. Given the rapidity with which events have chugged along thus far, I'm guessing it's the former.
Catherine, oddly enough, is not bonding over the hassles of single parenthood; she asks rather directly if Tramelle is Bridget's only child. He is not. She has a daughter. Brass asks, "Why wasn't she with Tavian's other kids at the carnival?" "She wasn't invited." We flash back to the argument between Tavian and Bridget, where Tavian adds further luster to his Prince of the Jackballs crown by refusing to bring along Tramelle's sister on paternal grounds: "You better explain to her that I'm Tramelle's father, not hers. It's all about what's mine." Charming. The daughter in question, who looks as though she just walked home from Village of the Damned Preschool, comes in and asks about lunch. Bridget stalls her, and forestalls Catherine's shrewd look by saying, "So instead, I took her to Sweet Creatures in the Forum Shops." We see the two of them building a stuffed animal together. Catherine's zoned out into a reverie: "Oh, yes, I've been there. Works wonders on the disappointments of little girls." Bridget adopts a plucky-yet-wistful look and replies, "That's what I was hoping for."
Back at the Labitrail, Liam's hoping to learn from Warrick by reading his case files. He produces a folder and says, "The fiber you tweezed from that sweatshirt -- Trace pegged it as sisal." Warrick's all, "Sisal? Rope? Most likely from the restraints." Or a rug from Pottery Barn. Liam asks what Warrick's eyeballing in the microscope, and Warrick invites him to take a look. Liam does, noting, "Hair -- but cuticle's a single layer, overlapping. It's not human." Warrick tells him, "It's canine; this sweatshirt's riddled with dog hair, many different breeds." Liam wonders if the kidnapper used it as a lure, and Warrick replies, "Kids love dogs -- I know when I was a kid, I was all over them. That's a good start. Thanks." Liam saunters off coolly, mentally counting the seconds until he's out of eyesight and can do the "I'm so cool! I helped!" dance.
Meanwhile, David's handing over the contents of Isaiah's stomach -- pill casings. He explains, "[A pill] starts to break down as it hits the mouth. The shell is porous; in the stomach, the medicine leaches out and enters the bloodstream; the casing's left behind. Eventually, the casing's broken down as well, but by then, the medicine is already working." We see this miracle of passive diffusion via TMICam, where the magical journey from tongue to stomach is covered in glistening detail. Catherine notes that she sees a USP number, but David can't find the corresponding trade name of the drug in the Physician's Desk Reference. At least, that's what I'm assuming; my copy of The Merck Manual doesn't seem to have that table, although it does have a nifty trade name/generic name table. Anyway, Warrick comes in, we rehash the pill casing discovery, and Warrick mentions that Isaiah's sweatshirt was covered in dog hair. "So our kidnapper had contact with dogs," Catherine realizes. "Multiple breeds," Warrick elaborates. David tries brainstorming, but Catherine cuts him off with, "Hey, how about a vet?" Warrick solves the USP (U.S. Pharmacopeia) number problem by suggesting, "Try The Reference of Veterinary Pharmaceuticals and Biologicals." David calls it up online, and they've got a match within minutes: acepromazine maleate, a commonly used animal tranquilizer known for its rapid results. David notes that a 25-milligram dose wouldn't have been fatal for a child Isaiah's size, but "based on the blood levels, he was probably running on a second dose." Warrick realizes, "It wasn't the money drop that went bad. The problem was that Isaiah died." Catherine tells everyone she'll have Brass extend the search to veterinary clinics and other animal-related sites.
Outside the morgue where the sun is shining and the A-plot is in progress, Gil, Nicky and Lockwood are walking through the Labitrail and discussing Alex James's extensive real-estate holdings. Lockwood's telling them, "According to the mining law of 1872, public land can still be patented for $5 an acre -- a law which is still in effect." Yup -- and boy, is the National Resources Defense Council hot about it; it's too bad they're dealing with an administration that could care less about how taxpayers are stuck with the $32 and $72 billion cleanup tab once mining companies extract $2 to $4 billion from public lands. But you didn't come here to get outraged at the U.S. government in action; you came here to learn what Lockwood's discovered: "That's all this guy did -- buy and sell publicly-owned land." There is a sort of evil-genius simplicity to that kind of revenue model, I'll give James that. The plot gets even simpler; Lockwood explains, "The funny thing is, there was one mine he sold over and over again." Nicky wants to know why someone would do that, and Lockwood tells him, "There lies the mystery." Gil wants to know more about the last purchaser -- the now-missing local, Joe MacPherson. Gil asks, "Where's the mine?"
We're about to find out. After a panoramic shot of the mountains, we zoom down to the entrance of a cave, where the overall-clad Gil and Nicky are walking toward what we presume is the much-sold mine. Nicky asks, "What's with the gate?" Gil replies, "It's a bat gate -- keeps people out, lets bats in. Old mines are considered bat habitats and preserves." Nicky then asks, "Who puts the bat gates in?" Gil quips, "Batman." We hear a few bats squeaking as Gil and Nicky more or less demonstrate the inefficacy of the bat gate by waltzing on it and disturbing the bats' slumbers. Gil shines his flashlight on a pile of insect chitin which, as he notes, "Is usually found in the entrance of caves." Gil then notes the abundant guano and says, "We got bats." Nicky squeaks, "Good." Oh, please. Mister I-love-the-beasts-and-birds-on-Discovery-Channel can't handle the bats? I personally love our little friends in the order Chiroptera. Not only do they get bonus points for being the only truly flying mammals (flying squirrels and lemurs merely have an excellent command of gliding), they also have echolocation. Sonar in animals is cool. Bats have many other excellent features as well -- sophisticated social groups and migratory patterns, roles as insectivore or pollinators in many ecosystems, obsessive-compulsive cleaning habits (bats returning to roost will spend as much as thirty minutes cleaning before going to bed), and a bitchin' nocturnal lifestyle. In North America, there are forty-four different species of bat alone; in the desert regions of America, there are roughly eighteen. While it's true that the North American bat species can carry rabies, the death rate from bat-transmitted rabies is, in fact, so low that the number of deaths in the last forty years is still less than the number of people who die annually from dog bites. Unfortunately, the bat birthrate is correspondingly low; most bats only give birth to one pup per year, and given the charming habit some humans have of blowing up or scorching bat colonies out of ignorance, it's quick and easy to deplete bat populations. This would be bad, on account of that whole role-in-the-ecosystem thing I covered a few sentences back.
However, all this is lost on Nicky, who does not appreciate the wonders of the California Leaf-Nosed Bat (Macrotus californicus) -- the unique ear and nose structure or superlative in-flight maneuverability, the incredible water efficiency or fruit jones -- because in addition to his arachibutyrophobia (fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one's mouth) and his thing about taking off his shoes, he also hates bats. It is no fun to be Nicky, is it? Instead he's all, "They don't bite, do they?" Gil testily replies, "They're like bees, Nick. You don't bother them, they don't bother you." Nicky then pleads, "Let's not bother them, okay? I'm serious." Gil and Nicky walk past a small, sleeping bat colony, and Gil asks Nicky if he's seeing what Gil's seeing: a mine ceiling shot through with gold. "We're rich," Nicky says. Gil's more skeptical. When Nicky discovers a buckshot casing, Gil looks at the ceiling again and says, "These look like impact patterns." Nicky replies, "So he was loading his own [buckshot casings]." "But not with pellets," Gil counters. "With gold," Nicky concludes. Gil figures it all out: "You know, Lockwood said that James sold this parcel of land multiple times. I think he was running a scam." We see James melting down his pawnshop treasures into gold pellets, then loading a shell, then blasting the ceiling. "He was salting the mine," Nicky concludes. Then he turns his attention to the floor; it's a party for invertebrates, and everyone's invited. Gil rattles off, "Cockroaches, cave crickets, carabid beetles, all heading deeper into the cave." Nicky asks, "Why?" Gil concludes, "They got tired of eating bat guano."
Lest we wrap that plot up too quickly, we move to a kennel where Brass is barking at people and ordering them hither and yon. Catherine and Warrick begin searching up and down the dog runs, and find a small sneaker lying on the ground outside one pen. Within a few strides, they find a sisal rope; this is our cue to flash back to the little boy bound to a gate while a dog barks violently right behind him. Because, really, nothing brings home the terror of kidnapping like throwing in vicious animals as well. In the present, Catherine notices the severed rope and looks sick. Warrick's walked on ahead and calls to Catherine to notice the giant bottle of acepromazine maleate. As more and more pieces slide into place, the two of them look more and more unhappy. Brass then brings 'em down to a whole new level by bidding them to come over and check out the dead body he just found -- Jacob Price, a local who worked the nightshift. "Looks like somebody beat us to him," Brass says.
Well, it's wasn't Tavian. He's standing in Brass's office, telling him, "I don't want to hear this." Brass could not care less. He continues, "I've been on the job a long time, and I know what a tragedy like this can do to a family." Tavian repeats that he doesn't want to hear it. Brass plows on ahead, "What's going to happen is one day Keneisha or Tramelle or one of your other kids is going to come to you and say, 'What happened to Isaiah?' and they're going to want to know the truth." What's best for the kids is of no interest to Tavian; he counters, "Nothing you say is going to change anything." Brass figures Tavian needs to hear this, and tells him, "The guy who took Isaiah worked in a kennel. He was used to handling dogs, not children. When Isaiah tried to escape, he was restrained, and when that didn't work, he was drugged. Now, drugs have a different effect on adults than on children -- it's called 'the paradoxical effect,' and when the tranquilizers weren't working, this guy, Price, upped the dosage. Now, as a father, I can understand why you'd want this guy dead." At last, something Brass said has registered with Tavian: "You think I killed him." Brass does. Tavian protests his innocence, but adds, "If I'd gotten to him before you, I would not have stopped to think about it." You can tell he's serious because he hasn't even stopped to change expressions when talking about his searing rage. For some reason, Brass just lets it go. Perhaps it's because Catherine's about to find a piece of bear stuffing in the search grid, flash back to her conversation with Bridget, and connect all the dots in this sordid case.
She won't connect them yet, though. We have to wrap up the bat cave scene, with Nicky now fussing about air quality. Gil's all, "Smells like trinitrotoluene." That's TNT to the rest of us rubes. They find several wood spikes, and Nicky asks, "How'd they get in the back of the guy's head?" Gil notices the fuse line running across the floor. The two men pick their way through the wreckage, and Gil finds a body lying on mineshaft floor. He notes that Joe MacPherson -- for that's who this is -- is sporting a chest wound not unlike that which a .38 would make. He then tells Nicky, "You know, wooden support beams, fuse line, TNT. I think Alex James was trying to hide this body in the back of his mine." We see how the crime happened: MacPherson cornered James in his office; James managed to kill him, then decided to drive out to the mine, dump the body, and blow up the back of the mine so nobody would find the body. Unfortunately, he did not possess the action-hero skill of outrunning the flame. As Gil says, "Like most fuses, it probably burnt too quickly and he couldn't outrun the blast, or the wooden stake."
Now Catherine can connect the dots -- she's got a stuffed bear (no word on whose it is or how it was obtained), and they unstuff it to match the kennel sample against the bear. It's a match. Everyone tramps out to the townhouse and opens the door, but when they arrive, only Tramelle is there, watching television and not looking too happy. Catherine asks, "Tramelle, where's your mother?" He answers anxiously, "I don't know. She left with my sister. She said my daddy would come get me." Catherine's taken aback by this. Brass announces he'll put out the APB for the missing mother/daughter duo, leaving Catherine to figure out what to do about the abandoned boy.
In the Labitrail, Catherine explains that Tavian was paying Bridget child support to the tune of $3000 a month. Warrick's a little taken aback: "Three grand a month. Tavian Tombs has been a $12-million-a-year player for eight seasons, not including endorsements." Catherine points out, "He made his deal with Bridget when Tramelle was born -- bad timing for her." Warrick's less sympathetic: "Motive for us -- she was right to assume Tavian would pay immediately ransom. What's five million to a guy who makes hundreds of millions?" Catherine pulls the parenthood card with, "It is his son. So how does the dog kennel guy Price figure into this, and was killing him part of the plan?" Good question, Catherine. We never do find out how Price and Bridget knew each other, but Warrick does think that "Bridget Willis killed him because he killed Isaiah." Catherine moralizes, "In her act of redemption, she gives Tramelle to Tavian." Act of redemption, my Aunt Fanny -- this guy's an indifferent father who leaves the child-rearing to any one of a number of ancillary females, so leaving Tramelle in his care is a mixed blessing at best.
We get to see that in vivid detail as a limo pulls up and one of Tavian's bald goons walks the little boy through the VIP entrance and down the hall to Tavian's suite. Tramelle knocks on the inner doors, to be greeted by his glowering and impassive father. After a moment of blinking on both parts, Tavian is rendered helpless in the face of cuteness, and brings the boy inside, hugging him before passing him off to the woman of the hour. The door closes on what we are supposed to presume is a healing family unit, but feels like a kind of creepy quid pro quo, what with the living son being sent to replace the dead one.
In a happier resolution, Nicky and Gil are walking down a brightly lit casino sidewalk. It looks like Midnight Rageboy, with Nicky in the naive hick part and Gil as Bugso Rizzo. Gil's wrapping up the case by telling Nicky that, yes, MacPherson was shot with the .38, and Nicky's sharing his day at the county records office. I can tell you with full authority that the good men and women working in the Clarke County records office are delightful to talk to, although when I chatted with them, it was about rectifying the way they mangled my last name on my marriage license, not how people have been buying and selling public land for nigh unto fifty years. Gil hears about this and snorts, "That figures." Nicky cites P.T. Barnum with, "There's a sucker born every minute." Gil replies, "Yup. And they all come to Vegas." And the rockabilly music plays us out before either one of them thinks to ask, "Then -- hey! -- why are we here?"