As this episode begins, I'm busy watching the blinking lights on my temperamental cable modem, so I end up hearing it before I see it. What I hear sounds like the product of a rave DJ being held, Misery-style, by a clan of backwoods Ozarks types. So imagine my surprise when I don't see an emaciated club kid being shackled to a turntable to a corn crib, but am greeted instead with a vision of a sleek airplane.
As the frenetic technocountry keeps playing, we get an unprecedented TMICam shot that begins at one of wings, winds through a propeller, follows a cable down, and zooms around some stuff that only diehard aerospace junkies would be able to identify. The upshot is that we eventually end up following a propane line which is providing the necessary heat for the cherries jubilee that's being whipped up by the chef on the plane. I'm guessing this is no ordinary Southwest Airlines flight. After seeing a blonde making a lot of dramatic gestures, we know we'll be seeing more of her later. (It's Elaine Hendrix, whom I remember fondly from The Chronicle, although more people may remember her from Romy and Michele's High School Reunion; I'm usually not good with Hey! It's That Guy actors, but you don't forget a fantastic pair of eyebrows like hers.) The camera pans around so we can see the in-flight masseuse, the smoking, and the general debauchery. However, there's soon a little turbulence, and so people are forced to sink into the chaise longues or loll about the beds; Elaine Hendrix toasts everyone. I believe that's our confirmation that she's the alpha female here.
The camera zooms up to a porthole in a door, and then we hear a horse whinnying. We get the other side of the porthole and more horse noises with a side of rattling chains, then a sweeping shot of the interior, which holds pricey-looking toys like motorcycles but nary a Vuitton valise. After a shot of a covered meal on a tray, we see the horse in its stall. I should point out that, unlike other little girls, I never went through a horse phase. I yawned through the first chapters of National Velvet before putting in down; I failed to comprehend why Trixie Belden thought riding horses was the keenest activity ever. So I can't tell you if this horse is a chestnut or a bay or what have you, nor can I tell you if it's a quarter horse, third-horse, or all horse. I can tell you it's kind of brown with white socks and a white splash on its face. It's also standing in a stall where the crumpled, bloodied body of a blonde woman is slumped against the wall.
Cut to the inside of what looks like a warehouse. The horse is now stashed in another type of portable stall. Gil and Catherine come ambling into the warehouse. Brass meets them by the horse's original travel stall, where the woman is still in her original position. He dons the mantle of Captain Exposition and says, "The victim's name is Lori Hutchins. Apparently, she chaperoned the horse on trips all the time. Baggage handler found the body in the cargo hold after the passengers had disembarked." Gil says a little peevishly that they'll need to process everyone on that plane. Brass shoots back, "They're being corralled as we speak, partner." Catherine wonders where to start. Gil -- who is not looking at her, so apparently his hearing is just fine right now -- says, "First witness, first suspect." On cue, everyone turns around to look at the horse. Catherine says, "The horse?" Gil replies, "Of course."
And on that Mr. Ed shout-out, we go to the credits.
Once we come back, Catherine is still in the storage hangar, standing in front of three men. I'm going to guess by their snotty demeanor that they're the flight crew on Air Elaine. Catherine prompts the three for their recall of Lori, and they describe her as sweet, polite, quiet, and utterly devoted to the horse. Catherine then asks whether anything unusual happened on the flight, and aside from a little turbulence, there wasn't anything. There was a call button if something went wrong, but Lori never used it.
Gil, meanwhile, is inspecting the horse stall, taking all sorts of digital photos of the blood. I thought they had to put rulers down for that sort of thing? Or markers on the scene? Gil also finds a bloodied pair of small scissors; I'd think they were manicure scissors, but they're actually medical scissors of some sort. Nicky comes by and asks where the horse is, and Gil tells him it's at a USDA facility, where it's under 48-hour quarantine. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought, "USDA facility? What, are they going to slaughter it and serve it to prison inmates?" Nicky then comments, "A hundred-pound woman trampled to death by a 1400-pound horse? It doesn't seem very fair." Yes -- because man is constantly at the mercy of those bastard animals who are bigger than we are. It's not like we have a habit of systematically annihilating entire populations of big animals or anything. Oh, wait. We do, and Nicky's an idiot for not putting the whole thing in perspective. Gil then pulls out a tranquilizer dart. Nicky concedes, "That changes the odds a little." Gil then pulls out the gun used to deliver tranquilizer darts, and Nicky says approvingly, "Yeah, heavy artillery." You just know that his forebears on whaling boats said the same thing about harpoons. Gil comments, "There's more than one way to handicap a horse."
Catherine is now walking around the plane's cargo area. We do finally see our Vuitton valises -- swaddled in bubble wrap lest the leather get scuffed, along with a stuffed and mounted zebra head. Undoubtedly, it's only a matter of time before someone comes along and screeches, "Don't touch that couch! It's covered in genuine blue whale leather and stuffed with tiger fur!" Catherine notices some deeper brown leafy stuff mixed with the hay, and picks it up for study before she bags it. What? No photographing it? No evidence markers? Did they all just stop doing that? Catherine then looks up at the foil-and-insulated roof of the hold and notices a tranquilizer dart embedded in the ceiling. Without bothering to photograph it or anything, she just climbs right up and takes it down. This is driving me crazy -- isn't there a reason for documenting where evidence was found so that people can prove it wasn't planted? Isn't this whole show a procedural drama? Why skimp on procedure, especially when it's been featured so prominently in other episodes? Catherine then imagines a scenario where the horse is freaking out; Lori loads a dart in the gun, but turbulence causes her to misfire while throwing her into the pen, where she is promptly trampled. Yeah, I know, it seems like an unlikely string of coincidences, but knowing this show, anything's possible.
Nicky then comes in and asks Catherine what she's got. Catherine produces more evidence and says, "The trainer had all these small syringes. Why go for the big gun instead?" Because she shares Nicky's philosophy of using firepower as a way to level the interspecies playing field? Nicky suspects Lori just didn't want to get close to a spooked horse. The two of them turn to Lori's uneaten dinner. Apropos of nothing, Nicky notices, "Looks like someone stepped in horse crap." He then asks Catherine what kind of footwear Lori was wearing; Catherine thinks it was work boots. Nicky's thinking he's not looking at work boots. He's all, "That's a funky print." Catherine replies, "Oh, that's a JP Tod's driving loafer." Nicky's got a question mark over his head. Catherine replies, "I may shop the outlets, but I read Vogue." Hey, me too! The Vogue reading part, I mean, and I read it primarily for their food writer, the sublime Jeffrey Steingarten, which is roughly analogous to reading Playboy for the articles.
Hey, it's Detective Lockwood, walking with Warrick and Sara in Death Valley, which, last time I checked was about a two-hour trip from Las Vegas and mostly in California, but why let the facts get in the way of a good time? Warrick comments on the general hostility of the climate, and that leads us nicely into the discovery that kicks off the B-plot: a teenaged boy clad in a dark suit and lying on a blanket, quite dead. Lockwood explains that a helicopter tour pilot noticed the body as he flew overhead and called it in. Sara notes, "Deathbed. Casket-ready. Laying in the Hell's Gate section of Death Valley." The thing I love about Death Valley is the unadulterated morbidity of its landmarks' names: Funeral Mountains, Coffin Peak, Hell's Gate, Starvation Canyon. Incidentally, all those names are inside the boundaries of the Death Valley National Park, 3.3 million acres of fun which technically falls under federal jurisdiction, and Hell's Gate is on the California side of the park. Then again, if we wanted to get all "technical" about murder jurisdictions and stick with "facts," a murder that took place while a plane was in the air would be probably be investigated by the FAA, making this episode all of five minutes long and going something like this:
SETTING: The Break Room. NICKY, HODGES, GIL, and SARA are watching television. An ANCHORWOMAN appears on the screen and begins speaking.
ANCHORWOMAN: Both the FAA and the National Parks Service have their hands full this evening with unexplained deaths. Details are sketchy, but so far, we have learned one body was found aboard a plane after it landed, and investigators are keeping mum about a grisly discovery in California.
NICKY: Gosh, Gris, those cases sure look unique and challenging.
HODGES: Give it up, Texas. Does the word "jurisdiction" mean anything to you?
SARA: Does the word "civility" mean anything to you?
HODGES: I am civil. Stop looking at me like that.
GIL: Nicky, you know that we only work cases within Las Vegas. Anything that happens in the air or in a national park belongs to the Feds.
NICKY: Why do they get all the good cases?
GIL: It comes from being in charge.
Roll CREDITS, and then roll END CREDITS, since it's a slow night in Las Vegas and there are no relevant cases.
Anyway, back in an episode where "federal" is a collection of syllables about as relevant to this universe as "kairopan," Warrick looks at the forlorn tableau and deadpans, "Poetic." Sara replies, "More like suicidal." She begins snapping digital photos, and again, while I applaud the embrace of digital photography, I do have to wonder about the lack of rulers, markers, et cetera. Lockwood notices a white smear on the blanket, which Sara swabs for later study. Warrick finds an ID for the DB -- Toby Wellstone, McKinley High School, 12/12/87. Sara notices the transdermal patch on Toby's hand; Warrick tells her it's a fentanyl patch, and adds, "Absorbs faster through the pores of the hand. Intentional overdose." We get a TMICam shot of the fentanyl rushing into the bloodstream during all that. Lockwood says he'll notify the parents, and Sara says, "We're 85 miles from Las Vegas, one mile from the closest road. If this was a solo job, how did he get here?" Notice how she doesn't add that they're also in California. Warrick answers her question by pointing out some small tracks made by something with wheels.
Catherine's now working her way through the plane's cabin. Brass comes striding in, sighing, "Some days, it's tough to be me. You know, I wish the seats were as organized as that bar. We have the passenger manifest, no assigned seating, 12 passengers, 24 shoes, 36 lawyers." Nicky picks up a cigarette and asks naively, "Was this a smoking flight?" Brass rolls his eyes and replies, "I think we've established that these people do whatever it is they want." He storms off, and Nicky watches him go, a little puzzled by what just happened there. Nicky then looks back down at the violently rumpled sheets on the bed and begs Catherine, "Don't make me ALS." Heh. I've always wondered if the CSIs have days where they're like, "If I see another semen stain somewhere that semen was never meant to be..." Catherine demonstrates the perks of seniority with, "Hey, man. I don't want to go blind any more than you do." She then calls his attention to a spent condom and some bloody towels. There's going to be a hot time in the DNA lab tonight!
Catherine and Gil then head back to what is presumably USDA quarantine headquarters, which looks an awful lot like the same warehouse where the horse was originally kept post-landing. A thin brunette is hassling the USDA guard about getting in to see her horse, but since we never see her again and she has no bearing on the plot, there's no point in spending any more time on her moment on-screen. The two CSIs make their way over to the paddock where the horse is being held; the vet, Dr. Stevens, is busy petting her muzzle. We find out that horse is all shook up, but as Stevens explains, "Horses are incredibly sensitive to change. Travel's hard on them." And apparently, for a horse, losing your trainer is like losing your best friend. Dr. Smith tut-tuts over Lori's inexplicable death. Gil says he's going to need to pull samples from the horse, which cues a round of blood samples, hoof samples, and hair samples. Gil is near the tail when he notices that the horse's nether regions are sutured shut. He asks what happened, and Stevens explains, "High Folly is what we call a 'dirty' mare. Prone to serious uterine infections. Caslick stitching keeps out fluids and bacteria." As Stevens is talking, he's holding High Folly's gums so Catherine can pull some dark, leafy stuff from the horse's teeth. At the other end of the horse, Gil asks incredulously, "So you stitch her up until it's time to breed?" Someone should tell Gil that in some countries, they still do that to people before they're married off. Stevens is all, "It sounds bad, but I promise, having an acute infection is worse and there's no greater tragedy than a champion who can't breed." Well, I think the whole sewing-women-up thing qualifies, but I doubt that's a consideration here. I do wonder, however, if the whole "dirty mare" thing is a result of overbreeding horses. Anyway, Catherine asks about the leafy thing and gets no answer. We do, however, get some important information relevant to the plot after Catherine mentions the tranq gun. Stevens replies, "You'd never use a tranq gun on a horse. The impact energy would cause an immediate adrenaline response, make the horse more agitated."
Back at the lab, Sara's down in the morgue, finding out from Warrick that nobody's come to claim Toby's body. Warrick replies, "I don't know what's worse -- consoling a grieving parent or finding a kid with no parents at all." This is how we find out Toby's been bounced through seven foster homes in seven years, and the system lost track of him a year ago. Sara tells Warrick that her talk with the high school was similarly depressing, concluding, "The kid was a ghost." The forlorn quality of that statement is only exacerbated when David The Drawer-Pulling Coroner recites Toby's last meal: burger, shake, and fries. Sara gets in a Fast Food Nation-style slam with, "So that's what killed him." Warrick comments that the meal is haute cuisine to many in the Clearasil set. David adds sadly, "More like a last meal, I'm afraid. He took a synthetic narcotic, fentanyl, by patch and by pill." We find out that fentanyl's a painkiller commonly used in hospitals, post-surgery. Sara's still reading the postmortem report, and she asks what cisapride is. David tells her, "That's what separates the attempts from the corpses. It's a prokinetic agent that speeds up the body's absorption of fentanyl and keeps the stomach acids from going into reflux." Why, according to The American Journal of Gastroenterology (1991; 86/2 (135-149)), he's right! And for those of you who aren't regular readers (and why not? Their food writer's almost as good as Vogue's. I kid!), prokinetic agents stimulate or enhance muscular contractions or movement through the gut. So you can see where it might be used to speed the fentanyl along. Everyone quickly realizes that no stomach acid means no nausea means no vomiting means no loss of lethal dose, and that this kid did his homework. Warrick sighs, "A permanent solution to a temporary problem." David adds, "Maybe not so temporary. Eighty percent of all completed suicides have tried previously. From the scars [on Toby's wrists], I'd say twice before." This really rattles Warrick. As David draws the sheet back over Toby's head, he says, "Third time's the charm."
Catherine is busy processing all the evidence she collected to some complaint-rock soundtrack. There's a lot of pipetting going on. As she squirts away, a jump-suited Nicky comes by and says, "Hey, fashionista. You were right. Not only did we find a match, we also found trace elements." Stop and ponder what a job must be like when finding horseshit on the bottom of a shoe constitutes good news. Brass is bringing in the lucky woman now.
Down in the morgue, David and Gil are looking down at Lori on the slab. She's fairly beaten up, what with having been trampled by a horse and all. The only anatomical oddity not consistent with that are her pinpoint-sized pupils. We find out this is because she had a load of torphine -- a narcotic a thousand times more potent than morphine -- in her system. David adds, "One of those bruises contains a puncture wound about the same size as that dart you found." Gil studies the bruise, then asks, "How do you shoot yourself in the shoulder with a tranquilizer rifle?" You don't. David says as much. Gil suggests that someone was trying to frame the horse.
Up in an interrogation room, some sadistic soul has decided that Nicky's just the person to interrogate alpha-female Elaine -- or, as she's called here, Harper Fitzgerald. Fortunately, Brass is there to make sure Nicky doesn't get wrung out by Harper, and he does all the questioning. We find out many things, among them that Harper was trying to lure Lori from her current employer over to the Fitzgerald payroll. Harper is apparently the kind of woman who doesn't take "no" for an answer, and responds to news of Lori's death with, "She's no use to me dead." Do you think her wealth's made her callous and indifferent to the welfare of others, or am I just leaping to conclusions here? Nicky asks for a DNA sample, and Harper basically fellates the swab.
Sara and Warrick have taken another road trip to California as they head back out into Death Valley to stand over the body of a dead teenaged girl. Lockwood explains, "National Park Service found her. She was beyond our perimeter." Oh, God. I can't go into the Death-Valley-California-Feds-why-this? rant again. Just click back and read what I already wrote. Warrick turns her over -- her shins are scraped -- and Lockwood notes, "He was wearing a suit, she's wearing a prom dress. That's odd." Maybe they were doing an extra-credit project for AP English -- acting out your favorite Shakespeare scene. Too bad they didn't go for a Beatrice and Benedick scene from Much Ado About Nothing. Warrick notes, "No prior scarring on the wrist, but the same transdermal patch." He also notices a white splotch on her dress that's similar to the spot they found on the blanket. Sara's all, "Seems Romeo had a Juliet." Warrick adds, "Who got out of bed and ended up half a mile away." Sara notices that the girl's dress is way too big. Warrick asks her what she's thinking, and Sara replies, "Vanity, thy name is teenaged girl. They were trying to go out in style. Something's off."
Back at the lab, Gil's telling Catherine that the tranq gun's been wiped down and there are no prints on the darts. However, there were three different prints on the handrail leading to the cargo bay. Harper's was one of them, steward Jason Banks was number two, and general hanger-on Rhone Confer was number three. Rhone was formerly a concierge, which catches Catherine's attention. She explains to Gil, "Those brown shavings that we collected from the cargo hold and the horse's teeth were tobacco. More specifically, Volando and Colorado Maduro." Gil realizes she's talking about cigar tobacco. Catherine continues, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but when it does not contain propylene glycol, a preservative used in the humidification process --" "Then it's a Cuban cigar," Gil realizes. Catherine opines, "Dominicans are just as good, but they're legal, so what's the fun in that?" That's a philosophy to live by. Gil finally realizes why Catherine was into the concierge when he puts two and two together and concludes that the go-to guy for an illegal cigar is a concierge who's used to discreetly procuring things for people who want them.
And now we're taking with the ridiculously-named Rhone Confer, who's basically confirming that he's a professional hanger-on because he hopes kissing rich-people ass will convey some communicable wealth disease. Rhone explains the presence of his prints on the rail by claiming that this was his first trip on the jet, and he wanted to see all the rich-people things in the cargo bay. When he went down, High Folly chomped on the $60 cigar he was so foolishly waving around, since Rhone is one of the few people in America who are apparently unaware of the herbivorous diet most horses prefer. Then Rhone saw Lori's prone body in the stall, but declined to say anything to anyone, because "these people, they don't tolerate a buzzkill, and damned if I'm going to be shot for being the messenger." Brass notes, "The happier Harper stays, the fatter your pockets." Rhone's all, "I really don't like to talk about money." Fortunately for everyone, Catherine rushes into the conversational gap with an oral swab.
Sara's looking over the black dress, swabbing the stain near the shoulder and running an ALS over the dress. She turns the dress inside-out and notes the large, irregular stitching on the seams; it's done in white thread, which would be a dead giveaway for the amateur skills of the dressmaker even if the needlework were neat. She promptly heads into the lounge and tells Warrick, "I think our girl is a young Madame DeFarge. She made her own death shroud but she didn't know her own measurements." Bonus points for a French Revolution mention; if the writers can ever work Marat and Charlotte Corday into casual conversation, I'll give the episode an A on principle. Warrick comments, "Kind of freaky." I'm liking the B-plot a lot more than the A-plot this week; Sara and Warrick have a great working chemistry. There's no evidence of sexual assault, but the girl came back with the same last meal and same drug ratio. Warrick adds, "You know what else is freaky? Her prints were on his patch, and his prints were on her patch." Sara realizes that the girl was a willing participant in all this. We see a flashback to the death scene, wherein the two teens romantically smack dermal patches on each other. Sara wonders, "Why didn't we find any trash at the crime scene? And why didn't we find a note?" Warrick adds, "I read somewhere that only 15 percent of suicides actually leave a note, but you would think with all the trouble they went through, they would want to be found." Sara says, "Together." Warrick replies, "Yeah. And after she was sedated, she crawls away from the scene?" Sara's all, "What's up with that?" Right then, Lockwood comes by to state that the library card found with the body (huh? When did this happen?) matches one Jill Frommer. Her mom's coming in to ID the body; one presumes she's the one who filed the missing-persons report.
Cut to a photo of the benighted dress, with Sara asking Mrs. Frommer if she recognizes the dress. Mrs. Frommer -- who, frankly, could use a thermal conditioning treatment and a decent concealer, but we'll cut her some slack with the dead kid and all -- shakes her head. Sara asks if Jill took home ec or liked to sew; Mrs. Frommer bitterly laughs at that and notes that Jill was the anti-Martha, then adds all ominously, "You only realize what you wanted to teach them after it's too late." We then find out that Toby had lived with the Frommers as a foster kid about five years ago, but he went back to social services after a year because "my husband died of cancer and I couldn't handle Toby alone. That boy was just way out of control. And then about a year ago, Jill brings him home." We flash to the scene, in which Jill shows the bruises on Toby's back from beatings he was getting at his foster home, and pleads for them to take in Toby. Mrs. Frommer took him in. Sara asks if Toby and Jill were romantically involved; Mrs. Frommer's minor meltdown would seem to indicate "yes." She finally pulls it together to offer the non-answer, "You know those moments you look back on, and wish you'd chosen door number two. My whole life feels like that. I got nothing left." Sara, to her credit, keeps talking. Jill wasn't suicidal prior to Toby. Sara asks for a list of friends who might have possibly helped, which earns the derisive response, "'Friends'? I think it's pretty clear that my daughter's life was just way out of my hands."
And now, time for the token Flippant Fun With Forensics scene, starring Liam The Lab Tech as your flippant fun flunky. Try saying that ten times fast. He tells her that the blood on the paper towels did belong to Lori, but there was also DNA in another area -- epithelials belonging to a mystery donor. Catherine asks, "Are you being cagey?" Liam smiles with what he hopes is sincerity, and says, "I'm trying to transition out of 'cagey.' You gotta round up some more swabs. Neither Harpo --" "Harper," Catherine corrects him. Nice to see Liam hasn't transitioned out of "irreverent" yet. Liam replies, "Whatev-o. Neither she nor Rhone was a match." Catherine's about to reply when she's summoned by cell phone.
I'm guessing she got a call to go see a man about a horse. Dr. Stevens comes in to stand over the dead body -- speaking of which, did they get a horse model or something? I know horses aren't supposed to lie down on their sides because of their notoriously finicky insides, and I can't imagine any horse trainer getting the horse to lie down and play dead got take after take -- and tell us all that High Folly died of chronic metritis. He opened up the stitches, he tried drugs, he tried lavage, but it was all in vain. Gil's looking at him with "you dirty, filthy, horse-stitching liar" written all over his face. Gil asks, "I found a suture scissors near Lori's body on the plane. Is it possible she knew about the infection and tried to relieve it?" Dr. Stevens issues a non-denial of sorts.
After he's gotten rid of Dr. Stevens, Gil is hanging out with what I can only assume is a forensic veterinarian -- hey, CBS, when you spin off CSI: DVM, send me the royalty check c/o Television Without Pity -- or a vet with a morbid bent. The vet -- identified in closed-caption only as "Woman," so excuse me for not naming her -- explains that horses are incredibly fragile and have been known to die of things like indigestion. Gil quips, "A horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle." The vet asks him who said that; he tells her it was Ian Fleming, and he knows it courtesy of having read all the James Bond books as a child. Yep, Gil skipped right over Red Fish, Blue Fish and went straight for the 007 stuff. After fishing around in the horse's innards for a while, the vet eventually pulls out High Folly's uterus and correctly pegs the cause of her lethal infection as being a big bag of lentils and diamonds. The tech hands them over to Gil with a flat, "This is outside my purview." Gil, who can never resist the opportunity to make an eye-rolling quip, even when he's thirty-odd minutes past the credits, says, "The horse is a mule."
Sara and Warrick are now at McKinley High School; I wonder if its rivals are the Leon Czolgosz High School Fighting Anarchists. They're, like, totally quizzing, like, these eye-rolling girls who, like, make it self-evident why any self-respecting kid would voluntarily withdraw from social contact if these girls are, like, the norm for McKinley students. Neither Sara nor Warrick looks as though they've got a lot of hope for the future, if pop philosopher Whitney Houston is right when she asserts that the children are our future. Sara whips out the photo of the dress, and one of the three girls identifies it as "the dress Alyssa made and wore to homecoming last year." "Back when she was fat?" asks another one. They dissolve into giggles, and Warrick asks irritably, "Ladies, who is Alyssa?" We find out that Alyssa Jamison is the school's resident goody two-shoes -- environmental crusader and hospital "volunteen."
Naturally, Sara and Warrick hie to Desert Palms -- is there any other hospital in Vegas? -- and head to the pharmacy counter where Alyssa works. A press of the buzzer later and Alyssa, clad in a crisp candy-striped apron, is asking pleasantly, "Hello, how may I help you?" After their session with the McKinley kids, Sara's not used to speaking to teenagers who can utter complete, grammatically correct sentences, so it takes her a moment to recover and introduce herself and Warrick. Warrick asks if Alyssa knew Jill; Alyssa answers that she did. Sara drops that ubiquitous dress photo and asks if Alyssa gave Jill the dress. Alyssa looks worried, but replies that she did. Warrick asks if Alyssa gave Jill fentanyl and cisapride. Alyssa immediately replies, "Oh, my God! She killed herself, didn't she?" Sara confirms this. Alyssa continues, "She gave me a necklace." Sara's all, "Excuse me?" Alyssa explains, "Giving away sacred possessions? That's one of the sure signs of suicide. She traded the necklace for my dress. I told her she didn't have to. But she kept insisting, said that she had something special to wear the dress to, and the necklace would be collateral. I took it as a good sign because she'd been so depressed lately." Warrick just stands there, stunned that they've run into someone who's actually answering questions. Sara asks if Alyssa passed on the drugs, and Alyssa points out the security camera in her work area, and says, "I couldn't, even if I wanted to. Not that I ever would." Sara and Warrick just stand there, still stunned by the unfamiliar experience of speaking with a teenager who is not: a) a moron, b) accused of murder, or c) lying to cover up someone else's crimes.
Catherine's checking out the office of Dr. Stevens, recently of Las Vegas, now traveling unexpectedly. Gosh, Catherine almost buys that, except there's all this cut glass on the glass tabletop, so that's a pretty strong indication that Stevens was in some way responsible for stuffing those diamonds where the sun doesn't shine. The red lentils also help make her case; as Gil points out, they supposedly prevent diamonds from chipping. Catherine concludes, "That Dr. Stevens was very involved." You think? Gil notes the conveniently placed medical poster of the equine reproductive system, and says, "A horse's uterus is the size of a football, so he could have packed it with pouches of diamonds." Catherine wonders why he left one behind, and Gil responds that Stevens took only what he could reach before running. However, since Stevens wasn't on the plane, he couldn't have killed Lori, so he obviously had a partner.
Back in the lab, Gil and Catherine are testing the diamonds and discover that, based on assorted physical properties, these are African diamonds. While they're doing that, Gil says, "Did you know that the word 'carat' comes from the Mediterranean carob tree, whose seeds were used for centuries as a standard of measurement?" Catherine didn't; nor is she particularly euphoric about learning the truth about carats. She's bogged down in math: "So, based on the six-to-one lentil-to-diamond ratio in the packet we found, and assuming that all the packets are the same size, I think we're looking for...five more." Gil looks up from his computer to ask, "Five?" Catherine looks at him oddly before answering, "Well, yeah. Based on weight, we established approximately 183 grams of lentils per pack, 732 grams of lentils would be -- oh, my mistake. Four." Gil only cocks a mathematically correct eyebrow at her. I'm a little confused as to how they estimated the weights with the lentils, but it's the least of the mind-boggling fact blips in this episode. They move past the math portion and into the "Hey! These diamonds are from Africa! Don't African diamonds enforce slavery and bloodshed, and support warlords? And aren't they banned by the UN?" conversation. We quickly establish that in addition to bypassing all those pesky moral questions about blood diamonds by simply not alerting anyone to their presence in a horse's uterus, whoever smuggled these also got out of paying taxes on them, so they can realize a greater profit when they sell the ice. Catherine suspects someone killed Lori because she found out about the diamonds in her charge -- remember how, way back in the beginning of the episode, we heard that Lori lived and breathed horses? Gil's all, "We've got the how and the why. We just need the who."
Brass is now talking with the plane steward, Jason Banks. He notes that Jason's well-used passport is the only one that shows a trip to Sierra Leone. Jason says snottily, "You know why I became a steward?" Brass guesses it's because he loves wearing aprons and serving coffee to belligerent drunkards at 3000 feet. Oh, he does not; he guesses it's because Jason wanted to see the world. Jason confirms that. Brass asks what Jason saw in Sierra Leone, and Jason replies, "Well, that's the joke. Free night in Amsterdam? No, no. I went around the globe picking up packages for the Fitzgeralds like a frickin' bike messenger. 'Oh -- could you take the plane to Rome? To Ghana? To pick something up for me.'" Brass dryly comments that it sounds like fun, and asks about the nature of the packages being picked up. Jason tells him, "I figure I'm better off not knowing, and it looks like I was right." It amazes me that anyone takes a job like this where they knowingly look the other way on morally suspect activities instead of facing it head-on. How do they live with themselves? Brass delves into Jason and Lori's relationship, given that their DNA mingled on the paper towels. Jason claims he merely picked up the towels for Lori (who apparently sustained a minor wound from a panicky horse), then carried them upstairs, where he was promptly summoned to Harper's bedside so he could unzip her. Brass hisses, "That's a tidy little story." Brass ain't no friend to the working stew.
In another part of the Labitrail, Warrick talks out the trauma of his afternoon with, "Jill's friends seem either brainwashed or brain-dead. The mom was absentee at best." Sara suggests that Jill may have thought Toby was the best thing in her life, so if he wanted to kill himself, she'd just follow along. The two CSIs head over to see Liam, who tells them, "Don't even bother reviewing those surveillance tapes. No hospital's dispensed cisapride in three years." Sara loses it a little, and Liam talks her down by pointing out that the white substance he tested turned out to be "denatured milk proteins and mucoid saliva. Baby spittle." Sara stares before asking, "There was a baby out there." Liam clarifies, "Not just a baby -- their baby." Oh, really? And this didn't come up in Jill's autopsy? It's not like childbirth doesn't do a number on your body; there could have been a half dozen signs that this kid had given birth, and it's only coming up now? I...I don't even have the will. So I'll just roll with it. Hey, everyone! There's a baby! Off we go to California to look for a baby!
And now we're in Mrs. Frommer's front yard. After Lockwood tells Warrick that Mrs. Frommer recently bought a suit from the young men's department of J.C. Penney, Warrick peers in the window of the car and comments, "Looks like Moms is a personal shopper and a chauffeur, huh. Moms is busy." Looks like Warrick is less than impressed with Mrs. Frommer. Sara replies, "Too busy to notice a baby, apparently." Or maybe not -- they'll find out now that Lockwood is presenting Mrs. Lockwood with a warrant to search the premises.
Search they do through the kids' scanty possessions. Warrick finds a Valentine's Day card that confirms the goings-on between the two kids, but that's about it. The two CSIs move to the kitchen, Mrs. Frommer watching them the entire time. It's good to see that she finally rustled up some concealer. Sara notices the impressive array of pharmaceuticals in the kitchen cabinet which, o coincidence of coincidences, includes both fentanyl and cisapride. Mrs. Frommer tells Sara, "My husband went through chemo. I told you that. The fentanyl's for my back pain." Warrick replies incredulously, "Why didn't you tell us Jill and Toby had access to these?" Moms Dearest replies, "You didn't ask." The blinking, clanging, neon "SUSPECT!" sign immediately goes off over her head, because that answer's a little too cagey and self-serving for a supposedly grieving parent. Just then, a disembodied baby's coo wafts out. Both Sara and Warrick cock their heads and look toward the fridge, which is where the sound is emanating from. They're probably thinking what the audience is thinking: "Nobody would put a baby in the fridge, right? There's another explanation, right?" Thankfully, CSI has not yet stooped to chilling babies in the name of plot advancement. When Warrick opens the fridge door, we see several baby bottles and the baby monitor. At least the baby sounds delighted.
Cut to the baby, who immediately looks even more thrilled to be alive when Warrick comes over and says, "Hey. Hi, baby. Hi, little baby." Moms Dearest comes over and picks up the kid, saying, "I'm this baby's only chance." Sara replies, "Lady, you are out of chances." Moms Dearest replies that watching people kill themselves isn't illegal in Nevada. Yeah, but the kids died in California, so no doubt Bill Lockeyer might have a thing or two to say about it, especially since it wouldn't be hard to make a case for assisted suicide (hey, she's technically the supplier of the lethal drugs), and assisted suicide is illegal according to the California Penal Code. Why do I bother thinking this stuff through?
Anyway, we see the whole assisted suicide in flashback -- Moms encourages them to kill themselves through questions like "How much longer are you two going to ruin my life?" -- like, lady, I'm pretty sure you're responsible for some of the situation, since you're not exactly drawing any lines on what will and won't fly under your own roof -- and then feeds 'em, drives 'em out to the desert, waves the baby around in a half-hearted goodbye, and then, when her daughter changes her mind, ignores her daughter's entreaties and leaves her to die in the desert. Moms's response: "They were beyond saving." I'm sure it had nothing to do with your parenting skills, lady. Warrick punctures a hole in her "I'm bulletproof!" argument with, "I think we can convince a jury that you did more than just watch." Moms argues, "Not helping a child in danger is a misdemeanor. You might as well write me a parking ticket." She seems awfully sure that there's not going to be any sort of legal repercussions for heavily-assisted suicide. Sara tells her, "I'm going to write you up on murder, and then I'm going to call Child Services." This does not rattle Moms, who seems to be under the impression that women who kill their children fare well in prison prior to their trial and sentencing. Warrick takes the baby; across America, half of the women watching spontaneously ovulate. As Moms is carted off, Warrick and Sara sadly conclude that the vagaries of the legal system will probably end in her favor. I'd say the plot ends on a down note, but watching Warrick baby-talk the infant has a surprisingly uplifting effect. The producers should note that, and just bring out babies for Warrick to hold whenever any case ends on a down note. I'm not a big baby person, and I'm enjoying the effect.
And now, wrapping up the A-plot. Gil runs into Catherine in the Labitrail and tells her, "We've got animal, mineral and now vegetable." Oh, so it's okay for him to make with the cute, but the minute someone else whips out the Jeopardy metaphor, it's "childish." Anyway, Catherine's got a big question mark over her head until Gil explains that he also picked up traces of carrot, which leads him to believe that Lori, Little Miss She Loves The Horses, knowingly introduced a foreign body or five into a dirty mare. Sadly, neither Gil nor Catherine comments on what a craven hypocrite she was, so I have to do it. Catherine concludes that Dr. Stevens had two partners; Gil tags in and figures that Lori was the only one who knew there were five packages, which explained why Stevens left one behind. Catherine comes the closest anyone will to condemning Lori's actions -- let's not forget an innocent animal suffered and died, thanks to her -- by commenting, "She was a victim, but she wasn't innocent."
Nicky is reduced to acting like a human cursor for Catherine and Gil as he drags and drops assorted mug shots on a giant screen. The question of who's buying the diamonds is raised, as Gil correctly notes that there's no point in smuggling anything if you're not going to get rid of it. Nicky comments on the breadth of people on Harper's payroll, and Catherine tartly replies, "Well, you met her. Would you be her friend for free?" After watching what she did with a DNA swab? He probably would. Rhone comes up again, we see for the first time that his full name is actually Rhone Kinsey-Confer, and Catherine realizes who the diamond buyer is; Rhone's related to the people who run the local jewelry shop, Kinsey diamonds.
Within seconds Rhone's outraged mother is watching the Las Vegas police collect multiple trays of diamonds for evidence. Brass asks, "Did you ever stop to think that maybe your family discount was a little too good to be true? Did you really think your son mined those rocks himself? Come on. Think about it." Heh. I love Brass when he does this.
We finally wrap this whole thing up when Brass and Gil talk to Rhone. Brass asks, "Why even bother, when you had everything you wanted at your disposal?" Gil replies, "Tantalus, stuck in hell forever staring at the fruit just out of reach." Well, if you want to be general about it; Tantalus was assigned to Tartarus, the area of Hades -- which was not Hell in the Judeo-Christian sense -- where the greatest sinners were punished for their transgressions, and "transgression" was defined largely as "whatever the deeply irrational, capricious, and somewhat dim divinities decided was a transgression at that very moment." Anyway, we've established that Rhone was indeed hoping wealth was a communicable disease; he enlisted Lori, but she decided to pull out the diamonds to save the horse. Well, then, I take back some of the harsh things I wrote; at least she realized her mistake. A scuffle ensued, he tried to shoot her with the tranq gun, it missed and went into the roof, so he spiked her with a dart and down she went. Fortunately, the drug kicked in right about the time the horse's hooves landed on her sternum, so maybe all she felt was intense pressure. Gil proves it by setting Brass on Rhone -- Brass cheerily tells him the tax evasion warrant covers stripping -- and noting the large wound from where the tranq gun backfired. Ah, Rhone -- you should never challenge Gil with "Prove it," because he will. Rhone bitterly says, "Freaking pony lover." Gil says smugly, "A horse, my kingdom for a horse." Rhone is left to shake his head and reflect on how very much he hates Richard III. Gil, meanwhile, grins, pleased as punch that he was able to begin and end an episode with cultural horse references.