Day breaks over Las Vegas -- sunny, cloudless, devoid of any portents of doom. Who will buy this beautiful morning? Such a day I never did see. Who will tie it up with a ribbon and put it in a box for Gil? I mean, that's what the title of the episode refers to, right? Gil's fabulously sunny day?
Oh, I sang too soon. There are men loading guns and synchronizing their watches. Then we switch to the lobby of First National Savings and Bloodbath. A blonde woman and her fidgety little boy are waiting in line. The boy turns around to gape at Detective Lockwood, who is also waiting in line. As Lockwood reaches into his coat pocket to settle his billfold, we see his badge and his gun. The kid gapes, the mom catches on, and we have a nice little moment wherein we establish that Lockwood is kind to children. Also, we can't help but wonder if nobody ever hipped Lockwood to two wondrous inventions: drive-through banking and ATM banking, because either of those financial conveniences could have dramatically changed the outcome of this episode.
Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. First, a squadron of goons outfitted in black ski masks, all-black outfits, and long black trench coats has to march into the bank. You'd think that a teller sitting at the counter facing the all-glass wall and doors would see this crew coming and press the alarm, but you'd be wrong. You'd also think that the security guard for the bank would be stationed so he could watch both the entrance and the bank, and thus see this crew coming so he could hit 911 on his phone, but you'd be wrong there too. Their flashy entrance is apparently an enormous surprise to everyone in the bank, and within seconds, gunfire is spraying as the thugs command people to line up against the counter. One guy quickly disables the security camera. Lockwood assesses the situation and decides to go along with the up-against-the-wall crowd, a sensible survival move I would applaud but for my conviction that he won't be there long. One of the thugs threatens the blonde, "One peep and you die! The boy too!" Lockwood looks over. It's got to really bite to be an off-duty cop in a situation like this: you do something, and you risk getting killed; you do nothing, and the press has a field day afterward wondering why an off-duty cop doing his errands didn't pull a Die Hard and rescue everyone.
Anyway: mayhem, shooting, bossing around of hostages, bank manager being taken to the safety deposit vault, where he opens up the doors under threat of gunpoint. Another thug -- look, the whole point to the all-black getup is so we can't tell one guy from another, so I'm not even trying here -- enters the vault and begins placing explosives on certain safety deposit boxes within the vault.
Back in the bank lobby, the "I'm a people person" thug is handling the hostages, mainly by commanding them not to look at him. The useless blonde panics, "I've gotta get out of here!" I ardently wish the rest of this scene would play out like it did in Airplane, with a line of people smacking her to and fro while commanding, "Get a hold of yourself!" because...well, because the dramatic trope she is perpetuating deserves to pilloried through broad satire. Instead, the people-person thug threatens, "If any of you moves a muscle, I'll blow you away!" She continues bleating, "I've got to get out of here! I've got to get out of here!" I'm sure that's going over well with her fellow hostages. Lockwood watches with mounting anxiety; no doubt, he's reviewing all his options here and finding them wanting.
The vault blows, sending stacks of cash and other valuables flying. We see two of the four thugs watching.
In the lobby, people scream as the explosion rocks the building. Naturally, this is when Blondie decides to prod her kid into joining her as she makes a break for it, because the words "If any of you moves a muscle, I'll blow you away!" failed to penetrate the thick layer of undignified hysteria in which she is swaddled. Frankly, at this point, if I were one of the other hostages, I'd be asking for her to get shot, if only to give the rest of us a little peace and quiet while we're being held by violent, unpredictable men. Anyway, Moron Mom and her spawn attempt to make a break for it, and the gunman turns to fulfill my wish of making this tense, noisy hostage scenario a tenser, quiet one.
And that's when Lockwood moves to pull his gun. He is promptly shot from behind, a nice move since there's no gunman behind him in the bank, and it's a mystery how long-distance shooters would have been able to detect Lockwood going for his gun. I guess this is the remote branch of the "If any of you moves a muscle, I'll blow you away!" enforcement patrol. Blondie and that poor being saddled with 50 percent of her extra-panicky DNA are doing some sort of free-form panic thing while they watch Lockwood fall, the remaining thugs come out announcing that they have what they're looking for, and the men exit the scene, leaving in a van just as the police arrive. There's a shoot-out, of course, because the mystery shooter who tagged Lockwood lingered. I've got to wonder why nobody in the building opposite the bank noticed the armed man standing at a window and firing a gun.
Seconds later, Gil arrives on the scene. We hear the alarm ringing, and then it fades out, because Gil's going deaf, you see. Gil stops and stares at the alarm -- because he thinks he can glare it into submission, as he does so many CSI employees? Because he's trying to detect its ringing? I'm not sure -- anyway, as Gil is staring at the alarm, Catherine comes up and comments, "Mwah wah mwah wah wah wah," or, as the closed captioning says, "What a day to come back to work." Gil just gapes. Catherine charges ahead, then turns back to look at Gil and ask, "Coming?" That's when Gil's hearing conveniently kicks back into normal mode, and the alarm goes off.
Brass is crouched over Lockwood's body, with Emergency Backup David on his other side taking notes. Without looking up, he tells Catherine, "This crew was in and out. Three, maybe four guys depending on who you talk to. Detective Lockwood drew his weapon protecting a woman and a child." Brass's delivery is clipped; it's a nice touch because it tells us -- as does Brass's scooping up Lockwood's badge -- that Lockwood's death affects him. Catherine sighs, "Wrong place, wrong time." Brass grits, "There is no right time to kill a cop." Especially not one so charismatic as Lockwood. He will be missed by me especially. Gil is looking around and casing the joint as Emergency Backup David points out that he only sees one bullet wound through the back. That corroborates witness reports of being taken down with a single shot. Gil walks over to a bank window spiderwebbed with fine cracks; when Catherine joins him, he says, "Beveled edges on the inside. The shot came from outside. We need to get a picture of this." Catherine adds, "These guys were pros." You think? What tipped you off? The lack of Dog Day Afternoon-style antics between bank robber and police?
Catherine and Gil ask how much the robbers get, Brass tells them the robbers weren't interested in money, and Gil's follow-up query ("What were they interested in?") is answered by a field-trip to the smoky vault. Blasted electrical wires sizzle and snap, debris litters the floor, and the precise hole betrays the purposefulness of the blast. Gil shines his flashlight and says, "See the blast marks? Charges were placed in corner quadrants. Four boxes up, five across, the rest looks like collateral damage." Catherine adds, "Whoever did this knew precisely what they were after." Gil replies, "Well, the one good thing about their precision: it'll narrow our focus."
The Who seem to concur; they've narrowed their focus to only one question too.
Once we come back from commercial, Gil is glowering in the foreground while we see the Young Turks come strolling in behind him. Their conversation is muffled. Weirdly enough, both Warrick and Nicky are in their CSI bulletproof vests, while Sara's wearing a tan suede scooter jacket and a red tee. Come to think of it, Gil and Catherine have the same sort of thing going on -- he's in a County windbreaker uniform thingy, and she's in a black v-neck shirt and baby-blue jacket. It seems weird that the men are in uniform and the women are not. Everyone's standing behind Gil, and we hear a lot of "mwah wah mwah wah wah wah" to establish that Gil's deaf, since we really haven't had a lot of clues leading up to this startling revelation or anything, and then Catherine practically shouts Gil's name. As she taps his shoulder, his hearing is miraculously restored. Gil apologizes, and looks at Catherine, puzzled. She gives him her usual "I am figuring you out, buddy" look -- the perps usually get this look right before Catherine nails them to the floor -- and tells him she's all about processing the bank. Gil replies, "Right. I'll take the safety deposit boxes. Sara, you're with me, since I can't think of a more optimal work situation than one where an employee with amorous intent is trapped in a small space with the person who rejected her affections. Or are we pretending that didn't happen?" Or, you know, nothing to that effect past the words "you're with me." Nicky heads off to check out the shot-up patrol car, Warrick heads to the altered security camera, and Catherine stands there and looks all thoughtful. Or she's watching Warrick swab the camera and tell us what we already know. Brass comes jogging in right then to tell Catherine that he found the getaway vehicle a block away, near an off-ramp. He adds, "The coroner's en route." Catherine's all, "Coroner?"
Down in the vault, we can verify that Gil and Sara have indeed conveniently forgotten that there was ever a personal moment between them, and thus have moved back to a professional relationship. Somewhere, an SS Geek Love cruise director is sobbing over the lack of follow-up from last week's big scene; I prefer to save my tears for the lack of consistent characterization regarding these two all season. Gil and Sara quickly conclude from the wreckage that the thugs most likely used C4 to blow the boxes apart. Gil makes an oblique Four Corners reference -- "Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona" -- to indicate that the center of the four set explosives was the target, and then we see a TMICam-style shot of the explosive firing off before a box from the middle is blasted out. Sara connects the dots with, "Four corners." Gil replies, "What does that tell us?" That whatever the thugs wanted was in the center. Gil gives us a little how-to with, "The Monroe effect: all force generated toward one central area." Sara asks, "What do explosives have to do with reiterating our aversion to European colonization in the New World?" and Gil tells her that she's confusing the Monroe Doctrine (James Monroe's December 2, 1823 address to Congress, which included seven paragraphs' worth of the idea that maybe having Europe run roughshod in the Western Hemisphere wasn't in the USA's best interests for a variety of reasons) with the Monroe effect (energy released directly away from an explosive so the explosive energy gets focused into the void for maximum damage). Oh, he does not either, but I can't be the only person who's ever been confused by all the eponymous tags for assorted phenomena and begun mixing things up. Anyway, Sara wonders how they're going to figure out the damage, and Gil more or less disregards that comment because he's just found the bomb's detonator.
Catherine runs outside to see how Nicky's doing with the car. He's staring down at the bullet-riddled hood and murmuring, "Some day..." Oh, he is not. He doesn't even have a reason to right now; he's busy telling Catherine how he was all competent and deductive with, "I followed the [car fluid] leakage back to its original position. Two in the hood, one in the windshield. [pause] Lockwood. High power, long range." Catherine dibs the bullets and heads on out.
She meets Brass at the van, which is parked in the same back alley where the crazy chick from last year's season finale hangs out, and checks out the sight in the driver's seat: a nearly-decapitated man whose red, glistening neck wound is accessorized with the piano wire used to make said wound. Brass comments, "Probably became a liability after the heist. No honor among thieves, I guess." Catherine adds, "Tells us something about them." We see the flashback to how it happened -- the driver headed to a predestined point, looked around and asked why they were there, then got strangled for his troubles.
Then we transition to a profile shot of Lockwood on the coroner's slab. David The Pondering Coroner is pulling out the slug in his chest and dropping it into the usual metal saucer.
Then we see Nicky futzing around under the hood of the police cruiser, digging out more shells. While he works, the music that began playing when David was working picks up tempo -- think "Flight of the Bumblebee" as interpreted by some Windham Hill artiste with his guitar and backed with a percussion beat -- and then we go to the vault where Sara's working, and the music morphs to something much more techno. We get some distorted vocals as Sara pieces together the blown-apart boxes, and then we go back to bumblebee-by-way-of-Windham-Hill as Gil and Warrick study the last seconds of the security tape before it went black. Warrick gets emotional for a moment with, "Lockwood was a good cop. It's too bad," before adopting a more businesslike tone and announcing, "Grissom, I just talked to Hodges. That black stuff from the camera lens? The FTIR spit back magnesium aluminum, silicate, talc, methyl paraben and sunscreen. All these chemicals are consistent with camouflage cream." I guess the makers of camouflage cream aren't too concerned about fighting the ravages of age, because I didn't notice any alpha-hydroxy acids or Q10 coenzyme in there. Don't murderous commandos fret about their fine lines too? Anyway, as Warrick was talking, he was facing Gil's profile, and Gil was utterly non-reactive, so we were supposed to think that Gil was suffering a raging case of the Can't-Hearums today, and thus would be outed to Warrick. However, in this case, Gil was merely ignoring Warrick until something relevant caught his attention. He hmphs, "Black face paint," then goes back to ignoring Warrick. Undeterred, Warrick carries on, "My guess is, the same stick they used to cover up the camera lens, they used to paint their faces with. I just found an eyelash in it." Gil deigns to look at him again.
Then Gil goes on a walkabout through the Labitrail. David The Pondering Coroner catches his attention and explains, "I was just coming to see you. I pulled the bullet from Cyrus Lockwood. Fully intact, well-preserved." Gil replies that David didn't have to go to all the trouble of leaving the morgue, and David replies that he did too, because "I wanted to. Every day I see people I don't know" -- although that really hasn't stopped his Miami counterpart from making new friends at work daily -- "but I saw a lot of Lockwood, and I did get to know him. I felt like I owed it to him." Gil is unmoved by the idea of social bonds among coworkers. He wanders off while David stands there and looks sad.
Gil delivers the bullet to Catherine, who does not immediately break into hosannas of gratitude. This is because she's got her hands full figuring out that the getaway driver is one Larry Whiting, recently of the Nevada penitentiary system for assault plus drunk and disorderly, and a Rampart Casino valet. Gil dredges up the second tiresome personal plot point of the evening by asking, "Isn't that one of Sam Braun's hotels?" Viewers who only started watching this year are all, "Who?" In a nutshell: Sam Braun is a casino mogul out of Vegas; one of his sons was killed by the other in the Season Two opener, and we established that Sam's known Catherine since she was a baby on account of his shtupping her mother. Or, as I recapped back then:
Sam looks at her and says, "You know, I should have married your mother." Catherine says, "Considering I was six months old when you two lit the flame…you had plenty of chances." Oh, so I'm thinking Catherine's mom was Sam's long-time mistress. "It just wasn't in the cards," he says sadly.
So. That's Sam Braun, casino owner. Gil's not caught in the same retconned plot pit we are, so he's actually moving on with the show by pointing out, "You have to have a non-gaming work card to park cars at a Vegas casino." I realize that he's saying this for our benefit, but why is he telling long-time Vegas resident and casino habitué Catherine? It would be like him telling Warrick how to count cards. Gil goes on to ask how a guy with a criminal record gets such a card, Catherine replies that he wouldn't, and Gil adds, "Unless he was juiced in by Sam Braun." Catherine evades Gil's eyes as she demurs, "Well, it is his hotel. It's his call ultimately." Gil replies, "Well, it's our case, so it's our call. Check it out. Go ahead. Get personally involved. It'll be good for the case, give you a little extra incentive to stare unblinking at unpleasant conclusions instead of giving in to the temptation to make it personal." To her credit, Catherine actually points out, "I may be compromised. I do have a personal relationship with the guy." Gil turns a deaf ear to her concerns -- metaphorically speaking, of course -- with, "You'll be fine." He walks out, and Catherine gets a "the hell?" look on her face.
Fortunately, she recovers enough to wander into Sam's casino and watch him glad-hand someone. Once he's done, he turns around and sees Catherine, and his face lights up. He grins and waves, and she smiles in response. In a flash, they're sitting at a deserted bar in a quiet part of the casino, and Sam's vigorously claiming, "I'm going to have to talk to H.R. about this Larry Whiting. Human Resources is never supposed to process anyone with a record." Catherine replies, "Well, his record caught up with him, Sam. We suspect he was involved in the First National Savings and Bloodbath robbery. Getaway driver, except everyone got away but him." Sam replies, "I have to tell you, Mugs, the name doesn't ring a bell." That nickname didn't ring a bell either until I went back and checked the recap for "Burked," and that's actually how Sam enters the scene. Anyway, Catherine calls Sam on his patter this time around by saying, "That's like you telling me when I was a kid that you were too tired to drive home every night when you were sleeping with my mother." Sam replies gallantly, "Well, you can't fault a fellow for wanting to be with his two best girls." I wonder if Mrs. Braun or the fratricidal Braun boys did. Sam asks where Catherine's going with this line of questioning, and she replies, "Well, last year one of your cocktail waitresses was murdered, still unsolved." Because we didn't see that crime, we're hearing about it now. Sam replies that the waitress worked at one of Sam's other casinos, the Whiskey Town. Catherine connects that dot to Whiting, and asks, "How does that look for business?" Sam breaks out the nickname again, in an obvious attempt to deflect any attempts at professionalism on Catherine's part: "Mugs, I've got a PR department that deals with that. When one white tiger killed another one in the Secret Garden at the Mirage, the PR department had it buried on page 16E under the car ads about [holds fingers an inch apart] this big." Catherine replies, "Right. They made it go away." Sam continues, "Some things are people's business. Some things aren't." Catherine ignores that clear and obvious sign that Sam's up to something by pressing, "Well, this is my business. It's not going to go away." Sam tells her, "Then I'll be rooting for you." Somehow, that sounds like a threat.
Later that night, Brass and Warrick are poking around Whiting's apartment. Warrick explains why they're there to us, the audience at home, with, "If this getaway driver's stupid enough to get whacked by his partners, he's stupid enough to leave something behind." As Brass grumbles, "This whole neighborhood's stupid," Warrick picks up the laminated Rampart Casino ID card and puts it down again, the better to grip the enormous and enormously tacky brandy snifter stuffed with bills in assorted denominations. He then exclaims, "Sixty grand a year for jockeying cars? I'm in the wrong line of work." Brass replies, "Look at it this way -- you're still alive," which seems like an odd thing to say to a police type immediately after a coworker has been gunned down. Anyway, the real bright side comes from Warrick's discovery of two wrappers which once held $5000 stacks from the Rampart. As Brass notes, "Sam Braun's hotel," Warrick looks shocked -- shocked! -- that this could be the case.
Back at the lab, Bobby the ballistics guy is verifying for Gil that yes, the same gun that killed Lockwood also shot up that police cruiser. They're both consistent with the M1A, a long gun. Bobby notes, "Long guns are only registered to the person who makes the original purchase, and the serial numbers aren't recorded." Gil sighs as he realizes, "Impossible to trace, so it's a dead end." Bobby replies, "Forensically, yeah, but not cognitively. See, shooting someone from a long range and taking out the engine of a radio car while it is hauling ass -- you're looking at one sharp shooter, and that kind of training only comes from --" "The military," Gil replies. Well, that narrows it down considerably. Maybe they can find out if the shooter knows infamous Miami sniper Chris Harwood, also military-trained.
At the bank, someone flips on the lights for Nicky. He's standing with a forensic dummy draped in Lockwood's coat, and he places a rod in the hole in the back of the jacket to get the exact location of Lockwood's fatal shot. He turns a knob on the rod, and a red laser shoots out. Nicky shoots out a little chemical mist of some sort to clarify the beam and confirm that it's shooting through the hole in the window, and then he proceeds to repeat the process for the holes in the car. Then he follows the beams over into the other building, where he pinpoints the exact location of the shooter. To verify, he pulls over a chair and mimes shooting a long gun. Oh, sure, other viewers may think we're flashing back to the shooting, but we all know that this is foreshadowing of the Day of Justice to come.
Meanwhile, Sara has been locked in the vault to think about what she's done. That'll learn her for asking the boss out. Actually, she's been in the vault putting the blown-out boxes back together. Catherine walks in with Gil; she'll all impressed with how Sara reconstructed the bank of boxes and found the time to stack all the scattered cash into tidy little bundles. Sara launches into an explanation: "This was the epitome of precision. The outer rim of boxes sustained the most damage. The intent was not to blow out the surrounding 23 boxes, but to preserve the sanctity of the center box. Box 729? It's history. It's the only thing that's gone." Catherine sighs, "That's the box they were after." Gil helpfully points out, "And we still don't know what's inside."
Well, Gil and Catherine are about to find out who the box belongs to, the better to ask the owner what's inside. The two CSIs are waiting in the bank manager's office, and Catherine's displeased that she's being made to wait. Fortunately, she can pass the time by pestering Gil. After getting his attention, she asks, "Mwah wah mwah wah wah wah," or "How long have we known each other?" Gil dodges with, "In days, months, or years?" Catherine replies, "Mmmmphle mumble mpph," and follows up with, "Mwah wah wah wah?" or, "Can you hear me?" Gil only stares, but he's saved from replying when the bank manager shows up. After a few minutes of back-and-forth bureaucratese cut short by a court order, we find out that the person holding Box 729 is Benny Murdoch. This startles Catherine. Gil asks if she knows him. Why, yes, she does.
And the scene shows us why Vegas is such a small town for Catherine; Sam is busy pouring a drink and twinkling over how Benny was his first doorman at the Whiskey Town. Benny quickly worked his way up and became Sam's right arm at the Rampart, and, oh, how unbelievable that he died a few weeks ago from a brain aneurysm sustained during the Bong Olympics. I'm sorry, I'm mixing up my CSIs again. That happens sometimes when my attention wanders, as it is during this scene. Enough with the Sam and Catherine already! What will it take for this show to stop hauling out the "for one CSI, it's personal!" angle? Catherine fishes for a possible connection between Whiting and Benny, and gets nowhere. We do, however, find out that Benny's idea of building social capital with his good friend Sam was by directing "the high-end whales" in Catherine's general direction while she was dancing. Because having someone who runs with your mom's ex-boyfriend recommend you as a naked attraction on the Vegas strip isn't creepy at all. Catherine replies, "The sun set on that time. I hear you and Benny had a little sunset of your own. A falling out about six months ago." A fortuitously timed casino cheater pops into Sam's security system right then, giving him an excuse to leave the conversation and monitor this guy's progress, telling security that if things don't change soon, they'll be sending in "Mr. Happy." Gil, who is sitting with Catherine, is seemingly oblivious to these goings-on; his attention is on the picture of Sam and crew posing in front of the Rampart's ceremonial opening-day ribbon with a giant pair of scissors. Sam comes back over and tells Catherine, "I was with him in the hospital when he died. We made our peace, if it's for the record." Gil gets straight to the point by asking if Sam knows what Benny kept inside his safe-deposit box. Apparently, that topic didn't come up during Sam and Benny's reconciliation. Sam takes his leave to unleash "Mr. Happy" on a would-be con artist.
Liam The Lab Tech is back on the job, looking remarkably good for someone caught in the path of some exploding mystery liquid. Catherine comes in and abruptly asks, "You know what 'off the record' means, don't you?" Judging by his response to her -- not at all chilly, as if she never did anything that led to his wounding in the explosion they all went through a scant week ago -- he does. We don't find out why it's so important that Liam know this yet.
Meanwhile, Gil has wandered on down to the morgue and collared David The Friendly Coroner because "I'd like a second opinion." We then see David peering into Gil's ears and saying, "I wish you'd come to me sooner. Your condition's pretty far along. Why did you wait?" Because David's not an ear, nose, and throat guy? Actually, Gil says, he waited because "I hoped it would go away." Well, points for honesty. David presses, "Doesn't your mother have this condition?" Gil replies, "Yes, it's hereditary. I know. I wasn't rational." Yeah, there's a lot of that going around the lab. David says ruefully, "Look, Gil, I'm not going to preach to you. You came to me, but doctor to doctor, there's a chance the bone deposits have spread into the inner ear, in which case, your hearing loss will eventually be permanent. If I were you, I'd schedule surgery as soon as possible." Gil receives this advice impassively. Maybe he's thinking of how his HMO defines "as soon as possible" as "the minute the trumpets hailing the Second Coming of Our Lord and Savior ring out and Revelations gets freakily literal."
The shot does not find Gil on the phone shouting, "What? I can't hear you. Surgery when?" Instead, it's all the CSIs, plus Liam, sitting around a lab table eating Chinese food. Liam is telling us about the eyelash Warrick found: "I extracted DNA, ran it, CODIS gave me a, uh, Mongolian beef." As Liam shares this, he shakes the empty carton. Sara, however, has not caught on: "I'm sorry, what does that mean?" Warrick clarifies, "That means he got nothing." Liam leans over and helps Warrick pick up what looks like a steamed rice-paper roll. Warrick's not too thrilled to be helped out. Nicky's all, "Let's focus on the robbers." Gil's pondering his fortune cookie. It probably reads, "With luck, Season Four will move away from the draggy personal stories and back into case-of-the-week plots." Catherine gets Gil's attention and asks him what he thinks, and he replies, "I think we're giving these guys too much credit. They're experts at robbing banks, not experts at concealing evidence." He waves around the cookie for emphasis, and Catherine replies, "Well, unless the answer's in that fortune cookie, what's the plan?" Gil answers in a typically opaque fashion with, "Do you ever wonder how the fortune gets inside the cookie?" Nicky swallows the last of his General Tso's chicken to tell us, "I know." Sara, miffed at not being the kid with the right answer, teases, "Of course you do." Nicky explains, "The cookie comes out of a press like a tortilla, then some lady puts the fortune in the center of the dough, then folds the dough around a piece of metal, then folds it again." Gil skips over the implication of predominately female sweatshop employees working repetitive jobs, and basks in the correctness of his employee. Sara looks puzzled as he leaves.
We then see Gil examining the assorted bomb components she presumably bagged and tagged, brushing them for fingerprints, completely not-distracted by the background soundtrack.
The prints yield an ID. Jacqui tells us it's Robert Rubio, and according to his non-gaming card, he is the head of security at the Rampart. Just as Jacqui asks, "Hey, didn't that other guy --?" Gil interrupts, "Run it through a military database." Jacqui does, and presumably follows Catherine's directive to give them an address, because the shot is of roughly two dozen heavily armed law enforcement types busting down a door and securing a ranch house on the edge of the desert. Once the house is cleared, we see that something's burning out back. Brass heads back to investigate. Catherine and Gil follow him. They head to the grill, and Catherine quips, "That's one example of the evidence going up in smoke." Brass comments, "The guy's a piece of work, huh?" then walks off to take a call. Gil begins poking around with barbecue tongs; he comes up with a black coat and Box 729. Since it's fire-resistant, it didn't come to any harm. The CSIs open the box and find a fragment of some sort of silky material, as well as some blood drops. Gil wonders -- and rightly so -- "How does blood get into a safe deposit box?" Catherine suspects that it's linked to the fabric scrap. Brass rejoins the conversation at that point to give us the bullet on his conversation: "Mr. Nine-Volt, Rob Rubio, ex-military, security expert. Went to work for casino owner Sam Braun when one of his soft-count cronies got caught skimming the skim, so...all roads lead to Rome, except in this case, the Rampart." Catherine doesn't look happy.
Speaking of roads and Sam, he's followed some desert road out to the middle of nowhere. He gets out of his car with a big, metal briefcase we can presume is full of money. Another car approaches -- it's the same silver SUV we saw driving away from the van and the strangled driver about 30 minutes ago -- and three thugs get out. There's a quiet moment where these guys all glare at each other.
And then, we see Gil, Catherine, and Brass standing over the bodies of the three thugs in the desert. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- these CSIs have the biggest jurisdiction in the history of law enforcement. Brass is explaining, "Triple homicide in the desert." Gil replies, "Old-time Vegas. We found Tommy 'The Aspirin' out here. Remember him? Used to make his bosses' headaches disappear?" Catherine adds, "Until they made him disappear." Brass adds, "I think this is the origin of the word 'termination.' There's the corporate way, and the way of the gun." I think I could care less about fake-etymology jokes and more about how on Earth these three ended up finding out about these bodies. Gil's looking at the bodies. One got hit by a high-powered rifle at a sufficiently close range to leave visible gunpowder, a second was shot in the chest, and a third in the back. We see flashbacks of all three murders. We learn that all three men were carrying weapons, but never had a chance to use them. Gil asks, "They didn't fly here, so where's their car?" Catherine replies, "It's not a dump job. Killer drove them here, killed them and drove away." From this we can deduce that they knew their attacker. Catherine's busy being all smug about how these guys couldn't take off their camouflage stick properly, but Gil's ignoring her in favor of wandering off into the desert where there's a piece of long material draped on a creosote bush. Brass and Catherine eventually catch up to him, and after Gil stretches out the scarf, Catherine tells us, "Bloodstain, rainbow-colored thread, safety-deposit box. Those guys are definitely the bank robbers." Brass asks about the fourth man. Insert your own joke about Graham Greene renouncing that ill-conceived sequel. Gil points out that the fourth guy, a.k.a. Rob Rubio, is rapidly moving into the "mass murderer" slot.
Back at the Labitrail, Bobby catches Gil so he can tell him the results of the bullet tests from the shells taken at the desert death scene (they match the bullet that killed Lockwood), but Gil's deaf again so it's all, "Mwah wah mwah wah mwah wah wah." Since Gil can't walk and lip-read sideways, he says loudly and irritably, "Slow down, Bobby!" Bobby apologizes for getting all excited about the 30-caliber rounds, and mwah-wah-wahs some more at Gil; Gil just gives him a look and wanders off, leaving poor, puzzled Bobby in his wake. Seriously -- that poor guy's never been anything but cordial, he's majorly excited by what he's found, and he's being cut off by a disinterested Gil. I feel for him. No doubt some of y'all on the forums are willing to salve his bruised feelings.
Anyway, it turns out that Gil was in a hurry to see Liam, of all people. Liam explains, "Yeah. Blood flecks from the safe-deposit box. Two distinct samples. I only got one hit, though. Primary sample belongs to Vivian Verona, cocktail waitress. She was killed on the top floor of the old Pike's Gambling Hall about two years ago. Here's the report." By the way, Pike's is also a Sam Braun production. Gil reads about Vivian's multiple puncture wounds of different depths, possibly made with two knives. Liam continues, "I pulled the crime scene photos for you, too. Case is still pending. Murder weapon was never found. Now, the secondary blood sample came back [no donor]. Could be the killer. You always say murder's messy." As Liam's rattling this off, he's holding the report and his hands are shaking pretty violently. Gil says as much with, "Liam, your hands are shaking." Liam denies it while anxiously trying to read Gil's face. Gil takes the report and orders Liam to hold out his hands. The lab tech does, and they're shaky, all right. Liam explains, "They've been shaky ever since [points to exploded lab]. I can't really make it stop." Gil asks, "Is it affecting your work?" Liam replies, "If I were a bomb expert, maybe. No, I...I think I have it under control." Oh, he's so plucky, and so filled with lies. Then the flying pigs return for an encore cruise as Gil reassures Liam, "It'll stop. If you need me, I'll be around." Liam's too stunned to say anything more than, "Okay." He studies his hands while Gil leaves.
We then focus on a photo of the vivisected Vivian wearing a scarf in the same pattern as the bloodied silk Gil found. Sam just happens to be in the picture. Gil studies the crime scene photos of Vivian, and notices her scarf. Warrick comes in with the scarf fresh from Liam's lab, and Gil asks him to open the evidence bag and replicate the blood pattern. Warrick begins cutting, and Gil has a eureka! moment. He asks Warrick for the scissors. A fruit-munching Nicky conveniently pops by, and Gil demands of him, "Nick, give me that apple." "But I didn't get any lunch," Nicky protests. Gil says more imperatively, "Give me the apple. You're not supposed to eat in here! [holds up the picture] Two puncture wounds, right? [stabs the scissors through the apple, then holds up the picture again] Scissors. That's what was wrapped in the scarf."
Using the power of computers, Warrick confirms this a second later when a program matches the swirl of bloodstains to the shape of a giant pair of scissors. I take the time in which this scene unfolds to try to walk through the logic behind this crime: someone killed Vivian with a pair of scissors, which they then wrapped in her scarf tightly enough to have left a monster bloodstain, and then that package ended up in Benny's safe-deposit box, leaked blood on the bottom of the box, and ended up inspiring a robbery and murder?
Catherine comes in on the end of the scissors conversation, and Sara fills her in on what she missed: they figured out that Vivian was murdered with these scissors the night before the old Pike's Gambling Hall was imploded. Nicky adds, "Sounds like somebody wanted her to disappear in the rubble. Bet you Braun hired his own clean-up crew for that one." Sara tells us that the pyro guys found her on their last walk-through before the implosion, and although there was a CSI assigned to the case, the crime scene blowing up more or less rendered the case cold. Gil has been ignoring everyone again, and he emerges from whatever trancelike state he was in to command Warrick to enhance the blade area of the scissors. Warrick does, and we see that the blade reads, "Rampart." Catherine doesn't look happy.
In the scene, she doesn't sound happy either. She's changing into street clothes in the locker room, and as Gil approaches the doorway, she fumes, "He's not returning any of my phone calls. I need to confront this Sam Braun business for once and for all. I'll drive." Gil reluctantly says, "I'm not going with you." Catherine asks, "What do you mean?" Gil takes a few steps into the locker room and says, "I'm scheduled for surgery at the Desert Palm." What, like that afternoon? There are ear surgeons just hanging around, breathlessly waiting until someone like Gil comes wandering in? He gets the second opinion in the morning, spends an afternoon wandering around the desert, and makes an appointment for surgery that evening? The mind, it boggles. Catherine is as disbelieving as I; she states flatly, "Surgery." Gil just looks at her somewhat anxiously. Catherine walks over and studies his face; Gil looks even more nervous. Catherine looks concerned. She finally asks, "Your hearing?" Gil tries to put a brave face on it and says, "Yep." It doesn't seem as casual as he had intended. Catherine's all torn up now; she practically whispers, "I'm sorry." Gil, who has apparently just powered on through the denial he's been floundering in for the 22 episodes, puts on a brave front with, "I'm not. Has to be done." Okay -- I am the first to gripe about how much I dislike this whole Gil-going-deaf plotline, but I do have to give it credit for making this scene possible because we're seeing more of Gil letting down his guard now than we have in three seasons, and Catherine's reaction for her friend -- sorrow and concern -- is priceless.
Catherine asks, "What can I do?" and Gil says too-bravely, "Nothing! I'm fine!" You can tell that he totally doesn't want Catherine getting all emotional on him, but he wants her support without her pity. He finishes, "Take care of the case," and makes to sprint off. Catherine stammers before recovering, "That's it?" Gil stops and says, "That's it." Then he seems to remember that this is personal for Catherine and quietly, sincerely wishes her good luck. God, I love the interaction between Gil and Catherine. I like how their friendship is depicted as deep-rooted, rarely discussed, and sui generis for each of them. Catherine watches Gil go, just stunned.
Somehow, some way, Rob Rubio is apprehended and brought in. Most of the Las Vegas police force turns out to watch the cop-killer do the perp walk down the hall before turning back to the task of drawing lots to see who'll be around when Rubio has an accident while in police custody.
Brass gets to talk to Rubio now. He begins by saying, "You must really like the ham steak at the Primm. One more mile north, you're gone forever." Rubio replies, "They got good ham." Brass replies, "That's good to know. I'll know what to get you for your last meal, for killing a cop. You know the rifle we found in your trunk? The bullets match one we pulled out of a friend of mine, Detective Cyrus Lockwood." Rubio replies, "Tough losing one of your own." Brass replies, "You lost three of yours." Four if you count the strangled guy. There's some more back-and-forth with the interrogation, and Rubio says, "You know, when I get out of here, I'm going to take pleasure in putting air in your head." Brass leans in and says softly, "Let me put a fact in yours. You left a lot of yourself behind, killer. You give up your boss, you get to spend the rest of your life in a jail cell, not on death row." Rubio'll take death row, what with his lifespan there being longer than it would be if he squealed on Sam.
And now, the most asinine scene in the episode and, quite possibly, the season -- and that's including such golden greats as "Sara asks out Gil," "Nicky hang-glides after solving the murder of an extreme adventurer" and "Sara gives the 'this is your brain on drugs' speech to the cannibal cheerleader." Long story short: we learn that Sam killed Vivian in a fit of jealous rage with the ceremonial ribbon-cutting scissors, and he did so because she was stepping out on him with Benny. For reasons never fully explained here, Benny somehow managed to get hold of the scarf and murder weapon and put them in a safe deposit box; even if there were reasons worked into the back-and-forth Catherine and Sam have, they'd have to be mind-bogglingly bad to justify that move.
And how did Catherine know it was Sam who killed Vivian and not Benny, as Sam claimed in a story that has Benny keeping his incriminating evidence, then relying on old friend Sam to bring in a gang of trigger-happy thugs to protect his secret posthumously? Because she had Liam test her blood against the no-donor sample and -- gasp! -- there were seven alleles in common. Sam is her father, which means that the timeline hinted at between Catherine's mother and Sam is more or less blown to pieces. Catherine is a little more worked up over the fact that her biological father killed someone and covered it up, but I imagine once she's unwound from that, she could probably spin back up into a rage over the fact that Sam's refusal or inability to acknowledge paternity probably made her and her mother's lives much harder than they needed to be. So the scene winds down with Catherine bemoaning the manner in which she discovered the identity of her biological father, as opposed to Sam informing Catherine that her DNA hunch and their conversation will probably not go a long way toward building a case vis-à-vis Vivian's murder, since his squadron of attack lawyers will dissect their interactions six ways to Sunday before either one of them steps foot in a court.
The sun goes down in Vegas. Gil is in a hospital gown and flip-flops, swinging his crossed feet as his sits on the examining table and waits for a nurse to finish taking his blood pressure. She tells him the doctors are prepping the operating room for him and will be ready shortly. Gil does not look reassured by this. There's a long shot of him sitting there, breathing deeply as he tries to calm himself, and then Catherine pops in the doorway. Gil asks, "What are you doing here?" Catherine smiles and shrugs as she awkwardly says, "Just wanted to see you." Awww. She continues, "I didn't want you to go in without wishing you good luck." The nurse appears with the wheelchair then. Gil eyes it with trepidation, then eases off the examining table and walks over to Catherine. He tells her, "Thank you...for being here." Oh, God help me, I'm getting all verklempt over CS-frigging-I. Damn you, producers, for manipulating me so! Catherine looks near tears as she hugs Gil. Gil looks a little startled at first, but smiles as she pulls away. He then tells the nurse he doesn't need the wheelchair, and walks to his operation. Catherine watches him go -- in his hospital gown -- and smiles tearily as he wanders down the hall.
And that's how Season Three ends. Once again, I want to thank the tireless and patient (with me, anyway) editor Sars ["the pleasure is certainly mine" -- Sars] and all of y'all who read the recaps, post in the forums, send me email, and surprise me with the occasional Amazon wish list raid. It's been a hell of a ride this year, but y'all are the most fun part of the gig.