Hey, it's Las Vegas! For thirty seconds! I'm guessing the producers finally figured that four seasons in, we'd all know where the show takes place.
Music that someone far hipper than I would be able to identify bubbles up as we zoom abruptly from the skyline to a glossy roulette table. The ball whirls around the wheel as a slender blonde claps, "Okay, let's go! Come on -- don't fail me! Come on...black 22." She puts down a big pile of chips, and her partner, a dark-haired guy with a receding hairline, tells the dealer, "If this happens, I'm buying you a shot, man." The dealer closes the table to bets, we see the ball bounce some more and, with a big ol' stroke of luck -- or maybe plot contrivance -- it lands in the black 22 slot.
The blonde and her husband are ecstatic. The dealer places a bottle of clear fluid on top of the chips -- I guess he's a bartender as well as a roulette wheel operator -- and the couple's doing some more smoochy-face stuff. The blonde leans over the table and the guy rubs her back. Hey, it's Brian Bloom! Someone's going to end up dead some time soon, if his stint onOz is anything to go by. Wait -- what am I saying? This is CSI and we're less than a minute into the episode. Someone is going to end up dead here too.
Anyway, Brian's rubbing his wife's back, and he notices that another skinny blonde is watching him while her dark-haired husband is nuzzling her. The blonde at the roulette table gets her giant stack of chips. She throws her arms around Brian and tells him, "Let's cash out." He asks, "Why? I thought we were gonna take some risks tonight." Brian, your wife bears an uncanny resemblance to Jessica Simpson; if looks are anything to go by, your biggest risk of the evening will be getting drawn into a debate about whether tuna is fish or chicken. Anyway, the wife wants to go dancing, and Brian replies, "Okay -- as long as it's lap-dancing." The wife is not nearly so shocked by this as she pretends to be. As she hugs Brian, he looks over her shoulder and notices that the other blonde and her husband are no longer in their spot at the bar.
We then shift perspective so we're watching the bartender at that bar pour drinks for Brian and wife. Ah, heck -- until we get names, let's call her Jessica. Anyway, Brian orders them martinis, and Jessica's all, "Why don't we take those up to the room, 'cause I'm feeling a little, ah, frisky." She giggles through the whole proposition. That's always smooth. Brian ignores the woman currently flinging herself at him to peer around the bar until he finds the blonde and her husband again. Jessica figures out that Brian's attention is elsewhere, and she turns around to follow Brian's line of sight until she sees the other couple; both of them are now watching Jessica and Brian.
Jessica turns around and looks at Brian. He's not looking too unhappy to be caught out. She asks, "Do you know them?" He recovers with, "No. But how frisky do you feel?" Jessica proves that she's from a beer commercial, or maybe the Spice Channel, and not from a planet where someone might take umbrage at her husband being all, "Baby, thanks for the pass, but I'd like a little more company tonight." She leans back over and checks out the couple. There's some pointing and staring and laughing, and either the couples are going to have drinks together, or one of them is going to ask the waiter to pass a napkin with the message "Do you want to have a spouse-swapping party? Check () yes () no." The two couples meet for drinks. Wow, that other couple looks kind of evil.
And then we're watching the sun rise over Vegas, and for some reason, housekeeping has decided to begin making its rounds at the crack of dawn. Ooh, that's a sadistic hotel. The maid enters the room, opens a window, then turns around and begins screaming. The reason? There's a brunette in a slip dress slumped in a chair, her throat slit and its former contents sprayed all around the room.
The camera whirls around the room and ends up on...Gil. Boy, he got there fast. And he brought his beard with him. Gil walks by the stripped bed and checks the body. He observes, "The throat's been slit by what appears to be a very sharp implement." Catherine, who's busy checking out her plunging tank top in the blood-splattered mirror and wondering, "Should I maybe have worn something a little less recreational to work?", doesn't say anything. Gil notes that the room is completely stripped -- no bedding or sheets. Catherine adds that there are no towels either. Gil produces the wallet of the slain woman. She's Alice Dominguez, until recently of 311 Sephill, Los Angeles, CA . From the wallet, Gil concludes Alice wasn't robbed. Catherine adds that Alice isn't in her room either, as the room was registered to the Parkers, whoever they are. Gil then trains his flashlight on a diamond the size of a cashew and notes the wedding ring. He asks where the husband is. Before Catherine can answer, she's interrupted by a barely-audible buzz. Gil follows the sound with his eyes; it's coming from a cell phone attached to Catherine's bag. Looks like that operation worked, huh? Too bad for us: no more of those amusing "mwa WAH mwa wah wah WAH" exchanges. Gil points out, "I think your cell phone is vibrating." Catherine turns around and asks, "You heard that?" No, Catherine, he's got sonar now and he uses it to detect other disturbances in the air. Gil all casually clucks, "Mmm-hmm," while the strings of mirth are plucked on the soundtrack. Catherine picks up the phone and comments, "You're back." Gil looks up and says, "Huh?" Catherine quickly realizes he's kidding, and goes to answer her phone. Since Gil doesn't credit the rest of the audience with catching on as quickly as Catherine, he winks and smiles slightly. Oh, how puckish!
The Who don't know what to do with this new and improved Gil; they're wondering who he is.
Hey! New credits. No more Catherine walking around all saucy and wearing bangs. They kept Gil bashing the mannequin with the golf club, though.
When we return from the commercials, Brass is walking down the hotel hall with Nicky and Warrick. Did George Eads whittle off even more weight? It's not like he had a hefty screen presence before. Warrick opines that people are only killed in a hotel room for two reasons; Nicky adds that the reasons are sex and money. Brass explains that he's got the money angle covered, as the room was booked under a stolen credit card belonging to one elderly Mrs. Parker of Henderson, Nevada. He sums up the sex angle: "I want to be a believer." Nicky notes, "Room closest to the exit." Warrick adds, "Quick escape. Murder central." Somewhere, Sara's screaming, "I knew that!" Somewhere, but not here. The three amigos split up: Brass goes off to handle the door-to-doors, Nicky decides to take the exit, and Warrick takes the money trail.
Gil and Catherine are circling the late Alice Dominguez. Catherine opines, "This is very weird." You're telling me: Megan Donner's pirate pants just rose from the grave and claimed another victim. The CSIs are more weirded out by Alice's throat. The cut indicates that the person sat and faced her, slicing from the ear down to the larynx, and the cut's not very deep. Alice has no ligature marks, or any other marks indicating she was restrained. We see a flashback of her sitting in the chair, sobbing, as someone facing her holds the knife to her throat. Catherine asks incredulously, "She sat there and allowed someone to slit her throat?"
Down in the casino, Warrick runs into Sara. "Hey, girl! I wasn't planning on gambling. No sirree, those days are far behind me, just like Gil's chronic deafness, and your thing with Hank, and Catherine's issues with Eddie the duplicitous pancake-making bastard," he says. Or maybe he stops somewhere in the beginning of that. Sara's been getting information on Alice Dominguez; she had checked in with her husband to Room 859. Warrick notes that it's two floors away from where her body was found. Mr. Dominguez is currently nowhere to be seen; Warrick notes, "He's MIA, but he left a gambling paper trail. I have a signature and a thumbprint from where Mr. Dominguez signed a $5000 cash-advance check." Sara's intrigued. Warrick adds, "It was a cash advance on a credit card. That's not cheap -- ninety dollars every thousand." Sara's all, "That's a rip-off." Think that's a rip-off? Check out the interest rates the credit card will charge on that balance. Warrick's all, "He must be desperate. Must have had a bad night." But pity not the missing gambler. Sara reminds us that the missus is the one who got her throat slit. Warrick and Sara decide to check out the Dominguez suite together.
Brass, meanwhile, is talking to some middle-aged guy with a receding hairline and a bathrobe. We'll call him Brad. He looks like a Brad. Brad tells Brass that he heard the couple arguing earlier in the evening, but it was hard to tell what they were saying because "the walls in these joints are pretty thick." Wow, if the three seasons didn't compel me to suspend disbelief, this statement about soundproof hotel walls surely would. Brass asks if Brad got a good look at them; he did, through the spy hole. We see, however, that Brad is talking about Brian and Jessica. They're arguing. Jessica's all, "Why would you put me in that situation?" and Brian's rebutting, "I didn't put you in that situation!" Brass asks what time the dispute happened, and Brad rattles off 10:35. Brass is intrigued as to why Brad is so accurate. Brad answers, "Well, I had just ordered a pay-per-view movie, and it was just about to begin." Brass asks which movie. Brad replies, "Arma-get-it-on." Brass replies, "You mean Armageddon." "Hell, no. You think I'd admit to paying for a Ben Affleck movie? In which he sings? It's porn and I'm proud!" Brad replies. Actually, he just repeats the title. I suspect Brass was messing with him anyway. Brass asks, "Good movie?" "Worked for me," Brad replies. It's cinematherapy, guy-style.
Nicky is off lifting prints. I see that he, like Warrick, is wearing his CSI vest. Do you think they coordinated that on the phone? Anyway, he opens the door to the stairwell and walks into an M.C. Escher painting. Will he be going up the stairs? Will he be going down? Will he be doing both at the same time? Eventually Nicky wrests his way free and ends up at the valet stand in the parking garage. As he introduces himself, a valet who looks like he just rolled out of bed calls, "Nick Stokes? What's up?" Nicky's clearly drawing a blank. Valet says, "It's Kenny!" Nicky's vacantly affable expression doesn't change. The valet tries again: "Kenny Richmond!" Now Nicky realizes he should know who this clown is, but still can't place it. Kenny's all, "Rebel baseball, played backup catcher..." Nicky feigns recognition. It's now old-home week at the parking lot. I'm a little hung up on that Rebel thing; I thought Nicky went to Texas A&M, and they're the Aggies. Maybe it was intramural baseball and his team was named the Rebels? Maybe I'm overthinking this. Kenny's all impressed that Nicky's a CSI. We establish that Kenny's aware of something happening in the tenth floor, but he's under the impression that "some chick got her brains bashed in, right?" Nicky, overcome with relief that he's not parking cars with the rest of the engineering graduates and always eager to provide the correct answer, babbles, "Actually, she had her throat slit and bled out over the room. I'll know more when I check the surveillance camera." Kenny the valet asks why Nicky's in his office, as it were, and Nicky replies, "I'm just checking possible escape routes. She was murdered in the room closest to the exit. It's murder central." Oh, Nicky. Why don't you just lose the evidence now, since you're devoted to screwing up your work? Get a jump on your egregious gaffe quota for the night. Kenny the valet can't wipe the grin off his face: "Murder central, huh? Cool."
The morgue. David the Club-Attending Coroner is working over Alice's body and explaining, "Cut began at the carotid, severed the artery and the jugular vein, and terminated at the trachea. It's not as deep as I would expect for this kind of crime." Catherine asks incredulously, "He sliced her gently?" David notes, "Oftentimes the only thing intact is the spinal column. This did the job and nothing more." We find out that Alice was moderately sozzled at the time of her death, and all that Ecstasy in her bloodstream can't have helped either. Catherine and David toss around the idea that she was drugged before she was killed, and then move down to what David found in between Alice's toes. David holds up a sparkly purple square with an "S" punched in it. He explains, "There's a strip club, um, named Shimmer, on Industrial. I, um, recognized the 'S' almost immediately." Catherine's enjoying David's discomfiture. She eventually replies, "You go, Doc," and the mirthful strings plunk in the background while David gives a self-deprecating smile.
Sara and Warrick enter the Dominguez suite. It's pretty plush. Too bad nobody used it. The two CSIs rifle through the Dominguez duo's belongings. Warrick finds a receipt for gas from a station in Barstow, and from that gets the car's license plate number: "Two-Paul-Charlie-Edward-329." What kind of gas station makes you write your license plate on the receipt? Let's just pretend it's the hotel parking ticket, because that makes more sense.
The shot is of Sara and Warrick walking on different levels in the parking garage, checking out each of the cars to see if any match the license plate number. Nicky finds the car eventually -- with a dead Mr. Dominguez in the front seat. And then he scampers off to find his friend Kenny the valet, so he can tell him too.
Within seconds, the car is a crime scene. Nicky tilts back Mr. Dominguez's head and notes that his throat wound is much different from his wife's. Where hers was from the front, his is from the back. We see a flashback of the action. It's not tidy. Sara checks out the car and finds a bloody knife tossed in the back seat. It looks like Mr. Dominguez had a bad night too. Maybe now Sara will be sympathetic.
We transition from the bloody knife blade to its photo session as it's documented for evidence. Then we're in the lab, as Nicky hands over the knife to Jacqui the print tech and asks her to match the thumbprint off Mr. Dominguez's cash-advance check against the prints he found on the knife and the exit door. Jacqui's happy to have the thumbprint to work with: "Inkpads make for great exemplars." Gil sits in a corner and observes without saying anything. Jacqui compliments Nicky on the prints he lifted; Gil gives Nicky a look. Oh, we're in for a season with these two, huh? Jacqui confirms that the prints all match Dominguez, and Gil's all, "One print belonging to the husband, but we have two victims --" "Speaking of twos," Liam interrupts. Gil turns around looking all irritated that someone interrupted him, and Liam adds, "I found blood from both victims on the knife." Gil recovers: "So it's possible the husband killed the wife. Who killed the husband?"
We'll find out after this detour to a strip club. George Stephanopoulos and Yoko Ono watch a young woman get to know a brass pole. Well, two extras who look like them get to, anyway. As the women dance, an off-duty stripper tells Gil and Catherine, "Yeah, they look familiar -- from the neck up." She's looking at copies of Alice and Checo Dominguez's licenses. Yes, the man is named Checo. Even in death, he has no dignity. The stripper explains that she gave each Dominguez four or five lap-dances apiece. Catherine says, "So they were George?" Gil looks at her, and she translates, "Big tippers." The stripper says that no, the Dominguez couple wasn't, but their little friends were, what with them picking up the bill. Gil's all, "The other couple?" The stripper explains that the party of four was in the VIP booth. We flash to her giving Alice lap dances. The stripper explains, "The four of them came in together, and the other couple just wanted to watch. I assumed they were friends. Good friends." We flash to the stripper giving Alice a body shot while another couple -- their features obscured in darkness -- watches. The stripper explains, "I didn't get a good look at the other couple, but they slid that money across the table...mmmm. A brick this big." She holds up her fingers to indicate a respectable sum, and continues, "Like I said, they just wanted to doggie in the window." Gil turns to Catherine, and without even looking over at him, she deadpans, "Watch." You know, maybe it's time for Gil and David to have a conversation where David explains, "Sometimes, when a man has some money and he wants to see a woman..." The stripper continues giving us all a lesson in lexicography: "They were subbing drinks left and right." Gil tries to puzzle that one out and fails. Catherine to the rescue: "Ordering clear drinks to keep the party going. What'd they order?" We find out that the drinks were vodka or soda water; the Dominguezes got the vodkas, while the shadowy faceless couple got the soda waters.
Just then, Catherine's cell phone goes off and she turns away to answer it. The stripper does this thing with her arms where she ends up looking like Kali in one of her rare good moods, and flirtatiously greets Gil. "Would you like a dance?" she asks. Then she throws her head back and does another flirty move with her arm. Gil removes his glasses before they steam up, and looks like he's seriously contemplating the offer. Catherine notices, and cuts in to tell Gil she's got to be at the courthouse, as there's a last-minute evidentiary hearing concerning the Sam Braun case. Gil's back to normal now. The stripper asks, "You sure you don't want a dance? I could be your specimen. You could be my mad scientist." Because Gil has apparently lost the capacity for speech, Catherine has to step in. She snaps, "He already is, sweetheart. Thanks." The dancer cocks an eyebrow in regret for the beautiful relationship that could have been. Gil looks remorseful too -- maybe he's thinking, "It's true. I am a mad scientist." Then he heads out.
Back at the lab, Archie is taking Sara through the last footage the hotel has of the live Dominguezes. They're in the elevator with the not-Brian couple we saw in the opening sequence. Archie also points out that the couple arguing at 10:35 was not the same couple that was with the Dominguezes; that's the Brian-and-Jessica couple, and they happened to be on the elevator down. Going up, however, they were in the elevator with the other non-Dominguez couple. Sara asks for a still so she can ID Brian and Jessica, and Archie manages to pull a hotel key from the Tangiers casino. Sara's all, "Do me a favor. Call Grissom." Oh, now she feels all awkward talking to him?
Meanwhile, in the break room, an anchordroid is breathlessly reporting new leads in the Sphere casino killings. FYI, the Sphere is where the Dominguezes were found. Both Warrick and Nicky look up as the anchordroid reports, "According to sources at the crime lab, the killer most likely fled the room CSIs call 'Murder Central,' the nearest room to the emergency exit." Nicky looks like someone who just realized he topped the bestseller list with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Idiocy. When the anchordroid continues, "The CSIs are currently studying surveillance footage in an effort to identify possible suspects," Nicky reaches above his head, flips on the "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" neon sign hanging over it, then says, "What the hell?" "What?" Warrick asks. Nicky's all, "Kenny Richmond, that's what." Nicky, you're writing the sequel, An Even More Heartbreaking Case of Staggering Run-off-at-the-Mouth-itis. Warrick wonders why he needs to know who Kenny is. Nicky explains the valet-baseball connection, and Warrick's all, "Don't tell me you opened your mouth to this guy." Why does Warrick even have to ask? This is Nicky we're talking about. Warrick correctly points out, "You could lose your job over something like this." I find it hard to believe that nobody ever bothered to point out to the CSIs, "Don't run off at the mouth to impress half-forgotten acquaintances." Nicky claims that telling Kenny's valet and media hotline service isn't the same thing as telling the media directly. Warrick urges him to go and confess to Gil anyway, adding, "He'll don the cassock and everything. The beard totally adds to the effect." Nicky frantically equivocates that anyone at the scene could have blabbed. Oh, if that's not an indication of guilty behavior, I don't know what is. Warrick replies, "You going to wait until he comes to you and then lie about it?" *Poof!* Gil appears and asks, "Lie about what?" Boy, he sneaks up on ya. You'd think that someone who was until very recently deaf would be sensitive to what it's like to be sneaked up on, but no. Nicky looks up with an incredibly guilty face. I have no doubt that the post-operative, sonar-using, winking Gil Grissom can deduce everything he needs to know from Nicky's face.
Hey! It's the Clark County administrative building. I was here recently, straightening out my egregiously misspelled marriage license. Word to the wise: check all spelling when you're getting the license. I have no idea who Mr. Sobell was married to for two years, but if spelling is anything to go by, it wasn't me. Catherine, who's covered up her tank top with a blazer so she only looks like a pirate from the waist down, heads into the courthouse. It turns out to have been a wasted trip; the shouting media horde surrounding Sam Braun as he leaves after getting the evidence thrown out underscores how badly Catherine screwed up the case.
Brian and Jessica speak! They're talking to Brass and Gil and explaining they were on first-name-only basis with "Mandy" and "Cameron." Brian explains that he met them at the roulette tables, there was a little liquor involved, and then he and Jessica got invited back up to Mandy and Cameron's room. He justifies it with, "It was Vegas. We were looking for a little excitement." That's my biggest complaint about Vegas: it's packed with people all trying to live out the crazy nonsense they see in a Coors commercial. If they didn't annoy me so badly, I'd feel sorry for people who let bad beer manufacturers tell them what "fun" is. But I hate them all, so let them suffer! Ha ha ha ha ha!
Ahem. We're now in the middle of Brian's flashback, in which Mandy is losing her top and kissing Cameron as the liquor flows. Sure enough, Jessica's soon lost her dress too. Brass asks, "Did you find it?" Jessica says, "No. Not at all. They creeped us out." Brian explains, "He asked me, ah, he asked me how much I loved my wife." Brian looks awkward, as does Jessica. Perhaps they've seen their marriage for the hollow sham of convenience it is. Brass asks, "Is that a crazy question?" Jessica explains it wasn't the question so much as it was the tone. We get another small and icky flashback, and Jessica elaborates on how Cameron's repetitive asking got kind of creepy after a while, and then "Mandy asked how far we'd go to prove it." Brass asks, "Prove what?" "The Pythagorean theorem," Jessica replies. Oh, she does not. It's how far Brian and Jessica would go to prove their love. Apparently things got awkward when a naked Mandy made a dive for Brian's crotch. What? I thought that's why they went into the hotel room -- so Brian and Cameron could be all, "Hey! We look kind of alike! And our wives are interchangeable! Let's all have sex!" Jessica and Brian get into a weird little argument about timing and who liked what, and it's all a big cruel joke for Brass and Gil, since neither one of them seems like they're routinely hitting the hotel rooms for a night of creepy foursome sex. Apparently the bickering ruined Mandy and Cameron's mood. Gil remarks, "I don't know how fighting works for your marriage, but it probably saved your lives." That's not going to catch on as a public service announcement. Brian and Jessica look like they agree.
Warrick and Catherine in the unisex locker room. Am I wrong to be disturbed by this concept? I just keep waiting for Liam to wander by in a banana hammock, saying, "What? If it feels good, do it!" Anyway, Catherine sighs. Warrick asks, "Need some help with that?" Catherine's all, "Help with what?" Warrick replies, "That weight on your shoulders." Oh, God, did the writers produce this during Take Your Daughters To Work day? Will we end this scene on with a shirtless Warrick riding off on a unicorn? Anyway, the piano of poignancy tinkles while Catherine is shocked that she's so transparent. She tells Warrick what's going on with Sam Braun. He replies, "[Sam] made his bones in Vegas. What did you expect?" That the case would magically resolve itself, like the other personal cases the CSIs get to work? Warrick adds, "The guy's bulletproof." Catherine groans, "I'm not." Warrick's all, "Wanna talk about it? We have this piano going, so it means I'm sensitive right now. Plus there's no way you did anything stupid like Nicky." Catherine says, "Sam told me it takes a lifetime to establish a reputation and just a second to ruin it. When I suspected that Sam was my father, I didn't go to him. I didn't go to Grissom. I went to Liam and had him run a DNA test." Warrick gasps, "On who?" Catherine admits that she ran it on herself. Warrick asks what Catherine used as an exemplar. Catherine replies, "Blood evidence from the case." And that's why they kicked it. Would it be unseemly for me to gloat? Yes? Ah, well. I'll just move on to the paragraph then...
After saying I TOLD YOU SO! I TOLD YOU SO! I TOLD YOU SO!
Okay, so Warrick, Catherine, locker room, tinkling piano, Catherine looking regretful. She tearfully admits, "I'm just afraid." Warrick wants to know what she's afraid of. She says, "A backlash." Oh, save us from Someone Will Try To Ruin Her All Season: The Catherine Willows Story.
And now we're at the delightfully low motel, the Fez. Gil and Brass are walking across the lawn and discussing how this might be the serial killer, but he or she has downgraded. Gil hits the hotel room, opens the door, and tries the lights. Naturally, they don't work. So he flicks on the flashlight -- the better to be all creeped out, my dear -- and heads into the hotel room. Sure enough, the bed is stripped. It's also in remarkably good shape. Where is the U-shaped mattress? Where are the mysterious stains shaped like Midwestern states? We see the victim sitting in a chair, throat slit in roughly the same manner as the last one. There's a lot less blood in this room, though. Why is that? Captain Exposition tells us the neat bleeder is named Wendy Laggerman; she's not a patron of the Fez. She is, however, married, so the obvious question becomes, "Where's Mr. Laggerman?"
Brass is checking cars. Gil joins him, and soon they spy a small SUV with someone sitting very still in the passenger seat. You can see the resolution of this scene coming a mile off. Gil leans closer to the passenger, flashlight trained on his face, when the man wakes. Gil starts back and actually exclaims, "Jeez!" Holy cow, what did those doctors do to him?
Gil reports to Brass on the victim who wasn't -- who was merely catching some shuteye in the parking lot before checking in -- while a smirking turkey with a fauxhawk watches the goings-on and shovels ice from the machine into his ice bucket. He's not watching what he's scooping, which explains why the ice is getting redder and redder, and when he finally notices, he screams for help. Brass is all, "Take it easy." That's too bad; I'd love to see an episode where he completely loses his cool and begins pointing and bellowing, "Oh, that's gross!"
Anyway, Brass wrangles Frank Fauxhawk; Gil makes a note of the man crammed into the ice machine and bleeding slowly all over its contents. Gil comments, "This one's different. It's not right."
A few hours pass, if the appearance of daylight is anything to go by. Gil is finally getting around to doing something about that ice machine and the body therein. It would be a wonder if they can find the body under all the ice the machine will have made.
Anyway, Gil pops up, and Emergency Backup David looks aghast. Perhaps he's just reacting badly to Gil wearing a dark red shirt. Perhaps he's colorblind and is wondering when Gil began wearing green. Whatever the reason, Gil cautioning Emergency Backup David to be careful because the body's in rigor, so it will have to be tilted, certainly does nothing for the young coroner's mood. Emergency Backup David asks, "Tilt it, sir?" The faint strains of the wacky forensics hijinks theme song begin playing. Gil elaborates, "Downward 90-degree angle, then up, tilt, and out." We all know where this is headed; the fun is in seeing what the trip will be like. Emergency Backup David gestures a silent extra and directs him, "I'll take the shoulders, you take the feet." They lean into the square opening and attempt to move the body around. It's not going well. Gil is hovering behind them, making frantic directing gestures with his hands and wincing every time the body clangs against something. It's like watching a mime. A forensic mime. Can you imagine what the court testimony from one of those would be like? I'm sorry. I appear to have drifted off for a moment whilst David and the Unknown Coroner fail to get the corpse out. Emergency Backup David pleads, "Sir, we can't get him. His knee's bent." Gil leaves the land of Marcel Clouseau and tartly directs Emergency Backup David to put the body back carefully. Then he reaches in and dislocates the dead guy's hip. There's a crispety crunchety sound, and then Gil stands back, saying, "There. Now try."
Once the body is cleared away, the Young Turks prepare to do a bucket brigade so they can bring the ice back to the lab. I look forward to seeing how it's going to be photographed, catalogued, and stored. Sara's a little loopy from the prospect: "This is our first bucket brigade, gentlemen. Now try saying that ten times fast. Bucket brigade, bucket brigade, bucket brigade..." Warrick looks at her and wonders when he became the least crazy person on the shift. Gil tells everyone to hop to, what with Vegas having one of its interstitial heat waves between monsoons, and we go into a big ol' ice-scooping montage. Yes, watching a latex-gloved hand scoop bloody ice is every bit exciting as you might think.
Eventually, Gil finds a knife. Warrick whistles in appreciation; Gil says, "Would you like to bag this for me, Warrick? My hands are a little numb." Nicky watches apprehensively. Sara helps Warrick with the bagging. Gil notices a bloodstain on the side of ice machine and asks Sara to take a sample; he directs Warrick to help as soon as he finishes bagging the knife. Nicky is one minute away from having an Edgar Allan Poe-style meltdown and hysterically confessing that if you pry up the floorboards, you can hear the blabbering of his indiscreet mouth. Gil forestalls this by calling Nicky inside the hotel room instead. Warrick and Sara stand together and give him the "you are so busted" look, and Nicky gives them a faux-nonchalant look in return.
He and Gil head inside the hotel room. If that's a step down from the Sphere, it's not a very dramatic descent. The room is done is a beautiful deep blue with some charming mismatched Arts & Crafts-style chairs and a little dining area, a great 1950s chandelier...it's actually kind of cute. Gil says, "Shut the door, Nick." Nicky looks like he's about to throw up. He asks, "You want to talk?" Gil sighs. He answers, "No. I want to see the room the way they left it." Nicky stands there for a moment, the cogs visibly turning in his brain. He closes the door and braces for whatever arcane mental arts Gil will be using in the application of this week's smackdown. After Nicky comments that, "if it's anything like the Sphere, we're not going to find much," Gil replies peevishly, "We're still going to look." Oh, someone is in trouble.
Gil heads over to the general area of the bed while Nicky heads to the bathroom. When Nicky's done in the bathroom, he comes out and finds Gil staring at the Magic Quarters box on the bed. We establish that Gil's never seen one of these in person before. Nicky explains, "Magic fingers. Twenty-five cents for fifteen minutes of vibration. Died a slow death in the 1970s due to vandalism and seedy connotations. Good for sex. Good for sleep...too." Gil thinks it's good for them, since "given the killer's appetite for sexual persuasion, maybe they blew the circuit," which would explain why the lights were out. Nicky realizes the prints on the coins used to overload the Magic Fingers could help nail down the killers.
Cut to them dumping out the filthiest collection of coins ever. Somewhere, a numismatist is weeping. Catherine photographs them while Gil and Nicky dust them for prints. You know, they're using ordinary powder; whatever happened to Gil's homegrown red creeper or red devil or whatever it was called? Did I imagine that? ["Nope." -- Sars] After they finish the coins, the power's restored. Catherine asks, "So why this place? How do you go from the Sphere to the Fez?" Gil looks all sorrowful and wise as he asks, "What do you think, Nick?" "I think that the beard makes you look Christlike, and boy, won't there be a CSI in Miami who's gnashing his teeth because he can't channel that look," Nicky responds. Actually, he doesn't. His guilt and self-loathing compel him to say, "A reporter got some inside information. Killer probably heard about himself on the news, changed the MO." Catherine says tartly, "Great. Help the bad guys. I'm sure the Laggermans appreciate that." Oh, go tell it to Warrick. It's not like he's ever run off at the mouth, except -- oh, wait. He did. Gil gives Nicky another look of infinite suffering and compassion, and Nicky chokes out that he has to get to the lab to work on those quarters. The lab techs get feisty if anyone interferes with the scheduled beer-lympics, and Nicky's point man for funnels, plastic tubing, and quarters. Gil hands over the coins with a lot of gravitas. What, is he waiting for a cock to crow three times in the background?
Anyway, after Catherine cleans up, Gil pops a coin in the Magic Fingers and tells Catherine, "I need fifteen minutes to think." Catherine tells him to enjoy. Gil chills on the bed. This is...wow, did someone give Gil a really good prescription while he was in the hospital? I mean, I'm all for it. I just want an explanation.
Nicky does fingerprint-processing penance in the lab. As he's working, Liam comes in -- and let me note here that both Liam and Nicky are wearing the lab's new uniform, dark blue lab coats, and it's kind of disorienting. I liked the old uniforms better. In any case, Liam is pleased to report that the blood smear had two different blood types in it -- the victim's and that of an unknown donor. Nicky figures the unknown donor is probably the killer.
Back at the hotel, Gil's up and about again, and musing to Catherine, "So they lure the victims with promises of sex, and they get them to the room, and they say, 'Just kidding. We don't want sex. We want your life.'" We get the flashbacks that explain everything: the killer is explaining how it's about trust, and Checo is holding a knife against Alice's throat as we hear, "How much do you love your wife?" Gil asks the question we all want the answer to: "That still doesn't explain how they get the husband to kill his wife." Catherine replies, "They had to have been in some kind of situation where they couldn't say no." Gil correctly infers that the husband had a gun to his head. So the deal is: the killer pulls a gun on the husband and orders him to cut his wife's throat under some crazy-ass "it's about love and trust and proof and our weird little rationale" line of reasoning that includes threats of rape and torture -- kill the wife quickly now, or keep her alive so that other people can make her death more prolonged and painful. I'm guessing that this episode was conceived and shot before the management decided CSI was a family show. Or maybe the pro-family message here is that people who swing outside the traditional boundaries of the marital set-up deserve to die in extraordinarily sadistic ways. Either interpretation works. Catherine sums up the situation with, "It's just so sick." The one useful thing to come out of that scene -- other than our understanding of the killer's motives -- is the information that whomever stabbed Mr. Laggerman also cut him- or herself, and that blood can link them to the crime.
Nicky's still plugging away at the coins. He actually gets a match off Mandy Klinefeld, whom we'll all remember as part of the creepy, non-Brian-and-Jessica couple. The music gets all urgent as Nicky lopes through the Labitrail and hails Gil with Mandy and Cameron Klinefeld's license photos. Nicky's all het up about the discovery, arguing, "It's got to be them. Who stays at a hotel when you live here?" Gil assumes another long-suffering look and replies, "Assume nothing, Nick." Nicky just stands in the hall and looks dismayed. That poor guy -- he's trying to atone, and it's just not working.
We get an aerial shot of what looks like an extremely nice resort. Then we're heading toward an extremely nice pool area. Brass is asking a cop/trooper/uniformed type who found the couple, and he explains that the one Green Valley Ranch security guard who actually bothers to check APBs picked up on Nicky's and reported the car. Gil and Brass make their way to cabana number four, where the Klinefelds are busy feeding each other peeled grapes and engaging in other activities more commonly found in music videos about sexing up and getting down. There is, of course, another couple with them. Brass puts a damper on the mood by sending the Klinefelds' company off with another police officer. He ignores Cameron's quip about "that's not the cocktail waitress" -- very good, you Oscar Wilde, you -- and rattles off all the things the CSIs suspect the Klinefelds of doing. Cameron cops to the Fez: "I got a hooker. She watched. She likes it. It gets her off." Why is it every couple on this show that admits to engaging in anything other than quiet domestic sex ends up being both insufferable and homicidal? There was that first Lady Heather case with the guy who saw the sub to deal with his wife issues, and then the second Lady Heather case with the jackass who saw the sub to deal with his wife issues while his wife got dominated to deal with her husband issues, and now this? It's kind of ironic that for all its sexual titillation, this show is pretty conservative in that nobody is allowed to enjoy sex for long. No wonder the CSIs never date; their job probably kills their libidos than saltpeter and cold showers could ever hope to.
In any event, Cameron fronts, while Mandy just sits there and smiles. He asks, "What's the problem?" and Brass replies with some asperity, "The problem is, people keep showing up dead in your hotel rooms." Mandy elects to gloss over this and asks Gil, "What are you looking at? My feet?" Gil sets her straight: he's looking at Cameron's feet. More specifically, he's looking at the Shimmer confetti stuck to the bottom of Cameron's sandals. Ew, he wears sandals to a strip club? That just seems wrong somehow. Mandy makes noises about harassment. Gil goes temporarily and selectively deaf, and after fixing on the cut on Mandy's hand, asks Cameron, "How much do you love your wife?" This gets Cameron's attention.
And then he and Gil engage in a quote-off.
Cameron: "Love is not love."
Gil: Shakespeare.
Cameron: "Let me not the marriage of two minds..."
Gil: "Admit impediments. Love is not love..."
Cameron: "But bears it out to the edge of doom."
Gil: One of the sonnets. Love is conditional.
Cameron: [looks at Mandy] For most people.
Gil: [grinning and pointing] But not for you.
Just once, I'd like to meet a killer who quotes situationally inappropriate poets and playwrights -- say, Sir Walter Scott -- and comes off like a preening jackass. Or I'd like to see the killer who breaks out the Yeats and mocks Gil for not recognizing "No, no, not night but death / was it needless death after all?" from "Easter, 1916." Just once.
Well, it's not happening today. The powers that be do throw me a bone in the form of a group brainstorm. Gil heads the evidence-clogged table with, "We've got a husband and wife serial-killing couples. So let's see where we're at, starting with the first double murder. Sara?" Who is this "Sara" of whom you speak? Was she in the episode? Sara points out the bloody knife pointing back to Alice Dominguez. And then Catherine jumps in: "We suspect that Mr. Dominguez was forced to kill his wife for the promise of freedom." We flash back to Mandy urging poor Checo to cut Alice's throat. Nicky adds that the prints he found support that scenario. Sara fleshes out what happened after Alice was killed: the Klinefelds walked Checo down to his car, then killed him. The glitter on the Dominguezes links them to the Klinefelds via the glitter on Cameron's shoe; Gil thinks the couples may have met up there. However, nobody can positively ID the Klinefelds as being with the Dominguezes. Even the flashback seems to hedge bets on this; the blonde is virtually useless for ID purposes, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that it is the Klinefelds, because the guy's hair seems too sleek and flat to be Brian's. That's just my guess after pausing the TiVo. The team moves on to murder number two. Nicky squirms guiltily as everyone comments on the paucity of usable evidence. Catherine decrees that they'll all have to get inside the house and hope the Klinefelds haven't done a lot of whites.
Getting inside the house is going to be harder than previously thought: Catherine's hijinks with the Braun case have made the judge wary about what constitutes probable cause. The judge balks at the DNA admixture. Gil reminds him, "DNA, if given a warrant, can clear or convict --" "Are not enough for me to violate the Klinefelds' right to privacy," the judge interrupts. Gil reminds the judge that he's signed warrants for less. The judge snaps, "Yes! And where did it get me? Just last week, the appeals court overturned one of our convictions based on a search warrant I gave to one of your sidekicks. We make a habit of this, I'm never going to get to the Foley Building." Oh, where to begin? With a judge admitting outright to law enforcement that he'll only give warrants on slam-dunk cases? With the weird timeline confusion swirling around the Braun case now -- there's no way it would have gone to trial that fast, and it's not at all clear from the show that the evidentiary hearing is connected in any way to any sort of conviction. This is giving me a headache. The upshot is: no warrant.
Nicky's still doing penance in the lab. Catherine comes by and comments, "Funny. Doesn't look like a doghouse." Nicky gives her a look before saying, "Grissom ratted me out, huh?" Catherine corrects him: "No. You ratted yourself out. Hey, Nick. I know you're proud of what you do. You're good at what you do, and you want people to know what you do, but once you open your mouth, it's all over, 'cause what we say ends up in the news." Nicky does not snap, "Really? I hadn't noticed!" He makes noises about learning the hard way. They smile, and it's a moment, and it's kind of rich given that Catherine's work on the Braun case may or may not have made it more difficult for everyone to get warrants on subsequent cases.
In any event, Nicky and Catherine are watching the first few minutes of this episode, only their version is on security tape. When both couples are hanging out together, Catherine's all, "What you want to bet the Rifkins" -- hee! They're named after science gadfly Jeremy Rifkin! Also, for those who are all, "Who?" this is the Brian-and-Jessica couple -- "are drinking vodka and the Klinefelds are drinking soda." Nicky then notices that Mandy swabbed out Brian's ear with her tongue. The two CSIs quickly conclude that perhaps Mandy does this to every guy she wants to kill, and they sprint down to see if maybe they can't retrieve some DNA-laden saliva from Checo's ear canal.
After a tense little sequence where they're racing down to the morgue at the same time Emergency Backup David is preparing to wash the body -- and what is up with the timeline there? Why wasn't he washed around the same time he was autopsied? Anyway, there's a little tense scene, but they get to the unwashed ear canal of Checo Dominguez, and we get the first TMI-cam shot of the night at the 54-minute mark as we see how saliva can get caught on gummy ear wax.
A quick DNA test later, we see that the DNA from the saliva matches the DNA from the ice-machine blood admixture, and we've got probable cause to suspect Mandy Klinefeld as a killer.
Warrant in hand, Gil and Brass head over to the Klinefeld residence. After dispatching a phalanx of cops around the premises, Brass and Gil head to the front door, which is conveniently open. The two exchange looks. Brass pushes open the door and calls, "Las Vegas police! Mr. and Mrs. Klinefeld, we have a warrant." They go on in. There are candles flickering, and the TV's on. However, Mandy's not watching, possibly because she's been shot in the back and is lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Brass calls out to Gil, "We've got a problem." Gil, who has just stumbled across a slumped Cameron sporting his own gunshot (at heart level), does not call back, "Make that two problems." Instead, he stares and looks generally taken aback while Brass exposits, "Somebody got to our killers before we did." Gil looks taken aback some more, Brass raises his flashlight...and the light floods the screen until the words "TO BE CONTINUED" flash across the screen.