Golden showers bring...well, not flowers so much as burglars, if the opening sequence of this episode is to be believed. I like how they set up the guy who's peeing in the middle of the road as up to no darned good. My only question is, how was he holding the crowbar while he was, you know, aiming? It's not like we could tell down there at ankle level.
We get a few shifting scenes to indicate that the kids are pierced, bald, or gelled -- no stodgy hoods, these -- and we watch them progress toward their target a quick-cut at a time. First the backs of their heads, then their Doc Martens-clad feet. Then back up to the heads. Then down to the feet. Another quick cut and they're jumping the cinderblock fence and landing on a convenient table. Another quick cut and they're prying open the back door with the crowbar. We go to an aerial view as the two head inside. When they walk through the narrow kitchen, one comments, "This place doesn't look like much to me." The other one replies, "I'm telling you, this bitch is loaded, and no one's seen her for weeks." You know, nothing says, "You'll be seeing her now!" like that sort of statement.
As the two walk into the lit living room -- have these rocket scientists wondered why the living room is lit if nobody's seen the bitch in question for weeks? -- they notice the general state of disarray. "This place is trashed!" complains the most aesthetically sensitive. Oh, wait. He's not protesting on aesthetic grounds; he's worried that he's going to look stupid. The other kid protests that someone else must have had the same idea they did.
Just then, their gaze alights on the furniture shoved up against the closet door. "What the hell is this?" one of them asks. A siren blurts inquisitively outside, and the other makes the command decision to take off. The two head back from whence they came, leap over the fence...and straight into the spotlights a phalanx of cop cars have directed right at the spot where they jump. Heh. As the two boys put their hands on their heads as directed, we see them squinting in the bright glare
and then light pulls back. We see a flashlight, and Gil's bearded face at the end of it. He's intently studying the chair that's been wedged below a doorknob. It's a nice chair. Gil then dusts it for prints while Warrick hangs around. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Then we see Warrick dusting what appears to be a different flat surface, and telling Gil, "Smudges, nothing but smudges. Doesn't anyone use Formica anymore?" A uniform's standing by and telling Gil that the contents of the closet are a total mystery, as the police were loath to open it until the geek squad arrived. But now he's all impatience: "Are you gonna open it?" Gil assures him that they will eventually. "Eventually" actually translates to "in the time it took me to type the preceding sentence." There's some more dusting for prints, and Gil lifts a partial off the doorknob. The uniform mutters, "This is going to take all day." Gil replies, "Sun Tzu once said, 'If you wait by the river, the bodies of your enemies will float by.'" The uniform shoots back, "My mom once said, 'I'm not getting any younger.'" Oh, he does not. But just once, I'd like it if someone responded to some quoted tidbit with a smart-assed rebuttal. Gil then opens the door, flashlight at the reader.
“ Brass just gives him a level look, then resolves to call him mom and make sure that she's got everything from motion detectors to call-in buddies who will check up on her if nobody's heard from her in 48 hours. Or maybe I'm just projecting that last part. ”
The gray-green legs of a mummified corpse are resting on the floor of the closet. Gil and Warrick take in the twisted posture of the woman, her deeply-furrowed death grimace, and the limp gray hair, and Gil refers back to Sun Tzu by saying sardonically, "But those were brutal times."
The Who are having a brutally hard time figuring out who the hell we are.
When we get back from commercials, Emergency Backup David is preparing to wheel a gurney into the house. He's blocked by Warrick, who's a) at the door, and b) asking that David cool his heels since that woman's not about to rehydrate, reanimate, and skedaddle on out. David agrees, "I'm not going anywhere." Warrick goes through the mail and notes that there's at least four weeks' worth; Gil calculates, "Four weeks of a hundred-degree days with zero percent humidity. Eventually the body tissues sublimate, the fluids vaporize, and all that's left are proteins, fats and minerals." We see this happening in time-lapse as Gil narrates. Warrick comments, "Turns a grape into a raisin." What happens to a corpse interred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, or mummify indoors? Gil comments, "The desert was making mummies long before the Egyptians." I wonder if the early Egyptian mummifiers were merely hucksters trying to convince people that their mummification process was better than nature -- "You could keep Grandma on the sand dune in the back, but siroccos and camel spit will damage her -- why not use our patented Dri-Linen mummy technique instead?" Gil notices something, then calls Warrick over so he can bear witness too: the door is scored with scratches, and that scratched area splotched with blood. We then see that the poor woman's fingers are like half-chewed jerky. Warrick states the grim and obvious: "She tried to claw her way out." Gil adds, "Which means she was alive when she was entombed." And now we're back at those Egyptians again. Or at least at Aida and Radames, who were kind of Egyptian.
Meanwhile, Brass is outside gathering more evidence for the comprehensive thesis, "Kids these days are up to no damn good." The hood with the hair is alleging that the house's resident has to have been loaded, since she had the nerve to go out to dinner all the time and bring in shopping bags; he further endears himself to Brass by adding, "Bitch had insurance money, and word had it that she kept it hidden under her bed." Because this was 1930 and she didn't want anyone to know she had cashed out before the bank crash the year before? Brass contents himself with replying, "A retired grade-school teacher living on a pension?" Hairy Punker protests that he didn't kill the target of his burglary. Brass snorts that he knew that, and says what he's really more interested in is learning whether or not these two kids touched anything in the house. Hairy protests that there was nothing left to touch, trash, or take. Brass just gives him a level look, then resolves to call him mom and make sure that she's got everything from motion detectors to call-in buddies who will check up on her if nobody's heard from her in 48 hours. Or maybe I'm just projecting that last part.
The sun rises as Warrick is looking through the surprisingly intact kitchen. Intricately painted mugs are stacked on a scalloped shelf over the sink, and a full china tea service is laid out on the counter under a window, where it probably glowed in the sun. I have to give the CSI set-design team credit here for giving this victim's life more texture and poignant detail than the usual body-of-the-week gets. Warrick looks at the tea set, then sees a plastic grocery store container and a slice of chocolate cake with a bite taken out of it. It's remarkably mold-free and moist-looking; one wonders when it got in the house relative to when the teacher was killed, or if it's so full of preservatives and 64-carbon-long hydrocarbon chains that it's immune to any of the elements, period. Warrick explains why the cake strikes him as odd: "A woman taking the time to make tea like this leaves a chunk of chocolate cake on the counter?" Gil adds, "With a big bite out of it? Yeah." It's probably sick and wrong, but I like it when Gil takes a case personally. It's a nice, subtle way to develop his character, as opposed to having him wander around glassy-eyed while the soundtrack is all "mwah MWAH mwah mwah mwah MWAH." And Warrick's no slouch in the reaction department; he shakes his head while he checks out the "Lavish Caf" container and comments on the likelihood that some crackhead did this. Gil commands Warrick to take the cake back to the lab.
Gil then heads into the room with the closet, opens the closet door, shuts himself in, and imagines what it was like to be locked inside with no hope of escape. As he imagines, we also see the interspersed shots of the terrified woman being thrown into the lit closet, straining mightily to get out, sobbing as she claws at the bottom of the door, and then collapsing with a final weak groan. The light bulb in the closet burns out shortly afterward, and we're left back in the present, in a dark closet, with Gil. He looks like he's about to cry.
We then transition to the body on an autopsy table in the morgue, while David the Not-Quite-Outraged Coroner explains to Gil that, apart from multiple fractures on her fingers and hands, the old woman died with few injuries. Gil postulates, "So whoever boarded her up in the closet maybe didn't intend to kill her." David says, "They must have thought somebody would find her, a friend or relative." Gil points out, "She lived alone. Only relative was a nephew. Brass is looking for him." David sighs, "Live alone, die alone. In this case, from massive dehydration. Rule of threes: three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food." Spoken like someone who has never fretted over a friend or relative living alone. Gil says quietly, "Three days must have felt like three years." The two of them then get back to forensics: Gil needs prints and dental impressions to rule out any prints at the scene, and any impressions left in the cake. David partially obliges by popping out the denture plate, and then commences clipping off fingertips.
Don't you feel like a lighthearted B-plot at this point? You don't? Too bad -- you get one anyway. In the lush heart of well-manicured suburbia, Catherine's walking around someone's rolling green acres with a uniform. He's explaining that a gun more or less appeared out of nowhere, a little kid fired near his foot, then dropped the weapon, and nobody's touched the gun since. Anti-gun lobbyists begin bouncing excitedly as the gun's independent movement toward childish hands proves that, as a matter of fact, the guns are killing people (or at least trying), and they're taking the initiative now. Catherine is now standing over the gun. She picks it up and inspects it. At one point she notices a tiny piece of red ribbon.
Catherine then walks over to talk to the kid, who's dressed in his pajamas and sitting on his mother's lap. We establish that he's been given a rocket-ship Band-Aid for his troubles, and that his mother is somewhat silly: "My husband and I don't believe in guns." Not even after one wings your kid? I can see not believing in the tooth fairy, unicorns, or the presence of WMDs in a certain country, but when you've got actual evidence, I'd say it's time to start believing in guns, and maybe consider not-believing in something else. Then the woman mewls, "We moved here from the city because it was supposed to be safer." Oh, someone is about to become her homeowners' association's worst nightmare as she begin petitioning for some sort of watch to prevent further incursions by flying firearms. In any event, we go through the usual rigmarole to demonstrate that there's a reason Catherine works with the short set while Gil vibrates with fury over a mummy (she's good with childish quirks, whereas Gil would hear about Seymour the imaginary friend and say something to Brass like, "They don't believe in guns, but they do believe in imaginary friends," and then he and Brass would stand there and marinate in their general contempt). We also establish that the gun seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the planter.
Back in the unfun plot, Gil and Brass are awaiting the arrival of the mummy's nephew, who apparently aroused Brass's suspicion when he insisted on seeing his aunt's body. Conor Foster finally shows up, loping along and apologizing for his tardiness; he got lost on the way over. Conor finally registers some bodies on gurneys and asks, "This is the morgue, huh?" No, it's where the CSIs nap when they don't want to be disturbed.
Once everyone has decamped to the cool greenish light of the morgue proper, Gil tries to prepare Conor for what he's about to see: "You have to prepare yourself for this. Your aunt was found in an advanced state of decomposition." The words fall like so many gibberish syllables into Conor's ears. David pulls out the drawer and Conor looks down at his wizened green aunt for a moment before deciding, "Oh, this is messed up. This is really messed up. Whoa! She just moved! Did you see that? I'm telling you, she just moved." Gil and Brass are exchanging skeptical glances. Brass says calmly, "Sometimes, when you see the body of someone you know, someone you've seen move before, you want them to move." Conor persists, "That's not her. This lady's too thin. That's not her skin, either! My aunt always wore sunblock." Heh. Conor's what passes for a good time in the morgue. Gil says to Brass, "Dry him out. Diaphoresis. Red eyes, dilated pupils." Conor doesn't know what "diaphoresis" means. (It means you're sweating a lot, Conor. And you are.) Brass says, "You're high." "I gotta go," Conor replies. "We'd like you to stay," Brass assures him.