A bus goes winding along a remote mountain road. Because this is CSI and the show's all about being gruesome and serious, we don't hear its occupants singing, "Ninety-nine inmates are up for parole / ninety-nine inmates are up / if one of those cons / should happen to go / ninety-eight inmates are up for parole…" Instead, we just see the bus chugging along while the lone car tailing it follows too closely and lays on the horn. The guy's all honking because he secretly suspects that the bus driver hasn't fired up the hyperdrive and hit warp 5 in his 1950s-style bus out of sheer perversity, while his distaff partner is all, "Honey, just pass him." Lady, consider the man in whose car you've elected to travel: when he wants your advice, he'll tell you what it is.
This goes on for a while, and the car attempts to pass over the double yellow line a few times, but the bus driver really is a petty jerk because he speeds up when the car does. Heh. The passenger snaps matter-of-factly, "Calm down and just pass him." Ah, well, the SUV coming from the opposite direction might not take to that. The guy veers back behind the bus, and then his frazzled nerves are frayed just a little more when a severed human arm wetly splatters onto his windshield. The guy hits the brake and veers off the road, presumably to see if his seat's upholstery repels liquid spills like the salesman promised it did.
Cut to Brass pondering the arm, his fingers touching his chin thoughtfully as if to confirm that they're all still attached to the Brass corpus. He's distracted by Catherine hollering his name the county over. She and Nicky come over, and Catherine asks if there's a dead body or not. "That arm crash-landed on the windshield of the car. According to the driver, it shot out from under the bus. Generally speaking, where there's an arm, there's a body." Nicky attempts to be all Nick Stokes: Man of Action with, "Whaddya say we check out the bus?" and Brass deadpans, "Good call." As everyone walks over, Brass exposits that the passengers were on their way to a work-release program. Nicky doesn't ask any more questions, presumably because he's now afraid of the women who are all staring lasciviously at him and making comments. Heh. That totally reminds of the summer I lifeguarded at a pool where girls from the local juvenile detention center would come swim during strictly-supervised visits: prior to their first weekly appearance, all the guys I worked with were all, "All right! Reform school girls!" because they all cherished the fond, Cinemax-derived delusion that girls who went to juvie were really just nubile naughty cuties who would spend a lot of time finding excuses to have sunscreen wrestling matches in their bikinis. So you can imagine how shaken they were the first time the girls came in and they realized that this crew, with their DIY tattoos and bathing suits that looked like they were designed by a 1960s-era Communist collective for which women were but a theoretical abstraction, would be ogling them poolside. Ah, recalling their aghast and fearful expressions as they watched the guards bring the girls in still makes me laugh.
Anyway, Catherine finds blood on the wheel well, then hunkers down to see all the assorted body parts hanging from assorted parts of the undercarriage. "Oh, yeah. That's a definite 4-19," she sighs. Incisive exposition like this is why she's a senior CSI. Not. I can't believe that she is the first person to peer under that bus and notice the pieces and parts just dangling there. You'd think Brass would have a look-see. Or, you know, the bus driver, once someone pulled him over and was all, "By the way, you're leaking bloody dismembered body parts." I know leaning over while I said, "No wa -- oh, GROSS!" would have been the first thing I did. Anyway, Catherine deduces that the body belonged to a Caucasian woman (the loosely-hanging blonde head is responsible for that call) and Nicky's all, "Tied to the undercarriage, maybe." You think? Remember, he's promotion material. Brass is now sprawled out on the ground to Catherine. He comments, "Hitch a ride to a bus -- that's one way to get out of jail." Nicky's all, "This big boy spit out body parts all the way down the road." However, it spit out body parts outside of the jail, so Brass's statement still holds.
Catherine breaks out the beginner-level algebra with, "The bus is going 65 miles an hour" -- and here is where Honking Harry should shout, "It didn't go over 40!" -- "so what's the distance from the tip of her nose to the tip of her toes?"
The Who managed to figure it out, and have moved on to asking who we are.
We get back from what must be the longest commercial break in the history of television, since several hours have elapsed and it's now pitch-black outside. Catherine is pulling herself out from the bus undercarriage and telling Nicky that the dead woman used strips from a white cotton sheet. "Use whatever's available when you're breaking out of prison, I guess," Nicky comments. Catherine comments on the low thread count. Yeah, well, that may not always be the case. But she's not taking note of it because being subjected to coarse cotton/poly-blend percale constitutes cruel and inhuman treatment, but rather because its tensile strength isn't very good. We flash to the escaping prisoner feeling her bonds loosen as the road speeds beneath her and the wheel axles move ominously. And then we hear the sheets tearing, see her body fall down, and watch her get a face full of asphalt at 50 miles an hour. Yeesh. Just in case the visual didn't do it for you, Nicky comments, "The torque of the axle ripped her apart like the rubber off a bad retread." Catherine comments, "If this was nylon rope, she'd be on her way to Tijuana." Nicky's off to get auto detail to grab the bus; Catherine orders him to then grab Sara and head directly to jail. She'll supervise the body part collection.
And how. We get a few close-ups of a lone foot, abraded and bruised, through a camera lens. Once Catherine finishes photographing it, Emergency Backup David collects it. This goes on for some time as the team moves to pieces that look less like prop body parts and more like giblets someone pulled out of their Thanksgiving turkey and stored against the day they might be used on the show.
Meanwhile, across the valley, back in Las Vegas, Gil looks around a none-too-clean apartment and wonders why he didn't get to say the cheesy line before the credits rolled. Actually, he looks down at a bloodied body on the floor while Warrick takes pictures of the body, the blood, the knife, and the rest of the apartment. We spend a moment looking at a bloodstain on a white couch cushion, just so we'll know it's significant later. Warrick comments, "Helter-skelter." Gil replies, "Yeah. Except there's no blood spatter on the walls or the ceiling." So it's really nothing like the Manson family killings at all. Warrick looks at the body and states the obvious: "We've got the murder weapon. He was stabbed in the chest." We then see how in flashback -- now with juicy stabbing noise and agonized grunts! It amazes me that thousands of people foam at the mouth over seeing a few seconds of Janet Jackson's nipple, and yet this show routinely features people bleeding to death, getting ripped apart in gruesome ways, being fatally assaulted, et cetera, and the national reaction is to seat CSI at the top of the ratings chart. And spare me the argument that there's a difference between the Superbowl performance where children were watching and now: 9 PM is not that late, nor was the rest of the Superbowl exactly sex- or violence-free. I'm just saying: I don't get how people go into pearl-clutching hysterics over a "wardrobe malfunction" while writing off explicitly violent scenes as prime-time entertainment.
Ah, but foolish insistence on logical consistency is the hobgoblin of my little mind. After we get over the flashback, there are a series of photographic flashes, and then the landlord is telling us that the dead guy is one Adanto Adams; Adanto wasn't the resident of the apartment in which he was found, but rather, the guest and brother of one Zero Adams. Gil wanders over to the sofa and says, "Unless he was standing over the sofa with his chest pushed against the cushion, this bloodstain is inconsistent with that wound." Gil then asks someone named Paul to turn over the body. I guess Hank's no longer around to manhandle corpses and make things awkward for everyone. That's almost too bad; I enjoyed mocking him nearly as much as I did the late unlamented duplicitous pancake-making bastard Eddie. Anyway, Paul flips the body, and Warrick notes that Adanto's been stabbed both fore and aft. Detective Artan asks where Zero might be now, and the landlord snaps that he's not Zero's mother. No doubt Zero is grateful for that, wherever he may be. ["Unless his mother actually named him 'Zero,' in which case…" -- Sars]
We get a night shot of the strip to remind us of how there's this whole city packed with wacky acts and neon, and then we're in the cool recesses of the morgue. Catherine's telling David the Flirtatious Coroner, "When I do a puzzle, I like to start with a corner piece." I like to sort the puzzle pieces by corners, then by straight edges, then by color groups. This doesn't surprise any of you after I revealed my grocery-sorting quirks, does it? Anyway, David tells her, "When the puzzle's a body, the corner piece is the pelvis. Oh, uh, Nick identified your vic. She missed her last bed check. Convict number 6920." Catherine looks at a photo of the girl's face -- made prior to its introduction to the asphalt -- and pegs the blandly pretty blonde as Antoinette Stella, who was doing two years for identity theft. Incidentally, Antoinette was due to get out in a month. Of course she was. David ups the "irony" quotient by pointing out that Antoinette wasn't trying to escape. Rather, she was murdered. Catherine looks startled, and David lifts up a forelimb still dripping with gore and explains, "I dissected her arm. The blood in the brachial artery is clotted, which is indicative of a postmortem laceration." We see this courtesy of the TMIcam. Catherine recovers enough to ask if David's determined the cause of death. Yup. He peels back the scalp -- not like he needed much help there, since the road gave him a head start -- and says, "Cranio-cerebral injury due to blunt-force trauma. Depressed skull fracture embedded with tiny white fibers. Given the depth and position of the fracture, I'd say she was hit on the head with something hard on the inside, and soft and fuzzy on the outside." Catherine wants a closer look at the skull, so David's about to begin boiling. Gil will be disappointed to miss it. He has Catherine check out Antoinette's left forearm: there's a blotch on there that could come in handy.
Then we see the prison Nicky and Sara are heading out to. Nicky got the order at night, it's broad daylight now…either he's spent the last few hours pouring black coffee down Sara's throat to sober her up after breakfast, or the timeline's a little skewed. Also, I believe I've seen this prison before. No, not as an inmate. I think I drove by it: the penitentiary looks a lot like the Chuckawalla State Prison in Blythe, California. Same high-desert landscape, same low-slung layout…all that's missing is a shot of the highway sign that reads, "Rest Stop --1 Mile" and below that "State Prison. Do not pick up hitchhikers." I just love that apparently, people have to be told not to pick up wild-eyed strangers lurking near a jail. Anyway, a warden exposits that she locked down the facility the moment she got the call, and all inmates were accounted for during the 1 PM bed check. Nicky asks what time the bus leaves for the work-release detail, and the warden tells him it was 1:30. As Nicky walks down the main corridor, one of the inmates calls, "Hey, sexy! Why don't you come back here on your day off? No gag reflex." That's a woman who knows how to target her sales pitch. Unfortunately, this scene is shot in Dark-o-Matic, so Nicky's response is lost to the shadows, but the warden lets drop that she's got a whole drawer full of C-9 forms with Harriet's name on them. One more cell over, a woman's seated on the porcelain throne. She angrily asks Nicky what he's looking at. "I thought this was a scheisse video," he stammers. Oh, right. As the little group reaches a cell, Nicky asks what Antoinette was like, and the warden says she was popular with the other inmates, with no enemies to speak of. The cell door opens as the inmate contained inside finishes her hasty grooming, and the warden directs her to step outside. The CSIs head in, and the warden asks Christine, "When's the last time you saw Baby Girl?" Christine shoots back, "I'll need to check my calendar." Heh. Nicky's all, "Baby girl. Was that a street name?" No. That's actually what I call one of my cats when I'm feeling affectionate (read: not threatening to send her to the pound, sell her to a grocer for a dollar a pound, and so on), so you and I will have to hope I make it through the rest of this recap without confusing Antoinette with the cat.
Anyway, it turns out that "Baby Girl" was Antoinette's prison nickname. How disappointing. Why go to prison if you're not going to get a nickname that strikes fear into the hearts of upstanding citizens? Christine says she saw Antoinette at lunch, about an hour before everyone was loaded on the bus for their work detail. The warden enters the cell and opens Christine's locker. Christine's none too pleased about this: she protests that she didn't take Antoinette's belongings because she really didn't have time to inventory her cellmate's possessions, what with having only lived with the other woman for eight days. Sara asks after this -- or at least, I think she does. Her new, pale lipstick makes her mouth disappear into her face. The warden explains that she caught Antoinette smuggling in a silver necklace; inmates aren't allowed jewelry; therefore, she was transferred. Sara rattles off assorted personal-care items so as to give the warden an excuse for telling the audience that inmates are allowed to visit the commissary once a month, and that she can provide a list of purchases if necessary. The warden adds, "For the record, there's never been a homicide in a female correctional facility." Sara adds, "Until now." Yeah, she's a real charmer, our Sara. There's no evidence of blood in the cell, so they're off to inspect the bus and the facility in which it was parked.
Sara's out in the garage, asking the male prison guard if he's the only driver. Yes, he is. Sara asks if the guy had time to inspect the vehicle before he drove out, since she's well aware that we were all watching and saying, "Shouldn't someone have checked the vehicle before it pulled out? Isn't the whole point to a prison that someone's always watching to make sure you don't escape?" The guy cites severe time-management issues, i.e. "I don't have time to scratch my ass," thanks to understaffing and budget shortfalls. Nicky's just standing there, looking uneasy, and a bunch of inmates drift on over to stare at him. He fidgets as Christine hangs on the fence and gives him a stalkeriffic smolder. Please, let this not be the groundwork laid for yet another Nicky-in-peril episode during sweeps. Sara asks if the guard knew Antoinette, and he replies, "Start seeing them as real people, start caring when they go back to their pimp dealer scumbag boyfriend." Sara congratulates him on his enlightened mindset. Nicky comes over and reports the area clean of any overt evidence; he suggests that the deadly incident could have happened on the bus. Sara asks who maintains the transportation fleet, and after the guard has himself a good laugh over the idea of any state penal system having anything resembling funding, he says that inmates do all the work. Even Nicky thinks this is a bad idea: "You let inmates service your prison vehicles?" The guard's thrilled with the idea -- why, on Saturday, he even brings in his SUV so poor, cringing Juanita over by the fence can come on over and wash it. He reasons, "I gotta get something on top of my $11.65 an hour. Look, we're in the middle of the desert. We're a hundred miles from the pit of nowhere." And yet, they're close enough to Las Vegas to be investigated by their police department. Shouldn't the state police have something to say about this too? Or should we just assume that Sheriff Xander Berkeley effected a coup in Nevada and declared, "All your crime scene are belong to us!" Sara sums up the security attitude toward vehicles by pointing out, "Essentially, anyone in the prison population could have into the garage, on to the bus, and nobody would have said boo." The prison population, all of which has gathered at the fence to ogle Nicky on the off chance that he's about to have a wardrobe malfunction, sees nothing wrong with this. The guard, however, thinks it's cute to say boo.
Back at the lab, Gil coasts on through the episode with a science montage that tells us nothing new and interesting. We've all seen them fume for prints before.
Warrick, meanwhile, is making the acquaintance of one Samuels, who claims to be Zero's guardian. It's not the most social exchange -- Samuels is tense, and Warrick is pretty blunt with the details -- and it's interrupted only when a blood-covered Zero comes over and blurts, "Frank? I'm so sorry." Warrick looks over, and he's taken aback by the man and his stained blue sweatshirt. "I'm sorry," Zero repeats, just in case we missed the point about Zero being slow, what with having a guardian and all.
Nicky and Sara work the bus, and on one of the seats in the back, Nicky finds the tell-tale absorption stain. Sara swabs it as Nicky notices another tell-tale stain, and after his swab comes up positive, Sara asks, "What is semen doing in the back of a female prison bus?" The backstroke?
Meanwhile, Warrick's worked with exemplary efficiency to get Zero into jailhouse scrubs before questioning him back at CSI headquarters. Frank Samuels urges Zero to just go along with the questioning. At no point during any of this does mention of a lawyer come up. I can only assume Miranda was thrown out during Sheriff Xander Berkeley's coup. Zero says, "I said I was sorry because I'm not supposed to be out by myself." Warrick asks, not unkindly, why Zero went out. He explains, "I came home from special school. I found Adanto in the kitchen." Cue the heart-rending discovery flashback. Even Warrick looks all stricken. Warrick asks Zero about the last time he spoke with Adanto, and Zero reluctantly says it was just before school. We flash back to Adanto telling Zero, "What I'm about to tell you, you can't tell anybody. We're going to be rich like we've always talked about. I love you, kid. And I love you, o player of the poignantly plinky piano." Or something to that effect. Back in the interrogation room, Zero is telling Warrick that Adanto had promised him a shiny new car and driver. Zero leans in, and Warrick leans in too as Zero confides, "He said we were going to be rich." "I know. I saw the flashback," Warrick replies. Not.
The camera zips across the desert just so you can get a sense of isolation, a train rattles by so viewers can be reminded of "Folsom Prison Blues" without the producers having to pay Johnny Cash's estate anything, and the warden tells Catherine Juanita's the go-to inmate for transpo chores. Catherine smiles at Juanita and asks when the last time she washed out the bus was. Why, that would be right before they took off yesterday. Catherine asks if Juanita happened to notice either blood or semen in the back of the bus. Juanita said she didn't see any blood. Catherine asks about semen, and Juanita shoots back, "Don't they still do it in the back seat in the free world?" Please don't remind Catherine. She's dating a guy who drives a convertible. Catherine's all, "I doubt if conjugal visits are permitted on the prison bus." Juanita points out that conjugal visits aren't permitted anywhere. She gets ready to roll on this before the warden gets a weird look on her face. If it weren't for the fact that this show is overfond of hauling out the actual perp in the final moments of the show and spending the first three-quarters of an episode focusing on a red herring, I'd suspect her. She does look suspicious --and suspiciously robot-like. Is it wrong to think that maybe this show could use androids to liven things up? Or at least explain why Gil suddenly has perfect hearing again?
Anyway, Juanita drops it in the face of the robot warden and points out that "the only men permitted in this correctional facility are the correctional officers." Robot Warden points out that it's a class D felony for a CO to have sex with an inmate. That didn't seem to stop anyone over on Oz. Catherine points out, "Lots of things are felonies, but people still do them. Otherwise, you and I'd be out of a job." The warden has no reply to that.
Back at the lab, Hodges is telling Nicky that the fibers indicate a cotton-poly-elastic blend. Nicky says, "Sounds like we're looking for a lethal pair of underpants." Somewhere in Baltimore, a light bulb just went off over John Waters's head. Hodges points out it could easily be a pair of socks or a bra. He then says that the skin sample's a real challenge. Nicky gives him the fisheye, and Hodges rattles on until Nicky snots, "That skin sample was supposed to be sent to histology." Hodges shoots back, "Yeah, well, they kicked it back to me. The skin coloration was an adulterant -- aluminum chelate of carminic acid." Nicky's all, "Che-huh?" and Sara drifts on in to tell him, "It's a cochineal. They're scaled insects. Carminic acid is found in their intestines. It's bitter, so it discourages predators. As a dye, it's been prized for centuries." Hodges asks snidely, "Since when did you become an insects expert?" "Since I developed a passionate yet unrequited love for my boss with the entomology PhD and read up on bugs so I could woo him with tales of parasitic wasps," Sara shoots back. Or not, because she says something equally likely to make the stranded passengers of the S.S. Geek bob with joy as they float around the sea of uncertainty: "Entomology textbook. Grissom gave it to me last Christmas. When I can't sleep, I read." Hodges gives Nicky an elaborately casual look, and Nicky comments, "Funny. I didn't get a Christmas gift from Grissom. Did you?" "No," Hodges answers brightly. Both men give Sara a look, and then Hodges nudges the conversation along by asking how Antoinette would have gotten hold of all the requisite bugs for her homemade tattoo. Sara reasons that cochineals feed on cactus plants, the cacti probably grow in the prison yard, and so Antoinette could have harvested beetles there. And picked up a few needles with which to do the work. I find it hard to believe the prison would have been sanguine about cacti, since people are resourceful and can turn anything into a weapon.
Sara then asks for a photo of the tattoo and quickly says, "Every woman knows what that is. It's a heart. Well, half a heart." Y'all excuse me for a moment: the ovary repo guys are here to take back the equipment since I failed that vital visual test. Nicky asks where the other half of the tattoo is. Patience, Nicky -- we'll find out at the magical 48-minute mark.
Meanwhile, the B-plot creeps along at a glacial pace. The upshot of this scene: Samuels found Adanto's body, but flipped out on Zero's behalf and left, rather than calling the cops or 911. Since that's a felony, he's about to settle in for a stay on Cellblock Nine.
Down in the morgue, David's commenting on the peculiarities of Adanto's stab wounds: they go straight up and down. Gil says, "The crime scene suggests he was moving around his apartment while he was being stabbed, so straight in and out doesn't seem likely." David concurs: "One time is an anomaly. But five times? All four back wounds are clustered and parallel. And the chest wound is the same distance from the crown of his head as the other four." So maybe he was killed by an extreme neat freak? "Hold still. I want your wounds to match precisely." But the case gets stranger: there are no defensive wounds, and there's a wad of paper in his stomach.
Hey! It's Ronnie the QD guy extolling the virtues of fatty food, as it preserved the paper. Let that be a lesson to all you would-be spies who were hoping to eat evidence: it'll go faster if you lay off the fries. After a close examination, Warrick determines that the paper is actually a marker for $10,000 from the Palms casino.
Within moments, Warrick's at the casino and chatting up a security guy, who tells him that Adanto came in to play with the big boys a few days ago. Warrick asks if Adanto had a system, and the security guy replies, "They all got systems. This one was a small-time double-up-type-thing. Bet $100; lose. Bet $200; lose. Bet four; lose. Double up until you win." That's a terrible system. Gambling is essentially like tossing a coin: you always have a 50-percent chance of losing, and the tosses don't determine future outcome. There is no base-2 system someone can follow. Warrick asks for the footage of Adanto's playing time, and the security guy is all, "You look familiar. Have I seen you in here before?" Warrick says tightly, "Maybe just on a case. How about that footage?" In the background, a continuity fairy does a happy dance, then leans in to whisper, "Clap your hands if you believe in consistent characterization."
Cut to Sara and Catherine strolling through the Labitrail and talking about makeup. Well, kind of -- they're talking about personal care items, and Catherine notes, "The warden faxed over [Antoinette's] commissary purchases. She bought one 20-count box of tampons every month like clockwork. But check out the last few months." Sara figures maybe Antoinette didn't need any tampons for nine months or so. Catherine quips, "I think Baby Girl was having a baby." Or a tumor. But that's not nearly so quippy, is it? By the way, that top Catherine's wearing is workplace-appropriate only if you're a cocktail waitress at Caesar's.
Catherine comes in just as David the Culinary Coroner is checking his cream of cranium soup, and he tells her, "Skull's not ready yet. Enzymes are still eating away at the proteins." Catherine's not here for that. She asks if David did a pregnancy test on Antoinette. He's all, "I thought she'd been incarcerated for the last 23 months." Clearly, David's confused the penitentiary with the cloisters. Anyway, he rolls out the headless body, inserts a syringe, and draws fluid while quipping, "Urine, you're out." (Say it out loud.) Catherine grins. David whips out the EPT, and Catherine comments on the use of an OTC product instead of a sooper-dooper specialized forensic pregnancy test. David points out that it's ten times cheaper than what the lab supply firm offers, and just as accurate. Catherine's all, "Eye on the bottom line. I find that very --" "Sexy?" David asks. What? Did Catherine send out an interdepartmental memo reading, "Want to practice your flirting skills? Come compliment my ass! I promise not to sue." Anyway, Catherine and her cleavage reply, "Prudent. But that was a good try." Sure enough, Antoinette was pregnant. David says, "You know what that means." "Who's your daddy?" Catherine replies.
So the good news is, we have a scene with Warrick and Archie. The bad news is, the director elected to shoot this scene without lighting, so we can only tell who they are by the sound of their voices. I ask you: what is the point to eye candy if it's in the dark? Anyway, Warrick's come by to check out Adanto's footage on the Palms' surveillance tape. He says, "According to the pit boss, the kid was playing a double-up system. What I want to know is, how many hands did he back himself up?" Archie's all for finding out. He rolls the tape and narrates, "First hand, a hundred. Loser. Second hand, $200. Lose. Third hand, $400; lose. Fourth hand, $800. So he's doubling every bet." Warrick watches the cards fly by as he says sadly, "Classic double-up system." It's unclear whether he's so disturbed because he can easily recall his own doomed gambling pursuits, or because he's over-empathizing with Adanto. They advance to the tenth bet -- all in, $51,200. Warrick watches intensely, saying, "Adanto has 20. He sticks. She has two up. Another two. That's four. Two, three, two. Eleven. Ace, ace, ace, ace. Fifteen. Six." We see Adanto's head fall. Archie's stunned: "Ten-card 21. What are the odds of that?" Without even looking up, Warrick says, "The record's an eleven-card 21. That was back in '78." Archie asks how screwed Adanto is with, "So he loses $102,300 in ten hands. What's the $10,000 marker for?" Warrick tells him, "To try to chase back the 102." Warrick stares bleakly at the screen. Poor baby. His head probably hurts from all the anvils that have fallen on it, each one bearing the painted-on message, "THIS COULD HAVE BEEN YOU." Just in case the most literal-minded person in America missed the subtle parallels the writers have been drawing, Warrick practically rends his garments in distress as he whispers, "He lost it all." Really? Thanks for clarifying.
Catherine, meanwhile, has devoted considerable effort to answering the question, "Who's Antoinette's baby daddy?" And when she's done with that one, she can answer the question, "Who's currently guarding the inmates while the male guards all mill around prior to giving DNA samples?" I thought the place was understaffed as it was. The robot warden attempts to pee all over the wardens in an effort to mark her territory, and Catherine points out that they have probable cause to believe a correctional officer was involved with Antoinette. Robot Warden is willing to concede that one of her guards could have put Antoinette in the family way, but surely none of those guys were responsible for her death. Catherine issues smack #2: "As you pointed out, sex with an inmate is a crime, which is the basis for my warrant." Catherine heads on in to wrangle the men while the warden stares at the camera ominously. If this show really took the whole "assume nothing" seasonal theme seriously, we'd find out that the warden's actually a man and she/he has been carrying on with the inmates. But then, to carry that off, this episode would have had to have cast Charles Busch instead of Gina Torres.
Detective Artan comes over to tell Warrick he did some digging, and it turns out Zero's custodial account was drained of $102,000 the day Adanto died. Quelle coincidence. The signatories are supposed to be Zero and Frank Samuels, but Frank vigorously denies that he signed the withdrawal slip, and then adds some handy exposition by recalling that he ranted at Adanto, "Let me tell you something, you degenerate! All I hear from you is how much money you blow day-trading, and now you want to touch your brother's life savings? You can forget about it!"
Adanto counters in the flashback, "If I play perfect blackjack, there is no way we can lose. Except if a freak ten-card 21 comes up. But the odds of that happening are so small, only a higher power with a hackneyed sense of fate and its role in narrative would bother contemplating that option!" Or something along those lines. I just…this sort of thinking baffles me. It's like the time I went to see Indecent Proposal and watched the two idiot leads decide that since they've gone broke, they might as well gamble their last $5000 away; I ended up leaving that movie with a giant headache from trying to understand why people think gambling is a sound wealth-creation strategy. Anyway, Warrick asks for a sample of Samuels's handwriting, and bids him to copy some passage. We then see Zero laboriously copying the same passage.
Within moments, Ronnie is rhapsodizing, "London letters is one of my favorite writing tests. The paragraph has every capital letter in the alphabet, as well as numbers one through nine." Warrick tells him to cram the lecture and skip to the part where he identifies whomever lied. It turns out Zero did sign the withdrawal slip, but it looks like Adanto forged Frank's signature. And not very well, either.
Catherine's strolling on through the Labitrail when Liam -- whose new streak-'n'-tip dye job was evidently inspired by Anne Bancroft in The Graduate -- appears over her shoulder, takes some time to enjoy the view, and passes on the news that the semen donor is the bus driver with the bad attitude, and he happens to have 13 alleles in common with Antoinette's fetus. For some reason, this totally shocks Catherine. God alone knows why: she was all sassy when she was asserting that one of the COs knocked up Antoinette before, but now that she's got actual evidence to back up her assertion, she's taken aback? This makes sense like gambling away your life savings makes sense.
However, she's recovered enough by the scene to inform Jerky Jerkerson that he would have been a daddy but for a well-placed thud to the head. She cuts off his lawyer at the knees; all the guy does is drink bottled water and confirm the DNA test results. While this little tableau unfolds in the interrogation room, Nicky and Sara watch in the secret compartment. Nicky comments, "When he said he expected something on top of his $11.65 an hour, I thought he was talking about free car washes." Oh, Nicky. You're a modern-day Galahad. I bet you even thought that nice lady with no gag reflex was simply pointing out that she's never suffered one of those bizarre morning tooth-brushing incidents where you're brushing your tongue, and you hit it too far back, and end up spitting out enough toothpaste to have it go up your nose and prompt a round of sneezing. Um, not that I have. Anyway, Sara points out, "There's no evidence of ante- or perimortem rape. He'll claim it was consensual." Nicky says seriously, "It's still rape, under cover of authority." Meanwhile, the guard claims that Antoinette said she was infertile: "Too many turns of the coat hanger." Ah, chivalry, prison-guard style. The guard claimed he was only quoting Antoinette. As Catherine begins trying to get the guard to admit his motivation, Nicky pegs it more accurately: "She blabs to the warden, he gets demoted from guard to inmate." Sara concurs that it's motive. The guard is all, "I swear! I had no idea!" and the lawyer finally earns his $350 an hour by saying smoothly, "If the D.A. had sufficient evidence to file murder charges, he would have." Catherine points out that Doug's already on the hook for a felony. Doug begins blabbing over his lawyer's irritated shout of "Doug, would you be quiet?" and yells, "I got her pregnant! I admit it! I'll do the time. But you can't prove that I killed her, because I didn't." Doug's lawyer sinks his head into his hands and wonders why he bothered becoming a defense attorney with clients like these.
Hey! It's a Hodges-errific episode: he's now loping into a lab with Warrick and presenting the evidence Gil scraped off the handle of the knife found at Adanto's death scene. It's house paint. Warrick asks what house paint is doing on the handle of the knife (the backstroke?), and Gil zooms in from left field with a story about how William Berstrom bet $1 million on a single roll of craps, lost the roll, and subsequently killed himself. This is Gil's oblique way of suggesting that Adanto killed himself. Warrick wonders how the stabbing happened. Gil, of all people, says, "Put the evidence aside for a second." Warrick does, inadvertently misdirecting the millions of people who follow the evidence per the orders coming from the voices on their television screen. Gil continues, "Consider Adanto's state of mind. You've had a few bad runs." Warrick sums it up in a word: desperate. Gil prods him, "So put that into context with your evidence."
Catherine, meanwhile, has made free time for the usual round of fun and games with Liam the Lab Tech. He snots, "Do you think skin cells can survive fifty miles of rough desert road?" "I don't know. Why don't we strap you to a CSImobile and find out?" Catherine shoots back. Oh, she does not. She merely waits for him to get to the point after acidly stating, "That's what I asked you." Liam replies, "I analyzed every strip of fabric from the bus's chassis. Zilch. But I'm a guy who likes to tie up loose ends, when I'm not busy dropping self-aggrandizing comments into my conversation in an effort to come off as breezy and irreverent, so I asked Doc Robbins to send over the scraps that were tied to the body parts. That's where I found them: fresh, abraded epithelials. And it made me so excited, my hair stood on end. It needs you to touch it, baby." Or something to that effect. I may have been listening too closely to the subtext. The upshot is that whoever tied Antoinette to the undercarriage left a little piece of themselves behind. Catherine's all excited about using the epithelials to prove that Doug tied up the body, thus closing the case. Liam's all, "Yeah, well, nice theory, but the double-X chromosomes kind of scotch that. Unless it turns out that Doug's really a woman, but then we've got a whole pregnancy issue, and while the CSI audience has already proven amenable to sex-change killers, I doubt they'd buy my elaborate theory that the warden's a man, she and Doug the secret woman created a test-tube baby in the prison infirmary, implanted it in Antoinette, and then ended up killing her. That sort of sneaky reveal coupled with an impossible premise won't be trotted out on this show until Season 5. But the good news is, it's on CSI: Miami week, since those suckers specialize in crazy-ass cases with more implausible turns than a Judith Krantz novel." Or maybe he actually gets pithy for once and passes on the genetic information.
Catherine stands there and ponders the possibility that either an inmate or the robot warden iced Antoinette, and David comes in toting a skull in a bag. He lifts it out while quipping, "Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio." For some reason, the camera zooms in on Liam's face. Well, since he's not likely to be the gloomy Danish prince, I'm going to guess it's an allusion to the jester Yorick was. Unless I'm giving too much credit to a random directing decision…anyway, David passes on the good news: the occipital bone retained the shape of the murder weapon.
Warrick's back in Zero's apartment, flashing back to Adanto holding the knife. He mutters, "Desperation." Warrick checks out the couch again and flashes to Adanto lying on it, then flashes to him on the floor with the knife stuck in his chest. Warrick then notices the pile of paint chips on the floor by the door jamb, and his gaze travels up to the spot on the wall where the molding's paint in worn away. Warrick realizes what Adanto did: he wedged the knife into the door moldings, had himself his own little flashback to the conversation in which he asserted he'd soon be rolling in dough (that's right, folks: we're hearing a flashback within a flashback), then backed into the knife repeatedly. Adanto then took a breather on the couch, since stabbing yourself in the back multiple times takes it out of you, then flashes back to another conversation where he and Zero exchange I-love-yous before he impales himself on the knife.
Cut to Zero tearfully asking, "He killed himself?" "I'm afraid so," Warrick replied. Zero turns to look at him and says, "No. Why would he do that?" Artan explains, "Your brother took out an insurance policy with an accidental death clause." Zero looks at him, visibly struggling to understand. Artan realizes this and adds, "It means, if he was murdered, the beneficiary would be entitled to a million dollars. You're the beneficiary." Zero goes to say something, and Warrick cuts in with, "Unfortunately, the coroner is going to rule the case a suicide, not a homicide, which makes that policy worthless." Zero is on the verge of tears; he stammers, "I -- I was just trying to help my brother. Oh, I want Frank!" Artan proceeds to wreck Zero's day further by telling him, "Frank will be facing charges of obstructing justice. Do you understand that? The court will appoint you another guardian." Zero vehemently insists that he doesn't want another guardian! "I want Frank!" Then he breaks down with something that seems like a sob. I can't really tell, since the screen's looking a little blurry from where I am. Seriously. The last time I got all worked up over a plotline was Season Two's dealie with the evil, evil,eeeeeevilbrother and the poor boy who killed himself, but that didn't make me all leaky like this did. It's just…poor Zero. First his brother inadvertently bankrupts him, then Adanto kills himself for love of Zero, and then Frank makes a felonious mistake for love of Zero, and as a result, this poor man is going to be broke and completely alone in the world without anyone to lovingly watch out for him because of other people's good intentions and lousy decisions. The real pisser is that Adanto killed himself for nothing: the CSIs have sniffed out the would-be insurance fraud. The whole thing is drenched in futility and pathos. Even Warrick feels it. He's practically misting up as he says he's sorry. Not sorry enough to overlook the damn evidence and turn a blind eye to an obstruction of justice charge or insurance fraud, but sorry nonetheless.
Anyway, the actor who played Zero did a fine job, and deserves your lavish praise in the forums.
Back in the chicks-in-prison plot, Nicky's playing with a computer simulation of Antoinette's skull and examining the crater in her cranium. Sara notices that it's a dent within a dent, and after a few minutes of whiz-bangy CGI, we figure out that she was killed by someone putting a combination lock in a sock and using it as a cudgel.
They're all back in Christine's cell; Christine is of the opinion that her unwanted roommate is not worth the postmortem fuss. You think she'd be thrilled that Nicky's back, what with the way she was preening the last time he was around. All of this is just a stall until we can get to Antoinette's old cell in D-block. Surprise, surprise, she shared it with Juanita. Juanita's lock glows after it's sprayed with luminal; Catherine happens to notice the white fibers on it too. Catherine then asks about the frequency of the inmates' laundry days. As luck would have it, tomorrow's the day they do whites. Catherine goes through Juanita's bag and finds nothing resembling a bloody sock, so she asks Juanita to remove her shoes. Sure enough, Juanita's got a bloody sock. Catherine channels Dr. Seuss with, "A lock in a sock." Well, it's better than a file in the aisle, a gun in a bun, or a knife in a wife. I am wondering, however, why Juanita didn't just take a clean sock off Antoinette to replace the bloody one, tie up the dead woman with the bloody sock, and dispose of the evidence that way. Then they'd only be able to link a bloody lock to her cell, but not the means with which she used the lock.
Ah, well. It's too late for that. Juanita and Catherine are having a gab fest, bonding over men what done them wrong -- Juanita went in because her boyfriend the drug dealer used her as a mule and left her to deal with the mandatory minimum sentencing. That's a judicial legacy of which we can all be proud. Anyway, Catherine's all, "My ex drained my bank account. I was saving up for a nice little house for my daughter and me…" but she does not add, "And then my father wrote me a check for a quarter mil, so I got the nest egg back eventually, plus interest. Also, my ex is dead. So -- problems solved!" Juanita is all, "Men -- can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em. Ha-ha! Prison humor!" and Catherine notices that she's got a half-heart tattoo too. So she works around to asking about Juanita's love life on the inside with, "It gets lonely in prison, doesn't it?" You know, there really is no way this conversation won't sound like it should precede some sort of prison-carwash scene in a Russ Meyer flick, so I'll just skip to the stuff you all care about. No, not the explicit details of Antoinette and Juanita's intimate life. Juanita's motive! Juanita finds out Antoinette is pregnant, what with Antoinette a) being her cellmate and b) having morning sickness, and predictably goes ape over it. Antoinette claims she was "doing it for us," but Juanita's not having any of it. So Antoinette coolly says, "Wanna know the truth, Juanita? In one month, I am out of this hole, and away from you." The two women made up, but it's not like Antoinette could unsay anything she said, so the suspicion was there, and then "the day, she got the warden to transfer her out of our cell. She wasn't playing the warden -- she was playing me!"
Catherine's all, "So you killed her?" Well, not for that. Juanita says that Antoinette had promised that it was all over with Doug, but then she found the two of them going hot and heavy in the back of the bus, so she ran back to her cell, threw the lock in the sock, then entered the bus as Antoinette was dressing and caved in her skull with one blow. Juanita's moral in all this: "If there's one thing I learned in prison, it's to stick up for myself because nobody else will." Ah, but Catherine would prefer that she learn a different lesson. What it is isn't exactly clear: "[Antoinette] was telling the truth about the transfer. It wasn't her request…she was caught trying to smuggle in this necklace and was reprimanded. I'm guessing it was for you." What, so Juanita could have been reprimanded too? And how do we know it wasn't a kiss-off gift? What was the point of telling Juanita? Was it so we could see her doing the sad walk back to her cell while some woman ululates in the background? TV, I'm confused! Tell me what to think!