The good news is, all of the casinos in Las Vegas remembered to pay their electric bills. Or so it would appear from the opening shots of the Strip. We quickly move from the establishing shots to the smoke-blurred air of a crowded, noisy casino. We see a rather formidable-looking fellow step into aisle along a bank of slot machines. By "formidable," I don't mean "he's able to wreck your credit rating with a single keystroke." I mean "he's able to wreck your cranium with a single blow." If this guy is not a bar bouncer, it's only because he got tired of the hours, or he's making better money as a freelancing leg-breaker.
There are some more shots of people going about their business in the casino as Mister Toughie stands around glowering and waiting for people to poke fun at either the gaudy gold rope chain he wears around his neck, or the proto-mullet he wears on his head. It's not really "business in front, party in the back" so much as it is "massive beat-down in the front, using your shattered front teeth to pop open the celebratory long-neck he will drink after he's worked up a thirst giving you contusions in the back." Have I painted a picture with words yet?
And now Big and Beefy goes barreling through the crowd and toward a discreetly-placed door. He appears to be stalking someone.
But whatever it is he's going after? I'm not really interested in seeing it, because I'm trying to imagine what laid this fellow low, and I keep flashing back to the nasty nightmare things in Hellboy. And while I would welcome the chance for this show to transcend formula and maybe introduce a few extra-dimensional visitors with minimal social skills, well...there remains the problematic introduction of some egghead spouting paranormal esoterica, the usual baroque and gratuitously convoluted creation myth surrounding whatever demon is lurking around killing people, and the unavoidable fact that the people who come up with the extra-dimensional beasties apparently do so from a place of deep seafood phobia, if the preponderance of tentacles is any indication. Plus I am prone to looking at giant tentacle-riddled wicked things and cackling, "Evil now comes coated in a tasty deep-fried batter! Evil tastes delicious with lemon aioli or marinara!" And I'd soon go nuts with the hoary clichés that demonic killers inspire, while you worked up an appetite following repeated calamari references. Nobody wins there.
So we'll just shelve the speculation and live in the now. Brass is thinking that maybe getting your face tenderized prior to your death by bludgeoning could hurt. Years of police observation backing that conjecture, no doubt. Brass notes the many casino chips in Scary Dead Guy's pockets, and concludes that robbery wasn't a motive. Gil observes that the man's eyes bore the brunt of the punishment. Brass replies, "You can't see, you can't fight back." Unless you're Matt Murdock. I don't dare invoke his crime-fighting name, or Ben Affleck might appear. Gil notes the blood and hair under Tony Sciarra's fingernails, as Brass tells us that Dead Guy is, in fact, named Tony Sciarra, of Philadelphia, PA. Gil quips, "So much for brotherly love."
And then The Who want to know who you are, so they can send some fraternal goodwill your way. I'm still stuck on Gil's quip. Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love. Vegas doesn't need to love you. So why would...eh. Trying to figure out the presumed wit behind this is like trying to figure out what Bob Dylan is doing pimping cheap lingerie.
Once that commercial brain-teaser is over, we're back at Tony's body, with Catherine and Warrick working the scene. Several feet off, Gil's looking surly for no particular reason, and Brass comes over to exposit in his general direction and let him know that Tony hadn't even unpacked yet. Gil comments, "He made enemies fast." Brass adds, "Yeah, the old man he knocked down said the same thing. He was hauling ass."
Catherine checks out the impressive blood spatter on the wall and tells us, "Blood drops are medium to large. Low-velocity spatter. No castoff." Warrick suggests that maybe Tony wasn't beaten with a weapon. Catherine's skeptical about the possibility of hand-to-hand combat, and Warrick counters, "I know the guy is yoked. He's what -- six two, six three?" Catherine imagines that he may have been outnumbered. We flash to that scenario. Warrick comes back to the present, checks out the ground meat where Tony's face used to be, and winces. Yeah, no kidding.
Down in a basement lit only by dim -- oh, I'm sorry. I had confused the subplot subbasement with the casino's security office, what with Nicky and Sara being there and all. Anyhoo, they see Tony muscle his way across the floor, and a security guy helpfully points out that once Tony's off the floor, he's out of the cameras' sight. Nicky asks the security guard to roll back the tape so they can see where Tony had been playing prior to his death by drubbing. Nicky sees something and asks the security drone to slow it down.
He and Sara watch as a slight blond man leans over and grabs a chip off Tony's pile. Sara asks, "Did you see that?" Nicky grins as he replies, "Yeah. The little guy on the right just snaked him." Yeah, I'm sure Tony thought it was funny too. Sara watches as Tony tosses the dice, and marvels, "You've got to be kidding me. He just did it again." Nicky fatuously notes, "Two for two." Sara makes a comparative anatomy assessment regarding the blond guy's gumption vis-à-vis the contents of his jockeys, and Nicky wonders if the third time's the charm. Yup. Sara and Nicky continue viewing the tape and laying out the set-up: Tony notices the sneaky little guy lifting chips and makes a few threats, the blond guy gets up in Tony's grill, Tony continues to wax wroth, and then the two conclude it's time to see who the towheaded thief is. Sara asks for a still of the guy's face.
Speaking of still facial shots, behold Tony. David the Appalled Coroner ticks off the damage: "Fractures to the zygomatic, ethmoid and nasal bones. Also the mandible and maxilla. How many teeth did you find at the scene...he's missing six." That would be four more than were found at the scene. David helpfully adds, "I found one in the back of his mouth. He probably swallowed the other three." Well, at least he knows where they are, then. Had he lived, he could have asked for a bottle of ipecac and a dentist, and been on his way. Gil prods this expository scene along by noting that blood evidence at the scene suggests there wasn't a weapon in play. David confirms this -- it was a bare-knuckle beatdown. He then works around to cause of death: "Multiple blows to the head produced angular acceleration and deceleration in the brain. Twisting in the brain causes the bridging veins to rip. From there, it's all downhill." And we see it all -- including X-ray flashes of the brain being tossed around like the S.S. Minnow -- in slow-motion, spare-no-detail shots. I wonder for the umpteenth time why something so innocuous as a two-second allusion to sex that involves a) a position other than the missionary, and b) a woman who actually enjoys the act rates an adult warning prior to the episode's beginning, while endless replays of a man being beaten to death are apparently no big deal. Clearly, I like pondering the unknowable.
Anyway, Tony's not doing any pondering whatsoever because, as David explains in a TMIcam shot, "The axons in the white matter of the brain begin to snap. Officially, C.O.D. is diffuse axonal injury. Unofficially, it's the most brutal beating I've ever seen." One assumes he's being dispassionate in his statement because he's trying to maintain professional distance, and not because the director said anything so foolish as, "Hey. When commenting on this beating? Keep it casual, like you're ordering a latte or something. I'd hate for people to get the idea that this is a brutal and horrific way to die."
Gil, who is equally sanguine about Tony's mode of departure from this vale of tears, notes that the strangulation-style neck bruises were made by someone's left hand. David adds that there are also bruises from someone's knees on Tony's chest. Gil lays out the details just in case we've missed them from all the flashbacks thus far: "So -- knees on his chest, a hand on his throat, his head was butted up against the wall, and all the blows were directed at his face." David pokes a hole in the Mob-beatdown theory by noting that the M.O. Gil described doesn't leave a lot of room for other attackers to get their licks in. Gil figures there were no other attackers, and we see a flashback of that possibility. Or rather, you, the viewer, do, while I roll my eyes and grumble about this show's increasing reliance on gristly crime reconstruction at the expense of detailed and geeky science or lab sequences. David's a little incredulous that one guy did all this, but Gil's entirely willing to believe it.
In the shot, we see a printout of the slight blond guy, and Brass is asking the maid who holds it if it matches up to a man she saw. She confirms that it does: she was in the bathroom, and she saw him march in and rinse off his hands. She adds that he left, and then she called security. Brass asks if she sees the guy now. Then, recognizing that she's more than a little freaked by this guy -- and probably thinking of every Lifetime movie ever made where Dean Cain/Mark Harmon/Harry Hamlin menaced plucky single mom/divorcee/youthful widow and struggling maid/entrepreneur/shop girl Markie Post/Melissa Gilbert/Nancy McKeon after they witnessed a crime/served on a jury before getting shot/being apprehended/being killed during a struggle thanks to the plucky heroine/her bland and hunky new boyfriend/her adorable kid...and on it goes. Lifetime movies aren't models of cinematic innovation so much as they're like ninety-minute Mad Libs. Anyway, my point is, Brass recognizes that the maid's all freaked out, and tells her all she has to do is nod if she recognizes the guy with the bloody hands. She can barely move her head for her frozen terror, but she manages to peg the guy.
Nicky notes that the guy she pointed out looks different: "ID's off. We're looking for a blue shirt and jeans." Brass points out, "He could have ditched the clothes. Let's be smart about this." He does not add, "Promotion material, my ass." The music gets all ominous, and Brass sidles on over with a cadre of uniforms. As he gets closer, the camera zooms in to see the hank of hair the blond's missing behind his left ear, plus the claw mark on the side of his neck. Brass gets to the point: "Las Vegas police. Put your hands behind your head and stand up."
The guy keeps chewing -- on the bright side, at least his hands are where Brass can see them, what with them being wrapped around an enormous sandwich -- and Brass prods him. As the uniforms cuff him, the guy gives Brass a long, presumably menacing stare. Or maybe he's just nearsighted. Anyway, he's shooting for "amoral and cool," yet hitting somewhere around "daft and tepid." Brass meets the look. We then zoom in to the remorseless killer's baby blues, as if we're supposed to see that verily, the eyes of a killer have affixed on their target, but all I can think is that verily, the killer may have smoked a bowl after washing his hands, which would explain both his appetite and his red eyes. Brass is unimpressed. The music tries weakly to creep us out, then peters out.
Within seconds, we're in an interrogation room back at HQ. The blue-eyed guy is now pretending they're playing statue tag, and Brass is it. He eventually leans in and observes, "You're not much of a talker, are you, Walter? I tell you, you must be a pretty tough guy to take on Tony. A guy as big as that? He's huge. That's his name, you know. Tony Sciarra. Did you know Tony? How come you left his wallet and $500 in chips in his pocket, huh? 'Cause that makes me think this was about something else." Gil watches this impassively, because he's afraid his face might actually break if an expression were to cross it.
The camera flashes down to Walter's raw and swollen left knuckles as he growls and flexes them on the table. Brass prods, "Did he wrong you in some way? He hurt you? Huh? Maybe it was just a lover's quarrel?"
Well, that hits Walter where he lives. He protests, "I'm not soft," since he's obviously never heard of, much less attended, the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. Brass snickers a little, then pursues a line of questioning concerning his little scene with Tony at the craps table: "You swiped his chips, and then you whispered sweet nothings in his ear. What did you say?" Walter spits out, "Give me a reason." Brass immediately asks if that's a confession. Walter repeats coolly, "No. That's what I said." He tries to give Brass the icy stare of a stone-cold killer again, and Brass disabuses him of any delusions concerning its efficacy, adding, "But save it. They're going to love you in prison."
Gil then leaps into the conversation, asking to see Walter's fingers because "you may have evidence underneath the fingernails and I'd like to collect it." Gil lays down a sheet of paper and goes to grab Walter's swollen left hand. Walter flinches, so Gil pulls back. Walter gives Gil a crrrraaaaaaaazy! look, and the background music swells, the percussive beat sounding a lot like a speeding pulse. Real subtle, huh? Gil looks at Brass, then tentatively reaches for Walter's hand again as Brass hovers on Walter's right side. Gil grabs Walter's hand and asks, "Mr. Darien, do you have a fever?" Walter bugs his eyes out, just in case we keep forgetting that he's crrrraaaaaaaazy!, and Gil completely misses the clue as he concentrates on scraping under Walter's fingernails. The music picks up, lub-dub-lub-dub lub-dub-lub-dub, and Walter continues his "Faces I Will Make During My Kingdom Hospital Guest Shot" improv exercise. You're bugging your eyes in vain, my friend.
And then the music goes quiet. As everyone who's ever seen a horror movie knows, this is so you can hear your pulse spike to 160 bps when the shit hits the fan onscreen. This episode is no exception to that rule: Walter lunges out of his chair and goes for Gil's neck, backing him into the wall with a lot of hollering. Walter promises Gil, "I'll kill you!" Gil is too busy keeping Walter from squeezing his windpipe to come up with any suitable aphorisms in reply. Brass goes to pull the screaming, flailing Walter off Gil, and a few uniforms teleport in -- where were they when this started? How did they know when to come in? Is there a panic button, or was the "I'll kill you!" thing loud enough to cue the redshirts? Walter flails and gabbles inarticulately, taking out a window, sending a uniform flying to the floor, and generally behaving like a wild animal. You know, the opportunity for David the Sharp-Shooting Coroner to come in with a improvisational blowgun rigged with a pipette, a syringe, and a lot of neurotoxin is right here, and yet, all we get is Brass just standing there watching Walter tire himself out on the uniforms. ["That would rule all. I almost wish David would get a spin-off: C.S.D." -- Sars] Eventually, three of them manage to subdue him with the judicious application of billyclubs. Gil stands by the wall and watches with a What the HELL just hit me? look while Brass crouches by Walter's supine body and figures out that Walter's lunged for his last victim.
Catherine working her second crime scene of the night, but on the bright side, at least she doesn't have to drive anywhere. Emergency Backup David is taking the liver temp, and it reads 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Catherine's all, "You might want to check that," and Emergency Backup David tells her he already did. Catherine does the math, then checks Gil, who's hanging out over at the wall, a hand on his neck.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Xander is striding through the mess out in the hall. Massive props to the actor for pulling off the patented pointy-haired boss trick of walking around purposefully without actually doing anything at all. He eventually gets to where Brass is leaning in a doorway, and Brass says, "It's not as bad as it looks." Xander drawls, "It never looks good when a suspect dies in custody." Brass goes on the defensive: "What are you saying, [Xander]? You rather it be one of us?" Xander points out, "If I was here, I'd have been in there with you, you know that." Yes, ducking the flying bodies and feigning useful actions. He points out that the department will end up looking like the bad guy here, as opposed to Walter, who may have actually beaten a man to death. Behold the power of public perception!
Catherine spares a passing glance to the middle management passion play and heads in to check on how Gil -- remember him? Tallish, has a beard, briefly accessorized with an ascot made of screaming sociopath? -- is doing following Walter's mid-fracas DFO. He winces and does the stoic "I'm fine" thing, but drops his hand to give Catherine a look. Awwww. Also, I love it when these two are on their A game. Catherine checks out the abrasion, and Gil winces. She more or less nudges the mood out of serious by marveling, "That kind of looks like a hickey!" Gil gives her a Oh, only you... look and swats her hand away. Catherine moves back to business with, "You wanna tell me what got this party started?" "I scraped his nails," Gil replies with some asperity. Catherine's all, "That's it?" but Gil's moved on and asked about Walter's liver temp. Catherine tells him it was 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Gil explains for those in the audience who were all, "Liver temp? What, were they planning on repurposing Walter as foie gras?" that Walter's liver temp was 103 degrees Fahrenheit when he died, and "I touched his skin, Catherine. He felt like he was on fire."
Cut to Walter's debris-packed car, with a big box of Krispy Kremes wedged in the back. Well, no wonder he was burning up! It was all the sugar. Two more doughnuts, and he would have either spontaneously combusted or gained the ability to move from solid to vapor state. Or maybe I'm just jealous because I gave up sugary foods for Lent, and I miss fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts only slightly less than I miss Scharffen Berger chocolate. Anyway, Walter's car is an unholy mess. Sara gazes upon the crammed-to-bursting car, and asked, "How did Walter Darien even drive this thing?" Knowing Walter, my guess would be "Aggressively."
Nicky quips, "Where there's a will, there's a way." ["I know that, contractually, they have to give Eads something to say, but does it always have to be nonsensically useless scene-filler? Fight the power, George!" -- Sars] They begin examining the car, no doubt wondering why on Earth all the cases they work have to be with packrats. Seriously -- why can't they ever work a case where the killer decluttered? Or maybe read Martha Stewart's Good Things: Organizing and had a raging Container Store jones, and kept all the evidence neatly stored in labeled canvas shoeboxes or something. Seriously -- I realize that the clutter's a shorthand for mental illness, but excessive, weird organizational schemes could be equally as effective, you know. Anyway, Sara finds the blood-spattered t-shirt and jeans. Nicky reaches back into the SAT prep vocabulary words he memorized and comes up with, "So this...scumbag, Walter Darien, he beats a guy to death, goes out to his car, changes clothes, then he goes back to the casino, washes his hands and gets something to eat?" I love how there was the Shatneresque pause in that sentence. One can almost imagine that "scumbag" is the worst term Nicky knows, and he knows it only because, back when he was a CSI-I, he called each perp "that big meanie" until Warrick pulled him aside and explained that maybe Nicky could gain a little professional cred by learning a few tougher terms. Sara, however, is nonchalant about that seemingly monstrous chain of events. Nicky finds a cardboard box filled with chips from assorted casinos, and he puzzles, "So, he grifts, but he doesn't cash in?" Sara muses, "Maybe it wasn't about the money. I got gloves, a t-shirt and a jacket, all with the tags still on them. Maybe he just likes to steal things." Or maybe he likes provoking confrontations and taking souvenirs to remember the fracas and its outcome. And if I can come up with that hypothesis off the top of my head, why can't the writers?
Anyway, Nicky finds a uniform from the Roadside Diner with a nametag reading "Libby," and calls Sara's name. Now he's got her attention. She calls his attention to the burn holes in the uniform -- please, tell us we're about to see Walter burning some young woman with lit cigarettes. Given this franchise's twin penchants for graphic depictions of violence and victimized-women flashbacks, it would not surprise me at all. Fortunately, all we get is Sara musing, "The guy takes on five cops in their house. Makes you wonder what he might have done to the waitress." Nicky gives her a startled look, as if to say, "Did he only tip ten percent?"
Down in the morgue, Gil heads on down to face his erstwhile attacker. David asks caustically, "Didn't get enough of this guy in the interrogation room?" Gil ducks that question and asks one of his own about the cause of death. David replies, "Well, it wasn't the nightstick action. Cardiac arrhythmia. His heart rate increased until he went into tachycardia. Started throwing PVCs and then V-fib." Well, thank God we had the background music to tell us otherwise. Gil asks if there were any prior conditions, but David didn't find any. Gil notes that Walter was all jacked up prior to his sudden demise, and David points out that there aren't any visible signs of drug addiction. Gil asks about the hot felon, asking David to check him and see, since he had a fever of a hundred and three -- and David's all, "Ah! Nothing to see here, my friend! The writers couldn't be bothered to unearth any sort of malady that could indicate or explain elevated aggression, unlike the episode where the guy bugged out on the airplane because of the pressure in his head."
Or maybe I'm just projecting. David tells him that 98.6 degrees is just an average, and some people run hotter. Gil does not ask, "Five degrees hotter?"
And now, Walter's of kin is getting the news about her brother. It looks bad at first, since Beth Darien's first statement is, "He was killed in police custody," and you can practically see Sheriff Xander steeling himself for the inevitable tsunami of lawsuit-related press, but then Gil comes in and magically makes it all better. He tells Beth, "I was in the room with your brother," thus allowing her to see the big bruise on his neck. She eyes it and asks, "Is that how he touched your life?" Gil elects to ignore that question too, and shares the autopsy results. Beth replies, "I don't care how he died. I'm just relieved that it's over." Sheriff Xander excuses himself so he can do his celebratory jig in the hall, out of the sight of the bereaved. Beth continues, "Walter hurt a lot of people. If you had something he wanted, he just took it. And if you got in his way...I always kept my distance." Gil declines to address this directly either -- probably for the best -- and doggedly pursues his line of inquiry, asking about Walter's high temperature, and Beth says Walter always ran hot, even as a kid. She apologizes to Gil for Walter, and he uncomfortably pulls up his shirt. God forbid he should identify with anyone who might have also been hurt by Walter. It wouldn't do to try and understand the killer from that perspective.
Anyway, we are now at the hotel Walter operated in the middle of nowhere, Nevada. The cardiac theme in 4/4 time starts up again as Warrick hops out of the SUV and begins whining at Gil that he can't see why they have to come, and all the fun evidence is back at the lab, and he's having a bad hair day, so can't they just head back so Warrick can try to restyle his locks? Or maybe I'm going beyond the actual content of the scene a little. Anyway, Warrick points out that the Tony case is closed, and you can't prosecute a dead man, but that's all water off a duck's back to Gil, who quips, "'The evil that men do lives on after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.'" Yup, it's Shakespeare --Julius Caesar, in fact. What, Warrick, don't you remember tenth grade English? Anyway, the two head inside, and Warrick also expresses his conviction that, just once, he'd like to check out a perp who had read Organizing From the Inside Out, only not in so many words. Gil theorizes, "Well, if Walter viewed his world as a threatening place, according to the shrinks, the hoarding of useless objects may have made him feel safe and secure." Yeah, but it blocked his qi, and that can't have been healthy.
Warrick points out, "In the real world, Walter's the threat." He then notes a broken mirror and comments, "Guess he didn't like what he saw." Warrick, take a look in that mirror. Check that hair. We'll understand if you want to take a swing too. Gil pokes around, checks the window to the back yard, and looks alarmed at the wheelbarrow.
In a jiffy, he and Warrick are out there, pulling the tarp off the top and checking the tools it held. Warrick, who has wandered off to survey the yard, finds a grave-sized patch of cement. He calls Gil's name and notes, "This doesn't look like a patio."
Cut to Sara and Nicky at a diner, where, improbably enough, a waitress who gives every sign of having organically arisen from dust motes and griddle grease on the first day of business manages to remember a dish girl who worked a grand total of one day eight years ago. Either the waitress an autodidact who eschewed a life of greater material gain for the glories of foisting iceberg lettuce on anyone craving some food item not battered or fried, or she's really had a boring stretch since that fateful day. In any event, while Libby and her fateful burn are fresh in the waitress's mind, nothing else remotely related to Walter is.
Back at the Hotel Walterfornia, Warrick applies a jackhammer to the concrete while Gil stands around and thinks about the perks of the job. We then see a team of CSIs assemble a staging area and work through the afternoon and into the night. Fortunately, they have a soundtrack to accompany them -- lots of bells and random chanting and a keening wind instrument, so you can feel all world-beatish when you listen. Warrick eventually unearths a skull, and as he brushes dirt off, Gil quips, "I guess there was no more room at the inn."
Then we go to commercials, because the time to get quippy to The Who passed thirty minutes ago, Gil.
When we get back, the usual array of police vehicles has arrived, and uniforms are swarming the scene. Brass heads over to the gravesite where Gil is working, and Warrick brushes away dirt to reveal a wedding band around one skeletal finger. Brass introduces the red herring portion of tonight's episode with, "Do you think this is the waitress Nick and Sara are looking for?" Gil points out that there's nothing gender-specific about the skeleton yet. Warrick sighs and breaks out the beleaguered expression to point out that there's neither tissue nor hair left, and the bones have probably been buried for at least three years. Gil sniffs deeply, and decrees that it's been more. Brass speaks for all of us when he asks, "You're kidding me, right?" Gil replies, "Well, the rule of thumb is, if the skull smells bad, it's usually under three years. This one smells like dirt." So that means...what? Don't just toss in an intriguing tidbit --tell us why this is the case. Does it mean that putrescine has a very specific half-life? Does it mean that all the byproducts of bodily decomposition that could smell noisome are gone? I miss the days when they bothered backing up the Fun Forensic Facts with...well, actual facts.
Just then, Warrick finds the murder weapon buried to the pelvic bone. Too bad there's no way any DNA was preserved on the blade, what with it having been exposed to the elements for lo these many years. Brass says, "Doesn't fit. Walter was a fighter. He used his fists, not knives, you know?" Gil speaks for all of us this time when he points out, "Well, we haven't known him that long." Then he gives Brass a weird little So there. Feel free to mouth off after Walter's wrapped his hands around YOUR neck look. Whatever, Gil.
Cut to David looking at dem bones, dem bones, dem tidy bones, all neatly arranged on the table. We find out that we're looking at a female who, going by the pits in her pelvic bone, never gave birth. Warrick asks if David can pin down the race, and David replies, "Zygomatic bones retreat, slant back. Nasal opening's long and narrow." Warrick deduces that she's Caucasian. Again, it'd be nice to have some context to this, like by commenting on how they know she's not Asian or something. David tells us he's deduced the height at 5'4" based on the length of the femur, and she was probably in her late teens, early twenties. She was also strangled, something David figured out courtesy of the fractured hyoid bone. Warrick notes a few fractures -- to the zygomatic bone and maxilla, and to the left ulna. Those first two bones sound awfully familiar, what with Tony having had those bashed in. There were no tool marks on any of the bones. Warrick helpfully connects the dots for the slow viewers: "Maybe she was punched in the face and tried to shield herself."
And then David launches into his "action items I accomplished" recitation -- he sent Emergency Backup David off with dental X-rays for identification, and he's taken a section of the mystery woman's femur. He also took a tissue scraping inside the pelvis and yanked a molar, because "If there's any usable DNA left, that's where it will be."
In another part of the Labitrail, Gil is reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (no, not really. The cover looked similar) when Catherine comes in to ask him how he knew there was another body at the hotel. Has she forgotten he's omniscient? Gil says he didn't know. He adds, "Tox and histology results came back on Walter Darien. Negative across the board. No drugs, no diseases." Ah, so Walter got high on life. Or high on making someone else's life miserable. He'd probable be incapable of grasping the distinction. Gil continues, "I don't get it. The guy was 38 years old, and this was his first arrest." Catherine deduces, "You're wondering what he's been doing all his life." Gil nods. Just then, Catherine's cell phone goes off. There's a strategic silence, and then she turns away from Gil -- who's looking a little put out that this is going on while Catherine's perched on his desk -- and purrs, "Why don't you hold that thought until later." Gil perks up, because the whimsical background music's just kicked in to tell us all how to react. Catherine turns around and breathlessly apologizes to Gil, adding, "A new friend." Gil cheers and pulls out her employee evaluation, saying, "So can we cross off the part where you got to have sex? And then can we never talk about it again? Or else I'm going to wish I was going deaf again." Catherine says, "You were going deaf? I don't remember that." Gil sighs and says, "That's okay. Neither does your daughter." Catherine: "My daughter? I have a daughter?" Gil snaps, "I know! It's news to the writers too!"
Okay, maybe some of that scene didn't happen. Only the icky parts did. Gil congratulates Catherine on her thriving social life, and then Liam pops in to save them from the genuinely awkward part of the conversation by providing distraction with his troll doll hair. Seriously: it's like Sara flat-ironed his hair, and then someone stiffened it with rubber cement. He asks, "You got time for something a little weird?" "Not now, Liam. Come back when we're not talking about Catherine's sex life," Gil orders. Oh, he does not. Catherine just gives Liam a look like, Since when have you actually gotten to the point in two sentences or fewer?
Liam leads everyone to his lab bench as he explains that he recovered DNA from the Jane Doe skeleton -- clean samples from the molar and femur segment David cut out, but the DNA from the pelvic sample had foreign DNA from a male who happened to share 13 alleles with Jane Doe. Catherine points out that's only possible if the male happened to be either a father or a son; Gil recalls that the woman's pelvic bones indicate that she never gave birth. Catherine figures it was the father then, and Liam asks, "Okay, so how'd it get there? The tissue was from inside the pelvis. So even if Daddy's blood or semen got on her clothes or skin, it never would have survived being in the ground all that time." Gil figures there's got to be an additional biological source.
Hey, do y'all remember how back in Season One, when the CSIs want to put a face to a skeleton, they brought in the forensic reconstruction artist and she explained how she did her work? Well, apparently nobody felt like seeing if Pamela Gidley had some space in her schedule, because now Archie the A/V tech and Nicky are busy doing lame-ass computer-generated reconstructions.
Back at Walter's Hostile Hostel, Warrick is busy taking pictures of Walter's detritus-filled rooms and wondering why Walter couldn't have been a minimalist. We see the items that will fit into the rest of the plot: a typewriter, a printer, and a big, fist-sized crater in the wall. Warrick opens a box and pulls out a length of leopard-patterned cloth, and then a gauzy scarf, and finally, a baseball cap that just happens to have a few blond hairs stuck on the inside. Big break of big breaks, they've also got the skin tags attached. To signify how truly momentous this occasion is, the thundering background music comes to a dramatic halt, then segues into "Poignant Prelude #4."
Back at the lab, Nicky and Archie are whipping up a facial reconstruction of one hot Nordic mama -- at least, if the look Nicky's giving her is any indication, she's alluring. Or perhaps Nicky's so unsure what to do with real girls, he's settled for having Archie whip up reconstructions for him to practice his small talk on, and he's confused this with his off-hours.
Catherine goes through a hotel room and finds a packed suitcase. There's a faded photo of a very young-looking, extremely pregnant blonde and her husband. The photo's ripped in half. Ah-ha-ha. I've been there. With the ripped photos, I mean. Catherine calls Warrick's name to show him the maternity clothing. Warrick reads the inscription on the back of the photo: "And baby makes three. Love, Sean." Catherine finds a wallet, and we learn that the dead woman is one
Marissa Cleary. Back at the lab, we get a visual to compare Marissa's photo to the reconstruction (going by the looks of it, Nicky needs to get over his social disorder and begin talking to real girls soon), and we confirm that the dead body is Marissa's. Gil's got his own white whale -- or red herring -- to chase in this case: the mysterious missing waitress Libby.Catherine tells Gil the foreign DNA on the bones is from Marissa's son, and Gil points out that there wasn't a second body in the grave and adds, "She never gave birth." "Not through her birth canal," Catherine points out. Gil muses, "That might explain the hunting knife we found." And then we flash to Walter giving Marissa a C-section without benefit of anesthesia or, for that matter, consent.
Back in the present, Catherine points out that the umbilical cord contains fetal DNA, and we go to the TMIcam time-lapse shot of the livid cord turning dark and desiccated over time. Gil muses, "Walter Darien never threw anything out. So where did the baby go?" Oh, there's plenty of places to explore at the Hostile Hostel. Just be sure to send someone with a strong stomach to do the looking.
Or maybe just talk to the wiry young man who's the father of the missing baby. He mumbles, "I never thought she was dead. I wondered where she was, what she was doing with her life, what my kid was like, why I didn't think to maybe talk to her family or an investigator to maybe see if I could answer the first three questions." Or maybe I'm projecting again. Catherine and Brass break the news that they're not sure if the boy was dead or alive. The guy tells the usual story: boy meets girl, boy impregnates girl, boy and girl decide to buck the odds on shotgun marriages between teenagers, boy and girl discover the odds are high for a reason. Marissa took off after a fight over the phone, and that's the last this young man had heard of her. Catherine looks empathetic -- no big surprise there.
It's up to Brass to ask actual questions, so he does: "You never reported her missing?" The guy replies, "I didn't think she was." I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that this couple had problems communicating. Anyway, Brass cocks a skeptical eyebrow, and the guy explains, "I was nineteen! Barely out of high school." Catherine gets a little suspicious and comments, "Last thing you needed was a family." The guy continues, "She was in her ninth month when she split. I thought she'd cool off in a couple of days, come back, we would work things out. But then I got this." Catherine reads the letter he pulls out: "You're not who I thought you were. You don't want me. You don't want this baby. We don't want you. Marissa."
Meanwhile, Liam's sequencing the DNA from the hair found in the baseball cap, and Ronnie down in QD is busy explaining to Catherine how Marissa's signature on the letter was forged. Catherine bets that Walter did it, and Ronnie manages to speak for evidence, as opposed to inference and supposition, when he points out that she won't know for sure without an exemplar. Catherine remembers that CSI used to stand for Crime Scene Investigation and not, as one might suspect from this season, Crime Stories Imagined, and asks for the down low on the letter. It was printed on an inkjet printer, which doesn't square with any of Walter's dot-matrix numbers.
Off in another part of the Labitrail, Warrick is surrounded by a mountain of evidence envelopes and bags and looking for...I honestly have no idea. This is where a little expository dialogue would come in handy, as opposed to yet another mute "The CSI Looks At The Evidence And Frowns So We Know They're Thinking" shot. I realize the latter lets the music supervisor go wild on the Casio, and it means that the script writer has fewer lines to worry about writing, but the benefits are outweighed by the fact that we're winding down this episode and spending valuable wrap-up time watching some CSI go rooting around for who knows what purpose -- hunting for a baby? Sniffing out a handwriting sample? Taking inventory? -- while big questions like "Will we ever find out why it's relevant that Walter was always burning up with fever?" go unanswered. Anyway, the upshot of this scene is that Warrick finds a torn t-shirt with what looks to be an old blood stain on it.
Meanwhile, Sara looks at Sean Cleary's envelope in her quest for clues. Here's a hint: the baby isn't there either.
Liam goes in to report to Gil and Catherine that the hair from the baseball cap was only a few years old, as it was still able to yield DNA, and the DNA matches Marissa's son, so the boy was alive a few years ago. Catherine muses that the boy would be eight now, assuming he's still alive. Just then, Sara comes in all chipper, and then introduces herself since she hasn't seen these people in forever and it's entirely possible they -- or we -- may not remember who she is. I'm kidding, but only a little. Anyway, Sara tells them she was working on the letter's envelope, and the postmark's out of Henderson. Catherine points out, "The Bates Motel is in Sloan. Why would Walter go that far out of his way to mail a letter?" You might as well ask why Walter went out of his way to drive to Las Vegas every time he felt like whupping some ass, but that doesn't kick us into what will pass as the wrap-up for this episode, so Gil conveniently ushers into the possibility.
Cut to Beth telling the CSIs that she moved to Henderson to get away from Walter. Catherine and Gil give her the fisheye. Then Catherine whips out the mended picture of Marissa and Sean, and asks if Libby recognizes her. Nope. Catherine explains that Marissa Cleary was a guest at the Hostile Hostel eight years ago. Beth visibly pauses, checks the door, then resumes looking at Catherine before saying matter-of-factly, "He killed her, didn't he?" Gil thinks that's the case, yes. Beth breathes, "I wonder what she did to set him off." Suggest that maybe blaming the victim isn't cool? I'm just guessing here. Catherine is giving Beth the narrow-eyed assessment as she says, "I'm sure it wasn't much."
We flash to Marissa's end of her volatile, final conversation with Sean, and throwing the phone across the room afterward while Walter pounds irritably on the wall on the opposite side. Marissa then moves to ripping up pictures in her fury, and telling what she believes to be her hotel neighbor -- and not, say, a sociopath always on the lookout for any excuse to kill -- to "Shut up, damn it!" And that's all the excuse Walter needs to come in, pound on Marissa, and decide that she's due to deliver right then. Thank you, CSI, for making me feel old and prudish the moment I ask, "Did we really need to see that again?"
So Beth, eyes darting all over the place, says calmly, "He'd always find an excuse for anything that he did." She then checks the time. Catherine asks, "Are we keeping you from something?" Beth lies that they're not, adds that she's really uncomfortable talking about Walter, then whips off her jacket so we can all see the burn marks down one side of her arm. Catherine asks if Walter gave her those burns, and Beth says that was an accident on the job many years ago.
"When you used to be a waitress...Libby?" Gil asks. Why, yes. He explains that he found her old waitress uniform in Walter's car. Well, that's one mystery down. We still don't have an answer for Walter's fever, or what he did for 38 years (besides kill two people that they know of, and spirit a baby off somewhere), but thank the sweet baby Jeebus that we have cleared up the mystery of the missing waitress. Libby asks Gil, "Why would he keep that?" Good question. Just don't expect any answers any time soon, okay? Catherine watches a school bus pull up and thinks, "That long, yellow vehicle...someone I'm familiar with rides something like that...why am I thinking of this? Where is this idea coming from?" Actually, Gil hears the bus too -- because he now has super-hearing, I suppose -- and Beth gets an Oh, crap... look as she realizes the two of them are studying the school bus and watching a towheaded boy come barreling up the front walk.
He comes in and tells Beth, "Hi, Mom." She kisses him hello and gets him out of living room. The boy stares at Gil; Gil stares back, curious. When the boy leaves, Gil asks, "How old is that little guy?" Yes, Gil asks that, and not, say, Nicky. I can't explain it either. We're about two episodes from Gil tousling someone's hair and calling him "Champ." Beth says her boy is going to be nine month, and Gil and Catherine exchange triumphant looks. I hope their expressions can be pinned to relief that Walter didn't kill Marissa's baby, and not to the joy of smoking Beth out of her den of lies.
Now, a brief scene in which we see Catherine taking DNA samples from the boy (so Beth presumably gave consent, or else it is indeed possible to put together a warrant based largely on supposition -- and it may be) while Gil takes one from Sean. Catherine slaps the results on the table in front of Beth and says, "You're not his mother." "I'm the only mother he's ever known," Beth shoots back.
She then continues, "I raised him. I had to." We flash back to Walter pounding on her door in the middle of the night as the baby's outraged howls fill the air. He hands Beth the baby, then walks off. We don't see exactly what the baby's swaddled in, what shirt Walter's wearing under his jacket...nothing. Back in the present, Catherine says, "Middle of the night, your brother shows up and hands you a baby. You don't ask any questions, you don't report it?" Beth says that Walter gave her a story about the mother being a runaway who didn't want it. In this era of promgoers depositing their children in the trash before the DJ plays "Rock Lobster," that's entirely plausible. Gil asks how Martin got the scar on his forehead. Beth doesn't know. Gil suggests, "Or...you didn't want to know." Well, with Walter as her brother, can you blame her? Or is he suggesting that perhaps Beth's biological clock rang and she urged Walter to procure a baby? It's not clear here. I get that they're working around to Beth maybe being complicit in Marissa's murder, but they're not making the case at all, and there are, like, four minutes left in which to do so. I'll buy that she always figured the cops would come after her for raising a baby that showed up on her doorstep -- Lord alone knows how she finagled a birth certificate, and we certainly aren't finding out during this episode.
However, what Gil's alluding to is the possibility that Beth's all too aware of how Martin was introduced to the world, and we see yet another flashback of Walter preparing to raise the hunting knife in Fun With Backwoods OB/GYN Deeds!
Catherine tosses the note over, and Gil points out that they doubt Walter wrote the note. Beth says, "I'm not like Walter. When I opened that suitcase, and I saw the photograph, I didn't want the father to suffer." This is, in theory, a comment that our intrepid duo should be all over like white on rice. When was she at Walter's? Why was she opening the suitcase? How would she have managed to see only one half of the photograph? And if she didn't -- why didn't she express any curiosity about the mother? Or why did she lie when she said she had never seen Marissa (or her photo) before? Why should the father have any reason to suffer, unless Beth knew that keeping the baby was wrong? Where did she get the address?
I look forward to having all these questions answered in the 180 seconds. No, really. Stop laughing like that.
Catherine points out that the suitcase was in Walter's closet, and Beth claims that she took it back because it was creeping her out. Catherine looks off to the side, as if shooting someone off-camera a look like, Jesus, you people couldn't be bothered to write anything more plausible? Have you noticed the time? Gil's giving them the same faintly peeved look from the other side of the table.
Beth continues, "Giving me Martin was the only good thing that Walter ever did. I don't know why he did it, but it wasn't out of the goodness of his heart." Gil just stares at her. Perhaps he's so overwhelmed by the plethora of unanswered questions, he honestly doesn't know what to say .
Well, don't go looking for enlightenment in this scene. Gil just heads into the lab and begins examining the bloody white shirt Walter was wearing at the beginning of this episode. Who knows why? Not me.
In fact, the number of questions I have accumulated with every plot point. As much as I like the idea of having a case where the evidence is largely inconclusive and the motives are murky, because it's a refreshing break from the formulaic clue-clue-solved! pattern most of the episodes have, that kind of unresolved crime has to have a decent narrative arc surrounding it. Ars Poetica groupie that I am, if my pity and fear is to be aroused courtesy of the protagonist, I expect some sort of catharsis for my troubles. This, on the other hand, was the television equivalent of going on tour at the Winchester Mystery House: it gets hyped up as being the product of mysterious mind, but is actually proof that winging it without a clue as to where you're going to end up only leaves an artless hulk and a lot of loose ends. Bleah.