We begin with a shot of the mighty Sphinx, if by "mighty," you mean "two stories tall, with a handy walkway between its paws," and you're also okay with its pert nose and Las Vegas location. The Sphinx is the entryway for a roller-coaster, and our shot is of people riding the roller coaster in the lambent glow of late-afternoon sun.
We get a few more establishing shots so we know we're at an amusement park, i.e. a giant slide (lame), a Ferris wheel (also lame), and then everyone in the audience who gets sick on roller coasters doubles over on the couch because we get the you-are-there view of the coaster ascending its first big hill. Someone moans "I don't want to go." This is probably a conclusion they should have drawn earlier. We get a shot of some loathsome little monster unbuckling his seat belt to turn around and tell his mother and moaning sibling, "We're all going to die." Mom tells Joey to put his seatbelt back on, and unfortunately, he does, thus guaranteeing that he'll live through the first big drop and exit the ride to continue life as a low-grade irritant for all whom he encounters.
We get some fun you-are-there shots, which make me really want to ride on a roller coaster. We also get a shot of the wheel wobbling on the track, and of the car rolling around particularly tight curves, because the producers know we've all read the plot description for this week, and they're messing with our sense of anticipation. More fun roller coaster shots, and then this load of passengers pulls into the unloading area. The family gets off, and the load of passengers gets on. The kid who puts them into the cars is dressed like…it's almost Caesar's-themed with the togas and the laurel wreath, except it's too gilt-y and campy even for a casino. The second roller coaster takes off as the mom from the first ride ushers her kid over to a booth, where a Roman Centurion is on break from extending the reach of Caesar's realm to flip some burgers. She orders some King Tut burgers and Nile teas. You know, having the Romans run things in the Egyptian theme park seems off: it's like going to Busch Gardens: The Old Country down in Williamsburg, Virginia, and discovering the French food court run by Vichy concessionaires while the Germans and Italian ride operators plot together to blitz the Loch Ness Monster ride.
And then, we stop pondering the appropriateness of geopolitical incongruities in theme parks because a roller coaster's just run off the rails. We get a truly idiotic shot of some blonde in the front seat turning back to grin at the panicky people before turning around and finally noticing they've run off the rails and are about to land nose-first in the parking lot. Oy. The car lands, mashing a car in the process.
In the shot, Brass is standing there and looking at the car. It's dark. Night must have fallen when the roller coaster car did. Gil ducks under the police tape and notices the bodies strewn hither and yon among the wreckage. I'll skip the description, because all you need to know is that there probably won't be any open caskets at the wakes. Brass then asks Gil, "So, Dr. Thrillseeker, you ever been on this coaster?" Gil identifies it with, "Pharoah's Fever. Yeah. But my ride ended at the platform. Which is all ironical and such since the victim's rides did not." Or maybe he stops before hammering the subtext home. Gil asks Brass what he knows, then pulls up a chair, since he neglected to get specific since this could take a while. Brass tells him there are six people dead and a park full of witnesses who saw the roller coaster fly off the rails. He spits, "401B." Gil replies, "Accident with injury." That's a fun game, making up all those letter-and-number combinations. Do you suppose that on slow nights, Gil and Brass amuse themselves by shouting out combinations to taunt and confuse Nicky? "55F!" "Organizing a cockfight? Gris, when was the last time anyone was booked on that?" Gil more or less heaps fodder on my supposition by adding, "It's also a 418." Brass says, "A runaway?" Gil clarifies, "Runaway train."
And we go to The Who. I have never been so grateful to stick with the same theme music, because otherwise we'd be hearing Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train," and I can't be having with that.
When we get back from commercials, Nicky, Sara, and Liam are all striding onto the scene. It's no Young Turks moment. Nicky explains that they were late because the writers couldn't think of a plausible way to work them into the opening -- I mean, "because a news van was blocking the entrance." Gil tells everyone that this is the first time a roller coaster's derailed in Clarke County, and adds, "Huge criminal and civil liabilities issues, so keep it quiet, Nicky." Oh, he doesn't name names. And he doesn't explain why, on this high-profile case ripe with potential for litigation, he's got two mid-level CSIs and a lab monkey working the scene instead of, say, all five seasoned CSIs. Anyway, Nicky looks chastened, and Gil continues, telling them, "Photograph the scene, bag and tag the detritus, forklift anything bigger than Liam. We're going to put up a tent on the other side of the parking lot for accident reconstruction. Any questions?" "Yes. May I be excused? I get sick on roller coasters," Liam says. Or not. Actually, he asks what one body is doing flung so far away from all the others. Gil looks at the body and remarks, "Curious, isn't it?" Then Gil wanders off, and Liam asks dazedly, "So when he asks if anyone has questions, he's not really asking, is he?" Sara smiles and takes mercy on him with, "Well, I don't know much about roller coaster accidents, but in auto collisions, the victims found furthest from the car usually aren't wearing a seatbelt. That'd be my bet." And we go to a re-enactment of someone flying through the air and splatting onto the pavement. Liam looks haunted. Clearly, he's had the same vision. Nicky galvanizes the troops, and Liam stops looking at people puree long enough to ask what he should do; Nicky assigns him the photo log: "Record everything we collect, okay?"
Meanwhile, Catherine and Warrick cross a bridge spanning a misty gorge, battle through a thick canopy of verdant deciduous tree branches, and join Emergency Backup David in the forest primeval that surrounds Las Vegas. They're all looking down at the body of a teenaged girl. Emergency Backup David tells us he's ID'd the body as belonging to 13-year-old Tessa Press (courtesy of the school ID in her pocket). Catherine shakes her head, trying to remember, "Young girl, young girl, young girl…why does that resonate with me?" Warrick sighs, "I hate these cases." Catherine notes that body position is inconsistent with lividity, and Emergency Backup David explains, "After she died, blood settled to her anterior, and lividity fixed." Read: she had been facedown, and she is not now. Warrick concludes that someone dumped her face-up. It's insights like that which made him Gil's favorite. Catherine wonders how long the body's been there, and Emergency Backup David says he'll defer that question to the insects. Then he rolls Tessa's body over so we can get an eyeful of the little guys writhing in and out of the wound at the back of Tessa's neck. Yum! Good thing I was eating cavatappi, Catherine notices the instar maggots, which tells us nothing, as it's the stage of said instar maggots that will provide the timeline: First-instar larvae are maybe 2-55 mm long, growing to 10 mm as second instar larvae and swelling up to 15-20 mm before wiggling off the wound as pre-pupae; each stage helps pin down how much time has elapsed. But that has little to do with what these forensic professionals will conclude. Emergency Backup David decrees, "Given the ambient temperature -- which I won't mention since, you know, viewers can check the jackets and fog and figure it out for themselves -- and last night's rain, I'd say she's been out here 24 hours." Catherine notes that it does take that long for blowfly eggs to hatch. If it's been 24 hours, someone needs to test these maggots for steroid abuse. They're that bulky.
Warrick carps that the rain's washed away any trace evidence like tire tracks or shoe prints. Emergency Backup David asks, "If you're going to drive all the way out here to dump a body, why not take another ten minutes and bury her?" Because the drive back to Vegas from Oregon is seriously long, fool. Getting back to the desert from that coastal redwood forest takes time. Anyway, Warrick and Catherine make disgusted faces. You know, this might have been a much more interesting case for Gil and Sara to work, while the Frowny Twins took on the roller coaster; we'd have the fun of seeing people working on cases for which they may not have a natural affinity (read: bias).
Back on the A-plot, Liam photographs everything in sight. Or maybe, despite what Nicky said in the last scene about Liam doing the photo log, it's Sara putting her own Diane Arbus-like spin on the dead bodies. Liam appears to be drawing pictures. Maybe that's what they mean by photo-log?
Brass is off doing what he does best: sacrificing his time and sanity via a series of soul-draining conversations with sullen dullards. Here, he's talking to the poor unfortunate sentenced to toga-wearing duty and light ride-operating. The kid is telling Brass that operating Pharoah's Phever is a promotion, what with getting the opportunity to meet girls his own age, as opposed to the not-yet-potty-trained set that frequented his old gig, the merry-go-round. Brass asks what training the roller coaster operators have, and Tony Toga snorts, "Training? I release the brake, I press a button. It's green and marked 'start.'" Brass looks like he's never going on a roller coaster again. He moves on to request, "There are six victims. It would be helpful to know where each of them was sitting." Tony Toga recounts, "Blonde girl sitting in front. She was cute. Followed by a punk, some old folks, and a dude." Brass points out, "That's only five." "That's all I remember," Tony Toga counters. Brass then notices the "See yourself scream" kiosk, and we establish that there's a camera stationed at the top of the roller coaster, taking pictures so that the people might record the moment when inertia and gravity fought it out on their faces. The camera's triggered by the train passing over a switch, with the pictures recorded on a hard drive. Brass notes that the last coaster train went flying through the air, but adds, "I'm still gonna want to take that computer."
Well, that scene was a whole lot of boring. You know how it could have been made more interesting? If Tony Toga had really gotten into the Roman imperial theme and demanded that Brass conduct the interrogation in Latin.
And now, it's time to introduce the colorful character of the week. Let's call him Red, as in herring. Red introduces himself as the park's chief engineer by saying he's been working on coasters since he was tall enough to ride them. Gil, who is instantly suspicious of anyone who tries to chat him up, asks, "You were responsible for maintaining this roller coaster?" Red replies that he keeps all the rides up to code. If by "code," you mean "horrific accident waiting to happen." Gil asks if Red has any idea why the train went off the track. Red replies, "Well, in theory, anything is possible. But there's never been an accident like this anywhere." Well, lucky you: whole schools of roller-coaster physics can now be founded on this occurrence, since it's now both apparently possible and probable. Gil may or may not notice the giant nut lying on the ground. He merely asks Red if he's an expert, and the other man replies, "On roller coasters? Hell, yeah. Ten years of service at Six Flags' American Eagle before moving to Vegas." Gil has found the nut and picked it up. He asks Red what that is, and Red tells him, "It's a nut. It, ah, secures the wheel to the screw." Gil asks if maybe one screw could cause the train to derail, and Red assures him, "There's eight wheels per train. They'd all have to be loose, and that just doesn't happen." Gil looks accusingly at the nut, as if daring it to confess that yes, it fomented rebellion amongst its hardware brethren.
Then he walks inside the tent and gets all literary on the assembled CSIs: "'There are three things in human life that are important. The first is to be kind. The second one is to be kind. And the third one is to be kind.'" Without looking up, Sara says, "Henry James." My kind of woman. Gil explains, for the benefit of those who haven't taken Creepy Lit 101, "Author of one of the greatest horror stories ever written, The Turn of the Screw." Liam is secretly relieved that Gil pointed that out, since he was about to say how much he loved that Henry James movie with Uma Thurman in it, and he was just moments away from a horrible literary faux pas. Gil adds, "And I'm looking for one." "A screw?" Sara offers. Nicky's relieved, as he's still trying to figure out what Tropic of Capricorn has to do with anything. Serves him right for going to the same book club as Liam. Anyway, Gil fixes Sara with a look before answering that yes, he's looking for a screw. He does not add, "In the hardware sense." Nicky does his best to bring the conversation back around to Henry Miller by pointing out that technically, they're looking for eccentric shafts. Gil replies, "As long as you can screw a nut, it's a screw." Ah, Gil, don't work blue.
Sara then gets all book clubby by pointing out that Turn of the Screw isn't a horror story so much as it is a mystery, asking, "Did the governess kill the little boy, or did the ghost do it?" Gil replies, "It's only a mystery if you believe in ghosts." Oh, please let this show move in that direction. They've abandoned all pretense of science exposition, so why not go whole enchilada and have them begin supernatural crime-solving? Imagine Gil building an ectoplasm unit, and Sara dressing like Stevie Nicks as she twirls around and communes with the restive dead. Anyway, Sara fixes Gil with a look as if to rebuke him for his lack of imagination, and Gil sidesteps the literalism v. mysticism debate by noting that the end threads on the screw are stripped. Nicky goes Snicky with, "Means the nuts were loose. Excessive play on the screws would have worn down the threads."
Gil realizes the nuts would have popped off, and Liam replies, "Nuts don't just pop off by themselves." What did I just say about working blue? Ten bucks says L. Brent Bozell is busy drafting an email as you read this. Gil gives him a look, and goes back to examining the screw, noting the evenly-spaced vertical striations from tool marks. Snicky thinks it's a pipe wrench, and Sara adds that perhaps Red uses a pipe wrench to tighten the nuts. Snicky adds, "Whoever loosened the nuts…screwed up." Ow. Ten IQ points off for that one, Nicky.
Back in the office, Warrick manages to hand Tessa's mom a photo of her daughter on the slab, an impressive feat considering that he's about to dissolve into a pile of empathetic goo. The woman -- who's in cocktail waitress garb -- bears an uncanny resemblance to Catherine. She's all, "It's Tessa. I don't understand." Catherine looks devastated. Perhaps this is her "There but for the grace of God…" moment, or perhaps she's all, "Wow. No wonder Sara was all freaked out when we commented on her resemblance to a total stranger. It is kind of creepy." Anyway, the Anti-Catherine makes some noises about the general mystery of it all, and Catherine shoots Warrick a look before beginning by offering her condolences. The Anti-Catherine is still looking at the picture, and she comments, "She's beautiful, isn't she?" It falls to Warrick to begin the questioning; he points out that Tessa died more than 24 hours ago, and asks if the Anti-Catherine had reported her daughter missing. Nope --she just assumed Tessa was spending the night at her friend Carrie's. Wow, that's a laissez-faire approach to parenting your adolescent daughter. But the Anti-Catherine scores points with the Catherine by turning to the CSI and saying, "It's just the two of us. I'm a waitress. I work nights. That way, I can make her breakfast, and be there for her when she gets home from school." We do not see Catherine's reaction after this, which seems like an odd directing choice since, you know, she is the CSI in the room who does, in theory, have scheduling considerations and a child.
Warrick continues, asking when the last time Anti-Catherine saw Tessa; that would be yesterday morning. She recounts, "I got home around six. We made pancakes. I packed her lunch, and kissed her goodbye. When she didn't come home from school, I just figured she was at Carrie's. I should have called, but I didn't want to be a nag." The Anti-Catherine turns to look at Catherine at this point; Catherine is over-empathizing to the point of tears. The Anti-Catherine asks to see her daughter, and Catherine gets an extra to escort the Anti-Catherine out so she and Warrick can have a good cry once the civilian leaves. And to think, she didn't even have time to ask the Anti-Catherine why she hadn't seen her around at the monthly Plucky Single Vegas Moms meeting. Last month's topic, "How to appear even more sanctimonious about your role as a parent," might come in handy.
Anyway, off the Anti-Catherine goes, and as the two CSIs watch her leave, Warrick asks Catherine, "When was the last time you went 24 hours without talking to Lindsey?" "Who?" Catherine replies. Oh, she does not. Catherine watches the Anti-Catherine walk off and comments, "A single mother, working nights." Warrick replies, "I'm just saying -- she didn't check on her own kid. You know?" Catherine replies, "You do the best you can." I wonder if that's code for "Once I began the chaise lounge hurly-burly with Krycek, the kid became a rumor. I know she's alive because the tracking chip I had planted in her ear still pings my mobile every few hours, but for all I know, she's handing out porn flyers on the Strip. Who the hell are you to judge?"
Gil and David the Strong-Stomached Coroner review the bodies from the Coaster Massacre of Aught-Four. One of these bods is not like the other: Jim Nevins, age twenty, was a park employee who died of a temporal herniation, i.e. according to David, "the impact to the brain caused it to swell, which in turn put pressure on the brain stem." Gil points out that Tony Toga only pegged five passengers on the ride, and no employees, so "maybe Nevins was just an unfortunate bystander hit in the head by a falling rollercoaster." David says, "The Chicken Little theory? Here's a hitch. The others died roughly ten hours ago. Mr. Nevins' rigor mortis is fixed. Body temp puts the time of his death approximately 16 hours before the others', right around 1 AM." Gil replies, "Dead men don't ride roller coasters." Gil has never seen any of the Weekend At Bernie's movies, has he? So long as the corpse meets the height requirements, what's stopping him from going on a roller coaster? It's not like Jonathan Silverman has anything better going on right now.
After a few arty shots of the roller coaster under a searing summer sky, we see Gil and Sara back at the park, talking to Red. The park has been shut down. As Red limps on over to the coaster with the two in tow, he natters on about how rumor has it that Pharoah's Phever is phinished. He adds indignantly, "Newspaper called it a death trap, an accident waiting to happen!" Sara asks if Red disagrees with that, and he says, "She's old and wrinkled, but I took good care of her." Gil and Sara duck under the coaster, and then Gil says, "Ah, Woody? We'd like to be alone." So now you know: Red's name is Woody. If people were introduced by name early on, we wouldn't have this confusion. Red closes the gate to the roller coaster track, tells them to holler if they need anything, then stumps off after tossing a few mistrustful glares in their general direction. Gil and Sara crouch by the track and imagine the roller coaster going by. The two eventually conclude that the easy access means anyone could have gotten in and loosened the tracks.
Sara does notice a greasy smear on one of the platform's supporting beams. She asks if it's lubricant, and Gil observes, "Funny place for lubricant. It's not even on the track." Gil clearly didn't spend enough time around Lady Heather's place. Sara swabs the smear. The two notice some strut or something flapping in the wind. Sara murmurs, "That's worse than just a wrinkle." Red's outraged voice pipes through the gate, "It's got a support beam under it!" Gil and Sara turn around; they clearly can't believe he's there. Frankly, I can't believe it's only him there. Where are the inevitable attorneys and insurance claims adjustors? Red defends the flapping metal arm as a cosmetic problem. Sara tells him to back off, because this is an active investigation they've got going on. Gil asks if Red was aware that the support beam was detached, and Red answers, "Oh, yeah! Fixed it half a dozen times this year. It's in my maintenance log. But like I said, that cross-spire's supported by that metal beam. Since my hours were cut back last November, I've had to prioritize my 'fix 'ems.' It's really too bad, but --" Gil cuts him off with a request to requisition his pipe wrench.
Red hedges that the wrench is technically park property, not his property. Gil assures him that they'll get the wrench back to him. As Sara bags the wrench (Red is staring at it like she's just sealed his puppy in a Ziploc baggie), Gil takes a call from Nicky. Back at the Labitrail, Nicky's processing Nevins's clothing, and the clothing is covered in trilobal (triangular) red fibers. Gil's pleased by this. He clicks off and tells Sara they need to find a car with a red interior.
But first, they need to check up on Liam, who's futzing around the evidence tent. He hops to once they come in, telling them, "The roller coaster broke into 106 parts. I just logged the final piece." So is this the photo-logging? Sara compliments him on his work. This only encourages Liam, who says, "I found something unusual for a roller coaster." He leads Gil and Sara over to the surprisingly intact roller coaster car, and gestures at the seat with, "Not a sailor but a…" "Semen?" Sara finishes against her will. She adds, "Sex. On the roller coaster." She sounds almost angry. What -- because someone got to have sex? Or because the roller coaster is a sacred place and this act profaned it? Liam offers the alternate hypothesis: "Shaking hands with Shorty." Charming.
Gil gets all geeky with, "The release of epinephrine and adrenaline on a roller coaster can produce a stimulatory effect. It enhances ejaculation. Or, um, so I've heard. You know, in journals. This has nothing to do with my roller coaster thing at all." Or something to that effect. Liam's now got a mental image all mixed up with roller coasters and ejaculation, and he wants nothing more than to go take a mental shower. He asks haltingly, "Is it probative to our investigation?" Sara tells him to take a swab and find out.
Then we move on to the T-bird that was smashed by the roller coaster. As luck would have it, the car belonged to Nevins. Liam protests, "I didn't realize the car was relevant to our investigation." Gil's all, "Everything's relevant, Greg, until it's not." Sara looks in the car and notices a second pipe wrench. She and Gil exclaim over it, especially after they notice the blood on the head of the wrench.
Gil asks for Greg's ALS, and shines it in the car to see the blood pool. We have an Osmont-cam moment where we see Nevins lying on the floor, and Gil concludes, "Camouflaged by the red carpet. That explains the autopsy findings. Nevins may have never been in that roller coaster. Possibly killed by that wrench and stuffed in his own trunk." Sara derails Gil's theory with, "And then what? A renegade roller coaster comes along sixteen hours later and propels Nevins' body from the trunk to the blacktop?" Gil protests, "I'm just following the evidence." Sara counters that she'll call Brass and see if he can find a witness to place the car in the parking lot.
And he did. There's a clean-cut young man named Zach who closes up shop at the Sphinx every weeknight -- after he gets out of school, and finishes tutoring children in math until 5 PM. Brass snaps, "I asked a yes or no question -- I don't need your life story." Oh, he does not. This kid's just laying on the whole upstanding-citizen routine. Brass asks if Zach noticed any cars in the parking lot after closing, and Zach promptly replies, "Jimmy Nevins. His red T-Bird was there." Brass guilelessly follows up, "Oh, you know Jimmy?" Zach sure does -- Nevins worked the bumper cars. He adds, "I still can't believe what happened, you know? I mean, I must've ridden that coaster a hundred times. Maybe more. Anyway, sometimes, Jimmy stayed after closing." Brass wants to know why, and after some hemming and hawing, Zach replies that Jimmy had big plans, and pants to match: he was making time with the ladies on the roller coaster. Brass wonders how Jimmy got access to the park, what with the park being shut down at night. Zach explains, "The same key that opens the men's room door opens all the power boxes at the park, and it was just hanging outside Red's office for anyone to grab." Brass asks about security, and we find out that in the interest of cost-cutting, night security was let go. This is about the most asinine line of reasoning I've ever run across. Growing up as I did in touron country and working as I did at water amusement parks, I can assure you that the last thing any park will cut is nighttime security. I realize there's no plot without the conceit, but it's a dumb-ass one. Zach foolishly snorts, "It's not like anyone's going to break into an amusement park and steal a roller coaster, you know?" No, but they'll find a way to hurt themselves on it and then sue the park for not preventing them from doing so.
Meanwhile, we're back on the B-plot. Remember the B-plot? And how it actually had a victim beyond the Anti-Catherine? Anyway, Emergency Backup David's standing over Tessa's prone corpse, explaining how X-rays demonstrate that "the blade appears to have perforated her fifth cervical intervertabral disc, lacerating the spinal cord. The type of trauma suggests we're looking at asphyxia due to diaphragmatic paralysis." We get a TMIcam shot of the laceration, and then we zoom in on the resultant wound, now 100 percent maggot-free. Warrick notes that there's soil inside the wound. Emergency Backup David shouts over the plinking of the poignant piano that the body was found in the middle of the loamy forest. Warrick counters that the dirt there would be around the wound and on the wound, but this topsoil's inside the wound. Emergency Backup David snaps, "I'm a coroner, not a grammarian! Prepositions were never my strong suit." Oh, he does not. He just listens to Warrick swabbing the wound.
And now, a wrenching sequence. Well, wrenching for me to watch, anyway. Nicky's probably perfectly happy playing with the pipe wrenches. Gil comes and silently hovers over Nicky's shoulder, the better to scare the hell out of his underling when Nicky says, "I am the man." He's feeling justifiably pleased, as he's linked the tool marks from the sabotaged screw with the pipe wrench found in Nevins's automobile. This discovery emboldens Snicky to offer his theory: "Maybe Jim Nevins sabotaged the roller coaster. When he left the park, someone attacked him, grabbed his wrench, and hit him over the head with it." What a complex and opaque theory. Nicky's got a set of mystery prints to back up his chain of events. Well, give the boy credit for looking at the how instead of the why, I guess. Liam comes in then and makes an eloquent argument for teaching more poetry in schools when he quips, "The semen in the cab / was just processed in my lab. / All I can say / is that Nevins was a cad." Yowch. Rhyme scheme, Liam! ["The scansion isn't the greatest either." -- Sars] The three get all caught up on Nevins's rollercoaster of love operation, and Nicky cheerfully admits, "There goes my theory. Nobody tampers with their sex machine."
We go to commercial wondering what ungodly robots Nicky's been building in his basement since he stopped working on the Days of Rage schematics. When the Three Laws of Robotics meet the sex machine -- I can't even bring myself to finish that thought.
When we get back from commercial, Sara's hoping to impress Nicky with how she's examining the digital pictures from the day of the accident, but Snicky requests that she go back to the night before, since he has a hunch that Nevins was taking -- or getting -- a few private rides on the coaster after hours. Sure enough, a hilarious photo of Jim and a lady friend pops up. There's some joke to be made here about going down while things are heating up, but really, you can make it yourselves. Sara wants to know who the girl is, and Nicky reverses the photo feed a few more times so we can see what is apparently the shortest bout of foreplay ever, and then the girl sitting to him. Both of them have their hands in the air. Can you imagine how roller coaster sex would affect your boudoir style in more sedentary locations? There you are, and your partner's all, "Why are you holding your hands over your head and screaming? Is something wrong?"
Sara doesn't even go there. She notices that the time stamp for the photo is 12:45 AM, and if the coroner's right about the timeline, Nevins died 15 minutes later. Nicky decides they need to find the girl on the roller coaster, and the camera pulls in for a tight close-up. She's not looking too thrilled to be on the ride, which makes her actions in subsequent photos all the more baffling.
Back in the B-plot, Catherine and Warrick are meeting in front of a mini-mart in a scenic downtown area. Apparently, Tessa used to come in after school every day for a Little Debbie snack cake and a soda. That was about the extent of Tessa's structured domestic life: Warrick's also been chatting with Carrie, the girl the Anti-Catherine figured Tessa spent the night with, and the story there is that Tessa would just show up whenever, and when she didn't, it was no big. If the writers want to make the point that someone needed to keep track of what this kid was doing beyond the cashier at the mini-mart, they've succeeded admirably. Just then, Catherine notices the surveillance camera outside the mini-mart and points it out to Warrick. He's already all over the footage.
Gil and Sara have headed back to the amusement park, and they're wandering down the fairway clad in their little CSI vests. Gil is also munching on a box of popcorn. Hee! They pass a number of toga-clad young employees, and then Sara mutters, "Uh-oh. Roller coaster wacko at 12 o'clock." But Gil's standing at her two -- oh. I get it. It's Red, bearing down on them with an eager-to-help expression. He says he heard they were looking for someone. How? Through the Roller Coaster Cabal's shadowy intelligence network? Anyway, Sara whips out the picture, and Red quickly identifies the girl as Cleopatra. Of course. Agrippina and Messalina were otherwise occupied. Gil cordially thanks Red, who watches them go with an anxious expression.
Sara and Gil head over to the concession stand where Cleopatra works, but a no-name centurion tells them she's on break. Actually, she's studying algebra at the picnic table, wondering how her kingdom got overrun with Roman statesmen and Greek math. Gil comments that quadratic equations are hard, and Cleopatra sighs, "Glad you think so. I have a D average. If I fail, my family's going to Hawaii without me." Aw, Cleo -- you could always roll yourself up in a carpet and stow along that way. Sara begins laying down the photos, saying, "We're with the crime lab. We have some questions." Cleo's face falls with each mug shot that appears. She does recover with, "I had no idea those cameras worked at night." Gil asks if Cleopatra's real name is, in fact, Cleopatra, and she says it's Lisa. However, that's a little too weird for me, so Cleo she shall stay. Sara begins asking questions about the last time Cleo saw Jimmy Nevins alive, but interrupts her own line of inquiry to note, "You don't seem too upset." Cleo answers, "D.L. on Jimmy Nevins? When I was a frosh and he was a senior, he was my own Jordan Catalano, you know?" Sara knows. Gil does not. And the cycle continues. Cleo continues, "He didn't even know my name. So when I started working here, he's still working here. Total loser, but still really, really hot. So when he asked me out, there was only one answer." Gil looks baffled. Sara, however, is right there with her. She presses Cleo for details on the roller coaster assignation, and Cleo says, "I know! I thought, Cheez Whiz, but what the hell. I'd never done it on a roller coaster."
Sara is less shocked that Cleo got it on during a roller coaster ride, and more startled that this was how the couple spent their first date. What, did Sara think Cleo was after Jimmy for his scintillating wit and keen intellect? Anyway, Cleo rolls her eyes and chuckles, "You sound like my mother." This statement baffles me, as my high school conversations about sex with Mabell were nothing like that, in part because they weren't conversations so much as they were monologues, and I was not the one orating. If I had been, you can be darn sure the topics wouldn't have veered from the probable state of my mortal soul (damned) to the many horrible futures that awaited me if I even thought about doing the deed, starting with syphilitic insanity and descending into ever more gothic horror from there. And I wouldn't have included visual aids. There was none of this "oh, my mom's just commenting on me stepping out on the first date, tra-la" attitude.
Ahem. Back in the episode, Cleo says quickly to Gil and Sara, "You're not going to tell her, are you? I swear, I just turned eighteen, there was nothing statutory about it." O ho! So maybe she and her mom aren't so blasé after all. Gil's all, "Eh. Just tell us what happened afterward." Cleo replies, "We talked. Not that he had much to say." I bet she didn't either; it can be strangely deflating to get what you've wanted for so long. She makes a crack about Jimmy's kissing technique (bad), and then explains she walked home alone.
Meanwhile, Catherine and Warrick are examining their camera footage, and focusing on a young man who's trying to pull Tessa along. Within seconds, Warrick's enlarged the frame, we've lingered long enough to know he'll be treated like a suspect, and then we're magically whisked to an interrogation room where the boy is looking at the security camera frame and admitting that's him with Tessa. The boy sat to Tessa on the school bus. He explains, "I felt sorry for her. The girls picked on her -- made fun of her frizzy hair and old clothes. Stuff like that. She'd sit to me, and they'd leave her alone." Catherine presses, "In the photo, you're grabbing her arm." The boy protests, "It wasn't like that! I'd just got my learner's permit. My mom was waiting in the car. We were going to get slushies. I saw Tessa in the parking lot --" And then we flash to him trying to drag her to the car, since he's all excited about driving, and Tessa protesting that she was getting a ride from someone else. The boy knows not who, but he did know Tessa hopped into a truck.
Sara's wandering around the Labitrail when Hodges pops out of his lair, grabs her by the arm, and says in a cordial voice, "I've got a question for you. What substance contains the following ingredients: sorbitol, cetyl alcohol, isopropyl myristate, glyceryl, stearate, PEG-100 stearate, petrolatum, benzyl alcohol, titanium dioxide, and purified water?" Um. A big pile of emulsifiers and emollients buffered by alcohol? Petrolatum is more commonly known as petroleum jelly, sorbitol's an alcohol commonly used in cosmetics as a humectant, stearates are derived from the fatty emollient stearic acid -- and also used as a cosmetic base, isopropyl myristate is an alcohol-buffered skin softener, glyceryl is another skin-softening agent, and cetyl alcohol's an emollient.
Close, but no banana. Sara's actually laughing by the end of Hodges's recitation, and she says all flirty-like, "So you identified the substance we found down near the roller coaster?" Hodges tells her he has, and says, "It's doxepim ointment. Sounds Klingon, huh?" He's laughing too. Did something leak into the lab? Or are these two…ooh, I hope they are. Sara and Hodges together would be the kind of couple that other people would just be baffled by, and the prospect of the imminent train wreck would keep the entire lab in giddy suspense for months. Plus, it would probably irk Gil, and that's a side benefit for Sara. Anyway, Sara sobers up, and Hodges tells her the ointment is commonly prescribed due to plant-caused rashes. Well, now I have an image of Klingons weeding their gardens, barking, "There is no honor in crabgrass!" Anyway, Sara wonders if maybe the person who loosened the roller coaster wheel wasn't coated in doxepim. Hodges says all dramatically, "Your killer has a rash." Sara gets back into the spirit of things with, "And we have to catch it."
Warrick has been catching time with an attractive woman who melts away when Catherine comes barreling around the corner of the Labitrail. He tells Catherine he just got the results back from Hodges's analysis of the gunk embedded in Tessa's wound. "It seems it was Zoo Doo," he says. Catherine gives him a big "Huh?" and Warrick explains that Zoo Doo's the voodoo that gardeners do when they want to cut down on the greenery that deer chew, saying, "Hoof stock. It's a combination of feces from rhinos, zebras and bison. They say that the smell of wild animal crap keeps the deer away." Wisely, he steers away from the heated debate on the merits of composting and fertilizing with herbivorous manure versus carnivorous manure, because we'd be here all day. Catherine is just surprised that a humble gardener can notice that deer shy away from funny animal smells and use poop accordingly. She asks if they can track the source, and Warrick explains, "There's a zoo in Auckland that exports it, and there's only one landscaping that imports it -- ADL. I contacted ADL, and guess what they told me. Couple of months back, they were hired by the victim's mother." Catherine stops short when she hears that.
So they get over to the Press house right quick, and the ADL truck is still parked in front. Catherine snaps a few photos, and Warrick comments, "Must have been a big job. She hired them months ago." Catherine notices the bag of Zoo Doo in the back of the truck, and photographs it.
Catherine then marches up to the door, clearly dreading the conversation she thinks she's going to have. Warrick's not looking too happy either. She knocks, and the Anti-Catherine comes out, extremely calm all things considered, and asks if there's any news. A David Silver look-alike -- we've already had the original, so all others are pale imitations -- hulks it up in the background. Catherine looks a little disoriented, and Anti-Catherine explains, "Honey, these guys are from the crime lab." Then she introduces us to Justin Mack, her boyfriend. Warrick and Justin exchange nods and heys. Warrick then asks, "Could I have a word with you outside for a moment?" Justin asks, "Why?" Warrick rebuts, "Why not?" The menfolk wander off, leaving Catherine and the Anti-Catherine alone to talk.
They wander inside, their silhouettes nearly indistinguishable, as the Anti-Catherine protests that they can't be sure it was Justin's truck. Catherine changes tracks to ask about Justin -- the Anti-Catherine sighs, "I hired him to lay sod, and now we're in the midst of an outdoor overhaul." Catherine asks about Tessa's father, and the Anti-Catherine says he's off in L.A., but she knows not where. "He'll find a way to blame me for this," she adds.
Meanwhile, Justin's telling Warrick that the Anti-Catherine "thought it was important for Tessa to take the bus to school. Said it helps build independence. Sometimes I'd pick her up at the bus stop, buy her an ice cream cone, and drop her off here." Warrick asks if Justin had picked Tessa up the afternoon she died, and Justin huffs, "I know there are a lot of whackjobs out there, and you're just doing your job, but watch it!" Warrick just stares, and then asks to look in the back of the truck. Justin asks, "Don't you need a warrant?" "Only if you deny me access," Warrick points out. Justin shrugs and tells him to go ahead.
Meanwhile, Catherine is leading her doppelganger down the path toward the "your boyfriend's a predator" conclusion, but the Anti-Catherine digs in her heels and insists, "He's a good man. He wouldn't hurt anybody, especially not Tessa." Then she has a little breakdown.
Out in the truck, Warrick's busy spraying everything with luminol, and the spade glows with it. We then zip over to an interrogation room, where Warrick is telling a lawyer, "In 1988, your client was arrested for a drunk and disorderly. The fingerprints were then entered into our database. They matched the fingerprints that we found on the shovel."
But we don't switch to Justin looking all dismayed, but rather -- Anti-Catherine. Shocking twist, eh? Catherine explains to the Anti-Catherine that "the blood on the blade matches your daughter's DNA." The lawyer points out that the Anti-Catherine has been landscaping her yard in between bouts of making her daughter pancakes and having no idea where the kid spent her nights. Warrick counters that only Anti-Catherine's prints were on the shovel, and she counter-counters that Justin wears work gloves. Warrick concedes that it's possible, but Anti-Catherine's fingerprints provided sufficient basis for a warrant to search her car, where he found a big, body-shaped splotch courtesy of luminol.
Warrick explains, "The choice of weapon, and the manner of disposal suggest that this was not a premeditated murder." Catherine looks at her sullen doppelganger and urges, "You can help yourself here. You can avoid Murder One by telling us what set you off." The Anti-Catherine contemptuously says, "You wouldn't understand." "Try me," Catherine tosses back.
Okay, then. The Anti-Catherine spits out, "I bought Tessa a bus pass, and that little slut still gets my guy to pick her up after school. We all know why." Catherine prods, "Why don't you tell us?" and the music goes all discordant to indicate that the Anti-Catherine's a freak of nature as she claims, "She was trying to steal him from me." We go to a flashback which shows how deluded the Anti-Catherine is, and only makes me feel sorrier for poor Tessa, picked on at school and poorly cared for at home before her own mom kills her during a temper tantrum. The Anti-Catherine has no empathy for anyone, however. She protests that Justin was the best thing in her life. Catherine listens to the off-key jangling before going, "Ah, nnnnno. Your daughter was the best thing in your life." Then she gets up and strides out of the room in a self-righteous huff, so she can log into the Web site that logs Lindsey's every movement via implanted radio chip.
On the way out, the Anti-Catherine childishly calls, "You didn't know her!" Catherine scoffs and shoots back, "I know she was thirteen years old. A child!" And off she goes, while the Anti-Catherine sits there and sulks over how unfair it is to be held responsible for killing the boyfriend competition.
We wrap up that plot, just in time to hear Sara rattle through the Labitrail, detailing how lucky they are that doxepim isn't widely prescribed, so it was just a matter of romping through the local prescription databases before finding a likely suspect. Sara wraps it up by telling Gil, "You want a clue? Her death ended the Ptolemy dynasty's reign in ancient Egypt, hence making her the last pharaoh." Gil smiles and replies lightly, "Ah, the lovely Cleopatra."
Fortunately for Cleopatra, she is lovely enough to carry off the eye-rolling she's currently giving Gil and Sara. She snots, "I had a rash. So what? That's not a crime." The attack lawyer quickly discredits the whole purpose for the conversation, and Gil ignores him to ask Cleo about her arms. She tells him the rash was actually on her legs, and it went away days ago. "You want to see?" she adds. The CSIs decline the offer. The lawyer dryly says, "Unless you want to argue that my client stood on her head and held a wrench in her toes, we're done here." Nice line, but it falls on deaf ears as Gil asks Cleo how she contracted the rash. Why, by gamboling through the tall grass with her math tutor Zach, whom she also gave some ointment to when he got the same rash.
Brass and Sara head on over to the merry-go-round, where Zach's hanging out. Brass breaks the ice by noting that they just talked to Cleo and she passed on the info about the ointment. Zach nods. Sara jumps in with, "It's illegal to use someone else's prescription medication." "Is that why you guys are here?" Brass hedges, "Not exactly." Zach asks if they can maybe not have this discussion in the middle of the fairway, and Brass brightly says, "Hey! Good idea! We can go downtown!" Sara hangs behind, the better to dust Zach's broom for prints.
In the interrogation room, Gil asks, "What do you have against roller coasters?" Zach has no idea how he should answer that, so Sara leaps in to explain that his prints, they're all over the Jimmy Nevins's T-bird and the wrench used to kill the boy. Zach's attack lawyer dismisses it as circumstantial evidence. Yeah, good luck getting heard with this bunch, pal. Sara presses on and presents Zach's geek credentials before noting that "you don't sound like the kind of kid that would mess with a roller coaster just for kicks." Gil appeals to the mathlete's vanity with, "You're a smart guy, Zach, so let's talk this out logically. According to your statement, when you locked up Thursday night, Jim Nevins's car was the only one in the parking lot. And you knew he was staying in the park to ride the roller coaster." Zach stammers, "I don't care about Jim Nevins." Sara asks, "What about Cleopatra? You tutor her, right? Did Cleo tell you she had a date with Jim?" Zach's cool is completely gone: if Jim was Cleo's Jordan Catalano, she was Angela Chase to his Brian Krakow. He answers miserably, "No, she didn't say anything. It was all over the park. Jim was going to take Cleo on one of his coaster dates. I asked her about it, and she said it was a rumor."
Sara notes, "It seems to matter to you, that she had a date with Jim." Keep up, Sara! We're on Angela and Brian now! Jordan's history! Zach snaps, "Lady, I make $20 an hour tutoring. Why do you think I'd take minimum wage at the Sphinx?" Sara correctly guesses that it was because of Cleo. Zach brokenly relates how they started hanging out together, and "then last week, when we went for a walk, she grabbed my hand." This really is getting a little My So-Called Life-ish with the angst over the little things. Gil looks at Zach and asks if he thought it meant everything. Clearly, Gil was never a teenager in the throes of a painful crush. He adds that Zach didn't trust Cleopatra. Zach said he wanted to.
And then we go to a creepy little scene where a sullen Zach is giving the roller coaster a psycho glare as Cleo and Jim go around and around. Sara realizes, "You tampered with the screws. If she wasn't lying, she wouldn't be on the roller coaster -- no harm, no foul." Of course. Because a healthy relationship is one based on pop quizzes the test subject is completely unaware she's taking. Zach points out, "See, she was lying." Gil asks, "You didn't loosen the wheels enough, did you? So when the roller coaster didn't derail, you took things into your own hands." We flash to Zach braining Jim. Yeah, we probably never would've gotten that scene on My So-Called Life.
Gil adds, "What I don't understand is why you didn't go back and fix the roller coaster." Zach shrugs, "Guess I just didn't think about it." Sara serves the cheese course with, "You'll be thinking about it now…and the rest of your life."
And now the roller coaster is back open. Gil and Red are sitting at a nearby picnic table, and Red is ruing the day he didn't check the loose screws. Gil says kindly, "You're not to blame for this, Red." Red says, "I just hope they don't blame the coaster. It may not be the Manhattan Express at the New York, New York, or the Desperado in Primm, but it still makes grown men scream." Gil burbles, "My first week in Vegas, I rode the Desperado." It turns out that was Red's first coaster marathon, what with him riding it for a week straight.
Then the whimsical strings kick in and the two of them happily regale each other with roller coaster stories, Gil finishing with, "For me, it's not about the track. It's about the thrill." And the roller coaster goes swooping round with a full load of screaming passengers, ending the episode as we're left to wonder if Gil sees the irony in sticking to relatively safe and confined thrills while everyone else rides emotional roller coasters instead.