The Vegas skyline! It's so pretty and shiny and rich-looking! And isn't it spiffy how the lights turn into a pixilated pattern and then into the weave of a black tie? We're going from macro to micro there. And then we're going back up to macro again as we pull back from the tie to see that Gil's bungling the knotting of said accessory. He's in a dinner jacket, and he's not looking too bad in it. The tuxedo truly is the Little Black Dress for the masculine set.
Catherine comes up behind Gil and asks what he's doing. He whips out a bowtie-tying diagram that would be slightly more helpful if it were perhaps printed in Cantonese or Finnish, and tells Catherine dolefully, "I'm going insane. I don't understand this diagram." Catherine sighs before telling him, "You don't need a diagram. You need a woman." What, to act as his tie caddy? Catherine sidles behind Gil and ties his tie for him. He's got a look like, Well, I'll be darned. Maybe I do need a woman. Tie caddy, you say? So long as she never touches me and never comes between me and my bugs, this could work. Gil's looks are very voluble. As Catherine ties said tie, she mentions how she's looking forward to Gil's speech. If it's as eloquent as his eye-roll, we're in for something that would make any toastmaster cry with appreciation.
Cut to a formal dinner setting. Sheriff Dander Berkeley's busy making with the kind of fake-jovial office-speak that has the more surly and contentious types mentally updating their résumés and vowing to work anywhere that doesn't inflict affairs like these on them. As Sheriff Dander blathers on, Gil is busy tapping his forehead with a pen and thinking, "I had no problem generating mellifluous bullshit on demand when I was Senator Foghorn Leghorn in The Skulls. Ah, me!" Anyway, Sheriff Dander eventually gets around to toasting Ecklie. The man of the evening has been watching Gil write on his napkin with a nasty little smile, but he remembers his manners enough to smile at Sheriff Dander. And then, demonstrating how thinly tethered to reality the higher-ups in any dreary organization seem to be, Sheriff Dander begins to introduce Gil as Ecklie's "good friend." Fortunately, Gil is saved from the Hobson's choice of playing along or contradicting Sheriff Dander by his beeper. Catherine's head is swiveling like she's watching a tennis match; you can tell she totally thinks Gil needs to drop his pager in a glass of water and just give the damn speech already. She realizes he's not getting up to give the speech, as he's expected to, and says nervously, "Gil." He looks up from the beeper and says, "I got a 419." She tells him not to even think about it, and Gil protests that the swing shift's tapped out. I bet -- being willed into creation for subsequent plot contrivances can take a lot out of a crew. Ecklie's looking both smug and pissed at the delay. Gil hands Catherine the napkin and says, "Here. You give my speech."
Catherine struck speechless. Unfortunate, that. Gil gets up to give a cheeky thumbs-up and a "Good look, Conrad" to Ecklie, and holds the pager aloft, pointing apologetically. He heads off. The crowd does the usual "peas and carrots peas and carrots" dismayed murmur, and Sheriff Dander looks sufficiently hornswoggled at his keynote speaker blithely skipping off to a crime scene. Catherine opens up the napkin and sees that she's about to give the world's shortest laudatory speech: "What can I say about Conrad Ecklie?" She sighs, and Sheriff Dander pleads with her, "Help me out here."
Thus sprung from his toastmaster duties, Gil practically gavottes toward the crime scene. I believe he's in the Four Seasons; it's certainly swanky enough, and it's missing that tourists-in-matching-sweatsuits contingent that's spread across the Strip like a velour plague. As Gil meets an officer at the scene, the guy asks, "What's with the monkey suit?" "I was at a funeral across the street," Gil says. Heh. The uniform offers his condolences and explains that Gil will be taking the VIP elevator to the crime scene, not because he's special, but because the crime scene happens to be in the rock-star suite. As Gil enters the swanky elevator, the doors open and a woman in a slinky red dress lurches in. She greets Gil, and he politely replies with a hello and asks what floor she wants. The blonde looks at him and asks, "Where did you think I'm going?" Gil pauses and says slowly, "I wouldn't know." The blonde gives him a sidelong look and says, "You don't recognize me." "Apparently not," Gil says politely. I like how he reserves the snippiness for coworkers and perps. The woman helpfully says, "In the lab, I wear my hair up." The penny drops for Gil -- "Ahhhh, yeah." Insofar as meet-cute banter goes, this is a long way from Lucy and Jerry in The Awful Truth. Heck, it's even a long way from Clarice and Hannibal in Silence of the Lambs. We establish that the blonde is one Sofia Curtis, a CSI-3 who works the day shift under Ecklie. So if Gil is the anti-Ecklie, does that make her the anti-Catherine? Gil notes, "You work for Ecklie," and Sofia replies, "As of tonight, so do you." Duh-dunh-DUH!
Anyway, for all that it's her boss being lauded across the street, Sofia's working the case with Gil. Captain Exposition apologizes for dragging them away from the chicken cordon bleu, explaining, "It's the McKinley High homecoming. The dance is downstairs, but the cool kids' party is in here." Sofia checks the crazy-large suite and says, "This space makes the Rain Man suite at Caesar's look like my condo." What does that mean? The furniture here makes the Caesar's stuff look like it came from Ikea? Surely there are better ways to comment on the huge, opulent space -- like "This place could fit the Labitrail in it -- and we'd still have room to expand." Gil notes that the rooms are typically reserved for whales and royalty, so why is there a high-school homecoming party going on? To distract the student body from their killer parents, killer peers, and baseball recruitment scandals? I'm just spitballing.
Anyway, everyone does a 5K across the suite to get to the body lying on the wooden floor. The curtains flutter dramatically in the window, just so the death tableau looks more attractive. Meet Nicole Jenson, aged 17. She's lying on her side, with a whole lot of vomit all over the place. This is the point where Mr. Sobell leaves the room; our marital vows have an escape clause for depictions of vomit, real or fictional. He's got a phobia. No, really. An actual phobia -- emetophobia, it's called. Two years ago, two days before Christmas, I was stricken with a sudden onset of stomach flu -- the kind where your entire system instructs its contents to exit by any orifice possible. (Incidentally, I had just finished a CSI: Miami recap. Coincidence?) And as I was astride the throne, wondering if I'd have to explain to the emergency room doctor that I'd accidentally flushed my colon, my stomach gave a throat-clearing lurch and I called for Mr. Sobell: "Baby, bring the bucket!" The bathroom door opened, the bucket hurtled inside, and the door slammed shut. The last thing I heard before descending into my own plastic hell was the sound of rapid footsteps, and our TV turned up as high as it would go. Eventually, when I staggered out and collapsed on the couch, the husband turned to look at me. "I rinsed the bucket," I said weakly. "Sweetheart," Mr. Sobell said. I turned to him, expecting perhaps an apology for not being able to hold my hair back as my lunch and I saw each other once more. "Sweetheart," he said, "I need you to scrub it out with Comet too. And the bathroom. Right now."
So you can see where he's not going to be hanging around to comment on the few scenes. He will, however, be shouting from the room that he has many other outstanding traits (he does), and had he been a lesser man, he would have listened to that impulse to get in the car and come back some time around Boxing Day (he didn't). But enough digression -- the swankily clad Gil and Sofia circle around the body, note the compact puddle of vomit, and make some comments about how dreadful it is when the kids make like Jimi and Janis. Then the two of them notice a bruise on Nicole's neck -- Sofia notes the contusions, and Gil notes that "the position suggests she was grabbed from behind." Sofia reads the wristband, "A night to remember." Gil rebuts, "A night to forget."
The Who would like to forget how their band member also ended up dead in a Vegas hotel room.
When we get back, the two CSIs and Brass are on the balcony outside the suite. Sofia is pulling something on under her dress, and Gil is twiddling with his now-untied tie as Brass tells him hotel owner Charlie Macklin let his daughter Janelle have the suite for her homecoming party. And here I was thrilled when my parents let me take the Buick. Gil muses, "Off the streets and out of trouble. The best laid plans…" Gil asks what the daughter's story is, and Brass is all, "You know, that's a good question. And when I find her, I'll be sure to get back to you with an answer." And then he checks how Gil is staring at the now-jumpsuited Sofia with a glazed look, and he rolls his eyes and takes off. Sofia catches Gil looking too, and gives an impish look before pulling her dress out of the jumpsuit. I would love to know how she did that -- it wasn't what you could call a loose dress (it was a slinky column, with a lot of back straps) and when last we looked, she was pulling on the jumpsuit underneath, so the best I can figure is, she got the coveralls on up to the waist, pulled her dress up around her waist, then zipped up the arms over the dress. Then she did a variation of the Flashdance bra trick -- snake one hand up the opposite sleeve, pull down the strap so it's no longer over the shoulder, repeat on the opposite side, the pull the whole thing out at the neck. Although why she didn't just duck around a corner so she had some more privacy is God's own mystery. Sofia explains to Gil, "I can barely move in this dress, and we haven't cleared the bathroom yet, so…there it is. Don't worry, I'm wearing underwear, as far as you know." "That's the least of my concerns. I'm worried because that's Nicky's coverall and he's only just graduated to big-boy underpants," Gil replies. "I'd hate for you to find a surprise." Oh, he does not. Instead, he gives this forensic Lewinsky maneuver all the comment it deserves, i.e. none.
After trekking back to the crime scene, the CSIs get the news from Emergency Backup David that Nicole's been dead less than two hours. Sofia is sifting through the assorted detritus around the area -- "Banana peel, G-string. Scared of that." Why? Is fruit in scanty lingerie really that wrong? Emergency Backup David notes the ligature marks on both of Nicole's wrists and some kind of adhesive residue. Gil asks, "So she was bound?" It's kind of amazing someone who a) works in forensics, and b) ran around with a dominatrix still has to be walked through the connection that ligature marks on the wrists = bound. There's also a round impression on Nicole's left cheek. It does not match the smear of vomit on her right one. Sofia couldn't give a crap about the body -- she's moved on to the eats: "No beer or liquor. Just water, yogurt and OJ. Mixers -- not for drinks. Maybe for drugs. Right pH in the stomach speeds the buzz along. I think there's narco around here somewhere." Gil looks up and asks, "Are-are you talking to me?" No, she's not. Gil asks if she always processes scenes "with your mouth." Sofia replies only, "Whenever I meet someone new, I say their name aloud a few times. It keeps a picture in my head." It also permits them the opportunity to figure out what sort of accent Sofia's supposed to have. Half her vowels seem like they caught the late train into the sentence.
Anyway, Gil's not impressed with Sofia's attempts to paint a verbal picture. He says, "I thought that's why we had cameras." Or flashbacks, which some bubbleheaded witness is using to evoke a narrative of how Nicole came to be a vomit-covered corpse. Witness Miranda's version of the story: Nicole came in, hysterical and vomiting, then promptly dropped from cardiac arrest. Brass probes as to social dynamic of the group, and Miranda snots that Nicole was a hanger-on and a social untouchable because "her father's freelance limo driver. I mean, you have to have a felony to get that job." Brass chuckles and asks how Miranda knows that, and she's all, "Everybody knows that. Her dad was a knee-breaker for the old Mob. You ever see Casino, the movie? The guy Joe Pesci played. Well, he and Nicole's dad were friends in real life. Real lowlifes. That girl was kryptonite to me. I'd be lying if I said any different." Ah, high school. So full of petty cruelties. And even pettier and crueler when you're in your twenties, as this actress appears to be.
Catherine appears to have escaped Ecklie's dinner none the worse for wear, and she's back in what passes for her civvies. Nicky lets us all know that of the seven key-card holders to the suite, only Janelle and some guy named Sean Paland are unaccounted for. Nicky offers to go trawling the casino floor for the kids, and Catherine's all, "I thought you were going to go process the scene with Grissom." Nicky's all, "He said he had it covered. Sofia Curtis is up there with him." Catherine sucks in air through her teeth and grits, "Ecklie's right hand. Ever do a case with her?" Before we can find out why it's so awful -- perhaps Sofia's chattering gets to everyone? Perhaps her habit of setting up a portable Ecklie shrine is unnerving to outsiders? -- Nicky asks how the speech went. Tragically, we cut away before we can find out.
Catherine is busy asking the security guy for surveillance camera footage coverage all available egresses from the Macklin suite. As he pulls it up, Catherine notes, "Dance is still going strong." The guy waxes rhapsodic with, "That's the beauty of high school in Las Vegas. Homecoming in a casino? Dance can go all night." And we zoom through the footage to the dance in question. Nicky is currently wending his way across the dance floor, with an annoying little git in tow protesting about how he's been dancing for hours. The git is Sean; he is also the token twonk who shows up to a shindig dressed appropriately from the waist up because he's so "edgy" and "irreverent" (read: "needy for affirmation that he's not hopelessly jejune. He will be disappointed to learn none is forthcoming"). Either that, or he's not sure which pants are appropriate for the Aughties youth culture; this guy is another elderly-looking teen. And like the long-in-the-tooth girl from Brass's prior scene, this one also disdains Nicole as an untouchable. "Then what was she doing in the P. Diddy suite?" Nicky wants to know. Making the wrong choice in the "Vote or Diet" dilemma? Actually, Janelle collected her because she had a soft heart.
And if Janelle had snubbed her, we wouldn't have this scene where David the Monologue-Delivering Coroner exposits the following: "Standard SAE kit was collected. Physical findings of sexual activity. Unable to determine if consensual or rape. Collected heart blood sample. Preliminary tox indicates psilocybin, MDMA and THC in the system. Green-colored fiber was collected from the nasal passages to be forwarded to Trace Evidence for analysis. Vomitous mass was found in the throat and lungs, and there was petecchial hemorrhaging of the lower eyelids. Preliminary C.O.D. appears to be mechanical asphyxia from aspiration of gastric content as a result of acute drug intoxication. [David] Robbins, M.E., employee number ." And we're all the richer for knowing the employee number, aren't we? Ah, exposition, how clumsy your approach. I look forward to a day when all plausibility is tossed to the winds and we get mimes acting out things like what could have killed a partying teen. Other than a giant anvil sent by a harsh higher power, that is.
Now we get the turd's-eye view of Sofia as she peers in a toilet and fishes out a big bag of mushrooms. Something tells me they weren't put there by someone hoarding the Portobello against the barbarian throng. Sofia slogs over to where Gil is working and announces, "I collected seven used condoms -- not a record in my book. The fact that wrists were bound suggests possible sex games. Also pulled a plastic baggie from the toilet containing what looks like ground-up mushrooms. Probably not the kind you put on pizza. Could be the source of the psilocybin. One of the kids is still holding -- I'm going to let Brass know." Throughout this entire spiel, Gil has either resumed his hearing difficulties of Season Three, or he's gone to his happy place; he's not acknowledging Sofia at all. She says, "That last time, I was talking to you." Gil reluctantly returns to the crime scene and says, "Sorry. I was, uh, treating [your chattering] like white noise." The two of them then move on to a discussion of vomit, during which Sofia mentions casually, "Ecklie always said you had an odd sense of humor" (Gil arches an eyebrow at this), and the whole point to this discussion is that Nicole could not have possibly come stumbling in, spraying vomit like Mr. Creosote. The tidy puddle indicates it was pushed out of her, quite possibly in a CPR-like effort to revive her. A quick glance at a nearby chair suddenly explains the impression in her cheek (a button, implying that Nicole's face was pressed into the furniture with force) and the green fibers (pillow or upholstery, implying she was having problems breathing on account of a face full of throw pillow). The vomit-stained pillow helps too. Damn -- I have no vomit phobia, but even I am getting tired of seeing puke everywhere.
Brass wanders outside, surveys the kids standing there, then selects one, saying, "You. You're all done. Let's go." And as he walks the gibbering kid into the suite, my admiration morphs from "Wow, he picked the drug dealer out of the bunch!" to "Wow, he picked the most likely rat out of the bunch!" Brass is good. The kid quickly gibbers that Brass wants Rex -- Rx. Get it? Brass calls, "Hey, Rex!" and the oily-looking kid looks up. Oopsie for him.
He quickly tries to correct Brass with, "It's Gavin. You've got my license. Check it." Brass is all, "No, no -- it's Rex, as in R.X. I guess it's a lot more subtle than 'drugstore,' right?" Gavin protests that he's not holding, and as Gil comes in and asks brightly, "Is this our dealer?" Gavin goes a little crazy. It could be his receding hairline doing it to him, but honestly, did he expect to hit his forties without any damage? Anyway, Gavin's all, "My dad owns seven restaurants and I don't need drug-dealing money, blah blah blah," and Gil cuts him off with, "Maybe you just like getting your friends high." Brass adds, "There's a song about that, I think." "Why Can't We Be Friends"? "That's What Friends Are For"? The theme from Friends?
Sofia then wanders through the clutch of partygoers, eyeing them all disdainfully. I love it -- she's both real police and fashion police. She begins checking everyone's wrists for duct tape residue. Meanwhile, Gil is schooling young Gavin on the miracle of intact prints on submerged plastic baggies. Gavin continues to age visibly. Gil tells him, "When we match your prints with what we find on this bag, you'll be charged with murder."
Gavin cracks and claims he didn't give Nicole anything; the shrooms were a hostess gift and Nicole, in a shocking breach of etiquette, dove in before the hostess could set the portions. Gil and Brass asks if Gavin had sex with Nicole and he issues a non-denial with, "So what if I did? She was giving it away." It's heartening how the youth of today have been raised by their parents to cover their asses by relentlessly slandering the dead and blaming them for their untimely ends. Before this interrogation can get any more irritating, it's cut off by a phone call from Catherine. She's just found a Janelle Macklin sighting on tape -- but Janelle's being ushered into an elevator in what appears to be a kidnapping by the stars of Cowboy Bebop.
When we get back from break, Brass has Miranda, Randy the squealing rat, and Gavin arrayed in front of him so they can explain how it is that they neglected to mention a little thing like Janelle getting kidnapped. Brass is all, "So how did Nicole end up dead?" and Gavin admits, "Eventually, we all got ourselves free. We were all scared, but Nicole was possessed." Miranda adds, "She was wasted. Freaking out." So they smothered her until she could come to her senses. Or lose them altogether. Gavin points out that they weren't trying to hurt her, and Brass replies that it's really the DA's call. He then asks why they had to sit on the kidnapping.
Cue Big Daddy Macklin, who saw no reason why a little abduction should ruin anyone's homecoming. He assures Sheriff Dander Berkeley that "Janelle's fine. It's all a game." When Catherine points out that Janelle sure looked scared by her cowboy-bebop kidnappers, Big Daddy Macklin pooh-poohs it as her natural acting talent coming forth. "So you think this is all an act -- Daddy's little girl begging for attention." "Right on the button," Big Daddy Macklin smiles. He continues, "Let me tell you about Janelle. I sent her to a nice prep school back east. She flunked out, on purpose. I gave her a Bentley for her Sweet 16, she wraps it around a tree, and I'm putting up with this crap since she was a kid. I'm done." Sheriff Dander Berkeley scores a few points when he asks, "When was the last time you actually talked to your daughter?" That would have been yesterday, when she asked Big Daddy Macklin to comp her the suite. Catherine and Sheriff Dander Berkeley look kind of appalled by this. Big Daddy Macklin snots, "You want me to call her, fine. She never goes anywhere without her cell phone." And, apparently, her new entourage of abductors: a disembodied voice answers the phone and instructs the listener to wire a million dollars to a bank account in the Grand Caymans. Catherine looks kind of devastated for a minute, then recovers to comment, "I take it that's not her usual greeting. If this is a game, why ask for money? She obviously doesn't need it." Big Daddy Macklin explains why: "I pay, she wins." It turns out that Janelle's trust is set up in the Caymans. Quelle coincidence! Catherine points out, "When Steve Wynn's daughter was kidnapped, he didn't tell the police. He went to the Mirage casino floor, he got $1.4 mil cash, he made the drop --" "Got his daughter back in a couple of hours. Yeah, I know the story. Steve Wynn's daughter is a real victim. Janelle isn't." Sheriff Dander Berkeley actually brings a little law-enforcement mojo with, "Game or not, Mr. Macklin, one girl is dead. Your daughter is missing. We're compelled to investigate here." Big Daddy Macklin exits with a warning about how they can also make Janelle answer for her hijinks because he's done with her -- and this paint-by-numbers plotline from the Daddy Gave Me Money, But All I Wanted Was Love collection.
Meanwhile, at what is shaping up to be the Daddy Broke Some Kneecaps, But He Sure Loved His Daughter plotline, David the Cordial Coroner is pulling out the drawer in the morgue in which Nicole is being kept. Mr. Jensen looks down, absolutely devastated. It's a nicely rendered moment. So well done, in fact, that I feel slightly bad asking, what's the deal with the three tiny stripes of hair on his chin? But really -- they're kind of distracting. David tells him Nicole's personal effects are at the front desk and Mr. Jensen takes off without a word, just shambling away, completely unstrung.
It's now daylight. Gil's changing in the locker room -- the door's open to the hall, which seems like something of a privacy challenge -- and Ecklie swings by to comment, "At least you got your money's worth out of the rental." Gil pauses for a moment, then silently resumes hanging up his coat. Ecklie continues, lying through his teeth, "I just wanted to let you know, no hard feelings about you leaving the banquet. Just doing your job." Gil pauses in mid-pant-hang to give an insincere smirk. He then asks mildly, "Have you decided yet who's going to be the day-shift supervisor?" Ecklie looks both ways before saying, "Well, Sofia's a logical choice, but nothing's been decided yet." Gil plows ahead and tells Ecklie to consider Catherine because she's earned it. Ecklie says, "I'll give it some thought," in such a manner as to make it clear that he means, "So long as you're backing it, it will never happen." Then, to further throw Gil off his game, he asks for a copy of the speech, for his scrapbook. Gil's all, "Yeah, I'll get on that for you," in such a manner as to make it clear that Ecklie will get the speech the same day Catherine takes over the day shift.
Speaking of Catherine, she's flogging poor Liam to produce results from the hours of footage he's viewed. "I think my eyes need band-aids," he groans. "Tough shift," she shoots back. "You did say 'shift,' right," he asks. Catherine confirms that she did, and the Parents' Television Council members all backspace a few lines on the protest letter they've got open, then resume waiting for the threat against decency. Liam gives us the thumbnail on the eight hours of footage he reviewed: Janelle and her posse rode up to the suite, but then the only footage of her is with the kidnappers, before they hustled off to some other egress that's presumably unmonitored, as there's no record of it anywhere. "Maybe she's still in the suite. It's a big room," Liam suggests.
Nicky's in a much smaller room, i.e. the elevator. After he bemoans the many footprints in the elevator, Catherine checks out the wall control and says, "And hundreds more fingerprints. Good luck." Then she bops off. Nicky shouts sarcastically, "Thanks a lot!" Whoa! Our Nicky with attitude? Will wonders never cease?
Meanwhile, Warrick's all alone in the linen closet. This is a man who knows his designer handbags and La Perla lingerie; is he going to start carrying on about the Frette linens too? Before he can begin sighing and looking beleaguered because he's surrounded by sub-200-count sheets and towels not made of long-staple Turkish cotton, Catherine comes in, and Warrick conveniently finds the costumes the kidnappers were wearing. As Catherine comments, "Those guys definitely know their way around this motel," Warrick continues sorting through the linen carts. Catherine opens a service elevator and frowns, despite the apparent breeze from the elevator brushing her hair back in a particularly dramatic fashion. She photographs the floor; so does Nicky. He also happens to notice a fiber of some sort caught in the door.
Downstairs, Warrick's making a more interesting discovery: the creepy kabuki masks the kidnappers wore. He points out, "The abductors exposed their faces to Janelle Macklin. That's one of two things: either she knew them, or they were going to whack her." Catherine makes the lemon face as she realizes Big Daddy Macklin might have called this one correctly. That, or she's thinking, "I too am the scion of a Strip overlord and I never pulled stunts like these. Then again, I didn't find out I was the daughter of a Strip overlord until I was in my forties. Would it be unseemly to begin acting out now?" She also happens to snap a totally boring photo of the elevator corner.
Boring but crucial, as it turns out: the security feed purporting to show the same elevator features a scrawl of graffiti in the corner. Clearly, someone's monkeyed with the footage. The question, of course, is who. The answer, it turns out, is the milquetoasty security guy they originally turned to for the footage. Catherine goes into an explanatory monologue that may or may not be accurate when it comes to security cameras: "TiVoing the casino. Now, that's ballsy. You time-shifted the signal from the west penthouse service elevator and you fed it to the east monitor." The guy gives voyeurs a bad name as he crumples like Tara Reid's red-carpet tops and whimpers, "Janelle asked me to. I really like her. I practically watched her grow up. I mean, through the cameras. [Sob!] I'm so fired! [Sniff!] I screwed with Charlie Macklin. I'm probably dead." Catherine couldn't care less that she's talking to a dead man: "Where is she?" The guy snivels, "I don't know. She said she wanted to sneak some guys up to her suite that Mr. Macklin wouldn't like. What was I supposed to do? She's the boss's daughter." Catherine gets all shirty with, "She's also a person of interest in the death of Nicole Jensen." I love that phrase. It seems like the best accolade ever, as opposed to an indirect way of saying, "Someone with whom law enforcement would like to chat." Not that the two usages would be mutually exclusive -- one imagines that persons of interest are doing things of interest to police -- but that "person of interest" would be an excellent way to describe a non-boring autodidact.
Speaking of non-boring autodidacts, here's Gil in the lab, babbling away as he examines the fiber Nicky found under a microscope: "Definitely not synthetic. Medulla is 14 microns in diameter. Continuous cortex. Imbricate scales. I'm thinking sheep." Catherine has walked by during all this, and Gil's monologue has sort of thrown her. She hovers while Gil cross-checks the fiber sample against a database; he says triumphantly, "Merino. A fine wool for fine fabrics." That textile appraisal finally pushes Catherine over the edge: "Why are you talking to yourself?" "Because 'imbricate' is much more fun to say than 'overlapping,'" Gil replies. Oh, he does not. He tells her, "I'm trying a new technique." "Is it working?" Catherine asks, in a tone pleading for Gil to tell her it isn't. "I have no idea," he admits. I give the man points for being open to new and/or better ways of using his brain. I also give the writers points for the characterization: really smart people -- the ones I've run across anyway -- are always up to absorbing new ideas no matter how unlikely to source, and it's smart writing to give this trait to Gil. It's what separates him from a know-it-all blowhard (cough, cough -- Horatio -- cough, cough). But the point to this scene is not to establish that Gil's into copping Sofia's forensic techniques, but that the fiber is off a black wool tuxedo. Gil looks at Catherine and says drolly, "You'll have to take their clothes." Ha!
Cut to some random kid named Dean Tate looking more than a little thrown that someone matched him to the Janelle Macklin kidnapping based on one fiber. After Brass comes in and puts the fear of God into Dean, he sets down the terms: immunity from being implicated in Nicole Jensen's untimely demise if he sings a little ditty 'bout jacking the Macklin. Dean catches us up on everything: "Janelle hired an eye-in-the-sky geek to knock out the cameras in the service area. We swooped in, scooped her out, and BAM! I mean, we were over it." Bam? When did would-be criminals start taking their style points from Emeril? Brass asks what the financial arrangements were, and Dean continues, "I wouldn't take a penny from Janelle. We've been friends since grade school." Brass says insincerely, "So you kidnapped her out of the goodness of your own heart." No, Dean did it because Janelle was no snob and stayed friends with him, the humble son of blackjack dealers. Brass congratulates the young man on letting his loyalty override his concern over committing several felonies, and Dean is all, "You don't know what it's like to live here! Consider yourself lucky I'm not a drug dealer and Janelle's not a junkie stripper!" Oh, please. Also, why did this scene not take place with one of the two native Las Vegans on the staff? Because they would have smacked Dean's shit down. Especially after he attempts to take the high road by declining to name his partner in crime. Because that's moral, you see.
Cut to the hotel room where Janelle is staying (no doubt in her daddy's hotel, just to make it all ironic). A team of police stampedes into the room, which is something of a mess, and missing one Janelle Macklin. At least we can all be heart-warmed by the corporate cooperation between Viacom (parent firm of CBS) and Time-Warner (parent firm of the Cartoon Network, whose Aqua Teen Hunger Force is playing on the TV). It's so heartwarming when media conglomerates play nice.
And now Dean is hooked up to a polygraph. Before we get any interesting or relevant information, we switch to the hotel room, which Warrick and Nicky are working. Nicky finds semen on the bed at the same time Warrick finds a slinky slip with one strap ripped, as though the garment had been yanked forcefully. We go to a flashback where one kidnapper pins Janelle down by the neck and rapes her, while Dean unzips his fly in anticipation. And THIS doesn't get a warning? The HELL? It kills me how the so-called mature content that merits warnings is always, always consensual sex in which a woman is shown enjoying herself, while a rape scene is just business as usual. Is an orgasm really that much more indecent than sexual assault? Oh, to have a window into the inscrutable minds of the standards and practices department. The intimation that rape was involved is kept alive as Dean says he didn't assault Janelle, but it would be amoral to rat on his partner who just might have raped his so-called good friend Janelle.
Dean tested truthful on the polygraph, but that's okay because Warrick's matched a print he pulled off Janelle's pancake plate with a Las Vegas work card. "Let me guess -- Mrs. Butterworth?" Catherine says. It's nice to see that lame one-liners are among the managerial cues she's lifted from Gil. The Who will love working with her if she gets that promotion. Anyway, faster than I can type, "And now we're in an interrogation room," we go to an interrogation room, where Sean the Homecoming geek is lipping, "What are you accusing me of? Eating French toast? Eating carbs is against the law now?" Of course not, but kidnapping is. Sean insists, "My prints are in there because it's Deano's room. He got it so we'd have a place to bring the ladies after the dance." Nicky then confuses Sean with science. It's not a tough task, but Nicky still dispatches it with flair: "So you're telling me when I take your DNA and compare it to the kabuki masks here, that's not going to be you?" We get a flashback explaining how a lot of spit ends up on those masks. Sean immediately assumes, "Deano rat me?" Nicky says soberly, "No. The evidence did that." Thus placated, Sean begins yammering about how he's all filled with resentment because he has to bus tables everyday, so nobody should judge him for pulling off a kidnapping for a thousand bucks, and he has no idea where Janelle is and he really doesn't care because he thought he was totally gonna score, but instead Janelle flipped out on him after getting a phone call, and so he was forced to salve his broken heart by returning to the dance and hitting on other people's dates. Wah!
Catherine watches the surveillance footage of Sean leaving the room and entering the elevator. He does a little dance and checks himself out in the mirror, and Catherine snorts with laughter: "You crack this kid's head open, all that would come out would be T&A." And a lot of pure, fresh mountain air. Anyway, Liam gives Catherine an alarmed look and pouts, "You said that about me once." "More than once," Catherine corrects. It amazes me, the conversations that pass for appropriate workplace exchanges around Liam. Anyway, the video time code confirms Sean's story. As Liam goes to access Janelle's final voicemail message, which was timed right around then, Catherine asks, "So, when are you going to be doing your final proficiency?" Liam sing-songs, "Every time I ask Grissom, he says 'time out.' And then I end up here." Catherine smiles sympathetically. Just then, Liam calls up the latest message, which is from Big Daddy Macklin: "I am really disappointed in you, Janelle. All those years you spent around me at the casino, you think you can put something like this over on me? The only thing I am giving you tonight are four little words: Get your ass home." Liam and Catherine are both somewhat surprised by the vitriol.
In the scene, Catherine's catching Gil and Sofia up on what she found, and concludes that due to the time-lag in the footage, Janelle may have taken the service elevator undetected and escaped for parts unknown. Sofia wants to know, "Where does that leave us?" Right where you started, lady -- it's not like you got on the Great Space Coaster the minute Catherine opened her mouth. Gil takes off his glasses so you know he's serious, and he says, "I think we're done." Catherine says resignedly, "No crime was committed. The kidnapping wasn't real --" "Nicole Jensen's death was plenty real. Janelle Macklin's ultimately responsible for the events that led to Nicole's death," Sofia argues. Gil tiredly says there's a BOLO for Janelle and her car and beyond that, there's not a whole lot they can do. "Well, that's…highly unsatisfying," Sofia decrees, and gets up because on her shift, they don't mind a little railroading of justice if it means a satisfying ending. She drops off a bowtie on the desk and says, "You forgot this at the suite. I fixed it for you. You never know when you might need to get dressed up again." Sofia saunters off while Gil shouts, "Actually, yes I DO know when I'm getting dressed up again! I'm in the cocktail lounge at the Starlight starting tomorrow!" All in his head, of course. Catherine picks up the tie and inspects it before handing it over to Gil with, "She glued it." That's a metaphor for something right there. A willingness to work around shortcomings? Rigid bureaucratic thinking? The suggestion that Gil won't look pretty in a tie until he shrinks his head to fit inside it? Catherine offers some advice: "Just keep in mind, Gil, that she is on Ecklie's team. They're different. Possibly not even in our genus or species. We should reduce the opposition to a group of labels, so we can render them as dehumanized abstracts, so from now on, I will refer to her only as 'Evil Distraction.'" Or maybe Catherine merely warns Gil to remember that Sofia's agenda may be more expansive than "Item One: Pitch Woo to Grissom. Item Two: See Item One."
Just then, their beeper goes off and there's a 419 at McCarran airport. Guess that BOLO paid off. To make an excruciatingly-paced scene short and to the point: if Sofia's idea of a satisfying ending includes a life for a life, she'll be pleased to know that Janelle Macklin was suffocated in the trunk of her own car.
We clear the all-important 48-minute mark during the commercials for The World's Scariest Thunderstorm EVER! And then we're back in the lab. Catherine's photographing the body, imagining the scene in which kidnappers cram a silky scarf into the screaming Janelle's mouth and slam the trunk on her. As Warrick pulls out the scarf, Catherine works on the scarf tying Janelle's hands together loosely.
Cut to Big Daddy Macklin, looking as though he acutely regretted sending Princess to voicemail the last time she called: "She was crying, saying how someone threw her in the trunk of her car. And then the call cuts off. I thought it was just more drama. Just more drama -- this time didn't seem any different from all the others. What kind of kidnapper lets you keep your cell phone?" From across the desk, Brass shrugs and says blandly, "You should let us answer that question. Just hang around for about six minutes. We'll have the answer." Big Daddy Macklin asks, "Where did you find her, Captain?" and Brass tells him, "Sunset Road. Near McCarran." He's getting a little verklempt -- probably thinking about his own terrible daughter, who may well come to her own sticky end while fighting Daddy all the while. It's beginning to sink in for Big Daddy Macklin. He tells Brass, "Janelle loved airplanes. She was always begging me to go see them take off and land. I took her down there a couple of times, I think. Her mother is in Paris. That's what, nine hours ahead. Kind of late to call right now." If Mother is hiding out in Paris and letting Father deal with the child, I'm guessing he's read that situation right. Brass is feeling sorry for Macklin, but once the most recent Mrs. Macklin comes in to comfort her spouse, it's evident she's up to salving his emotional wounds, as she can regale Big Daddy Macklin with stories about the time she and Janelle got detention together after algebra class. When Macklin makes the introductions, Brass's quick shift from eye-rolling to insincerely pleasant as he says hello is simply wonderful. Oh, Paul Guilfoyle. I will never objectify you like I do Gary Dourdan, but I can admire your craft. Anyway, Big Daddy Macklin bids Brass to find who did this, and Brass promises they will.
What follows can only be described as a deliberate attempt to circumvent the law of the 48-minute mark. Fools! Attempt to defy it and it will only come back stronger, for Janelle's killer has already been found. Anyway, the cops bring in Knee-Breaker Jensen. As he kicks back in the interrogation room, he notes bitterly, "Not one word about my daughter, but Macklin's rich bitch gets page one. Oh, you boys sure can move quicker when there's cash behind it." Brass gets down to business and asks for the guy's whereabouts for the last six hours; Jensen cordially invites Brass to kiss his ass. For real. Brass whips out the witness trump card: apparently Janelle hopped into Jensen's car some time during the last few hours; the CSI team processed the vehicle at near-light speed, and found Janelle's fancy diamond bracelet in the car. Brass asks, "What do you think something like this is worth? A hundred Gs at least. Enough to ease the pain?" The expression on Jensen's face plainly communicates that nothing is easing his pain. He explains flatly, "I got a call for a pickup. I went. Trying to keep my head in the work, 'cause what else do I have left?" And we flash back to Janelle imploring, "You've got to believe me, I never meant for anything to happen to Nicki," while Jensen tells her to get out of the car. Janelle offers to pay "whatever you need, until the day I die" but Jensen roars, "You wanna pay? You wanna pay…" and we come back to the present, where Jensen says, "I told her I was gonna put two bullets in her head and dump her on her daddy's front step." Brass asks Jensen if he elected to skip the shooting because it would be more satisfying to let her choke to death in her own car. Jensen responds, "I told her what I felt like doing, so her father would know the way I feel. And she got out, and she ran, and it's a good thing she ran, because I might have changed my mind." Brass isn't so sure Jensen didn't. Jensen sighs in frustration before pointing out, "I'm not that guy anymore." Brass asks, "You sure about that?" Jensen then delivers the real heartbreaking moment in an otherwise tepid episode. He turns to the other man and says bleakly, "It really doesn't make any difference what you do to me. My baby's dead." Aw, hell, excuse me. I have to get the Pledge out. It's gotten dusty in here.
David the Recurring Coroner is busy explaining to everyone that Janelle's COD was suffocation, what with her scarf having traveled way down the esophagus. Janelle's tox also came back positive for benzodiazepines, or what you and I know as Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, or Halcion. David points out that Mother's Little Helpers are known to suppress the gag reflex and knock you out at the same time. (Insert your own variation on the line, "So that's why it's Mother's Little Helper!" here.) Catherine says, "Girl probably didn't even realize she was suffocating." David makes this sound like the best death ever with, "It would have just been like falling asleep." Catherine mitigates it by pointing out it was like falling asleep for three hours: "That's a slow way to go."
Warrick comes in to tell us that all evidence says Jensen didn't do it. What's more, Mia worked off-screen to discover that the only saliva and epithelials on the gag belonged to the kidnapee herself.
Ah, but Gil couldn't care less how this turns out -- he's outta here. As Gil walks to his car, Sofia pulls up in hers. He checks her out briefly while she's not looking, and when he goes to get in the car, she checks him out when he's not looking. Yeah, it's a real Montague and Capulet tragedy that these two are kept apart. As Sofia stomps inside, she walks by a poster with a photo of Sara and the legend "Have You Seen Me?" and then she passes Catherine, who is poring over the photos of Janelle's tied hands.
Catherine's clearly gotten her badge in tying knots, because she flashes back to how Janelle died: stupidly.
Okay, fine, for those of you who want more detail, here's what happened: Janelle places the call to her dad, closes herself in the car, then wriggles into place, putting the scarf between her teeth, making a circle with her arms and passing the circle over her bent knees, thus pulling her arms behind her. Catherine explains, "The position of the knot was the key -- between her wrists and her back. The only way it could have ended up in that position was if she tied it herself.. And her saliva on the ends of the scarf confirmed it."
Brass asks, "Are you saying she committed suicide?" No -- that implies intent. Although that doesn't seem to matter to Catherine: "I guess I am, although I don't think she had that intention. She was hoping that her father would save her in time." Well, it's a good thing she had Valium to dull the pain. The only thing Daddums is good for is replaying Janelle's final message, over and over, because there's no better way to express your love for the kid you neglected than by paying attention to the artifacts they left behind.
Y'all, I wanted to rant this week, but really? What can I say that has not already been said? The sexual double-standard on this show is only slightly less repellent and baffling that the attitude that all teenagers are worthless killers in the making. I hope to God that the writers' kids all exit puberty soon, so we can get a little variety in how this show treats the underage set.