Night has fallen on Las Vegas, and as per usual, the casinos downtown have insisted on turning on the lights, the better to illuminate the bodies of murder victims. At this point, I have a near-Pavlovian response to seeing neon: I immediately begin looking for corpses in the vicinity. You can imagine how much more interesting this made our trip to Las Vegas last month.
The mist swirls, we see a man revving up a motorcycle, and I brace for the impact of a Meatloaf video. After a few more atmospherically spooky minutes spent waiting tensely for the crashing opening chords to a bombastic lite-metal ballad, what I get instead is a man exiting a car. He's wearing sensible black shoes, as opposed to a studded metal boots and a swirling cape. Those, combined with his saturnine expression, reassure me that we're not about to stumble into a wall of sound erected by pop music's answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The lean-faced man heads inside his house, and we quickly establish that he's a fan of British tea. The music continues to thrum ominously. Perhaps the man's about to be waylaid by capering jackass Ty Pennington and his crew of similarly challenged individuals, in what would clearly be an act of hostile redecoration.
Or maybe he's just heading for the basement, where all your A-list serial killers and hangers-on lurk. However, instead heading straight into a drooling maniac with a chainsaw, the guy heads into a drolly appointed study with a lot of Chippendale. The place is a dead ringer for a nineteenth-century flat. The "scenery" outside the window -- reproduced from daguerreotypes of the period -- only confirms the impression that this guy created this space as an escape from the outside world.
And what does a man who hangs out in an elaborate basement hideout do down there? Plays the violin, of course. Ever notice how some instruments are shorthand for "classy," while others are shorthand for "weird"? Anyway, the camera pulls in tightly on the violin, and then on the fireplace behind it, bringing to mind the old Victor Borge quote, "The difference between a violin and a viola is a viola burns longer."
In any event, the shot shows the man in the same position, only he's swapped his string instrument for a bullet hole to the temple. That'll probably hurt his chances of playing for the Las Vegas Light Opera Company fall. Gil is peering around the place and examining the trinkets on the table: "A deerstalker cap, violin, Meerschaum pipe, even a Persian slipper with tobacco stuffed in the toe, I imagine. All in all, a meticulous recreation of 221-B Baker Street...residence of the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes." It is to Gil's credit he can utter that without making it look like he's fishing for a compliment. You just know Horatio Caine would say the same thing in a tone that practically demanded Calleigh or Delko to simper, "You're not so bad yourself, H." I'm shuddering thinking about it.
Brass brings us all back into the case by pointing out that the Sherlock groupie was also known as Dennis Kingsley, delivery man. Bless you, Captain Exposition, for your untrammeled ability to get to the point. Brass then asks Gil what he thinks, and Gil punts to Liam the Lab Tech, on account of this being his final proficiency case. "Emphasis on the final," Gil helpfully adds. Brass says, "Okay, Dr. Watson. Run it." With only a minimum of dolorous sighing and eye-rolling, Liam does: "Victim's in a relaxed position. In front of a fake fire. Alcohol. Solitude. Powder burns around the entrance wound, close to contact shot. It all suggests suicide." Brass quickly kneecaps that theory by asking where the weapon might be. Gil's no help. Liam says, "Family and friends who discover a body sometimes remove the weapon, make it look like murder. No suicide stigma and better chances of collecting on any life insurance." Gil looks pleased that Liam was able to defend his theory without a meltdown, but Brass presses on: "From the looks of things, this guy lived alone and the neighbors heard the shot, so...pretty good. I guess I'll go interview the neighbors."
After Brass heads out, Liam braces himself for pre-credits impact and asks, "So. Are you going to say, 'The game's afoot'?" Gil says with some small amount of interest, "I didn't know you were a Conan Doyle fan, Liam." Liam says, "I'm not. I saw a Sherlock Holmes movie once. By mistake." Gil's interest packs up and scampers away from the scene. Gil points to Kingsley and says, "Just so you know? Those movies never ended like this."
The Who would like to know how they ended. Also, they're curious as to who you are.
When we get back from commercials, there's the usual post-crime fleet of squad cars parked outside Kasa De Kingsley, lights flashing through the mist. Gil's drilling Brass on what he got from the neighbors. Answer: not much, except an excuse for give Gil an appropriate lead-in to the Grissomian adage, "We all have our costumes, Jim."
And that's how we meet the mixed nuts who will be tonight's suspects in the A-case. They stroll on to the scene amid the rolling fog of a smoke machine someone must have liberated from some dreadful Vegas revue. And speaking of dreadful Vegas revues, when we were in Las Vegas last month, we kept seeing billboards for the show that's officially replaced Thunder from Down Under as the most staggeringly tacky on the strip. And what, you ask, could possibly replace a bunch of blank-faced men sporting pecs like beefy, oiled chiclets and disturbingly diaper-like short shorts? The show Bite. In addition to having a name that's every critic's wet dream, it's also got a howlingly awful premise: Dracula needs a new lady consort, so he gets a lot of trampires to audition for the role. Which they do, mostly naked, while writhing to the strains of classic rock. Doesn't that just sound wretched? You should see the posters for this thing: women in G-strings wearing big fake fangs, trying (and failing) to look more sultry than silly.
The point is, Bite is currently the silliest thing going on, on the Strip. Off the Strip, it's these three clowns. They're in nineteenth-century period costume, play-acting the parts of Holmesian detectives like they're going out of style. Assuming that sort of thing ever was in style. Gil asks if they were friends of the late Kingsley, and one says in a veddy British accent that they're friends of Mr. Holmes. The woman adds in her veddy British accent, "Invited guests, in point of fact." The third snarls in his veddy British accent, "This is all so contemporary." Oh, the plummy tones of a BBC announcer are simply divine for giving voice to moments of extreme snobbishness. I love it.
Gil's patience for these hijinks has come to a short, wet end; he curtly explains that he's with the Las Vegas crime lab, and the first speaker cheerily says, "Ah! A colleague. Perhaps we can be of some assistance." The woman adds, "Yes. Have you discovered any shoe impressions in the soil." Gil snaps, "Not yet. This is a crime scene." The glowering man over-enunciating each syllable fails to clue in these would-be detectives as to the actual nature of the case. Hence the third man sneering, "Oh. A scenario created for our own entertainment, yes?" This is the point where Gil's struck dumb. He can only look and marvel at how he had never thought it was possible to find any group that made dress-up D&D players look like models of calm rationalism.
Fortunately, the paramedics pick right then to wheel out Kingsley's body, and everyone looks dumbfounded. Gil gets a little bit of his own back with "I guess it depends on what you call entertaining." Heh. I love Gil when he's irritated.
Inside the house, Liam is busy looking at Kingsley's innermost thoughts, helpfully freed by the bullet that left them scattered all over the floor. Sara comes in and asks if he's up for pizza and Liam says sullenly, "Very funny." He picks the bullet out of the soppy muck and Sara coos, "Oooh. BFB. Big freakin' bullet." I love the IAs -- irreverent acronyms. "DFO" is another one I find amusing. Liam observes it out loud: "The nose has mushroomed. Looks like pure lead. Two cannelures, consistent with a revolver. One, two, three, four, five, six lands and grooves. Left-hand twist." "Which usually means," Sara prods. Liam thinks it's a Colt 45. Sara grins her delight that he got it right. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. I did just state that Sara is pleased with Liam. Try to contain your shock. Liam asks if Sara's checking up on him, and she says that she's merely trying to lighten his load by letting him concentrate on that room while she handles the rest of the house. Before Sara can leave the room, however, she happens to notice an antique syringe. It holds the traces of a not-so-antique concoction. "I guess everyone needs a hobby," she muses.
Speaking of people who need hobbies -- or perhaps people who need different hobbies that don't entail behaving idiotically around law enforcement -- we're back with the dress-up crew that so amused Gil and Brass, if by "amused," you mean "drove into fits of pique." We learn that their group was a combination reading/history group, and they met every Thursday night. The guy who had the snide, Richard E. Grant delivery snarks, "You make it sound like a bowling league. This is a serious literary society." Well. Someone who wrote this -- maybe David Rambo, maybe Richard Catalini -- has clearly spent time listening to someone vigorously defending a hobby others mock with impunity. By the way -- this guy plays Moriarty in their little club. The first schlub is Watson and That Woman is, of course, Irene Adler. And we find out that tonight was to be the last meeting of the Vegas Strip Irregulars or whatever it is these folks call themselves; Kingsley had promised "an evening none of you will forget." Going by his pre-death preparations, he must have been planning to make a low-maintenance evening nobody would forget.
Gil asks for prints; a horrified Watson asks, "Why?" Gil replies, "Elementary. So we can rule you out." Heh. There's some more explanation as to why they want the prints (to see how they match against the study) and Brass advises Moriarty to sober up and drop the accent. He replies, "I can't. I'm English." And heh again.
Since this is, of course, a literary crime, this means Liam is examining the study while a violin plays on the soundtrack. It's nice, but it's no "Danse Macabre," the violin arrangement of which kicks off my favorite British detective series, Jonathan Creek. One listen to those opening credits, and you're spoiled on mysterious violin tracks for life. Anyway, we establish that: a) there's pipe tobacco in the carpet; b) the crappy lock was wrecked in what looks like a break-in; c) there's a small piece of mother-of-pearl from something; d) at one point, Kingsley had a family, but it was when he was much younger, if the picture's anything to go by; e) Kingsley was auctioning his entire Holmes collection of gewgaws and doodads on a site that in no way infringes on eBay's look or feel. Sara and Liam share these discoveries with one another. Liam also points out the blood-spattered copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles he found. Sara says, "I read that in tenth grade." "I was supposed to," Liam replies. It's odd that someone who's been chomping at the bit to solve crimes would be so indifferent to a literary character who's considered a master at placing evidence into context. What's -- Liam dissing Encyclopedia Brown for being squaresville? Sara smiles at this admission. I am amazed that she's so vivacious with Liam. Am I the only one who remembers her shooting him down -- really, fragging might be a better term -- in earlier seasons? I am? Okay, then. The point to this scene is not that Sara's thawed toward Liam, but that there's blood on the spine of the book, and the spatter goes across and over, so the blood on the book's spine isn't from Kingsley's fatal wounding. "You think an obsessive neat freak like our vic would leave something like that on a prized possession?" Liam asks. Sara thinks there's only one way to find out. A séance it is!
I can't be blamed for the ghost reference: Warrick's standing in the middle of a mountain road and watching a vehicle that's run away from Disney's Haunted Mansion bear down on him. It could be worse, Warrick You could be staring down a runaway teacup from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. And why is Warrick on this lonesome desert road, you ask? Because he and Nicky are charged with figuring out why someone who drive off the road and down a steep hill, into a tree.
After some brief and not at all necessary exposition on the part of Cavaliere and Emergency Backup David -- you really didn't need to know the victim's name was Cory Demayo, did you? -- we get to the meat of the case. The wee contusion on Cory's forehead isn't likely to be what did him in, and the lack of skid marks means that Cory didn't brake, swerve, lose control of the car, or otherwise fall victim to some sort of surprise accident. Emergency Backup David's suggestion that Cory fell asleep at the wheel is quickly vetoed by Snicky on the grounds that being flung over a steep embankment is a hell of a wakeup call. Even more baffling: the keys are still in the ignition and the car's still in drive, yet it's not running. We also get two pieces of evidence that ultimately go nowhere: a near-empty wallet, and a spliff. The CSIs pay lip service to the drugs-are-bad angle, lest some other group of imbalanced anti-TV activists find a reason for protesting this show beyond unrelenting misogynistic sex crimes and grue. And then they get back to the actual meat of the mystery. Which, at this point, is still mystery meat to them.
Cut to Liam processing Kingsley's body, accompanied by a violinist since this is the classy plot. After snapping a boatload of photos, Liam happens to notice the giant, nasty abscess inside one arm. Uh-oh. Someone wasn't practicing safe injecting. That could have killed him. If the bullets hadn't gotten there first.
Sara and David the "My Hobbies Have No Dress Codes"-Implying coroner are looking over Liam's photos while David asks, "Did this guy really dress up like Sherlock Holmes?" Straining to sound non-judgmental, Sara replies too evenly, "At least once a week, evidently. Like those Civil War re-enactors. I never understood that." David dryly notes that COD was no surprise, what with a bullet to the skull often being lethal. Liam bounces in right then to share the results of the tox screens, wherein we discover that, like his idol, Kingsley was often coked to the gills. Sara's all, "Well, that would explain the track marks then." Liam then adds that there's a 7% morphine solution in Kingsley's blood and the syringe. It's amazing Kingsley had the wherewithal to sleep without choking on his own vomit, much less summon the energy to be a Sherlock Holmes groupie. "Sherlock went from crack to smack," Liam concludes impudently. Sara notes that it was premium smack at that. David notes that Kingsley's dose would have put him out within seconds. Liam muses, "Not much time to undo the works, put away his antique syringe, pick up a gun and blow his brains out." Sara and David look stunned by this insight. Or maybe they're humoring him. Liam concludes that Kingsley probably didn't take his own life, and the discordant violins of violence take us to commercials.
When we get back, Cavaliere and Warrick are interviewing my former roommate. No, not really. But the resemblance is totally startling -- this guy looks like Mike P., most infamous in my social circle for being the guy who once stumbled up from the basement and slurred, "Dude, I just smoked the most insane bowl and took the best nap. I'm ready for the weekend"...on a Sunday night. He's actually Cory the Mystery Corpse's roommate. Anyway, Warrick asks this supremely mellow young man how he got the goose egg on his noggin, and it takes a few seconds for Mellow Gold to realize he's got a bump before he answers, "Oh...windsurfing. Heh." We find out that Randy of the Red Eyes didn't drive back home with Cory because "I sort of hooked up with this chick, so I bounced." Warrick congratulates Bud on his prowess with the ladies and asks for the young woman's name. Allison Alibi, perhaps? The Wowie from Maui replies, "Uh...Jennifer." Dude, this would have been so much funnier if he had been all, "Mary Jane, man." Cavaliere wonders if Jennifer has a last name and Sparky grins, "Uhhh...Jennifer Nipple Ring?" That is officially the world's best last name. I would pay her to get lost at airports just so people would have to page her. Warrick and Cavaliere crack up too. Possibly because the only other option is to cry. We finally find out Tall, Dank and Handsome's name as Warrick asks, "Lowery, were you guys out getting high yesterday?" Why, whatever would make you think that? Lowery lies like a rug, but Warrick soon wears him down (i.e. says, "Really?") and scares him by sharing the story he plans on telling a prosecutor: "You and Cory got stoned. And you drove away. Cory lost control of the Jeep, at which point, you couldn't wake him up, so you decided to take advantage of the situation, rifle through his wallet and leave." Lowery is offended by this depiction of events: "Man, that is not what went down!" Cavaliere twists the knife by pointing out that Lowery is looking at charges of: robbery, leaving the scene, and failure to report an accident. Lowery replies, "I didn't get back in the car with Cory. And if I had, I wouldn't have left him." Surprisingly, this display of lucidity fails to convince Warrick. The CSI asks for a DNA sample and Lowery cagily inquires, "Why?" So they can see if he's the one smoking the wacky tobaccy, Warrick explains.
This gets to Lowery. He explains, "Let me just be straight with you guys for a second here." Cavaliere can barely contain his anticipation in the face of such a promise. Or maybe it's animosity. Lowery continues, "Yeah, Cory and I sparked up at the lake, okay? But then he took off. Three weeks ago, I was busted for pot, okay? The judge gave me diversion. You guys file charges, I'm screwed. I will never get into dental school."
At that point Warrick and Cavaliere are looking everywhere but at each other. And I am suppressing the fervent hope that Lowery finds Miss Nipple Ring again in time to make her the receptionist at what will undoubtedly be the most awesome dental practice in Nevada.
Back in the A-plot, Hodges is busy telling Liam that the white fragment he found at the crime scene is mother of pearl, a substance that's deplorably common. "It could be from a lot of things," Liam notes, and Hodges snaps back, "That it could, Mister Proficiency." Close, but not quite snarky enough, Hodges. You just stick to running evidence and cultivating that Reed Richards color scheme you got going on, okay? Hodges ID'd the tobacco on the floor as Perique tobacco, grown only in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Liam asks if it's the same as the tobacco in the slipper, and Hodges replies: "Nope. [That had a] completely different make. Cheap, strong low-grade stuff." Gil ceases lurking and says, "Shag tobacco." Hodges is surprised Gil knew that. Gil replies, "That's what Holmes smoked." Hodges snorts, "Bad habit, even for a fictional character." And that's how we find out that in a past life, Hodges was noted prohibitionist Carry Nation. Liam and Gil bond over this mutual moment of insight.
Brass has begun tracking down the Vegas Strip Irregulars, beginning with Ms. "Irene Adler," who's got a crappy job as a pool hall waitress. It's not the toting of drinks hither and yon that gets to her; it's the would-be Casanova whose idea of a seductive opening is, "I'm swinging a hot stick tonight." Brass takes all this in. Irene-cum-Kay doesn't recognize him, and eventually turns around in her tank top to say flatly, "You're staring at me." It turns out that Brass is staring because he had a hard time recognizing Kay too. We quickly get a little exposition out of the way -- Kay hates her job, hates the Hot Stick guy, but she's got to support a sick mother, so she's not about to rack Hot Stick, Big Tipper. So Brass asks for Kay's Meerschaum pipe, which she happens to have in her purse, although he declines to tell her it's because he wants to test the tobacco brand.
Sara's off meeting with Watson -- real name Oakes. He's a security guard. Sara tells him she's there for his Meerschaum pipe and any related tobacco items. With the air of anxious amiability common to anyone who vaguely suspects they're in trouble, but has no reason why, Oakes says he's not smoking anything illegal. Sara smiles and shoots back coolly, "You haven't been accused of that." Oakes stalls, "My pipe is at home." Sara's grin remains in place as she says, "No problem. Let's go." Oakes tries one more stall: "Look! I'm working." Sara's prepared for that too, with, "We've already talked to your boss. And look! I have a warrant for you. Let me get that." As Sara crouches down to pull it out of her case, her CSI Eagle Eye zooms in on Oakes's Doc Martens, which happen to have what looks like blood spatter on them. She asks casually, "Were you wearing those shoes last night?" Oakes was. Points to the Docs for geographical accuracy, points off for anachronism. He says self-deprecatingly, "I'm not the same stickler for detail Denny was." "Apparently not," Sara says in a voice dripping with fortified irony.
B-plot. And now we find out that even David the Generally Useful Coroner has no idea why Cory died. Frustrated, Nicky returns to the Jeep. Warrick comes over, and after some back-and-forth, Warrick ends up pushing the Jeep while Nicky sits at the wheel and tests the brakes. It's all very cute, how Nicky teases Warrick about being a big boy and telling him to put his back into his task. Warrick notes that the brake lights are working, so the batteries are okay too. Nicky replies that the gauges are blown and the instrument panel is useless. "Ignition was on, but the engine wasn't running, so...what? Cory was in good shape, the Jeep seems to be in decent condition, so what happened out there?" Nicky wonders.
Ecklie could not possibly care less about finding out. He's busy telling Catherine how swing shift is short a few bodies -- why? Did they all follow their supervisor to the day shift? Quit in protest of not working that coveted four-to-midnight shift? What? Anyway, Ecklie is busy telling Catherine that swing shift's understaffed, and that's not going to change any time soon because there are budget constraints and Successories don't come cheap. Catherine looks like she's ruing the day she accepted the promotion. As Ecklie's implying that he sees nothing wrong with doing a cursory job on cases that can't be easily solved, Nick and Warrick choose that instant to come on in and share their progress on what Ecklie has quaintly termed "your surfer dude case." Warrick and Nicky cop to being baffled, but given that there are no obvious and messy loose ends here, Ecklie's all for declaring the case closed. He leaves. Both Warrick and Nicky look like they just caught a whiff of a bad smell. From her position behind her desk, Catherine asks, "You guys satisfied?" Nope. Catherine tells 'em to keep on keeping on, and promises to keep Ecklie out of their hair. Atta girl!
Back on the A-plot, we have the montage of evidence-processing that leads into a scene with Oakes wherein it's revealed that it's his pipe tobacco on the floor and it's Kingsley's blood on his shoes. Oakes protests that it's not him, but Brass isn't having any of it.
Sara goes bouncing into Liam's work area, exultant that they got Kingsley's killer. She's about 17 minutes too early. Remember: nothing gets wrapped up before the 48-minute mark. Anyway, Sara's delighted and offers to take Liam out to celebrate his closing the case, but he's not convinced it's over. Sara nudges with, "I'm buying." Y'all, this behavior -- while enjoyable to watch -- is just baffling. I can't decide if this is Sara deciding to nurture young Liam like a fragile orchid, or Sara deciding that in a few short weeks, she'll be getting an awesome skunk stripe in her hair while Liam stands there nervously and squeaks, "Mizz Sidle, are you trying to seduce me?" Liam reveals why he didn't jump on the offer: "These blood drops aren't uniform. Some of them are clotted red cells, but others are pure serum." Sara realizes what he's getting at, and looks at the blood stains under the scope while Liam explains, "It takes at least 20 minutes for blood to clot and separate. If Watson killed Sherlock, the blood drops on his shoe would all be the same." Sara tries to think of an explanation for why the blood's on the shoe. Her best guess: the killer takes some of Kingsley's blood at the scene, then sprays it discreetly on Oakes's shoe later. "Somebody's trying to frame Watson," she concludes. The violins shriek their disapproval at this development.
When we get back from commercials, there's Archie. And he's wearing a blue baseball shirt with dark blue sleeves, and he's now sweeping his hair forward into his face, and maybe Liam and Sara are there too and they're all establishing that Kingsley was selling his entire collection of Holmesiana on some auction site that is in no way eBay, but really...the forum surveys don't lie, so I know all you're interested in is Archie. Who's looking much better whilst peering at a computer screen than most other mere mortals do.
Oh, wait, there's relevant stuff in this scene too: Liam happens to notice a pearl-handled revolver for sale. He remembers Hodges mentioning the mother of pearl fragment, and rattles off that the revolver's a) the murder weapon, and b) missing. Archie's all, "Gun, whatever. I thought you were looking for a book?" Sara whips out the bloody copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles and explains that the blood from the pages doesn't match the blood on the cover of the book; she's hoping the mystery blood comes from the killer. Conveniently enough, Archie happens to find the book listing then. "When [the book] was photographed, there was no blood on the pages," Sara says. Liam asks Archie to pull up the bidding history, and we see that someone named Reichenbach has been patiently making bid after bid. Too bad for him that he looks like he's about to get sniped by Nikig017 of Los Angeles, California. Archie exclaims delightedly, "Reichenbach!" ands Liam asks warily, "What's the big deal about that?" Archie turns to him and says, "Reichenbach Falls?" Still not ringing a bell for Liam. Archie looks at Sara, who makes the universal sign for, "Go on," and Archie says with some bemusement, "It's where Professor Moriarty killed Sherlock Holmes." Because Archie is normally such a delight, I'll give him a pass this time, but he's wrong: it's where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended to kill Sherlock Holmes, as "The Adventure of the Final Problem" ends with Holmes and Moriarty locked in mortal combat as they fall to what is surely their deaths, but ten years later in "The Adventure of the Empty House," Doyle brings back Holmes, explaining that only Moriarty went over the falls. I can't read either story without thinking of Stephen King's Misery, by the way. However, historians are reasonably sure crazed fangirls (or fanboys) didn't tie up Doyle and threaten him with all sorts of horrible things unless he revived their hero; Doyle did it for other reasons that are, naturally, debated to this day. ["The New Yorker ran an article recently on how Doyle felt imprisoned by his own creation; I think the piece was in the context of a recent bio of Doyle. Interesting stuff." -- Sars]
Anyway, surprise, surprise, we find out that Reichenbach is none other than the chap who was playing Moriarty, and he had carved out the time to bid for the object in between his gig as a fry cook and his gig as an impoverished doctoral student in English history. Moriarty lets Sara and Liam know that he's considerably put out that he had to enter a bidding war for the book in the first place, since he was essentially the historical consultant on that Albion getaway in Kingsley's basement. He's also not terribly fond of Kingsley: "He was a self-destructing narcissist. If he had to give [the Holmes hobby] up, we all had to give it up." Sara's all, "And you weren't willing to do that?" Moriarty dodges. Liam wonders if maybe Moriarty killed Kingsley out of irritation over not getting the book. He's promptly slapped down with, "That is empty speculation, my friend." I said it before, and I'll say it again: nobody does caustic contempt with so much style as the British. Is it any wonder I'm an anglophile? Sara asks to see Moriarty's hands, which is how we discover that he's got one dilly of a paper cut. We then flash back to the confrontation what made that incision: a tug of war over the book where Moriarty argued that he was owed the book for all he'd done, and Kingsley wasn't having any of it. In the present, Moriarty argues, "I stopped by his house earlier that evening, but I didn't kill him. If I had, I would have taken that book." Sara and Liam swap incredulous looks. They've clearly never dealt with bibliomaniacs before.
Back in the B-plot, Nicky and Warrick decide to take the Jeep apart so that they might figure out the conflicting pieces of evidence around it. Warrick discovers a scorch mark on the roll bar in the back, while Nicky peers in the foot well below the steering wheel and sees a mess of melty wires and things. Under the Jeep, Warrick notes another scorch mark. Nicky finally tells Warrick he's got some blown fuses and fried wiring, Warrick tells Nicky he found some burn marks on the undercarriage, and although it's not quite the forensic equivalent of putting your chocolate in someone else's peanut butter, it's close. Or as Warrick puts it, "If an electrical charge traveled through the Jeep, and through the wiring, it would have shot Cory as well...whatever it was, it zapped the hell out of his Jeep."
The two decide to go on a field trip and see exactly what it was that might have zapped the Jeep. Since Cory croaked on a clear day, the chances of it being a bolt of lightning are sharply diminished. The most likely culprit is the collection of power lines hugging the curve of the mountain road. Warrick and Nicky come to that conclusion after ambling around for a while. The fresh wire trimmings -- which suggest a downed or recently-repaired power line -- that Nicky finds do nothing to exonerate the power lines. The new wire splice he notices also advance the impression that the wires are to blame for any errant bolts of electricity. Warrick says, "The power company originally called the Jeep in. They must have been out here fixing the lines. Maybe it was a downed line -- that would give us the high-voltage power source right there." Nicky's stuck on the electrocution angle now, because "even if a live wire struck the roll bar, the tires would have insulated the vehicle." Warrick concurs: "Without a path to ground, electricity is harmless." He then notices a bent-over road marker, and the boys amble on over to look at it. The black paint makes them think that Cory's Jeep would have driven over it, thus completing the circuit. Of course, now they have to figure out how Cory got to be driving his car off the road into an uncompleted circuit in the first place.
They'll have to do that later. We're returning to the A-plot, where Liam is examining the mother-of-pearl chip and noticing some red dust on it. He then approaches Gil as the supervisor is sitting there at his desk working, and says nervously, "I want to go back to the crime scene." Gil takes off his glasses, a sure sign that he's intrigued. Or reacting. Or irritated. Okay, so it's not really a sure sign. Just suffice it to say that Gil responds.
We're now back at 221-B Basement Flat, and Liam's explaining that he identified a trace on the edge of that chip as being red clay dust, commonly associated with fireplace bricks. I'm kind of curious as to why Trace Lab Virtuoso Hodges didn't pick this up. You'd think he would have. I guess the fact that Liam did is supposed to demonstrate his nascent CSI qualities. Anyway, the dust piqued Liam's interest, and when he gets to the fireplace, he hunkers down. Gil watches Liam examine the fireplace and asks, "So what are you looking for?" Still gazing into the fireplace, Liam explains, "The killer obviously left with the gun. And if there was some kind of struggle, maybe the killer left behind some skin fragments, or a strand of hair." Oh, that's lame -- Kingsley was completely incapacitated by the morphine. He's not fighting anybody. Gil more or less points that out by saying in the careful tones reserved for dealing with slow people, "Was there any evidence of a struggle in this room?" Liam is forced to admit there was not. He crawls into the fireplace to hide his shame, and conveniently stumbles upon the gun, which has been dangling there in the chimney, suspended by surgical tubing. The violin plays the "At last! A discovery!" chord.
When we get back from commercials, we're closing in on the magical 48-minute mark, so you know everything counts from here on out. As we see Kingsley pull the tube-tied gun toward him, Sara VOs, "He committed suicide?" "The man was a credit to his genre," Liam says. He further explains, "[Kingsley] runs a loop of surgical tubing through the weapon, secured inside the chimney. A shot of morphine a few minutes earlier takes the edge off." Sara looks at the photograph of the hanging gun and adds, "[The morphine] provides extra insurance in case the gun doesn't finish the job." We see the suicide in flashback, tastefully shot from behind. Liam muses that it would have been easy for Kingsley to plant Watson's brand of tobacco ash on the floor, adding, "I figure Sherlock drew his own blood in advance, and then sprayed it on Watson's shoes at their last meeting." Sara says skeptically, "The world's greatest detective makes his suicide look like murder. Why would he try and frame his best friend in the process?" Liam replies, "Well, Watson said they were friends, but who knows what kind of relationship they really had? Maybe they hated each other. Maybe Dennis couldn't stand the thought of anyone else being Sherlock. Besides, I thought motive wasn't our business." Heh. Sara smiles again -- yes, again. I can't explain it either. She admits that they're not in the motive business and tells Liam to write up his report for Gil. She adds, "Way to go." Liam is much less elated about this than you'd think he would be.
Meanwhile, Warrick and Nicky have stumbled on the solution to busy single mom Catherine's love life woes -- they're making her a man that'll never cheat. The things some people will do to please their managers… Kidding! They're making a human dummy out of ballistic gel, and judging from Catherine's hissy upon discovering it, they have yet to point out that this model is unlikely to go driving her daughter into any drainage ditches or spend its free time porking the help.
She snaps, "Do you have any idea how much Ballistic Joe here costs?" Instead of replying, "Enough to keep you warm and happy at night. Because you're worth it," Warrick veers into belligerent territory instead: "I didn't know you did." Someone has issues with his workplace crush getting promoted. Catherine blusters that she okayed the boys continuing work on this case because she thought they were going to go over notes and case files. Warrick begins arguing for the evidence: "We found electrical burn marks on the roll bars and the Jeep's undercarriage, and we found blown-out fuses on the instrument panel and the starter. That would explain why the Jeep wasn't running." Nicky adds that he called Nevada Power and they confirmed a downed power line the day of the accident. Catherine realizes where they're going with this: "You're saying the victim was electrocuted." And now all the boys have to do is prove it.
Which they fail to do the first time they test their theory. By this point, Catherine's all about watching Ballistic Joe jiggle for science, so it's with some irritation that she says, "Congratulations. You killed the Jeep, but the victim's still alive. The current never made it past zero. So either your theory's wrong, or you've got a problem with your experiment. Are there any variables in the case that haven't been duplicated here?" Why, yes -- Ballistic Joe is plumb nekkid. After dressing him in the dead man's clothing and running the experiment again, we have our answer.
Warrick: So the current went into the vehicle through the roll bar, and out through the undercarriage.
Catherine: It needed an entry point and exit point.
Nicky: Entry through the, uh, watch on his wrist. Exit through the rivets in his shorts.
Catherine: Right across his heart, stopping it cold.
And then Catherine trails off to engage in a little reverie wherein all the men who wronged her suffer similar accidents. The rest of us see this blameless specimen suffer his fatal moment of stupidity -- driving right into a downed power line. After we watch the accident one more time, thereby amortizing the stunt cost/airtime ratio, we come back to the present, where Catherine is sheepishly telling the boys, "I know I've never told you guys this before, but hide the evidence." Nicky laughs, then says, "Thanks for getting our back." Catherine reminds him, "We're a team, guys." But not enough of a team for Catherine to help Warrick clean up. Oh, it's all so comic.
Catherine heads outside and Ecklie's laying in wait, like a large and particularly torpid snake. He starts off with the fake naïveté: "I thought you told me you closed the Cory Demayo case." Catherine declines to incriminate herself. Ecklie then moves to the fake omnipotence: "Catherine, nothing happens in this lab I don't know about." Her marriage to Eddie having provided field training for dealing with blustering frauds, Catherine knows how to handle this: "I'm sure you know the case is closed." Now comes Ecklie's migration to the fake menace: "Did I make a mistake in promoting you?" Well, yeah, because he didn't hire someone who's cowed by empty threats. Catherine proves this with, "Yeah. You should have given me the day shift. But I'm making it work!" She saunters off, and Ecklie fumes impotently. Ecklie is an idiot, because he made the fatal mistake of assuming everyone on Gil's shift was as politically clumsy as Gil, and that any promotions from that group could be easily handled. And now two of his three shift supervisors think he's an assclown -- and I say two out of three only because we have no idea who the day shift supervisor is or what s/he thinks.
Speaking of people who think Ecklie's an assclown supreme, it's Gil. He's reviewing Liam's report and getting hung up on the line where Liam reports that the syringe was full of morphine. Given that Sherlock Holmes was a cokehead -- as was Kingsley -- there's no reason for the morphine. Especially since further flipping through the file supports Kingsley's cocaine habit.
Gil heads down to the locker room where Liam is changing into his civvies. He tries to catch Liam's attention, but since Liam's got his headphones on, Gil's finally getting a fair idea of what it was like for everyone else during Season Three. Gil eventually snaps, "Hey! MTV Boy!" and the thought of MTV playing music videos is so ridiculous to Liam, he's shocked into taking his headphones off. Gil shoots with his question: "According to the autopsy, the victim showed the effects of long-term cocaine abuse, but according to Tox, the substance in the victim's syringe is a 7% solution of morphine. The victim was an obsessive-compulsive. In the stories, Holmes' preferred stimulant was a 7% solution of cocaine, not morphine." Liam deflates. He replies, "Evidence out of context." Gil asks, "Did you ever consider the possibility that the victim didn't realize what he was injecting himself with?" No, Liam did not. Gil makes the duck face of disapproval. Liam slowly says, "Someone switched the victim's coke with morphine?" Gil spells it out: "You found the victim's fingerprints on the gun, but you found no prints on the surgical tubing. No epithelials either. Does that make sense if it was a suicide?" Liam is forced to concede it does not.
Time to look at any other suspects with access to morphine or surgical tubing! Good thing That Woman mentioned her terminally ill mother a while back, huh? Liam is not making the connection nearly so quickly, in part because he is still shriveling in the white-hot glare of Gil's disappointment.
He slinks into the lab a little while later, where Gil is examining the surgical tubing under a microscope. Liam tells us he revisited the suspects' medical records and gosh darn it, none of them were ever prescribed morphine. As Liam makes a case for Watson on account of his security guard gig maybe putting him in close proximity to drugs, Gil slices open the surgical tube with a scalpel and finds some tobacco. He orders Liam to run a comparison, as they're bound to match someone.
And the someone is That Woman, who's now slouched at one end of the interrogation table as Brass asks from the other end, "Do you like your life?" Answer: no. After spending all day being treated as brainless eye candy, she gets to go home to her dying mom and "try giving enough attention to someone who never gave you any growing up." Liam watches this through the fishbowl and looks very sad. Brass yanks this to its inevitable conclusion. The Sherlock Holmes club was an escape, as it was "the one place I could go every week where no one was staring at my breasts or grabbing my butt. The one place I could talk, think..." So, yes, Kay kind of snapped when her refuge was razed without warning. And then, given that she spends all her free time reading murder mysteries and dissecting criminals' fatal errors, Kay makes the oddest mistake of all: she completely rolls over after Brass lays out his case: "Okay, why don't I tell this like a story, the end of a story, all right? Because I like the part where the detectives solve the crime. So here goes: the morning of the murder, you broke into Kingsley's house -- that's easy enough, the locks are crummy, he's not there. You replaced his cocaine with morphine because you knew he was a creature of habit. So now all you had to do is wait. " We then flash to Kingsley passing out and Kay pulling the gun out of the fake fireplace, setting Kingsley's hand on the trigger, and engineering his death. After a moment to marvel at the effects, she lets the gun fly back into the chimney.
Brass continues, "So you drop some of Dr. Watson's pipe tobacco on the carpet, scoop up some of Denny's blood to splash on Watson's shoes later. Why the elaborate frame-up of Watson? He had as much to lose as you?" And then -- whirrrr! That's the approximation of the spinning sound as Kay rolls, crying, "He's the one who told Denny to give it all up and go back to his family. He's the one who wanted to be Sherlock Holmes because he didn't care what it was doing to me!" And then Kay heads round the bend, putting on a British accent and saying, "You see, Detective, Denny would have wanted his murder to be the perfect puzzle. A mystery worthy of the master." The violin begins shrieking as we go into the hackneyed mad-laughter-of-the-murderer routine, and behind the glass, Liam is slowly realizing that his exposure to people who kill for stupid reasons is about to increase about 1000 percent.
Liam stumbles down the hall in something of a daze, and the too-casual Nicky stops talking to the "I'm in the hall, posed casually? Why, I hadn't noticed!" Warrick, the better to tell Liam that Gil wants to see him. Liam stands there, and Warrick helpfully adds, "Like, now. In his office." Liam turns around, sighs, and sulks some more, then heads in. The chair is occupied by a figure with its back to Liam. He says levelly, "Grissom, you wanted to see me?" By means of remote control, the chair whirls around and we see a sign around Ballistic Joe's neck -- it reads "YOU PASSED."
In comes the old night shift to fete Liam. Everyone pops out of the recesses smiling and clapping. Sara hugs Liam, as does Catherine. Gil's wearing a proud, paternal grin. Ecklie pops in, just in time to grin, "Congratulations, Sanders. Good work." Aiigh! Where did he come from? He has unnatural snake-like stealth. Ecklie then pulls a completely unnecessary dickhead move by being all, "Well, now the party's over. Move it along, peasants." Everyone makes a show of leaving while Gil watches impassively. Liam takes advantage of the crowd leaving to say, "I don't get it. I got the wrong guy, the wrong manner of death --" "I don't expect you to be correct in all your interpretations all the time. You collected the evidence, you thought there was something missing, you went back and found it. Hey, that's the job. Congratulations," Gil says, sincerely.
Then the minute Ecklie slithers out of sight, everyone comes back in with champagne and flutes. Gil watches his family celebrate together, observing and happy to see everyone he's worked with and supervised in one place. For him, that's apparently enough.