Hey, did you know that the Las Vegas skyline throws off some of the craziest light pollution you ever did see? And that getting a true, dark sky conducive to star-gazing may require a trip of up to 100 miles?
I bring this up because we're about to zoom from the bright lights of the Strip to a remote area where the stars shine brightly on the grassy hills below. So I have no idea where the hell we are. All we can see is a guy dressed all in black. He snaps open a case and begins stealthily assembling something cylindrical. The music gets all ominous as he mounts his contraption on a tripod, aims the scope at a window through which we can see someone dressing…
…and then the show pulls an elegantly crafted fake-out by having the scope swing up so we're all looking at Orion blazing in the night sky. Well played, CSI. The stargazer notices a faint orange aura beginning to obscure the scope's vision on the left-hand side, and tries to readjust it. Soon, the scope gets brighter on the right, we see a few orange flickers licking their way across the lens, and then the guy looks up just in time to see that the forest behind him has caught on fire and an enormous fireball is rolling his way. He tries to outrun it, trips in panic (of course), and is swept along. We see him rolling, blazing and screaming, to his death. And while that's a hell of a way to go, I can't help but wonder: the fireball wasn't that big. Why not step to the right or the left and let it roll on by? Then your only problem is figuring out how to get out of a forest fire.
Anyway, the fire is subdued within seconds and all we're left with is Astronomer Flambé. Gil comments, "Low humidity, dry brush...perfect conditions for maximum damage." I would attempt to resolve Gil's statement with the speedy nature in which the fire was subdued, but it's way too early for that kind of mental yoga. The fire department guy mournfully points out, "Firebugs listen to the weather reports just like we do, only for different reasons." Sara wonders if maybe a litterbug threw a cigarette out the window. Good Lord, do people still do that? Has this nation learned nothing from Smokey the Bear? The fireman cracks, "You're an optimist," and Sara shoots him a look. Sara, he's got an admirably sour view of humanity, and in one scene, he's shown more personality than Hank did in a season. Jump the guy! Get him to show you the fireman's carry up close and personal-like.
Before Sara and Fireman Guy can determine whether they get on like a house afire, Gil yanks everyone's mind back to work and asks about the fire's point of origin. The fireman tells us it probably started along the ridge, and "I'll give you a shout when it's safe to come up." "Okay, Mom," Sara shoots back. Oooh, the landscape ain't the only thing smoldering here. Jump him, Sara! Jump!
Gil says, "This area's always been a good place for star-gazing," and Sara replies tartly, "It's a good make-out spot, too. Or so I've heard." I leave it to you to decide whether she's tweaking Gil with that, or whether she's got her mind on the fireman. (I know. Leave me my wishful thinking.) Gil is wearing an expression like, "Ew. Kissing is so gross. Why can't we just do as the cockroaches do and immobilize our paramours by emitting powerful, paralyzing pheromones?" Then he wanders off to check more of the crime scene. This is how he finds the second body, which is remarkably well-clothed for all that she's burned top-to-bottom. Gil calls, "Sara! We've got another body." The body flutters its long, lush eyelashes and gazes into the beam of Gil's flashlight. Cool as ever, Gil adds, "Get the paramedics!"
The Who is wondering who this live, burnt woman could possibly be. I've got a hunch they just might find out.
When we get back from the commercials, Liam the erstwhile lab tech is bopping on through the hospital. He comes over to a nurse who's finished wrapping up a head wound all like Gretchen's on the Amazing Race and introduces himself with, "I'm Liam. I used to be known as Liam the lab tech, until I got bumped up from the DNA lab to the CSI squad. And then, because my nickname was no longer contextually appropriate, I went as Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three. And then, because my nickname ceased to be funny to anyone except the recapper and she'd rather be funny than consistent, I returned to the simple, elegant 'Liam.' We all clear?" Oh, he does not either. I'm just engaging in a particularly clumsy form of explaining why Grasshopper, Gil's Adopted Son Number Three no longer wears his adopted family status on his sleeve and has returned to his old name.
So Liam introduces himself, and says stiffly that he's there to collect trace evidence from the arson victim. Wow, this has got to be providing some mild trauma to someone who was caught in a burning accident a few seasons ago, huh? Liam fans the flames of incipient PTSD by watching a medical team work on the victim for a while. He's both horrified and fascinated. The camera lingers long enough to justify the crazy expense that went into that special-effects makeup, and then we're back to Liam. He stammers to the doctor who materializes at his elbow, "I thought...I just assumed she was dead." "It's a miracle she's not. This is as bad as it gets," says the doctor. Liam asks how extensive the burns are, and the doctor replies, "Eighty percent. Mostly third degree." So I'm guessing the victim will be in this hospital only briefly before being transferred to a burn center? The American Burn Association's transfer criteria does state that patients ought to be transferred if they've got third degree burns over greater than 5% of their body area.
Anyway, Liam's a little freaked out, and he breathes, "I hope the morphine's working." Dr. Feelgood tells him, "Third-degree burns are painless. The nerves are burned away. She's not conscious of what's happening to her." Liam looks at Jane Doe's mottled black-and-red face one more time and says, "Not now." I hope you liked that moment: it's the last one in this episode in which Liam alludes, directly or indirectly, to his own wounds.
In the scene, he's managed to make it into the operating room where the burn team's working on Jane Doe. After he tells Dr. Feelgood he'll need any clothes, plus any trace evidence found on the body, Dr. Feelgood says, "We'll save what we can during debridement." Former burn victim Liam asks, "Debridement?" and Dr. Feelgood explains, "We scrape off the dead flesh, then cover it with cadaver skin. We then wrap it with gauze. It prevents infection and allows the remaining tissue to heal." And I realize "debridement" comes from the French débrider, which has its roots in the literal translation of the Middle French verb "debrider," or "to unbridle," but I see that word and I think "debridement" is what wedding planners do after a high-maintenance client finally takes off on her honeymoon. ["If I know what 'debridement' means from watching ER, I find it hard to believe that Liam doesn't. Clumsy explanation, writers." -- Sars]
Anyway, the doctor takes a moment to hand Jane Doe's recently-removed wedding band to Liam, then comments dispassionately, "She's going to lose those fingers." Liam gapes, horrified.
Meanwhile, in a B-plot across town, a team of EMTs are going through the motions on a little girl who's been fished out of the backyard pool. Catherine and Warrick look all somber, so it falls to Brass to exposit for us all: "Kid's name is Dani Stewart. She's five. Neighbors saw her floating facedown in the pool from their second-story balcony and called 911." Warrick wants to know why these same neighbors didn't call 911, and Brass says, "They couldn't get in the gate. [pause so we can all anticipate the irony-laden line ahead] Child-proof lock." Catherine sighs, "No key, no access." Warrick adds, "Parents protected their kid to death." Catherine judgmentally inquires as to the parents' whereabouts now, and Brass is all, "Shot dead inside the house. Do you feel like a jerk yet?" Well, his eyebrows say that. The rest of him just sighs wearily, "Home."
Catherine and Warrick proceed to search for the parents inside the McMansion. I hope they brought provisions; they're going to be there awhile. As they head through the kitchen, Aqua Teen Hunger Force is on the television again -- I love how this Viacom property's willing to pimp Time Warner's channel -- and Warrick eventually notices the dead Corinne Stewart slumped on the stairs. She's lying there face-down and going head-first, and her blood's dripped down the stairs' open wall. Warrick and Catherine conclude that Corinne fell forward as she ran down the stairs.
As Warrick and Catherine head up the stairs, he comments, "Lots of pictures of the kid. The family revolved around the child." Catherine replies, "[That's the] way it should be." I pause the TiVo so I can laugh long and hard. Once that's over with, we take in the broken picture glass on some of the framed photos; they've been knocked askew, and Warrick thinks they might have been damaged during a struggle. As the CSIs head up the stairs, we hear Corinne's blood drip, drip, dripping and get a shot of a blood drop hitting a puddle. It's a lot of flash for no good reason at all, other that it looks cool.
Once Warrick and Catherine head inside the bedroom, they see Morgan Stewart sprawled on the bed; he appears to have taken a shot to the underside of his jaw, but his head is remarkably intact. Warrick seems taken aback by the tableau and groans, "What a scene." The scene also contains a lot of glass on the rug. Morgan's got the gun in his hand, where his fingers are wrapped rather loosely around it, and there's a whole lot of blood on the bed and the floor. Warrick asks Catherine what she's thinking and she replies, "Maybe murder-suicide."
Warrick's not so sure. He notes that the gun appears to have been wiped clean, and Catherine asks, "You thinking a professional hit?" We see it in flashback, and Warrick asks, "What about the little girl?" and Catherine suggests, "Loose end?" We see another flashback where the child asks, "Mommy, why is everyone screaming?" while two legs loom ominously in the background. Warrick sums up the entire situation with, "We have three bodies in three locations -- a lot of variables."
Back at the big burn scene, the carrion birds cry in the background as Sara and Gil climb up the hill to the ridge where the fire purportedly started. Sara finds a burnt chunk of plastic she identifies "the business end of a disposable lighter. Could be an ignition source." Gil lurches on over -- the climb up the hill was pretty rough on him -- and calls Sara's attention to a broken glass liquor bottle. Sara muses, "Possible accelerant," and Gil replies, "Or possible martini." That exchange would have been a lot funnier if Sara and Gil had reversed their lines.
Sara picks up the broken bottleneck, sniffs it, and says, "I didn't think you could smell vodka." She would know. Gil alludes to the quality of the vodka with a sardonic, "Well, that depends how long it was distilled." Sara sniffs again and decides we're looking at the cheap stuff. Gil says, "Ironically, the word for 'vodka' comes from the Russian phrase 'zhizennia voda.' Water of life." Actually, as the folks on the forums are happy to tell you, it comes from the Russian phrase for "wheat water," which is "pshenichnaya voda."
But Gil's line allows us to transition to the swimming pool what killed little Dani so we can have our moment of irony for the episode, and then we're back inside the Stewarts' huge, awful house. Warrick is dusting the banister for prints when Emergency Backup David comes up and asks if he could please have the bodies released to the morgue. Warrick's all, "That would be a question for the boss lady. She's upstairs to the right." And now we know who's got a kink about women in power.
As Catherine works the bed, she tells Nicky she's found some long brunette hairs on the pillows. Since the wife was a blonde, this raises all sorts of interesting possibilities. Emergency Backup David comes up to begin asking for the bodies, and Catherine apologizes before explaining that they'll need to keep the bodies in their original position for a little while longer. Nicky strives for relevancy with, "Yeah. A crime scene this messy, you gotta break out the big guns, you know what I mean?" Emergency Backup David can't even be bothered to reply before he leaves.
Then Nicky segues into what feels like a product placement: "Hey. Did you know Ecklie volunteered the lab to evaluate this scanner for 3rdTech?" Catherine says cynically, "I'm sure he's hoping they'll give us one for free." "I wouldn't count on it, but I am going to enjoy using this while it's here. Virtual crime scene sketch sure beats doing it by hand." We then see the 3rdTech 3D laser scanner recreating the same scene it just washed with bright red light.
Then we cut to a brunette who barely has time to absorb how the entire Stewart family is dead before Brass is accusing her of bonking Morgan. The woman, who is Morgan's assistant, reacts to this suggestion by saying icily, "I wasn't sleeping with Morgan, and if you knew him, you wouldn't bother implying it. He was devoted to his wife. He was a wonderful father." Brass asks if the assistant was in the bedroom, and she replies that she wasn't. Brass says, "Then you wouldn't mind giving us a sample of your hair." The assistant replies, "I'd be glad to...as soon as you show me a court order." Without missing a beat, Brass asks, "You know how that makes you look?" The assistant snaps, "Save it. I'm pre-law." HA! I love it.
Liam is now left to run a hydrocarbon detector over Jane Doe's scraps of clothing, and picks up a burned, bubbly piece of plastic, quite possibly an ID card. Gil chooses that moment to pop in the doorway and say excitedly, "I hear our victim is still alive." "Not for long. Eighty percent of her body covered in third-degree burns? If you go by the standard rule for burn survival -- the patient's age plus the percentage of the body covered in burns -- we better hope she's less than twenty years old, since any number over 100 generally isn't good," Liam replies. Oh, he does not. He just says miserably, "I don't see why." Gil says, "She's not ready to let go yet."
The conversation moves on to what Liam found all over the clothing, and guess what? It's cheap vodka. Jane Doe was soaking in it. Gil theorizes that it was used as an accelerant, and now he's moved on to asking how Jane Doe could have taken a vodka bath at the top of the hill, then ended up a charcoal briquette at the bottom. He concludes, "I don't think she was caught in the fire. I think she started it."
Meanwhile, in another part of the lab, Sara's processing the broken vodka bottle. She finds a fingerprint on it which matches to one Patrick Bromley. Or, as we HBO-watchers might call him, Prior Walter. He used to be a busboy, but now he drives big rigs. Sara shares this with Gil who says, "He's a trucker. Let me guess: he's on the road." Not anymore, he's not. Vartann is currently working on bringing him in. Do you suppose Vartann is also softening Prior Walter up for the CSIs by making repeated cracks about his weight? Sara also did a quick end run around him, telling Gil, "The company tracks its trucks by GPS and they were kind enough -- under threat of subpoena -- to provide Prior Walter's route data for the last 24 hours. And what do you know?" Sara's last comment is directed at the computer screen, as it shows that Prior Walter was in the area of the fire an hour before someone called it in. A half-hour before that, he was at the local Gas-n-Sip. Gil's all, "Try to get the video surveil--" and Sara's all, "I'm on top of it, old man. Don't you wish you could keep up with me? Wouldn't you have fun trying?" Well, not really, but the impish attitude says it. I'm enjoying scorned-and-recovering Sara a lot more than I enjoyed Pining Sara.
And now we meet Prior Walter, who's not exactly happy because "You pull [me] off a route, that costs me money." Vartann immediately establishes a rapport with, "Hey. Shut up." You think he's smooth here, you should see him at wedding receptions. Anyway, Sara references the video footage, which shows an attractive, dark-haired woman (who is presumably Jane Done) getting into the cab. Prior Walter says he picked her up while she was hitchhiking on Sunset, and claims he dropped her off on Blue Diamond Road.
Vartann asks, "In the middle of nowhere, just like that?" and Prior Walter claims, "She wanted out." Sara snaps, "I bet she did. Where'd you get the scratches on your neck?" "Where'd you get the super X-ray vision to see in the shadows?" Prior Walter snaps back. Oh, he does not. He says he was in a bar fight a few nights ago. What kind of bar fight was it? Did it involve hair-pulling and sissy-punching? Vartann asks if they can look inside his truck and Prior Walter's all, "Whatever it takes to get me back on the road and motoring back to a career where I win more Obies." The other truckers watch judgmentally. This is probably why Prior Water gets his ass kicked in hair-pulling bar fights.
But it's not looking good for him in the here and now, because Sara's just found a pink sweater. We transition immediately to Prior Walter in the interrogation cell. Or in a whole other show, since he appears to have been ushered into a room with a black wall and told, "Talk like you're one of the great unwashed. And...action!" Prior Walter's explaining, "I was just trying to help that chick out." Sara takes this to mean, "I sexually assaulted this woman, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to support that conclusion." Prior Walter insists it wasn't like that. The camera gets all menacing as he insists, "I'm a happily married man...I just gave her a ride." Sara insists, "We already know what you did. Evidence? Who needs that to assume that you raped a hitchhiker, then set her on fire? I'd rather just assume the worst of you." DAMN, but the way she's just ASSUMING bugs here. Follow the evidence? At this point, Sara and Vartann would need Mapquest and two days to get back from their erroneous conclusion to the evidence. Fortunately, Prior Walter puts them in their place with, "Looks like you already got your answers. Which means I want a lawyer."
Now we see pictures of Morgan Stewart on the bed, looking none too alive. Warrick's holding them and explaining that Ballistics Bobby's already run the bullets and come back with information about the gun. Turns out it was registered to Morgan. It's worth noting that Warrick holds his evidence briefs during his morning cardio workout; he's doing laps through the Labitrail, with Nicky and Catherine trotting alongside. Ah, multitasking. Nicky wonders if maybe they're looking at "a murder-suicide -- guy kills his family, then turns the gun on himself?" Warrick's not ruling it out, because "Morgan Stewart was in debt up to his eyeballs. He was in danger of losing his house." I'd feel worse for Morgan if it weren't evident that he and Corinne were not living a subsistence existence. Anyway, rather than make a comment about rampant consumerism and the pressure some people feel to live beyond their means, Catherine goes for the low-hanging fruit and sighs, "Never underestimate the fragility of the male ego." And never underestimate the offensiveness of sexism in any form, Catherine. If a male supervisor had said something like "Never underestimate the power of the lady shopper" to her or Sara, he would have been explaining his gender-based theories of economics to the head of HR so fast, his head would have been spinning. The incredulous scoffs Nicky and Warrick exchange more or less say the same thing.
And now Catherine's off to insult David the XY Coroner, so long as she's man-bashing. I kid. She's actually listening as David explains of Morgan, "Bullet enters with a marginal abrasion on the underside of the chin. The wound path traverses the oral cavity, brain and the high scalp just right at the midline. Bullet exited with a stellate laceration of the right parietal scalp." Corinne Stewart was shot in the back, and "the hemorrhagic wound paths traverse the skin, subcutaneous tissue and musculature on the right side of the back. The trajectory is back to front, right to left and slightly downward." And twirling. Always twirling. Catherine asks about little Dani, and we move from the morgue tables to the fridge, have a flashy little shot of the child's chilled corpse, and find out that -- surprise! -- a kid found floating facedown in a swimming pool actually drowned. That's actually kind of a shock for this show. Catherine asks if there's any trauma to the body, and David mentions a fractured rib, as one would normally have if one had just had CPR performed. Catherine says as much, and David points out, "The EMT's report states that she already had the injury when they found her at the scene." Catherine's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Well, I guess they have to: they're pulling the expressive weight for the rest of her face. Catherine then theorizes, "Maybe this all started with the accidental death of a child."
We flash back to Dani floating in the pool, Corinne having the freak-out and fishing her daughter's body out. After an unsuccessful bout of CPR, Corinne tearfully tells Morgan, who is compelled by his allegedly fragile male ego to haul out the gun and kill the rest of the family.
Back in the present, David's all, "Eh. That works." Catherine replies, "Yeah, but how do you perform CPR on a child, then toss her back in the pool?" "Speaking of children, how's Lindsey?" David asks. "I dropped her off at a pool party. Why?" Catherine replies. You know I just made up most of that exchange, right? The only thing Catherine really asks why is you'd attempt to revive a child, then toss the body back in a pool. I'm going to save her a lot of grief now by telling her that she's asking in vain. We never, never get an answer in this episode as to why you'd do such a thing.
Meanwhile, Gil and Mia decide to play ninja. Or maybe they've just decided that dressing all in black and lurking in the shadows while talking about DNA is more fun than standing at a lab bench and talking about how Mystery Burn Victim's DNA is freaky. Mia explains, "One of her markers is out of the control range." Gil's all excited: "An off-ladder peak?" Mia's all, "Cram it, Big Daddy Ninja. Did you know the frequency of that anomaly is one in every 250?" Gil's giddy as a schoolgirl ninja because "I learn something new every day" and Mia's stealth exposition just helped him hit his daily quota. You know what this scene needs? Swords and nun chucks. Or maybe an explanation of why ladders matter. I can't give you swords and nun chucks, but I can provide the explanation. DNA testing typically requires an allelic ladder, which is made up of human DNA fragments collected from hundreds of people to provide samples of the more commonly observed allele lengths. The point to an allelic ladder is to provide a measuring benchmark for a suspect's alleles, and to show whether the PCR used to amplify a DNA sequence is working. Ladder alleles are then tagged with a dye, so they can be compared to the sample. What Mia's saying is that the DNA sample's alleles don't match up with the range shown as typical in the ladder exemplar, and that's freaky.
Or maybe what the scene needs is a scientific montage. Liam is back in the lab. Just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in. At least he's able to work in a lab much like the one that exploded all around him and covered him in burns, and he's not at all wigged out by it. Our man's psyche must be made of India rubber. Or forgetfulness. Anyway, after the montage music plays long enough for Trent Reznor to look up from his PSP and reach for the phone that has his lawyers on speed-dial, Liam manages to recreate the burn victim's license using a video spectral comparator. This handy device uses different light wavelengths to pick up marks on documents -- my best guess is that ink and paper absorb light at different wavelengths, and it's the contrast that makes something visible. Anyway, the upshot is that our burn victim's named Tara Matthews and she lives at Collie Lane.
Cut to Gil asking Neal Matthews when the last time he saw his wife was. It looks like the Matthewses are yet another of those Las Vegas couples that have seen fit to decorate with "Our Love Is Bigger Than The Both Of Us, Baby" theme. I simply don't get why you'd put up all these pictures of yourself with your spouse. Is this so you don't forget what the other person looks like? Or is this because the set decorator gets a kick out of the oh-so-Alan-Ball idea that behind the smiling Olan Mills façade is a couple that's deeply dysfunctional? Anyway, we get to the contradictory business all quick-like, because that smiling woman hanging limpet-like off Neal's arm? Apparently blew out of the apartment after a fight and hasn't been seen by husband dearest since. Gil's all, "Do you have a lot of fights?" and Neal's all, "I don't know. What's a lot?" The Germans might say "Two." Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazer might put it at "three." Anyway, Neal's all, "Things have been a little rough around here lately. Tara's been on antidepressants for a while. I own my own business, so she's home most of the time. What's this all about? Where's my wife?" Liam looks at Gil as if to say, Please tell him, but only after you explain to me what owning your own business has to do with your wife staying home most of the time. Gil ignores the silent plea and breaks the news: Tara's at the hospital, and there's been an accident. Neal's all, "I want to see her."
Oh no you don't. The only reason Tara's looking better than the last time we saw her is because more of her is wrapped in white gauze. But it's not like she's resting peacefully; she's stabilized between blocks, presumably to keep her from moving and further damaging her skin. We cut to Neal, who's in pretty deep denial over who's on that hospital bed. Liam doesn't let him wade long, what with whipping out Tara's wedding ring so Neal can fall apart all over it. Liam's got a look like, You know, the DNA samples never cry. What was I thinking with this job? He averts his eyes -- and unfortunately ends up looking at the blood-soaked gauze covering Tara's left hand. Neal wants to know this happened, and Liam's all, "Um. We're still investigating." Neal sobs some about how "All day, I was waiting for her to come home. I was really going to make it up to her. I had planned a barbecue. How do you think this makes me feel?" Like you're saying made-up lines? Because it should. Liam just lets Neal marinate in his guilt for a while.
Back at the lab, Liam's holding the jar with Tara's fingers in it and staring at them with the haunted expression of a person who wouldn't be surprised if the fingers began wiggling. Gil ambles on by and asks how his trip to the hospital with Neal went. Liam doesn't take his eyes off the jar full of fingers when he replies, "About as well as could be expected. Doctors had to amputate the fingers of her right hand. Too great a risk for infection. They gave them to me to process for trace." Gil realizes that Liam's close to snapping and grabs the reins with, "You pulled a double. You need a break. I'll process it." Liam's face is a blend of embarrassment and relief. Gil and his eyebrows escort him on out the door, and Liam mumbles his thanks as he leaves.
Gil kicks out the montage jams and begins plucking fingers out of the jar. They're looking surprisingly unburned, for all that they came from someone with third-degree burns over 80% of her body and presented a risk infection. Gil finds something embedded in the pad of one finger, but that's when we shift scenes…
...to Liam in the co-ed locker room. Sofia spots him and comes on down to say hello, asking, "What's the problem?" Liam lies, "Nothing, I'm fine," and Sofia calls him on it. He admits, "I feel like a wuss." Sofia continues the blunt talk with, "Well, you look like you feel." Oh, she does not either, because Liam is continuing with, "Grissom told me I should take a break, and I did." Sofia establishes that he was working on the burn victim, and Liam asks, "How do you get an image like that out of your mind?" Heavy drinking? Excessive use of pornography? A stitch-and-bitch group? Sofia has a less creative suggestion: "You go home. You, ah, hug your cat, your dog, your pillow." You apply the Bactine after the cat-hugging experience follows its usual course...oh. Sofia's still going: "You have a beer, you watch a movie, and then you come back tomorrow." Yeah, so long as Liam skips The Towering Inferno or Backdraft, he'll be fine. And so long as he skips past FX if they happen to be airing the episode where Kelly Taylor and her soon-to-be lesbian stalker friend Allison were trapped in a closet during a fire. (Although that is an awesome episode. God, I love Season 5 of . ["God, me too. And anyone who doesn't is AN EXTERN." -- Sars]) And the Food Network's not showing anyone making crepes suzette. I'm sure he'll be fine.
Anyway, Liam pouts, "It that supposed to make me feel better?" Sofia RSVPs to his pity party in the negative: "Rumor has it you used to be a pretty fun guy. Don't lose that." And then she walks off. Because it's better to dispense empty advice than it might be to, oh, invite yourself over for a beer and a bowl of popcorn while you watch Johnson Family Vacation with Liam.
Mia runs an ALS over the sheet from Morgan and Corinne's bed and cuts out the assorted bodily-fluid stains while Hodges lurks in the shadows and drools like the Phantom of the Labitrail. All he needs is a mask and a theme song. "Print me, scope me, savor the sensation…" Seriously. He's all up in the shadows and watching with beady-eyed longing. Shortly before he bursts into song with, "The Phaaaaaaantom of the Lab-I-trail is HERE! Inside your lab!" Catherine pops up and smugly asks, "Hard to look and not touch, huh?" Wow, she is just filled with inappropriate behavior tonight. I ask again, if the genders were reversed, how do you think that would be received?
Hodges bluffs with, "That poor kid has been working her tail off. Only fair, considering how DNA gets most of the glory these days." Catherine's all, "Whatever. Gimme evidence." Hodges does: the dark hairs found in the bed aren't a match to Corinne. And then he tweaks Catherine -- I don't know if it's intentional or not -- with, "Pretty bold to bring another woman into his matrimonial bed. He was begging to get caught." Catherine predictably snaps back, snotting that Hodges hasn't told her anything she didn't already know. So he points out the basal body temperature thermometer that was found broken on the floor of the bedroom, helpfully adding that the thermometer is "used by women to pinpoint a temperature spike that occurs --" "During ovulation, I know. It maximizes your chances of conception," Catherine replies. She concludes Corinne was trying for another baby. Catherine and Hodges then cluck about how poor Corinne was trying to get knocked up while her husband was knocking bottoms with someone else.
And now we're back to DNA Freakshow with Gil and Mia. Sadly, they are not dressed like ninjas this time. She pulls up the genetic charts she whipped up, and explains of the first, "This is the standard ladder of alleles that I run against every unknown DNA, and it contains all of the commonly encountered alleles in the population. You see at locus D3, the alleles are 12-19. Now, as you can see on the sample on the bottom, the locus D3 alleles are 15 and 21." In other words, the 21 allele is outside the normal range encountered in the population. Gil gets it: "It's an off-ladder peak, like Tara Matthews." Yes. Just like, as Mia demonstrates when she pulls down another chart and says, "And this is the DNA that was extracted from the vaginal contributions to the sheets at the Stewart house." Catherine breathes, "Tara Matthews' DNA in the Stewarts' bed." Gil says with some asperity, "We're working the same case."
So what better time to have a family meeting over pancakes? Unfortunately, Gil forgets the pancakes and brings only the evidence. He tells everyone there were several spots of high-density polyethylene embedded in Tara's fingers. Sara adds that the plastic's consistent with the material in most disposable lighters, and she just happened to find the top of a disposable lighter at the scene of the fire. Warrick points out that heat melts plastic and butane adds the kind of pressure that could drive plastic into someone's fingers. Catherine sputters incredulously, "So the lighter blew up in her hand? Are you saying she set herself on fire?" Well, that's what the flashback seems to indicate. Sara, who's still carrying quite the hate-on for the truck driver, speculates, "It's attempted suicide. She'd been assaulted by a truck driver shortly before her death, she was clinically depressed, she was having problems in her marriage --" "You know, some Eastern cultures believe that fire cleanses the soul," Gil begins, and Catherine takes time to derail a comparative theology lecture in the making by pointing out that if Tara's looking for excuses to purify the soul, "sleeping with Morgan Stewart" is as good an excuse as any. Catherine muses, "If she attempted suicide several hours after the Stewarts died, she's a possible suspect." Gil counters that "Just having her DNA in the bed doesn't prove she was there for the murders." Sara likes Neal for the murders, and that's when we find out from Warrick that Neal and Morgan have been friends since they were kids: "Neal was good at making money and Morgan was good at making debts." Sara theorizes, "Morgan was jealous of Neal, sleeps with Tara out of spite, Corinne finds out --" "And three people end up dead," Gil says. He then gets to the point: "If Morgan shot himself, then he's the prime suspect in the murders. But if he himself was murdered, then somebody else was in the house." I like the six-year-old for it. Kidding!
It looks like all signs point to Neal. Brass is swinging by the hospital to make some small talk -- unsuccessfully -- about how Tara's doing before asking, "With the detective who interviewed you earlier, why didn't you tell him your best friend and his family had just been killed?" Neal claims he didn't know. He also claims he wasn't at Morgan's house the day he was killed, but can't quite vouch for Tara. Brass prods a little with, "Well, she's been spending a lot of time there." Predictably, Neal rises to the bait with, "What's that supposed to mean?" Tactful as ever, Brass says, "Your wife was having an affair with your best friend." Now comes the fake empathy: "I feel for you, I do. Friends don't sleep with their friends' wives." Neal says scornfully, "You think you know how I feel," and Brass shrugs, "Guilty." Neal admits that yeah, he does feel guilty: "I couldn't give my wife what she needed. If she went to Morgan, that's the reason. She never handled rejection well." Brass does some fishing around to see if maybe Morgan rejected Tara to the point where she was driven to kill. Morgan's all, "Nope. Not Tara." Brass somehow ignores the big, flashing "BECAUSE IT WAS ME!" sign hanging over Neal's head.
Back in the lab, Warrick ambles on over to hang out with Nicky as he examines the computer 3D model he made of the crime scene. Nicky shows Warrick the trajectory angles of the shots, and the two of them realize that Morgan wasn't lying on the bed when he shot himself. He was moved from someplace on the floor. This is pretty compelling evidence that someone else shot Morgan. Nicky reasons, "Maybe Neal or Tara Matthews has blood on their clothes," and Warrick replies, "Time to check the house." We pan to Gil and Sara walking through the corridor that doubles as the Matthews Marriage Shrine, and the two of them proceed to work the cavernous house. I wonder if the CSIs ever look around these McMansions and wonder why more bourgeois homeowners haven't read Sarah Susanka's The Not So Big House and begun demanding better, more compact architecture in response.
Anyway, we go into yet another montage with the camera lingering on a fully-stocked nursery -- seriously, the kid won't be lacking for entertainment until he's seven -- and we see Sara crouching in a walk-in closet the size of my living room and running an ALS over all of Neal's pants. Gil's going through Tara's equally capacious dressing room. Eventually, Sara finds a shard of glass in a pair of Neal's shoes, and Gil finds another basal body temperature thermometer secreted in a drawer.
Cut to Gil bursting into Catherine's office -- knocking as he comes in, a gesture that seems quintessentially Grissomian in that it recognizes territorial custom while disregarding its importance -- and dishing on basal body temperature thermometers. Catherine mulls this for a moment, and then the penny drops: "I was just looking at Corinne Stewart's autopsy report, and she had a tubal ligation, so she obviously wasn't trying to get pregnant." Gil concludes, "Tara was."
When we get back from commercials, the camera pans across the somewhat medieval looking tangle of wires, poles, and tubes required so that the lab might get a urine sample from the unconscious Tara. David then dips the little testing stick, and within minutes, it's confirmed: Tara is pregnant. Apparently, when you've suffered a massive, systemic shock like getting third degree burns over 80% of your body, you're in no danger of miscarriage. But ride Space Mountain once, and everyone's squawking about placental abruption. Gil more or less says the same thing. Shockingly, he doesn't raise the roller coaster issue. Catherine sighs, "The body is designed to protect your baby. I don't know. All that trauma and morphine. It'll be a miracle if she brings it to term." Gil's wondering as to who the father is, and argues that it's probably Morgan, since the broken basal body temperature thermometer in the Stewarts' bedroom implies that she was trying to conceive while in his bed and not her own. Catherine wonders if Neal was shooting blanks, and theorizes, "Neal and Morgan were best friends --" "Somebody she may have felt comfortable with," Gil finishes.
And then Catherine narrates a flashback: "Neal catches Morgan in bed with his wife. He knows where his best friend keeps his gun --" but before we can get to the money shot (as it were), Gil yanks us back to the present by pointing out, "The glass in his shoe just puts him at the scene. We didn't find any blood on the clothes we recovered from his house." Catherine's all, "Eh. Clothes are easy to dump. The glass was an oversight, he didn't know it was there." Gil's still pushing at her theory, and they discuss the odds that Tara did it. Gil points out that getting evidence from her clothing would be tough, since "the clothes she was wearing went up in flames." Catherine remembers the sweater Sara recovered from Prior Walter's truck and says, "Not everything."
In record time, she's processed the sweater and found a suspicious trace of something, which Hodges then processes. Before you can say "micropipette," Brass has Neal in the interrogation tank and is all, "So! Would you care to explain to me how chlorine from the Stewarts' pool ended up on your wife's sweater? Or should we just go ahead and charge her with the murders now?" Neal's attack lawyer raises his eyebrows in a them's the breaks kind of way while Neal chuffs in dismay. Then he says, "Whatever happened, Tara couldn't have done it on purpose. It must have been some sort of accident." Brass muses, "Tara went to Morgan's house to tell him she was pregnant with his child…" He tapers off as he notices Neal's pole-axed expression and asks with his usual feigned surprise, "She told you the baby was yours?" Neal confirms this. Brass is all, "And you believed her?" "We were trying to have a baby. Why wouldn't I?" Neal replies. Brass shrugs, "Well, sure. You and Morgan were close enough in looks, she probably would've gotten away with it." Neal stammers, "She always said, 'A woman without a child of her own was not a woman.'" Some tautologies are too stupid to even dignify with refutation. This is one of them. Neal admits they had tried IVF a half-dozen times -- Brass already knew this, and adds unhelpfully, "You had bad sperm." You know, having a cop discuss whether your boys can swim has got to rank in the Top 50 Worst Masculine Nightmares of All Time.
Well, then Brass spins a tale about how Tara, giddy from the hormones fueled by her adulterous pregnancy, tried to get Morgan to leave his family for her, and when he refused, she killed them. Under Brassian logic, anyone who's on antidepressants is clearly unbalanced enough to kill. I swear, some people read Prozac Nation and it turns them against selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and the people who take them. Neal's not even listening; he says mournfully, "I told Tara we could adopt. She wouldn't." Because...why? The proof of womanhood's in the gestating of babies, and not in the raising? I'm trying to be sympathetic to the crispy adulteress, but the more I hear about her, the less I like her. Brass continues to talk about Tara's asinine quest for gender validation via conception caused her to kill, kill, kill, and eventually Neal cracks. Naturally, his lawyer is aghast at this development. Brass, however, is delighted.
Long story short: one balmy afternoon a few short days ago, Neal and Morgan were hanging out and having a few beers. Neal got a splinter and went to the bathroom to get the first aid equipment. He found the thermometer; knowing that Corinne had had her tubes tied, Neal quickly figured out who was using the thermometer and what it was doing at the Stewarts' house. He explains, "He said it was Corinne's idea. They were trying to help us." Then we go into flashback. As the two men throw down -- Neal being upset over Morgan impregnating his wife under the guise of doing him a favor -- Morgan calls for Corinne to call the police. She's by the pool, and rather than drag her daughter out of the water first, she lets Dani bob along with only a flimsy flotation device to keep her head above water, and runs into the house to see what's going on. It figures. Nine years of working as a lifeguard left me with a lasting appreciation for the near-infinite variety of ways in which parents neglect their children's safety in and around large bodies of water. Anyway, Corinne arrives in the bedroom just in time to see Neal shoot Morgan, then runs off to call the cops; Neal shoots her before she can do that, saying weakly, "She could've called the cops. I was just trying to stop her." The bloodbath over, "I didn't know what to do, so I called Tara. When she came over, she saw what I had done. She freaked out."
We flash back to the two of them having the kind of conversation that, inexplicably, is not overheard by the same neighbors who manage to notice a little girl's body at the bottom of the pool, i.e. Tara screaming. "Are you out of your mind? Do you know what you've done?" and Neal wailing, "This is all because of you!" The conversation is interrupted by Tara noticing Dani's body and attempting a rescue, who knows how long after the fact.
Without bothering to explain why the two of them then dumped the little girl back in the drink, Neil explains that Tara decided "we didn't deserve to live, either of us. And then she just ran out of the door. I was afraid she was going to try to kill herself." But clearly not in agreement on the didn't-deserve-to-live business. Neal defends the whole wretched mess with, "All we wanted was a baby." And instead, you got four dead bodies. After all, Tara "I don't deserve to live" Matthews took out another innocent man during her suicide attempt, and who knows how many animals and whatnot in that fire she started.
And with that, we're done. The camera pans from the dead bodies of the Stewart family to the inert body of Tara. Her eyes snap open, and the camera lingers for a moment, but we're unable to tell if she's aware of anything at all.