It's pouring rain. And yes, it really does look like that: the last time I was in Vegas, I landed in the pouring rain, my cab more or less floated down the Strip, and all I could think as we caromed sideways toward the Flamingo was, "This is the karmic payback for five years of jokes about the paucity of rain in Las Vegas." Consider the message got, universe.
Anyway, we soon zoom in on an institutional-looking building surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and a sole figure hurries toward the door. We see her greeting a security guard, and within a short sequence, we've established that she's Nanette Farmer, she's a nurse, and she works for Desert State Mental Hospital. I look forward to seeing which CSI got committed -- I can't imagine any other reason why a city investigator would be poking around a state hospital.
Nanette heads inside, a task made considerably more complicated by the dozens of security procedures she must follow as she scans, punches buttons, unlocks and locks doors, et cetera. Eventually, she makes it into the nursing station so she can hang up her coat. She's the only one around, and the thunder's rumbling atmospherically. Either Nanette's got nerves of steel, or she's blessed with an underactive imagination; I'd be giving myself the willies by imagining Bruce Davison waiting around the corner to lobotomize me. Out of nowhere, another nurse says, "Some night, huh?" Aiee! I bet she lurked until just the right moment. The hardy Nanette comments that "it's ugly out there." Well, the décor isn't doing a lot to recommend the great indoors either.
Nanette begins bed check. Her first stop? The insomniac's room. He looks justifiably cranky over not being able to sleep. Her second: a baby-faced guy, fast asleep. Her third: another placidly sleeping patient. The fourth is bad news: victim Robbie Garson is on the floor, lying on his side in a pool of his own blood. Nanette rushes in to check out the damage. Ronnie's roommate Kenny is busy rocking back and forth, his hands covered in blood. He whimpers, since it's more concise than saying, "I admit it's not looking too good for me right now. But consider this: it's possible I was framed." Nanette whips out her alarm pen.
Cut to some suit telling Gil, Brass, and Sara, "We have two types of patients here: the criminally insane, and the sexually violent predators, all with multiple convictions. And all of them are Las Vegas residents too, which is why the city CSIs are investigating a murder in what is nominally a state prison. Lucky for us we found precedent in the books, what with you guys solving murders on federal property too!" The suit continues reassuring everyone: "We get all the inmates the prisons can't handle, which is why, among the CSIs, we figured the slower old guy and the skinny girl are the most capable of defending themselves physically in case of confrontation. You, gruff balding sergeant guy, will deflect them with your glower." Anyway, the suit asks Sara to remove her vest because "new uniforms upset them." How fortunate for the inmates that they didn't put Catherine on the case; otherwise we'd have an awkward moment when the director said, "Also, the inmates are upset by cleavage. Can you take those off too?"
Anyway, the hospital director guy continues to reassure the CSIs by telling them to stop and put their backs against the wall, as there's a bunch of inmates being led by. One guy decides to get acquainted by waggling his tongue at the CSIs; someone brusquely orders him to put his tongue back in his mouth. But how will he able to respond if Sara stops being disgusted long enough to say, "Hello"? Won't someone think of the inmates?
The suit marches them over to the two nurses -- Nanette and the creepy nurse Joanne McNeil, plus the on-site cop Reed Owen. He's part of the special hospital police team. Which is part of the Las Vegas police? Why do I even bother fretting about jurisdiction? Nobody on the show does. Anyway, the camera just keeps on returning to the freaked-out-looking Sara, and it's working my last nerve already. What is the point of harping on the damsel-in-peril angle here when the first question any sane viewer's going to have is, "Well, if a girl's in that much danger on these premises, what's stopping Gil from swapping her own with Nicky or Warrick?" There's being in legitimate peril, and then there's being in contrived situations for the sake of cheap drama.
Anyway, the internal team -- evidently made up of women who don't deserve the Camera Close-Up of Impending Danger -- explains that Nanette had just relieved Joanne, she was doing bed-check, and she found Robbie at 12:10 AM. Brass asks, "Are the patients locked in their room at night?" The guy replies, "No, their doors are unlocked at night." Hold on -- these are the guys too tough for any prison to handle, multiple felons who are mentally ill…and they're allowed to wander around unfettered at night. Brass asks as much, and the suit replies, "Locked rooms usually lead the patients to try and harm themselves." Whereas with unlocked doors, they're encouraged to branch out and think of others first.
We find out Kenny's been "taken to seclusion," which is code for "strapped his screaming ass to a gurney." The ever-unflappable Nanette orders Leon the nursing attendant to pump Kenny full of lorazepam. This "seclusion room" business is misleading: when I go to a day spa, the seclusion room usually involves lying down someplace that smells like lavender while someone puts cucumber slices on my eyes and a Wyndham Hill album plays. It seems a lot more calming than being stuck in a five-point restraint system while Gil glowers at you. No wonder Kenny's screaming. I would be too. Sara notices the wounds on Kenny's arms and asks after them. Leon tells us, "He suffers from Renfield's syndrome." So he's in thrall to vampires? Shouldn't he be eating bugs? According to Leon, "He gets off on blood. A couple weeks ago, I caught him gouging himself with a carpet staple." Gil's only interested in Kenny's stylish scrubs, asking if he was wearing the clothing when they found him to Robbie's body. He was.
Gil draws Sara out to the corridor and points out, "There was blood spatter all over the victim's room." "Blood, but no spatter all over Kenny's clothes," Sara replies. She and Gil take a moment to look around. Sara adds, "Locked unit, a limited number of suspects…" "Crazy or not, here we come," Gil quips.
The Who wants to know who's replaced the normally broad-minded Gil with someone who's maybe not got the most nuanced take on mental illness.
When we get back from commercials, the inmates have settled down for a night of card-playing and pretending to knit. Brass points out the phantom knitter/insomniac to Gil, and asks, "Why's that guy knitting an imaginary sweater? How's he know when he's finished?" "His brain's telling him that what he's doing is real. He has no reason to doubt it," Gil replies. "Or any desire to," Brass replies. Someone's wearing the cranky badge tonight. Gil adds, "They asked John Nash how he could believe that extraterrestrials were sending him messages. He said that the messages came to him in the same way that his mathematical ideas did, so he had to take them seriously." Before the discussion can move on into an assessment of Ron Howard films, Calamity Jane nee on-call doctor Valerie Dino comes on over and introduces herself. She adds, "The administration asked me to set up some rooms for your interviews but, ah, personally, I don't see what you hope to accomplish. These patients are criminals with severe mental disorders. They're not going to give you a straight answer." Brass cheerfully replies, "No one ever does."
Robbie's body is wheeled out of the room, and Sara lingers long enough to read the chart on the door. His psychiatrist was Dr. Dino, his nurses were Joanne and Nanette, his psych tech was Leon, and he was on Geodon, olanzapine, Depakote, lithium and lorazepam. Having creeped herself out, Sara begins working the room. The most interesting item: a torn photograph on the wall suggesting that a photo was recently taken down.
Gil's begun talking with the inmates. It is not the meeting of minds you'd otherwise expect. Someone named Ronald Salter, who's committed multiple rapes and murders, insists, "I heard him saying, 'I'm coming in.' It's not like he isn't serious." Ronald punctuates every syllable by tapping his temple. Gil asks, "Who isn't serious?" Ronald stammers, "The perpetrator." This is when we flash to his docket, which helpfully adds that the multiple rapist/murderer is also prone to hallucinations and delusions. And he's in here? Shocker. Gil asks, "Can you tell me anything else about him?" Ronald demurs, explaining in a whisper, "He's here." Gil surreptitiously checks the corners, then asks, "In this room?" Ronald continues to tap his temple. Gil asks, "Is his name Ronald?" Ronald helpfully clarifies, "No, my name is Ronald." Gil asks, "What's [the perp's] name?" "He doesn't have a name. He's a cricket. Here [in my temple]." Gil is all disgustedly, "A cricket." Buck up, camper! It's not every day your love of entomology collides with your love of getting confessions out of people. Ronald solemnly asserts that the cricket is "trying to burrow a hole in my head."
Brass is talking to Earl Simmonds, who's committed six rapes and grappled with severe depression. He's the insomniac phantom knitter guy. Frankly, not getting enough sleep is enough to make anyone depressed. Me, I snap at people. Earl evidently stays awake all the time because he is consumed with thoughts of the "bitches." Brass refrains from suggesting that Earl could benefit from an imaginary stitch 'n' bitch group; what he thinks it means and what Earl thinks is means would be two different things.
Sara continues to work the room. Using an ALS, she notices semen on the bed sheets. A quick check under the mattress reveals a stash of department-store ads in which little boys are modeling clothing. And this is how we conclude that Robbie's a homosexual pedophile.
And now it's time for us to meet Adam Trent, multiple suicide attempter. He's busy smirking at Gil. After Gil asks what's so amusing, Adam says, "So let's say you find out who did it. Maybe it's me. What are you going to do? Are you going to convict me of murder and put me in a bad place?" By the way, multiple-rapist Adam is also prone to delusions. Gil refuses to play the what-if game, and just asks, "Is it you?" Adam quips, "Check the files, sir. I'm a rapist, not a murderer."
Brass is now interviewing a scary-looking old guy who's fastened to the chair with padded leather cuffs. He's all, "Robert Garson?" This rings no bells for the taciturn Roman Golenski.
The pederast Charles Pellew is up on Gil's docket. He responds to the question, "Do you know what happened to Robert Garson?" thusly: "Female pig relation hanged. It sped even. Well, too." Gil's all, "Come again?" Charles replies, "No…I ground it, blindly. Wet and dirty. Cut the blood oven. It spoke justly, repeatedly, calmly. Some thin rod dared your wash. They foretold this into some ready child, which fell crossly. They hag-rode me…again." Gil's wearing an expression like, "Well it's no wonder Chomsky ditched generative grammar for the transformational stuff. 'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously' has nothing on this."
And now, Brass gets to interview a racist. It's almost like watching Oz all over again. Naturally, Jake's been tagged as anti-social. The ritual murder rap probably didn't do much to convince the jury he was really a people person with an unfortunate, albeit talentless, bent toward performance art.
Sara, meanwhile, continues wandering alone throughout this hospital filled with free-roaming inmates whose eggshell psyches can't handle a bulletproof vest. You don't suppose we're supposed to feel concern about this, do you? Sara rolls on up to Dr. Dino's office. Dino's taking advantage of the inmates' diversion elsewhere to catch up on paperwork. Sara asks, "Question about the victim. I have heard that in some cases of deviant sexual disposition, you slow the sex drive --" "If you're talking about chemical castration, the answer is yes, Robbie was," Dr. Dino interrupts. Sara asks, "So he didn't masturbate?" Dr. Dino clarifies, "Masturbate, yes. Ejaculate, no." Sara says slowly, "So the semen I found in his bed is someone else's?" "Likely," Dr. Dino says. I would say I like her, but I can't figure out if I find this character so appealing because of the way she's been drawn for us (no-nonsense, blunt, amiable) or because I dig the actress's work on Deadwood. Sara scampers off to tell Brass and Gil, "I found semen in the victim's room, and it's probably not his, because he's chemically castrated." "So you're thinking the donor could be the killer?" Brass asks. Gil still looks like he's struggling to reconcile Charles's speech with the theories of cognitive linguistics. He recovers enough to say, "Sex is the foreplay. Violence is the climax." Unfortunately, Sara's face is hidden by her hair, so we can't see if she's got a look like, Whew, I dodged a bullet on the dating scene there.
Gil and Sara then proceed to try to get DNA samples from their limited pool of suspects; Brass bows out after cheerily wishing them "Happy swabbing!" Leon's busy doping everyone up. Gil divides the work by telling Sara, "You take that side, I'll take Jiminy Cricket." Somehow, I feel like Liam should be attached to a case with imaginary grasshoppers. The swabbing goes about as well as can be expected until Sara has to swab Roman; he's evidently eschewed our spoken language for a series of lunging bites. It's moderately startling, but on the bright side, Iceman from Top Gun now has someone who actually gets that tooth-chomping thing he does. The two of them can happily shatter their molars in dental communion. Meanwhile, Sara deals by calling out, "Grissom…you take this one." Heh.
It's still raining. Robbie's still dead, only now he's across town and on David the Dry Coroner's slab. Gil has made the time to zip across town and hang out during the autopsy too. He's still got all his digits, so I'm guessing his attempt to get Roman's DNA was more successful. David says of Robbie's stomach contents: "They're fascinating. It reminded me of that scene in Jaws where Dreyfuss cuts open the shark's belly and all kinds of weird things come out." Gil looks confused: "You found a license plate?" No, that tends to show up in regular prison; the inmates take their work home with them. Sadly, no. David did find "band-aids, wood chips, human hair and half a snapshot." Gil muses, "Pica?" "Boo?" David replies. Ha! Gil looks contemptuous at the attempted joke, then huffs, "Pica's a compulsion to eat non-nutritive food items. It's from the Latin word for magpie." Does it cover non-nutritive food items like Cheetos, or merely things in wood pulp family? Then again, maybe Cheetos are in the wood pulp family…anyway, Gil explains that pica's symptomatic of a large and indiscriminate appetite, which certainly does nothing to sever the pica/Cheeto association. Anyway, it turns out that despite the fat and juicy head wounds, Robbie died of asphyxiation; his head was bounced off a hard surface post-mortem. "Evidently dead wasn't dead enough," Gil sniffs. David helpfully points out that Robbie was likely restrained immediately before his death, if the ligature marks on his wrists and ankles are any indication. Gil says peevishly, "Nobody mentioned restraints."
Sara's also taken a break from the hospital and come back to the lab. She's peering in a microscope when Hodges comes up to talk personal grooming habits: "Would you ever bleach your hair? I wouldn't. It's so Liam the larval CSI. Most of the hair is the vic's, but I also found that bleached sample as well. In my continuing quest to further my standing, I took it upon myself to get you the tox report…blood came back with pretty hefty levels of olanzapine." "That's a pretty potent anti-psychotic," Sara notes. "Good for drooling," Hodges adds. Sadly, he does not finish that sentence, "Which is so Liam-like as well." Instead, he notes, "Also, there's the not-so-potent smattering of ibuprofen." Sara's all, "Really? That's it?" Hodges muses, "If I were institutionalized, I would be hoping for something better. Clonazepam, maybe." I love that Hodges has actually given thought to this eventuality. Sara does not share my affection for his actinic wit. She gives him a look, and Hodges asks, "You think I'm crazy?" "Crazy is as crazy does," Sara replies. She continues, "His chart indicates he was on at least four other anti-psychotics. Why wasn't he getting his meds?" "Do I look clairvoyant?" Hodges snaps back. He saunters off, irritated.
Meanwhile, Brass is handling the case with his usual excruciating attention to euphemism: "Newsflash from the loony bin: two reported deaths in the last three years from 'complications due to restraint procedures.'" Gil wants to know how many went on report; Brass tells him, "The hospital just got off probation. One more death by restraint brings the feds in." Which still wouldn't stop Gil and company; their crime-solving mandate transcends all jurisdictions. Gil and Brass figure this is incentive enough for hospital staff to maybe cover up a restraint-related death by pinning it on one of the inmates.
So they head back to the hospital, where the talking suit from before tells them that the hospital's legally required to videotape all restraint activities, and won't they pull up a chair and watch Robbie's restraining session? Sara and Brass watch; Sara seems considerably more affected. Empty Suit points out that both an on-call doctor and Creepy Nurse Joanne checked in on him, and two hours later, they walked him out. Empty Suit huffs, "I resent the accusation [that Robbie died from improper restraining]. We've made a lot of changes. Policy, staff, surveillance have all been overhauled. Robbie left the seclusion room alive." For some reason, Sara gets all swotty when confronted with proof of positive institutional change, and she belligerently asks, "Okay. Fine. Who administers medication?" Are you asking because you need it, Sara? She's asking because she's trying to figure out why Robbie was missing four anti-psychotic meds that should have been in his system. Empty Suit suggests that Robbie was "cheeking them," or tucking the pills between his teeth and gums so as to fool the psych tech into thinking he had swallowed the pills. We get a TMIcam of this, complete with a show first -- a waggling epiglottis bathed in the water meant to wash the pills down.
Brass asks why anyone would cheek their meds. Empty Suit shrugs, "They think they don't need them. They sell them, trade them, store them up to get high later." Sara's still glaring daggers. Lady, it's not like Empty Suit's encouraging people to go off their meds -- this isn't his fault.
Cut to Sara and Brass interrupting Leon in mid-medicine dispensation. But it's okay, as he's been dispensing placebos. After validating Hodge's workday by smirking at the tech, "I love your hair," she checks out a cup and muses, "Ibuprofrin, aspirin, laxatives…what are you treating here? Schizophrenia? Or constipation?" Brass is less arch: "Where are the real drugs, Leon?" Leon's all, "Uhhh…"
We zip back to CSI central and an interrogation room. Brass muses, "Man … Xanax, Olanzopine, Zoloft, Ziprisadone, Clozapine, Lorazepam, Lithium, Valium, Wellbutrin, Haldol…" Sara says brightly, "You took everything with street value." Leon is unrepentant: "I get 22K a year. That's nothing. Diddly-squat. I should get hazard pay. These people…I get, I get spit on, puked on, peed on, bitten. I get my hair yanked out, I get my ass pinched, I get death threats…all for 22K. So I supplemented my income. It don't hurt nobody." Except perhaps the people who, when taken off their meds, are prone to doing things like spitting on, puking on, peeing on, biting, hair-pulling, ass-pinching and threatening others. But other than that, yeah, it's a real victimless crime.
Sara continues in that same dryly playful tone, "Are you a doctor?" Leon snorts, "These places overmedicate all the time. It controls the population. And I don't endanger the patients, okay? I'm all about the patients." Good news for Leon: even if he loses his gig here, his inability to observe or connect with reality should be attractive qualities if he decides to pursue a career with the White House press office. Anyway, Brass theorizes that perhaps Robbie was threatening to blow the whistle on Leon, and Leon killed the would-be snitch. Leon denies that Robbie had to go to seclusion because he was so distraught over evidence of criminal behavior in a hospital for the criminally insane. He says, "[Robbie] freaked out on Group. I wasn't even there! Ask somebody who was." Sara is looking less amused by the second, although Leon is pretty much a one-man party. He caps the whole conversation with, "Am I gonna lose my job? 'Cause these people? Need me."
After that eye-opening look into the world of managed care, Sara retreats to the safety of sweet, sweet data. She reviews the video logs, finding that Robbie went into seclusion at 5:03 PM, went out of the room at 7:06 PM, and was evidently in bed by 9:30 PM. That last bit comes courtesy of the creepy Nurse Joanne. Gil checks the logs and notes, "Body was found at 12:10. So sometime between 9:30 and midnight, he was suffocated." "Probably closer to 9:30, he was suffocated. The blood would've needed time to coagulate before his head was smashed in," Sara theorizes. Gil points out that the person who did the suffocating and the person who did the smashing could have been different people. He and Sara sit around ruminating on that possibility until their Zen-like silence is interrupted by Liam the larval CSI, who bounces into the room burbling, "How about some pillow talk? Robbie's pillow was covered with saliva -- all his." Gil points out, "Could be from drooling. Or it could be from dying." Liam continues, "Look at this -- I found slits at both hands. [They fit] left hand, and right hand." Liam places his hands on the pillow to approximate a death grip, and pretends to smother Sara, who doesn't look like she minds. Gil looks peeved. Gil needs to get over himself -- he does not get to not-break-up with the woman he's not seeing via a monologue during a perp non-confession and then get all irritated when she has the nerve to move on with her life. Anyway, Sara looks back at Gil and comments, "Looks like we have a murder weapon." Gil looks like he's trying to figure out how to murder Liam with the very pillow he's holding.
Sara returns to the hospital. It's still raining; a cop is kind enough to hold her umbrella for her, and she's rocking the watch-cap-and-pea-coat combination. I guess if this CSI gig doesn't work out, she'll join the Navy. Sara heads over to the shelter where Creepy Nurse Joanne's smoking. She asks about the incident in group therapy with Robbie; Creepy Nurse Joanne says Robbie had brought a personal item to therapy with him, and "you can't bring anything in Group except a beverage. It distracts the other patients." Creepy Nurse Joanne stubs out her cigarette. Because the camera's lingering on it, this'll no doubt be important later. Sara asks what Robbie brought and what Creepy Nurse Joanne did in response: the photo was of a little boy, and Creepy Nurse Joanne claims she "followed protocol," which means that she reprimanded Robbie while he had a massive meltdown. For the sake of everyone in Group Therapy, I hope Creepy Nurse Joanne was merely a substitute leader, because otherwise…no. She's what people go into therapy to recover from. Creepy Nurse Joanne concludes, "Boom, boom and boom -- medication, seclusion and restraint." "Tough love," Sara snots. "Call it what you want -- these aren't my children," Creepy Nurse Joanne cracks. Sara asks why Creepy Nurse Joanne didn't see fit to mention Robbie's incident last night, and Creepy Nurse Joanne says, "Because crap like that happens every day here." Sara instantly suspects her of lying. As Creepy Nurse Joanne walks off, Gil calls: the semen on Robbie's sheets comes from Adam Trent, he of the "what are you going to do to me? Send me to a bad place?" line of thought.
We're now in Adam's room. He's yet another criminal with delusions of becoming an artist. Sara's checking out the drawings -- a cat with a tail that turns into a thorny branch, a tree that turns into a spike-studded cudgel. Gil stops snapping photos to exclaim, "This stuff is dark!" A mentally ill criminal producing disturbing drawings? What are the odds? Sara says as much. Gil checks out a sketch of a Medusa-like woman and comments, "Adam's subconscious was working overtime." Sara muses, "I bet you aced your Rorschachs." She smiles at him, and Gil gets flustered. Then she says, "When I was in fifth grade, I drew a picture of a harpooned whale. Everyone thought I was gonzo'd. But I had just read Moby Dick. Sometimes a dying whale's just a dying whale." Gil is staring at her with an expression that seems to suggest something's blown his mind. Could it be the idea of a ten-year-old Melville fan? The intimation that Sara's mental health was ever shaky? The suggestion that Sara thinks he may be overanalyzing Adam's boring and derivative sketches? Sara then accidentally drops a sketch. Unfortunately for all of you, I have no idea what happened after she moved the desk to retrieve it, as an actual crime report interrupted the broadcast for two minutes.
However, by the time we return, we're in Dr. Dino's office, Gil's recovered from whatever fantasies he had of a lingerie-clad Sara sitting on a pillow and reading Billy Budd to him, and returned to his usual state: staring contemptuously at whomever happens to be in his line of sight. Dr. Dino's reading the letters I assume Sara found tucked behind the desk. The first one: "Dearest angel, I think of you wherever I go. You are my prince. I miss you. Write to me. Your only love, Mother." Then Dr. Dino shudders in disgust before resuming: "Another one… 'It rained today. I thought of that time when you and I got caught in that storm at the lake. The fire…I came home and made your favorite dinner. I even set a place for you'…so on and so forth." Sara manages to recover first: "That…does not sound maternal to me." That would be because it's not. "Incest," Gil says grimly. Dr. Dino concurs, "Fully consummated. Mother/son incest is rare, deeply pathological --" "Oedipal complex taken too far," Sara interrupts, but Dr. Dino quickly clarifies, "Oedipal implies son-to-mother. In this case, the mother was seeking the love and creating the codependence. We call this the Jocasta complex…when Adam was nine, his father died. His mother replaced her dead husband with her son." Sara dryly comments, "That's gonna mess you up." And how: Adam is schizo-affective, suicidal, and a pathological narcissist. Dr. Dino continues, "When he was a teenager, he was unable to retaliate against his mother, and incapable of actual intimacy, so he started raping women." Gil asks, "Always women?" Getting animated, Dr. Dino says, "Yes, which is why I don't think he killed Robbie." Sara points out that she found Adam's semen in Robbie's bed, and Dr. Dino continues, "See, that surprises me. Like any good psychopath, he rarely veers from his pattern. Adam is a single-celled organism who exists wholly for himself. He must have been getting something tangible in return." What that might be is a mystery for now.
Gil moves us to the art criticism portion of the episode, asking what we can tell from Adam's drawings. That it's a good thing he's not doing that for a living? Dr. Dino says, "Ahhh…he starts with a innocuous object. A tree, a cat, an oboe" -- well, I've give you two out of three -- "all of which he morphs into something deadly, as you can see. " Gil notes how it's all about something safe becoming unsafe. "Mother becomes lover," Dr. Dino said. Well, assuming Adam's subconscious was working overtime, it was sticking to repetitive tasks. Speaking of Adam's mother, whatever became of her? Why, when Dr. Dino started sending the letters back lest each epistle prompt another near suicidal bout of depression, the mother stopped writing. Which, when you think about it, really isn't much of an answer.
Speaking of the repellent little narcissist, here he is now, gnawing on his fingernails as per usual. Sara and Gil are attempting to talk to him while Dr. Dino observes. Adam admits to killing Robbie, and Sara asks why. "He was queer," Adam replies. "But you had sex with him," Sara points out, trusting that Adam's smart enough to add "…so it's not like you were 100% straight" himself. Adam glares at Sara, and we get a funky flash-type thing clearly meant to imply that Adam's just put Sara on his mental "People I'd Like to Assault" list. Then he clarifies, "No. He had sex with me. He was the punk." You keep making those insignificant distinctions there, champ. Sara asks if the sex was consensual, and why Adam did it, and he answers both questions with, "I dunno." Sara's all, "Right. And then?" Adam says dully, "I took his head and I smashed it on the floor." We get a flashback. Sara adds one more time, "And that's how you killed him." Adam seems to have trouble agreeing to this. But when Sara and Gil swap skeptical looks, he gets upset and chokes out, "What, you don't believe me?" Sara mildly points out that she's only wondering how Adam killed Robbie. He replies, "Yes. I'm saying this, and this is true. If you don't believe me, just look in the bucket in the latrine. Okay? Do you really want to know why I killed him? It's because I'm crazy." And let's not forget "a sexual predator." So it totally makes sense that someone with tremendous issues about women should be interrogated by one. Because there's no chance whatsoever that he'll be spending his time flashing to her face or chest or anything.
And now, in another scene staged horror-movie-style, i.e. the lone female goes blithely tripping into a creepy place while completely oblivious to the lurking danger within, Sara heads into the latrine to find a blood-spattered set of inmate clothes. From the safety of the well-lit doorway far, far away from the danger. Gil says as much. Sara also finds a pair of boxer shorts; oddly enough, they've got lipstick on the crotch. Well, that pulls Dr. Dino, the unflappable Nanette, or the Creepy Nurse Joanne into this in a whole new unsavory way. Sara immediately scampers back out in the rain to lift some of the Creepy Joanne's discarded cigarette butts.
She asks the disapproving guard watching all this where Creepy Nurse Joanne is, and the guard's not what you'd call helpful and informative in response. Sara sighs, "I can either take [the cigarette butt] and the underwear back to the lab and confirm the match, which will only extend our presence here, or you can give me access to the nurses' station right now."
The guard is truculent, but he isn't stupid, so Gil and Sara are happily poking around the nurse's effects within seconds. Sara's found the uneaten half of the photograph Creepy Nurse Joanne had taken from Robbie, and she comments, "It kind of looks like Adam." "Where would Robbie get a picture of Adam?" Gil asks. How about from Adam? Sara says as much. Then she turns over Creepy Nurse Joanne's heart-shaped paperweight; on the bottom, it reads "J+A." Gil then totally sets up the classic prelude to a horror movie massacre: "I'm going to go leave you alone in this loosely supervised hospital full of insane criminals." Sara is unconcerned by this.
And just as Gil waddles around the corner in pursuit of someone who can open a few drawers, Adam locks himself in the nurses' station with Sara and asks, "Are you a spiritual person?" This is either a prelude to being handed The Watchtower or getting a shiv between the shoulder blades. Sara concedes that she's intermittently spiritual. Adam asks, "Do you believe that everything happens for a reason? That bad things are there to teach a karmic lesson?" So he's a Calvinist? And Sara's learning that her coworker…is kind of inconveniently absent? Or is the lesson that this hospital sucks so badly, SOMEONE WHO CONFESSES TO KILLING A FELLOW PATIENT IS APPARENTLY ALLOWED TO ROAM AROUND UNSUPERVISED?
I mean, really. How am I supposed to take this scene seriously when this clearly dangerous patient is permitted to gambol through the corridors mere seconds after being all, "I killed my lover! Because I'm nuttier than a Pepperidge Farm gift basket!" and nobody seems to find this problematic? How am I supposed to believe that a rapist who's scaled the crime ladder to murder is wandering around and nobody at the hospital is alarmed by this? Least of all THE WOMAN WHO IS WORKING ALONE? Were the guards all replaced by documentary filmmaking students who decline to actually GUARD PATIENTS because it might compromise the artistic integrity of their film?
This scene has moved far beyond ridiculous. As has Adam who, instead of seizing the opportunity to rape and murder someone as is his wont, decides to blather on about how fucking special he is for a while Sara elects to fumble with a syringe instead of, oh, I don't know, UNCAPPING THE SAME TYPE OF ALARM THE AWESOMELY UNFLAPPABLE NANETTE BUSTED OUT A FEW SCENES AGO.
I mean, just when you think this scene couldn't get any stupider, it reaches a new low. After that hooyah in the beginning of the episode about security precautions, nobody's thought, "Gosh, we have a LONE WOMAN in a hospital packed with SEXUAL PREDATORS. Maybe we should, like, give her an alarm. And an escort. Who doesn't wander off to get keys"?
Anyway, after the usual fracas in which Sara loses the syringe full of whatever she was planning on plunging into Adam (of course), Adam's got a piece of pottery pressed to her neck and is threatening to kill her unless she continues to listen to his sophomoric ruminations on cosmic oneness and whatnot. Frankly, it's a toss-up as to what's more painful -- the shiv or the spiritual blather.
It finally occurs to Gil, when he comes back to a locked and empty office, that maybe leaving wasn't the brightest thing that could happen. Sara's on the floor, looking like she's been to better comparative theology classes. Gil tells the institutional flunky, "Open the door." The guy with a big ring full of keys can't. There's some more manufacturer tension in which Adam elects to just carry on ad nauseam and Gil elects to be all intense with, "Open the door. Just open it," and you know, I really can't help but think this whole thing could have been prevented. Sara's looking like she'll be really pissed if she dies for stupid reasons too. Just then, someone FINALLY hits an alarm, Creepy Nurse Joanne comes around and triggers Adam's meltdown, and Sara takes advantage of his being distracted to elbow him and escape. She runs out of the room as Adam slices his own throat. Creepy Nurse Joanne wails, "Adam, stop! Get a medic in here!" as Gil's all, "Hi! My coworker? Might be traumatized too? Because she's not given to posing in front of dramatically-backlit windows and sulking?"
After Sara peels herself off the window, Gil stares at her for a while until she begins speaking. Backstory ahoy! She says, "When my father died, my mom came to a place like this for a while for evaluation. It looked the same, it smelled the same…it smelled like lies." Gil responds with, "You sure you're okay?" Sure, Gil -- five years of watching you, and Sara's learned to take those big, messy emotions and crunch them down into a tiny ball before locking them away. GAH! Sara looks at him and cracks, "Crazy people do make me feel crazy." Gil generously offers, "I can have somebody take your place." Well, that's considerate. Sara tells him, "I appreciate that. I do, I really do. But I kind of made a decision to move beyond that and I really want to finish this case." Because the best CSIs are the ones who are using each case as a way to work through personal demons. I just…I don't even have the strength to get all capital-letters upset anymore.
Just then, Creepy Nurse Joanne stomps over to blare, "We have rules for a reason" -- and none of them have to do with supervising patients, evidently -- "and you people come in here disrupting things, you're unsafe, this is your fault." Gil is shocked into responding. "Really?" he asks, in a tone pregnant with the implication that Creepy Nurse Joanne might just be crazier than her patients. Sara notes, "You seem to take this job really personally." Creepy Nurse Joanne snarls, "What are you suggesting?" "That you had an intimate relationship with Adam Trent," Sara shoots back. Creepy Nurse Joanne tries to deny it, and Sara spits, "Your lipstick is on his underwear." Oh, that would be because Robbie wore her lipstick, claims Creepy Nurse Joanne. "We didn't find any [lipstick] on his lips," Gil counters. "Well, that's your problem," Creepy Nurse Joanne incorrectly surmises. She stomps off, leaving Gil and Sara looking like, She is so totally sleeping with him. And ew.
Cut to Gil wandering around the art therapy room. He happens to notice an amphora missing what looks a lot like the pottery handle used as a shiv a few moments ago. We find out that Adam was making the piece on Monday, but he never had a chance to fire it because Creepy Nurse Joanne came in, they had an argument, and then she yanked him out of class. Gil takes a look at the piece, which is ringed in grooves not unlike those found on an LP. The art teacher comments, "Adam's work is very provocative." "It speaks to me," Gil replies.
Back in the lab, Sara's asking Gil, "Acoustic archeology?" Gil explains, "In the sixties, experiments were done on clay pots and painted canvas. Scientists were able to ferret out sounds captured during the creative process in the clay and paint." "Trippy," Sara comments. Sofia, who's bothered to show up for CSI Science Minute, explains, "It's actually not that far out. In the old days, the first gramophone recordings were made by taking the vibrations of sound and cutting them into wax cylinders while they were turning. Based on the frequency and intensity of the sound, the stylus cut into the wax, creating distinct variances of depth and width. For playback, a mechanical transducer vibrated along a groove, generating a current which, when amplified, turned into sound."
Sara takes all this in with an expression best summed up as "Bitch, step offa my turf." But the point to the mumbo-jumbo is that we had to have some sort of semi-plausible explanation for explaining how the sounds "Robbie" and "my angel" get captured in the clay. And remember, Adam's creepy mother used to write him letters in which she called him "my angel." So…Creepy Nurse Joanne is Adam's mother.
Incidentally, Mr. Sobell and I both called this before Adam attacked Sara.
We've now got Creepy Nurse Joanne in the interrogation room. Sara points out, "The brush in Adam's room was fresh enough to get a DNA profile. It came back female. We tested it against your cigarette butt. It matched." "Adam liked it when I brushed his hair," Creepy Nurse Joanne protests. "I'll bet he did," Brass deadpans. Oh, Brass, you make my heart go pitter-pat. Sara jumps back in with, "You were lying about giving Robbie lipstick. You have seven out of 13 alleles in common with your patient, Adam Trent." Brass picks up a letter and adds, "Your dearest angel. Okay…Joanne McKay, registered nurse, licensed by the Nevada board of nursing 1978, married Howard Trent 1980. The board requires you to get a new certificate when you get married. I guess you never complied." That seems like the least of her legal problems right now. Creepy Nurse Joanne protests that she's always gone by her maiden name. Brass cracks, "I guess that makes it less embarrassing to check into a motel with your son." There's an awkward pause, and Brass says insincerely, "Oh, I'm sorry. You checked into a psycho ward instead." Creepy Nurse Joanne protests, "He needed me." Sara asks brightly, "For what? To destroy his ego? To fill him with guilt? To make him hate himself so much, he would take his own life just to be free of you?" Creepy Nurse Joanne assumes a martyred expression and says, "You have no idea what goes on between us." And I don't want to. Brass snorts, "Cut the umbilical cord, okay? Six months ago, your letters start coming back unanswered. No more communication with Little Lord Fauntleroy. So you applied to Desert State. They were desperate for nursing staff. They didn't perform any background checks whatsoever." Cut to a flashback where Dr. Dino introduces the new nurse and Adam very quietly freaks out all, "Ooh, this is awkward. We used to date." Brass continues, "But it's tough to turn folies a deux into ménages a trois. N'est-ce pas?" Then we get a flashback to mother-son hair brushing hour. Sara twists the knife: "Even tougher that your son was cheating on you…with a man, no less." We then flash back to the fateful pottery argument, in which Creepy Nurse Joanne (or is that Jocasta?) instructs Adam to end it with Lucielle Two -- I mean, with Robbie.
And then, after Adam more or less ignored his mom, she went and set up Robbie for a brief spell in restraints so he'd be doped and docile by the time she wanted to suffocate him. She did so by telling Robbie to bring in a picture of a bathing-suit-clad Boy Adam to Group because it was okay, then pulling a 180 in Group because Robbie could be relied upon to lose it. So despite Robbie correctly protesting, "You told me I could! Don't you remember?" Creepy Nurse Joanne pulls the "Oh, who's going to believe the crazy anyway? Take him away!" gaslighting number, setting Robbie on the road to death.
Brass sums up why Creepy Nurse Joanne is so evil: "You manipulated the situation and took advantage of Robbie's weakness." "Exactly what you have been doing to Adam for the past twenty years. And being such a good mother, you made him cover it up. Again," Sara adds. So after exploiting her son's lover, she made her son bash his lover's head in? That's just…oh, lord. Creepy Nurse Joanne needs to be in Desert State as a patient, not a nurse. Creepy Nurse Joanne tries to argue, "Why would my son do that?" Sara concludes, "Because he loves you as much as he hates you." Creepy Nurse Joanne snarls, "You can't prove any of this." But Brass thinks they have a decent shot of proving the incest -- and surprisingly, it's illegal even in Nevada. It's got a ten-year penalty. Sara twists the knife a little with, "That's ten years away from Adam." Creepy Nurse Joanne spits, "Good luck getting Adam to testify." Oh, that won't be too necessary.
Meanwhile, Gil watches from behind the mirror. As Sara joins him, he comments, "Jail or no jail, I don't think she'll last six months. She'll die without her son." Sara says tiredly, "That would be better for both of them." Gil looks at her all, "Oh, wow. You got a dark side there, Sara. I find it strangely attractive." And then he backs away slowly so Sara can sit and brood.