Synopsis:

The team is called to a cabin where they find a pool of blood and strange bullet casings—but there is no sign of a body. Evidence suggests that Michael Newbury let his killer in, and they shared a beer at the kitchen counter before Newbury was shot. A tall piece of furniture in the living room has moving disks under the legs, and they pull it away from the wall to reveal a door leading down to a basement filled with guns. Newbury was a gun expert and collector, but none of these weapons could have fired the unusual bullets used to kill him.

When the sun comes up, uniformed officers locate a secondary crime scene. Blood and hunks of human flesh cover the ground, and there are a lot of bullet casings nearby, but Newbury was already dead when the killer pumped him full of bullets. There is a grommet torn from a shower curtain, explaining how the killer removed Newbury from the house without leaving a blood trail.

The ammo used to kill Newbury is not available in the United States. Xiomara discovers that the same bullets were used in a shooting in Pakistan, and the search sends up a flag on the FBI database. Federal agents arrive, and they offer to help the LVPD; however, they won’t reveal the full details of their own investigation. They will only say that they’re looking for a missing weapon that was stolen from a military weapons supply.

Catherine is assigned as the lead on the case, and DB sends her and Agent McQuaid back to Newbury’s house to look for more evidence. They determine that Newbury was “zippered” for ease of transport; the killer used the strange gun to shoot the body multiple times until it was cut in half. These halves were then shoved into garbage bags and tossed into the back of a truck. Catherine knows that garbage bags can leak, so they follow a blood trail until they see vultures in the distance. They find the bags containing Newbury’s body, and they also find a broken beer bottle that was used to mutilate a tattoo on the victim’s arm.

Special Agent in Charge Pratt tells DB about the full details of the raid on the US military supplies in Pakistan. The investigation report was done by Ceressus Logistics, a military contractor. DB suggests that someone from Ceressus is behind the theft, and Pratt admits that it looks that way—if insurgents stole the supplies, they wouldn’t have ended up in Nevada. When the CSIs get called out to another shooting, Pratt grows visibly uncomfortable. The shooter in this case is a 16-year-old kid trying to rob a store, and he says he found the gun behind a dumpster. Nick and DB are pleased to get the strange weapon off the street, but Pratt has no choice but to tell the team the true extent of what’s going on: the gun they have is only one of 144 guns stolen. There are still 143 of these dangerous weapons out there.

The mutilated tattoo leads to the 532 Airborne Division, and the team cross-references people from that division with locals. The name Lenny Wesson pops up; he’s a truck driver, and he found the guns while transporting Persian rugs for some old members of the division who got a job with Ceressus. The team knows that Wesson still has the remaining weapons, so Catherine and McQuaid track him down to a truck stop to retrieve them.

The team interrogates Wesson, who saw the guns as his golden ticket. He took one of them to Newbury to out what it was, and he killed the man after Newbury said they needed to return the stolen weapons to the military. They need him to say that Ceressus is involved, but he will only agree to help them if he gets immunity. Wesson dies on the way to a holding facility, and it looks like Mark Gabriel, the head of Ceressus, was covering his tracks. The case isn’t over, but Pratt and McQuaid have to return to Quantico—it’s the FBI’s problem now.

Analysis:

“Zippered” marks the beginning of the end of Marg Helgenberger’s time on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. This episode sets the storyline in motion, and it will be concluded in January before Helgenberger makes her exit. Viewers are introduced to several important characters this week who will continue play a role in the storyline, including two FBI agents who work the case: Special Agent in Charge Pratt and Agent Viggo McQuaid. DB is friendly with the FBI, although the rest of the team is less than thrilled to have the federal agents “helping” them with their case. Despite his jovial manner, DB makes it clear that he won’t allow the FBI to compromise their case in any way. He accomplishes this by making Pratt his “new best friend” and pairing Catherine with McQuaid.

There is an immediate spark between Catherine and her temporary FBI partner. Catherine points out that Pratt, despite being the boss, is much younger than the other agent. McQuaid explains that he’s training Pratt to take over for him, and he suggests that he’s planning to change jobs soon. He expresses curiosity about Catherine’s position in the lab, referencing something DB said earlier in his office: “Catherine was me before I was.” Catherine explains that she was demoted, and McQuaid wonders if she’s waiting to take her old job back. She admits that she isn’t sure she wants it, but she doesn’t offer any more information than that.

When they go after Wesson, McQuaid veers into a truck stop. They find Wesson’s truck and call for back-up, but they don’t wait for it to arrive before they open up the back and climb inside. They don’t see any guns, only Persian rugs, but they see movement and locate Wesson tied up. The door closes, and Catherine shoves McQuaid out of the way as bullet holes start peppering the sides of the truck. They move toward the cab, but the bullets are getting closer. Catherine focuses, and time seems to stand still as she figures out the direction of the bullets and fires her gun through the side of the truck to hit the shooter. DB and Pratt arrive a moment later to take out a second man, and they pull open the door to let their colleagues out of the back of the truck.

Catherine and McQuaid interrogate Wesson, who wants immunity in exchange for his cooperation. Catherine refuses, pointing out that he killed Newbury—a man who was supposed to be his friend. McQuaid goes over Catherine’s head and agrees to give the man immunity if his information turns up anything substantial, and Catherine is clearly upset when she leaves. McQuaid shows up at her house at the end of the episode. He brought beer with him, and he apologizes for blindsiding her in the interrogation. It’s clear that he would like their relationship to take a romantic turn, but they are interrupted by the news of Wesson’s death. The chemistry between the pair is palpable, and I expect to see more of it when the storyline resurfaces.

Catherine also interacts with her old friend Laura in “Zippered”. Laura is married to Mark Gabriel, the leader of Ceressus Logistics, and Catherine sees her waiting while her husband speaks to Brass, DB and Pratt about the raid in Pakistan. The women haven’t seen each other in decades, but they laugh comfortably with each other. Laura leaves quickly, but they make plans to see each other before Laura leaves town.

Laura visits Catherine at the end of the episode, but her demeanor is completely different in this scene. Catherine can tell that something is up, and Laura admits that she overheard a conversation by accident. Catherine guesses that it involves Mark’s company, but Laura tries to laugh it off. She gets up to leave, and Catherine jots her number down on the back of a lawyer’s business card. Laura asks about the card, and Catherine points out that the man was the lawyer for her father, Sam Braun. If Laura needs help, he’s the one for the job.

DB spends more time with Agent Pratt, and they have a really interesting dynamic. Pratt is quite young, but he is smart and talented despite his lack of experience. DB, ever the father figure, brings plenty of experience to the table, and the contrast between the older CSI and the young agent is both glaring and fascinating to watch. DB immediately picks up on the fact that Pratt graduated from Brigham Young University within the past decade, but he never condescends to the man. When Pratt admits that there were 143 more guns out there, DB and Nick are shocked, but they quickly get to work tracking Wesson down. During the scene where the LVPD and the FBI are working together to find Wesson’s truck, DB and Pratt find a moment to trade a few jokes. DB says that it’s nice that all of their “kids” are working together, and Pratt explains the “citizen broadcast” system they are using: drivers from all of the private companies on the road become the FBI’s eyes and ears. DB says it’s like a “CB radio on steroids”, and Pratt—who to this point has mostly been on the receiving end of the jokes—teases DB by asking what a CB radio is. It’s funny, especially given the earlier references to Pratt’s age.

The final scene between Pratt and DB is fun as well, and DB offers the young agent a mushroom as a parting gift. He says it’s an edible mushroom he can put on sandwiches, but Pratt wonders if this is a ploy to make him fail a routine drug screening. DB’s response is, “You should be all right with that, I think. I’m pretty sure.” This guy is a hoot, and I really like his interaction with Pratt. I hope we get to see more of that as the storyline continues.

The relationship between Catherine and DB is also highlighted at the start of the episode, when the pair discusses their children. Catherine wakes up and goes into work early because her house feels empty without her daughter Lindsey there. DB immediately understands, pointing out that he and his wife are still dealing with “empty nest” syndrome since their youngest son moved out three months ago. Catherine is clearly sad to see her daughter grow up, but she points out that this is Lindsey’s time to find herself. Catherine also seems to be searching for herself right now, and this episode makes it obvious that she is slowly but surely on her way out the door. Sheriff Liston’s job offer in “Brain Doe” is at the back of my mind, and it certainly seems like a valid possibility. I am curious to see what will finally push her to leave the crime lab.

See also: “Zippered” episode guide

Synopsis:

Kevin Fetzer is a successful entrepreneur, and he throws an elaborate birthday party for himself and his friends. Unfortunately, he doesn’t survive his own celebration—he’s found dead, with his pants down, in the birthday cake. His childish underwear are on backwards, and all but eight of the candles have been removed from the massive cake. Someone wanted to make Kevin look like a child.

Kevin experienced blunt force trauma, and his two front teeth have been knocked out. He died after choking on his broken veneers. Brass talks to Kevin’s father, who left angry messages on his son’s voicemail after getting into an argument and being kicked out of the party. Kevin’s father says something was wrong with his son when he was a child, but he denies killing him. He came to the party to ask Kevin for money to get his truck back, and he went to the casino to win it after Kevin kicked him out.

Kevin was killed using a wooden ball from arcade bowling. There wasn’t a game like that at the scene, so the killer brought it with them. Catherine finds an old, unsolved case from when Kevin was 15: an 8-year-old boy named Mikey Moran was killed with a wooden bowling ball and left behind the building with his pants down. Kevin worked at the arcade, and he was questioned as a person of interest; however, an arrest was never made—it looks like someone punished Kevin.

Meanwhile, Nick and Sara look into the death of a man who was shoved into a stack of tires and burned. He was killed in a gang neighborhood, and this particular method of death is popular in Mexico. The fire did not destroy the flesh where his arms were pressed against his sides, and a scar identifies him as a gang member called Espectro, aka “The Ghost”. They speak to another gang member in prison, Diego Barra, who may have ordered the hit; he says he wanted Espectro dead, but he lost track of him before he could get the job done. The crime scene makes him think of Marta, who was Barra’s former girlfriend. She was killed in a similar manner nine years ago.

Greg and Morgan head to a motel, where Darlene Crocker died after being loudly attacked. There’s some sort of crystalline substance on the bed, which turns out to be PCP; Darlene killed herself with a shard of broken mirror while she was high, but someone force-fed her the drug. The PCP is vintage, and drugs from the very same batch caused the death of Darlene’s daughter Chelsea 22 years ago. The sample was checked out of the police vault by former Detective Stan Richardson two days before he retired. It looks like Stan is involved, but he’s dying in hospice and could not have left his room—he must have an accomplice. Nick and Catherine look around Richardson’s room, and they locate a locked box containing the bag that previously held the PCP evidence used to kill Darlene.

Sheriff Liston comes into the precinct, and she says Richardson was her first partner. She doesn’t know who is working with him, but she has a bad feeling about his next target: Rex Camford. Camford’s wife filed for divorce 15 years ago, and she vanished the next night. They never found her body, so the District Attorney was hesitant to press charges against Camford based on circumstantial evidence. Meanwhile, Catherine checks Richardson’s phone records and finds a disposable cellphone that made calls to the room around the time of each murder. They are able to track the disposable phone to Lake Mead, which is where Camford is suspected to have dumped his wife’s body. The team rushes to the scene and finds Vega trying to kill Camford, and Vega is shot when he starts to raise his own gun.

Analysis:

“Crime After Crime” is an intense, absorbing episode. It’s always disappointing to see the return of a familiar character only to learn that they’ve become a dirty cop, but it does make the case even more personal for the viewers. Detective Vega has been on CSI for more than a decade, first appearing in “Too Tough to Die” during the very first season. He was last seen in season nine’s “Hog Heaven”, and his return this week takes a tragic turn when it is revealed that he has been working with Stan Richardson. Richardson found out that Vega had killed a confidential informant a few years ago, and he kept the bloody knife as collateral while he forced Vega to mark names off a short list of killers who evaded justice.

Out of all the team members, Brass and Nick were closest to Vega, and his involvement in this case hits them particularly hard. When they find him at the lake with Rex Camford, they try to talk him down and offer to help him. Despite the fact that Vega has a gun, they don’t believe he is a threat to them, but the uniformed officers who accompanied them to the lake can’t know that for sure. When Vega says that the other cops can help him, Brass and Nick realize what is happening, but it’s already too late. Vega raises his gun, pointing it away from the others, and the uniformed officers shoot him.

When the group rushes forward, most of the cops are focused on Vega instead of Camford. DB moves toward Camford, trying to help him as the others realize that Vega can’t be saved. Nick looks up at DB and tells him to leave Camford alone and let the other officers handle it. Brass, who has already called in Vega’s death, reluctantly lifts the phone to his mouth to add that they will also be needing an ambulance. The next morning, DB and Nick are still at the lake. They realize that Camford must have brought Vega to the spot where he killed his wife, and they call in divers to search for evidence. They locate the woman’s skull, which shows that she was shot in the back of the head. The bullet is still lodged in the bone, and they pull it out and match it to Camford’s gun. Sheriff Liston heads to the hospital to handcuff Camford to his bed, but it is no doubt a bittersweet victory to arrest him for murder.

“Crime After Crime” highlights the frustration police officers feel when criminals evade justice. Sheriff Liston is one of the officers who shared her anger with Richardson, and she’s the reason that Camford was on Richardson’s list. However, her role in the story is small. Vartann shares a scene with Catherine earlier in the episode, talking about Kevin Fetzer and his role in the death of Mikey Moran. It was one of Vartann’s first murder cases, and the most damning piece of evidence—a pubic hair found on Mikey’s body—was consumed during the first DNA test. DNA technology was new back then, and they weren’t able to use it to pin the murder on Fetzer, but Vartann was sure he did it. Like Liston, Vartann aired his frustration at the bar with Richardson, but he tells Catherine that he hasn’t spoken to the man since he quit drinking 11 years ago. Catherine presses him a bit, and he admits that some other officers might still go out for a drink with Richardson, including Brass.

There’s plenty of tension between Brass and DB throughout the episode, and it emphasizes the divide between these two men. Brass is a cop who has been wearing a badge for a long time, and DB is very much a scientist first and foremost. They come at the case from very different perspectives, and it creates some very intense interaction between them. Brass may not be cheering Richardson on, but it’s clear that he truly understands where the man was coming from when he made the list and went after killers who got away with their crimes. Like Vartann and Liston, Brass has a connection to one of the cases the team is investigating. He worked the original Crocker case, when 12-year-old Chelsea was forced to swallow a lethal dose of PCP. Even 20 years later, it’s obvious that the image of Chelsea’s dead body still haunts Brass. DB asks him about the case, and Brass reveals that Chelsea’s older brother Ken confessed to the murder, but he hired a private investigator two years into his prison sentence and was able to prove his innocence. Despite the fact that evidence pointed to Darlene as the real killer, the District Attorney chose not to file charges. DB is surprised when Brass says that justice has been served, pointing out that Darlene was murdered. Brass cuts him off, correcting him: Chelsea was murdered, but Darlene “got what was coming to her.”

Later in the episode, DB returns to Brass’s office to ask him about Richardson, and the tension is still thick between them as they talk. Brass doesn’t believe that Richardson would be involved in the revenge killings, and he tells DB that every cop has a “hit list” running through his mind—but they don’t act on that desire. When DB reveals that Richardson checked the PCP evidence out of the LVPD vault, Brass sits down slowly and says that Richardson isn’t a murderer. DB reminds him of his own words, suggesting that Richardson might think of his actions as justice, that the victims ‘got what they had coming to them.’

At the end of the hour, Brass heads to Richardson’s room at the hospice to pick up his personal effects, including a letter explaining his actions. A bit later, DB comes to Brass’s office for one last conversation. The case may be over, but things are still awkward between the men. DB takes the opportunity to tell Brass that while they may not be close friends, he does have a great deal of respect for the detective. He also reminds Brass that they did arrest a man who killed his wife, and that means something.

This is the second episode in a row to end with a closeup of Brass’s expression. As I mentioned in my review for “Brain Doe”, Paul Guilfoyle has a tremendous talent for bringing emotion to the smallest moments. The character’s feelings are written all over his face, and it is clear that the “burden of the badge”, as Richardson referred to it in his letter, weighs heavily on Brass as the hour draws to a close. Before DB leaves his office, Brass reveals that the funerals for Richardson and Vega will take place on the same day. Rather than attend either one, a very subdued Brass suggests that he might get up early and ride a motorcycle out of town.

See also: “Crime After Crime” episode guide

Synopsis:

A convertible rolls through a Tasty Time drive-through, and it looks like no one is behind the wheel. The car continues rolling into the street, causing an accident with a Jeep and a truck that claims three lives. The man in the convertible is dead, the man driving the Jeep was ejected from the car and died, and the man in the truck had his throat slit during the accident. DB notices a problem when he finds a brain that doesn’t belong to one of their victims resting among the tires that fell from the truck.

The man in the convertible, Danny Clegg, was transporting the brain in a cooler. Sara finds oxycodone pills in the car, and there’s yellow powder on a crowbar in a gym bag. They don’t find the body that goes with the brain in the trunk, but they do find a football with the number 17 on it. Clegg has several of the oxy pills in his stomach, and there are track marks on his arms. He died from a drug overdose and collapsed on the front seat of the car before rolling out into traffic.

The spare brain belongs to a man, and Catherine heads out to a mortuary after they get a call that a man’s brain has been stolen. Lt Theodore Seligson was Jewish, so he was not embalmed, and there is a shoe print matching Clegg’s on the ground next to the body. Yellow powder and crow bar marks on the door offer further proof that Clegg broke in and stole Seligson’s brain. However, the brain Clegg was transporting when he died does not belong to the dead soldier—Seligson’s brain is still missing.

The brain they have belongs to Ryan Dempsey, a former MMA fighter who was having problems before he killed himself. He wanted his brain to be studied so they would know if he had something called Chronic Traumatic Encephalitis, or CTE. After Dempsey committed suicide, his wife called their family friend Bill Pernin for help, and Pernin contacted a private pathologist named Dr Eller. Eller came to remove Dempsey’s brain, and he was supposed to deliver it to a hospital for analysis; however, instead of taking the brain to the hospital, Eller met with Clegg in the parking lot of another Tasty Time restaurant. They switched containers, and Eller delivered Lt Seligson’s brain to the hospital instead. The team searches for Eller, but they find him dead inside of his car. He was shot once by another driver who pulled up beside him in an abandoned parking lot.

The yellow powder in Clegg’s gym bag and on the floor in the mortuary is a type of high end talcum powder used at gyms—including Bill Pernin’s Power Center, where Dempsey learned to fight in the MMA along with Clegg before Clegg was kicked out for using drugs. Pernin has an energy drink that he is trying to market, and the team realizes that it would look bad for him if one of his fighters was diagnosed with CTE. Pernin hired Clegg to get another brain, and he hired Eller—who once worked out at the gym—to remove Dempsey’s brain and make the switch. Pernin’s goal was to keep Dempsey’s brain from being studied. However, it seems unlikely that Pernin would go through the trouble of having Dempsey’s brain stolen and then killing Eller if he was only trying to cover up the CTE diagnosis.

Nick and DB are still confused about the football in Clegg’s trunk, and they wonder the significance of the number 17—right before he died, Clegg ordered a number 17 triple cheeseburger from the Tasty Time menu even though he always bought chicken nuggets. They know that Clegg never played football, but Dempsey did, and they wonder if the ball belonged to him. Curious about what secrets the ball might be hiding, Nick cuts it open and finds syringes inside with Pernin’s fingerprints on them. Clegg died on his way to a nearby police station to deliver Dempsey’s brain and the syringes so he could expose the truth about Pernin. The trainer had been dosing his fighters with a drug called dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and that was the secret Pernin was trying to protect. The syringe evidence gets the team a warrant, and they find the gun that killed Eller in the trainer’s house.

Analysis:

“Brain Doe” is an intriguing mystery, and the viewer is drawn in the moment DB finds an extra brain at the scene. It appears that the man driving the convertible, Clegg, is involved in a murder, but the reality is far more complex. I had trouble keeping up with all of the twists and turns at one point, but everything became clear by the end of the episode.

What happened to the victims and poor Lt Seligson is horrible, but the truth about Dempsey’s death is even more tragic. Years of MMA fighting left the man with a string of concussions and eventual Chronic Traumatic Encephalitis (CTE). The degenerative disease left him with memory problems and made him aggressive, and DB sees bruises on his wife Joyce’s arm when he brings her in to let her know that her husband’s brain is missing. Brass feels an immediate connection with Dempsey’s son Declan, and he sits down to speak to the boy while DB is with Joyce. Brass talks about his own father, who was also a police officer, revealing that the man could be abusive. Brass says he was 15 when he finally hit his father back, and he’d never felt better—or worse—than he did in that moment. He tries to ask Declan if his parents fought, but Joyce emerges from the interrogation room and leaves with her son before Declan can say anything. Brass decides that he should look up whether there were any domestic violence calls against Dempsey, but he finds something disturbing when he gets the file for Dempsey’s so-called suicide. There’s no sign of gunshot residue on Dempsey’s shirt, proving that the shooter was standing at least three feet away when the gun was fired.

Knowing that Dempsey was abusive toward his wife, Brass assumes that the woman shot her husband in self-defense. Bill Pernin’s phone records prove that he has been having an affair with Joyce, and they wonder if Dempsey found out about the relationship and went after his wife. Pernin helped make the murder look like a suicide, but even after he is arrested for killing Dr Eller, Pernin refuses to give up anything on Joyce. Brass tries to speak to Declan again, hoping the boy will give them the information they need to prove that Joyce was holding the gun. Declan says his father was always abusive. The night he died, Dempsey pushed Declan down the stairs and started choking Joyce, and Declan couldn’t stop him. Brass realizes the truth before Declan can say it out loud, and he tells him not to say another word, but Declan doesn’t listen. He confesses to shooting his father, and he says he never felt better.

Paul Guilfoyle is a tremendous actor, and he always hits just the right note in every scene. The look on his face in the final scene with Declan is perfect. He’s convinced that he knows what happened that night, and he comes into the room feeling confident that his rapport with Declan will help him uncover the truth. However, as the scene continues, his expression transitions to confusion and then a dawning realization. You can see it in his eyes the moment he figures out what happened in that cabin, and his hand comes up as if he can physically stop Declan from confessing. The episode ends with a shot of Brass’s stunned face, and Guilfoyle never fails to impress me with how much talent he brings to the show and his ability to bring genuine emotion to even the smallest moments.

A far different father-son relationship is featured in “Brain Doe” as well, and the audience gets their first glimpse of DB’s son Charlie. As he revealed in “Bittersweet”, Charlie is a freshman at WLVU, and he’s on the basketball team. The young man comes to the lab this week to see his father, and he speaks with Nick. It’s fun to see DB’s son interact with part of his ‘work family’, especially since DB has taken on a paternal role with the younger members of the team. As Charlie finds out, DB’s methods at the lab are definitely similar to the way he helps run the family at home, and it’s a really interesting moment between the characters. DB comes in a minute later, and things get a bit awkward before Nick excuses himself to get back to work and leaves DB and Charlie alone.

DB is not pleased to learn that Charlie has been suspended from the basketball team for a game after he missed curfew, but he keeps his cool and tells the young man they’ll discuss the situation later. When DB and Charlie sit down to talk toward the end of the episode, the audience learns what happened. It would be easy for Charlie to be written as a typical, troublesome teenager—those are so very common on TV—but that isn’t the case here. Charlie missed curfew because he was out bouldering alone, and he confesses to his father that he feels like an outcast around the rest of the team. DB says Charlie is the weird new guy on the team, and he can relate since he’s the weird new guy in the lab. This earns a laugh, and DB encourages Charlie to apologize to his coach and work hard during the next game. The relationship between father and son is really touching, and I’m glad we finally got a chance to see DB in ‘action’ as a parent, so to speak. Brandon Jones is a great choice for the role, and I hope we haven’t seen the last of Charlie. The next item on my wishlist is to see DB’s wife on screen—their phone conversations have me curious about just what kind of woman married DB Russell.

Elsewhere, the wheels are being set in motion for Marg Helgenberger’s upcoming exit from the series. Sheriff Liston comes to see Catherine and asks how she’s doing. Catherine says she’s fine, but Liston reveals that she’d be angry if she got demoted and had no immediate chance for advancement. Liston says, “Sometimes you have to move out to move up,” and she tells Catherine about a great opportunity in Washington, DC, where the Senate Judiciary Committee is planning to establish a Forensic Science Commission. They need a full-time staffer who is an expert in the field, and Liston recommended Catherine for the position. The sheriff points out that it can be difficult for women in law enforcement, and she gives Catherine the phone number so she can think it over and make her decision soon. I’m not sure if Catherine will take the job, but it would be an interesting way to write her out of the series while giving the audience a satisfying sense of closure. As much as I love DB as a character and as a boss in the lab, it was disappointing to see Catherine demoted in the wake of the Nate Haskell fiasco. If she moves to Washington, DC to work for the FBI, it would definitely allow the character to leave on a high note.

See also: “Brain Doe” episode guide

Synopsis:

A young woman is found wrapped in a tarp, and there are long needles sticking out of her arms. They were inserted with precision to minimize bleeding and maximize pain. There is also a barbecue skewer stuck into her as well, with black wax on it. There are scars on her body like the marks left by the needles, indicating that repeated use created scarred areas. Doc Robbins finds lidocaine in her system, which is an anesthetic.

The woman had a knee implant, which gets them a name: Rachel Grier. They speak to Rachel’s sister, Dr Jennifer Grier, who says she hasn’t spoken to Rachel in years. Her daughter Silvia, however, had lunch with Rachel a few days ago. She says her aunt wanted to mend fences and come home.

There’s a painting on the tarp that has been covered with new paint, and Nick uses camera filters to discover the image beneath. It looks like a woman with flames in the same places as the needles in Rachel’s arms. The woman looks like a human candelabra, and Morgan does an image search and finds the website for Major Willie’s Rambling Carnival and Curious Extravaganza. It’s in Vegas, and they head there to check out the ‘Magnificent Femmistopheles: Empress of Pain’, aka the human candelabra. Major Willie identifies Rachel as ‘Femmistopheles’, but he doesn’t seem too choked up to learn that she’s dead. It isn’t a surprise, he says, considering how the rest of the world views people like them.

Rachel was killed with propofol, which in a large enough dose can paralyze the diaphragm and cause a person to suffocate. Willie has access to drugs like lidocaine, and he admits to giving such drugs to Rachel, but they don’t find any propofol at the carnival. However, they do find bags of blood that Rachel drew to use for her act, and the blood contains hormones indicating she was pregnant. They also find blood and semen in her bed, and the semen belongs to someone with Proteus syndrome—the Elephant Man in the show, Joshua Helm. Rachel wanted them to leave the show together, but he knew he couldn’t live a normal life the way she could. She lost the baby, but she wanted to try again. He refused, but he denies killing her.

Willie is found dead, staged to look like he was hanged. Rachel’s niece Silvia is caught fleeing the scene, and she says she just wanted to see the life her aunt was living. She felt a connection to the woman, and she stumbled into the tent and found Willie hanging there. The other people from the show saw her and looked at her like she was responsible, so she ran.

Willie died after something punctured his stomach from the inside. As part of his act, he swallowed strange items, so Nick and Greg go through the man’s stomach contents and find a nipple ring still attached to the nipple. The nipple ring has the Gemini zodiac sign, so they assume it belongs to one of the men at the carnival who goes by the name Zodiac. However, his nipples are intact. When they check everyone else from the show, they discover that Sergio the Strong is missing a nipple. His real name is Seth Helm, and he is Joshua’s fraternal twin brother. Their mother died in childbirth, and their father abandoned them. When his brother started to change, they knew their only shot was to join a show like this. He says Willie was better than most when it came to his brother, until he convinced Seth to help cover up Rachel’s death. He assumed that Willie killed Rachel and pushed him while he was sword-swallowing. This injured him internally, and he bit off Seth’s nipple in a struggle before he died. Seth thought if he made it look like a suicide, it would all go away. He coughs up a bottle of propofol, which ties back to Rachel’s sister Jennifer. She killed Rachel to keep the “freak” out of Silvia’s life.

Analysis:

“Freaks & Geeks” establishes the differences between these two groups of people within the traditional sideshow. “Freaks” are those who come by their talents naturally, such as those who have a genetic condition or physical deformity. “Geeks”, on the other hand, are people who earn their place in the carnival by honing their skills. Both types of people are represented in this episode, with the victim Rachel falling in the “geek” category. The young woman inserted large, 20-gauge needles into her arms at regular intervals and placed burning candles on the ends. She was the ‘human candelabra’, and the regular process of inserting needles into her arms caused scarring that turned the insertion points into pathways that could be reopened more easily and with a minimum of bleeding. It was still incredibly painful, and Rachel injected herself with lidocaine to manage it.

The leader of the carnival, Steven “Willie” Watt, provided Rachel with the pain medication, which he also used himself. He too is in the “geek” category, and he inserts a paperclip into his arm in the interrogation room before swallowing it. When the man turns up dead later in the episode due to internal bleeding, it looks like his ill-advised snack might have disagreed with him. However, the bleeding was actually caused when he was shoved while sword-swallowing.

The “freaks” in the episode include Zodiac, a man with congenital analgesia, and the Elephant Man, Joshua, who suffers from Proteus syndrome. Joshua and Rachel were in a relationship, and she was going to have his child until she suffered a miscarriage. Rachel wanted to try again, but Joshua said no. He thought Rachel lived in a fantasy world, and she thought they could actually live a normal life in the outside world. She could, and he tried to get her to leave, but he could never walk away from the carnival.

Despite all of the “freaks” and “geeks” surrounding Rachel at the carnival, it was her sister Jennifer’s intolerance that actually killed her in the end. Jennifer couldn’t handle the idea of Rachel coming back into her life and corrupting her daughter Silvia. Silvia admired her aunt, and Jennifer’s education and medical degree didn’t prevent her from being ignorant about Rachel’s lifestyle and choices. She refers to Joshua as a “thing” and is disgusted that her sister would fall in love with him. She injected Rachel with propofol and left her to suffocate, and she tells Catherine that she was protecting Silvia from the “monsters in this world”. Catherine responds that yes, Silvia is safe from the monsters, but it’s obviously the monster sitting in front of her that’s at the front of Catherine’s mind, not the people in the carnival.

Interacting with the “freaks” and “geeks” from the carnival has an effect on Catherine and DB. For Catherine, her history of bad relationships causes her to focus on Joshua as a suspect, assuming that he killed Rachel after she broke his heart. Joshua tells Catherine that she can’t comprehend the love they felt for each other, and he says she’ll never understand it. Catherine is slightly taken aback by the comment, but she doesn’t deny that he struck a nerve when she’s speaking to DB later. She still thinks Joshua is a viable suspect, but DB wonders if his own past is clouding his judgment. He admits that his focus on Willie is based on a bad experience from his childhood. In his case, the charismatic leader reminds him of Durga Joe, a man he and his parents knew a long time ago. DB’s parents were singers who joined a traveling show, and they drove around the country in their van. His parents didn’t like Durga Joe, who was so charismatic that he could make people do just about anything. They were afraid to leave, so they packed up their van and drove off in the middle of the night. DB understands that a man like Durga Joe or Willie can be the best con artist. Indeed, Willie talks Seth into disposing of Rachel’s body—his friend and the woman his brother loved—by convincing him that it was best for Joshua. Unfortunately for Willie, his charisma didn’t protect him when Seth gave him an ill-timed shove while he had a sword down his throat.

In addition to the background about his parents and the time they spent traveling with Durga Joe, DB offers up another interesting tidbit at the beginning of the episode. He’s looking at Las Vegas from a distance when Catherine arrives at the scene, and he says the city is beautiful from this vantage point. Catherine refers to the location as “the missile base”, and DB wonders why. She tries to change the subject, not sure why she even brought it up, but DB decides to offer up his own story in exchange for hers. He met his wife during his freshman year of college, he reveals, and she was his “first and only love”. Catherine is surprised to learn that he lost his virginity to his wife, but DB just shrugs it off and says that “life is simple sometimes.” Life was never simple for Catherine, however, as DB learns a minute later when she tells him the story about Tony Anthopolis and their ill-advised relationship when she was sixteen. DB clearly doesn’t judge her, and when she points out that she made bad choices when it came to men, he tells her that she was smart and was also looking for someone to recognize that. It’s an interesting, insightful conversation relating to both characters, and I’m going to miss their dynamic when Marg Helgenberger leaves the show. She and Ted Danson are great together.

See also: “Freaks & Geeks” episode guide

CSI creator Anthony Zuiker releases the final digi-novel in the bestselling Level 26 trilogy.

Title: Dark Revelations: A Level 26 Thriller Featuring Steve Dark
Author: Anthony E Zuiker with Duane Swierczynski
Release Date: December 29, 2011
Publisher: Dutton
ISBN: 978-0-525-95197-1
Price: $26.95

[Please note that this review contains spoilers for the first two books in the Level 26 series.]

Dark Revelations is the third and final installment in CSI creator Anthony Zuiker’s hit Level 26 series of “digi-novels”, which he co-wrote with Duane Swierczynski. Like the first two books, Dark Origins and Dark Prophecy, Dark Revelations combines traditional reading with video “cyber bridges”. These bridges are short segments that can be accessed on Level26.com using codes sprinkled throughout the book. The digi-novel is an interesting, exciting way to consume the narrative, and the concept has evolved since the first novel. Out of the three books in the series, Dark Revelations best represents the digi-novel as it was envisioned.

The final book in the trilogy centers around the hunt for Labyrinth, a smart, sophisticated criminal with a message behind his murders. He’s always several steps ahead of the authorities, and it takes a man like Steve Dark to come close to capturing him. Introduced in Dark Origins as a tortured man whose ability to track the worst of the worst is both a gift and a curse, Dark has come a long way since the start of the series. He’s still good at what he does, but he’s a different man these days. The hunt for Sqweegel in Dark Origins left him a broken man after the loss of his wife Sibby, and he spent Dark Prophecy trying to balance his tormented psyche with the demands of fatherhood. Little Sibby, named after her late mother, provides Dark with a reason to fight his own inner demons, and that struggle continues in Dark Revelations. Fortunately, it feels like Dark is starting to reconcile the two disparate parts of himself, and the final book in the trilogy finds him dealing with his issues in a way that bodes well for his future as a man and as a father.

When the Level 26 series began, Dark was working with the Special Circs division of the United States government. He left Special Circs at the start of Dark Prophecy, but he couldn’t give up the hunt. A mysterious woman named Lisa Graysmith found him and offered him an intriguing proposition: he could have unlimited resources at his disposal to track down monsters like the Tarot Card Killer featured in that novel. When Dark Revelations gets underway, Dark learns more about his mysterious benefactors as he is invited to join the organization: Global Alliance. It’s a small group featuring the best agents from around the world, and they work together to use their unique, impressive skills to track down the worst criminals imaginable.

Overall, Global Alliance is a bit too omnipotent. It provides Dark with unlimited resources, but it also seems to have an unreasonable amount of power worldwide. Despite the fact that Dark has never heard of this group before, it seems as though every single law enforcement officer they encounter recognizes the logo. Dark only has to flash his cellphone to get complete, unquestioned access to anyone and anything he wants. The leader of Global Alliance, a secretive billionaire named Damian Blair, says the organization is supported by governments around the world, but they don’t answer to anyone but themselves.

With the introduction of Global Alliance, Dark Revelations brings some new characters into the mix, including Natasha Garcon, a beautiful and brilliant linguist with a (perhaps unbelievable) list of skills. She provides a tantalizing romantic prospect for Dark, but the character doesn’t get much development throughout the novel as the narrative focuses on Dark and his latest nemesis. The other two members of Global Alliance, Hans Roeding and Deckland O’Brian, are also superficially sketched, and I would have loved to learn more about the weapons expert and computer genius.

Dark’s old colleagues in Special Circs are still around, but their role in Dark Revelations is greatly diminished. Lab tech Josh Banner gets a few scenes early on, and Constance Brielle is limited to one brief but meaningful exchange with Dark’s former boss, Tom Riggins. Riggins, meanwhile, sticks around longer than the others, and he gets to participate in the action of the novel despite the fact that Special Circs is all but defunct.

The relationship between Dark and Riggins was one of the high points of Dark Origins, although it was nearly absent during the turbulent events of Dark Prophecy. It returns a bit in Dark Revelations, as Dark continues to wrestle with his demons—particularly the demon that haunts him the most, Sqweegel. Sqweegel was the twisted, forensic proof serial killer introduced in Dark Origins, and he is perhaps the most recognizable symbol of the Level 26 series. (In fact, Black Sqweegel, a character teased at the end of Dark Origins and the start of Dark Prophecy, appeared in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation named after him.)

Sqweegel was the monster who nearly destroyed Dark. The killer murdered his entire foster family, and Dark’s wife Sibby also fell victim in the end. Dark captured and killed Sqweegel, but his memory continues to haunt Dark throughout the rest of the trilogy. Dark Origins teased the true relationship between Dark and Sqweegel, and Dark Revelations brings the truth to light and forces Dark to face it. The inner conflict brings the series full circle, and it’s satisfying for longterm readers who wanted to see how that storyline would be resolved. It ties in with a question the characters—and readers—have been asking through the entire series: is Dark going to the dark side? Will he become one of the monsters he hunts? Dark Revelations provides an answer without tying up every single loose end; while this may be the end of the series, this is certainly not the end of the line for Dark and the others.

Dark is the protagonist of Dark Revelations, but Labyrinth gets a great deal of focus as well, particularly in the cyber bridges. He has a message, and it’s a message he communicates brilliantly throughout the novel. He’s not just killing people for fun or for attention. Every single thing he does is meticulous and intentional, and he plans each move well in advance. In fact, he doesn’t even kill every victim. He’s always looking at the bigger picture, and his message catches on in the book via social networking sites. It’s a very modern story, and very relevant to the world we live in today. As Joshua Caldwell, who directed the cyber bridges, explained in his recent interview with CSI Files:

I think these bridges really feed into a collective sentiment that’s floating around out there, the idea that our world is corrupt, that we are not living up to our potential and that the majority of the people aren’t getting a fair shake. The timeliness of it was something that makes the book and the bridges really unique.

Labyrinth is trying to draw attention to the decadence of the rich and powerful, the damage mankind is causing the environment, the corruption of the world’s governments—even if his methods are abhorrent, readers may find themselves identifying strongly with the message behind his words. Dark Revelations is a great crime thriller, but it also provides plenty of food for thought once the reader is finished with the story.

Hal Ozsan portrays Labyrinth in the cyber bridges, and he’s a great choice for the role. To all appearances, the character is handsome, charming and non-threatening to those around him. He easily gains the trust of others, and he blends into any environment without seeming the slightest bit out of place. However, his thoughts, presented in the novel from a first-person point of view, reveal his fanaticism and offer a clue about how his mind works.

There are only eight cyber bridges in Dark Revelations, which is down from twenty in Dark Origins and eleven in Dark Prophecy. The bridges strike the right balance between those from the previous novels, proving how much the digi-novel concept has evolved since the series began. Book one featured a variety of scenes that tied into the novel, although some felt unnecessary or distasteful. Book two took a different approach, and each cyber bridge was part of an hour-long short film featuring Dark at a tarot card reading which tied in with the book’s plot. The bridges in Dark Revelations return to the format of Dark Origins, where each video is relevant to a particular segment of the novel. Overall, the clips in book three focus on bringing Labyrinth and his message to life, giving readers a glimpse of a complex character and adding to the narrative that is presented in the novel.

Dark Revelations is an excellent ending to a series that has provided readers with a brand new way to consume a crime novel. The stories stand on their own as great thrillers with a believable, relatable protagonist and strong supporting cast. Additionally, over the course of three books, the concept of the digi-novel has really come into its own. I’d love to see future titles continue the tradition, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a few new novels with Steve Dark and the rest of the Level 26 cast at their heart.

Rachel Trongo is the news writer for CSI Files.

Synopsis:

A group of people are playing a high-stakes poker game when a man in a mask rappels down the side of the building and breaks through the window. He opens fire with a semi-automatic weapon, forcing the people to duck down and avoid the flying bullets. The robber steals all of the money and goes back out the window, and the chandelier falls as he gets ready to exit. When the team arrives, they see that the chandelier fell onto a man’s head, but that wasn’t what killed him: he also has a bullet wound in his neck. This is not the first time this robber has hit a big poker game, but it’s the first fatality.

The victim is a Hollywood movie producer named Benjamin Paxton. He was shot in the hip, and the bullet ricocheted off his hip bone, traveled up his body and exited his neck before getting lodged in the arm of rap mogul Isaiah Stiles, who was sitting next to him. This bullet doesn’t match the weapon used by the robber, suggesting that they’re looking for a second shooter. They search the players, which include a big actor and a housewife in addition to the producer and the mogul. The housewife, Evelyn Bowers, doesn’t fit in with the other people in the game. She reveals that her son Kevin was at one of the games this man robbed six months ago, and he hit the young man in the back of the head. This caused a hemorrhage that nearly killed Kevin, and the injury causes him ongoing problems. Evelyn wanted revenge against the robber. She took out a second mortgage on her house to get the money, which she used to convince Joey Ranzone to allow her to join high stakes poker games. She went to every game she could, waiting for the robber. There’s a gun in her purse that matches the caliber of the bullet that killed Paxton, but it isn’t the murder weapon.

The glass of the window is tempered, which should have prevented the robber from breaking his way in. However, there are grooves that have been scratched into the glass from the inside, which weakened it and allowed the robber to break in. There was someone on the inside helping the robber, and these marks could have been made with a diamond or piece of ceramic. The actor, Jason Huntsman, has glasses with ceramic on the frames, and the ceramic is scratched. It could have been used to create the groove, but Jason isn’t the killer. The bullet was fired from a vent in the wall—this is an assassination.

The face cards from the game are marked with invisible ink, which can be seen with special lenses. The actor’s lenses don’t match, but Evelyn is wearing special contacts that let her cheat. It was the only way she could afford to stay in the games and continue hunting for the robber.

There’s a mark inside the air vent from a fresh tattoo, which leads back to the Haileah Kings gang. Eric talks to Frank and gets the name Carl Raines, a guy who specializes in high-end jobs. He and Natalia head to find the man, but he shoots a uniformed police officer, and Eric is forced to fire at him. Before he dies, Carl says he was paid to kill Paxton.

Eric and Natalia look through Carl’s truck and find a flash drive with raw instrumentals from Isaiah’s new album. Carl was his bodyguard until a few weeks ago, when he stole the tracks from him and tried to blackmail him. Isaiah leaked the album himself and made the tracks worthless, removing Carl’s source of blackmail.

Joey Ranzone tells Horatio that Isaiah insisted on having the producer at that particular game, and he tried to pay the man off with a big diamond ring. Ranzone didn’t take it, though, because he only accepts cash. Natalia looks at Isaiah’s rings and finds glass particles on one of the diamonds—he scored the glass to help the robber. He tells the team that the producer got what he deserved. Isaiah was cast for a movie, and he even used his own money to produce the soundtrack. However, the producer dropped him before filming began, and he ruined his reputation by suggesting that Isaiah didn’t have the right edge for the role. In his business, reputation is everything, so he decided to hire Carl to kill Paxton. The robber didn’t even know Carl was in the vent—Isaiah set the robber up to take the fall for Paxton’s murder. Isaiah gives up the name of the robber, and Frank recognizes him as a man he saw holding up a camera phone and asking questions at the crime scene.

Analysis:

“Sinner Takes All” features a glamorous high stakes poker game, a serial robber who rappels down the side of a building in a devil mask, a mother bent on revenge, and a bevy of rich, powerful people and unscrupulous characters. In short, welcome to CSI: Miami! Miami is always the most vivid, colorful member of the franchise, but the opening this week is especially bright and saturated with strong shades of yellow, red and blue. Stacks of money are changing hands before the notorious robber (whom we’ve never seen before) bursts in and opens fire. Everyone ducks for cover until the robber leaves, at which time Paxton’s body is discovered beneath a fallen chandelier.

Drea de Matteo’s performance helps make Evelyn a very sympathetic character. She wants revenge for what happened to her son, and she ends up creating more chaos in her family’s life in the process. Despite her plan to kill the robber, we see her hesitate and pull her hand back when she starts to reach for her gun at the beginning. Even when she finally has the opportunity, she doesn’t go through with it. She’s an angry, grieving mother trying to deal with the toll Kevin’s injury has taken on their lives, but she’s not a killer.

The audience meets Kevin later in the episode, when the young man bums a ride to the precinct to bail his mother out of jail. Evelyn is surprised to see him there, and she tells Horatio that the boy doesn’t even have any money. He gets confused sometimes, and she doesn’t have a way to get him home. Horatio offers to take the boy home himself. Evelyn is grateful, and Horatio sees Kevin’s forgetfulness firsthand when they arrive at the house and he must prod Kevin gently to remember to put the key into the lock first and turn the handle to open the door. Horatio sees that most of their furniture is gone, and Kevin reveals that his mother sold it all.

When Horatio asks why Evelyn hasn’t bailed herself out of jail yet, she says she tried—but her bank account has been emptied. Kevin is the only other person with access, and Horatio discovers Joey Ranzone using Kevin’s forgetfulness against him to manipulate the boy into giving him stacks of cash. He told Kevin he could get back into gambling if he gave him money, and Kevin obediently drained his mothers account to hand it over. Horatio arrives and puts a stop to the transfer, and at the end of the episode he demands that Ranzone pay back everything he took from the family. Evelyn is at home when Kevin arrives with a backpack full of money, and the young man apologizes for the trouble he has caused his mother. She tells him not to apologize, and the audience can see Horatio sitting in his Hummer outside while mother and son embrace. Considering that Kevin is confused and easily led since he was injured, I do think Evelyn should have asked more questions about where the young man got the money. There was a lot of money in that backpack!

While Evelyn is a sympathetic character, and Horatio is always eager to help those who need it, once again we see Horatio Caine rescuing a woman who has gotten in way over her head. He takes it upon himself to stand in as Kevin’s protector while his mother is being held by the MDPD, he threatens Ranzone to make him give back the money, and he escorts Kevin—and the money—home at the end. It’s good to see that the family is getting closure and can move on with their lives, but they couldn’t do it without Horatio. I know it’s part of Horatio’s characterization to be the hero who saves the people of Miami, but it always seems to be women and children who are the most helpless and in need of rescuing.

Walter shares a few scenes with Samantha Owens, a new lab tech who transferred over from the night shift. Walter was on the night shift before transferring to the day shift back in season eight’s “Bolt Action”, so it’s nice to get a reference to his time before joining the team. Walter and Samantha are obviously old friends, and they even share some comfortable jokes between them. Samantha refers to Walter as “Teddy Bear”, which is hilarious—and I totally believe his colleagues on the night shift would call him that. He should be careful that she doesn’t use the nickname around other members of the team, though. They might have a bit too much fun with it—especially “Wolfey”. A lot of new lab techs have been introduced over the years on Miami, and plenty of them disappear after a single episode. However, given her connection to Walter, I’m curious to see if Samantha returns. I hope so, if only to hear more about the night shift and the time she and “Teddy Bear” worked together.

At the end of the episode, Walter and Natalia are the ones interrogating Isaiah when Natalia discovers that his ring was used to cut the tempered glass. Walter wants the man to tell them the name of the robber, but Isaiah doesn’t seem eager to give it up. Walter looms over him, demanding the name and threatening to hurt more than Isaiah’s “reputation” if he doesn’t fork it over. It looks like Walter is learning to channel Horatio. I like when Walter is assertive, but I think Horatio’s methods are best left to Horatio. It’s one thing for the leading man—who often seems like a larger-than-life superhero—to be aggressive and push the envelope, but it’s a bit much when other, more grounded members of the team follow suit.

See also: “Sinner Takes All” episode guide

Synopsis:

Eric and Calleigh head into a mansion that is only reachable by ferry, and they find the housekeeper Andrea Edison hanging, bloodless, inside. There’s a letter written with a made-up language in the desk, and the team discovers that the language was created by the home’s owner, a vampire author named Marilyn Milner. The letter is written in blood, which traces back to Wes Rayburn. Wes says Andrea was already dead when he got there, and he thought the body was a gift from Milner. He bit her neck with his modified “vampire” teeth, but there was no blood to drink.

There are bits of cork in Andrea’s hair from a wine bottle. The chef, Lawrence Kingman, found her body and called it in, and Milner’s editor Joseph Crumbaugh told him not to stay. Crumbaugh says he took his private boat to and from the island. He was sleeping with Andrea, and he knew it would look bad if it got out that Milner’s editor was sleeping with the maid, whose dead body was found on her property.

When the team heads to Crumbaugh’s boat, they find Lawrence and the “gardener” Kenny Barnsdall writing inside. They are ghost writers, and they and Andrea have been writing Marilyn Milner’s novels for the past three years. Milner gives them storylines and general ideas, and they go from there. They pretend to be the gardener, chef and maid if anybody comes to Milner’s mansion to prevent anyone from finding out the novels are ghost written. There’s an e-mail on Andrea’s computer offering some motive: Andrea threatened to expose the ghost writing if Crumbaugh didn’t give her $100,000. He was going to pay her, but he found her dead. He took the manuscript to the printers, and when they retrieve it, they realize the murder in the novel matches Andrea’s death.

The original crime scene is a Rolls Royce Phantom, which Milner bought with the profits from her first book. She told her editor that she was in Milan, but the text she sent traces back to Miami. She doesn’t write or read her own books, and she says she wouldn’t kill the best ghost writer who made her life so easy. The book doesn’t identify the killer, and Milner says the truth is revealed in the epilogue, which is exclusive to the audio version of the book. In the book, the killer drained the victim’s blood and drank it “like wine”, leading the team to the wine collection in the house. They realize Lawrence did it. He says Andrea took credit for his ideas, and he gave her a chance to fix it—she didn’t, so he killed her. He drained her blood and hung her up like the victim in the book, hoping they’d think a crazed fan did it. However, he left eight ounces of blood in her body, and he says the blood was draining too slowly. Hemlock was found on the body, and it can slow the heart. They need to figure out how it was introduced into the bloodstream, and they discover that the poison is found on Andrea’s wrists. A bottle of perfume Milner bought for her in Milan was dosed with hemlock to kill her slowly and cover the author’s tracks.

Analysis:

Vampire novels are all the rage these days, and CSI: Miami embraces the phenomenon in time for Halloween with “By the Book”, which combines the undead bloodsuckers with a murder mystery and plenty of deceit and intrigue. At the beginning of the episode, Calleigh comments that she “hates Halloween” when they discover a young woman dead, hung by the ankles from the ceiling and drained of blood—complete with a set of “vampire” teeth marks on her neck. The murder turns out to be related to the vampire phenomenon, not specifically Halloween, but there’s another mention at the end of the episode to tie back in with Calleigh’s earlier statement. The team is getting ready to head out for dinner together, but they get a call about a new body. The killer is a “werewolf”, and Calleigh repeats herself: she hates Halloween. It’s hard to blame her, though, especially after she and Horatio chase Wes and capture the vampire enthusiast in the forest—but not before the man sinks his sharp “vampire” teeth into her arm. Horatio rushes over and, rather than secure the suspect, leans down to check on Calleigh first. It’s understandable that he would be more concerned about Calleigh’s well-being, but there’s a murder suspect standing—unrestrained—mere feet away while Horatio’s attention is focused elsewhere. Luckily, Wes is dumb enough to just climb a tree, and Horatio shoots a branch to knock him off his perch. Wes says he’s going to sue, and Horatio says, “Be my guest.” It’s kind of a silly scene, but we’re talking about a guy who thinks he’s a vampire. I have to admit, I’m surprised Calleigh’s “bite” isn’t mentioned at any point later in the episode.

There are some fun character scenes throughout the episode, and several of them include Dr Tom Loman. He’s standing next to the body with Walter and Ryan, processing the victim when the CSIs comment that they need to identify the young woman. Tom offers her name, and when Ryan asks how he knew who she was, Tom produces the ferry pass he found in her pocket. He hands it over and takes off his gloves. When he reaches for his clipboard, he loses his grip, and it slips out of his hands. Walter calls him “butter fingers”, but Tom is slightly alarmed. His hands feel tingly, and Ryan reaches for the gloves he discarded. They smell like dead mice, although Walter is curious about how Ryan knows what dead mice smell like. Ryan explains that they had a mouse trap next to the refrigerator in college, and “you never forget the smell of dead mice.” Tom remarks that hemlock smells like dead mice, and he’s trained to look for it when he’s performing autopsies because it can be fatal if it enters the bloodstream. There’s hemlock on Andrea’s body, and he came in contact with it when he took off his gloves. He says it’s probably a small dose, but he should still wash his hands—a lot.

Eric heads down to the coroner’s office a bit later to see if Tom was able to figure out how Andrea’s blood was drained, and he finds the ME washing his hands again. Eric is sure Tom survived his encounter with hemlock, but Tom would rather be safe than sorry—so he rinses his hands one last time. It’s hard to blame the coroner for wanting to be extra sure he doesn’t have any poison on his hands, but it’s a really fun moment for the character. I love Tom, so anything that shows his quirkiness is a plus in my book. His interaction with Ryan is great too. I always enjoy the prickly sort of relationship they seem to have with each other. And, of course, you can never go wrong with Ryan and Walter, whose banter and teasing are often my favorite part of an episode. Putting all three together in the mansion scene is a winning combination.

Walter and Ryan also share an amusing scene without Tom as they look around the grounds for the source of the poison. Ryan wonders why someone would put such a dangerous plant in their front yard, and Walter suggests that they might be antisocial. They are using telescoping metal pointers to search, enabling them to avoid coming in contact with the plants, and they finally locate the hemlock next to the swimming pool. Ryan remarks that the plant is “so beautiful, yet so deadly”, swinging his pointer around at Walter—prompting Walter to deflect the pointer with his own. Ryan says they need to find the gardener, and a commotion draws their attention to the man carrying firewood nearby. He identifies himself as the gardener, so Walter and Ryan share a look before telling the man in unison that he’ll be heading into the precinct with them.

Walter shares several scenes with Natalia in “By the Book”, and I really enjoy their dynamic as well. Natalia doesn’t opt for Ryan’s vaguely-immature behavior around Walter, but the pair of them still laugh and seem comfortable with each other. When they discover Lawrence and Kenny on Crumbaugh’s boat, they are surprised to learn the men are ghost writers for Milner. Kenny tells the CSIs that their identities as chef, gardener and maid were merely a “ruse” to fool any visitors who came to the mansion. Walter seems to think the word “ruse” is clever enough to confirm that these guys are authors, and Natalia gets to work searching for Andrea’s blood. She sprays luminol all over the floor at Kenny and Lawrence’s feet, and Lawrence exclaims that they’re trying to work. Natalia retorts that she’s doing the same thing. When Natalia finds Andrea’s laptop and asks for the password, the men feign ignorance. Walter turns to them and snaps, “Man, what’s the damn password?” Lawrence gives up the word quickly, and Walter offers the man a “thank you” in the same tone as Natalia grins up at him.

There are several guest stars that I recognize this week, namely Diane Farr and Orlando Jones, who play the famous vampire author and the killer who wants recognition for his work. Farr in particular seems a bit wasted in the role, only appearing a few times in the second half of the episode. Despite the lack of screentime, Farr is great as the famous author who is too busy relaxing by the pool to write her own books. When the team confronts her about poisoning Andrea with hemlock at the end of the hour, she seems to be under the impression that she’s an expert about law enforcement because she did some research for her novels and went on a few ride-alongs. She knows how cops think, she says, and while they believe that justice would be served by arresting her, they’d just be giving her inspiration for her next book. Unfortunately for Milner, that tactic doesn’t work; the police charge her with attempted murder, and she is led away in handcuffs. However, I do have to wonder why Andrea would continue to wear the perfume Milner sent her if contact with hemlock causes skin to feel tingly. If I put on perfume that made my arms tingle, the first thing I’d do is wash it off.

When a uniformed officer guides Milner through the precinct, they pass by Lawrence, who has confessed to killing Andrea and draining her blood. Lawrence tries to talk to the author, but she doesn’t seem to know who he is—as they are pulled in different directions, he calls out that he “made” her. He committed murder because he wasn’t recognized for his ghost-writing contributions to the Milner novels, and in the end, the woman still doesn’t know his name. It is odd, though, that Lawrence tries to pin the murder on a crazed fan by modeling it after a book that wasn’t publicly available at the time. As soon as the team realizes Andrea’s death parallels the latest manuscript, they are able to narrow down their suspect pool to eliminate the very people Lawrence wanted to blame. It would have made more sense for him to base the murder on an already-released book. That said, Jones does a great job in the role, skillfully portraying several facets of the character over the course of the hour: the seemingly-innocent ruse of a cook who found Andrea’s body, the confident ghost writer who seems largely unfazed by the death of a colleague, and finally the frustrated, slightly crazed man who is desperate to have his skills acknowledged.

“By the Book” ends with the team getting ready to head out for dinner before they get a new case. They invite Frank along, but he declines. He claims that he’s waiting on a case meeting, but in reality he’s too busy reading the first Milner novel after becoming interested in the series during the course of the episode. He has no idea who Milner is at first, but he finds himself engrossed in the manuscript for the latest book after he picks it up from the printer. In fact, he’s so busy reading that he doesn’t exit the elevator when the door opens, and Walter has to get his attention. When the team looks through the manuscript for clues about the murder, Frank is clearly interested in what he’s reading, and the episode ends with him smiling as he works his way through the vampire novel. Rex Linn is always fun to watch, and the mini storyline provides some great moments for his character.

See also: “By the Book” episode guide

Synopsis:

Sheriff Anita Torres is on her way to work in La Cancion, Mexico when her husband’s car explodes with him inside. She heads to Miami with her brother Carlos to consult with Horatio. The Mala Noche gang is behind Geraldo’s death, and she believes Memmo Fierro ordered the hit. Memmo claims he wasn’t involved, and the hit came from Mexico eight months ago. The killer, El Asesino, won’t stop until Anita is dead.

The bomb was created using a WWII grenade, which traces back to a weapons stockpile in Texas. The man who runs it, Brendon Dwyer, has an office in Miami, and Calleigh and Eric speak with him. He says the stockpile was robbed a year ago, and he got shot in the process. There are rumors that Anita’s husband was working with Mala Noche, and Carlos admits that the gang approached them once while they were eating in a restaurant. They told Geraldo to take care of his wife or they would, and they left a stack of money on the table. He put the money in a church box and told Carlos not to tell his sister.

Anita and Carlos head to a safe house, but a hit man gets in and tries to kill them. The man gets away, but he is wounded. Anita got paint under her fingernails from the hit man, which leads the team to a Mala Noche member who huffs paint, Luis. He has a gunshot wound on his arm. El Asesino is the one who shot him because he knows it’s his job to kill Anita. Luis wasn’t behind the car bombing. If the CSIs want answers, they need to get them from Memmo.

Memmo reveals that El Asesino is set to make a weapons buy, and they find Brendon Dwyer at the location. He works for the government, and they were trying to use weapons to track the low level Mala Noche members in order to find the upper level ones. There are sensors hidden inside the guns, which the gang was able to find and remove easily. However, there is also a second set of sensors inside some of the weapons, which the Mala Noche didn’t remove. One of these weapons is a special order .22, which Eric tracks to the house where Anita and Carlos are staying. They find the gun in Carlos’ bag, but the young man insists that he found the weapon under Geraldo’s dresser back in La Cancion.

Geraldo’s glasses were found at the scene of the bombing, but there’s no evidence of blood on any of the debris. He faked his own death—Geraldo is El Asesino. He met Anita eight months ago when the gang put out the hit on her, but he fell in love with her and couldn’t bring himself to finish the job. He hoped his “death” would make her quit her job, giving Mala Noche no reason to continue going after her. He came to the safe house to protect her, and that’s why he shot at Luis. The only way to draw Geraldo out is for him to think the Mala Noche got to Anita. They pretend she got shot and announce it on the news, and Geraldo rushes to the hospital. When he realizes what is going on, he pulls his gun, and Horatio is forced to shoot him.

Analysis:

“Killer Regrets” finds the team dealing with the Mala Noche gang once again. This time, the gang ostensibly kills the husband of Sheriff Anita Torres in La Cancion, Mexico, and the woman heads to Miami to get the help of Horatio Caine. I guess Horatio is the international authority on the Mala Noche—or at least Memmo Fierro, the gang member who killed Horatio’s wife Marisol. Horatio recaptured Memmo in “Last Stand” after he escaped from prison last season, and this week he is forced to visit the man in jail to ask questions about the gang. Anita is sure that Memmo ordered the hit, and Horatio is willing to use any means necessary to get information from the man. He threatens to have Memmo’s daughter Elsa, who was seen in “Manhunt”, taken away from her mother. Memmo is reluctant to help the CSIs, but he does respond to the threat against his family. He tells Horatio to hit him so it won’t look too suspicious that Memmo is talking to a cop in jail. Horatio doesn’t hesitate to slam his fist into Memmo’s face, and Memmo points out that he’s “been holding on to that for a while.”

Memmo wasn’t behind the hit. He says the gang sent a man called El Asesino to kill the sheriff, who has been causing trouble for the gang since she took charge. Horatio wants the name of El Asesino, but Memmo says only his victims know who he is—and they’re keeping his identity secret. Horatio expects him to find out something useful. Memmo wants to see his daughter, but Horatio won’t agree to that. The most he’s willing to do is give the man a steak. Frank, Eric and Ryan are reluctant to go to Memmo for answers, but Frank says they may have to “dance with the devil to get out of hell.” Horatio goes to jail and brings Memmo a steak, and Memmo finally offers something worthwhile: the time and location of the weapons buy, where he assumes the team will be able to find El Asesino.

The team is surprised to find an ATF agent delivering a truck full of weapons for gang members, and they are skeptical when he mentions that the government sent him on purpose so they could track the guns to find gang members higher up in the food chain. The whole scheme sounds like the “Fast and Furious” operation, in which the ATF reportedly allowed nearly 2,000 guns to be smuggled into Mexico over a 15 month period, without the knowledge of the Mexican government. The purpose was to track the guns to drug cartel leaders, but many of the weapons were used in crimes—including the death of a US border patrol agent in Arizona.

I’m not sure how Carlos is able to bring the .22 into the country in his backpack. I’m no expert on gun laws or bringing weapons into the US, but that seems like a major plot hole to me. Would Anita even have been allowed to have her gun if she wasn’t on official police business? I can chalk most of it up to the writers using dramatic license to keep the story moving, but it does stand out to me.

“Killer Regrets” continues an ongoing storyline while setting up the possibility for a very interesting plotline in the future. The team first dealt with Inspector Scott O’Shay in “Look Who’s Taunting”, when he prevented them from executing a search warrant that may have nabbed a killer. O’Shay runs the Mayor’s civilian oversight panel, and his goal is to police the actions of law enforcement officers to ensure that they are doing their jobs correctly. This week, O’Shay confronts Calleigh about working on the bomb evidence from the Torres case despite the fact that they have no legal right to process it. Calleigh refuses to apologize, telling O’Shay that the grenade from the bombing is from an ATF facility in Texas, and the man who heads it has an office in Miami. It would only take a car ride to check the man out. O’Shay is unimpressed; he reminds her that Hank Kradic is on the oversight panel with him, and the man also donated the Hummers used by the lab. Later in the episode, when the Mala Noche hit man breaks into the house where Anita and Carlos are staying and tries to kill them, Calleigh rushes out to her Hummer to head to the scene—only to find that the car won’t start. She angrily confronts O’Shay, who says Kradic had it cut off remotely when he heard about its “foreign use.” She reminds him that a cop was killed during that shooting, and she sends a message to Kradic: if he ever messes with her car again, she’ll have him arrested for obstruction at the very least. This team won’t put up with anybody preventing them from doing their job, and I’m curious to see where things go from here.

At the end of the episode, O’Shay approaches Walter and says the CSI has “great potential”. Walter thanks him, but he isn’t sure what it is that O’Shay wants. The inspector says he just wants cooperation, and he gives Walter his card before walking away. Calleigh approaches Walter, having seen the exchange from afar. Walter insists that he would never work with a man like O’Shay, but Calleigh suggests that it might be a good idea for Walter to let O’Shay think he’s willing to work with him. I’m looking forward to watching this play out. There’s no doubt in my mind that Walter will prove himself, but I hope he doesn’t find himself in danger in the process.

When the hour draws to a close, Horatio visits Memmo in jail one last time. Memmo has been beaten up, and he was demoted in the gang. He asks if his daughter is doing well, and Horatio says that Elsa is fine. Memmo brings up something Horatio mentioned earlier: Horatio suggested that Memmo should start working to earn the “grace” he was given, and Memmo asks at the end of the episode if working with Horatio might have helped in that regard. Horatio says that’s up to Memmo, and while I don’t know that Horatio could ever actually forgive the man, I do wonder if we’ll be seeing him help the team again this season.

See also: “Killer Regrets” episode guide

Synopsis:

As Riley Frazier plays basketball, his brother Hank listens to the game in prison. When he’s released the next day, Hank promises Riley that he’s clean and that he’s going to stay that way. The things that kept him sane in jail were the thought of seeing his brother and his girlfriend Angela again. When Angela turns up dead, the team finds Hank’s name written in blood on the wall. They bring Hank in, revealing that they found cocaine in her apartment, and he has cocaine in his system. He says he didn’t kill Angela because he was elsewhere getting high. Flack doesn’t believe Hank, so Hank promises that he’ll tell them whatever they want to hear as long as he can see his brother first.

Angela was stabbed 10 times, and she has a lot of defensive wounds. However, some of the stab wounds have hilt marks while others don’t; to add to the confusion, the deepest wounds are the ones without hilt marks. Sid also reveals that the stab wound in Angela’s back incapacitated the left side of her body, but Hank’s name was written with her left index finger—the evidence was staged.

Riley comes to see Hank but throws the table over on him. He’s angry at his brother, and he throws a crumpled paper on the floor before he storms out of the interrogation. It’s an agreement he signed with Hank when he was seven, a promise not to let anything stand in his way of becoming a big basketball star. Hank used to be great too, Riley says, but he tore his Achilles tendon and ended up getting into drugs. Angela stayed by him through thick and thin.

Hawkes recreates the stab wounds, discovering that the three stab wounds with hilt marks were delivered with force. The other seven were pressed in slowly, not leaving a bruise but creating a deeper wound. Whoever killed Angela stabbed her three times, then added the other wounds to make it look like a crime of passion.

Adam tests a piece of plastic found in the victim’s body, which is a piece of a hologram depicting the Asantewaa Living logo. The company recently teamed up with the Wyandotte Sports company to make exclusive, expensive bracelets for athletes. Flack and Lindsay match epithelials under Angela’s nails to Nick Blount, who worked at the same hair salon. He has priors for drugs, but he says the skin under her nails got there when she gave him a head massage while shampooing his hair. However, he’s wearing one of the athletic bracelets, and the hologram is missing. They put the man into the back of the patrol car, but he manages to get free—and immediately gets hit by a passing cab. Blount is put into an induced coma, but the murder weapon is found in the dumpster outside his apartment and has his fingerprints on it. He also has a kit to make a key mold. It’s obvious that he killed Angela, but there’s still a mystery to be solved: a drop of blood in Angela’s apartment doesn’t belong to Blount. There’s another person involved.

Jo reassembles a torn letter from the crime scene. It’s a love letter from Hank to Angela, which mentions Riley and their mother. The letter says that Riley is going to sign with Kansas, which isn’t what Hawkes thought. Blount’s bracelet was a gift from Gavin, Riley’s coach. Gavin has a reason to want Hank out of the picture. Kansas was Hank’s choice when he was a player in the past, so Riley had his heart set on that school. He changed his mind after Hank started making mistakes, and Gavin worried that Riley might go for Kansas now that Hank was turning his life around. Gavin hired Blount to plant some cocaine in Angela’s apartment so they could send Hank back to prison and ensure that Riley would make the “right” college choice—there were millions of dollars in it for Gavin if he delivered Riley to the right school. Unfortunately, Angela came home and caught Blount in the act, and he killed her. He called Gavin to come to the scene, and Blount punched the coach during an argument and gave him a bloody nose—leaving the blood drop on the floor. Left with few options, they staged the scene in an attempt to pin the murder on Hank.

Analysis:

“Air Apparent” marks the return of Don Flack’s younger sister Samantha, who was last seen in the season five episode “Dead Inside”. Back then, it was revealed that Sam was an alcoholic, and the audience was left wondering about her for the past few years. It’s great to see her back this week, and it’s even better to learn that she has gotten her life together since her previous appearance. Flack is reminded of Sam when he thinks about Hank’s addiction, telling Mac that he used to live in fear of his sister doing something stupid while she was drunk. Mac asks if he speaks to Sam regularly, but it’s clear that perhaps they don’t speak as often as they should. Later, Flack heads to Sam’s apartment. He says four of the last five times he called her, the phone went straight to voice mail, and the fifth call told him her number had been disconnected. Sam knows him well enough to guess that he came to visit because he caught a case that made him think of her. She says she’s sober, and all she does all day is watch soap operas.

Sam gives Flack her new number, and he heads out to his car. He sees Sam leaving the apartment and decides to follow her. When he sees her exit a building, he waits for her to round the corner before he heads over to see where she’s been. A while later, he returns to her apartment to confront her about the application she dropped off at the temp agency, asking why she didn’t just tell him she was looking for a job. Sam is angry that he would pry into her life like that, but Flack is undeterred. He tells her she can’t lie about her record or her addiction, but she insists that telling the truth has gotten her nowhere. Flack tells Sam that she has a new lease on life, and she can do whatever she wants, but she isn’t buying it. Flack has the NYPD in his blood, and he knew exactly what he was going to do with his life. Sam was different, but Flack points out that she used to dream of being a journalist. Those dreams aren’t available now, she says, and she tells him to stop trying to give her a pep talk. She points out that he’s here because he cares about her, but he’s also here because he feels guilty about not coming to see her more often.

At the end of the episode, Flack heads back to Sam’s apartment with something for her. First, he gives her an NYPD hat, which she assumes is a gift. However, he reveals that she’ll need to wear it for her new job in the NYPD media relations office. He called in a favor and got her the job, but she worries that it will reflect badly on him if she screws up. He isn’t concerned about that; he just wants her to use this as an opportunity to follow her dreams. I hope we see Sam again later this season, especially if we get to see how she’s doing in her new job. It would be interesting to see how these two interact in a professional capacity. Sam and Flack are very different, but it’s clear that they love each other despite having an imperfect relationship. Kathleen Munroe is great in the role, and she and Eddie Cahill play well off of each other.

Mac seems to form a connection with the Frazier brothers in “Air Apparent”. It is revealed that he spoke to Hank offscreen, telling the man that he’d be checking in on him in rehab—and Hank can tell that Mac is serious. He also speaks to Riley, giving him the paper he threw on the ground in the interrogation room earlier. They might not be the idealistic little kids they used to be, but they are still brothers. Riley knows that Hank is trying, and that he hates to disappoint his brother. Mac points out that, with Angela dead, it would be easy for Hank to fall back into old habits. He tells Riley not to give up on his brother—Hank is going to need him. Hank walks into the gym while Riley is shooting some hoops, and they end up playing a friendly game together.

Danny is back in the lab full time, but there is no mention made of his previous promotion. The end of “Officer Involved” made quick work of the transition back into the lab, so I guess it’s no surprise that the team is back to business as usual this week. I wouldn’t expect the show to devote too much screentime to Danny’s return to the crime lab after the previous episode focused on the storyline, but I am disappointed that there wasn’t any sort of mention.

Lindsay and Flack have an exciting scene in the barbershop when they head in to speak with Blount. The man is casual when he talks to them, explaining away his DNA under Angela’s fingernails. When Lindsay steps aside to take a phone call, however, he’s watching her closely. She learns about the holographic bracelet and looks back at him, eyeing the bracelet on his arm and the missing hologram. Blount takes off before she can say anything, and Lindsay and Flack jump into action. Blount grabs a woman and holds a straight razor to her neck, threatening her life if the cops don’t let him go. Lindsay points out that she has a gun pointed at his head, and she can shoot him before he even thinks about hurting her. Lindsay’s dialogue during the stalemate seems a bit awkward, but it is nice to see her sharing an action scene with Flack—it reminds me of their takedown in last season’s “Vigilante”, and it’s good to see Lindsay out of the lab and alongside one of the show’s resident action heroes.

If Flack is the go-to guy for action scenes, Adam is the go-to guy for comedy. “Air Apparent” is no exception, and the dorky lab tech shares a hilarious moment with Jo in the lab. Adam has a white band on his head, and he leans back with his arms out and announces, “I’m taking my talents to South Beach, bitch! What up?” The lab tech sharing the room with him doesn’t even glance up, but Jo arrives in time to observe his behavior. She speaks up, asking when he’s leaving, and he quickly pulls off the headband and stammers his way through an explanation. He says it’s all for a good purpose, and Jo says she’s “all ears” with a smirk on her face. I’m not sure which part is more funny: that Jo walks in and catches him acting like a dork, or that the other lab techs are apparently so used to his antics that they don’t even notice them.

See also: “Air Apparent” episode guide

Synopsis:

DB, Morgan and Greg arrive in the middle of nowhere, expecting to find a dead body. Instead, they learn the man is still alive. He was shot in the shoulder, and a second bullet grazed his head. They document as much as they can before the medic gets the man into the helicopter. There are marks around his wrists, indicating he was bound, and there are stun gun marks on his neck. There’s no blood pool despite the gunshot wound, so this isn’t their primary crime scene.

Nick gives DB a call, telling him that he’s pulled a double homicide and could use some help. Since they are no longer dealing with a murder, DB says he’ll send Greg to the hospital with the wounded man and then he can join Nick at the double homicide crime scene. Morgan offers to go instead, and she hops into the helicopter before it lifts off.

The victims at Nick’s crime scene are a pair of Mad 10 gang members. Plasma cutters were used to cut through the metal security door at the back of the house, and the men were strangled with a wire. The killer was trying to get information out of them. Brass speaks to the company that owns the stolen plasma cutter, learning that an assistant by the name of Frank Cafferty stole some equipment the night before and didn’t show up for work this morning.

The victim currently on his way to the hospital crawled a short distance from the primary crime scene, leaving a bloody fingerprint on a rock. DB photographs the print and sends it to Mandy for testing, and they get a name back: the man in the helicopter is Frank Cafferty. He got out of jail six months ago after doing a 10 year stint for manslaughter. Meanwhile, Frank starts convulsing in the helicopter, and Morgan and the medic move forward to help him. However, Frank is only pretending, and he uses the opportunity to grab Morgan’s gun. He tells the pilot not to hit the emergency button, and he orders the man to take them south, toward Mexico.

The team finally figures out the connection between Frank and the Mad 10 gang. They look through personal items taken from Frank’s apartment, including a letter his daughter Samantha sent to him in jail four years ago. In it, she told him there was a better man in her life who was looking out for her, and she included a picture of herself sitting in the man’s lap. It’s one of the men Frank killed. There’s a URL jotted down on a piece of paper from Frank’s apartment as well, which links to a site with a porn video featuring a drugged Samantha. Frank wanted to rescue his daughter, and he tried to strangle information about her whereabouts from the Mad 10 members. Some amateur surveillance photographs from Frank’s apartment include a picture of a Porshe Cayenne, which fits with the luxury SUV tire tracks found at the scene. They trace the partial license plate number in the picture to the car’s owner, Alexander Zadian.

A small, secondary blood pool from the desert leads back to a girl named Tiffany Bamford, who has ties to the Mad 10s. She’s in the hospital. The gang used her in place of Samantha, making Frank think they killed her before they shot him and left him for dead. If they had to pretend to kill Samantha, that means she may be alive and out of their reach. If they can find her, perhaps they can get through to Frank and convince him to let the hostages go. Luckily, Samantha saw the news on TV and comes into the precinct to help. The police have a message repeating itself over and over on the radio, telling Frank that his daughter is alive and wants to speak to him. Frank responds, and Samantha tells her father that she’s fine. She starts to tell a story, but then she quickly yells for him to head to the “wishing well” because she’s sending someone to help him escape. They police drag her away, but the message has already been sent.

Frank orders the pilot to change course, but they’re almost out of fuel. Unfortunately, it’s all just a set up so the Mad 10s can get Frank once and for all. The team needs to figure out where the “wishing well” is so they can get there before the Mad 10s do. They search through the pictures of Frank and his daughter to find a photograph of the pair of them in front of a wishing well at an old theme park. The cops race to the abandoned park, but the gang arrives first. They shoot down the helicopter, killing the pilot and medic and wounding Frank further. Morgan is able to get him into one of the buildings to hide from the gang members. The police get there in time to engage the gang members and take them out, saving Morgan—but Frank doesn’t make it out alive.

Analysis:

“CSI Down” is a departure from the typical CSI episode, focusing on character over forensics. There is science involved, of course, but the knowledge that Morgan’s life is in danger drives the team to solve the case. The storyline brings the newest CSI front and center, and it gives the audience a glimpse into the strained relationship between Morgan and her father, Conrad Ecklie.

Morgan tries to form a connection with Frank in the helicopter, hoping that she can get the man to put down the gun and let them land. She asks about Samantha, the name he was muttering while partially conscious. He eventually reveals that she’s his daughter, and he believes she’s dead. He says he was a bad father, and he never had a relationship with her. Morgan talks about her own life, how her parents split up when she was 14 and she went to California with her mother. She was angry at the time that her father didn’t even fight for her to stay. Frank wonders if that would have been enough, and if Morgan forgave her father. She says she thought it was worth a shot, and they can get past whatever mistakes they made. Her father is a better man now, and he deserves a second chance.

Marc Vann really shines this week, bringing emotion and subtlety to Ecklie’s reactions throughout the episode. When he first learns about Morgan being in the hijacked helicopter, the expression on his face is perfect. He hasn’t had time to fully process the information, but it’s clear that he’s facing a father’s worst nightmare. When he learns that Frank believes he watched his daughter die, Ecklie can’t help thinking about what that may mean for his own daughter. He seems relieved and hopeful when Samantha arrives at the precinct and says she wants to help. As they wait for Frank to respond to the message over the radio, he paces back and forth. DB rationalizes why they haven’t received a response yet, and Ecklie says he has become a master at rationalization when it comes to Morgan. He told himself that she didn’t understand what he and her mother were arguing about when she was 14, that she was just a moody 16-year-old and didn’t mean the things she said to him, that she was simply too busy to call—then she showed up in Vegas with a chip on her shoulder, and he knows that she hates him. DB breaks in, telling Ecklie that this could be a second chance for the father and daughter. Ecklie knows that may be true, but his voice is wavering when he says that it can’t end like this.

Ecklie and DB have several great scenes, two very different fathers trying to find Morgan and bring her home. DB is a source of support for Ecklie as they search for the missing CSI, and it’s interesting to contrast the relationships that Morgan has with each man. DB is her boss, although he has taken on a paternal sort of dynamic with the younger members of the team. Ecklie is her father, but the pair of them barely have a relationship at all. When DB tells Ecklie about Morgan’s disappearance, he points out that she’s a member of his team and therefore her safety is his responsibility. Ecklie responds that she’s his daughter, but he quickly adds that DB has been a better supervisor than he has ever been a father. The men work together throughout the episode to bring Morgan home, and they are both there at the end of the episode when she is rescued. Ecklie runs up to Morgan and hugs her. He is relieved to see her alive and relatively unscathed. Despite her conversations with Frank, she isn’t quite ready to pretend that things are 100% okay between them, so she pulls away and asks if they can leave. She walks off with DB, who puts an arm around her shoulders and tells her she’ll be okay. At first, she says she’s fine, but she breaks down as they continue walking.

It’s interesting to see things developing between Morgan and Ecklie, and I like that we’re seeing a realistic progression of their relationship. Even if they both want to be a family again, it won’t be easy. They can’t just smile and pretend nothing ever happened. Morgan has a lot of pain and anger to deal with, and Ecklie has to face up to his guilt and the fact that he hasn’t been a good father for most of Morgan’s life. I’m looking forward to what’s in store for them going forward, and I hope both actors get more great material to work with. Elisabeth Harnois has been a great addition to the CSI cast, and this storyline is bringing a new, different family dynamic to the established team.

In contrast to DB’s calm, methodical investigating and Ecklie’s subdued fear for his daughter, Greg has a very impassioned response to Morgan’s kidnapping. He’s frantic to find her and bring her home, and he lets his emotions get the best of him several times. He suggests that they should just let Frank go; even if he’s a killer, they can let him escape to Mexico in exchange for guaranteeing Morgan’s safety. You can’t blame him for wanting to do whatever it takes to protect a colleague and friend, even if it’s not a reasonable or realistic option. DB doesn’t even consider the idea, and Greg is upset when he asks why DB isn’t willing to try it. DB rationally points out that he doesn’t think Samantha is trying to help her father; sure enough, Nick and Sara check surveillance footage from outside the precinct and discover that Samantha was dropped off by Zadian, one of the Mad 10 gang members. She is leading Morgan right into even more danger. Greg storms into the interrogation room and slams his fists on the table, yelling at Samantha and demanding to know where she sent the helicopter. Samantha calmly points out that the Mad 10s are her family now, and Frank has to pay for killing two of them. Greg has to be restrained (by Ecklie, no less), and he kicks a chair over and storms out of the room. At the end of the episode, Greg is in one of the cars rushing toward the abandoned theme park to rescue Morgan. He stays back at Brass’s order, but he rushes up when the area is secured to make sure that Morgan is okay.

I’m not sure if Greg’s reaction this week is out of friendship or something more—as I mentioned in my review for “Bittersweet”, it’s clear that Greg is developing feelings for Morgan, but things are in the early, undefined stages right now. Greg’s concern this week seems like more than just a man worried about the safety of a colleague—after all, the other CSIs are more professional with their investigation of the crime—but it’s not clear just what those feelings are at this point. I’m most eager to see Morgan’s relationship develop with her father, but I’m curious about what might be brewing between her and Greg as season twelve continues.

See also: “CSI Down” episode guide