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In tonight's episode, the season finale, we open with Jim Brass being shot in slow-motion. The CSIs and paramedics rush to his aid and take him to the hospital. Once he's inside the room for surgery, he crashes. The doctors are able to restart his heart with the defibrillator.
We cut to a scene which presumably took place some time ago, with Jim Brass speaking to Grissom. Brass tells Grissom that he's the only person he trusts with his life and would like him to have power attorney over him.
We then move back to the hospital, where a surgeon briefs Grissom about Brass' condition. He was shot twice. One bullet was lodged in his vest and the other is lodged near his heart. Grissom then receives a call about a case. There's a dead body near the railroad tracks in Henderson. Because of this, Grissom has to leave the hospital and get to work.
As Grissom arrives to the scene at the railroad tracks, he and Sofia talk about Brass. She just talked to Undersheriff McKeen and has learned he's in pretty bad shape. They then walk further down the tracks and come upon a dead body lying in between the tracks. A train ran the person over about an hour ago and the engineer couldn't stop in time. One noticeable injury is the body was decapitated. Nick thinks it's likely from the train, but the head is nowhere to be found. Nick notices that there's virtually no blood on the ground, which is odd if this is where the decapitation took place. Grissom agrees but he thinks the body was likely dragged quite a ways, until the train came to a stop. Without the head, Grissom sends Nick to go look for it. Grissom and Nick split up to look for it, and Grissom finds a toupé. David Berman enters the scene to examine the body and is shocked to see that the person's waist is so narrow. It seems to have been compressed.
After the credits roll, we rejoin David Berman trying to obtain a liver temperature, which can give them an idea of when the person died. Unfortunately, the liver isn't in the normal place, which is causing David to poke multiple holes into the body, to which Grissom asks, "are you getting the liver temp or performing acupuncture?" He's eventually able to find the liver, but the body doesn't look any better with all of the holes in it. Sara wonders if the man committed suicide... maybe lost a ton of cash at the tables and wanted to end it all.
At a hotel in the city, Catherine walks down a hallway, being briefed by the super. He found a deceased man, Manny Rupert, in his hotel room. Manny had been playing music pretty late that night, so the super knocked on the door to ask him to turn it down, but found Manny was dead, so he called in the police. The super is very talkative and seems interested in some sort of reward, so when Catherine gets to Manny's room, she tells the super to "stay here and shut up." Catherine then enters the hotel room and finds a lot of booze and cake on the table. Warrick and Dr. Robbins join her and are surprised by all of the booze in the room. The man clearly partied well into the night. Dr. Robbins believes Manny died only three or four hours ago, based on the amount of body rigor. Warrick picks up the wallet and notices there's no cash left. As Catherine makes her way around the room, she finds broken glass on the floor near the bed. A few pieces of glass appear to have blood on it, likely because someone without shoes stepped on it, cutting his/her feet. On the nightstand, Warrick finds a lot of pills, and inside, a pistol. Catherine checks the wall across from the bed and finds a few bullet holes. Someone shot out the mirror, which explains the broken glass.
Back to the railroad crime scene, we catch up with Nick, who walks across a bridge and finds a large barrel which was used to burn something. It's parked in the middle of a small stream. Inside the barrel, Nick picks something out with a stick, but it's unclear what it is exactly. Near the barrel, in the stream, Nick finds the head from the body.
In the morgue, David and Sara examine the body of the decapitated man. Nick is in the crime lab, sifting through the ashes from the barrel.
After a while, we find Dr. Robbins briefing Grissom on the body of the decapitated man. The organs have been displaced because of the compression on his waist. Also, there are a number of blisters on his body, some of which are fresh, but some of them have scarring, going back years. Dr. Robbins believes this is all from a consistent compression of the waist, going back many years. The cause of death wasn't decapitation, but rather a gunshot to the head, from the underside of his face.
Back at the hospital, a surgeon speaks to Grissom, telling him the options for Brass. They're not sure if they should remove the bullet because it could cause him to have a stoke and be permanently incapacitated. If they leave the bullet in him, the bullet may move through the artery, towards the heart, causing him to get a stroke, or it may just stay there for years, not causing him any trouble. Since he has power of attorney, Grissom tells the surgeon to remove the bullet. After speaking with the surgeon, Grissom gets on the phone and calls Jim Brass' daughter, Ellie. He leaves her a message on her answering machine, telling her about her father and asking her to come and see him. We then see Ellie smoking a cigarette in California, listening to the message. She doesn't seem to be in a rush to call him back or to visit... she seems unsure of what to do.
In the crime lab, David Hodges tells Nick that the victim's body had a lot of cortisone in it, likely to reduce the amount of pain he would suffer from the compression of his waist. The fibers found on the body are raw wool, dyed grey. The clothing may be very old, given the fact that there is insect activity in the clothing, possible moths or mites. Nick then leaves the crime lab and joins Grissom in the hallway to get an update on Brass. We learn Brass is being prepped for surgery.
Elsewhere in the lab, Warrick gets an update from Henry Andrews, who tells him Manny Rupert's blood-alcohol level was .28, very high for most people. Manny also has cocaine, barbiturates, opioids, meth, THC, and almost everything else imaginable in his body. Mandy Webster then enters and tells them that she's been able to find out the person he was with that night, Sindee Houston, a local prostitute.
Back to the morgue, Dr. Robbins tells Catherine that there's evidence of sexual activity in Manny's body, including his ears. Manny also ate enough cake to cater a wedding. They're interrupted by David Phillips, who brings in a dead body. He claims he just came from the hospital, which immediately makes Catherine and Dr. Robbins think of Jim Brass, but David realizes this and tells them that the person on the cart is from a traffic accident. They're both relieved to hear this.
Grissom stops by the hospital to check on Brass. He's surprised to see Greg sitting where Undersheriff McKeen was earlier. Greg tells him he went to get something to eat. Also, Brass has apparently just went into surgery. They then have a brief and awkward conversation about what Grissom and Brass do when they hang out. Grissom tells him they don't hang out together. They're interrupted when Grissom hears Ellie yelling at a woman who tells her she can't see her father right now because he's in surgery. He goes over and introduces himself to her. Since she can't see her father, she wants him to let her into her father's place so that she can take a shower and catch some sleep. Grissom doesn't want to, but offers to get her a room at a hotel. Ellie gets upset at this offer because she thinks that Grissom thinks of her only as a prostitute, which is what she's been doing in California. She then storms out, leaving Grissom surprised.
Back at the crime lab, Sara visits Grissom in his office. She finds him examining old texts on the act of men using corsets to narrow their waist. She tells him that the bone used in the corset was whale bone.
Across town, a specialist, Mr. Phillipe, dealing with corsets is questioned in his place of business. He's shocked when he finds out one of his customers was killed. Sara shows him a photo of his head, and Mr. Phillipe identifies the man as Caleb Carson. He comes in once a year for a restitch and reinforcing. She then asks him for his address.
Sara and Sofia visit Caleb Carson's house to take a look around. It seems he's quite a civil war buff. Sofia notices a glass case of guns with bullets, which seem to be a similar caliber to that of the bullet used to kill Caleb.
After a commercial break, we rejoin the search of Caleb Carson's house. Grissom is fascinated by the incredible amount of detail of a miniature re-enactment scene someone made at Caleb's house. Sofia stops by and tells him Brass is out of surgery but hasn't yet regained consciousness. Sofia asks if the military scene is Gettysburg because her father is a military history buff. Grissom believes the scene is actually Pickett's Charge... Caleb Carson is a son of the south. Grissom and Sofia walk into the bedroom and find Sara dusting a corset for prints. Since it laced from the back, she knows it would have been impossible for him to lace by himself; he needed help. Grissom opens a small photo album and finds one of Caleb's family members, also dressed in a corset.
Outside of the hospital, Warrick runs into Ellie, who's smoking a cigarette. Warrick tells her that Brass would like to see her when he wakes up, but she's not so sure and walks away.
In the interrogation, Catherine questions Sindee Houston, the woman who spent time with Manny Rupert. She tells Catherine that she had a great time for a while. She says most guys are good through one or two, but he wanted more after six, if you know what I mean. Anyway, when she was tired of having sex, she tried to leave, but he shot the mirror out, so she ran out. She says that he was "whacked out" but alive when she left.
Back at the crime lab, Warrick asks Mandy Webster if she's finished processing the prints from Manny's room. Warrick is looking for the prostitute's prints on something which would give them proof that she may have had something to do with Manny's death. Unfortunately, she didn't touch the booze or the bottles of pills.
In the interrogation room, Sofia interviews Gregory Kimble, Caleb Carson's driver and personal dresser. He tells her he helped lace up Caleb each morning. He then tells her that the last time he saw Caleb was the previous morning, during a duel held at a reenactment of the battle of Gettysburg.
With the new information, Sofia and Grissom visit the battlefield. Sofia asks a union soldier why on earth they would have a duel. It seems the union soldier was on the cell phone with his wife and upset Caleb, so he challenged the union soldier to a duel. They then made their way to a small portion of the field for the duel, but unknown to the union soldier, Caleb's gun had an actual bullet in it, so when he pulled the trigger, the union soldier found himself injured in his left arm. He decided to run, out of fear. He tells Sofia and Grissom that he didn't call the police because he didn't know what Caleb would do to him if he did.
After a commercial break, we find Sara and Grissom re-enacting the duel with their cameras. The take ten paces, turn to one another and take a photograph. They then look down in hopes of finding blood or something which validates the story told by the union soldier. Sara verifies that the man was shot because there was a bit of blood on the ground. Grissom, however, finds a lot of blood where Caleb would have been. He believes Caleb may have been killed here and not on the railroad tracks.
At the hospital, Ellie Brass is looking at her father from a few feet away. He's in the ICU and on watch. Nick watches her and tells Grissom that she's been drinking a lot of coffee, going outside for cigarettes, and talking on her cell phone. He promises to keep in touch should anything change. Grissom is at the crime lab, on his way to meet with Bobby Dawson. They use a Hawkeye Boroscope to examine the barrels of the pistols they took from the battlefield. The gun they examine doesn't appear to have fired an actual bullet in some time because there is still dried wheat particles used to seal the gunpowder in the cylinder is still there.
In the hallway, Warrick tells Darcy Rupert, Manny's sister, that Manny likely died from diabetic shock. He had been recently diagnosed as being diabetic. We learn that the family has a long history of people with the same health problems, with few of them living to the age of forty. Manny just turned forty and basically decided to give up. He spent the night with an attractive woman and went out with a smile on his face. Warrick doesn't morally agree with Manny's decision to give up on life, which upsets Darcy. She doesn't appreciate the fact that Warrick is judging her brother. He apologizes and they part ways.
Back in his office, Grissom is researching medical information regarding gunshots and operations. It's obvious that the decisions he's made regarding Brass is weighing on him. He's visited by Sofia Curtis, who tells him that Ellie has been looking into her father's pension and death benefits. Wendy Simms then enters with some results for him on Caleb. The epithelials on the toupé don't match Caleb, meaning it belongs to someone else.
In the interrogation room, Sofia and Sara interview Gregory Kimble, Caleb's driver. The toupé is believed to belong to him. He tells them that Caleb's death was an accident. He tried to wrestle the gun away from Caleb when Caleb shot the union soldier. Unfortunately, the gun went off when it was pointed at his chin, killing him. Mr. Kimble tells them that he had to move the body because Caleb wouldn't have wanted to be found like that. He then mentions that Caleb's Great-Great-Great Grandfather died trying to stop a union train from entering Virginia. He stood in the middle of the tracks, shooting the train with his revolver. He was obviously run over by the train.
Back at the lab, Ellie is escorted inside by an officer. She's brought to her father's office, where Grissom is waiting for her. He asks her to sit down. When she does so, she's surprised to find her father's desk with her photograph on it. It's of her as just a small child. Ellie tells Grissom that it's easy to love a puppy.
At the hospital, the surgeon on call pours a cup of coffee as he speaks to Catherine. She receives a call from her 14 year-old daughter, Lindsay, who is upset about not being able to go to a movie. There's then a Code Blue alert, so the surgeon rushes in to tend to Jim Brass. All of this takes place as Grissom and Ellie arrive to the hospital. He's able to get him to come back. His eyes then open a little bit for a moment. Seeing her father go through this makes Ellie leave the area.
A bit later, Grissom walks in and gives Jim Brass some water. He thanks Gil for not pulling the plug on home. Grissom points out his little fan club. Catherine, Greg, Sara, Nick, Dr. Robbins, and Warrick are outside, looking on. They're ecstatic to see that he's doing much better. When he sees that Jim is doing fine, Gil sighs heavily.
Later that evening, Gil is in a bed, wearing a night shirt, speaking to seemingly no one about how he would prefer to die. Gil wants to be warned in advance. He'd prefer something like cancer, so that he can take time to re-read Moby Dick, visit the rain forest again, and enter a chess tournament. As the camera turns around, we see the room from Gil's perspective. Sara enters the room, from the bathroom. She's wearing a robe and says "I'm not ready to say goodbye." This ends tonight's episode, the season finale. It leaves more questions than answers.