CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

The team is back together again, and Grissom couldn't be happier. The reunion takes place at a trailer park between the Strip and Boulder City, a place turned into a war zone by the rupture and subsequent explosion of a natural gas pipe that has demolished a mobile home. Catherine chooses Warrick to work with her on the perimeter, while Greg handles the sketch. Brass conducts the interviews, which include a nosy lady and a sleepy drunkard. Sara, Grissom, and a stoic Nick enter the smoldering wreckage. They find two dead bodies - Robert Durgee, 30's, in bed with the homeowner, Selena March. She's dressed for sex. The bodies are singed, half-covered with debris, and there are gaping holes in the front and back walls.

Catherine gets a 419 call. A female dead body is found off Industrial Road ("G-String Row"). Again, she chooses Warren to work it with her. Upon arrival, Detective Vartann leads them to the side of a mini-mart where the victim, who is in her 30's, is sprawled near some discarded boxes. She was killed by blunt force trauma to the head. She's got large rubber work boots on and a plastic shopping bag covering her g-string attire. A homeless stripper? The Detectives look around for a weapon as Officer Michaels stakes a rebar rod strung with yellow tape, marking the border of the crime scene. David Phillips sets the T.O.D. at under four hours. Catherine notices that Warrick is wearing a wedding band. He says it's because he got married yesterday at a drive-through on Circus Circus way. Catherine is stunned. The men offer congratulations. Back at the trailer park, a Meth Lab explosion is ruled out after cataloguing the contents of the destroyed mobile home. Sara has found the gas meter and thinks an explosion inside the home launched it like a missile into the gas main. What Grissom wants to know is, where did it all start? The Acura found outside belongs to Robert Durgee. His wife's name is on the insurance card in the glove box. They'll notify her. At CSI reception, Grissom receives a small parcel from the Flora Nevada Nursery. It's a cassette tape, the one that was inside the coffin with Nick, residual evidence in the Walter Gordon case. Grissom's going to keep this particular item close to the vest. On the way down the hall he runs into Detective Sofia Curtis who has been reassigned out of Boulder City to work with CSI. We sense she missed Grissom, and vice-versa.

The autopsy on the bodies of Selena March and Robert Durgee reveal that she died of smoke inhalation, and he died from fatal crushing injuries to the abdomen. Grissom isn't convinced of the latter, and wants photo enhancements of the man's bruises. Nick sets up a Kodak Wratten 18-A filter onto a tripod and, under an ultraviolet floodlight, takes a series of flash photos 12 inches above the body. They're transferred to a laptop, the UV light filtering out the surface bruises, revealing tire marks on Robert Durgee abdomen. They're now looking at a hit-and-run homicide. The tire tread on Durgee's body matches a 1996 Ford Ranger, a car driven by his wife. She's brought in and confesses to Brass that she was out with a married man the night of her husband's murder. She thought he was working late. The Ford Ranger is down in Mexico with her brother, and she has no idea when he'll return. Brass likes her for the murder, and runs the "hit-and-run scenario" on her husband by her. Of course, she torched his lover's mobile home, too. She thinks it's crazy. Brass knows from crazy. In the coroner's washroom, Catherine processes the homeless stripper. The woman was in terrific physical shape, even had manicured nails. Warrick enters, feels his colleague's estranged vibe, but stays focused on the case. The large rubber work boots removed from the victim have the initials "E.V." on them. Catherine has linked them to a Streets & Sanitation worker on duty that night-Eddie Vonner. Catherine and Vartann interview Eddie who is nervous about losing his job. It's against the rules to pick up anything other than trash, but the victim ran up to him hysterical, barefoot, wearing bikini bottoms and a trash bag. She begged for his boots, so he gave them to her and a lift out of the crime-infested area. Not wanting to veer off his route, he dropped her off at Industrial and Western. He feels proud about his good deed until Catherine informs him that the stripper died four blocks from there. Meanwhile, Nick and Sara examine a plethora of mobile home debris on a large tarp. If the jealous wife (Mrs. Durgee) torched the trailer they would see small debris embedded on the interior walls. They have zilch. However, Nick finds a piece of exterior wall with a tire track on it. Sara points out blue paint scrapings on the gas main. Maybe Mrs. Durgee didn't wait for her husband to come out of his lover's mobile home to run him over? Maybe she just ran right through the place? Nick takes the exterior wall piece over to the mobile lab to see if the blue markings match the paint stock to a '96 Ford Ranger. Sara leaves to get lunch. Nick has a cockroach climb up on his forearm. His reaction is primal, instantaneous. He smashes the bug and tries to collect himself. Nobody sees this moment of delayed stress syndrome, obviously induced by the trauma he endured during the "Grave Danger" episode.

Night falls. Warrick and Detective Vartann scout Jefferson and K Street, the location where the sanitation man, Eddie Vonner, picked up the homeless stripper. They find her broken high heels. Warrick dusts for prints on a nearby phone booth. Vartann will get the 911 call records and the video off the traffic cameras in the area. The next day, Nick is back to square one with Grissom at the trailer park. The paint markings on the gas pipe and tire tread marks did not match up to a '96 Ford Ranger. Grissom notices that there are no tire tracks between the gas main and the mobile home, but there's an impact crater with bits of headlamp glass on the opposite side of the residence. Maybe the trailer home wasn't rammed? Maybe it was a "through-and-through?" A car came off the road at high speed, hit the gas main, which served as a ramp, and the explosion vaulted the car through the trailer home, across the lovers while they were in bed, and out the other side. A "flying car?" Strange, but possible. Later, Nick gets a partial OEM number on a recovered headlamp piece. It belongs to a '97 Pontiac. The blue paint and tire print also match up to that stock profile. He passes that info off to Detective Brass who will put out a broadcast. A Pontiac matching the description is found in Nellis. Sophia is on scene when Grissom and Sara arrive. The registration is a fake, and there are two bodies found in the trunk, a male and a female in serious decomposition. Grissom orders a car condom. Sara gets the task of sealing the vehicle for transport back to the lab. In the A/V lab, Archie plays Warrick the disrupted 911 call from the homeless stripper. The traffic camera video shows her being yanked out of the phone booth by an angry, territorial hooker. Warrick has Archie rewind the video to an earlier time code. It shows their victim being shoved out of a shuttle van - not the kind that makes airport runs. It's a strip club on wheels. Catherine and Vartann interview Marcus Corcoran, a driver who gave a bunch of casino whales and CEOs a "champagne ride" down Las Vegas Boulevard the night the stripper was murdered. Warrick is processing the shuttle van, which has a pole in the middle for the girls to do their thing. It's clear that it is a sex party wagon. He finds a purse with cash, cell phone and I.D. Their homeless stripper is Brooke Harris, from an upscale residential neighborhood. Marcus testifies that she wouldn't put out for a client, so the man demanded that the driver stop the vehicle and give her the heave-ho. Marcus did what he was told, never mind that he dropped the woman off in a war zone. He figured that strippers are tough chicks, that she'd get herself home one way or another. Warrick notes that the victim's cell phone received five unanswered calls from a "Giselle." Tracing the calls lead them to the Tone Gym where Giselle teaches a cardio striptease class to suburban housewives. Brooke was a student. She loved attention and wanted the fantasy of doing the real thing. Catherine coldly measures Giselle, and accuses the former stripper of feeding her student to the sharks. Why? Because Giselle's a bitter woman who never had a nice home in the suburbs, or a man who didn't screw her over. She called five times hoping to hear what a miserable, humiliating time Brooke was having.

Brass brings Grissom and Nick back to the trailer park. He pulled up all the R.O.'s on 1997 blue Pontiac Sunfires and came up with Randy Swansiger--the sleepy drunkard. He's had two DWIs. When confronted, Randy confesses to falling asleep at the wheel the night of the trailer fire. He remembers a crash-boom-bang! When he woke up, his car was still running, so he just parked it and went to bed. Realizing he's not talking to a sympathetic audience, he tries a feeble escape attempt. It's pathetic. Meanwhile, Hodges informs Catherine and Warrick that the rusty particles found in Brooke Harris' hair were rusty particles. Ferric oxide. Found on nearly every iron object on planet earth. Not a case breaker...

Meanwhile, Sara and Greg have a comical time draining the decomp fluid from the Pontiac Grand Am. Sara lifts prints. Greg finds a bullet fragment in his strainer. They also find a bunch of sticky cinnamon gooeybuns, all torn up save for one found under the front seat. Greg learns from Bobby Dawson in Ballistics that the bullet frag is most likely a match for a .44 in a drug-related shooting in Mesquite five days ago--two days after their victims ended up in the trunk of the stolen Pontiac. Someone's on crime spree. Sara pushes Sophia to run down a list of thirteen suspects connected to the prints lifted. Meanwhile, Dr. Robbins' autopsy of the two victims reveals some interesting skeletal clues that help with the identification process. The male shows a lack of prognathism, making him a Caucasian, mid-twenties. The female is prognathic, making her African-American. Also, her unfused epiphyseal makes her a teenager. She died from a .44 round to the back of the head. The male took a bullet through the mouth. Greg and Sara work the Missing Persons Database and strike out on the male, but they find a profile that fits the girl, a sweet sixteen-year-old, Clara James. Sara interviews the girl's father, Mr. James. He tells her that Clara was a rebellious teen, and that she worked at Gooeybunz. When told that several torn remnants of the sweet rolls were found in the car, he seems puzzled. Clara hated those damn things, wouldn't eat them. That takes Sara and Sophia to the lab where they dissect the Gooeybunz scraps looking for bite marks. However, Sara opens the one undamaged bun found under the front seat of the Pontiac and extracts a bag of cocaine. The Gooeybunz were packaging to distribute drugs. On the list of thirteen suspects Sara passed to Sophia is one with a felony conviction for coke trafficking: Joey Zack. His print was lifted off the radio tuner, which was set to 107.1 FM. Hodges comes in with a chemical breakdown of some candy also found in the car. Greg puts together that the only place to get that radio station clearly and that kind of candy is at the Moonlight Drive-In Theatre. At the drive-in, the manager informs them that a Darryl Blakeny worked there but quit last week to go home to his parents' place in Mesquite. In the CSI Break Room, Sara, Greg, Sophia and Grissom conclude that Darryl, who was in court-ordered rehab, was a customer of Joey Zacks. He saw Joey and Clara at the drive-in, lost his will to stay sober, and went after his former dealer's coke supply, taking them hostage, later robbing and murdered them. The Pontiac was found a block from his last known residence. Two days later he uses the same gun in another drug crime in Mesquite, his parents' hometown. A warrant is put out on Blakeny for the double-homicide. Having the man in the system now is progress, but the CSI Team knows it will do little to lessen the pain for Clara James' father. Before going back into the field, Warrick wants to cut through the estranged vibe between he and Catherine. After seeing what happened to Nick, he figured life was short, and made a decision to marry a girl he had been seeing, Tina. Catherine owns up to the fact that it is, for her, the end of a fantasy. They return to Industrial Road, retracing Brooke Harris' footsteps. The woman begged to get her Mercedes back from a parking attendant, but she didn't have the ten bucks. She was just another g-string freak. At the site where her body was found, Warrick notices that the hapless Officer Michaels used a rusty rebar rod to anchor the crime scene tape. It has blood on it. The admonished officer points to where he found it, and they come upon a crazed homeless man. When Catherine and Warrick show the man Brooke Harris' photo, he hisses "She's a thief. Stealing's a crime." They realize they have found their killer. That night, in the A/V Lab, Grissom huddles with Archie, listening to the audio enhancement of Walter Gordon's voice on the cassette tape. "Hi, CSI guy. You wondering why you're here? Because you followed the evidence. Because that's what CSIs do. So breathe quick, breathe slow. Put your gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Any way you like. You're going to die here… Okay?" And then there's a slight pause, and a new voice says "Perfect." Grissom knew it would be there. Why? Because Walter Gordon was in control. He knew exactly what he wanted, and if that "Okay?" had been meant for Nick, it would not have been presented as a question. Walter Gordon was working with somebody. The cassette tape is too mangled. Archie can't tell him if that somebody is male or female. Should they ask Nick? No. Grissom makes it clear the revelations of the tape must stay with them.