Synopsis  

It starts out in a casino with a guard having his gun stolen and a guest shoots him with it. The shooter takes a hostage and the casino calls in the SWAT team. Jim Brass arrives with SWAT as the negotiator. Once the floor is cleared, they try and open the door. The shooter shoots through the door and we flash back to 15 hours before.

Brass, Grissom, Warrick, David and Doc Robbins are on the scene of a domestic homicide case, where the wife (Janice Cutler) was shot in the face. There is no other signs of a struggle in the room, and Grissom is suspicious. There was signs of sex, but not rape, in the body. The gun was placed inside the mouth. Grissom admits he was only close to marriage when he was seven.

Sara and Warrick inspect the house. Warrick laments he and Tina got married so fast. Warrick finds light porn in the house. The gardener’s sock was found in the bedroom, and the young man, Timmy, admits that he’d been having an affair with Janice. Timmy says that her husband, Willie, was in a rage, but both were alive when he left.

The prints on the porn match the husband, and Nick calls one of the numbers. Sally, the hooker, says that she’d been screwing around with Willie, and he’d given her his card. Catherine goes to Willie’s office, where a man is found dead on the floor. Another body is dead in the back office, and one man is alive in the back office: Willie Cutler. Willie had no idea his wife was dead.

At the second scene, the bullets trajectory confirm Willie’s story. Willy also claims to have not known Janice was sleeping with Timmy. Willie’s story has a few holes, however, as he claims to have lost money at the tables, rather than spending it with Sally and so on. The CSI’s verify this as the taxi driver who picked up ‘Sammy’ had the fare recorded, and it was Willie.

Willie, however, has an older brother, named Sammy, who just got out of prison for grand theft auto. Sammy had ditched his taxi ride to the Lucky Dragon, wanting to go to a casino, so Warrick takes the information to the casino. At the casino, Warrick sees his wife, who lies about where she is. They argue, and Warrick tells her to leave, presuming she’s cheating on him, when in reality she was planning his birthday party.

Doc Robbins comes to give Sara the autopsy reports, and says that Willie’s ‘gunshot’ wound was actually done by a sharp object that left a blue trail. Like a pen. Willie’s shirt is clean of GSR, and it becomes apparent he stabbed himself with a ball-point pen to make it look like he was shot. Grissom finds traces of Janice’s blood on Willie’s shirt and tells Brass to get Willie. They suspect the brothers were in on it together.

Willie arrives at the casino, takes the guard’s gun, shoots him, takes a woman hostage, and takes the elevator upstairs, bringing us back to where we were in the beginning.

Willie takes a very long time to answer the phone when Brass calls, wanting to come in and talk. Brass is unarmed, and Willie lets him in. Willie says that Sammy was trying to help him, and Brass says he’ll trade Sammy for hostage. The catch being that the CSI’s don’t actually have Sammy.

Willie confesses that he’d blown the $5000 on a hooker, thinking he’d be getting a a $15,000 promotion. But Willie was passed over and then wired himself $50K, all his money. Willie took the money to the Lucky Dragon, so he tried to win big, but it all went south. When Willie got home and confessed to his wife, she insulted him, and Sammy shot her. Willie decided to use his money to get Sammy safe. He went to the office and found his co-workers dead, and realized that his brother did it to protect him.

The kicker is that Sammy died a month ago. Brass calls out the safe word, Willie shoots him, and the SWAT team kills Willie.

Review  

Sara works the side of the case involving the dead wife.

Quotes  

Sara: And grass, not the kind you smoke on the floor in the closet. But all the shoes in the closet were clean.
Warrick: So someone was walking around in here with grass on their shoes? Maybe it was the missing husband… or a desperate gardener.
Sara: Who was mowing more than the lawn.