Synopsis  

The two forensic teams come back together under the leadership of Grissom and Catherine just in time to tackle three separate investigations: a murdered couple found in bed in a suspicious trailer explosion; a beautiful stripper discovered dead and dumped in the worst part of town; and two bodies found baked and decomposed after spending five days in the trunk of a car exposed to the hot Vegas sun, forcing the CSIs to ‘wrap’ up the evidence and bring it back to the lab for further analysis.

The episode starts with a 402 – fire in a trailer park, with two victims (male and female). The CSIs are all back together, with Catherine giving direction to Warrick. Sara and Nick check the trailer (she takes outside, he takes inside) while a cop suggests it’s a meth lab. Brass learns from the neighbors that the woman was single and the car outside wasn’t hers, but no one saw anything. One neighbor says he heard the explosion and came out five minutes later because he was watching TV.

Catherine and Warrick leave to check out a 419 (dead body) in the industrial part of time. The woman was found in a bag for a dress and rubber boots. No ID other than that. Catherine notices Warrick’s ring and he confesses to having gotten married the day before. Vartann and David Phillips congratulate Warrick. David gives time of death as no more than four hours.

Back at the trailer park, daylight comes and Nick still can’t find the cause of the fire. Sara suggests the secondary explosion was from the meter exploding off the trailer like a missile, into the other pipe. Meanwhile at the lab, Greg follows up on the plates from the car at the trailer. He heads off, and Judy gives Grissom some evidence the detectives think are related to The Walter case (Nick being buried alive and all in “Grave Danger”). At the autopsy, they determine the mans body doesn’t match the scene, as he was run over. Brass interviews the wife, whose car matches tire prints found driving up to the trailer, and accuses her of murder and arson. Naturally she lawyered up. Grissom runs into Sofia, who had left to be a cop in Boulder City, CO, but came back to Las Vegas to be a detective. She’d never really wanted to be a CSI anyway.

Catherine and a female coroner check out their 419 and gets nothing. The rubber boots are from Streets and Sanitation, however, and a nearby code is marked EV. They track this down to a garbage truck driver who admits he found the woman barefoot on the road, gave her the boots and a lift, but didn’t know she was dead.

At the trailer park, Sara takes photos with Nick. The scene doesn’t make sense to them. There are tire tracks inside the trailer. They speculate that the wife drove into the trailer and over the husband in bed with the trailer trash. Sara goes to get something to eat leaving Nick alone. As he’s looking at evidence, a bug crawls on his arm and he freaks out a bit.

Vartann and Warrick check the surrounding area where they found the body. They find pay phones and print them, hoping she called 911. They also get the traffic cam to see if they can place the time of the call.

Back at the lab, Hodges says that the tires match the car of the wife (of the dead guy in the trailer), but the paint does not. Grissom photos the trailer and determines that the car used the gas pipe outside the trailer as a ramp, and launched through the trailer. He finds a headlamp to get them closer on the make of the car. Sofia, Sara and Grissom find a car that matches the description, but it’s been parked for over 5 days and has two dead bodies in the trunk, partly liquified.

In his A/V lab, Archie is listening to the tape that Nick had in the coffin (in “Grave Danger”) when Warrick walks in to check the video tape from the traffic camera. They determine the woman was a stripper on a limo bus (the Champagne Express) who got into an argument with the patron and dumped in a bad part of town. She was also Brooke Harris, a housewife taking stripper/pole dancing gym class. Her teacher had set her up for the job.

At the trailer park, Grissom, Nick and Brass run into the drunk guy (who’d left his trailer about five minutes after he heard the explosion). Apparently, while drunk, he’d hit the gas main, vaulted through the other trailer causing it to catch on fire, and then driven home. The car still worked, but the man was obviously messed up from it.

That leaves Sara and Greg to process the car with the liquid bodies. Greg has to reach in and unplug the drain, which splashes fluid on Sara and into his mouth. The two drain the car, saving the remains, and find a bullet.

Hodges has no good news on Catherine and Warrick’s case (the rust stain was caused by rust). The CSIs can’t figure out why their victim was so far from her car. Warrick wants to talk with Catherine, who’s obviously a little upset about his marriage, and explains that he did it because of what happened to Nick. It made Warrick rethink his life. Catherine confesses she’s jealous because Warrick was her fantasy man.

Bobby the ballistics guru finds a possible match for the bullet Greg found in the trunk of liquefied people. The gun was used in another crime. Sofia goes to play dectective, since she is one, and Sara meets up with Greg and Doc Robbins in the morgue. The man is white and around 25, while the girl is a teenager and black. Greg posits that it was racially motivated. Sara tracks down the girl as likely being Clara James. Clara’s father brings lots of DNA samples to Sofia, saying she wasn’t smart with people, but she was a good kid who worked at Gooeybunz. She hated the bunz, though, and yet they found a package in the car. Greg flirts a little with Sara as they check the bunz for bite marks, hoping to ID the man, but none were eaten. Instead every one was torn apart and Sara finds a baggy of cocaine in one.

Warrick and Catherine determine that Brooke couldn’t get her car because she had no money or ID. They go back to the crime scene where one of the cops had found re-bar but missed that it had blood on it. Warrick follows that to a crazy homeless man, who explained that Brooke took some of his money and he hit her with the re-bar.

Back on the liquified body case, Sara traces the cocaine to Joey Zack, who trafficked his drugs with the Gooeybunz. He’d asked Clara out. Greg pieces togeather the scraps of food left in the car along with the radio station to gather that they’d been at a drive-in. One of the workers there had recently quit, and they learn he’d bought drugs from Zack. They conjecture that he saw Zack, jacked the car, kidnapped the couple, shot them and shoved them in the trunk. And he got away.

At the end, Nick takes Warrick to dinner to celebrate the marriage. Catherine begs off to pick up her daughter, while Grissom says he’ll come, he just has one more thing to do. Grissom and Archie listen to the tape (see “Grave Danger”) and determine the kidnapper, David Walter, had an accomplice.

Review  

Not a stand out Sara episode, the one showed her doing what she does best: being witty and enjoying being a CSI. Sara allows her hypotheses to be advanced by the change in evidence, and she is quite comfortable showing Greg the ropes. Sara remains as disgusted as she did in “Bully for You” about liquified bodies (though perhaps this time her hair won’t retain that smell). She also seems to get along better with Sofia, now that she’s a detective and not a CSI.

Notes  

• Sara’s ‘specialty’ of evidence recovery pulls up the gas meter.
• Sara still sort of ignores Greg’s flirting.

Quotes  

Sara: You know, Metcalf, just because somebody lives in a trailer park doesn’t mean they’re a meth cook.

Sara: You know Greg, technically that makes you a cannibal. Grissom would be so proud.
Greg: Grissom would probably taste it on purpose.