CSI: Grissom's Divine Comedy (Episode 812)

Three months ago, I said I thought the strike would kill the rest of season eight. I was wrong, and that is why the closest I will get to Las Vegas is recapping this show. Anyway, welcome back! When we last left the gang Sara had taken a sabbatical (SHUT UP, she IS coming back), Grissom was alternately mopey and cranky, Catherine was hot, Nicky was also hot, Greg was adorably annoyed with Grissom for letting Sara get away, Brass was awesome and snarky, Hodges was crushing on Wendy, Doc Robbins was hilariously creepy as ever, and Warrick was saddled with the worst personal storyline I think this show has ever seen.

We open with a series of shots - Grissom brewing some concoction, a grand jury being sworn in, a burning car, a thuggish-looking dude with a shaved head and many tattoos - while we hear a woman's voice tell Ecklie that her case is pretty much hosed because her witness is now carbecue, and she wants Grissom to investigate the death. We see the woman pull up to the wreckage, with the fire now put out by emergency personnel, and she insists that Ecklie tell Grissom she asked for him personally. She hangs up and goes over to greet Brass, who calls her "Maddie" and repeats what Ecklie apparently already told her, that Grissom is home sick. Maddie doesn't care, because her chances of getting an indictment against a certain gang leader depend on what's uncovered in the death of her witness. Doc Robbins calls them over to the body and she introduces herself as Deputy DA Madeline Klein. Robbins shows them that besides the obvious burns, Don Cook also has a bullet wound in his back.

Over at Grissom's (and Sara's) apartment, he listens to opera and stirs some chicken soup, occasionally hacking into a handkerchief. Hank lies on the floor next to him, waiting patiently for a piece of chicken to accidentally drop. Grissom's phone rings and he picks it up, seeing the caller ID shows Ecklie is on the other end. He drops his head and sighs wearily, knowing his sick day has come to a forced end. "Are you still going to eat that?" Hank barks.

After the credits, we discover that Grissom has found a good compromise - he's leading the investigation as Maddie requested, but he's still keeping his ooky germs at home and having Catherine be his eyes and ears out in the field. As the credits roll, I am struck by two things. One, apparently this fiery crash took place in the lushly green and misty hills of Ireland. Two, I see that Maddie, who looked vaguely recognizable but I couldn't place her, is played by Bonnie Bedelia. Wow, really? She's...changed a lot since she was married to Bruce Willis and punching out annoying reporters on an airplane controlled by terrorists. Anyway, Catherine gives Grissom the details of the case but before he can respond, Maddie demands to talk to him. She tells him that walking pneumonia is no excuse for dodging her request and that she once got out of bed for him. She hands the phone back to Catherine, who gleefully asks whose bed Maddie left. However, Grissom isn't in the mood for gossip and asks for information about the road. Catherine takes a picture of the debris path and e-mails it to Grissom, while Warrick teases Greg about being bundled up in a sweater and scarf when everyone else is in short sleeves. Greg's in no mood for joking, though, because he's also sick.

Catherine meanders over to the car and takes another photo, then hears a loud sneeze. Nicky pops up from the other side of the car and says he hopes he's not also getting sick, then tells her that it looks like the fire started in the engine. Catherine says that doesn't happen accidentally in newer cars but they won't know for sure until they get it back to the lab. Catherine also notes the driver's door, which is closed even though the victim was found outside, and says people on fire don't take the time to close doors. Nicky says the firemen claim the pressure of the hose probably caused the door to shut. "Hosers," Catherine mutters. HEE. Catherine spots something on the bumper and when Nicky wipes away the soot, they see that it's the tag for La Tierra, the gang whose member Maddie is prosecuting.

Maddie barges into Grissom's (and Sara's) apartment with an insult ("You look like hell."), a box of evidence, and a demand for sugar. "Nice to see you, too, Maddie," Grissom replies wryly. Maddie is still disgruntled that Grissom is investigating the case from home but he assures her that his team won't screw it up. Maddie rattles off the litany of screw-ups his team has already been involved in and Grissom hands her a soda and asks if she's done. She smiles and apologizes, then gives him a DVD. It's the questioning of Don Cook, who thought he had been brought in for a traffic violation, but Brass wants to ask him if he saw anyone at the red light he ran. Maddie says that La Tierra's main enforcer, who carved the gang's tag into his victims' faces, was a ghost until Don was able to identify him as Emilio Alvarado. Alvarado was spotted by Don at the light moments after a nearby man was murdered and tagged. Alvarado was arrested for a parole violation shortly after and it wasn't until Don's statement that Maddie knew she had the enforcer. However, he's due to be released in 52 hours unless Maddie can get an indictment and she says that's gotten a lot harder with her main witness dead.

In Brass' office, he talks to Cody, Don's wife. She said she last saw her husband the night before and admits she didn't want Don to testify. When Brass asks her if anyone else knew Don was a witness, she says she told her parents and her best friend.

Down in the morgue, Robbins tells Catherine that the concentration of Don's burns are consistent with an engine fire. He also hands her a bullet and says the cause of death was from the gunshot. In the lab's garage, Nicky, who has indeed gotten sick, is processing the car. Greg joins him and after they whine a bit about both being sick, Greg says they've been directed to find out if Don got shot before getting in the car, while in the car, or after he got out. Greg finds skin on the seatbelt and since it's unlikely Don took the time to buckle up if he was shot, they cross out the theory that he was shot before getting in the car. Nicky also thinks the second scenario is unlikely because they would've found evidence of someone else being in the car. He finds the remnant of a rag in the engine and thinks the same person who tampered with the car may have followed Don and shot him to make sure Don ended up dead.

The grand jury is freaking out over the death of the main witness and Grissom and Maddie are trying to calm them down, but it doesn't work because they don't have much to tell. Grissom says he doesn't know yet who killed Don, and Maddie adds that until Grissom can corroborate Don's statement they can't share what Don was going to tell them. One of the jurors asks the big question: how did La Tierra find out about Don and could they also come after the jury members? Unfortunately, Grissom and Maddie can't allay their fears.

Grissom's back at his (and Sara's) apartment after talking to the grand jury and he may be sick, but he's looking damn fine with his untucked dress shirt and tie draped loosely around his neck. Brass pays a visit, claiming he has more files for Grissom to look over, but it's easy to tell that he's got something on his mind. Grissom invites him in, offering tea instead of the coffee Brass requests. Brass tells Grissom that Don first refused to testify, so Brass took him out to lunch and told him about a teenage girl Alvarado had raped, murdered, and urinated on. That changed Don's mind and Brass says he promised Don that he and his family would be protected. Two days after agreeing to testify, Brass tearfully tells Grissom, Don was dead. On a lesser show Grissom would tell Brass it's not his fault, maybe even hug him, but because this show is strong with the subtle fu, Grissom simply hands him a mug of tea and gives him a sympathetic look.

In the garage, Nicky is still processing the car, hacking and sneezing all over the place. Warrick arrives and tells Nicky to get the hell out before he contaminates any more of the evidence. Well, he's more diplomatic than that, but you just know that's the real reason. Nicky gratefully skedaddles and Warrick gets to work processing the glove compartment, where he finds a melted mass of plastic and metal. He chips away at the chunk of debris until he sees that it's the remains of a gun. He uses solvent to reveal the serial number and when he runs it, he discovers the gun is registered to Richard O'Malley, Don Cook's father-in-law. Brass goes out to the O'Malley house and tells Richard that his gun was used to shoot Don and asks how it got in the glove compartment. Richard says he gave the gun to Don for protection when Don asked, and says he tried to convince Don not to testify. Brass asks if he can take a look inside but Richard refuses, saying his family has been through enough already.

Back at the lab, Greg runs an experiment and determines that the gun discharged when the fire reached 400 degrees, causing Don to be hit in the back as he was running out of the car. Grissom and Maddie report the results to the judge, but Grissom admits he still doesn't know who set the fire. Maddie says the car was tagged with the La Tierra sign and asks for a warrant to investigate Alvarado's apartment. The judge is reluctant, insisting there's not enough probable cause, but Grissom says Alvarado is an admitted gang member and shows him the photo of Alvarado's victim with the tagged carved in his cheek. The judge relents and Grissom and Warrick head over to Alvarado's apartment with their warrant. They're heading up the stairs, making small talk, when Alvarado's apartment explodes. The force of the explosion knocks Warrick over the stairway railing to the ground below - twice, which is a ridiculous editing decision that's more fitting for CSI: Miami - and as car alarms ring and debris rains down, Grissom and Warrick give each other big "WTF"? looks.

After the fire is out, Grissom and Warrick investigate the charred remains of Alvarado's apartment and find the remains of a "MacGuyver bomb" made of butane, sugar, and nails. Warrick thinks whoever set off the bomb was looking to do more than destroy evidence and since the guy wouldn't have had much time to set the bomb and get out, he's prohably still nearby. The cops have rounded up the neighborhood loiterers and divested them of their wallets, phones, and various weaponry. Grissom sniffs suspiciously at one dude, then orders him to pull out his pockets. When he does, sugar spills out.

In interrogation, the guy insists he wasn't following anyone's orders and that he bombed Alvarado's apartment because he's a pyromaniac. Maddie storms in and tells him it doesn't matter what he says, because he's going away for ten years and La Tierra is still going to think he snitched on them. She leaves and Brass follows, angry that she screwed up his interrogation. Maddie insists the bomber was never going to turn on Alvarado. Brass changes tacks, asking if Maddie took Don back to where he saw Alvarado crossing the street near the victim's house. She denies it at first but when Brass shares his story about guilt-tripping Don into testifying, she admits it and realizes La Tierra saw her and Don, then followed her back to the courthouse where she escorted the grand jury inside. She looks stricken and tells Brass that this is where he says it could happen to anyone and it's not her fault. "Like hell it isn't," she groans, and Brass doesn't disagree with her.

Hodges finds Nicky and hands him the results from examining the gang tag, saying whoever left it painted the La Tierra green over a base of cerulean blue. As thanks, Nicky coughs all over Hodges, who tells him that in China, people wear masks when they're sick because it's impolite to infect your co-workers. "Maybe you should go work in China," Nicky wheezes. I'm with Hodges here; not only is it rude to bring an obviously contagious illness into the workplace, but if Nicky, Greg, and Grissom have to be called in they should be confined to desk duty so they don't contaminate evidence.

Warrick collects Alvarado's belongings from when he was arrested but finds them spotless when he examines them. He's escorted to Alvarado's cell and as Alvarado waits in the hall, Warrick sifts through and photographs the contents. When he's finished, Warrick asks Alvarado if he always cleans his boots with bleach. There's some pointless exchange about what Alvarado's gang name means and Warrick finds it about as interesting as I do. "That's great," he snarks, then tells Alvarado that he's going to have lots of time to share his folktales with his fellow inmates.

The sickly trio are going over the evidence and Nicky says Hodges concluded that the tagger didn't use spray paint like usual, but instead an oil-based paint. Grissom asks for the photos, then hacks up part of a lung. When he's done he peers at his handkerchief, raises an eyebrow, then pockets it. Nicky makes a "Ewwwwww" face and gingerly hands over the photos. Grissom looks closely at the tags and spots brush strokes and indications that stencils were used to make the tag, then painted over to look authentic. That's a little too arts-and-craftsy for a gang.

Back at the O'Malley place, Brass and Nicky have a warrant and more questions for Richard and Cody. In the garage, Nicky finds a crate with paint supplies and takes it into evidence, then tells Richard that he'll need his prints, Cody's as well. Back at the lab, Nicky processes everything, matching the paints and stencils in the crate to the tag on Don's car, and learns that the prints belong to Richard. Later, Nicky tells Don they know he stuffed a rag in the engine to start a fire and painted the tag on the bumper to make it look like La Tierra killed Don. Don refuses to say anything but it doesn't matter because they have all the evidence they need. As he's led out in handcuffs, Cody attacks her father and he breaks his silence to tell her he did it for her, but she screams that she hates him.

Grissom's office. Catherine enters and admits she's disappointed with the resolution to the case. Grissom agrees and when Catherine observes he's reading the court personnel files, he says he's trying to find the leak. Somebody knew they were coming to investigate Alvarado's apartment, but he's cleared everyone working in and around the courthouse. He tells her that the only ones left who knew are the jurors and Maddie.

Catherine has asked Archie to come in on his day off to investigate the phone records of the jurors during the time period between obtaining and serving the warrant for Alvarado's apartment. They get to one juror, Marie Leahy, who has called a different disposable cellphone number around the same time each night. Grissom and Maddie talk to Marie, who says she was approached by a woman who promised to get her wrongfully convicted brother out of a Chicago prison in exchange for passing along information. Crying, she says she only met the woman once and can't give a good description.

Warrick joins Nicky in the lab and says Alvarado is due to be released later that morning. Nicky says nobody does anything without Alvarado's direct order but Warrick insists Alvarado is in isolation and has no contact with the outside world. The only thing in his cell of a semi-personal nature was a book because he's a big reader, and Nicky wonders about the other books Alvarado has read.

Grissom heads to the prison library and asks for the names of all the books Alvarado has checked out. He flips through them and finds torn-out pages in each one, then asks to see what book Alvarado currently has in his cell. Alvarado is escorted into the hallway while Grissom examines the book, finding a page that looks like it got wet and then dried. He holds a lighter under the page and theorizes that Alvarado wrote messages on book pages with his own urine, which turned invisble when it dried. When the book was returned to the library, a La Tierra member would tear out the page and the page to another gang member on the outside. When the page was heated, the writing would become visible and Alvarado's orders would be carried out. Sure enough, a message appears on the page Grissom is heating: "Carve MK for me. Send a photo." That's clearly a plan to kill and cut Madeline Klein and Alvarado is locked back in his cell, but not before he threatens Grissom's life. Future plot arc or impotent threat from someone who's been outwitted? Only time will tell, but if this is the beginning of what will lead to William Petersen's presumed departure at the end of next season, Robert LaSardo is an excellent choice of actor to play Grissom's final nemesis.

Later, Grissom shows Maddie the page with Alvarado's threat and she realizes Alvarado ordered someone to kill her while he left town. Grissom asks if she's okay and she says she owes him one. She tells him that he's the only one who's never let her down, which means he's either an enabler or her soulmate. He looks thoughtful and gives a tiny, wistful smile.

Grissom heads back to his (and Sara's) apartment after walking Hank. He sits down on the couch and rubs the bridge of his nose, looking exhausted. The phone rings and he drops his head, frustrated that he can't catch a break for even ten seconds, but when he picks up the phone and sees who's calling, he relaxes and lies down on the couch. He answers with a grin and a pleased, "Hi," and settles in for a nice, long chat. And who is on the other end? Well, his new BFF Jack Malone, OBVIOUSLY.