CSI Files
Captain
<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>Following a training exercise addressing hostage situations, the team is called out on multiple 419s in a quiet Las Vegas neighborhood. Two people are dead, the victims of fatal gunshot wounds: the street neighborhood watch captain, Bill French, and a seven-year-old boy named Jason Morley. The apparent targets were Priscilla Hatcher, whose home was broken into, her son, Reggie, and nephew, Frankie Kirkland, but only Priscilla has been found and is on her way to the hospital. .38 caliber bullets from a 9-millimeter gun are recovered from the street and Catherine posits that the neighborhood watch captain may have fired at one of the suspects. Brass notes that neighbors saw an SUV parked in front of a house a few down from Priscilla's, and Catherine finds fresh collision damage to two cars parked near it, indicating that the SUV sped off. Nick and Ray process the Hatchers' house and Nick discovers a palm print on the television set from the struggle while Ray takes note of Reggie's diploma, which shows he was the valedictorian in his high school graduating class. Nick finds a book of checks with Reggie's address on them indicating he lives right down the street--in the house the SUV was parked in front of. Meanwhile, Brass gets a lead on a shooting victim who was dropped off at Desert Palms Hospital. By the time Brass and Catherine get to the hospital, the man, Marcus Garfield, is dead. From distinctive tattoos on his face and body, Brass is able to identify the man as a member of the Snakebacks, a dangerous Vegas gang that deals in drugs. Catherine wonders if Reggie was involved in dealing drugs in some way, and Brass says that if he was, he and his cousin are probably dead. Back at the lab, Catherine and Hodges go over surveillance footage from the hospital and see Marcus Garfield tossed out of an SUV with tinted windows. They run the plates, but the car belonged to Garfield himself. Riley recovers 27 bullets from the scene, all from a 9-millimeter gun.<p>Six blocks from where the murders took place, an abandoned car is discovered in a mall parking lot. When Catherine and Brass show up, they find the body of a man named Aaron Sweets, a member of the Snakebacks, in the trunk. In the morgue, Dr. Robbins uncovers four .22 bullets from the body, and determines the man has been dead for 24-48 hours, meaning he wasn't involved in the attack on the Hatchers. The team is able to identify a second suspect, Robert "Little Bobby" Danwood and determine that a stray bullet from Garfield's gun struck and killed Jason Morley during Garfield's shootout with French. Nick is able to connect Reggie to the Snakebacks when he finds four outgoing calls on Aaron Sweets' phone to Reggie's landline. Ray and Riley return to Reggie's house, which had been searched by the police but never processed. They call Reggie's landline and follow the ringing to a closet, where they discover a hidden door down to the basement. When they go down into the basement, they find an extensive drug lab with the components of PCP on various tables. While they set about processing the basement, Brass learns from Detective Vega that Reggie was pushing drugs in Snakeback territory. Greg goes to tell Jason Morley's grief-stricken father that his son's killer is dead. In Reggie's basement, Ray notices fresh blood on a pipe and signals to Riley that they need to leave, but before they can a boy, Frankie Kirkland, bursts out of a door to another room waving a gun and ordering them not to go anywhere. Behind them they can see the wounded Reggie Hatcher. Greg comes to check on Riley and Ray and a frantic Frankie orders Riley to get rid of him, so she goes to the stairs and tells Greg that "It's okay, Riley, we don't need any help." Greg catches onto the way she calls him by her name and goes to get help.<p>Ray recognizes Reggie and offers to look at his injury. Reggie has a huge piece of glass in his shoulder from his altercation with Garfield. Ray tells Frankie they need to get Reggie to a hospital, but Frankie refuses to budge and let anyone leave. Riley manages to turn on a walkie talkie so the team, assembling above with SWAT, can hear what's going on in the basement. Frankie strikes her when he sees her fiddling with it, but assumes she has turned it off after he orders her to do so. Riley identifies the gun Frankie is holding as a .22, but when Frankie hears a helicopter above, he realizes what she's done and smashes the walkie talkie. Riley reminds Frankie he hasn't hurt anyone yet, but he tells her he killed a gangbanger--and also reveals he's only fourteen years old. The landline starts ringing and Frankie panics, but Ray tells him that if he's going to save Reggie, he needs his kit, which is in their SUV. Riley answers the phone and says she's coming up for the kit. She does, alerting Nick, who is hiding behind a car that she's okay--and armed. She returns to the basement with the kit and Ray removes the piece of glass from Reggie's shoulder, causing an artery to begin gushing. As Ray calls for help with the artery, Riley pulls her gun and tells Frankie to help his cousin--and drop his gun. Frankie reluctantly does so, and with Frankie's help, Ray is able to stop the bleeding. The four emerge from the basement: Reggie is taken to the hospital and Frankie is arrested, with a caveat from Ray to Brass that "he doesn't have to be a lost cause." Relieved their ordeal is over, Ray and Riley are reunited with the team.<p><b>Analysis:</b><p>Nothing screams, "Danger ahead!" like opening an episode with a training program addressing hostage situations. The heavy-handed foreshadowing intro is a misstep in what is otherwise an exciting, if not exactly shocking episode. Why give away the rather clever tell of Riley calling Greg by her name in the intro when it would have played out much more dramatically later in the episode without the earlier flag? I think Greg--and the audience of <i>CSI</i>--is smart enough to figure out that Riley is signaling that she and Langston are in trouble when she calls him by her name without the set up during the training exercise. Though previews for the episode gave away the fact that Ray and Riley would run into trouble while processing a crime scene, the opening sequence essentially does the same thing--never a good thing in a mystery series. Though it provides for a little bit of humor with Greg getting "taken hostage" by the man testing the team, overall it simply serves to telegraph the upcoming danger. The time could have been better devoted to getting a better sense of the Las Vegas neighborhood that is rocked by two murders.<p><HR ALIGN="CENTER" SIZE="1" WIDTH="45%" COLOR="#007BB5"><p>To read the full reviews, please click <A HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/reviews/csi/no_way_out.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>