CSI Files
Captain
<p><b>Synopsis:</b><p>Miami resident Jimmy Castigan hosts a party at his house, bragging to his many guests about his recent exploits. Ron Saris, who has been crashing with Jimmy, urges him to keep his mouth shut after all of his guests have gone. The two get in an argument and Ron pushes Jimmy into the pool, only to watch as the young man's skin literally starts melting! When the police arrive, it's too late: Jimmy Castigan is dead. When Horatio arrives at the scene, he's frustrated to find Dr. Price isn't already there to examine the man's body. Delko determines that an alkaline has been used in the pool and Ryan surprises Horatio by telling him that Ron Saris called the murder in. Horatio questions Ron, who admits to arguing with Jimmy but insists he was shocked by the contents of the pool. Nervous about breaking his cover as a confidential informant, he tells Horatio that he swims in the pool every day and wonders if he was possibly the target. He hands Horatio a threatening note he received and tells the CSI he suspects it's from Julia. Delko and Calleigh neutralize the alkaline in order to retrieve the body and lab tech Michael Travers identifies the substance as sodium hydroxide. Calleigh is concerned when Delko gets a call, but he claims it's from the lab and the two set off to find the source of the alkaline dump, which proves to be the pool's filtration system. Tripp and Delko question Peter Bishop, the pool cleaner, who tells them his truck was broken into the day before and his keys stolen. Horatio tries to get a hold of his ex, Julia, and learns that she's been calling Kyle incessantly. He tracks her down to find out if she threatened Ron and immediately knows something is off about her. Julia admits she's off her meds--and threatens to call the police if Horatio doesn't leave her alone.<p>Natalia tells Horatio the handwriting on the note doesn't match Julia and Tripp reports that Peter Bishop's alibi for the time of the murder checks out. Ryan and Delko go over Bishop's van and find a hair on it that comes from either a cow or a deer. Recalling that sodium hydroxide is used in the process of tanning leather, Ryan and Horatio head to a local leather treatment plant. The manager, Allan Pierce, tells the pair that the plant doesn't use sodium hydroxide anymore, but points them to the room where it's stored. Opening it up, the two smell decomp, and soon see the reason why: partially melted human remains in two of the barrels. Horatio notices a cigar cap, leading him and IAB officer Rick Stetler back to Ron Saris. Ron points the skeptical pair in the direction of Sean Echols, Castigan's partner. In the morgue, Ryan catches Tara popping a pill and confronts her about her prescription drug abuse, asking her what will happen when she messes up an autopsy. The coroner once again brushes him off, turning to the remains from the barrels. She and Ryan discover a man's wedding ring with a date engraved on it. Ryan runs the ring through the missing person's database and gets an ID: Bill Moore. Horatio speaks with the man's wife, Sondra, who tells him she last heard from Bill before a scuba diving trip they'd planned. Bill had gone to pick up her sister, Rebecca, and brother-in-law, Warren Barnett, but the three had never showed up. When she learns the remains found in the barrels were male, she clings to the hope that her sister might still be alive. Horatio meets Ryan by Tara's locker, armed with a search warrant. The two open the locker and find a plethora of pill bottles. Calleigh and Tripp pay Sean Echols a visit and notice the body of a boar lying outside his trailer. Sean denies even knowing Jimmy, but Calleigh is skeptical and decides to have an officer watch him.<p>A rattled Julia bursts into the morgue with a gun and fires a shot. She holds Ryan, Tara and Kyle at gunpoint and demands her son be returned to her. Horatio comes to talk her down, but she turns the gun on herself. He manages to grab it before she can shoot, and she's arrested. After the incident, Ryan tells Tara that Stetler wants to talk to her about the incident with Julia. Horatio talks to an extremely confused Julia, who is horrified to realize she endangered Kyle and admits that he's better off without her. In the lab, Delko admits to Calleigh the call he got earlier was from his father, Alexander Sherova. Calleigh is immediately concerned--Delko's father is a dangerous man. Delko tries to reassure her and then turns back to a puzzling detail: Barnett and Moore were apparently frozen before they were dropped in sodium hydroxide. Surmising that if Castigan and Echols murdered Moore and Bennett early in the morning, the CSIs suspect the pair might have frozen their victims to mask the smell of decomposition. When Tripp learns Echols' trash route takes him right by Castigan's house, the three go to search Echols freezer. Calleigh is greeted with a horrifying sight: the body of Rebecca Barnett hanging in the large freezer. Echols admits he and Castigan killed the three people in a carjacking gone wrong, but only found two barrels with sodium hydroxide and had to keep Rebecca's body in the freezer. Castigan wouldn't stop bragging about the crime, so Echols shut him up for good. Stetler confronts Tara with the bag of pill bottles from her locker. Tara claims she didn't hurt anyone, but Ryan points out she did: Horatio and Julia. Stetler has her arrested for felony theft, burglary and evidence tampering. Horatio is able to convince a judge that Julia's mental capacity was compromised when she broke into the morgue with a gun and he checks her into an institution for treatment.<p><b>Analysis:</b><p>Despite the truly shocking and downright disturbing demise of Jimmy Castigan in the opening of the episode, the case is actually the least interesting part of this exciting entry. Two long-simmering stories come to a head here, with surprising results. Much as Tara Price obviously crossed the line in <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season7/divorce_party.shtml">"Divorce Party"</a> when she stole Stephanie Vasquez's Oxycontin and tried to pin it on Julia, I thought she might be spared any real consequences for her actions. After all, just a few episodes ago Horatio sympathized with Ryan when he was blackmailed into tampering with evidence in <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season7/wolfe_in_sheeps_clothing.shtml">"Wolfe in Sheep's Clothing"</a>. Though I didn't expect Ryan to get fired (again) for his actions, I thought there would have been consequences for him beyond Calleigh and Delko's scorn. But Ryan had an excuse--he truly was in an untenable position.<p>As Ryan tells Tara after she's called to the carpet in front of Stetler, he did give her ample opportunity to kick the habit. Even before Ryan caught Tara scrambling after her pills in <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season7/collateral_damage.shtml">"Collateral Damage"</a>, Kyle caught her popping a pill in <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season7/dead_on_arrival.shtml">"Dead on Arrival"</a> and didn't buy her explanation that she was taking aspirin. Tara certainly has had fair warning, and one has to wonder if her pill problem started when her shoulder was re-injured in "Divorce Party" or if she's been battling this addiction for a while. Certainly, Horatio and Ryan didn't just find a bottle in her locker; they found a veritable stash, suggesting Tara's problems run much deeper than even just being unable to give up pain meds after an old injury is aggravated. When he confronts her after catching her popping a pill, Ryan tells her that he knows about addiction--and getting to the point where you don't care about getting caught. Like Tara, Ryan once got into trouble because of an addiction: in his case, it happened when his gambling impacted his job in <A class="link" HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/episodes/miami/season5/burned.shtml">"Burned"</a>. Ryan lost his job--but he wasn't arrested, as Tara is.<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/dissolved.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>
