In this episode of CSI: Miami, all eyes are on the track as a murder goes down and all bets are off as to who's the killer. Calleigh and Eric inch closer to a possible resolution to the "will they or won't they" question.
The episode opens to reveal a man behind glass in his luxury suite watching his horse, Backdraft, through binoculars. Poor Robert Banyon is shot from behind right before the race ends.
"So what have we got besides a killer view?" Calleigh asks Eric as they begin to collect the evidence from the luxury box. The only thing out of place is a box of truffles, Calleigh's favorite, which apparently can't be found in Miami. The truffles are tracked to Chicago and the company is owned by a man named Wayne Tully— who happens to be in town. When questioned, he says he went there to try to buy shares in Banyon's stable. He also happened to check a gun into his flight to Miami which he says was for protection.
A boy walks up to the CSIs outside of the racetrack and he has Wolfe's name and number in his pocket. The boy's father is a friend of Wolfe's and is also a vet at the track. He failed to pick up his son after school. The scene cuts to an intense fight involving Wolfe and two men at a house. Horatio comes in the nick of time and sees a man lying bloody on the ground. He has a Russian mob tattoo on his shoulder and when Horatio calls him on it, the man slits his own throat. The other man is Wolfe's friend, Mark Gantry who Wolfe says called him because he was in trouble, but that he didn't know why.
Dr. Price determines that Banyon was killed by a captive bolt gun which is normally used to put down livestock. They are supposed to destroy a horse's brain stem so the heart keeps beating and are thus inhumane. The CSIs think maybe someone didn't like the way Banyon treated his animals. Calleigh and Eric approach his horse trainer for questioning and Eric finds a towel wrapped bolt gun in some feed. They take the trainer into the station.
Meanwhile, they pull photos from Banyon's binocular camera. There's a shot of the jockey on Backdraft using an electric horse prod, which is illegal. They approach the jockey that rode Backdraft and she said that getting the horse to speed up wasn't about getting Banyon to keep his eyes on the race but rather about winning.
Wolfe's friend Mark is found to have been holding a racing program and some cocaine in his pocket. Apparently this guy was Wolfe's gambling sponsor and had fallen off two wagons at once. Wolfe runs prints from the victim but there are no hits. They look at the Russian mobsters watch and determine it was still set to Russia time so they track down his prints at immigration. It leads them to Ivan Sarnov, the Russian mob boss we've met before. Eric examines some fibers and particles in the lab from the towel wrapped around the weapon for trace. He found some particles consistent from synthetic track materials that are only found abroad, namely in England. Only 5 tracks, none in Miami, have this type of substance in the United States and one of them happens to be in Chicago. They search Tully's truck (he's from Chicago, remember?) and his bolt gun is gone.
Calleigh shows Wolfe a report that his friend was using cocaine, but suggests that since he's the track vet, he's using it on horses. It apparently has the opposite effect in horses that it has in humans. It dopes them to slow them down. Backdraft tests positive for cocaine. Mark says that Sarnov came to him and showed him past debts that he owed before he had come clean. Sarnov told Mark that if he dusted Banyon's horse, it would wipe his debts clean. But he says that he couldn't do it to the animal and that he walked away.
Natalia is examining a betting ticket found in Tully's trailer near the stolen murder weapon. It's got a circle imprint on it that looks like the claw grabber that was seen being used by Scott the ticket collector earlier in the show. Turns out Scott the ticket collector was the original owner of Backdraft. Banyon conned him into selling him by telling him he was worthless, while always knowing he was a winner. Motive! He admits to the murder.
There were a lot of red herrings and diverging plotlines in this one and the ending appeared to be somewhat anti-climatic. The Russian mob, an ex-addict friend, a shady jockey... we saw it all. Not to be outdone. Mark meets up with Sarnov in a parking lot and offers to throw him one big race. Sarnov wants him to throw all races though and Horatio comes to the rescue as usual and grabs Sarnov. Extortion, bribery, conspiracy to race fix are the charges Wolfe cites to him, but Sarnov threatens Horatio as he's carted off.
All appears to be well and we see Calleigh enjoying the horses at the track now that she's off duty, an old pastime of hers. She takes the trainer up on his offer to ride one. Meanwhile, Eric is looking for her, but she's riding off into the sunset with the trainer. Eric leaves some of the special truffles for her on the table at work and calls her as he leaves, but her phone is on the side of the track, leaving us to think they'll never connect. Wolfe packs up Mark and his son and sends them off to a better place, wherever that may be. But, nothing's what it seems to be as each CSI is being watched. Could it be Sarnov's promise to "bring down" on Horatio's entire world?
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In this episode of
CSI: Miami, all eyes are on the track as a murder goes down and all bets are off as to who's the killer. Calleigh and Eric inch closer to a possible resolution to the "will they or won't they" question.
read more