CSI
Register
Advertisement


MIblack
Big Brother
Big Brother
Season 2
Number 8
Writer Ann Donahue,
Jonathan Glassner
Director Joe Chappelle
Original Airdate November 17, 2003
Navigation
Previous Episode: Grand Prix
Next Episode: Bait


Big Brother is the eighth episode in Season Two of CSI: Miami.

Synopsis[]

A stock trader is found dead by a janitor with his throat cut in his office. The case of the murder of Horatio's brother is solved and Horatio learns that he has a niece.

Plot[]

A janitor finds a dead body—a stock trader—during nighttime cleaning. Horatio, Speedle and Yelina arrives at the scene, where the former spots a hunting knife, but without blood trace around it. Alexx wants to move the body, but Speed spots an uninterruptable power supply, and the corpse's nose was pressing the J key on the keyboard—thus giving an exact time of the murder. The neck is deeply slashed, indicating passion, while the heel marks in the carpet and the champagne bottle indicates a woman's presence. Horatio deducts that the vic was on a "killer date".

Under the cabinet, Horatio finds a glue cap with blood on it, then gets interrupted by a phone call. Seemingly shocked, he leaves the scene. At the MDPD, an officer informs him that an apprehended woman requested his presence, mentioning his late brother, Raymond. The mysterious woman turns out to be Susie Barnham, who returned from Indiana, and although she was brought in for possession of substance—meth—and she claims she's clean. Horatio orders a urine examination, telling her that if she comes out positive, he can't offer any help.

At the crime scene, Speed and Calleigh are processing the computer, when the manager rushes in, telling them not to touch the computer, for it contains sensitive market information and no relation to the crime scene, only to be waved off by Speed mentioning the spyware on the computer. When Calleigh pulls out a WiFi card case from the laptop holder, the manager gets surprised, claiming they have no WiFi in the building for the same reason: not to have anyone going around the inside spyware. They realize that the WiFi signal was from another building, and Speed spots the exact computer the used signal came from, in the building across the road. The mails recovered from the server reveals why the vic got around the spywared cable internet: he was dealing in prostitution.

Meanwhile at the MDPD, Susie's urine sample came back negative. The car she was pulled over in belongs to a Robert Keaton, and Susie confirms that he is her "off-and-on" husband. When Horatio points out that it's his meth, Susie starts to defend him, but Horatio wants a talk with him. When Horatio arrives with an officer to detain him for questioning, Bob starts to shout slurs at Susie, with Horatio defending her. Horatio spots their daughter, Madison, who just cut herself, and realizes that she looks like Raymond, his late brother with whom Susie had an affair with. He puts a blanket on her bleeding cut, then pulls Susie out for an eye-to-eye talk: he asks who's child is she. She claims she's Bob's, but Horatio points out they look nothing alike. When asked if Ray knew about it, she says that she only realized her pregnancy after Ray's death. He takes the bloody blanket, and bids farewell to Madison.

At the department, he gives Speed the meth sample from Bob's car to analyze. When questioned by Yelina about his rush out of the scene, he tells that a friend of his got into a fight. She sees through Horatio's lies, as he can't make eye contact with her when lying, just like his brother did. He says he's working on something that he cannot discuss, but when he can, he'll tell everything. Satisfied with that, Yelina leaves, and Valera arrives. Horatio gives her the blood sample from the girl, and even though she works on the bloody cap, she is ordered to process them ASAP.

Horatio arrives at the evidence storage. He pulls off Ray's unsolved case box—a videotape, an event log, a bag of crystal meth, and two bullets. Deeply in flashbacks, he gets interrupted in his thoughts by Valera, having finished Madison's blood analysis. She asks if there is something to compare it, but Horatio denies. She leaves confused, then Horatio pulls out the DNA analysis of Raymond. Compared, the alleles are matching. He angrily crumples the blanket file, uttering Raymond's name.

In the lab, Calleigh and Delko are with Tyler, who deciphers overwritten data. He finds a pornographic webcam site that videos a fictitious sorority. On their poster, Calleigh spots the name Amanda, a name that frequently came up in the vic's mails. The last mail stated a meetup among them to 10pm, the date of time according to Speed's text analysis. Tyler runs down an IP check for the place of the webcams.

The producer, Jason is questioned at the site. He denies prostitution, and lets Delko and Calleigh in the studio. They are told that the place is on live video 24/7, and that they can only interview Amanda while broadcasted live. Eric investigates the controller.

Horatio finds Hagen, Ray's former partner. He wants to reopen Ray's case, but John thinks they're over it. When asked about why Ray went alone to the drug bust, Hagen says he had no information on him taking the bust, suspecting foul play behind it, and telling that he did everything to help him. When reminded of filing a transfer application a week before the murder, Hagen tells that Ray started to go out with his "tweek girl". With the drugs accompanying a mistress, he wanted out. Horatio accuses him of negligence, as he was busy with his transfer. Hagen gets angry, telling Horatio that the truth is that Ray got himself killed; only to get a cold reply from H: that he had "a lot of help".

Horatio meets Speed at the whiteboard. He analyzed the meth: it's normal, except for one ingredient, pseudoephedrine, a kind that animal vets use. Horatio recalls that Bob works at a pet store, then gets a call, and rushes away. Bob is brought in, but Susie is bailing him out. She claims she just wants to make up for him arrested, but Horatio spots bruise marks on her arm. She states that she's "stuck in a loop", and thinks keeping track of Bob keeps her off the meth. H asks her about Madison, while telling her that the tests confirmed she's Ray's daughter. Horatio promises keeping track of him, but only if she retracts the bail.

Eric is in the camera room. There are forty different cameras, but none of them records sound. There is a live counter of viewers. Calleigh questions Amanda, who first thinks she's a new member of the cast. When faced with the mails, she claims she knows nothing about them, and she was in the "dorm" all night. With Calleigh stating that it's easy to check, she takes her shoes to analyze.

Horatio sits in the evidence storage, examining Ray's case. Yelina catches up with him, since she got no answers about the suspect they just arrested. Horatio tells that Bob and Susie knew Raymond. Horatio tries to lie about Madison first, but Yelina wants to hear the truth, claiming she knew what he was doing, but when Horatio makes her recite what she knew, she only mentions the drugs. Horatio tells her about the trunk meth matching the one that was found with Ray, and that Bob is the possible cook, and was with Ray on the date of the murder. When he promises that he'll go after Bob, Yelina wants to go with her, demanding Horatio not to protect her, but he refuses to do so.

He goes to Susie's flat, demanding Bob's whereabouts—Susie posted the bail after all. She has a black eye, claiming she fell, but Horatio tells her that she switched addictions. He wants to take her and Madison, and when Susie refuses, he mentions that she's his flesh and blood, and he has a saying in her life. When Susie teases him about Yelina finding out about Ray's illegitimate child, he remains speechless.

In the lab, Speed is doing paperwork. Calleigh checks up on him, with Speed telling that he found industrial floor polish on her shoes, which was used by the janitor at the office complex. Tyler confirms Amanda's alibi, with her live records having a timestamp. Calleigh faces Amanda with her shoes being at the crime scene. They go to a blind spot, where Amanda confirms that she was there, but he was already dead. She took the laptop and left.

At the MDPD, a cartridge full of drugs arrive at Bob's interrogation room. Horatio interrogates him, telling that he sold that on the day of his murder. He confesses the drugs, but denies the killing. Bob tries to tease Horatio with Ray being a dirty cop, but Horatio tells him that even if he was, he didn't deserve to die. He then meets up with Susie and Madison. She reluctantly confesses about a place they were going out sometimes.

In the lab, Speed and Valera analyze the vic's laptop, pulled out of a dumpster by Eric. They can't turn on the power, since it has water contamination and could corrupt the data on the hard drive. She checks the traces on the laptop. Later, Eric and Calleigh discuss the evidence found on it: superglue. Tyler shows Calleigh the data found on the hard drive: he pulls off the visited webpages and mails from fragments that night. Amanda sent another mail, placing her appointment to midnight, that didn't appear on the WiFi server earlier. They also find out by IP analyzing that the 10pm appointment was a forgery, but only differed in one digit from the midnight one, so it was likely sent from the proximity of the original. Calleigh finds that the forged email was sent from the producer's email. He denies anyone could use his PC, which points the eye towards him, along with a capless superglue in the trash bin. Speed demands to see his hands, but they're clean: he thinks the superglue was used to close the cut wound the killer got from the murder.

In the surveillance room, the operator has Amanda's room rewritten to Lisa's room, when Delko arrives. He wants to see his hand, and when he denies, he grabs it: there is a clean cut, with glue on it. When faced with the evidence, and that he couldn't stand when out of a million viewers, one touched her, he confesses: he thought Amanda knew he was behind the camera, and that her flirtings were directed towards him.

Horatio visits the place Bob used as his lab. He finds a homemade antenna, made from a gun barrel. He has it analyzed with Calleigh, who puts the barrel in another .45 caliber pistol, and fires a test round. The bullet marks are an exact match to Ray's killer bullet. When asked by Calleigh if he's ok, he tells he is now. He goes back to the interrogation room with Bob, curtains it, kicks out the cup of water from his hands, and shows him the murder weapon belonging to him. Outraged, he tells Horatio that he was a degenerate, to which Horatio responds that at least he wasn't a coward like him. He stood up to him to protect Susie from his abusing.

At the end of the episode, Horatio hands an envelope of cash to Susie, to protect her and Madison. While he promises her to expect more monthly, he makes her promise to get clean and call him if she's in any trouble. Yelina comes out the building, and thanks Horatio for solving Ray's case, giving a kiss on his cheek. He visits the evidence storage once again; now to close his case file for good.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

 Guest Cast[]

Title[]

  • The title is derived from the reality show of the same name, which involves game show competitors living in the same quarters. It's also a reference to 1984 by George Orwell, about a dystopia of totalitarianism and brainwashing where the government and secret police are always watching and waiting to punish dissension.

Trivia[]

  • Horatio turns out to have a niece, formerly unknown to him. Madison, Susie's daughter was born out of wedlock and even her mother thought she was her husband's.
  • We learn that Speed is, although not his field of expertise, proficient in computer technology: he determined the exact time of death from the word processor, counting the J letters and comparing them to the computer's character speed; he also recovered the mails sent from the WiFi server by the victim on his own.

Goofs[]

  • Before the end credits, Horatio examines Ray's former MDPD card, with issue dated on March 17, 2002; however, when he first visits the evidence storage, the date of murder on Ray's box is September 14, 2001.

See Also[]

CSI:Miami Season 2
Blood BrothersDead ZoneHard TimeDeath GripThe Best DefenseHurricane AnthonyGrand PrixBig BrotherBaitExtremeComplicationsWitness to MurderBlood MoonSlow BurnStalkerazziInvasionMoney for NothingWannabeDeadlineThe OathNot LandingRap SheetMIA/NYC NonStopInnocent
Advertisement