Homecoming | |
Season | 12 |
Number | 22 |
Writer | Christopher Barbour, Larry M. Mitchell, Don McGill |
Director | Alec Smight |
Original Airdate | May 9, 2012 |
Navigation | |
Previous Episode: Dune and Gloom | |
Next Episode: Karma to Burn |
Homecoming is the twenty-second episode and Season Twelve finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Synopsis[]
When a friend of the Sheriff becomes a prime suspect in his wife’s brutal murder, the investigation’s political fallout reveals the truth behind Russell’s troubled history with Finn. Also, an old foe of the CSIs resurfaces and threatens the team.
Plot[]
Victims: Donny Price, Alonso Seal and Veronica Gilmore (all deceased)
On the case: entire team
At a reelection fundraiser for Sheriff Sherry Liston, "self-made man" Jack Gilmore waxes poetic about his past. Sheriff Liston then takes the stage, informing the guests that under her leadership, crime is down across the board. While she's speaking, an older man is shown in a motel room getting cozy with a young woman and doing drugs; his bodyguard is cutting more drugs on a nearby table. Suddenly, someone breaks into the room and shoots the bodyguard in the head. The older man is pistol-whipped while the woman hides in the bathroom and pleads for her life.
Russell, Morgan and Ecklie are guests at the event. As Russell leaves the event with his wife Barbara, Ecklie tells him about the triple homicide, which just happens to have occurred down the street. At the scene, Det. Moreno introduces his partner, Mike Crenshaw. The two of them have been working undercover targeting drug dealer Donny Price. They had set up a deal for that night, but someone broke into the room and killed Donny, his bodyguard, and his girlfriend before making off with the drugs and money. The CSIs are thrown for a loop when the woman is identified as Veronica Gilmore, Jack's wife.
Nick helps Morgan process the room, noting that the bodyguard never even got his gun out of his holster. There's no sign of forced entry, indicating someone knew the gunman. Donny's pants are down around his ankles and his kneecaps have been worked over. Nick follows a trail of indistinct bloody shoe impressions to the door. When the trail disappears outside, he and Morgan conclude that the gunman was wearing booties similar to what the CSIs wear. This would suggest planning and premeditation.
In the bathroom, David Phillips has trouble finding Veronica's liver in order to get a liver temperature reading. Finn sees that Veronica was beaten badly and wonders why the gunman didn't shoot her like he did the other two victims. Veronica's cell phone shows that the last call she made was to her husband; the call lasted four seconds.
Jack tells Russell and Sheriff Liston that he separated from his wife four months ago and knew she was having an affair with Donny. He says that he last spoke to Veronica a week ago, but Finn interrupts and brings up the recent four-second phone call. Jack tries to explain that Veronica drunk dialed him, but Finn theorizes that the gunman called Jack to tell him that Veronica was dead. Finn tries to get access to Jack's phone, but Russell stops her. After Jack walks away, Russell admonishes Finn for acting so callously.
In autopsy, Doc Robbins pulls a 9mm bullet out of Donny's skull; it's consistent with the other bullets fired. Veronica's cause of death is labeled as massive internal hemorrhaging. Her insides look like soup; she was hit so hard and so often, her internal organs disintegrated. This would explain why David couldn't get a liver temperature reading. Doc Robbins finds a synthetic fleck embedded in the skin and sends it to Hodges for analysis.
The fleck tests for polyphenylene and terephthalamide; put simply, kevlar combined with aluminum and carbon. Russell believes the weapon is a baseball bat, and Finn reveals that Veronica was hit over 50 times with the murder weapon. Finn continues to believe Jack is guilty of triple homicide, and she and Russell get into an argument about a similar case the two worked in Seattle. It's possible Jack hired someone to kill his wife, but Russell notes that everyone saw him at a fundraiser full of law enforcement. However, phone records show that Jack was in the alley between the casino and the motel right around the time of the murders, two minutes after he gave the podium to the sheriff. Sheriff Liston's speech was just over 18 minutes, which would give Jack enough time to slip away. However, when Jack was seen at the post-speech reception, he showed no signs of just being in a bloody battle.
Finn and Nick trace Jack's would-be path from the casino to the motel. On the way, she recalls the case in Seattle similar to this one—the disappearance of a girl who worked for venture capitalist Tom Cooley. They suspected Tom of orchestrating the disappearance, but couldn't test his DNA due to a technicality. Upon reaching the motel room, they reenact the murders, noting how much blood spatter would've gotten on the killer's clothes after beating Veronica. If Jack is the killer, he was wearing something over his tuxedo and would've gotten rid of it somewhere. While retracing the route back to the casino, they find a duffle bag in a dumpster containing bloody oversized warm-ups and a bloody hockey stick. Both are branded with the logo of the Las Vegas Silver Strikes, Jack's hockey team.
The team goes to the hockey arena to look for evidence. Finn is upset that the scope of the warrant doesn't cover Jack's office, car, or home. Despite the evidence so far, Sheriff Liston says Jack isn't a suspect yet. Finn accuses the two of being friends with benefits, which the sheriff doesn't take lightly. It's revealed that back in Seattle, Finn obtained Tom Cooley's DNA illegally by lifting a champagne glass with his fingerprints on it. She appears to be going down the same road again.
In the arena locker room, Nick finds a blade without a hockey stick and notes that the stick found in the dumpster was missing its blade. He explains to Greg that hockey sticks nowadays are made so blades can be switched on an off pretty easily. Scratches inside the hockey stick appear to be similar to the scratches inside the blade. The team's equipment manager is Dominic Bruno, a former mob enforcer. He denies being involved in the murders and shows Brass a past voice mail from Jack he held onto. In the voice mail, Jack tells Dominic to kill Donny Price despite Dominic claiming he's not that guy anymore.
Jack is arrested and brought to the station for interrogation. He admits that he reached out to Dominic, but did nothing else. The evidence against him is stacking up—a bloody hockey stick along with bloody warm-ups that contain his DNA on the inside and Veronica's DNA on the outside. Russell believes a black thread recovered at the scene will also match the tuxedo Dominic was wearing. It seems that Jack planned all of this months in advance, but Finn suddenly isn't so sure. Watching from behind the glass, she sees Jack struggle to pick up a coffee cup. She brings him another cup, and he uses two hands to grab it. Finn asks Jack what he was doing in the alley, and he replies that he was meeting a labor consultant named Bobby Connor who never showed.
It turns out that Bobby Connor doesn't exist, nor does the company he was supposedly working for. Jack has no alibi, but Finn sets out to prove his innocence. Using liver from the local deli, she finds that one would have to use their whole upper body and hit it over 50 times to turn it into soup. Jack is off the hook, as medical records show he has ALS, which explains why he couldn't grab the coffee cup earlier. But what about the evidence against Jack? Finn guesses the killer stole Jack's warm-ups from his locker at the arena. Furthermore, the tuxedo thread is actually a thread from a wetsuit, indicating the killer wore it under the warm-ups. This would preserve Jack's DNA while the crimes were being committed. When combined with the mystery phone call Jack received from his wife while waiting in the alley for someone who doesn't exist, it's clear that he's being set up.
Lieutenant Paul Kimball, who was in charge of the undercover operation against Donny Price, is brought in to assist with the case. He tells the team that he had a confidential informant on the inside for the last four months that was getting close to identifying Donny's supplier. This timeline matches up with Veronica leaving her husband, which means she was the informant. A confidential informant is dead and the undercover operation is blown, which means there's a leak in the department.
Jack had been meeting with someone using the Bobby Connor alias; surveillance videos show that the mystery person is Kimball. This would mean that Kimball is the one who set up the meeting in the alley with Jack. More surprisingly, the bullets that killed Donny and his bodyguard trace back to a cop who discharged the weapon in 2008—former Undersheriff Jeffrey McKeen, who murdered former CSI Warrick Brown. McKeen is serving life in prison, but his gun is still committing murders. Russell guesses that McKeen is still running his empire from the inside and someone is carrying out the murders for him. Morgan reveals that before he ran Vice, Kimball's first partner was McKeen. Russell holds off on bringing Kimball in, as nobody knows how deep this operation goes; his belief is that Kimball is just an errand boy. Instead, he suggests bringing McKeen in for questioning in an effort to shake him up and see who he reaches out to.
In interrogation, McKeen denies having any knowledge about the triple homicide. He's told the gun used traces back to him, but he remains confident that there isn't enough evidence against him. McKeen rattles Nick's cage by bragging about Warrick's murder, causing Nick to leave the interrogation room. Russell returns the favor by threatening to cut off McKeen's ways of supplying for his family from behind bars. McKeen, in turn, threatens Russell and tells him to leave his family out of this.
Nick and Ecklie listen in on a meeting between Kimball and David Winnock, Jack's finance guy and, apparently, McKeen's shot caller. Per McKeen's orders, Kimball is to leave town with a new passport. Things go sideways when David spots the police presence. He tries to run, but is eventually cornered by Nick and Ecklie. David yells out that he's not going to jail and commits suicide by cop. The team has lost their best chance at bringing McKeen down.
Kimball's car is found abandoned, and there are no signs that he hopped on a plane out of the country. Greg runs DNA on David Winnock and discovers that he has 13 alleles in common with McKeen—he's McKeen's son. McKeen is told of his son's demise and says that he was family. "Karma, Jeffrey," Ecklie replies. McKeen knows that Ecklie is the one who shot his son, but Nick tells him that he put a target on his son's back and is the one to blame. Detectives find David's office completely cleaned out, and Kimball is still in the wind. It's still unknown how deep this goes and how many cops McKeen has under his control.
Sheriff Liston addresses the media, vowing to end all corruption within the LVPD. Nick, watching on a TV in the break room, tells Greg and Sara that it's all for show. Good guys like Warrick end up dead, while scumbags like McKeen continue to run things from behind bars. "The game never changes, just the players," Nick says. Frustrated, he tells his fellow CSIs that he can't handle this anymore, verbally quits, and leaves the room.
Finn shares drinks with Det. Moreno, but a mild argument ends the night. Moreno's partner, Mike Crenshaw, watches from a distance and swoops in to save the day after Moreno leaves. When Finn gets up to use the bathroom, Crenshaw tells someone on the phone that things are "under control."
Elsewhere, Morgan and her father take a walk after having dinner with Hodges and his mother. Suddenly, a car pulls up and someone shoots Ecklie before driving off. Russell is alerted to the shooting, but something hits closer to home. Someone calls the house and tells them to look upstairs—where Russell's granddaughter Kaitlyn has been kidnapped from her bedroom. A card is left on the bed that simply reads "KARMA."
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Ted Danson as D.B. Russell
- Elisabeth Shue as Julie Finlay
- George Eads as Nick Stokes
- Paul Guilfoyle as Jim Brass
- Jorja Fox as Sara Sidle
- Eric Szmanda as Greg Sanders
- Robert David Hall as Dr. Al Robbins
- Wallace Langham as David Hodges
- David Berman as David Phillips
- Elisabeth Harnois as Morgan Brody
- Paul Guilfoyle as Jim Brass
Guest Cast[]
- Marc Vann as Conrad Ecklie
- Barbara Eve Harris as Sheriff Sherry Liston
- Enrique Murciano as Detective Carlos Moreno
- Peri Gilpin as Barbara Russell
- Brooke Nevin as Maya Russell
- Mia Hays as Kaitlyn Russell
- Craig Sheffer as Jack Gilmore
- Jeremy Glazer as David Winnock
- Billy Magnussen as Michael Crenshaw
- Conor O’Farrell as Undersheriff McKeen
- Mike Starr as Dominic Bruno
- Jaclyn Smith as Olivia Hodges
- Peter Onorati as Lieutenant Paul Kimball
Notes[]
- Finn fills Nick in on her past case involving Seattle venture capitalist Tom Cooley. She returns to Seattle to further investigate in the Season 13 episode CSI on Fire.
- Nick tells McKeen that he should've shot him when he had the chance, a decision he passed on in the Season Nine episode For Warrick.
Trivia[]
- Peri Gilpin played Russell's wife Barbara; she's most recognized for playing Roz Doyle in the TV show Frasier. Ted Danson himself guest-starred in an episode of Frasier, reprising his character Sam Malone from the show Cheers.
See Also[]
- List of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episodes
- CSI:Crime Scene Investigation Season 12
- Category:Images from Homecoming
CSI:Las Vegas Season 12 | ||
73 Seconds • Tell-Tale Hearts • Bittersweet • Maid Man • CSI Down • Freaks & Geeks • Brain Doe • Crime After Crime • Zippered • Genetic Disorder • Ms. Willows Regrets • Willows in the Wind • Tressed to Kill • Seeing Red • Stealing Home • CSI Unplugged • Trends with Benefits • Malice in Wonderland • Split Decisions • Altered Stakes • Dune and Gloom • Homecoming |