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Way to Go
Way to Go
Season 6
Number 24
Writer Jerry Stahl
Director Kenneth Fink
Original Airdate May 18, 2006
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Previous Episode: Bang-Bang
Next Episode: Built To Kill, Part 1

Way to Go is the twenty-fourth episode and Season Six finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Synopsis[]

While Brass fights for his life in surgery after being shot, Grissom, Nick and Sara investigate when a man with an absurdly narrow waist is found dead near train tracks. Meanwhile, Catherine and Warrick handle a case where a man is found dead after a night of hardcore partying.

Plot[]

Victim: Jim Brass (alive)

Picking up where "Bang-Bang" left off, Brass has been shot twice at the hands of Willie Cutler. In the hospital, he temporarily loses his pulse before being resuscitated. A flashback shows Brass speaking with Grissom about his daughter Ellie and only being able to see her as she was, not as she is now. He believes that if something ever happened to him in the line of duty, Ellie wouldn't care. Therefore, he gives Grissom his power of attorney.

The doctor informs Grissom and Undersheriff McKeen that one of the bullets hit one of Brass' arteries and is lodged near his heart. They can't tell if he has any neural damage yet. The doctor tells Grissom that, as Brass' power of attorney, he may have a decision to make. Grissom then gets a call to a crime scene in Henderson.

Grissom returns to the hospital later, where the doctor tells him that they were able to stop the bleeding. However, Brass is still critical; removing the bullet could cause him to bleed or stroke out. The same thing could happen if they decided to leave the bullet in him, but he could also live for years without anything happening. The doctor adds that Brass may never wake up. Grissom tells him to perform the surgery to remove the bullet. He then calls Ellie and fills her in on her father's situation.

Ellie arrives at the hospital and is heard having a confrontation with a nurse, upset that nobody asked for her consent to do anything. Grissom introduces himself and tells Ellie that her father's surgery will take a few hours. When he offers to get Ellie a motel room nearby, she gets defensive and rolls up her sleeves to show that she has no track marks. She angrily wonders aloud why she came at all and quickly departs.

The bullet is removed from Brass successfully, but he has yet to regain consciousness. Outside of the hospital, Warrick runs into Ellie and updates her on her father's condition. She asks Warrick if her father ever talks about her, showing that she's more focused on herself than anyone else.

Sofia informs Grissom that Ellie is looking into her father's pension, asking how much is in it and whether she's a beneficiary. Because of Ellie's past, Sofia thinks it will be easy to chase her out of town, but Grissom believes that Brass wouldn't want her to do that. Instead, Grissom brings Ellie to her father's office, where she finds a photo of her as a baby on the desk. The sentimentality is brief, as Ellie wonders aloud whether it would be better if her father never woke up.

Grissom and Ellie join Catherine at the hospital. Brass is out of surgery, but soon after they arrive, he codes. As the doctors work at reviving him, Ellie grabs onto Grissom's arm in fear. The doctors are able to revive him and he looks out the room's window, only to see an emotional Ellie flee. But, the team is there for him, and everyone is happy to see him on the road to recovery. Brass thanks Grissom for not pulling the plug on him.

Victim: Caleb Carson (deceased)

On the case: Gil Grissom, Nick Stokes, Sara Sidle, Sofia Curtis

Grissom is called away from the hospital to a scene where a man's decapitated body has been found on the train tracks. There's no ID on the victim, and Nick notes that there isn't a lot of blood on the ground for a decapitation like this. Grissom finds a toupee on the side of the tracks. When David Phillips unbuttons the victim's shirt, he finds that the victim has an hourglass figure with an unnaturally small waist. David has trouble finding the liver to take the body temperature, but is eventually successful. Sara, now on the scene, questions whether the victim decided to commit suicide after a bad night at the casino.

Along a nearby stream, Nick finds a barrel with some burning embers still inside. He picks up a metal pole and lifts something from the barrel before dropping it back in. As he moves his way closer to the stream, he finds the head they've been looking for. In the lab, Nick sifts through the ashes from the barrel and separates out the larger items. He uncovers a button with an eagle insignia on it. Meanwhile, while processing the body, Sara finds some fibers and collects them as evidence.

In autopsy, Doc Robbins tells Grissom that the victim's organs aren't where they should be. There are blisters all over the skin; some are fresh, but scarring indicates that the injuries go back years. This is consistent with long-term pressure on the waist. Grissom spots a bullet hole in the decapitated head, and the doc confirms that the cause of death was a shot to that area. The bullet retrieved is a .44 caliber lead bullet, which Doc Robbins says is heavy-duty.

Hodges tells Nick that the white substance found on the victim's waist is prescription strength topical cortisone. Despite it being topical and not being absorbed into the skin, the victim's blood contained a large of amount of cortisone. The fibers from the body are consistent with the fibers found in the burned-up clothes, meaning that they were the clothes the victim was wearing. Hodges is able to identify the fabric as raw wool, dyed gray. Pomegranate extract was found in the wool, and Hodges notes that this was used to dye wool in the 1800s. Combined with the insect activity on the fabric, Nick guesses that the fabric was old, perhaps even vintage.

In his office, Grissom studies a book about corsets, revealing that men used to wear them, as well. Sara enters and tells him that the bone fragments recovered from the scene are whalebone, which is what they used to make corsets out of. The manager of an antique clothing store shows Sara a whalebone corset, remarking that several of his customers buy them. When shown a picture of the victim, the manager recognizes him as Caleb Carson. He says that Caleb came into the store once a year for re-stitching and reinforcement. Sara is provided with Caleb's address.

At Caleb's house, Sara and Sofia find that the living room is full of Civil War memorabilia, including a Confederate flag. A portrait resembling Caleb in a Civil War uniform turns out to be a portrait of a Caleb "C.C." Carson from 1864, and a nearby display case contains several antique guns and bullets consistent with the caliber Caleb was shot with. Grissom arrives and finds a miniature Civil War battle scene in another room, telling Sofia that it appears to be a recreation of Pickett's Charge from the Battle of Gettysburg. Caleb, he says, seems to have been a son of the South. In the bedroom, Sara locates a corset and sees that it ties from the back, meaning Caleb had help lacing it. A black-and-white photo of a man in a corset indicates that corset wearing ran in the Carson family.

Sofia questions Gregory Kimble, Caleb's personal driver and dresser. He confirms that he laced Caleb's corset every morning and says that he last saw him the previous morning on the battlefield at "Gettysburg." Grissom and Sofia visit the scene of a Civil War reenactment and speak to a Union soldier with his arm in a sling. The soldier tells them that Caleb caught him talking on his cell phone with his wife and challenged him to a duel. The duel, however, was not a reenactment, as Caleb shot the soldier with a real bullet, while the soldier's gun was only loaded with powder. The soldier tells Grissom and Sofia that he ran away after he was shot and didn't call the police because he feared what Caleb would do if he found out. Grissom spots a Colt .44 hanging from the soldier's waist and takes it as evidence.

At the scene of the duel, Sara finds blood drops traveling away from Caleb, corroborating the soldier's story that he ran away after being shot. On Caleb's side, Grissom finds a large blood pool and notes that it could explain the lack of blood by the train tracks. He wonders if Caleb was killed at the duel site.

Bobby Dawson shows Grissom that the soldier's gun used in the duel contains dried powdered wheat particles, which are used to augment the smoke and seal the gunpowder in the cylinder; in other words, something that would be perfect for Civil War reenactments. Bobby believes that the soldier's gun hasn't fired a real bullet in quite a while.

Wendy tells Grissom and Sofia that the blood on the battlefield is Caleb's; however, the epithelials on the toupee from the train tracks are not. Gregory Kimble is brought back into interrogation, where he removes his toupee for Sara to collect as evidence. When confronted with the evidence, Gregory admits that he killed Caleb accidentally. He could see the insanity in Caleb's eyes and knew that he was going to kill the soldier in the duel for his cell phone infraction. As he tried to wrestle the gun away, it accidentally went off and killed Caleb. When asked why he didn't just call 9-1-1, Gregory recalls Caleb's story about his great-great-great grandfather trying to stop a Yankee train from entering Virginia. The man stood on the tracks firing at the engineer until he was run down. Gregory says that Caleb told the story frequently and said it was an honorable death; he just wanted to give Caleb the same.

Victim: Manny Rupert (deceased)

On the case: Catherine Willows, Warrick Brown

The super of an apartment building leads Catherine to Manny Rupert's room. Manny, whose stereo was blasting music at seven in the morning, is lying dead on his bed. There appears to have been a major party, as the apartment is trashed; cocaine, joints, and pills are in plain sight. Doc Robbins, also on the scene, identifies cause of death as petechial hemorrhaging from vomiting or asphyxiation. The time of death is placed as three to four hours ago. Warrick finds that Manny's wallet is empty and that there's a gun in the nightstand. Catherine observes a broken mirror; there's blood on the broken pieces on the floor. There are bullet holes in the wall, and she concludes that somebody shot the mirror. Manny doesn't have any bullet wounds on his body.

Manny's blood alcohol level came back as .28 and he had just about every possible drug in his system. The DNA from the blood on the mirror and pubic hairs recovered from Manny's mouth comes back to Sindee Hutton, a local prostitute. In autopsy, Doc Robbins tells Catherine that Manny has evidence of sexual activity in every orifice and that his stomach contents contain a large amount of alcohol and cake.

Catherine interrogates Sindee, who says that Manny paid for everything in the room and that the evening started out fun. However, Manny had no off switch; when she tried to leave, he grabbed his gun and tried to shoot her, hitting the mirror instead. She was able to get out of the room, stepping on the broken glass and leaving her blood behind. According to her, Manny was alive when she left.

Thinking that Sindee might have slipped Manny something to push him over the edge, Warrick visits Mandy in the print lab in hopes of backing up the theory. However, Mandy says that Sindee's prints were found on the bedpost, the chair, and a soda can; she didn't touch the alcohol or pills.

Warrick speaks with Manny's sister, Darcy, and tells her that her brother died from diabetic shock from consuming a large quantity of alcohol, sugar, and narcotics. Darcy tells him that Manny had just been diagnosed as pre-diabetic and that their family had a history of heart diseases and diabetes, resulting in the early deaths of their parents and grandparents. Manny had just turned 40 years old and treated it as a death sentence; his bender was a way of going out in style. Warrick can't understand why Manny would just give up, but Darcy reprimands him, telling him he doesn't understand what it's like to have a death sentence hanging over one's head.


Hours after Brass's successful surgery, Grissom relaxes on a bed in a bathrobe, talking to an unseen person about death and how he wants warning before he goes. A woman enters the room and sits down next to him; it's revealed to be Sara. She ponders the subject with a small smile, and tells Grissom she's not ready to say goodbye.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

Episode Title[]

  • The episode's title, "Way to Go," can describe the deaths of Caleb Carson and Manny Rupert. Caleb's driver and dresser, Gregory, chose to stage an honorable death for him on the train tracks reminiscent of one of his ancestors, while Manny decided to go out in style with an all-night party.

Notes[]

  • A flashback shows Brass talking to Grissom about recently seeing Ellie working on a street corner in Los Angeles. The conversation would've taken place shortly after the season five episode Hollywood Brass; it didn't occur on-screen in another episode.

Trivia[]

  • Patrick Kerr played Gregory Kimble. He is perhaps recognized by some fans of 90's television for his role as Noel Shempsky on the show Frasier.

See Also[]

CSI:Las Vegas Season 6
Bodies in MotionRoom ServiceBite MeShooting StarsGum DropsSecrets and FliesA Bullet Runs Through It, Part 1A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 2Dog Eat DogStill LifeWerewolvesDaddy's Little GirlKiss-Kiss, Bye-ByeKillerPirates of the Third ReichUp in SmokeI Like to WatchThe Unusual SuspectSpellboundPoppin' TagsRashomamaTime of your DeathBang-BangWay to Go
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