- The investigation of a badly-burned corpse at a beach party leads CSI to a fuel smuggling ring with ties to human trafficking.
- Paul Sanders's beach party turns too hot when gate crashed by student Dan Granger, who is literally on fire. The new pathologist Dr. Tara Price, who impresses Eric in more then one way, finds he also has bad internal burns. His roommate Johnny Young admits they collaborated to steal fuel from luxury cars parked under Sam Laughlin's supervision. The car they stole from and the fuel additive allow the team to establish plausible links with other crimes, large-scale fuel theft from gas-stations and passport counterfeiting for illegal immigration or even human trade. Several names come up repeatedly until it all ties in.—KGF Vissers
- Obnoxious people party in a tent on the beach. All of a sudden a man stumbles out, completely in flames. They all watch as he stumbles through the tent, burning and screaming. They don't so much as spit on him. He runs to the sand and collapses.
Horatio and Tripp hit the beach. A young woman examines the body. Dr. Tara Price, a "spark plug," according to Tripp. Horatio goes to talk to her. She's excited to be at the beach with "fourth degree burn guy." He was doused in an accelerant.
Jerko from the party, Paul Sanders, goes to talk to Horatio, not being terribly sensitive. Calleigh and Eric track the shoe prints in the sand. They use some sort of gauge thing to track the chemical from the shoe. He didn't run in a straight line, but through parked cars that are now gone. Calleigh gets a higher reading from the point of origin. He left something behind, melted fabric.
Eric looks at the melted clothing in a lab. Horatio stops by to say really obvious things slowly. He and Eric devise a way to read a melted plastic nametag. Sam at Select Exec Valet. "So the party had a valet service," says Horatio, for anyone just coming in from the bathroom.
Calleigh goes to talk to the valet service. They find Sam. Not dead. His vest went missing.
Eric visits Dr. Price in the lab and basically giggles and flirts with her. She has results on the accelerant. She gives them to Eric and he smiles like she just flashed him. It was high octane gasoline. High octane looove, maybe. Dr. Price shows him the victim's throat. It was burned from the inside. He swallowed gasoline. Why would a conscious person swallow gasoline? She's also ID'd the body. She rips out his tooth and gives it to Eric, telling him to tell the lab to use the "Nicolas the Second" treatment. Natalia confirms this is in fact possible, grinding down teeth to extract DNA, which scientists did last year on tzar Nicolas II. She does some stuff with the tooth to musical accompaniment and up-close graphics shots. 30 seconds later she has the ID: Dan Granger, a student with a record for trespassing and petty theft.
Horatio and Tripp visits Dan's roommate Johnny Young who is selling cans of gas out of the back of his truck, which also has a charred rear. He admits they were siphoning it from expensive cars and selling it. That explains how Dan swallowed the gas. Johnny says they stole the valet vest to blend. He saw Dan in flames and panicked and left. Dan was sucking gas from a black Escalade that tore out of there after Dan caught fire. He gives them the fuel Dan siphoned. They arrest him anyway.
Eric says the high octane gas matches the stuff in Dan. Horatio wants to find the station to find the truck. The computer beeps and Horatio suggests Eric look at the beeping, because he certainly wouldn't have thought of that on his own. The computer has found a chemical additive that one station uses.
Calleigh goes to talk to the attendant with Ryan. Ross says they had a black Escalade in there yesterday towing a trailer, but they didn't buy gas. (Gas prices start at $4.99 for regular unleaded. Ouch.) Ryan finds a grate that looks like it's been forced open with a crowbar. Ross measures his gas. He's down 15,000 gallons. That's $7,000 retail.
Ryan explains how it'd be done through the trailer, parked over the vent. Ross the owner realizes the girl yesterday who was willing to do "anything" for some cash distracted him. Luckily he wore protection. "For a girl who would give it up for a free tank of gas, hell yea." It's in the ladies room.
At the lab, the world's fastest DNA test set to music turns up a woman, Andrea. She says she wasn't a distraction.
Horatio thinks she's telling the truth or maybe, just maybe, covering for a killer.
Ryan has security camera footage from the bank next door. It shows the Escalade and the trailer, with a hose coming out of the bottom. They can't see the driver. But they see the plate. Horatio asks Ryan to run it, because he might not have thought of that on his own. The plate's fake, but they put out a BOLO.
Calleigh is sitting at a light in her enormous Hummer when that exact Escalade happens to drive by. In Miami. The small little town where that could totally happen. A car chase ensues. Calleigh gets cut off by a truck towing a boat and the Escalade pulls away. When she reaches it, it's burning and its windows are exploding. Calleigh calls for back-up.
Ryan arrives. Calleigh says they ditched the car and torched it as soon as they got away. The trailer is missing. There was no accelerant. It seems to have been caused by a flare. Ryan finds a fingernail in the glove box.
Tripp and Ryan show Johnny Young the burned car. The fingernail was his, burned off by gas. He admits he opened it and found a plastic bag with a bunch of passports in it. He took it.
Tripp runs the passports from Johnny's dorm room. They're all for women in their 20s from Central and South America. Immigration says all the women are in the country legally on student visas, which you need a local address to get. Horatio thinks they're being held out there and the gas is to drive them around the country.
Off they go. The raid the business, but find it seemingly empty. They find Andrea Rinell. She's happy to see Horatio. She says she didn't ask for help before because the man holding them said he'd kill their families.
It's a human trafficking ring.
Eric uses a fancy machine to test objects for something sciency. He gets a hit on a cell phone. Except it's not a cell phone. It's been rigged to work as a Taser. It's the murder weapon. He prints it.
He gets a hit. Sam Laughlin, the valet parker. Calleigh interviews him. They found the trailer at his house. That's enough to make him start confessing. Sam says he just wanted to teach the kid a lesson. He saw his glove compartment open and thought Dan stole more than gas. He Taser'd him but didn't think he'd burst into flames. Sam denies knowing Andrea. He says he was told the attendant would be distracted, but he didn't know by who. He doesn't even own the Escalade or trailer. He was hired. He says he won't give them up.
Looking through the trailer, Ryan finds a license plate. Horatio, ever helpful, tells Ryan to run it. It leads back to Paul Sanders, the jerko hosting the party. He's in the shipping business.
Cut to Paul unloading women from a trailer. They part to reveal Horatio, savior-like. Cops arrest Paul. Horatio damns him with his eyes and pretty flaming hair.
Paul says he's providing them with the American dream, which allows to Horatio to make a crack about them getting a nightmare.
They take him away.
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