ABOUT
GUM DROPS
Series: CSI Las Vegas
Episode Title: Gum Drops
Episode Number: 06.05
Synopsis: The CSI team suspects an entire family has been murdered, but cannot prove it until they find the victims' bodies. When the blood evidence suggests only three people were killed, Nick is the only one on the CSI team that believes the fourth family member, the young daughter, is still alive. Now, it's a race against time to find the perpetrators who may lead the CSIs to a possible survivor.
Written By: Sarah Goldfinger
Directed By: Richard J. Lewis
NOTES
The plot of this episode was modified at the last moment to accomodate for a sudden change in William Petersen's availability -- originally, Gil Grissom was going to be the CSI convinced that the younger daughter was still alive.
EPISODE GUIDE
If you travel at the maximum speed limit, Pioche, Nevada is about two hours and ten minutes from Las Vegas. It's an old Gold Rush town that's got its fair share of secrets…and inside one Victorian era house there is blood evidence of a quadruple homicide. Where the bodies of the McBride Family ended up is the question the CSI Team must unravel.
The haunting, raspy voice of 10-year-old Cassie McBride leads us through the initial phase of the crime scene investigation. "They came to my house. They had a fight. They couldn't find what they were looking for..." Pioche's Sheriff Brackett notifies CSI after an anonymous 911 call comes in regarding the missing McBrides. Grissom, busy teaching a "Human Remains Recovery" class, puts Nick in charge. Sara, Warrick and Greg join him on site. Catherine, interviewing DNA techs, stays at the lab. The McBrides appear to be a normal family. Jude McBride is a stay at home dad. Nina owns the local coffee shop. Jeremy's a smart kid, a junior in high school…and then there's Cassie, a pipsqueak according to Sheriff Brackett. "I loved my family" we hear her rasp, as Nick begins to feel a connection to the girl after viewing her room filled with photos and crafts. She likes Nancy Drew books, Bubblicious bubble gum, and was obviously thrilled to be cast as Gretel in her school play. He finds a sneaker under her bed, which she cleverly used as a receptacle to ditch yucky cough syrup. Nick bags a blond hair strand from her bed's headboard. Downstairs, the blood pools are dry, meaning the crime scene is at least twelve hours old. The family cars are still in the driveway--keys, cell phones and wallets near the front door. The coffee maker was reset for Monday morning, so whatever happened at the McBrides' happened over the weekend. Sara and Nick take blood samples for DNA comparison with toothbrushes and hairbrushes.
After tape-lifting all the bloody shoeprints and one pair of bare feet, transfers are made to large laminate sheets, Sara and Nick then compare them to the family member shoe sizes. There are no bloody footprints for Jeremy or Cassie. Assuming the victims were shot, the first to die wouldn't necessarily step in blood. They also find one set of size 12 prints, and two size 11s, meaning three more people (non-family members) were in the house. Greg, processing outside, finds coontail algae near the driveway. It doesn't fit into the rest of the landscaping. He also spots an unusual tire tread that doesn't fit the family cars. Lastly, he finds a piece of Bubblicious gum and bags it. Back inside, Warrick inspects Jeremy's room and discovers the kid was trafficking in term papers--some went for $100 a pop. In the kitchen, Sara inspects a chart and sees that Cassie never did her Saturday morning chores. That means the crime went down on Friday night. Greg, enters, sorting through mail, and reacts to a $2,000 Nevada Power bill. The reason for it is found in the basement. The McBrides were growing marijuana under fluorescent lighting. It's a ganja graveyard, and a motive for murder. Two bullets used to shoot open the lock on the basement door are bagged. Taking stock of all the plants growing and drying, it looks like the suspects got off with a huge score. A check of the McBrides' phone logs shows there were no outgoing calls all weekend. However, there were six incoming calls to Jude McBride's cell from the same number, all belonging to Dr. Malcolm Parker. When questioned, the doctor admits that he stopped by the McBride's on Sunday night to buy some dope. He saw the blood pools through the window and called 911 anonymously. He wears size 10 shoes and was working rounds Friday night.
Later in the afternoon, Nick greets Sage, a friend of Nina McBride's who is concerned that the woman didn't show up at the coffee shop today. There's no news about the McBrides' whereabouts. Sage seems to be able to look inside Nick. Does he believe in past lives? Ah…he's just trying to get through this one. With an eerie knowing she tells him "I think you're doing pretty well." For Nick, it's a strange yet comforting reassurance. Catherine calls. She got one hit off the prints lifted in the kitchen--a Mark Horvatin. He's seventeen, in Junior ROTC, which is why he's in the system. At the high school parking lot, Nick and Sheriff Brackett confront Mark. He wears a size 12 shoe with a similar thread found in the McBride's house. Since the parking lot is still school property, Mark is forced to pop open his car trunk. It's stuffed with hefty bags of dried pot. "Daddy's garden was supposed to be a secret," says Cassie's haunting, raspy voice. Warrick and Greg process Mark's Neon at the Pioche P.D. garage. They find an ATM receipt for 10:03 Friday night, within the timeframe of the murders. The Sheriff will run the account number. They also find a piece of Bubblicious gum in the backseat. Warrick matches the hefty bags holding the pot with the same hefty bag roll found in the McBride's kitchen. They're getting somewhere…until Nick enters with the news that Mark's dad is a lawyer. He's challenging the search-and-seize on the grounds that it lacked probable cause.
Back at the CSI Layout room, Catherine has pieced together the crime scene photos of the various blood pools and foot traffic. Jeremy McBride was shot first near the front door. His father, Jude, came running out of the kitchen, stepped in his son's blood, and then backed up when he saw Mark and two other N.D. boys. He was shot next in a struggle, falling near Jeremy. Mark and his co-assailants then tracked blood into the kitchen. Nina McBride, in bare feet, ran downstairs to see what the commotion was, moving to her husband and son. When the boys exited the kitchen, she tried to run back upstairs, but was shot and slid backward. All of the DNA reports match a McBride family member to the blood evidence except for Cassie. Her death must have been a bloodless crime. Nick wants to believe that they took Cassie with them alive. He airs a theory out to the team. Jeremy was a nerd who did term papers for Mark. Wanting to be popular, he revealed that he could give the jock some pot, that dad had plenty to go around. And how does that translate into a quadruple murder? One of Mark's friends was stupid enough to bring a gun. The parents weren't supposed to be home. It all blew up. Warrick notes that Mark's dad is a lawyer. Maybe the kid thought, Habeas corpus… Corpus delicti… "Body of the crime" must be proven to make a case, so get rid of the bodies? Sheriff Brackett appears with a name from the ATM receipt: Peter Locke (17), coaches the kids swim team. Brackett also has ATM surveillance footage. Warrick will drive it back to the A/V Lab in Vegas. Sara is concerned that Nick is acting like someone planning to rescue a child rather than find a body. "You rescued me," counters Nick. No, the CSI Team was simply doing their job, and it wasn't Nick's day to die. Nick still believes that it's not Cassie's time to die either. At the Locke Residence, Greg notes a boat hitched to a Ford pick-up truck. Coontail algae, which he found near the McBride's driveway, hang from the outboard motor. Sara finds a roll of hefty garbage bags on the boat, explaining why she's not finding any blood. They learn from Mrs. Locke that her son, Peter, took the boat out Friday night. Good way to dump a body…or four. Nick calls. Did they find a piece of wrapped Bubblicious gum on board? Yes. It's Cassie! She's leaving a gum drop trail, just like in her favorite play "Hansel and Gretel." It went from the house, to the driveway, to the car, and now the boat. Archie in the A/V Lab does a some frame skipping and pixel averaging on the ATM surveillance tape and finds a shot of Cassie lying across Peter's lap in the backseat of Mark's car, sucking her thumb. After receiving a jpeg of it on his Trio, Nick busts in on the Sheriff's interrogation, pulling Peter out of his chair, shoving the frightened boy up against a wall. They have his prints on Cassie's cough syrup bottle. They'll match his hair to a strand taken off her bed. He tried to drug the girl, but how did the boy hurt his hand? She outsmarted him, fought back, didn't she? Peter, scared and sorry, doesn't say a word. At the Eagle Valley Reservoir, a Las Vegas Search & Rescue van has brought divers and a police issue boat. Learning that the boys got a full tank of gas and came back with it ¾ full, they calculate that they went about three miles out from the launch point. Reaching the search area, the divers drop a video ray into the water. Soon, they find the corpses of Jude, Nina and Jeremy McBride linked together by rope and held down by an anchor line. Shredded scraps of black trash bags dangle off of them. Cassie is not among them or anywhere in the area.
Later, Dr. Roberts pulls .22 caliber slugs from the three victims, probably from a six-shot revolver. There were four shots to the bodies, and two to the basement door lock. It looks like the perps didn't shoot Cassie because they ran out of bullets. IBIS bounces back a hit on the gun, registered with the Department of Wildlife for a hunting infraction. The owner is Chris Daniels of Pioche, Nevada. He's a real SOB, tough on his son Luke, age 17, a friend of Mark and Peter. Sheriff Brackett finds a knife on the boy. It tests positive for blood. So do his size 11 shoes. Sara sits next to Luke at the Pioche Police Station and lays out how it went down. Luke went with Mark and Peter to the McBride's to score the pot…only Jeremy's parents were home. When Mr. McBride came out, Luke pulled the gun. Jeremy jumped in front to stop the confrontation and got shot. Jude McBride rushed Luke, tried to wrest the gun away and got shot through the hand and chest. Later, Luke fired two rounds into the back of Nina McBride when she tried to run back up the stairs. Peter then went upstairs to deal with Cassie while Luke and Mark bagged the pot in the basement. They also bagged the victims in garbage bags. Only Peter couldn't kill Cassie, so he drugged her with cough syrup instead. Then they drove Mark's car to the ATM before picking up Peter's boat. They dumped the bodies in the reservoir. And Cassie? Luke and Peter got in a fight over what to do with her. Peter punched his friend. Luke doesn't like getting hit. Dad knocks him around enough at home. So he got defiant, pulled out his knife and went for Cassie's throat. "You're man enough to kill a little girl?" Luke looks at her, trembling a bit. She knows she's getting somewhere. Soon after, Nick searches the shoreline of the reservoir in the police issue boat. The spotlight picks up some matted down grass in one section and he rushes ashore. He finds Cassie unconscious, a section of rope tied around her wrist, her hand clutching a piece of Bubblicious gum. In the Desert Palms Hospital, Cassie recovers, unable to talk very well as Luke's tentative cut struck the trachea, but none of her surrounding blood vessels. Nick sits with her. She writes on a pad, "Where's my family?" He hedges, telling her that they are here in Las Vegas. She writes, "I am 10 years old. Don't baby me." He tells her that her family's bodies are at the Coroner's Office. She accepts this news sadly. Nick gently encourages her to tell the story of what happened to her family from the beginning. And in her haunting, raspy voice she starts in from where the episode began, from where we first heard her voice. And now we know why it is raspy. "They came to my house. They had a fight. They couldn't find what they were looking for…"
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