Nick, Sara and Greg discover bodies in a house where the owner hoards every item she ever came across, as a piece of her life. They believe her to be responsible for the murders of several boys, all buried in the garden.
Officer Mitchell (Larry Mitchell) and his partner are on a call out. When they try to get into the house, they need to break the door down. After several attempts, the door gives way to reveal the house if brim full of clutter and junk. The owner, Marta Santiago (Bertila Damas) suffers from a hoarding obsession/disorder. She was ordered by the court to clean out her house. Nick (George Eads) asks Sara (Jorga Fox) how people can live like this. Sara replies it's more like "somebody died like that." Nick manages to find a DB when he puts his foot into the remains. Greg (Eric Szmanda) jokes about Nick "stepping in it." The body can't be moved until they clear a way for David (David Berman) to get in. Marta is helped out of the room by Sara. Marta's whole life is in this house as she tells Sara. Also that she's living with 'ghosts'. Marta notices Nick going through her things and loses her temper at him.
Greg is tasked with helping David remove the body from the house. Doc Robbins (Robert David Hall) describes the Vic as being in her '20's. COD was an epidural haematoma (blow to the head.) Ray (Laurence Fishburne) comments her wound is akin to a barcode and if she was killed with something from the house, then it's still there.
Nick, Sara and Greg sift through the contents of the house. Brass (Paul guilfoyle) attempts to track down other family members. Sara notices blood drops and follows the trail. Luminol won't show up so Sara suggests they use hydrogen peroxide, which will foam wherever there is any blood. Nick thinks Marta killed Diana because she tried to clear the house and her mother hit her. In much the same way as she got angry with Nick. The blood trail leads to a grandfather clock.
Sara talks to Julian (Ramon Ocampo) her son, telling him they're investigating a homicide. Tears well in his eyes when she tells him it's his sister, Diana. He's not aware of the whereabouts of his other sister, Alisa (Georgie Flores) but tells Sara how hard it was for them growing up in this house.
Dr Prescott (Annie Wersching) informs Ray that Marta doesn't have it in her to be violent. She's a hoarder and hoards everything family orientated. She didn't know about Diana and kept her body there for so long because she suffers from "clutter blindness." Marta's level 5 on the scale of hoarding and so it's likely she would never have found her body. Marta claims to have a bad memory, but when Dr Prescott tries to throw away her pen, Marta wants it since Diana used it. Ray comments her memory is good for her to recall this. He shows Marta the photos of the grandfather clock, which is an heirloom. The blood belongs to Diana. The blood trail goes on and leads to a pile of magazines and Greg identifies the barcode pattern on Diana's wound.
Marta tells them Diana found something when she was clearing up and things fell down. She doesn't tell Ray what Diana found. Presumably that was a DB then. Greg accidentally knocks a gun which goes off, causing Nick and Sara to burst into laughter. Nick commenting he's the one who stepped in it now. The skeleton is that of a male - his hands were tied in front of him with a red coloured ribbon. Nick and Sara have an altercation as to what Marta thought was more important - her home and not her family. Sara believes she suffered a trauma. Nick: "You can be traumatized, but still take out the damn trash." Very judgemental on Nick's part in not even attempting to understand Marta's compulsive hoarding and what could have caused it. He's prejudicial to an extent, if her house had been spotless, he'd be more inclined to agree with Sara. Since Marta's a hoarder, it automatically means she's a killer and it's much easier to hide the body. As Sara tells him, he's getting too far ahead of the evidence. Sara offers to process Marta, as they had an understanding, probably in an attempt to get away from Nick and his blind attitude too.
The male DB is described as being between 15-17 so it can't be Marta's husband, unless she married young. Doc allows Ray to take a bone marrow sample for analysis. Sara finds it difficult in having to fingerprint Marta. Henry (Jon Wellner) finds the Vic died of acute arsenic poisoning.
Sara tells Greg that Nick's not in touch with the case. Ray takes Dr Prescott to the house and she also tells Nick Marta isn't a killer. She organizes her house visually. Nick wonders if they're "trash whispering" and Ray replies if they listen very carefully, they may find something and they did.
Marta's organized some storage boxes on a different side of the house and Dr Prescott thinks they're time capsules, containing Alisa's items, such as her prom dress. They come across Alisa's room which is completely empty. Sara calls them to the garden, where three DBs have been discovered, bound in the same way as the second DB. All the Vics died from acute arsenic poisoning. Three are identified as runaways from a halfway house where Julian worked. He also got Alisa a job there. One Vic, Matthew, had been seeing Alisa. Brass believes they were all potential boyfriends of Alisa's and Julian killed them. He lawyers up.
From the storage boxes, Ray believes Marta was regressing and attempting to put Alisa back into her womb. They find another door and inside they find Alisa, handcuffed to her bed. Nick talks with her in hospital, removing his cap, so she'll recognize him. Yeah Nick, she'll remember your hair or lack of, ha. He asks who did this to her and that he can protect her; she replies it was her mother. Well that's all he wanted to hear.
Greg tells Ray he could handle the trash but not the bodies. This is unusual for such a comment coming from Greggie too, since he has been surrounded by plenty of DBs in his time in the field. Also in last weeks episode where he was confronted by more blood and gore, such as the Vic killed in the carwash, he wasn't affected by it in the same way as here. Some strange thinking and writing going on from the writers in this episode where Greggie and Nicky are concerned.
Sara believes something isn't quite right. Greg analyzes the handcuffs and the scratches where someone tried to remove the serial number. They were purchased from a local gun store by Julian. Nick wants to know why Sara can't see past Marta's guilt. Sara thinks Julian killed the boys and hid them there; having some sort of a hold over his mother. Ray tells them they have to look at the evidence, being the voice of reason and attempting to tell Sara she needs to walk away, which is what she does before he's finished his sentence. Nick wants to speak to Marta, but before he can do so, Julian has a lawyer for his mother.
Ray and Nick find the ribbon ends can provide them with a time-line for when the Vics were killed. The ribbon was torn using teeth and this will give them DNA. Dr Prescott tels Sara and Greg where to look for the ribbon, in its original packet. Sara finds a box of rat poison, in it's original box, and the ribbon too. The poison contains arsenic. Ray tells Alisa they have her DNA as she killed the boys. Her mother handcuffed her attempting to stop her from killing. She blames her mother and that she made everyone leave. Julian also blames their mother for Alisa's condition, but Sara tells him Alisa is more disturbed than anything her mother did to her.
Sara relays the story of her schizophrenic mother stabbing her father in the heart one night. Sara survived her traumatic childhood, as did Julian. Marta won't be prosecuted if she helps with the case and the rest is up to her and Julian. Ray and Nick in yet another discussion (in Blood Moon they talked of the monsters they come across in their work) and here Ray tells him about consumption and hoarding - that in the '60's people had less in their houses, whereas today, it's all about having.
Nick cleans out his desk and he and Sara have another chat about Gil (William Petersen) since we know he makes an appearance soon. He finds the blue marble Gil gave him and Sara has one too. They got back to being on speaking terms very quickly and without any apologies either, suppose they don't need to apologize having known each other for ages. Nick realizing he was wrong about Marta, but he didn't admit as much. It was good to see some tension between the two, they haven't had an argument like that before. Nick not understanding how Sara could bond with Marta in the way that she did. Or that Sara was blinkered when it came to Marta being guilty. But Sara was right, she didn't kill anyone and wasn't responsible for Alisa's affliction either. She was just a cold-blooded serial killer, who thought she could use her mother as justification for killing those boys. No one drove her to murder except Alisa herself.
Nick and Sara have a brother/sister relationship in a way, but after knowing her for so long, he still doesn't really know her. She also told Julian about her mother and not anyone that she works with, having more of an affinity with what they both went through as children. She also believes telling Julian about her own mother will help him deal with his, since in the beginning he wasn't moved or emotional when he asked if his mother was dead when Sara told him about the homicide. His reaction upon hearing it was Diana was more emotional.
Nick was rather out of character this episode, as he's the last one to make such insensitive comments and strange the writers having Nick being the one to talk and act like he did. Ray, as usual is the voice of reason, this time between Nick and Sara, but she's not listening when she walks out the lab.
Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) was missing this time round.
This episode of the show embarked upon a topical issue as hoarding is in the news at the moment, but not so in the UK, though lately the UK is getting its own epidemic of hoarders. The US seems to be affected by it in a big way. CSI choosing to shed light on such a major disorder.
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