A body of a man appears in a spring. The CSIs are puzzled as to how he had so many diseases affecting him, for someone so young. Leading to yet another case of cost cutting, corporate greed.
A DB is found in a spring. Brass (Paul Guilfoyle) comments they're all named 'Anthony' and in cement shoes. Ray (Laurence Fishburne) comments on it being a sulphur spring and if bathed in, can provide a beautiful complexion. Brass remarks that the DB's complexion has improved. The DB has an 'L' shaped wound on his head which Ray explains means his head was hit with a pistol. David (David Berman) says the water's nice. Ray believes he was dead when he hit the water or afterwards. Nick (George Eads) thinks it's a body dump. Ray thinks the PMI was about 4-7 hours and takes a water sample. Just as in last week's episode, Ray, Nick and Brass are called to the CS together again. Nick spots an oil deposit on the ground, probably from the vehicle that dumped the DB.
Also like last episode, Doc Robbins (Robert David Hall) and Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) are in autopsy together. He asks what he should get for his wife's birthday. Catherine believes diamonds, or gold with some carats. Doc Robbins determines the COD. The DB has no damage to his skull, but had several diseases, tissue degeneration. COD was drowning, which caused a reflexive spasm, he couldn't breathe. There's a sample of water trapped in his vocal folds. Catherine believes if they can match the water sample they'll know where he drowned. The prints match a Walter Burns. He had a record for assault several years ago, but hasn't been in trouble since then. conveniently, he had to be in the system and had a wife in Cable Springs; who died last year.
Greg (Eric Szmanda) checks Walter's phone records, showing he made a dozen calls to Rosalind Johnson (Angela Bettis) a newspaper reporter in Cable Springs. She runs the entire paper. Walter was one of her sources. Brass tells her she was the last one to speak to him but refuses to tell them why. Brass can't give out details of an ongoing investigation. She spoke to him about the ranch, his health. Rosalind looked sick from the first time we see her but it's not until later that Ray actually asks her if she's seen a doctor.
Archie (Archie Kao) shows Nick and Greg an empty car with blood. The navigation shows it was at Walter's ranch and a name, Richard Adams (Christopher Goodman) also comes up. The bullet casing is in the car. The car tests positive for blood. The gun was fired inside, but the blood's on the outside. Also present are amylase bubbles from saliva. Nick determines he was shot from the inside. Richard Adams was an engineer froma local gas company, Conservo Solutions. Det Reed (Katee Sackoff) comments that if he drove to 'Hooker Alley' then the shooting was premeditated. Nick finds a blood trail and follows drag marks to where the DB was dumped.
Richard's wife, Lisa (Megan Ward) tells Nick he called Rosalind. He had been nervous for weeks. He was a safety inspector for the ranches but she can't say anything more since she signed a non-disclosure agreement. Doing so would cause her to lose his benefits. Nick asks if she's been threatened and she shows him the head of a goat in the trash. It was left on the porch, two days before Richard was killed.
Ray says the goat had been dead twenty four hours, and was dead before the head was cut. Doc Robbins comments on the lesions being the same as Walter's. He believes the head is a message. He's seen The Godfather (1972) eleven times. Greg analyzes the blood on the box which held the head and also runs a print. Archie looks at the images from Richard's phone and Nick says that's "my goat" in the photos. The ranch address is Gibson ranch. The gas company is drilling nearby and there's no signs of any livestock. Gunshots are heard. Gibson (Henry Sanders) puts his goat out of its misery. Walter was a friend. The gas company paid him for his mineral rights. His wife had cancer, like many others in Cable Springs. He throws a match down the well and he explodes along with it.
Ray doesn't find any explosives in the well. Nick: "I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but water just doesn't blow up." He recalls the water in an Ohio town, which Ray says started the Clean Water Act. Ray repeats Nick's line of not wanting to insult his intelligence, but water isn't supposed to bubble and has a chemical smell to it. The water ignites and contains methane. As well as other chemicals. Ray speaks with Rosalind off the record. She tells him the gas company knew about the water and they figured this out a year ago. Conservo Solutions ignored safety protocols. They tried to stop it. Ray asks her now if she's seen a doctor. He'll read about it in her article. Then leaves after asking him if he's heard of "fracking." He comments that sounds like a "sci-fi expletive." An in-joke as the term "frack" was used in the remade Battelstar Galactica also Katee Sackoff was in this episode of CSI again.
Hodges (Wallace Langham) gives his findings to Doc. The water test results from Gibson's ranch show it contained benzene, a carcinogen. All of the chemicals were also found in the DB, the bacterial culture from Walter's brain lesions. He was suffering from metastatic carcinoma. Hodges says it was due to the bad water, which contained the same toxins but in higher amounts. Walter drowned in the source of the contamination.
Ecklie (Marc Vann) tells Catherine they can't alert the public. Ray has looked up "fracking." Known as "hydraulic fracking." Where gas is extracted from shale. The company pioneered a process whereby water is pumped into the gas, along with other chemicals, this breaks the rock and the gas escapes. Half of the fluid escapes with the gas, whilst the other half seeps into the water table, pumped into an evaporation pool; enters the ground water, the gas mixes with the air and explodes. No environmental impact study was ever carried out and gas companies aren't bound by any Acts. Ray mentions the trace report on the oil which was from a diesel engine, belonging to a commercial vehicle. The only ones in the area belong to the gas company. Ecklie says they don't have enough for a warrant, Catherine asks for the warrant since the killer of both men is the same.
Liked the way Ray feigned the evaporation pool to be a swimming pool. Nick checks the fleet of trucks for oil leaks and finds a scrap from Richard's shirt on the fence. Ray knows the proof is in the evaporation pool. The water from the pool matches the water in Walter's vocal folds, he was dumped in the spring after he was killed at the pool. Greg informs them the truck has been found. There's blood inside and the driver, Cody (Richard Roberts) was the victim of a hit and run: a 401. The gun was inside the truck. So if he was run over, why not take the gun too, obviously since all loose ends were being tied up by the gas company.
Nick test fires the gun, the back spatter matches, as well as the bullets and casings. There's the presence of blood and hair on the magazine. Ray explains Walter wanted a sample from the pool, was hit on the head with the gun and drowned in the pool, dumped by Cody. Ecklie declares the case closed, since they have the evidence and the killer. There'll be no trial. Catherine insists they need a water sample from the pool. He tells Catherine she's a CSI, not Erin Brokovich (2000). But the case on the hit and run can remain open.
Ray tells Rosalind what fracking is. She believed that "one person can change the world." She's not afraid to publish her story even if she doesn't have solid evidence and her paper would be closed. He tells her of a friend running clinical trials and he got her a place. It was "the least I could do." As is in his nature to help, he is a doctor after all.
CSI's turn to get on the 'bleeding heart' band wagon and the corporate greed crusade, seeing as CSI:Miami had two episodes about corporate greed in season 8.
Sara (Jorga Fox) was missing again. The comments and laughs were pretty low key to non-existent this episode. Once again showing companies can and do get away with murder. This episode was all about the little people as opposed to actually concentrating on the gas company, since that would have been too similar to CSI:Miami's Bad Seed episode. At the end of the day, the company would get off scot free as all tracks would be covered. But what about the hit and run driver, he's as much of a liability as Cody was.
Ecklie referring to Catherine not being Erin Brokovich, well she wasn't, although she did appear in that movie as Donna Jensen. So this wasn't a roundabout, general comment from him.
A topical ep as fracking is always in the news and is a serious subject.
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