csi: Miami
burned (22/24)

The forensics drama series continues tonight. In this episode, Horatio and the team investigate an arson attack which claims the life of a groom-tobe; and one CSI suffers the consequences when his private life intrudes on the case.

On the scene of a suspected arson attack, Horatio and Frank are talking to a shaken resident called Claire Gibbs (Rebecca Gayheart, ‘Vanished’), who has just seen her fiancé, Brett Morrison, killed by the flames. Suddenly everyone has to clear the area – a water heater is about to blow. The heater flies through the air and lands with a crash on Frank’s new car – just another brush with death for the world-weary detective. “First it’s a damn land mine, then it’s a water heater,” he sighs. “What’s next?” “Next,” replies Horatio solemnly, “we catch a killer.”

Claire Gibbs believes that she knows who may have started the fire: her ex-boyfriend Anthony Bryant, who has been stalking her since their break-up. “When Brett and I got engaged, it sent him over the edge,” she explains. When Horatio goes in search of Bryant, he is shocked to encounter Yelina Salas, his own widowed sisterin-law. Yelina tells Horatio that she is back in Miami working as a private investigator, and had been hired by Bryant to follow him around. She now realises that her job was simply to provide the man with an airtight alibi.

When Bryant is brought in for questioning, Horatio points out that he has something of an incriminating record, including arrests for burglary, stalking and arson. Unfortunately, none of these were accompanied by convictions –as the suspect is only too happy to point out to Horatio.

The investigation takes a grisly twist when Alexx’s autopsy of Brett Morrison reveals that he has a shred of human skin lodged between his teeth. DNA tests identify the flesh as belonging to mobster Michael Lipton, who is brought in for questioning but refuses to talk to anyone except Ryan Wolfe. Inside the interrogation room, Lipton informs Wolfe that he “doesn’t need that kind of heat” and offers to write off the $10,000 gambling debt owed to him by the CSI if he can make the situation “go away”. Shaken, Wolfe storms out and asks Natalia to take over the interrogation. Later on, Wolfe is caught on camera handing money over to Lipton, presenting Horatio with a very difficult decision.

Unaware of Wolfe’s problems, the other CSIs continue to search for the arsonist. Delko follows up a print found on broken glass from the door where the arsonist appears to have gained entry to the house, and comes up with the name Ron Cramer – a plumber and small-time crook. Cramer claims that he was at the house for a job, and smashed the window with his gun to try and get in to help the occupants when he saw the flames. But when Delko and Calleigh go back to the scene, they find evidence which suggests that this is not the whole story...

As the investigation progresses, the case gets stranger and stranger –culminating in the grim discovery of two autopsied bodies in Claire Gibbs’s attic. What is the real story behind the fire?