CSI: Miami

Season 4 - Episode 1 - From The Grave

Written by Ann Donahue & Elizabeth Devine
Directed by Karen Gaviola

Horatio’s in-church confession is interrupted by gunshots at the adjacent cemetery.  There, the funeral of Mrs. Fuentes goes haywire when a man emerges from her casket with automatic weapon blazing just as her son, Alberto, arrives from prison to pay his last respects.  Leaving both Alberto and his police escort dead, the shooter escapes in the hearse as Horatio arrives.

 Horatio concludes that the shooter was one of Alberto’s own Mala Noche gang members, and sets out to learn who posted the $10,000 required for Alberto’s escort guard at the funeral.  Wealthy Michelle Burke, Alberto’s former girlfriend, says a guy named Diablo asked her to arrange the guard (and payment).

 Calleigh and Wolfe test samples from the casket’s lining for DNA.   Delko and Calleigh locate the hearse and all converge on that site, the Livingston residence.  They are too late, and learn that one of the gang members had been there, raped housekeeper Celia Gonzalez, then sped off in the family car.   Dale Livingston and his family hid upstairs in their “panic room” during the attack.   Horatio sends Celia to the hospital for care and examination, but not before she reveals to him that she is pregnant.  Horatio is upset that Livingston made no effort to get Celia out of harm’s way, especially when it is revealed that Livingston is her baby’s father. 

 Calleigh discovers a mineral compound at the Livingston home that leads the team to the gang’s hideout, an abandoned limestone quarry.  Alexx’s autopsy determines that Mrs. Fuentes died of a heart attack brought on by extreme stress.  Delko searches Mrs. Fuentes’ home and finds an unexploded “pineapple” grenade, the probable cause of that stress.  At the newly renovated CSI lab, Calleigh and Wolfe meet Natalia Boa Vista, a new CSI whose federal grant only allows her to work on “unresolved cases,” much to the veteran CSI pair’s dismay.

 At the quarry, Horatio and his team arrest Raphael Sifuentes, and discover Mala Noche’s plan -- “importing” the powerful grenades hidden in boxes of golf clubs, using Dale Livingston’s import company as the operation’s stateside “front.”  Livingston claims Diablo threatened his family if he didn’t agree to the grenade shipments.

Using DNA collected from the casket, Valera determines the shooter was also the rapist.   Natalia discovers a connection through Michelle Burke’s year-old rape claim against Benito Galian, aka Diablo.  Michelle tells Horatio the gang is planning a big meeting and Diablo will come to get her afterwards.  Horatio wires her, then heads to the pier where the meeting will take place.  He follows Diablo to the hospital, where the gang leader tries to kill a recovering Celia.  Horatio confronts Diablo, who lunges at him with a scalpel.  Horatio shoots him in the jugular; blood gushes everywhere.  Horatio experiences déjà vu; his having intervened on the attack of another woman by a brutal man -- the brutal man causing his own death, with Horatio left holding the bloody weapon.