CSI: Miami

Season 4 - Episode 2 - Blood in The Water

Written by Sunil Nayar and Dean Widenmann
Directed by Duane Clark

The Gannon family is panicked aboard their fire-engulfed yacht.  Luke searches the boat for his sister Julie, who prepares to leap overboard.   Mom Laura screams at her daughter not to go into the shark infested waters, but Julie jumps in anyway.  Luke follows to rescue Julie, but it’s too late; Julie is jerked under the water by a shark.  Luke is nowhere to be found. 

At the floating crime scene Delko suits up to dive.  Horatio warns everyone to work quickly before the evidence sinks.  Wolfe and Calleigh bag evidence, and Delko discovers a nearby buoy had been tampered with; the rip current probably carried Luke’s body out to the Gulf Stream.  

 Laura tells Horatio there was a boat named “Helen B” that tried to help, but her husband refused their assistance because they would charge a huge rescue fee, a common scam in these waters.  Horatio questions Rex Hoby, the owner of Helen B.  Delko sets out to recover Luke’s body.   Calleigh’s investigation reveals cooking gas as an accelerant in the fire, which was started by someone on the boat.   Delko finds a young male’s body but it’s not Luke’s -- it’s Damon Loughlin, a Norwegian student here on a student visa.  Alexx determines Loughlin, a house sitter for the wealthy Elias family, was shot and killed before he ever got on the boat.  Calleigh and Wolfe interview Julian Elias and his daughter Tia, as they return home from a weekend at the Mayfair yacht club, the same club Laura Gannon belongs to.  Upon entry, Calleigh finds a pool of  blood in the center of the foyer, then discovers a gun casting and bags it.  Next, Elias reveals that ten million dollars in gold bars is missing.

Horatio confronts Hoby about the gold bars; Hoby claims the owner granted him salvage rights to the bars.  Luke then appears from below deck and says the bars are his and Hoby saved his life.   Horatio asks Luke about the stolen gold and Loughlin’s murder.  Luke denies knowledge of either and asserts his scuttle rights to those gold bars.   Wolfe deduces the fire was started by a bong filled with cooking fuel.  Delko ID’s a print on the bong as Tia Elais’.  Tia admits she put the cooking fuel in the bong to teach Luke a lesson.  She dated Luke until she found him in bed with his own sister, Julie.

 A background check on the Gannon family reveals Ken, Luke and Julie are not family at all; they are grifters.  Laura, widowed prior to her marriage to Ken Gannon, learns he planned their courtship and marriage and passed Julie and Luke off as his teenaged children to get access to the yacht club so they could steal Elias’ gold.    Horatio confronts Gannon, who claims Horatio has no proof.   Meanwhile, Calleigh uncovers Luke’s print on the casting she found at the Elias home.  She confronts him with the hard evidence.   

 An investigation of Laura’s late husband’s car accident death reveals the car had been tampered with.  A fingerprint is found which matches Ken Gannon.   Relieved that it’s over, Laura can’t believe she let herself get fooled because she wanted a family so badly.