CSI: Miami Recap - 6.20 Down to the Wire

This CSI: Miami had more twists than usual. There were plenty of little details to watch for. If you’re about to watch the episode, keep that DVR or VCR remote in your hand.

6.20 Down to the Wire
Air Date: May 12, 2008

A man calls 911 and reports that someone is shooting everyone. A SWAT team arrives at a nice suburban home, and rams the door in. A man comes toward them, through the smoke, holding a carving knife. The front line fires twice into the man’s chest. His wife appears in the doorway behind the man, screaming.

Horatio questions the SWAT team sergeant, who says they were within protocol. Horatio disagrees. A man came into his front room, wielding a knife, when an intruder has come in. There were no children in the house. A SWAT team guns him down, because they had wrong information.

Lucy Maddox, the wife of the man slain, Michael Maddox, wonders how this can be happening. Horatio calmly tries to explain, but she threatens to sue the department for taking her husband away from her. She said he was just trying to protect her from the police.

The team examines the 911 recording. The call originated from Maddox’s next door neighbor’s house. They call in Neil Jackson for questioning. He denies making the call, but Calleigh brings up Michael Maddox’s lawsuit against Jackson. Jackson is adamant that there’s no way he made the call. He claims he only wanted to put an addition on his house. He said there was a man hiding in his tree, the day before the incident.

Vista finds skin on Jackson’s tree. It matches private investigator, Kurt Rossi, a man known to work for many rich clients. Rossi tells Horatio that Michael Maddox hired him to investigate his wife’s infidelity. He was in the tree watching for Lucy and her lover.

Lucy Maddox denies having an affair, and tells the team that Michael was paranoid. She’s not surprised that he hired Rossi. Besides the news, home, and work, he was also suspicious of his business partner, Peter Cullen. Cullen was fighting Maddox’s attempt to back out of a hedge fund that they started. She says Michael’s SUV bumper was damaged by the SWAT team. Calleigh finds silver paint, indicating that another vehicle, and not SWAT, caused the damage. The SUV has an event data recorder. They watch the recording of Maddox’s accident, and find the plates of the silver car. Michael and the other man –Charlie Decker- were arguing in view of the camera.

Decker had a card for Lucy Maddox in his car. Decker said that Michael came at him outside the cars, and warned him to stop seeing Lucy.

Ryan isolates a rumble in the background of the 911 recording. Increasing the pitch reveals that it’s a jetliner. The pitch shift also reveals the voice to be that of a woman. Ryan discovers that the Jackson’s phone line had been tampered with, at the box on the street. The lineman admits that he was paid to set up the dedicated line to Jackson’s house. The lineman traces the call back to Debbie Schiffer’s phone, in the office of Maddox’s business partner, Peter Cullen.

Horatio and Vista find a voice shifter on Debbie Schiffer’s desk. Cullen appears aggravated about the media, and acts surprised at the news of the phone call, and the equipment. He says Debbie was worried about Maddox’s plan to sell off the company. He said she ran an errand, and hadn’t returned. They find her in the parking garage, in her car, dead from a gunshot through the windshield. They test Cullen for gunshot residue, but it’s negative. They find his pistol in a desk drawer.

Kurt Rossi tries to dissuade Horatio from investigating Cullen, who is also his client. Rossi says he can make the evidence look tainted.

Stetler shows up, and takes Calleigh off the case, because of a website showing Calleigh with a cheat sheet. The department is worried that it raises doubts about her ability to collect evidence, or makes it look like she tainted the crime scene. Rossi took the issue to the state attorney, and convinced him to put pressure on the police, hindering the investigation. The cheat sheet, though, is Eric’s. She didn’t want to let the focus go to Eric, so she let herself be taken off.

Using a new technique, Eric finds gunshot mist on Cullen’s jacket. Rossi, though, accompanies Cullen for the questioning. Rossi has a recording of one of Eric’s counseling sessions. He threatens to put the recording of Eric talking about his memory problems on YouTube. Horatio tells Eric that it doesn’t matter, because they’re going to destroy him first.

Horatio and Vista deduce that Charlie Decker slammed on the brakes to cause the accident with Maddox. Horatio tells Decker to stop protecting Rossi. He admits that he loved Lucy, and staged the accident in return for helping him get Lucy. At the accident, he taunted Maddox, and threatened to come to Maddox’s house and take Lucy away from him. So, on the morning of his murder, Maddox thought Decker had come through the front door.

Decker –at Horatio’s bidding- goes to Rossi and Cullen’s luncheon. He tries to get Rossi to admit what he did, but Rossi rips Decker’s shirt open revealing the wire. After Rossi and Cullen threaten Decker, Horatio shows up. He excuses Decker, and reveals the other wire, in the pepper mill. Rossi tries, in vain, to convince Horatio to work with him.

At Rossi’s, Eric and Calleigh find countless disks with CSI teammate’s names on them.