CSI: Miami - Episode 7.10 “Deluca Motel” Recap

Episode 7.10 - The DeLuca Motel
Air Date: December 8, 2008

As others in the Deluca Motel buzz around, going about their business, Delko walks out of his room. He goes to his car, makes some suspicious actions before opening the door and getting quarters from the console. As a pregnant woman gets ice, he passes her to get a coffee from a coin-op machine.

He goes back to his room, looks out the window, almost expectantly. As he sits to open an envelope, he hears a shot. As he goes to the window, the glass shatters, cutting his arm. He goes into the courtyard with his gun in hand. A body is floating in the pool, as he looks around the upper level for the shooter.

The team arrives, and tests all the people in the motel for gunshot residue. Delko and Horatio discuss the body…single shot to the chest, blindfolded, and no blood drops on the pool deck. Delko wonders how he ended up at the motel pool, especially since he hadn’t seen him around there. He tells Horatio he’s staying there while his condo is remodelled. Horatio doesn’t seem convinced that this is simply a construction getaway for Delko.

(click on “Read More” for the rest of the recap)

Frank and Calleigh check out the victim’s room. There’s blood on the door handle, indicating he had fled before ending up in the pool. Frank says the shooter probably took after the victim and fired hitting Delko’s window. Calleigh is stumped by the buckets and burned matches scattered on the carpet. They look around commenting on how unsanitary such motel rooms are. Frank points out the busted out bathroom window. Calleigh finds a substantial wad of fabric stuck in the broken glass. Frank wonders why Delko would stay in such a hole.

Ryan finds the bullet that grazed Delko’s arm, saying it must have shattered when it hit the glass. Delko wonders what happened to the third shot that he heard, in addition to this and the one in the victim. He sarcastically “compliments” Delko on his residence. Ryan is curious why Delko has an explosives field kit on the table, and why he would have been honing his technical skills rather than going out with the gang the night before. As Ryan follows Delko out of the room, he spots a slip of paper with the name Enrico Moldano, followed by “Cutanas - 11PM Sunday”, and “1K”.

Tara tells Horatio that, before cutting the victim open, fluoroscope shows that he bled out from where a bullet fragment hit his left lung and another lodged in his aorta. Horatio is curious how he managed to get to the pool, and comments on his blood alcohol level being 0.18%. She notes that the alcohol would have slowed his body’s response to trauma. They also comment on burn marks on his palms, apparent whip marks and needle pricks on his chest. Tara wonders if it’s S&M, and notices an intact bullet not far inside the entry wound. Below it, she finds a medallion with Greek fraternity letters. She deduces this was a hazing ritual.

Natalia and Horatio question Neil Scofield, from the victim’s fraternity. Neil responds that Seth Copeland was a pledge, but he doesn’t know about a motel. Natalia tells him he should have changed his jacket, and produces the piece of material from the bathroom window. It appears to match a hole in Neil’s own jacket sleeve. Neil begs them not to bust him for hazing, or else he’ll be expelled. She asks if the gunshots were a new level. Neil says he put him on “bucket brigade”, forcing him to hold pails of water in his outstretched arms. Lowering one of them, or moving his foot from a piece of tape on the floor would require him to drink a beer. While Seth was performing the task, Neil says he went into the bathroom to relieve his bladder. That’s when he heard the shots and Delko identifying himself as police. He broke the window using his jacket and fled. He apologizes for leaving Seth behind.

Ryan tells Calleigh that the bullet from Delko’s room is “compromised”, but she said they still have the one from the victim. She tells him that lines etched into the bullet are consistent with passing through a window screen. This would imply that Neil wasn’t lying about not firing the shot.

Calleigh and Delko go back to the scene with a foam dummy to determine the position of the shooter. She is also curious why Delko didn’t tell anyone that he’d moved into a motel. They follow the laser light from the dummy out into the courtyard. Along the line, they find a broken 40 ounce. Delko remembers seeing his “neighbor” drop the bottle about ten seconds before the shooting.

The man with the bottle…Carl Reston…tells Delko that he’d been out there drinking because they are on vacation. The woman asks why they would hurt the frat kid. Delko offers that maybe they were angry at the noise coming from the kids’ room. When Reston dismisses “shooting the problem” as being silly, Horatio and Delko remind him of his violent police record: possession, disorderly conduct, and assault with a deadly weapon. Molly Reston says Carl isn’t like that anymore. Carl tells them that they didn’t see anything, after that. They had entered their room before the shots fired.

Ryan tells Horatio about the explosives kit and shows him the note he found. Ryan expresses his worry for Delko, recalling his own cover-ups when he was running bets. Horatio tells him to concentrate on the case, and promises to look into it.

Horatio pays a visit to Cutanas, in Little Havana. The bartender says he is Enrico Moldano, and Delko paid him $1,000 to get documents from his contacts in Cuba. Delko told him they couldn’t meet again, face-to-face. He would have to deliver the goods to his motel room, wrapped in the morning paper. Moldano refused to tell him what Eric paid for. Horatio threatens to hold Moldano responsible if anything happens to Delko.

Frank helps Calleigh look for the gun in the Reston’s room. Strangely, for being on vacation, they have no luggage in their room. Calleigh asks Frank to lift her up to a ceiling vent. She crawls in, following a trail in the grime showing that something slid through the duct. When she reaches the next vent, she sees a man lying dead in a tub full of ice.

Linda Bowen, the pregnant woman that was at the ice machine when Delko got his coffee, tells Frank and Calleigh that it “must look bad” that her boyfriend Joel is dead in the tub. Frank responds that it looks like she killed him, and shot her neighbor to cover it up. As Frank searches the room, Linda tells Calleigh that they’d moved to Miami, after Hurricane Ike destroyed their home, and Joel was injured hefting sandbags. The A/C wasn’t working, and extreme heat always hurt Joel’s lungs. He checked and found something blocking the air vent. He told Linda that everything was going to be all right, now, but didn’t tell her what he’d found. Later, he collapsed on the walk. She put him on ice. She didn’t want to report his death to the authorities, because she needed his disability checks to support their baby. She was worried she would stop receiving them, since they weren’t married.

Delko finds Ryan working in his lab. Ryan shos him the bullet fragment from his motel room. He says just the fragment bullet was heavier than an entire .38 bullet, like the one that killed Seth Copeland. There must be a second shooter, so he asks Delko if someone is after him. Delko doesn’t know, but says he was at the motel, because he thought his condo was being watched. He tells Ryan that no one but Enrico knew where he was staying.

Delko goes to Cutanas. He finds Moldano dead behind the dumpster in the alley. He calls for backup.

At the scene, Horatio asks Delko what Enrico had for him. Delko shows him his birth certificate. He says that, since he’s been looking into his family, people have been watching him, looking through his trash, and breaking into his car. Horatio takes Delko off the case. Tara finds lipstick on Enrioco’s cheeks and lips. She asks if Delko’s in danger, and Horatio says he might be. Ryan finds a .38 in the trash.

Prints on the .38 match Carl Reston. Frank and Horatio question Reston, telling him his prints are on the gun that shot Copeland and Moldano. He claims not to know Moldano. He tells them that they came into a lot of money, and stashed it in the air vent. They came back to their room, and he found it gone. He thought Molly had taken the money for herself. He called her out of the room, dropped the bottle, and pulled his gun on her. She smacked his arm to point the gun away from herself, when it went off. That’s when Seth Copeland was hit. He heard Delko announce himself as an officer, panicked, and tossed the gun over the building. It went off, when it hit the ground on the other side.

Ryan and Natalia find the second .38 bullet inside a 55-gallon drum, near where Reston said he’d thrown the revolver. Next to the dumpster, there are fresh tire tracks, but three of them. Natalia guesses that it was an ATV.

Calleigh tells Linda Bowen that the autopsy showed that Joel had died of a heart attack. She promises to make sure he gets a proper burial. She asks Linda where she found Joel, then follows her to the ice machine. Calleigh digs through the ice…with no gloves on…and finds a duffel full of cash. She tells Linda to wait in her room with the officer until she gets back.

Delko’s mom meets him at the lab. He asks her about his birth. He tells her that every time she tells the story, the facts change, including the length of her labor, and the location where her boat from Cuba landed. He shows her his birth certificate, indicating that he was born in Cuba. She admits that his father was her boss at the factory. She tells Eric that Alexander Shiroa was a bad man. She begs him to let it go, but that Shiroa doesn’t know that he exists. She asks if he’s in danger, and apologizes.

Calleigh calls Molly Reston in, and shows her the bag she found. Molly lights up and is ready to claim the money. Calleigh explains that the money was found divided up into uniform units of 20 and 30. This, plus Carl’s priors for possession lead them to believe that the money was earned from selling drugs. Calleigh tells Molly that she’s prepared to check with narcotics, and see if her hunch is right. She offers Molly the chance to reconsider her claim to the cash, and Molly accepts, denying having ever seen it before.

Calleigh visits Linda Bowen at the motel. She tells her she’s not in trouble. She then hands her an envelope full of cash. Calleigh tells her that according to the law, if money is found and turned in to the police, and the rightful owner refuses to claim it, it belongs to the person who found it. She tells Linda to take the money, and make a fresh start. [OMG! I am not crying during CSI: Miami.]

Natalia tells Horatio that the tire tracks from the alley don’t match any known ATVs. When she changes the search to find vehicles with the single wheel in the back, it brings up the Can-Am Spyder. There are 56 registered owners in southern Florida. Horatio tells her to find only female owners, because of the lipstick on Moldano. There are only three, and one is Kate Hawkes, a woman who was talking to Enrico, when Horatio visited the bar.

Ryan finds blood on Hawkes’ bike. They tell her that, if the blood is Moldano’s, that puts her at the scene of his murder, as well as at the motel, during the attempt on Delko’s life. She says she was there, but wasn’t expecting to be interrupted. She questions why they’re talking to her, if they know everything. Ryan asks why she tried to kill Delko. “It was a job”, she says. They ask her about Alexander Shirova, but she doesn’t know where he is.

Back at the station, Horatio tells Delko that it’s not over. For Shirova, this is only the beginning.