CSI: Vegas Season 2 Episode 15 Review: Ashes, Ashes

The crime lab squad almost got there this time.

The team closed in on the Silver Ink mastermind thanks to clues gleaned from the bizarre death scene of Dr. Auerbach on CSI: Vegas Season 2 Episode 15.

If only that were the end of it. But no such luck.

It was fascinating that Auerbach had contributed to the rise of the Silver Ink killers, but not in a way that anybody suspected.

While she wasn’t directly responsible for the current murder spree, she certainly indirectly had a hand in creating the mastermind, despite her best efforts.

It was disappointing that, with all the characters somehow connected to this case, the mastermind came out of nowhere, introduced in the opening flashback foreshadowing Auerbach’s eventual murder.

Employing such a deus ex machina to resolve a storyline feels like a copout, and that was certainly the case to some degree here.

Still, Max’s team is making slow progress, so that’s something, right?

They learned that there’s both more and less going on than they had initially suspected.

By the episode’s end, they had a better handle on the big picture. The downside of that was that there was a bigger picture.

And the breakthrough, in large part, was thanks to lab rats Beau and Penny.

It was Penny’s stroke of genius to cobble together all the partial fingerprints found at the murder scene into more complete prints to discover who had been there recently.

That was a significant step forward in the investigation, although that wasn’t known during those initial interrogations, as if too often the case in this series. How often do they circle back to a person of interest who was cleared earlier in the episode?

Even more importantly, Beau overcame his lab agoraphobia when Catherine challenged him to return to the crime scene to uncover what others had missed.

And, whattaya know? He did. He sprayed the soot-lined walls with liquid latex and peeled it back to unveil a serpent eating its tail, with the names of those pediatric-psychiatry patients encircling the illustration.

What had appeared to be some sinister murder plot was just a version of the game Assassin, which both Beau and Allie recognized. Max was too busy coaching and then bossing to have heard of it.

Does this mean Beau is over himself and will continue to go out into the field voluntarily? Only time will tell on that front but let’s hope so.

The team was lured to the mastermind’s booby-trapped lair only to have it ablaze. Soon the CSIs had a reasonably good idea of what was going on but still no concept of who was in charge.

The mastermind had some connection to Auerbach since her death scene was simply too personal.

Still, it took a sustained effort by Folsom to figure out how Auerbach was staged in that Hangman position, so much so that he came up with the idea of swabbing for the killer’s sweat.

The DNA that Max recovered showed that the killer had a rare condition with two different color eyes, just like Ted Hester, one of the men interviewed earlier.

When the squad attacked Hester’s home, they quickly had enough evidence to tie him to Auerbach’s murder, including those childlike drawings and The Hangman card.

But Allie found the capper: Hester’s grandmother buried in a vegetable garden. Since he had told people that she had moved to Sarasota, he couldn’t get out from under that crime.

What was surprising was how quickly Hester caved and admitted his involvement with the Silver Ink killings. As Catherine pointed out, Hester thought he was the most intelligent man in the room and felt justified in all his actions. 

As far as Hester was concerned, he felt he was embracing his evil gift. By blackmailing the former patients into killing off each other, he was doing the world a favor by removing such people from the board.

He blamed his killing of Auerbach on Max and the lab since he feared she might give up his name to them. He scrambled to make any incriminating documents disappear.

But a season-long storyline couldn’t be completed only two-thirds of the way through the season, could it?

Of course, Hester had nothing to do with the hieroglyphics and the white room. That was all the handiwork of the MVP of his game.

And now Hester has sicced him on all the members of the lab. Having Max and Byron stashed in a hotel room somewhere isn’t going to protect the rest of the team.

The big question will be whether the revelation of the MVP will happen sooner or later. Will he be in the background while they solve other cases, or will the resolution happen in the next couple of episodes?

Catherine returned to the lab, which is always a good thing.

The problem was that she cut her Hawaiian vacation short because “Lindsey was annoyed.”

So the family healing didn’t happen as quickly as Catherine had hoped. It looks like it will remain two steps forward and one step back in her relationship with Lindsey.

To revisit the Silver Ink killings, watch CSI: Vegas online.

Were you satisfied with the unveiling of the mastermind?

Are you glad the storyline is continuing?

Are you happy Catherine has returned?

Comment below.

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Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.

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