The following contains spoilers for CSI: Vegas Season 2, Episode 3, "Story of a Gun," which debuted Thursday, Oct. 13 on CBS.
While CSI: Vegas already had its Halloween episode, "Story of a Gun" opens in a similarly spooky fashion -- teenagers crash their car in an abandoned town only to discover they're not alone. There's another vehicle with a dead woman slumped over the steering wheel. But instead of calling the cops, one of the kids decides to Instagram Live their situation, prompting a disgusted look from his friend. Josh Folsom is surprised to get a call from his friend Trey just before his new girlfriend Serena Chavez gets called in to work. As the two awkwardly show up at the murder scene, Maxine Roby points out: "So, uh, you two ride in together?" Josh refuses to say anything -- about Serena or helping Catherine Willows with her ongoing problem.
Max moves on to explain that the victim is Mindy Downs and that there was a third car speeding away from the scene. Plus, there's the matter of all the cash scattered across the roadway. Further examination reveals Mindy was shot before she wrecked. Serena and Catherine test her husband for gunshot residue; finding none rules him out as a suspect. Both he and his sister-in-law Amy have no idea why Mindy was leaving town. Almost as awkwardly, medical examiner Sonya Nikolayevich reminds Josh that her predecessor didn't like him before he spots a green substance on the bullet that killed Mindy. Beau Medlin identifies the substance as polypropylene while Jay Park suggests to Allie Rajan that it's "weird" for her to be working with Serena when Serena is sleeping with Josh. Allie does not want to hear any of this and she's absolutely right.
Trey, annoyed at being blown off by Josh earlier, shows up at the crime lab to tell him his truck was filled with weasels. He wants to know who did the deed. This means he gets to meet Allie -- apparently he's also heard about her from Josh. He further informs Josh that his mom Jeanette is out of custody. He's a whole font of information. Max and Serena confront Mindy's husband with the pieces of broken headlight at the crime scene. He admits that he hit her car the night she died but gives them a voice mail from his late wife to prove that she called him after she was shot, but before she died. Allie, Josh and Serena reconstruct her trip to figure out where the shot occurred. That obscure location further confirms it was a long-distance kill.
"We're talking about Army sniper accuracy," Catherine points out before the team goes looking for anyone in Mindy's neighborhood who heard the gunshot. Beau spots a balloon in the area that was grazed by a second shot. CSI: Vegas skips over several hours of searching before Max uncovers shell casings in a field behind a trailer park. Unfortunately, the person who comes to retrieve them knocks her unconscious. She's taken to the hospital and everyone rallies -- including a very upset Josh, who missed the whole thing since he was identifying who pranked Trey. Catherine calms him down before telling him this is his case, and Josh doesn't hesitate to spring into action.
Thanks to Max being able to hide one of the casings, Allie and Park trace it to a rifle registered to one of Mindy's neighbors. She claims the gun was stolen several years earlier and reveals Mindy's husband crashed the party at which it went missing. A still very frustrated Josh at least confirms the killer is left-handed while Beau has another random moment of greatness -- this time using a bottle of water to uncover a piece of concrete. There's a whole spate of new concrete in the neighborhood, and the rifle is buried underneath it.
This CSI: Vegas episode has been very Catherine-light, so she arrives in the lab to tell Josh and Allie that Max is going to be okay. Josh says he'll go see her when he can show her a mugshot. He's busy trying to glean every bit of information he can from the rifle -- and he deduces that the fatal shot was fired upward. "Snipers don't point up to shoot," Catherine chimes in again. "Her death was an accident," Josh suggests. But then who attacked Max? The woman who owned the rifle has a grandson, and Allie recovers a sliver of the rifle from his right cheek. He was using it to scare his bullies away. Furthermore, they find a pair of his mom's jeans with fresh concrete on them. She hit Max to protect her grandson.
Both the woman and her grandson are arrested. Mindy's husband and sister are on hand to see the arrest -- but it provides them no solace because it makes no sense. Furthermore, the husband wants an apology from Serena for how she treated him. But unlike Allie with Gene Farrow, Serena is not remorseful at all. "You put Mindy in the path of that bullet," she says, since Mindy wouldn't have been driving if she wasn't trying to get away from him. The plot ends with Josh and Trey having a conversation, but it's not helpful. Trey's still involved in some bad stuff, so Josh refuses to tell him who messed with his truck. It appears to be the end of their friendship. Josh doesn't care as he goes to visit Max in the hospital. He apologizes while reassuring her that her choice not to carry a firearm would not have protected her.
"Story of a Gun" is very sweet in going back to the bond that Josh has with Max, while also exposing more about Trey and Serena. It's interesting to see how Serena handles an angry suspect far more differently than Allie did -- and Josh was there for both confrontations, so that could be story fodder in the future. The fingerprints on Trey's truck might also tie back to Catherine's mystery. Is this small tale hinting at the bigger picture?
CSI: Vegas airs Thursdays at 10:00 p.m. on CBS and streams on Paramount+.