The fifth season of the hit crime drama continues on Five tonight. In this instalment, the CSIs are spooked by a strange case involving a dead woman, stolen gold and the practice of Santería. When police apprehend the frantic Danielle Madison, she is covered in blood and runnin away from the scene of her best friend’s murder. She claims that she went into the house, found Alissa Valone dead on the floor and ran out after hearing a noise. She did not get far because the car she tried to drive away was a ‘bait car’ used by police to trap car thieves meaning that its engine cut out straightaway. Inside, Alexx examines the bloodied body of Alissa, who has been beaten to death with a golf club. Inside a nearby closet is an altar bearing a bloody goat’s head, candles and other items which Delko identifies as elements used in the practice of Santería a pantheistic Afro-Cuban religious cult. A staunch Catholic, Delko refuses to touch the altar as he believes it would be sacreligious to do so and also steers clear of a miniature coffin found next to the body. Back at the lab, Calleigh inspects the murder weapon. Tripp notices that the golf club is too long to belong to the victim, and wonders if Alissa’sassailant was her ex-husband Trevor Valone. When questioned, Valone tells the detectives that he and Alissa were involved in a messy divorce and that he had not seen the clubs for a while she was holding on to the $10,000 customised set to spite him.Meanwhile, Wolfe is down in the morgue when he is startled by one of the bodies apparently moving. As the corpse sits up and looks at him, Wolfe turns andruns out but when he tells Alexx, she assures him that his mind is playing tricks on him. I know what I saw, insists Wolfe and whenhis handsuddenly go numb, he blames it on touching the miniature coffin from the crime scene. Is he succumbing to a Santería curse? Wolfe’s temporary paralysis is explained by the fact that the stretcher he touched had traces of blowfish powder on it. This substance can, in the correct dose, mimic death for a period of days which explains why the ‘corpse’ Wolfe saw came back to life. A look into places where the blowfish powder can be obtained leads the CSIs to Alissa’s boyfriend, Jeremy Fordham. He practises Santería and is alarmed when he sees the miniature coffin. You need to burn that thing, he insists, anxiously. Because if you don’t get rid of it, someone else is going to die.The CSIs are more preoccupied with how the ‘body’, now identified as Ed Smith, managed to get in and out of the morgue. It turns out that Trevor Valone was Ed’s doctor and an old friend, and agreed to administer the poison and sign the death certificate for him. He says that he helped Ed fake his death to avoid going to prison for stealing millions of dollars’ worth of gold bars, but denies that he got Ed to kill his troublesome ex-wife for him in return.

On Trevor’s advice, the CSIs head to Alissa’s office to look at her computer. Wolfe’s fears that a curse is at work are intensified when the computer suddenly bursts into flames thanks to a defective battery. The case is getting stranger and stranger and there are a few more scares tocome before it is solved.

Meanwhile, Horatio checks out the ‘bait car’ that Danielle Madison tried to drive away. Prints inside lead to a Javier Ravez, who has rigged the car with a ticking bomb as revenge for a family member’s recent arrest.

With no time to defuse the device, Horatio takes matters into his own hands and drives the car away from the lab... but can he get far enough away before the bomb explodes?

Executive Producers Jerry Bruckheimer, Ann Donahue, Anthony E Zuiker, Carol Mendelsohn, Jonathan Littman Director Joe Chappelle An Alliance Atlantis and CBS Production in Association with Jerry Bruckheimer.

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