Meanwhile, Horatio and Megan are busy looking at the door of the airplane. Horatio and Megan notice that both Christina and Sommer's prints are all over that door, courtesy of a black light, and Sommer's high-up handprints indicate that he did not, in fact, try to stop Christina, but rather tried to push her out. They come to these conclusions by bodily walking through the steps Christina and Sommer would have taken in the Christina-jumped-out-of-the-plane scenario, as well as in the Sommer-pushed-Christina-out-of-a-plane scenario. It's a contrivance to get them all up close and personal so we can see, and presumably swoon from, the alleged chemistry between Kim Delaney and David Caruso. There's nothing; if the producers want chemistry, they should ship Marg Helgenberger in for guest appearances. Then again, that would only point out the leaden dullness Delaney and Caruso have together. Anyway, the point of that scene is to establish the Horatio/Megan dynamic (which failed) and to inform us, the viewers at home, that Christina was holding on for dear life while Sommer pushed her to her death.

Cut to Horatio and Megan rushing to Sommer's hospital room to apprehend him, only to discover that he's checked himself out. Why didn't they call ahead? They could have saved themselves the trouble.

Back to Speedle and Delko, who are visiting the fisherman present at the crash with a warrant to search for items looted from the crash site. Speedle asks contemptuously, "What'd you think -- you were going to sell them on eBay?" The fisherman has no answer for that. Delko reports that he's got the locator signal -- it went on the minute the boxes hit the water -- and the two walk over to get them. There's some back-and-forth between the boys when they see that the poachers have stuck the boxes (which are actually orange) in a pool filled with baby alligators, and then both guys count to three and pull out a box, making all sorts of macho noises as they escape unscathed.

And now, back at HQ, everyone except Alexx is assembled to listen to the contents of the black box. Speedle explains, "This one over here is a cockpit voice recorder; it records the last thirty minutes of conversation over the cockpit mics. This is a flight data recorder. It documents 48 parameters of the flight: air speed, flaps, trim, the works. So this will help us with a timeline to figure out what went down." Speedle then cues the audio tech, Peter. We hear a mix of men's voices, with the air traffic controller leading off, then the pilot and copilot chatting: