Horatio Caine
Template:CSI character Lt. Horatio Caine is a fictional character in the series CSI: Miami, is played by actor David Caruso.
Head of the Crime Lab
Caine is a supervisor at the Miami-Dade crime lab, a forensic analyst and former homicide investigator and bomb squad officer (his forensic speciality is arson and explosion evidence). He is very protective of his team, who affectionately call him "H." He is very concerned about the reputation of his lab, and takes great care to keep them clean, perhaps because of his experience with his tarnished younger brother, Ray. Unlike his counterpart in Las Vegas, Gil Grissom (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation), he does not hesitate to carry or use a weapon. In the first two seasons, Caine carried a 9MM Beretta Cougar on the job. Since the beginning of season three, he has been shown carrying a SIG-Sauer P229. He is very insistent on gun maintenance, especially since team member Tim Speedle was killed in a shootout after his gun misfired. One of Caine's reasons for selecting Officer Ryan Wolfe as Speedle's replacement is Wolfe's compulsive care of his firearm.
At the end of Season 2 (episode 223, "MIA/NYC - Nonstop"), Caine travels to New York City in pursuit of a murder suspect and meets Detective Mac Taylor and his team, inagurating the first season of CSI: New York. Caine later reunites with Detective Taylor and the New York CSIs to track down and arrest the murderer, Henry Darius, who would be extradited to Florida to face the death penalty (CSI: Miami episode 407, "Felony Flight," CSI: NY episode 207, "Manhattan Manhunt").
He has many recurring enemies throughout the series, from serial killer Walter Resden to abusive Internal Affairs Agent Rick Stetler to the corrupt judge Joseph Ratner (Resden and Ratner have since been arrested).
Before he moved to Miami, Caine lived in New York. It was there that he killed the man who murdered his mother — his own father. He was also badly stabbed while investigating a case in which children were locked in closets while their parents were murdered. The perpetrator, Walter Resden, harbored a deep grudge against Caine, collecting the blood from the stabbing and preserving it for 10 years in order to frame him for the murder of Caine's girlfriend, Rachel Turner (episode 406, "Suspicion"). Caine is later forced to shoot Dresden (episode 415, "Skeletons").
Personal Life
Caine's original backstory, revealed over the course of the first three seasons, revolves primarily around his relationship with his late brother Raymond, also a police officer, and with Raymond's widow, Detective Yelina Salas. It was revealed in the Season 3 finale (episode 324, "10-7") that Raymond's apparent death had actually been staged to enable him to go deep undercover to gather information for a government investigation. Since the temporary resolution of that storyline, the show has begun to explore a new part of Caine's history: the events surrounding his mother's murder. In the episode "Manhattan Manhunt", a continuation of "Felony Flight", Caine is momentarily interrupted on his case when he is served with a subpoena. In "Nailed", Caine informs the rest of the CSI team that he had recently been charged by a district attorney in New York with the murder of the man who killed his mother. It is later revealed in "Collision" that this man was actually Caine's own father.
Caine was briefly married to Eric Delko's sister Marisol, who was shot by a Mala Noche gang member and later died (episode 424, "Rampage"). He pursued the man who ordered the hit on her, Antonio Riaz, all the way to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and eventually killed him in hand-to-hand combat after Riaz brutally beat Caine's brother Raymond to death and attempted to corrupt Ray's son, Ray Jr. (episode 501, "Rio").
Perhaps because he has lost several family members to violent crime, Caine is determined to the point of obsession to put criminals behind bars. Caine also advocates the death penalty, and is not afraid to threaten suspects with it (CSI: NY episode 207, "Manhattan Manhunt").
He is very protective of crime victims, often going so far as to give them his phone number should they need to talk. He remains very close to a lot of victims of crimes that he investigated, and some from cases he worked in New York have actually followed him to Miami. He is very sensitive to the plight of children, and reserves a special wrath for those who would hurt them, even against opposition from outside sources (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode 222, "Cross Jurisdictions," CSI: Miami episode 503, "Death Pool 100", episode 407, "Felony Flight," episode 417, "Collision," et al.).
After Speedle's death, Caine had a recurring nightmare in which he (Caine) was the one whose weapon misfired. Rather than talking with a counselor, as Interal Affairs officer Rick Stetler ordered, he instead worked it out with his girlfriend, State Attorney Rebecca Nevins (episode 310, "After the Fall".) He broke up with her, however, after she made a deal with a criminal he helped arrest (episode 313, "Cop Killer"). He later dated Rachel Turner, who was murdered by Walter Resden in an attempt to take revenge on Caine for "embarrassing" him in New York about a decade earlier (episode 406, "Suspicion").
Trivia
- Caine is revealed to have worked in New York City before joining the Miami-Dade Police. Coicidentally, Caruso starred in the first two seasons of NYPD Blue as Detective John Kelly.
- In the CSI: NY episode "Cross Jurisdictions", Caine says his parents named him for the 19th century American author Horatio Alger.
- His trademark is putting on and removing his sunglasses (a pair of Silhouette Titanium Model 8568 with special dark polarized lenses), often several times in an episode. Online fans have begun to refer to the pair of sunglasses as the "Sunglasses of Justice."
- Caine often stands sideways to the person he is speaking to and tilts his head slightly. Additionally, he frequently smiles flirtatiously at his primary suspect.
- Originally, the character was to be named "Horatio Sands."
Horatio One-Liners
- "... when you're in Miami, we never close."
- "This place is a buffet for these creeps."
- "Let's go talk to the other Russian, the cousin, before he chokes on a Twizzler."
- "Tomorrow is what you make of it."
- "Next time you want to take a swing at someone, start with me."
- "Everyone has something to hide."
- "He is a liar. I just don't know what the lie is yet."
- "You lied to me." (A common Caine catch phrase addressed to suspects; sometimes voiced by other characters on the show.)
- "When you have everything, sometimes it feels like nothing."
- "Bag it, tag it and let's see what else is there!"
- (To Eric Delko)"If we want to be effective on this job we have to survive, too."
- "Alright, be on the lookout for an Eastern European male with bad teeth who may have access to an ape."
- (In response to a murderer who asks if Caine wants to know why he killed people) "You just killed four innocent people. You're evil. You enjoy death. I hope you enjoy your own."
- "You guys couldn't find your ass with both hands."
- "Burn baby burn."
- "Fingerprints are like old habits. They die hard."