Dead Woman Walking

Oh, to be young and immortal and living the kind of life where you're surrounded by attractive, fun-loving types whose apparent day job involves appearing in the kind of beer commercials that make the rest of us wonder if we're somehow missing the "transcendent joy" aspect of a good beer bong. Even Michael Stipe wants to be these people -- he's watching them walk out of a club and following them with a kind of manic intensity. At least, the guy looks like Michael Stipe -- bald, lean to the point of inspiring within total strangers the urge to force-feed him a pound of pasta, kind of focused on looking at something not visible to mortal human eyes.

The shiny, happy people all hold hands as they head down the sidewalk. They're also sloppy, happy drunks, something Michael's all in favor of, as it will make mugging them go much more smoothly. Unfortunately, just as he's about to make his move and begin robbery maneuvers, a police cruiser drives by and gives the siren a brief tap as if to signal to Michael that they're on to him. Michael instantly begin pretending he has places to go and people to not rob, and he winds around a corner, past some shrubbery and a trellis into a parking lot, briefly checks out cars for robbery potential, then spots a lone person rushing out of the parking lot, his posture and stride broadcasting nervousness. This is the kinesthetic equivalent of dumping a gallon of blood off Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and like any predator-cum-scavenger, Michael's now on full alert. He begins hobbling after the guy, calling, "Hey, mister! Hey! Get over here!" The man makes the mistake of looking over his shoulder and acknowledging Michael, then breaks into a run. Michael shouts, "Come here!" and begins chasing after him, gaining with every stride.

Then, in the scene, Michael's lying sprawled on his stomach at the foot of some stairs in broad daylight. As Horatio crouches over him, Vin Ethanol comes down the stairs and gives us all the 411: "There's no witnesses. Nobody heard the trains running." Unsurprisingly, the closed captioning tells a different tale about a rookie cop trying to move the homeless along and discovering the body as he did so. Vin checks out Michael and pronounces, "Looks like a decade of skag and skin-popping." Horatio replies, "Yes, but it's not an OD. There's no foam around his mouth and nose. You see that? And look at that syringe." Vin Ethanol replies, "There's no blood in it." Horatio explains, "That's right. And that's because it's not a junkie syringe. A junkie syringe is one CC tops. This one is ten CCs. It's huge." Vin Ethanol advances the theory that Michael was a big believer in quantity. Horatio doesn't dismiss it out of hand, but he stands up to intone to the heavens, "Junkie or not, somebody killed this man."

And then he hangs around and waits for God to reply to him while Roger Daltrey carries on over the credits. At least, that's the impression I get.

Once we're back on the show, it's clear that God had His hands full with the requests of assorted professional athletes to help them win their silly games, so he hasn't gotten back to Horatio yet. Instead, we only have Delko taking photos while Vin Ethanol tells us that the body on the ground isn't Michael Stipe's, but Carl Aspen's, and Carl's got a long list of charges -- a few for possession, but mostly assault and battery. "Looks like he got the battery this time. Lacerations on the face and lips. I saw a couple of torn nails, so I bagged his hands. May be able to get a few scrapings," Alexx replies. Then she rolls the body toward her, revealing the fat wad of cash wedged under Carl's spine. Delko excitedly calls for Horatio, who inquires, "And what do we have there?" "Paper currency; it's backed by the government's gold standard, and represents a standard unit of wealth which can then be accumulated for trade in obtaining goods and services," says a puzzled Delko, who's evidently wondering how someone Horatio's age could have conducted his whole life via a barter economy. Oh, he does not either; I just made that up because Horatio's habit of asking obvious questions is beginning to give me a nervous tic and I've got to release the stress somehow. Leave me my fantasies! What actually happens is that Delko replies, "It's damp," thus completely ignoring Horatio's question and introducing a new observation. Not to be left out of the fun, Horatio deduces, "It's probably from the substance inside the syringe. How much is there?" Once he learns that it's the grand sum of $203, he shares, "That rules out money as a motive. Alexx, do you have time of death?" She pries open Carl's eye and notes that there's no corneal cloudiness, so that places the time of death at an hour to two hours prior, or 4 to 6 AM. Horatio concludes, "So Carl here was looking to score, needed money, but jumped the wrong person, didn't he?" Because the right person would have maybe not killed him? What a brilliant conclusion, Horatio! Thank you for putting it in the form of a question so we don't feel all stupid for not having arrived at that deduction ourselves! You can tell that the question thing has replaced Megan Donner's [beat] elliptical pauses as the [beat] dialogue quirk on this show that will drive [beat] me to drink, can't you? Before Horatio can expound further on his theory of right and wrong people to mug at 4 AM, his eagle eyes detect a new piece of evidence: "Eric." Delko replies, "Yes, Horatio." "That's a pencil, isn't it?" Delko enables Horatio's nasty conversational tic by saying, "Yes, it is." Delko places the scale, then photographs the pencil before noting that it's been chewed on. Horatio orders that the pencil be processed for saliva and epithelials, and that's that.

Enough time elapses to bring us to a point in the narrative where Alexx is doing Carl's autopsy. We arrive just at the point where she's injecting an enormous syringe into the man's chest. Seriously -- this thing is so big, it probably has its own room and two Oompa-Loompas to wheel it out whenever it's summoned for use. Alexx expels the amber-colored fluid she's just drawn into a plastic cup; I reflect that at least Carl wasn't alive to experience the way that urine sample was collected. A waiting lab tech carries off the sample, no doubt thinking the whole way, "Four years of orgo and bio chem, and I ferry junkie pee for a living." We don't get to see more of his inner torment, because Horatio's now on screen, in scrubs, to the gurney. This is a welcome improvement over the beginning of the season, I'll give them that. Alexx eagerly tells Horatio that she's determined cause of death. "Before you open him?" Horatio replies, startled. Alexx shows him an X-ray film that focuses on the neck and explains, "Cervical fracture." Horatio helps out us slow people in the audience by saying, "It looks like somebody snapped his neck." Cue the flashback, wherein Carl looks very surprised indeed to learn that his head is capable of whipping around like Linda Blair's; it just doesn't do so and allow him to live.

Horatio then asks Alexx if she's tested under his nails for skin. She replies that she's just about to. When she pulls off the brown paper bag, we see that the flesh on the tops of his hands is eaten away. Alexx says, "Wait a minute -- his skin wasn't like this at the scene." Horatio asks, "You think that's parasite activity?" "Not like I've ever seen," Alexx says, shaking her head. Horatio then leans in and inspects the raw, oozing flesh more closely, saying, "That's got to be some kind of chemical burn, right?" "But that would have presented immediately," Alexx argues before picking up a scalpel and probing the area. Horatio reaches out and gently catches her wrist in his hands, saying calmly but urgently, "Alexx, there's only one thing I know that burns like that." He's been pulling her away from the body, but Alexx jumps back a little, the scalpel clattering against the gurney as she says, "Radiation -- we can't stay here." Over her, Horatio says, "We've got to notify the rest of the team. They may have been exposed too." He hustles Alexx out of the morgue as he hits an alarm button, and then an alarm begins blaring as a woman recites, "There's been an emergency situation. Please find the closest exit and evacuate immediately." We see Speedle looking up from his microscope, startled and annoyed; then Calleigh stops in the hall and stares up at the flashing red light for a moment before hustling. As some people hurry, others complete their lab chores -- one guy slides an array of test tubes into a centrifuge before heading out -- and we see people filing neatly outside. Delko's busy doing something -- I have no idea what, but it involves something that looks like a dorm fridge, many hooks, and the money from the crime scene -- and more or less ignoring the klaxons. His cell rings, and Delko answers with, "What, are you checking up on me? I was just leaving." From the phone, we hear Speedle say irritably, "Turn around." Delko does; Speedle's standing outside the lab, and there's a wall of bars between him and Delko. Delko asks him what he's doing there, and Speedle replies, "Listen, Horatio and Alexx found radioactivity on the victim." Delko asks, "How bad?" and automatically begins inspecting his own hands. Speedle replies, "Nobody knows yet. The RMs are going to be here any second; they're setting up a hot zone outside." Delko's only half-listening, since it takes a lot of attention to inspect your cuticles for signs of glowing green radiation. Speedle tells him to hurry up and haul ass out of the lab, in so many words.

Horatio and Alexx are in no rush. They're standing in the observation bay, looking down at Carl Aspen, who's looking worse by the second. In terms of decomposition and gruesomeness, he's definitely blowing the corpse curve. Alexx notes, "It's eating through his flesh." Just to make her feel better, Horatio muses, "Odorless, tasteless and invisible." Alexx replies, "Too many neutrons to stabilize the atom. All those atoms ripping apart, releasing energy." We get a TMIcam that actually goes down to the subatomic level -- a new record, unless there's a case in which Horatio's knowing the difference between an up quark and a down quark solves the crime -- and we see all the neutrons whizzing around like sociopaths at a speed-dating event. As much as I normally applaud the use of the TMIcam to add visual impact to the science lesson of the week, frankly, this one feels a littleshowy. Alexx muses, "It makes you wonder what it's done to us." I know what it's done -- I saw The Day After. I couldn't sleep for three days after watching that; my entire generation didn't grow up on duck and cover drills, but we did get to see Steve Guttenberg lose all his hair in a post-nuclear fallout, so the psychic damage is there. Anyway, Horatio's got other things to worry about: "I just hope [the radiation] hasn't rearranged our DNA."

At that point RM -- radiation management -- comes in, kitted out in the full gear, and Adam Baldwin says, "You waiting for us?" Horatio speaks for the dozens of devoted Firefly fans nationwide as he says, "You better believe it." The RM team waves the Geiger counter around, and it crackles enthusiastically when it's waved over Carl. Horatio uses the intercom to tell the trained radiation professionals the source of the radiation. Adam Baldwin replies, "Ooh, hot hand. Medium radiation. Let's make this sucker safe." After a brief TMIcam shot wherein we see glowing purple particles swirling around to illustrate the radiation, the safety dance begins -- Unnamed Flunkie #2 wheels over a cart with two cylinders on it, and the RM team then performs a process that looks a lot like giving Carl a paraffin treatment, except that Carl currently has no skin on his hands, and nobody's in any hurry to remove his hands from the goo. Alexx and Horatio watch as the team maneuvers Carl's hands into the containers, then fills the containers via an old coffeemaker. She asks what's in the coffeemaker, and Horatio replies, "Cerrobend, a soft alloy." "Neutralizes the radioactive particles," Adam Baldwin -- or, as he's known in the closed captioning, DeSoto -- interrupts. He then notices that Horatio and Alexx are just kind of hanging out, and invites them to go take a shower, Silkwood-style. Horatio nods, "Roger that." It must be killing him not to be totally in charge of the situation.

Fortunately, it doesn't take long for Horatio to reassert himself on his turf. We see him all dressed up in a radiation suit, talking to someone on a cellphone and saying, "Okay, let's get the CDC to quarantine the crime scene until we know what we've got. Right." Alexx is pulling on her suit, so we can assume she just got out of the shower too. Let us all hope it wasn't anEnterprise-styleshower. DeSoto tells him, "You two are negative." Horatio asks, "This means we just need to contain the contaminated evidence, right?" DeSoto adds, "And clean the dirty air. This will tell if it's nuclear, medical, or right out of the ground." Horatio's moved on: "Let me ask you a question: could you administer radioactive material by syringe." DeSoto says yes, explaining, "Radiation therapy. Attacks tumors." Alexx realizes, "Junkie mistook a syringe full of radioactive isotopes for narcotics." DeSoto points out that this is entirely understandable: "It's not like it glows or anything. The syringes aren't marked 'junk' -- he could have mistaken it for anything." We then flash back to Carl holding the syringe and saying wildly, "What's this? Some grade-A smack? I just won the Lotto!" Putting aside for a moment the observation that Carl's Method portrayal of a junkie evidently came from watching one too many "Just Say No" commercials during the 1980s, let's pause to reflect on how Carl is not one of those ingenious junkies, as he's assuming that large, unmarked syringes carried by small, skulking people must contain something good and not something lethal. The entire set-up is a howler. Plus, if the person who's carrying the radioactive syringe knew anything about its contents, wouldn't they have been content with letting Carl kill himself via a lethal dose of radiation, and not gone to the bother of snapping his neck? I can't keep thinking about this -- I'll just get cranky with These Killers Today and how harebrained they are. The scene ends with everyone in the radiation suits striding around purposefully.

Meanwhile, outside, Speedle frets to Calleigh, "Delko's definitely been exposed." She frets back, "Yeah, but to what? There are hundreds of types of radioactivity." Speedle's already thinking about this in terms of classification -- or, for the folks at home, in terms of exposition: "Well, it basically breaks down like this. Say you have a pencil. You put that on your skin, that's gonna wash right off, because it's an alpha particle. It's got little radiation. You got a pen, it has more energy, so it's going to sink into something. Then you've got gamma, which is totally toxic." Except for Bruce Banner, who was left only with an inconvenient case of split personality. Calleigh sums up for those us who are now wondering if all our writing implements are radioactive, or if Speedle's metaphors just leave a lot to be desired, "So we don't know if it went on Delko, in Delko, or through Delko." And then Speedle confuses things again by reciting, over a silly TMIcam X-ray shot of Delko, "Alpha, beta or gamma. Delko could have inhaled it off the money and not even had a clue." Calleigh looks over at Delko in alarm, and we see Delko now looking a lot less calm and confident than he had been a minute before.

In the lab, Horatio's busy trying to come up with scenarios where junkies happen to come across syringes filled with radioactive material, and whom Carl would have held up to get the materials. DeSoto points out, "Any trained delivery guy would have handed it over and notified with Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So you're looking for a thief who steals radioactive isotopes." Horatio adds, "In syringe form. He's going to take as many as he can." DeSoto asks, "Radioactive materials -- are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Horatio replies, "You're thinking terrorism? I think the doses are too low." And I think this show skirts the line between topicality and inappropriate sensationalism. Horatio then shows DeSoto the money. It snaps, crackles, and pops -- and DeSoto identifies it as Iodine 131 at the end of its half-life, a low-level radiation that should be okay for everyone in the lab. Horatio is audibly relieved.

Delko finally ducks out and rushes over to the waiting Speedle and Calleigh. He tells them, "The guy says my exposure was equal to what a pilot gets on a flight to Paris." Calleigh replies, "Well, time, take the trip to Paris. It'll be easier on all of us." Awww, it's so cute how Speedle and Calleigh were worried about him. Delko laughs, "Tell me about it. I heard radioactivity can cause temporary infertility." Speedle shoots back, "So you and your girlfriend are temporarily in luck." Heh. Also, can you imagine? "Baby, get over that headache! I'm not sure how much longer this is going to last! Have some Advil. It goes great with this Barry White album, doesn't it?" Delko's not looking at the glass as half-full, as he adds, "Or permanently screwed." Just then DeSoto bursts onto the scene and says, "Hey, heard you were worried about having children." What, was he eavesdropping, or is the entire RM team talking about the diver who's worried that his swimmers are stunted? Either way, it's kind of unsettling how he just pops in on a conversation about fertility. DeSoto hands Delko a small device and assures him, "This'll keep you safe. The bell rings near radiation." He then pats him on the back and hustles off while Delko and Calleigh stare, clearly thinking, "Who was that man?" Speedle caps the situation perfectly by saying drying, "That was nice."

Back in the lab, a besuited Horatio is busy boiling the gook off the pencil until he can read its lettering. We find out that the B. King stands for Belle King, practicing attorney, and within seconds, Vin Ethanol, Delko, and Horatio are standing in front of her office. Vin Ethanol tells everyone that Belle specializes in environmental law. Then they go to ring Belle's buzzer; a thousand dogs bark in response. Vin Ethanol shouts into the intercom, "It's the Miami-Dade police department." She buzzes them in, and Vin opens the door a crack, flashing his badge when a woman commands him over the dogs to do so. Once she sees the badges, she clicks off the tape recorder which was responsible for the dog barking. That's too bad -- I'd like to see a case where someone with a lot of animals is not actually eaten by her pets, but rather, just has 'em hanging around. As the men come inside, Belle smiles slightly and says, "Sorry about that, but you can never be too careful. So what can I do for you officers?" Horatio tells her he's got a warrant to search the premises, and she says coolly, "Well, whatever you're looking for, my position is it's covered by client-attorney privilege, work product included." Lawyers must be an extraordinary pain in the ass to deal with at moments like these. Horatio says levelly that they're CSIs, and Belle thinks this over for the few moments it takes her to say, "I'm calling the issuing judge. Thank you." That "thank you" is directed at Delko, whose fingers she just snatched the warrant from, and as she sidles past him, his Geiger counter goes off. He brings it out and waves it at Belle, and the counter goes crazy.

Within seconds, we see Belle, wrapped in a blanket, being hustled out by the RM team as Horatio and Delko watch. Since Belle pretty much is the radioactive site, there's evidently no need to contain anything else. Delko says, "Ten times the level of the lab." We go to commercial so that can sink in.

Once we're back, Belle is making medical machinery snap, crackle, and pop. As she lies on an examining table in an isolated room, she looks over to where Horatio's talking to a doctor and keeps on staring at him; he looks back, and it's all very moving. If that isn't visual shorthand for "Belle is doomed," I don't know what is.

Horatio walks out into the hospital lobby where, for reasons that pass beyond human understanding, Speedle and Calleigh are hanging out. They shoot to their feet when he comes in, and Speedle asks, "What'd the doctor say?" Horatio replies, "The doctor said we have a murder victim on our hands and she has less than one week to live. She's not contagious. Let's find Eric and tell him to process the cash from the crime scene; it's safe to touch now. Calleigh, let's go to Belle's home. Iodine 131 decays into normal iodine. That's what you're looking for." Instead of asking Horatio what he'll be doing at Belle's house, Calleigh just notes that iodine reacts to sulfur, so she'll put some in her kit, and Horatio's too. Horatio then kemosabes Speedle with, "Let's go to Belle's office and see if any of her enemies have left her a warning."

After his underlings scamper off, Horatio comes into Belle's examining room. She's sitting on the edge of the table wearing her examining gown and wrapped in a blanket. Belle checks him out and says, "No silver jumpsuit. I guess that means I'm all better, hmm?" Horatio winces before replying, "Well, umm, you've actually ingested some isotopes. An isotope called iodine 131." Belle's quick: "The stuff they use for cancer therapy. But I-I haven't ingested anything. And even if I did ingest a little bit of iodine 131 it wouldn't kill you." Horatio refrains from pointing out, "Wrong again, Belle!" He just soldiers on, saying, "Actually, you ingested quite a bit." Belle asks, "Well, how much?" Horatio looks awkward and begins, "It's my understanding at these concentration levels --" "How much?" Belle asks again. Horatio can't quite meet her eyes as he begins, "Roughly equivalent to what four radiation treatment patients ingest in, say, a six-month period." He's finally looking at her. Belle laughs in disbelief, and we go to the TMIcam shot of her radiation-riddled organs. Belle insists, "Somebody's making a mistake. It's not true. I didn't eat or drink iodine 131." Horatio cuts her off with, "We think you were poisoned. Now, the doctor is coming in --" "How long?" Belle interrupts tensely. Horatio looks at her with a great deal of compassion, and says, "We think you have about a week." Understandably, Belle looks shocked. She looks back at Horatio, who's looking agonized, and he whispers, "I'm sorry." Belle replies, "Not even enough time for all my hair to fall out." A-ha! She remembers The Day After too! Horatio wants to do something, so he asks, "Is there somebody I can call?" Belle begins rattling off some relatives, then stops herself, saying she'll make the calls. Horatio's pulled back into business mode and tells her he's going to want to ask some questions. "Like who would want to kill me?" Belle shoots back. "That would be a start," Horatio says. Belle nods. Oh, these two. They've made a connection. They've made Horatio likable in this scene. And now my world is turned upside down because of that. Black is white! Day is night! Nestle's is Scharffen Berger!

In the scene, Horatio and Belle are walking past the hot dog stand they've clearly just stopped at. Well, if you've got a week to live, there's no point in worrying about the nitrites in a foot-long. They're busy talking about Belle's enemies list, which is a foot long too. Horatio wants to know if Belle met with any of her enemies recently, and she says, "I met with Twin Creeks power plant yesterday, whom I just sued for plume contamination. They hate me." Horatio asks if they brought her anything to drink. She says no, but she did have coffee in her meeting with a nuclear weapons facility. Horatio asks if they brought her the coffee. Belle snaps, "No, actually, I got it from a vending machine, and if you keep interrupting me, I'm never going to get through my list of enemies." This makes Horatio smile. He bids Belle to go on. She does, telling him she met with Risher Pharmaceuticals, a company guilty of toxic disposal, and, as she says, "Misplaced isotopes and -- this is my favorite -- confusing isotopes so patients are injected with the wrong dosages. No meal, no drinks." Nice how she anticipated Horatio's query there. He asks, "Not even a glass of water?" Me, I'd be asking, "Do you see any connection between the isotope hijinks and your own malady?" but I'm naturally suspicious that way. Belle insists that she didn't even get a glass of water. Horatio asks how Belle's feeling, and she replies, "Not very hungry." He smiles in sympathy. World turning upside down, I tell you.

Meanwhile, Speedle's dealing with Belle's assistant. She's very calm and matter-of-fact. Presumably, he hasn't broken the news about her impending unemployment. He's asking if Belle gets a lot of hate mail and angry phone calls, and the assistant is telling him how every day brings a fresh batch of jackballs, but "Belle kicks ass." Speedle leans down and picks up a stack of papers, saying, "Yeah, I've seen these articles. She does a lot of pro bono work." This point is illustrated by the headline "Legal Aid for Chickens and Juice." For those who like to look at the other prop details as much as I do, this paper appears to be the Miami Glove (where the news fits the community like ...?), and the other headline, in much smaller type, is "INS Makes Big Bust in Miami." Either those big busts are incredibly routine or the prop people didn't think through what sort of newspaper section this is supposed to be, because you don't put the human interest story across four columns in a Christ-Is-Risen-sized font and shoehorn in the Feds elsewhere. Anyway, I then see that my presumption was wrong -- one shudders to imagine how Speedle broke the news of Belle's radiation poisoning -- as the assistant demands to know who's sick enough to want to do something like that to Belle. Speedle doesn't have an answer for her. He wanders over to the filing cabinets and begins pulling on the top drawer in the leftmost cabinet, finally asking, "Can you tell me what's in this drawer?" "Personal stuff," the assistant answers promptly. "Well, can you open it?" Speedle asks, a little less cordially. She gets up, eyeing him warily, and reluctantly opens it. Speedle thanks her, but she ignores her cue to clear out and watches him open the drawer. Speedle's now fully suspicious of her and the contents of this drawer, and nearly pulls a facial muscle trying to keep an eye on her while inspecting the drawer's contents at the same time. In no time at all, he finds a heart-shaped candy box, but the inside of the box holds not inferior drugstore panic chocolates (so named because of the look on people's faces at the CVS when I passed by on Friday night), but seven rolls of film. Speedle also finds a camera, and nods.

Back at the lab, Delko's processing the money and nervously checking the Geiger counter in his pocket every so often. That boy lacks the ability to live in the now.

Horatio and Belle are entering her yard, where her feathered friends await her. Horatio's amused by the chickens. Belle introduces them as Mary Ann, Linda, and Jean. Horatio asks if she supplies the neighbors with eggs, and Belle replies, "People pay me what they can." Here's where Horatio tries hard to tamp down the fantasy where Belle makes him a super-fresh omelet every morning before going off to inflict justice on corporate wrongdoers. DeSoto comes lurching out of the house -- Adam Baldwin specializes in abrupt and dramatic appearances, doesn't he? -- and announces, "Air's clean. If there's any iodine 131 left in there, it's lost its potency. I just let one of your CSIs in." For some reason, this amuses Horatio -- maybe he's still stuck in his omelet fantasy -- and he ushers Belle inside in fairly good spirits. Belle is not so cheery, as he's just asked her to put on latex gloves. When they meet Calleigh in the kitchen, Calleigh's a little stiff and tentative, and she announces that she's treated the dishes with sulfur and there's been no reaction so far. And all I'm going to say about Calleigh is that beige and khaki are not her fashion friends; few women can pull off that color combination without looking washed out, and none of them are wearing I Dream of Jeannie hair and Edina Monsoon's evening face.

Horatio ignores Calleigh to exclaim, "You collect hourglasses!" Of course, Belle does. We haven't had enough symbolism of time running out in this episode yet. Belle walks him over and shows her largest one to Horatio, saying, "My dad got me this one to remind me not to work on the weekends. It lasts for five days." Horatio's been smiling the whole time, and as Belle flips over the hourglass and sets its sands falling, his smile falters a little before returning. He's one smitten kitten. Horatio then checks out the potential competition by noting that someone's recently sent Belle flowers. They're from "a friend." Belle says, "Sometimes people like to say thanks anonymously. I don't question it if it's nice -- it helps to balance out all the hate mail. Speaking of which, there's one from Newhouse, Getty and Cooley." Horatio could care less about them, focusing instead on the single-spaced missive underneath. He asks, "Who's Sam Carver?" Belle explains, "An angry father lashing out at the world, not me. Where are my glasses? Good thing I didn't get that laser surgery to correct my nearsightedness." Ah, gallows humor. Good for her. Sam's letter reads:

dear Belle

Or should I call you jezebelle for the way you have betrayed us. Janet is so upset about Michael shes holed up in bed and can hardly get up. shes crying non-stop. You made promises and gave us hope but then you couldn't deliver. I don't want to see the same thing happen with Hank. That's why I writing to tell you to stay the hell away from us. Everytime you leave a message its like a bullet in our hearts. You may not keep your promises but I do and I promise that if you dont let this thing with hank go there will be a bullet for you. If you ever try to contact us again i'll kill you and thats a promise.

Well, the props department got the illiterate incoherence part of hate mail right.

Horatio's stuck on the sentence "If you ever try to contact us again i'll kill you and thats a promise." Belle explains, "He wrote that right after his oldest son died. It was horrible. I still wanted to fight for Hank. He's seven now, he's doing fine, we worked everything out. In fact, Janet still leaves me fresh orange juice every couple of days to celebrate the clean new water." Horatio's Crimey Senses are tingling, and he asks, "Did she do that yesterday?" Belle says, smiling, "Yeah." Horatio asks tensely, "And did you drink it?" All traces of a smile have disappeared from Belle's face. Horatio calls for Calleigh, and the thing we see is the drop of sulfur leaving Calleigh's dropper and plashing into the surface of the orange juice, instantly turning it cloudy and releasing fumes. Calleigh states the obvious: "It's positive for iodine." Belle stares at the fatal orange juice, looking acutely betrayed.

When we get back from commercial, Horatio is sitting across the table from angry Mr. Carver and his juice-delivering missus, saying in measured tones, "Recently, Belle won a class-action suit for you against a power plant for $200,000. I guess I'm a little confused as to why there are still hard feelings." Janet Carver immediately protests that there aren't hard feelings. Horatio reads the last line of the letter again: "'If you ever try to contact us again i'll kill you and thats a promise.'" Sam Carver rolls his eyes and explains, "She dragged her feet on the case, holding out for more money --" "She had a responsibility to everyone in the lawsuit, Sam, not just us," Janet points out, so I don't have to. Sam counters, "While our older son died!" Janet explains to Horatio that yes, they could have used the money from an early settlement to move, but they've moved now and their youngest, Hank, is in a really good school with wheelchair access. Horatio points out that it seems like Sam still has some anger-management issues with Belle. Sam leans forward and says, "Two hundred thousand dollars. Does that seem like enough to you?" Horatio replies simply, "Of course not. I'm sorry for your loss."

In the scene, he shows Calleigh how to find hidden tampering by filling the plastic juice jug with water and seeing where the leak springs. This is why he's in charge. Calleigh points out, reasonably enough, "Sam Carver shoots a needle through plastic -- why not just pour the isotopes directly into the juice?" Horatio replies that it's because the Carvers didn't do it. After a Sorkinesque bout of echoing dialogue -- "The Carvers are innocent." "The Carvers are innocent." -- Horatio decrees that they're looking for someone who knows his way around a syringe. Well, that narrows it down.

Delko, in the meanwhile, is still working the money; he tells Horatio he found a bill with the impressions made from a credit card or bank card pressed tightly against it. If Delko can figure out what the numbers are, he can probably trace the account to the killer. Which killer isn't made clear -- let's just assume at this point that everyone's already linked Carl's death by cervical fracture with a side of radiation to Belle's imminent death by radiation poisoning. Horatio's quite pleased with Delko: "Eric, your genius knows no bounds. Nice going." As he leaves, Delko calls out that he'll be getting in touch with the credit card company. It should be fairly easy; different credit card companies have different four-number blocks at the beginning of their sixteen-number sequence, so all he has to do is remember which card issues which numbers starting with a specific sequence. (Note to the forum: Do not try to confirm this here on the boards; the last thing y'all need to do is to be rattling off part or all of your credit-card numbers in a publicly accessible place. Call your customer service rep instead.)