Freaks and Tweaks

After some desultory shots of the Miami waterline and the surrounding Everglades, we get to the point and quick: there's a dashboard's-eye-view of the Humvee, and the unsmiling visage of Detective Tripp at the other end of it, and we're at a rundown shack in the middle of nowhere. Tripp is looking disgusted; you just know he's thinking, "Oh, sure, first on the scene if there's a fire or a grieving widow, but when it's his turn to be the primary, he stops at 7-Eleven for a Slurpee first. I bet the jerk didn't even pick up one for me." We see Horatio get out of the Humvee and verify that no, he did not pick up Slurpees for anyone. There's some small talk about an unnamed guy living in a barn, and then Horatio asks the two uniforms, "What do we got, gentlemen?" We've got one cop who looks like he really needs a haircut; his partner can't even look at the guy. There's apparently a dead body in the barn -- a white male, maybe 25 years old, bound with duct tape. Speedle asks if anyone's been in yet, and Tripp tells him, "Waiting on you guys." So how did they secure the scene if they stood around picking their noses and waiting for Horatio to finish his 7-Eleven run? Horatio commands the troops inside.

Once they've entered the squalid shelter, Horatio notes, "You've got yellow powder on the table. Bathtub methamphetamine." And these guys are dancing around the premises without the precaution of hazmat suits because they've developed an immunity to the laws of physics? The prospect of being blown sky-high by a failed chemistry experiment holds no relevance? There is no unit in all of Miami-Dade law enforcement which handles toxic sites like this one? This whole set-up is just asinine; I've ranted about it already, so there's no point in getting worked up again when something new will undoubtedly come along. Speedle deadpans, "Speed." Horatio recites, "Cocaine high, no off button. I've seen people stay up for fifteen days on it." Usually at family dinners, which can get awkward. Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Tripp is appalled at all the fine electronic consumer goods which have been disassembled. He asks, "Tweakers just tweak stuff until they drop, don't they?" Hence the eponym, Detective. Speedle observes the grungy, bound, and bloodied man and comments, "He doesn't look like he dropped. He looks like somebody beat the crap out of him." Horatio figures it's the result of an argument. Tripp opines, "Problem is, once a meth-head starts something, there's no off button." Horatio ascends to the loft and summons Delko to stand at his right hand. After Delko kicks a glass bottle across the floor, Horatio tells him, "Take it easy. Something is not right here." Delko is delighted by the discovery of a shoebox full of Polaroids. "Tweakers love their porn," he exults, photographing the prurient photos. That's kind of meta, that is.

Just then, a single drop of liquid falls from the rafters on to Horatio's clothed arm. Naturally, he detects it. So Horatio looks up, notices some sweating plastic bottles, and interrupts Delko's kinky reverie -- this is when Delko picks up the box of porn to get a better look, and we hear a distinctive "click" and the whine of something warming up -- to tell him, "Eric, run."

Horatio hauls ass downstairs, bellowing for everyone to beat feet out of the building. It looks like Delko didn't have the presence of mind to bring the porn with him, since the camera is now giving us a long, lingering look at pictures of a scantily-clad woman in a variety of submissive poses. I love how this show manufactures excuses to pull out the prurient stuff. Anyway, the porn is about to be blown to kingdom come. Everyone sprints all slow-motion style, and then the building conveniently explodes. All the guys high-five on being faster than an extremely toxic and rapidly-reacting meth lab explosion. Well, maybe they do off-camera and away from the blast.

Judging from the credits, the explosion singed Roger Daltrey, because he's doing a little screaming of his own. I'm just curious to see whether Horatio's going to be called on the carpet for blowing up a crime scene; if there's some sort of explosions trend, there should certainly be a correlating disciplinary-hearing trend.

Once we're back from commercials, Speedle's sitting outside the smoking ruins where the barn once was, and Delko's kind of gaping at the damage. Neither one of them comments on how heartily tired they are of having fires break out wherever they go. Horatio comes over to hang out to Delko and ask if he's okay. Naturally, Delko is. Horatio comments, "This comes under the heading of 'No crime scene is ever safe,' huh?" Delko considers that a lesson learned. Horatio continues, "The problem is that our murder scene has been compromised in a very big way." You think?

Meanwhile, in a plot across town, Calleigh's hopping out of her Humvee and asking Hagen, "Just you and me?" "I thought I'd start walking my own lonely road, since it appears to work so well with the chicks," Hagen shoots back. Oh, he does not either. He gives Calleigh a mock-outraged expression and pouts, "You sound disappointed." I would not be disappointed if I were to spend one-on-one time with Hagen; his anti-Horatio attitude was refreshingly different, and he's pretty easy on the eyes. Anyway, Hagen gives Calleigh the bullet: "Joe Family Man runs to the convenience store to get milk. He gets popped. No ID, no wallet. I figure robbery." Calleigh notes the up-close entrance wound and comments on how it seems kind of personal for a robbery. Hagen thought so too, so: "I had patrol canvass for a wallet. Found it over there in the trash. Cash, credit cards..." Calleigh finds a bullet in the pristine back seat of the SUV; she notes that she might be able to get a print off it, on account of it not currently being lodged inside the dead guy. Hagen doubts her: "Heat from the primer burns the prints off." Calleigh replies, "That's true, except this one is unspent, so it didn't go through the barrel. I guess the primer probably malfunctioned because of humidity, so when the firing pin hit it -- nothing. It was a dud." During the back-and-forth with these two, we see a TMICam shot of the shell being thwacked by a firing pin and starting its long, hot journey to the inside of center of someone else's body, and then we see the same thing happening, only the bullet not going anywhere. I still don't quite get the explanation -- for example, it's not immediately apparent what the primer is, so I don't get how it's burning things or malfunctioning -- but it's sufficiently jargon-y to gull the unwary into believing that this show is more than a typical, predictable cop show. Hagen, who appears to have developed some sort of infatuation with Calleigh in the last four minutes, smiles, "I stand corrected." Calleigh beams back and tells him that's what she likes about him. Aww -- the courtship dance of police department employees, performed in the springtime over rapidly cooling bodies, is a sight to stir the most hardened heart.

Then Calleigh gets a good look at the victim's face in the rearview mirror and gasps. It turns out she knows him. And how, you may ask, does she know him?

Cut to Alexx wheeling along a covered gurney. Oh, no -- don't tell me Alexx knows this person and they're going to break the news of her friend's death by whipping back the sheet and shouting, "Surprise! Look who you get to talk to today while you work! I think you already know Dennis." Oh, yes, they are going to do it that way, because Alexx and Calleigh are chatting about Alexx's Christmas party, and Alexx is saying, "Of course I remember my Christmas party. I told you no gifts, you brought one for each of my kids. Why?" Calleigh says, "The couple there, the Harmons, Dennis and Julie..." Alexx asks, "What about them? They're my oldest friends." Of course they are. Was Dennis a few days from retirement? Was he happy about that winning lottery ticket he was about to cash so he could treat his wife to the vacation of their dreams? Because this whole set-up isn't clichd enough yet. Anyway, it finally hits Alexx that she's wheeling one of her oldest friends into the autopsy bay. Nice one, Calleigh. Alexx loses it, and it's embarrassing to watch because it seems so unguarded -- major credit to Khandi Alexander for carrying off the line, "No...we're still young." Calleigh speaks up and tells Alexx they can assign this to another ME if she wants. Why wasn't this done already? Since when it is police procedure to be all, "Hey! Was a friend or loved one killed? Let's put the bereaved on the case -- they're really the best people for the job, and will give us a completely objective investigation"? Alexx gets all teary and lies about being all right. The body gets dumped on her table, Alexx whips out a flashlight and notices immediately that Dennis's pupils are dilated, which is exactly the opposite reaction she would have expected at death. She's all over getting tox screens done. Then Alexx asks Calleigh, "Homicide notified Julie yet? I should be there when they talk to her." They began the autopsy without notifying the of kin? That's kind of tacky. Calleigh tells him that Hagen's doing it, and adds that the killing has all the marks of an acquaintance murder. Alexx is reeling: "Oh, it's got to be random. Dennis wouldn't get caught up in something like that." Alexx then catches herself and adds, "Listen to me -- like every victim's friend comes down here. Thinking I know somebody, what they'd be caught up in. Truth is, nobody really knows anyone." How very existentialist.

We're back at the burnt-out barn, where Horatio and some nameless bomb-squad member are concluding that the incendiary that set off the explosion was probably dynamite, helped along by gasoline and set on a time delay. It apparently exploded out at a rate of 16,000 feet per second; good thing Speedle and company run 16,001 feet per second, huh? Speedle's poking around and asking, "What I don't get is, if you're trying to destroy evidence, why not put the bomb to the body?" Horatio points out, "He wasn't trying to cover a murder. He rigged the bomb for kicks. The destroyed evidence is a bonus." Delko's been keeping himself busy picking up pieces of guitar all over the room. Horatio is intrigued. Right then, Speedle tosses evidence in Horatio's direction. Let's hope he doesn't do that with the spare body parts found lying around. Speedle's found a capacitor, which was part of the bomb. Horatio eyeballs it and decrees, "Judging by the oxidation, we're near the seat of detonation." This bit of know-it-all-ism, I can get behind, because Horatio did a stint on the bomb squad. Speedle asks if the capacitor is the bomb signature, and Horatio reminds him, "If we ID the signature, we can ID the suspect."