Blood Lust

This episode opens with Radiohead, which means that it's already got a B simply on musical merit alone, and then we see an aerial shot of the Strip with the Flamingo, the Paris, and the MGM Grand visible in the distance. Rest assured that sandwiched between the Paris and the MGM Grand is the Aladdin, where I spent last weekend. Insofar as casino hotels goes, it gets points for having a bathroom larger than the kitchen in my apartment, and for having the kind of tub where you can stretch out, maybe do a little yoga, and still keep everything submerged. These criteria are important: the only nicer hotel bathroom I've had in Las Vegas was in the Mandalay Bay, and frankly, for what those rooms go for, it had darn well better be nice.

But we're not here to talk about tubs -- we're here to get our freak on with Radiohead. Get your freak on, y'all. We switch to a residential-looking street in Vegas, where the cab driver Rajeeb Khandewahl is discreetly checking out the attractive woman in the backseat. He then turns down the radio -- goodbye, Radiohead -- and the woman takes the opportunity to comment, "Last time I was out here, this was all desert." Khandewahl replies, in perfect, unaccented English (this observation is important later -- I'm foreshadowing here), "One day, I'm looking at a cactus, the day, a mini-mall." Khandewahl asks what brings the woman out, and as she replies, "Work," she looks up and sees a kid stumbling into the crosswalk. She screams, "Stop!" and Khandewahl slams on the brakes with sufficient force to send her rocketing into the back of his seat. The sound of the brakes screeching is enough to attract the attention of a bunch of bikers gathered outside the neighborhood watering hole. The wheels of the car stop on the kid -- unfortunate, that -- and the cab comes to a stop. Cue twelve angry, drunken men preparing to come over and give the crisis the benefit of their collective wisdom. Khandewahl checks on his passenger, then heads outside to see how the kid is. Short answer: disemboweled. That's not usually what happens when you're hit by a car, unless you're an extra in Death Race 2000. The cabbie takes one look, then heads back towards his cab. Reason # 3,456 why I would never make it as a successful member of an angry mob: I assumed Khandewahl was going to take advantage of the dispatch radio to log the accident and call for help. These folks assume otherwise, and fueled by wrathful ignorance, they proceed to beat him senseless. I'm not going to bother giving a blow-by-blow, as it were; just suffice it to say that it's a barbarous spectacle.

Cut to the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle. Gil is walking over, and Brass asks, "Where's your posse?" Gil replies, "I have no idea -- I was actually on a date." Brass looks around to make sure the assorted crime scene personnel don't suddenly go flying into orbit, as Gil's mention of an outside social life has undoubtedly knocked the world off its regular axis and begun disrupting things like gravity and magnetic poles. The two men walk over to the scene, where Emergency Backup David is crouched over the disemboweled kid, and Gil says in dismay, "My God. What am I looking at?" Brass dons the mantle of Captain Exposition and says, "Taxi hit a kid crossing the boulevard. The crowd over there saw the driver, Rajeeb Khandewahl, try to get away, so they pulled him out of the front seat of the cab and they beat him up. I mean they...beat him up bad. He's on his way to Desert Palm." Brass sounds shaken -- this speaks volumes about the degree of whupping Khandewahl endured. Emergency Backup David waits for a moment, and then says of his subject, "His insides are on the outside." That doesn't sit right with Gil, who asks, "Did you move this body, David?" Emergency Backup David replies, "No, sir." Brass notes that Auto Detail hoisted the cab off the kid, and Emergency Backup David says defensively, "Yeah, but I supervised. No one's touched him." Gil then asks Brass if he's ever seen anything like this before. "What do you mean?" Brass warily replies. Gil continues, "How many hit-and-runs have you pulled?" Brass has seen too many to count. Gil asks, "How many times have you seen the victim's viscera exposed?" Well, counting now, I'm guessing once? Brass confirms, "First time." Gil replies, "Well, first time for everything." Aaaand we go to The Who.

Once we're back, Emergency Backup David is talking about that time in forensics camp when he -- wait. Wrong conversation. He actually telling Gil, "My science teacher used to say that your small and large intestines could stretch across the Brooklyn Bridge. But in reality, only twenty-five feet combined." Gil, who's sitting on his forensics case, comments, "Fiction is often more compelling." Speaking of fiction, it's time to talk to the eyewitnesses. Gil says dismissively, "Testimonials, Jim? I don't consider that evidence." Evidence snob. Brass checks the rope of viscera one more time, and comments, "But easier to clean up." Speaking of cleanup, Emergency Backup David's about to do with the guts.

Cut to Brass talking to the very shaken cab fare. She's explaining how she's in town on business, was planning on staying with a cousin, and she saw the pedestrian lurch off the curb, but she didn't think the pedestrian saw the cab. We also find out that the reason the cabbie didn't see the pedestrian was because he was looking at his fare in the mirror. Brass asks when Rajeeb tried to drive away, and the fare corrects him, "No, no, no, no -- he got out of the cab to see what happened, then he freaked, and he got back in, and he reached for his radio. That's when the guys attacked him." Brass asks, "His radio? He -- he wasn't fleeing the scene?" The fare repeats emphatically, "No. He was calling for help." Gil, who was watching this exchange with some interest, then turns his attention to the cab and radio as Brass begins asking about the mob. The fare replies, "You always think you'd be a great witness, but...there were so many of them, and it happened so fast." We see another version of the attack, this time from her perspective in the cab. Gil looks disgusted; this scene can't have helped reduce his normally benign misanthropy.

And neither does the conversation with the mob. I forget who said a mob is only as smart as its dumbest member, but it's appropriate here. One man says, "We're heroes, man." A second says, "They have no respect for our laws." And those laws include the one permitting people to beat the crap out of anyone on the flimsiest of suspicions? Brass, who's already looking harried, asks, "Who?" A third mob member drawls, "That damn cabbie." Brass shoots back, "Why? Because he's not from Vegas?" Who is? That place reflects Nevada's average population, eighty percent of which (as of the 1990 census) were originally from someplace else. Another mob guy replies, "Because he's not from here, this country." Brass says heatedly, "And you know that because you saw his birth certificate." Yet another member of the Mensa mob comments, "We didn't exactly need to see it. We only need to make a false inference based upon a premise that has dubious and unsubstantiated origin." Or maybe he just stopped after that first sentence. Brass says, "Tell me what you did see." The same guy replies, "He hit the boy." The first man to speak interjects, "Then he hits his brakes, and I figure he's going to stop and do the right thing." And that would be performing gastrointestinal surgery in the street? Loudly swearing a citizenship oath as he hurries around to the back of the cab? Another guy says, "Instead, he jumps back into his cab." Clearly, this man is unacquainted with the miracle of talking wires, and thus cannot grasp the concept of radio communication. One guy says, "Hey, if it wasn't for us, he'd have gotten away." True -- because none of them can read a license plate or the number a cab typically has on its side, and thus call the cops with that information. Another eedjit says, "Citizen's arrest, yo." Guy Number One says, "People are going to want our autographs." The sad thing is, given the amount of pseudo-celebrity the merely notorious garner, he's probably right.

Gil, palpable waves of contempt rolling off him, interjects, "I don't want your autograph, but I would like your photograph and a bit of your DNA, so line up." The mob goes to protest, and Brass snaps, "Look, the guy that you 'arrested' is in critical condition. That makes you all suspects in a battery." The bald guy says, "Figures. You know, we do something good, you guys try to turn around and pin it on us." What else is included in their definition of "good"? Kneecapping people who violate the ten-items-or-less rule in the express lane at the grocery store? One guy comments, "If we were wearing badges, you'd be throwing us a tickertape parade." Or we'd be prosecuting you. Just ask Clarence Mabanag, Jude Siapno, and Matthew Hornung of the notorious "Oakland Riders," or Rafael Perez, one of the problematic CRASH unit cops brought down by the LAPD's Rampart scandal. Brass merely settles for saying, "If you're wearing badges, I'm playing left wing in the NHL." One guy says, "I know my rights -- I don't have to give you squat." Brass decides that he's through being charming: "Let me tell you how this goes down if you don't cooperate. You all get a free ride in the cruiser down to the station, where I hold you there until the warrants clear. So what's it gonna be? It's your choice. Line up, single file." Go, Brass! It's your eppy! Go, Brass! Get your perp on! Gil steps in, raises the camera, and with the barest of smiles, aims at one of the guys and quips, "Say 'cheese'!" Then he begins the swabbing.

Then, after a baffling transition wherein we see the top of the Bellagio while slot machines tinkle in the background, we zip to the hospital, where a nurse is saying of the much-injured Rajeeb, "He's critical. Ruptured spleen, collapsed lung, fractured ulna, possible intercranial bleeding. Doctors are still waiting on the labs." Gil asks about Rajeeb's clothing, and a nurse directs him to the top shelf, commenting, "They're ripped up pretty bad." Well, whatever didn't get torn in the fracas would have been cut open by the EMTs on the ambulance. The nurse says hesitantly, "He said he killed a boy -- ran over him?" Gil asks, "Did he say anything else?" No, he did not. Gil looks at Rajeeb, troubled by any one of a number of things: the fact that Rajeeb failed to mention the viscera, failed to give an account of who hit him, or focused on what he had done and thus shown how mistaken the yahoos back at the bar were.

Cut to Liam's lair, where a tense-looking Liam The Lab Tech is moving a crate of stuff to a lab bench. Gil comes in and says puckishly, "Gene Rayburn," then looks at Liam expectantly. Wow, is that unnerving. Where is the abuse? Liam turns around -- boy, does he look hassled -- and says, "What?" Gil replies, "Point of reference." Liam replies, "Uh -- Match Game. Nipsey Russell, Fannie Farmer. Game Show Network. Look, I, uh, don't have time for you. Ecklie's got a multiple, Warrick tells me his home invasion is my top priority, and I'm still backed up on Catherine's no-suspect rape. One servant, many masters, you know what I'm saying?" Gil replies patiently, "Liam, this is your DNA lab. You are the master. We serve you." Gil then gives Liam an adorable look. And when I, who have never really subscribed to the "William Petersen: Adonis made manifest on Earth" school of thought, think Gil's being cute, you know he's being cute. Liam turns to Gil and says, "Well, your stuff just made it to the top of the pile." Gil smiles -- will wonders never cease -- and produces his request: Rajeeb's clothing, from which he'd like to trace the individual DNA from Rajeeb's attackers. Liam then finishes Gil's scene-beginning reference by quipping, "Get ready to match the stars."