Random Acts of Violence

Hello, Siegfried. Hello, Roy. You must be thrilled to be featured in the establishing shot opening this week's episode. The shot in question shows daylight fading into night, just so we realize that bad things happen at night and a very specific crew of people will be called upon to deal with them.

The camera zooms into a neighborhood where a boy -- think Ali G, only without the funny -- is kissing his girlfriend goodnight before peeling off toward his car. As the boy walks past a modest tract home, we zoom in on the lit window and hear, "Turn it off! I'm not going to say it again." The "it" in question is one of those kill-'em-all games, and the boy playing it says, "Five more minutes and I'll be on level nine." "NOW!" bellows the dad in response, but before he can follow up on that line of discussion, his adorable, pink-pajama-clad daughter comes out and protests, "Dad! You said I could watch Nickelodeon!" He tells her, "You've watched enough TV for one night. It's time to go to bed." The daughter pulls a time-honored counterargument -- implying favoritism -- and protests, "How come he doesn't have to?" Dad lays down the smack: "Both of you! Bed! Now!" This is the point where the son is conveniently struck deaf, so Dad strides over and turns off the television. The boy protests, and prepares to shuffle off to bed, stopping first to grab his soda. Dad intercepts -- "You know how much sugar's in that thing?" -- and that's the moment the Cola Wars begin in earnest, with gunfire erupting and shooting out the windows. Dad tackles his boy and covers him with his own body. I have no idea what would be more terrifying: trying to protect your kid, or knowing that your parent is trying to protect you in the only way he can. The gunfire goes on for a very long time, and as it stops, Dad remembers that Aimee's been in her bedroom alone the whole time. He gets up, shouting her name.

Remember this moment, because it's about as good as you're going to feel through the rest of the episode. It's all downhill from here.

We see a jostling camera shot as Dad runs into Aimee's bedroom and sees the shot-out window and the feathers drifting down like rain. The camera switches perspective so all we see is the smoking pillow, stray feathers, and a small hand lying limply.

Cut to the requisite array of office vehicles, and Warrick greeting Gil with a curt "hey." Gil asks curiously, "Didn't you grow up in this neighborhood?" I realize that line may have just been an excuse for the ensuing exposition, but I like to think that at some point, Warrick and Gil had talked about Warrick's childhood. Anyway, Warrick says, "Yeah, not too far away. My grandmother still lives down the block. Lot of familiar faces." One of them shouts off-camera, "Hey, Brown, you gonna find the guy who did this?" Warrick replies, "We're gonna do our jobs." Then he and Gil go to meet Brass. Brass looks even more somber than usual as he introduces us to Victim #1, the boy who had been kissing his girlfriend goodnight ninety seconds ago: "Jason Gilbert, shot through and through. He's gonna be all right, though." Jason, as it turns out, has great reflexes and hit the ground the moment the shooting started. Unfortunately, it means he didn't see the car. Brass sighs and says, "Little girl inside wasn't so lucky -- Aimee Phelps, age nine." The camera zooms in on Warrick; he looks dismayed as he repeats, "Phelps?" Brass begins executing the solemn sworn duties of Captain Exposition, telling us, "Father operates a rec center down the block," but Warrick's already pushing past him. Gil looks a little nonplussed at this.

Warrick heads inside, where Phelps pere is sitting with his head bowed, choking back tears, and lays an arm across Phelps' shoulders, asking, "What happened, man?" Phelps looks up and says, "They killed my baby." Then he begins sobbing in earnest. Warrick says fervently, "I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry. I got here as quick as I could. What happened?" As he's talking to Phelps, Gil drifts in, watching intently, his attention clearly torn between checking out the crime scene and trying to read the situation with Warrick. Phelps tells Warrick, "Cops said they were aiming at some white kid. I thought I was making a difference." He begins sobbing again as Warrick assures him, "You are making a difference. I'm living proof. I'm sorry." Gil takes this in as he checks out the bullet holes in the bookcase (where's there's a picture of Phelps with one of his kids as a baby). Warrick continues to pat Phelps on the back, then tracks what Gil's doing. Gil's peering more closely at the bullet holes; I suspect he's doing so both because he wants to get down to solving this and because he doesn't want to go anywhere near the Warrick/Phelps thing. We see Gil peer into a bullet hole, and the camera takes us on the TMI voyage that explains how it tore through the wall and into the pillow where, presumably, it then passed through Aimee's skull.

So Gil follows the path of the bullet to the doorway of Aimee's room and halts for a moment before kneeling beside the bed to inspect the body. We see that the bullet exited her neck and went through a wall on the opposite side of the room; the bullet hole is right above a shelf full of dolls. Warrick appears in the doorway, looks at Aimee for a moment, then takes out his gloves and sits on the bed. Gil finally gives Warrick his full attention as Warrick reaches out a bare hand to smooth down Aimee's hair. He watches Warrick grimace, then asks, "Are you going to be able to handle this?" Oh, Gil, I believe you're becoming more human every day. For one thing, you're picking up on the Earth emotion we call "grief." For another, you just let sentiment get in the way of the correct judgment call -- the minute you realized there was a connection between the victim and Warrick, you should have taken him off the case, as it would have been too easy for whomever the defendant's lawyer is to allege that Warrick's bias threw the case. Assuming Warrick's enough of a professional to handle this case is touching, but it's wrongheaded.

It's also plot fodder, so any intimation that Gil's made a bad management call goes by the wayside as Warrick replies, "I want this case."

Then we go to The Who, in one of the few instances where Gil doesn't get the last line before the credits.

After we're back from credits and commercials, Warrick and Gil are working the wrecked den. Warrick is telling Gil how Matt Phelps's house was broken into a week ago, and whoever did it took all his awards and medals; he adds bitterly that he hopes the items meant as much to the thief as they did to Phelps. Gil gets back to the case: "We're obviously looking for an automatic. The bullets went through the glass, shed their jackets, or disintegrated completely on impact with the wall. All we have left are lead cores, which are of no comparison value." Gil pauses, and the EMTs take that moment to wheel Aimee's body out. Gil watches the body go and says, "The only bullet that may help us is inside that little girl."

And on that cheery note, we go to Nicky and Vega heading inside an office park. See, I told you this episode would be sad. Nicky says, "HyperTrix? Sounds like a breakfast cereal." Yeah, the breakfast of tweakers. Vega says, "Some internet service thing. I stopped thinking about that stuff when I found out my NASDAQ fund was worth less than my son's comic book collection." And this is why you should diversify into money markets, government bonds, and blue-chip stocks, as opposed to trying to ride out a bubble. Nicky then says, "Dot com, dot bomb." Oh, har dee har. Like he wasn't crying in his HyperTrix back in 1997 when he saw those jackballs from TheGlobe.com rolling around on piles of fresh new paper millions. Vega gets back to the case at hand, telling us that the dead body in question is in a restricted area. Nicky and Vega then head into the office building.

Cut to them walking into an all-white office; it's like seeing The Prisoner. Who is Number One? You are, Nicky. As they walk by a sulky and intense guy clad in all-black, Vega explains that the night shift started at 6 PM. We then pass a girl who's doing her darnedest to channel a riot nrrd version of Bjork circa 1997 and a guy who looks like Artie, the World's Strongest Man, while Nicky continues expositing something that more or less tells us we've met our leading suspects. Then the two guys head into the server room, where Emergency Backup David is crouching among the backup disks. Everybody shudders as the folks at home all learn that thanks to the immense heat servers generate, a server room has to remain quite cool; Nicky says, "Most computers dissipate over two-thirds of the energy they use as heat. The AC's for them, not the worker bees." I wonder if he got that off TechTV. Vega could not care less. He rattles off, "The victim's name is Garrett Kwan. Job title: CTO." Nicky shoots back, "Chief technology officer. T.O.D.?" Emergency Backup David pulls out the meat thermometer and notes, "Ambient here's about 65 degrees, which makes core temp drop roughly two degrees per hour. Figure he's been dead...five to seven hours?" The 86.5 degree temperature would seem to bear that out. Nicky leans in to get a better look at the B-plot: Kwan died from a blow to the head, and there's minimum seepage. We also learn that the paramedics rolled him, as Kwan was found facedown with his head toward the server rack. Nicky and Vega banter over possible egress routes and places to hide a weapon, and then Nicky says, "One dead boss. Three live employees. I like the odds."

Back at the A-plot, Brass is outside with Warrick. As Warrick lays down evidence tags, Brass tells him, "So, Jason Gilbert, the kid who was shot? Wasn't too popular in the neighborhood. Just in a fight last week down the street." Warrick's all, "You saw his girl. She was hot. They were probably macking on her." He and Brass then figure out where the vehicle went and where it was going when its occupant(s) began shooting, aided by an upended mailbox. Brass deadpans, "It's a federal offense to mess with the postal service." Warrick notes that the vehicle took the corner quite hard, and then he rights the mailbox. Brass asks, "Doesn't that dent look high to you? Like a truck or an SUV?" Warrick gives his surprised assent, and Brass cracks, "I'm not just another pretty face, you know." Warrick notices silver paint transfer, but before we can get into that too closely, a deputy comes over and tells them that a guy was brandishing an automatic weapon over at P.J.'s Tavern a few blocks away; he's currently being held at the site.

Just like that, we're over at P.J's, where the owner is angrily telling a cop, "This guy's a punk." Brass tells him to start over at the top. He does: "This guy's no good. Every time he's been in here before, there's been trouble. So this time, I exercised my right not to serve him. You know what the little freak does? Lifts up his jacket and shows me a piece. I tell him to take a hike...hey! Are you listening to me or are you flashing back to your youth?" Oh, he does not ask that -- but we get a shot of the defiant punk glaring in recognition at Warrick and Warrick staring back with beleaguered intensity. We hear the barkeep saying, all echo-y, "He proceeded to tell me to watch my back because it wouldn't be the first time that night he killed somebody." Warrick says, "Jay...Jaycobs?" The barkeep corrects him, "No, it's Gene Jaycobs." Warrick helpfully tells us that Gene is former classmate of his who got kicked out of school. Brass says dryly, "Let's see what the lad has to say for himself." Nothing that can be repeated on primetime television without a lot of bleeping, I bet. Then Brass proceeds to channel his inner homey: "Hey, Gene, what it is! Uncuff him!" Warrick looks on with trepidation. I don't blame him; I'd probably have the same expression if I ran into most of my schoolmates. Actually, Warrick walks over to Gene, who immediately asks, "Do I know you?" Warrick says, "Put your hands out in front of you." Gene asks, "Oh, it's like that, huh?" Apparently it is, as Warrick fails to say, "You're right -- how wrong of me to not 'keep it real.' You're free to go." Instead, he checks Gene's hands for GSR and says, "I could process this now; it would tell me if you fired a gun within the last few hours. But I'm going to take this back to the lab, make you sweat it out." Something tells me Gene never signed Warrick's yearbook, "BFF!!!!" Brass picks that moment to drolly comment, "Officer, I think someone needs their cuffs put back on." Warrick continues to stare for a while, an activity that has all sorts of aesthetic merits, so far as I'm concerned.

Cut to HyperTrix, where Artie, the World's Strongest Man, is busy practicing for his interrogation by coolly smirking and saying, "I know what that is. You're checking me for blood spatter. I watch the Discovery Channel. I found the body, I called the police. Not too smart if I'm the one who killed the guy." You know, if the guy really watched the Discovery Channel, he'd know that the killer often is the one to call in the crime, the better to set themselves up as a well-intentioned innocent. Anyway. Satisfied with his delivery, Artie pops his head up over his Krebstar cubicle in the motion we at my first software start-up used to call The Prairie Dog, peers over at Nicky and Vega, then sits down to run through his patter one more time. Nicky and Vega come over then, and Nicky asks Artie, the World's Strongest Man, to stand up. Artie does so, takes a deep cleansing breath, and says haltingly, "I know what [gulp] that is. I know what that is. You're checking me for blood spatter. I watch the Discovery Channel." Nicky looks affronted at this. Artie, the World's Strongest Man, continues as Nicky continues scanning him, "I...I found the body, I called the police, nottoosmartifI'mtheonewhokilledtheguy." Vega says dryly, "Thanks for pointing that out." They then head into a discussion of Kwan's last minutes and Artie, the World's Strongest Man, says bitterly, "I didn't see him. Not tonight. I was working my way to carpal tunnel syndrome." You'd think a fancy start-up like that could afford Aeron chairs. Well, actually, they can, but they're not good enough for Artie, the World's Strongest Man. Nicky gives Artie, the World's Strongest Man, a level look, and he takes that as the fuzz putting on the heat, or something, and says all defensively, "It's not like my office has a view of the door. You should be talking to Charlie! Charlie has the good view." Nicky says, "Charlie?" and we follow Artie's finger to an empty workstation. Artie says shamefacedly, "Yeah, okay. Charlie doesn't work here anymore. That...[little tiny voice] doesn't really help you at all." Nicky asks Artie, the World's Strongest Man, to hold out his hands.

And now we're on tiresome employee #2, and I've figured out what bothers me so much about this setting: it's too aseptic and dumb. Where are the stacks of O'Reilly books? Where are the whiteboards where people have been diagramming program flows or grep statement syntaxes? Where are the life-sized cardboard cutouts of Claudia Christian and Sarah Michelle Gellar, where is the requisite artistically mangled Microsoft object, where are the pyramids of Jolt cola cans? Why is it so quiet -- why is someone not playing Rush, or Beck, or algorhythmically-generated trance? It's like someone grew these alleged high-tech types in a vacuum tube instead of checking out the native habitat of geeks. Sulky Black-Clad Guy is all, "I didn't see a thing: link, compile, debug. All night. The work absorbs me." Nicky's not too impressed, as he knows from absorbed workers, what with Gil and Sara back at the office. Sulky Black-Clad Guy is all, "My code monitors internet traffic and server load." He says that like it's something remarkable, and yet I spent ten hours at a trade show last month looking at five products that do the exact same thing. The real genius isn't in the functionality -- anyone can access HTTP requests on a server -- but in the interface for managing the traffic loads. Nicky, however, is getting all meta: "So you make your computer watch other computers that...other people are watching?" No, he's probably making sure some teenage wannabe 3l33t isn't trying to use his server as a mule for moving warez, but that's not nearly so cool and symbolic as the "who watches the watchman?" theme they're developing in this plot. Sulky Black-Clad Guy's all, "You can't see the beauty in data flow. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist." You just know this guy gets his kicks by pretending he's Neo in The Matrix. Vega asks what Sulky Black-Clad Guy's relationship to Kwan was, and in a nice moment of start-up verisimilitude, Sulky Black-Clad Guy says, "I'm employee #7. Kwan was employee #6." We then establish that Kwan and Sulky Black-Clad Guy had something of an intellectual rivalry going on.

Fortunately, there's nothing too mentally taxing about employee #3, Miss 1997. She deadpans, "You know, they confiscated all my murder weapons when I left Microsoft." She doesn't look like she has enough Gore-Tex or Polar Tec in her wardrobe to have been hired at Microsoft; I worked up on the Redmond campus for a few weeks during the summer of 1997, and it was pretty obvious REI was right down the road. This girl is working the clunky-shoed pro-sex kitten thing that swept the West Coast like a virus during the late nineties. Nicky comments appreciatively, "Yeah, you don't exactly fit the corporate image." She shoots back, "Well, it's my image. The company doesn't get a say in it." Vega takes in her work area -- which actually shows bona fide start-up personality and detritus -- and comments that it looks like Miss Thang gets special treatment. She explains, "I earn it. I optimize net infrastructure, incorporate buzzwords, do things that are generally derided in the latest IBM ad campaign, and skip around the technical details so actual geeks can't chortle at my claims that I'm all that and a bag of chips." Or maybe she stops before the buzzwords part. Anyway, Miss Thang brags about her five-figure bonus as Nicky swabs her hand. He fails to look impressed. She adds, "And, yes, I did see Garrett go into the server farm around six, six-thirty." Nicky says, "So, your boss is laying there dead for five and a half hours plus, and you never even notice he's gone." Miss Thang defends herself with, "Nobody else did, either." The sad thing is, I can totally buy that. There's a little bit of attitude-slinging that more or less leaves the viewer with the impression that all those dot-com brats got what was coming to them, and then we're out of the B-plot for a while and back to the downer A-plot.

More specifically, we're with David The Extremely Somber Coroner and Gil; David's telling Gil, "Bullet entered through the throat, severing the spinal column. C2's adjacent to the brain stem. Sever that, respiration shuts down, resulting in almost immediate death." David then picks up the bullet for inspection and shows Gil the wood splinters embedded in the jacket; Gil points out that the bullet did go through a bookcase. We establish that the bullet is a 9MM. Gil quietly thanks David, picks up the bullet, and heads into the ballistics lab. Bobby greets him, and Warrick wanders over to watch as Bobby begins processing the bullet. Gil gives Warrick a concerned look. Bobby then announces that they have a match 'twixt bullet and gun. Gil asks, "You're sure?" Bobby's sure. Warrick says with no small amount of vengeful satisfaction, "We got him!" Gil looks at Bobby, then back at Warrick, finally realizing that he may have misread how Warrick would have handled this case.

Meanwhile, Brass is busy talking to Gene. They go back and forth for a while on why Gene shot at Jason Gilbert; Gene claims to have no idea who Jason is, and that he didn't shoot anyone. Brass counters that according to Jason's lady friend, Gene was her personal almost-stalker. Gene assesses her credibility ("lying bitch!") and then claims he found that gun, it was jammed, and he cleared it. Brass shouts, "You cleared it all right -- right into Mr. Phelps's home!" You know, just once, I'd like Brass to pull this act in an interrogation and actually be right, as opposed to wasting his time and ours. Anyway, we establish that Gene actually threatened the bartender with an empty gun. When Brass questions the efficacy of such a tactic, Gene reasonably points out that the bartender didn't know it was empty. He then says he can point out where he found the gun -- back of Washington Avenue, to a big yellow dumpster. From behind the one-way mirror, Warrick snorts, "Oh, come on. That's it? That's his genius story?" Beside him, Gil points out, "We only found a small amount of GSR on his hands. Could have been transfer from just picking up the murder weapon." Warrick ignores this and insists that Gene's lying, and Gil gives him another assessing, worried look.