CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 4 - Episode 16 - Getting Off

Written by Jerry Stahl
Directed by Ken Fink

The CSIs are called to the drug-infested streets of Vegas, but the body they find there does not seem to fit. Witnesses say they saw the stabbing victim, Ed Burnell, arrive in a BMW, but no one can add anything else, and the Beemer is nowhere to be found.

 When Burnell’s car is found, a strung-out junkie is behind the wheel. He claims he rolled Burnell, who was already dead, and took his wheels, and he seems to be telling the truth. Some mystery crystals are found in the vehicle, and all of the tests Greg runs come up negative, until Grissom discovers it is the illegal drug ibogaine – one dose can cure physical addiction, but it is really a hallucinogen. “I don’t care if he’s selling the addiction or the cure, a dealer’s a dealer,” Brass insists.

So Grissom and Brass visit the halfway house where Burnell worked, and discover that he had become evangelical about what he thought ibogaine could do. They also find an addict named Mindy, who worshipped Ed – and whose prints are found on a condom in Burnell’s car. “Well, she said she loved him,” Brass reminds Grissom, who replies: “I want to find out how much.”

 Meanwhile, Catherine and Sara are called to the scene in an auto graveyard, where a dead body is found dead inside a tire. This is Tranny Town, but their victim wore makeup for another reason – he was a professional clown. Catherine and Sara reconstruct his makeup to discover his clown identity, as individual as a fingerprint. Doodles, aka Donny Zanko, was not a circus clown, but a basic chucklehead, says his booker, Buddy Ween (Paul Dooley) – he bought a getup, learned some tricks, and played kids’ parties. But it looks like Zanko may have been two-timing Ween, and taking jobs off the books, and Catherine and Sara soon discover that Doodles may have been done in by an enemy who didn’t find him so funny.