CSI: CRIME scene investigation

Season 4 - Episode 5 - Fur and Loathing

Written by Jerry Stahl
Directed by Richard Lewis
Willie Garson (“Sex & the City”) Guest Stars as Sexy Kitty

“Why did the raccoon cross the road?” That’s the initial question when Catherine and Grissom are called to the scene of what looks like a fatal 18 wheeler-meets-car traffic accident. But when Grissom walks the highway, he finds some two-legged roadkill – a grown man dressed in a raccoon costume. It appears that the female accident victim must have hit the furry critter, but when Dr. Robbins examines the dead man, he discovers that whoever hand-stitched the furry costume, didn’t make it bullet-proof. The dead man was shot by a high velocity rifle, and hit by a car, and the team concludes that it was a pretty rocky night, even for a raccoon.

Inside the man’s mask, there is vomit, and in the vomit, Warrick finds blue fur. They also find a medallion around the man’s neck that suggests he was a member of AA, but the tox report shows he was sober when he died. Weirder still, Greg finds traces of Ipecac (an emetic) and civet oil (an aphrodisiac) in the victim’s system. A search of Bob Pitt’s house tells Catherine three things that are equally weird – the man was a professional unmarried nerd, he collected stuffed animals, some of them life-sized, meant for more than decoration, and he intended to be at a convention called PAF-CON. The team lucks out -- the circled dates on Pitt’s calendar indicate whatever PAF-CON is, it’s still going on -- “minus one raccoon,” says Catherine.

PAF-CON turns out to be a Plushies and Furries convention, for people who prefer to interact with animals rather than humans – interact, that is, in every sense of the word. Catherine and Grissom make their way through a sea of lions, and tigers, and bears, and badgers, trying to find blue fur they can match to Bob Pitt. When they zero in on the very blue Sexy Kitty (guest star Willie Garson), he agrees to talk. But once they get Sexy Kitty to interrogation – turns out he’s a lawyer by day -- he’s as reluctant to take off his mask and his costume as he is to tell what he knows about what really happened to Bob Pitt, who may have had a little more hot live furry action than one raccoon could handle.

Meanwhile, Nick and Sara investigate when a stock boy is killed at a food warehouse, in what looks like a robbery. Their victim is found frozen in his own blood to the floor, and Dr. Robbins, called to the scene, lets the CSIs in on the secret on how to move him – first he has to be defrosted. Then the CSIs can figure out why the security guard is lying about hearing nothing at a crime scene where six vending machines are smashed and the frozen guy was killed by a single shotgun blast.