This week’s episode of Raines explores comic books and childhood.
Some people have beautiful childhoods, others have their youth filled with problem. Not everybody is born with loving parents or parents that are around.
These facts shape this week’s story.
Raines continues his sessions with his Shrink and actually appreciates what she has to say.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
//***************Spoilers*Ahead***************************
Raines is having thoughts about children and childhood.
He is bringing his partner’s son home.
He is investigating the death of a young man stabbed to death. They inform his girlfriend, another student. Jimmy is a graphic artist studying in college. He was raised by group homes because both of his parents were gone.
Raines gets a clue; maybe Jimmy’s family was murdered by the mob.
Raines was told that a comic book shop owner was a father figure for Jimmy, but this is disputed by the owner. Raines comes in contact with a lot of expensive comics and buys a Betty & Veronica comic.
By searching his apartment, he discovers that Jimmy was a dealer.
Raines meets this strange old lady that lived next door to Jimmy; he helped her get her “medicine” for her glaucoma. He learns that Jimmy had an argument with Sergei, the owner of a smoke shop.
This leads Raines to another conversation that he has with Charlie’s son Jack. We also see Charlie’s wife Lisa. Raines is talking to his shrink Samantha about this family.
Sergei denies knowing Jimmy. But after Raines brings Officer Boyer with a retired narcotic sniffing dog, Sergei folds and tells Raines that Jimmy owed him money, but he had paid him back a few days ago.
Jimmy was shot collar for the 420 Mafia, not a drug dealer. The 420 Mafia are a stoner gang, mostly white from Victorville. The gang is totally stoned, except their leader who is lucid enough to talk with Raines. He tells Raines after a bit of prodding that Jimmy had a fight with a gangster called Trey from the Rollin’ Fifties.
Trey tells him that Jimmy was the only one in that gang with half a brain; all the others are always stoned. Trey tells him that Jolene was at the scene, Jimmy’s girlfriend.
If we don’t solve a case within 48 hours, the chances that we solve it go down by half.
Raines to Jolene.
Jolene tells Raines that Jimmy had been in a gang since he was 12. Jimmy wanted out of the gang after he moved to LA. But the gang fell apart without him, so they came down anyway.
He paid off Sergei with some comics that were worth money. For the rest, he conned Wally Anderson, the comic book shop owner. Raines show the crime scene artist the comics and learns that they are fakes.
The guy says that the covers are impressively faked, but the rest are pretty obvious. He tells Raines that Wally couldn’t have been conned, because he would have seen these as fakes a miles away.
By going on Wally’s website, Raines discovers a Dragon Tooth dagger for sale, with twin blades, which could have made the stab wounds that they found on Jimmy’s body.
Wally tells Raines that the 420 Mafia made Jimmy fake these comics. Wally discovered these because the 420 Mafia sold another one of the fake comics to a collector, and that collector traced them back to him. He told Jimmy and Jimmy told him about the drug debt. Wally told Jimmy that he would pay it off, but that he never wanted to see him again, after he destroyed the fakes.
Jack has his first session with Samantha. He tells Raines that the truth comes out when you draw. This makes Raines go back to Jimmy’s apartment and look through the comics that he drew.
The panels are an allegory of what really happened. Jimmy was being squeezed by Surfer, the head of the 420 Mafia. Surfer would have hurt Wally for the fake comics, but Jimmy went home, smoked some weed for the first time in 6 months and got the dragon knife from Wally’s store. He went after Surfer, but he got overpowered and Surfer killed him.
The police bring in the 420 Mafia. Raines tells the 420 Mafia that Jimmy was a Confidential Informant for the police. Raines manipulates the 420 Mafia into revealing who killed Jimmy.
They all fold and Surfer gets booked.
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