From the CSI Archives

Cliche Scene Investigators were called in last week to investigate an unusually large number of bleached human bones that have been discovered in the Mojave Desert over the past several months. The puzzling circumstance about these remains was that there appeared to be no common factor connecting them. The remains were not discovered in a single cache or in a particular area, other than the desert. Here's what we discovered.

All of the victims had died from the standard desert killers, exposure and dehydration. There was no sign of foul play. Not the usual kind, at least. As the identities of the unfortunates became ... identified, one eerie commonality began to emerge, one that prompted the authorities to call in the CSI. All of the victims were professional pundits and political blowhards. What could have lured these alleged people to their doom in the desert wastes? We were as clueless as they.

The breakthrough came when we began examining their last pronouncements. We watched hours of video and, in the rare case of a victim who could write, reading articles. Slowly, a pattern began to take shape, and when we spotted it, we were able to locate corroborating witnesses.

"Yes, he said he was drawing a line in the sand," ran the typical statement, "and then, he by God went and did it!"

And then, deserts being what they are, any old chance breeze that cropped up obliterated the line, and the line-drawer got lost and cooked.

"I begged him - begged him!" sobbed the wife of the only one who could attract a wife. "Why not carve a line in cement? It's so much more stable! But would he listen?"

And so the mystery was solved by the dedicated and brilliant Cliche Scene Investigators. But there is a postscript to this story. It led to the solution of an apparently unrelated crime, or series of crimes, rather.

Elwin P. Fittleworth was a quet, unassuming, nondescript computer programmer who suddenly, for no apparent reason, took an AK-47 to a shopping mall and emptied both. The late Mr. Fittleworth had no previous history of criminal activity or, for that matter, any sort of activity at all, not excluding pulse. An interview with his wife both explained the rampage and tied it to our bleached pundits.

"Elwin said, if he heard anyone say 'draw a line in the sand' one more time, he just couldn't be held responsible," said Mrs. Fittleworth. "And then someone did. Several someones, actually."

NEXT: The case of "Jack," who fatally broke his spring when he attempted to "think outside the box."