218 All’s Fair

Why would anyone go through all the trouble to set up an international murder when you don’t have to …


Summary: An Iraqi activist is killed and Don’s team runs into several blocks, both offical and cultural, while trying to figure out why she was murdered.

Original air date:
March 31, 2006 (US)

Written by: Julie Hebert

Directed by: Rob Morrow

Opening numbers:

34,000: Insurgent attacks
65,000: Iraqis in California
5: Calls to prayer
1: God


Family Concepts: (character development)

  • Charlie lived with Susan Berry for nearly two years when he was twenty-one
  • Alan and Don both know Susan
  • Megan is a fan of Radiohead
  • Charlie has a standing invitation to lecture at Cambridge
  • Alan has another date planned, possibly with Donna

Episode Quotes:

  • Alan [to Larry]: Back off Rain Man.
  • Megan: Yeah, give me some good old fasioned red-neck chauvinism any day.
  • Larry: Eureka! Oh my word, eureka!

Episode Synopsis:

Saida Kafaji is a young Iraqi woman in who has recently come to the US.  While returning home to her cousin Nasreen’s home she is murdered. Don calls in assistance from Immigration and Customs to help with the case.  Saida was a radical who spoke out against a number of people in Iraq and acquired many enemies any of whom may have had her killed while in the US.   While Colby is running down leads from the crime scene, Megan and the ICE  agent interview an Imam  at a local mosque to find out if someone had put out the call to kill Saida.  The Imam doesn’t have any information, but Colby discovers the murder weapon and a boot print could be from American military issue.

Don has several interviews with Nasreen to find out more about Saida, but he knows she is withholding information.  Little by little she tells Don that Saida was a lawyer working with the US to prosecute war criminals and that she was accompanied to the States by a Lt. Karnes who is AWOL and has been since Saida was killed.

Charlie, Larry and Amita are working to figure out who might have killed Saida, at the same time Charlie has a visit from an old girlfriend, Susan Berry, who is in the US from London on a book tour.  Charlie and Susan make dinner plans and after dinner, they renew their past.

Colby comes to the campus and finds Larry examining the boot prints from the crime scene.  Larry has a eureka moment when he realizes the boot prints could not be made by Karnes, in fact Karnes was being set up.  Don goes back to Nasreen to find out more about Saida and Karnes and finds out they were secretly married; a marriage that would shame her family as he is not Muslim.

Colby tracks down Karnes and gets him to talk.  Colby finds out Saida was in the States to testify against a Republican Guard who had raped her when she was fifteen.  A cousin of the guard is known to be in the States and Nasreen suggests the FBI use her a bait to get him to come out of hiding.  The plan works and the man is killed after trying to kill Nasreen.