who shoved him aside, was shot and severely wounded. Pembleton, disgusted to find that fellow detective Mike Kellerman had deliberately shot Mahoney and would resign instead of being prosecuted, as well as grief-stricken over Bayliss's wounding, quit the force in disgust in the season finale. Bayliss would return for Season 7, forever changed and foreshadowing his actions in that season. In Season 7, having recovered from being shot, he converted to Zen Buddhism. At the end of the episode "Zen and the Art of Murder" it is implied he abandoned Buddhism as he feels having to shoot and kill a suspect who pulled a gun made him "not a very good Buddhist." Bayliss' sexual orientation and religion had prompted him to develop a website, which was later shut down on request of Homicide Captain Roger Gaffney. In the series finale he is outraged when Luke Ryland, "the Internet killer," escapes prosecution as the result of a legal snafu. Bayliss is later shown cleaning out his desk, with the implication that he is quitting the force, despite telling Giardello that he is merely doing some spring-cleaning. Ryland is found shot dead, execution-style, a while later. In Homicide: The Movie (2000), Bayliss was revealed to have taken an extended leave of absence, claiming that he had "things to think about" and issues (a point on which he is mocked by Meldrick Lewis). He returned to the force to solve Lieutenant Giardello's murder with the help of his old partner Pembleton; afterward, he confessed to Pembleton that he had indeed murdered Ryland, and asked Pembleton to turn him in. Ryland's name is written on the Board in blue to indicate a closed, cold case. The circumstances leading up to that result (Bayliss' arrest or death) are not revealed, but Pembleton later comments that he caught two killers that night. In a Season 3 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, John Munch mentions he once had a partner who took cases too personally and ended up committing suicide; while he does not elaborate further, Munch was briefly partnered with Bayliss during the seventh season of Homicide. References Fictional bisexual males Fictional Baltimore Police Department detectives Homicide: Life on the Street characters Fictional characters based on real people Television characters introduced in 1993 Fictional suicides Fictional murderers Crossover characters in television Fictional LGBT characters in television