Crime of the week

Perhaps "crimes" would be a more appropriate word, because as heinous as tonight's murder is, it's not much worse than the child-abduction cold case that Crews and Reese accidentally uncover.

At first we're only aware of the murder of a runaway teenage girl named Josie. Found below a bridge underpass with an acoustic guitar in her hands as if she's playing, Josie might almost appear alive - other than the bloody slash across her neck. Crews keys in to two young women on the edge of the crime scene who turn away and leave once he notices them. He blunts their suspicion by offering them oranges from the orchard he purchased several episodes ago. They reveal that Josie played guitar a lot in front of a certain supermarket.

After checking in with Lt. Davis at the station - in an odd conversation that quickly becomes a discussion of Crews and the Ames murder, laced with threatening overtones (more on that later) - Crews and Reese head to the supermarket, where a collision with a skateboarding youth has consequences for the rest of the episode. The boy is Nate, and his father Ray is a manager at the market. Nate denies knowing Josie, but his father confirms that she hung around constantly.

Nate is unusually reticent around his father, and so Crews and Reese go to their home while Ray is working a shift. Nate eventually confesses that Josie was teaching him how to play guitar, and that while they made out on occasion, they never had sex. Since by now it's been confirmed that Josie had sex with her killer, Reese asks if Nate knows anyone she was sleeping with. Nate suggests Dean Gill, who delivers bread to the market. When asked if Nate himself has an alibi for the crime, he goes to get his timecard.

And Crews, with his instinctive ability to brush aside the rules and sniff out trouble, invites himself across the threshold and into the apartment. He takes in the bars on the windows, and then the padlock on the bedroom door. He realizes that the father has "serious control issues". Said father shows up, unfortunately, and Nate tells Crews to leave, rather than incite Ray's wrath. Crews and Reese do leave, but by now Crews has begun to identify Ray with the guards he despised in prison.

Meanwhile, the detectives pursue the Dean Gill angle. Gill hasn't shown up for work and his truck is missing, so Crews and Reese go to his house, where they hear screaming and bash their way inside. Instead of a screaming woman, however, they see dozens of kittens meowing. Individually, they're cute. Together, they're extremely creepy. Dean's a bit creepy too. And the interior of his truck is unusually clean. They do find a guitar pick in his seat cushions, but Dean takes the unusual step of snatching and swallowing it. That's suspicious enough that he's taken into the station. It looks like he won't be allowed to relieve himself in private. Gill claims that he only liked to hear Josie sing (considering his fondness for pussycats, he probably thought her name was apropos).

While they're eagerly waiting for the chance to conduct a search of Gill's next bowel movement, Crews and Reese follow up at Ray and Nate's apartment with a search warrant. The apartment is empty, however, and the two are on the run. Stymied, Crews begins to wonder what Gill does with his kittens when they get older. It turns out they end up buried in his backyard with throats slit. Hm, quite a coincidence, eh" They turn up the heat on Gill with this evidence, claiming they'll find Josie's DNA on the guitar pick once it comes out Gill's other end. Panicked, Gill confesses that he tried to "take her voice", presumably before her voice became more mature, just like his kitties.

Ew. And you thought Ursula in "Little Mermaid" was bad.

Even though Ray and Nate are no longer murder suspects, their sudden departure can't be ignored, and eventually they discover that Nate is in fact Stephen, who was abducted when he was three. Ray isn't his father, but his kidnapper. Initially the search for them fails, but Crew reasons that Ray trusts his "son", and the search refocuses on two individuals, not a father-and-son pair. Somehow they locate Ray at a farm, and then lure Nate in by reporting on the media that Ray is being charged with Nate's murder. Nate turns himself in rather than see his "father" go to prison for life. Crews identifies with Nate, who has seen most of his life stolen from him, and takes him onto the roof helipad to help Nate deal with the future.

The Big Mystery

Regardless of how busy Crews is, with both a homicide and an abduction on his plate, he still has plenty of time to worry about the Seybolt case. Especially since it appears that the person(s) responsible for him being framed aren't content to allow him to remain free. They've made him a suspect in a new murder, and they've (most likely) made sure that Constance can't represent him in a murder trial by hiring her as an assistant D.A.

Crews has tried to remain under the radar with his investigation. Note how determined he was to keep Internal Affairs from finding his "mystery wall" in Episode Eight. Now, however, it seems he's taking a more aggressive approach. As Episode Nine begins, Ted is understandably curious about all those photographs and files he hid from the police. Crews explains about the missing Rachel Seybolt and his reasons for believing she saw the murderer. Ted is skeptical, but more intrigued by the fact that Jack Reese argued with Det. Ames the day after Crews confronted Ames. Crews claims that he's going to bring the facts out into the light.

He begins by leaving photos of Jack and Ames arguing inside Jack's morning paper for him to find.

Not long after, while briefing Lt. Davis on the homicide case, Crews brings up the Ames case. Davis becomes increasingly hostile and eventually makes him leave so she can speak to Reese in private. Davis then makes what sounds a lot like either a threat or a warning to Reese, suggesting that Reese's loyalty to Crews is a sign of a character flaw that turned her into an addict while undercover. And that if she doesn't help Internal Affairs, Reese might learn one day that drugs were found in her locker.

Say what" If Davis isn't part of the conspiracy (and she is on Crews' mystery wall), then she's at least aware of the existence of a group of people who will stop at nothing to see Crews in jail, or at least off the force with his reputation destroyed. And she claims that Crews has been making "trouble". It's hard to see that as true, unless you're looking at Crews' visits to Ames from the point of view of one of the conspirators.

Crews has a second meeting with IAD and continues to infuriate the investigator with Zen aphorisms. Even his union rep seems exasperated by Crews' refusal to give straight answers. Later he encounters Stark in a jacket and tie, waiting to be interviewed as well. Stark seems a bit genuinely worried, as "telling the truth" didn't help Crews the first time.

Later, a second meeting in Davis' office is even more antagonistic, as Jack Reese rightly suspects Crews is responsible for the pictures on his doorstep. Crews admits it, and that he thinks it's strange that Jack argued with his old colleague after Ames practically ran to Jack after his encounters with Crews. Jack privately warns Crews that he's making a mistake.

Surprisingly, there is little awkwardness between Crews and his partner, a.k.a. Jack's daughter. When the detectives discover Ray and Nate gone, Reese shares that even though Jack is her father and she followed him into the department, she spent her life trying to figure out if her father was "mean" or just "bad". Reese doesn't exactly like Crews either, but she intuitively understands that "he's one of the good guys". Suddenly her refusal to work with IAD suggests an act of rebellion against her father and cops like him.

Cops like Jack Reese is also the subject of a later conversation between Crews and Constance. Sitting in the park and eating popsicles, they talk about his case. Constance suggests that he should be careful, that there are cops out there who, unlike Crews, are not "in search of a pure heart". Like Davis, Constance appears aware of a concerted effort to bury Crews. Unlike Davis, Constance's priority is protecting Crews, not the department.

There is little else regarding Crews' case afterwards, except some light being shed on Crews' fascination with fruits. Often seen with fruits like oranges and plums, Crews is asked about it by Reese after she sees him with a tiny pineapple. Crews explains that you never get fruit in prison, and that it's something you learn to miss. Reese seems convinced that she'd miss a lot of things before she missed fruit, but the look on his face says "you'd be surprised".

So, what's up with Ted?

Nothing, actually. After his opening scene with Crews, we never see Ted again.

Personal Observations

- While getting Constance to join the D.A.'s Office may have been a tactical decision to deprive Crews of his most tireless defender in an Ames murder trial, the conspirators appear to have made a critical mistake in assuming that Constance isn't still on his side. Once again I wonder if she took the job because she thought she could best protect him from within the department.

- Crews' suggestion that Nate/Stephen padlocked his own door because he had grown used to having it there was very believable. I thought of the film "The Shawshank Redemption", where Morgan Freeman claimed that long-time prisoners became "institutionalized", that they learned to depend on the prison walls.

- Nate is fifteen, so he has been missing for twelve years. Just like Crews was in prison for twelve years.

- Certainly one of the segments of Crews' mystery is the role of Lt. Davis. He has her on his wall for a reason, but we're not entirely clear why. And her behavior has been very suspicious. But I like Robin Weigert very much, and I confess to hoping that she's not mixed up in the Seybolt killings. It's possible that she's aware of something bad going on, but for her the reputation of the LAPD is more important than an individual detective's life.

- When I commented last week that Crews' union rep was best known for playing the disgraced-but-redeemable Det. Roberts on "NYPD Blue", I temporarily forgot that he also played the volatile Steve on "Deadwood". That makes him the fifth actor who appeared in at least 10 episodes of "Deadwood" to be either star or guest-star on "Life". I like it, I just wish I knew why.

Don't forget that next week is the two-parter "Dig a Hole, Fill It Up". Part One airs Monday, December 3, at 10 PM EST. Part Two airs two days later in its regular time slot, December 5 at 10 PM EST.

And after that" All we know is, "Life" had its back nine picked up. Which means it's good to be excited.