Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Poison
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 15 | Aired on 03.23.2009
10:39:24. Moss is in Mayer's study with the crime scene guy, who hands over the preliminary ballistics report. Right now, Moss is more curious about the files that were up on Mayer's computer. I know it's a bit late to be mentioning this, but clearly Senator Mayer needs a screensaver password. Moss also wonders aloud why there are slugs in the doorway and the railing at the far end of the hallway, if Mayer was shot at point-blank range in the entryway. Maybe Mayer saw the gunman from the opposite end of the hallway and tried to rush him when he turned out to be a shitty shot? For now, Moss passes it off to the crime lab, thinks for a second, and pulls out his cell phone.
Walker is still pacing her holding room when another agent enters and hands her a cell phone, telling her it's Moss on the line. Moss opens bluntly: "Senator Mayer's dead." Walker asks about Kiefer, and Moss says they don't know where he is. Walker asks Moss if he thinks Kiefer did it, and Moss acts noncommittal. He does ask Walker if she has any idea where Kiefer might have gotten a hold of a UNP40 submachine gun, which was apparently Mayer's murder weapon, while on the run. Well, he did get a hold of a laptop, a PDA, a car, and some incriminating security footage, so anything's possible. Moss adds that it looks like someone else was in the house at the time, according to clues like, "Unexplained slugs, broken set of French doors, chair where it doesn't belong." The last one is a canny reference to how Mayer had his guest chair parked at the end of his desk while copiloting his computer with Kiefer in the last hour. "Are you saying that this third party killed Mayer?" Walker asks. Moss pounces: "Well, you know, Renee, I might be saying that if I knew what the hell Bauer was doing here in the first place!" Heh. He wants Walker's help, but she's still resisting. So he tells her about the Starkwood files up on Mayer's computer, and whether she talked about them to Kiefer. Walker pulls another one of her long phone silences, so Moss asks her to trust him. "What role does Starkwood play in all this?" Walker pauses some more... and then some more... and them some more... and then finally tells Moss about John Quinn, and Kiefer's assumption that Starkwood is behind the day's events. "He went to Mayer to get the evidence to prove it. I have to assume that Quinn followed him there," Walker explains. Moss is satisfied, but he can't spring Walker just yet until he has more evidence. So she grits her teeth and hangs up on him at 10:42:22. She is not happy about having to spend a whole hour out of action like this. But at least her hair still looks amazing.