By Lady Lola
On Day 5, Linden and Holder question Mr. Ahmed about his pen-pal relationship with Rosie. He insists it was innocent and gives them a copy of Rosie's Super 8 homage to Window Water Baby Moving as proof of her intellectual curiosity. It doesn't sway them, and when Mr. Ahmed's alibi doesn't check out, the detectives do some deeper digging and find that the extremely pregnant Mrs. Ahmed is one of Bennet's former students, to whom he also wrote notes. During the search of the Ahmeds' house, Linden comes across flooring fluid that, it turns out, was all over Rosie's body. The new evidence suggests that the perp -- be it Ahmed or not -- is likely an experienced killer.
Richmond's campaign is briefly buoyed by the ramped-up ad campaign. He carries on with his cloak and dagger routine with Jamie in Mayor Adams' camp, learning that Yitanes was behind Richmond's leak. Initially, it looks like former Yitanes employee Gwen could be the one behind the leak, but eventually Richmond discovers it's an underling named Nathan. When Richmond calls out Yitanes for her treachery, she causes friction by revealing that Richmond was checking out Gwen as the possible doer, too.
Stan struggles to make a living after several of his clients cancel. Meanwhile, Mitch is getting back to the business of living. She has a run-in with Richmond, who tells her "it gets better." But is he reaching out to someone who's going through a rough patch or caving in to his advisors' scheming? The Larsens choose Rosie's burial outfit and view her in it, which proves therapeutic for Mitch but brings on the breakdown Stan has been holding in until now. Fueled by despair and rage, he takes Belko up on an offer to leach information about the investigation from a friend at the school.
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Previously: Richmond had a mole in his campaign. It seemed like Jamie. Then it didn't. It seemed like Rosie was hanging with some tweakers her own age, then it didn't. Instead, she was exchanging letters with her much older teacher, Bennet Ahmed.
It's the morning of Day 5. Bennet Ahmed pulls into the seemingly empty parking lot of Fort Washington High School and heads inside. Pan over to one of the few other cars in the lot, where Linden and Holder are staking out the teacher. They enter his classroom as Ahmed prepares for his day. Holder comes in with his typical bull-in-a-china-shop style, saying, "Why don't you tell us about you and Rosie hooking up on the playground." Linden wonders why Ahmed never mentioned Rosie's connection to him through the Seattle All-Stars afterschool program, with which Richmond is associated. Ahmed says she only attended a few meetings, so he didn't think it was worth noting.
Linden wonders if, as spokesman for the All-Stars, Ahmed drove the campaign cars much. Ahmed starts to get the outlines of the picture they're drawing and insists he never drove any of Richmond's cars. They double back to his alibi, asking where he went after the dance the Friday before. He says he went home. No one can technically verify that, though, because he's redoing his floors and didn't want his wife to inhale the fumes, so he sent her to her sister's house for the weekend. As for the flooring company, he claims they cancelled at the last minute, so they can't vouch for him either.
Linden tells Ahmed they found his letters to Rosie. Ahmed claims Rosie didn't like to raise her hand in class, so they communicated intellectually through notes. He says he didn't save any of her notes. Holder snarks that Ahmed wouldn't want the notes falling into the wrong hands, like his wife's. Ahmed defensively raises his voice, saying that Rosie was different from other students, more curious, hungrier. He knows it looks bad but insists he was just trying to encourage Rosie to use her gifts and see the world. He says, "You should see what she came up with," and hands Linden a Super 8 reel. Credits.
Larsen home. Denny reaches for a box of cereal called Bits 'n' Pieces -- an apt name considering how scattered the clues in this particular mystery are. He goes into the refrigerator to find an empty milk carton. Since Stan and Mitch are still asleep, he decides to take matters into his own hands. He takes some money and walks through their less-than-great neighborhood in his jammies and gets himself some damn milk. Tommy wakes up with a start in a wet bed. He walks out into the main room in his underwear and immediately sees Denny. He tells him not to eat the cereal. It was Rosie's favorite. Denny keeps munching and says nonchalantly, "Go ahead, they don't care about us."
Meanwhile, Gwen wakes up in Richmond's apartment. She just got a text that their new billboards have helped, and they're up by three points. They have a busy day, including filming his anti-crime TV spots that night. She says she booked a hot new director. Richmond asks, "So why do you still look worried?" Gwen says Rosie is still hurting them. She encourages him to reach out to the parents personally and encourage them to film the commercials with them. He asks if she has any ideas that won't make him want to take a shower after hearing them. He tells her the Larsens still need time to grieve, and he plans to give it to them. Gwen maintains they don't have that kind of time.
Later, Richmond heads over to his rowing club to meet up with Jamie, who is predictably prickly in noting that his "ball hairs are freezing." He cuts to the chase -- he has a date with Mayor Adams later that day. Noting the exclusive club location, Richmond says Adams must be ready to get down to business. He advises Jamie, "Get him drunk, he opens like a flower." Jamie says he doesn't drink, and Richmond tells him it's time to start. Jamie shifts back to the ongoing mole investigation. He still thinks it's Gwen, but Richmond won't hear it. Richmond snarks, "You just worry about what shade lipstick to wear for the mayor."
SPD. Linden and Holder watch Rosie's film, a typical film student's stab at artsy fartsy cinema stylings. The video shows disjointed shots of a girl (maybe Rosie?) riding a bicycle, sitting on a patch of leaves in the woods, then a perspective shot looking up at monarch butterflies, then various shots around the city. Linden recalls Sterling seeing Rosie leaving lots of afternoons. She thinks maybe Rosie saw something she shouldn't have while filming. Holder gets irritated with the plodding course of the investigation (preaching to the choir, brother) and says he's going to call the flooring company to check up on Ahmed's story. He leaves, and Linden remains transfixed on the footage. She isolates a shot on the bike and tells the tech to print it, then another in the leaves. She hopes to make out a face to determine if Rosie was shooting the footage or starring in it. And, if she was starring, then who was shooting? As she watches, Rick appears in the doorway.
Larsen home. Aunt Terry readies them for school as Denny grouses about having another PB&J sandwich for lunch. Terry offers to go to the store to buy some more food, but Mitch offers to do it instead. "Are you sure?" asks Terry. Mitch insists she can handle it.
Elsewhere, Stan finds himself in another financial quandary when the roof of his new house is damaged and needs to be fixed. Making matters worse, he's had five cancellations this week because clients are afraid of an awkward interaction with "the dead girl's dad." [Really? Who cancels a mover because they don't know what to say to him? - Zach] Belko tells him he knows a groundskeeper at Rosie's school and can ask him for inside updates on the investigation. Stan rejects the idea... for now.
Linden delivers Rick to the airport. He asks if the barbecue is still on for Sunday, and she insists she'll make it. She thinks Holder will be up to speed by then, even if they haven't caught Rosie's killer. He calls her out for not eating or sleeping, saying "Drive-through at the Del Taco doesn't count." She admits with a smile she's busted. Rick worries that Linden will put Rosie's drawings on her wall, too. Linden promises him she's a different person now. She asks, "Do you think it's possible to know someone? To really know them?" Rick says yes, then suggests they cancel the barbecue on Sunday.
Grocery store. Mitch walks like a zombie down the aisles until she notices an acquaintance. She gives her a wan smile and the friend just turns around awkwardly and keeps walking. Mitch makes it to the cereal aisle and stops in her tracks at the Bits 'n' Pieces. Richmond appears from nowhere and intuits that she's staring so intently at this box because it was Rosie's favorite. He says his wife loved blackberries. Only after her death did he notice how abundant they are in Seattle. He tells her, "I can't avoid them," then says raspily, "It gets better." Asks Mitch, "Does it?" She trudges away.
Richmond heads outside and gets into his car. Gwen asks if Mitch was there, and he lies that she wasn't. Gwen can't believe it, because they've had someone staking out the Larsens' house for the last 24 hours. Richmond maintains his lie, not yet ready to cave in to Gwen's exploitative maneuvering.
Jamie has his meet-up with Adams at the upper crust club. Adams treats him to a little history lesson about the club itself, how it was started by lumbermen, then kept afloat by prospectors, and more recently added onto by Boeing. He says the story of the club is the story of the city itself. Jamie asks what his people did, were they panners or pencilheads. Adams defensively says his ancestors shoveled coal in the furnace downstairs... "So don't ever tell me my people don't know what it's like to be black." Then he looks at his African-American advisor and has a hearty laugh. Awkward! It's time for drinks, which Jamie is reluctant to enjoy. He tries to get down to nuts and bolts but is summarily shut down in his overture to find out if Adams planted a mole in Richmond's campaign. Seeing that it's going to be a long afternoon, Jamie takes his first, bitter sip.
Back at the SPD, Linden sits out in her car, eating her lunch from Del Taco and calling the airline to buy her latest set of tickets to Sonoma for that Saturday afternoon. She spots Holder rendezvousing with a mysterious car and taking a thick envelope. Holder heads inside and she shortly after. He's counting a thick stack of cash, which he claims he won at blackjack. He tells her Ahmed lied about the flooring company: They didn't cancel on him, he canceled on them Friday night.
Back at the posh club, Adams probes Jamie for the circumstances of his exit from the Richmond campaign. Jamie growls that Richmond isn't tough enough for politics. He doesn't have that taste for blood. Adams tells Jamie he's selling Richmond short, then notes that Jamie looks a little rough. Jamie excuses himself and runs to the bathroom to throw up what remains of his liver. Adams follows after to bluster about securing the waterfront. All too casually, he notes that Yitanes tried to put a plant in his campaign, but he sniffed her out. He says he has a nose for that sort of thing, then welcomes Jamie aboard.
Larsen home. Tommy finds Belko making his bed. Belko tells him he wet the bed until he was 17 and promises not to tell Mitch. [Anyone else weirded out by Belko being in Tommy's room, or even in the Larsens' house, with no reason given? - Zach]
Meanwhile, Stan and Mitch are at the funeral home handing over the dress they chose for Rosie's burial. The director asks if they want to see her in the dress, assuring them it'll only take a few minutes. Mitch can't resist, so Stan follows grimly behind her.
Jamie joins Richmond at their meet-up spot. Richmond tells Jamie he looks like crap, but Jamie smugly tells Richmond that Yitanes is behind the mole. He says he never trusted her and points out that Gwen used to work for Yitanes. Richmond tells him to check all the employee records for links.
A bit later, Stan drives Mitch home. They are a world apart as Mitch says, "She looked pretty... our Rosie, didn't she?" Stan sits there silently, still mulling over the sight he never wanted to experience. He pulls abruptly into a gas station, claiming he needs to get oil. He heads into the bathroom, gasping for air, and splashes water on his face. It's the moment he's been holding in for five days. The moment where he can't stop himself anymore. He wails and groans and pants, sobbing frantically for several minutes as collapses onto the floor in anguish. He finally returns to the car. Mitch notices he doesn't have any oil. He lies that they were out.
Richmond HQ. Gwen gives a press dossier to the director she's called in for Richmond's anti-crime campaign commercial. She emphasizes that Richmond is the real deal and says she'd like to highlight his athletic side. The cocky auteur wannabe snarks, "I'm a director, not a special effects monkey." He leafs through dossier and stops to mention the last time he saw Gwen, which happened to be undressed. He wonders if their past has factored into him getting this job.
Over at the high school, Holder speculates what happened on Friday night. He thinks Ahmed must have brought Rosie over for sex, then something went wrong, and he had to dump her body in the park and cancel the flooring company so he could clean up the mess. He says he'd bet on it, if he were a gambling man. She wonders how he's not if he won all that money at blackjack. They settle back into their push-and-pull routine where Linden pretends she doesn't hate Holder but is really ferreting out his character, and Holder pretends he doesn't resent Linden but is really trying to screw with her. Of note, we learn that Holder has been celibate for six months. He claims it's for "personal reasons." I suspect it's sobriety-related.
They head inside to talk with the world's worst principal. She insists Ahmed's relationship with Rosie was strictly platonic. Because she's so in touch with the students and their Cages and rape parties. She claims she would have fired Ahmed if she found out anything about him and Rosie. Holder snarks, "Like you fired that peekin' perv janitor?" Linden says perhaps she heard some student gossip that didn't seem relevant until now. The principal says there was "an incident" at another school, but nothing came of it because the girl was mentally unstable. As an aside, she says she hopes Richmond doesn't get dragged into the investigation again. As Holder and Linden start to leave, the principal adds one last thing: "I've always wondered about Mr. Ahmed's wife." In case you didn't know, she was one of his students. Yeah, that might be relevant! Sheesh.
Ahmed's house. Holder and Linden invite themselves inside to talk with the very pregnant Mrs. Amber Ahmed -- played by Ashley Johnson, a.k.a. Chrissie from Growing Pains! -- as they "wait" for Bennet to come home. Amber explains that Bennet was "really young," only 23, when she was a senior. Linden says she had a crush on one of her high school teachers, but he was already married at the time. She lies that they used to exchange notes. What a coincidence, that's what Bennet used to do, says Amber. He used to write her long missives, encouraging her to pursue her dreams, wherever they took her. Sound familiar? Linden asks about Amber's whereabouts the weekend before, she says she took the car to visit her sister since Bennet didn't want her taking the bus. Holder, smooth as ever, throws in a complete non sequitur and asks whether Bennet took any movies of Amber when she was a senior. This spooks Amber, so Linden changes the subject, asking if she can use the restroom. She takes the opportunity to explore the house and finds a room full of tarps and cleaning fluid.
By Lady Lola
Ahmed's house. Holder and Linden invite themselves inside to talk with the very pregnant Mrs. Amber Ahmed -- played by Ashley Johnson, a.k.a. Chrissie from Growing Pains! -- as they "wait" for Bennet to come home. Amber explains that Bennet was "really young," only 23, when she was a senior. Linden says she had a crush on one of her high school teachers, but he was already married at the time. She lies that they used to exchange notes. What a coincidence, that's what Bennet used to do, says Amber. He used to write her long missives, encouraging her to pursue her dreams, wherever they took her. Sound familiar? Linden asks about Amber's whereabouts the weekend before, she says she took the car to visit her sister since Bennet didn't want her taking the bus. Holder, smooth as ever, throws in a complete non sequitur and asks whether Bennet took any movies of Amber when she was a senior. This spooks Amber, so Linden changes the subject, asking if she can use the restroom. She takes the opportunity to explore the house and finds a room full of tarps and cleaning fluid.
Back in the living room, Amber tells Holder she's due week. She wants a boy, Bennet wants a girl. Holder asks if she ever worries about her husband not coming home at night, what with all the temptation around him. She says she doesn't worry and insists that he was home at 10 o'clock last Friday. When pressed further, though, she admits that Bennet called from his cell phone, not from the land line at home.
Holder is chomping at the bit as they head back to SPD. Linden tells him to hold his horses because circumstantial evidence isn't enough -- they have to put Rosie at the crime scene. Her phone rings, and she tells the lab tech to check Rosie's tissue samples for ammonium hydroxide.
Richmond HQ. He gets a package and a phone call from Jamie. As he opens up the package, Jamie tells him, "I want back in, Darren. It's lonely out here in the cold." After looking at the contents of the envelope, Richmond makes a phone call we don't hear, then he watches as security guards enter, approach Gwen, then head over to another room to pick up his staffer Nathan. Later that night, he tells Gwen he didn't have a choice and had to be discreet. She says she understands. Just then, Councilwoman Yitanes comes in. Richmond calls her out for insinuating Nathan, who also worked for her husband, into his campaign to leak damaging stories to the news. She plays coy, but he knows that she wanted to keep him weak so he'd have to depend on her. They butt heads for a few minutes, but Richmond gets the upper hand this time because Yitanes could get jail time for her felonious actions if Richmond goes to the police with them. Never one to skip a parting shot, Yitanes spills that Richmond had Nathan check out Gwen, too. "Spreading your legs just doesn't buy a girl anything these days," she says and makes her dramatic exit. Gwen is a little peeved.
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By Lady Lola
Larsen home. Mitch walks by the bathroom to find Denny playing in an overflowing tub. She has a flash of Rosie and flips out, ordering Denny to get out of the water immediately. These ripples are still coming fast and hard.
Richmond heads to his TV shoot, and Gwen introduces him to the (female) director. Richmond asks, "What happened to Mr. Hard-To-Get?" Gwen answers, "He had the wrong idea."
SPD lab. Rosie's tox screen was negative for all narcotics, but the ammonium hydroxide was all over her body -- even in her lungs. It's used for cleaning, both of the professional and homicidal type. The tech explains that's probably why they didn't find anything under her nails or any sign of sexual assault. Linden says it sounds like the perp is a pro, and the tech agrees.
Closing montage: Stan goes into his garage and tells Belko to follow up with the groundskeeper at the high school. He wants to know who the cops are pursuing. Holder lingers outside a house with children playing inside and finally drops his packet of cash into the mailbox. Linden tacks up shots from Rosie's Super 8 movie, just as she did with the drawing Rick mentioned earlier. Richmond films his TV spot with -- guess who -- Bennet Ahmed and the All-Stars.
Discuss the episode in our forums, then check out our guide to our favorite dead TV characters.
What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Join the conversation now!
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