Triptych

Will listens to a recording of Angie reading Aleesha’s letter to her mother. Suddenly, Leo enters Will’s office and tells him that Gina got a restraining order against Michael in DeKalb County. Will is surprised to see that Leo believes Gina’s side of the story. They also learn that Baby G, Aleesha’s pimp, has been shot and is now on life support. Will asks Leo to spend more time investigating the case of Jasmine’s disappearance. Will then calls Angie and asks her about the details of Gina’s restraining order, and she tells him that Michael physically abuses Gina.

Will heads to the home of Aleesha’s mother, Miriam, which is in a wealthy neighborhood. Miriam tells him that Aleesha ran away when she was a teenager. Miriam explains that they spent thousands of dollars on rehab and therapies, but Aleesha did not want their help. She ran off with a man she met at a treatment facility and was later arrested on a drug charge. Apart from a phone call in which Aleesha asked for money, Miriam has not heard from her daughter in 20 years.

Will grapples with the difficulty of telling a parent that their child has died, and he suggests that she call her son to join her. He asks Miriam to explain what the letter meant to Aleesha. She tells him that a house down the street was home to a mother, who worked as a lawyer, and her wayward son, who had weekly drug parties.

Angie has spent a long day arresting men for soliciting services from sex workers. She is preoccupied with her worries about Jasmine, especially since she knows the statistical realities of cases involving young missing girls. When she goes to visit Ken, she is still in her Vice attire. The receptionist at the nursing home asks her how much she charges, and his question demoralizes her. The stroke has left Ken partly paralyzed and unable to speak, so Angie does her best to make conversation. She understands Ken when he indicates that Michael is not what he seems. She also tells him that Michael had warned her to watch out for John Shelley.

As she is talking to Ken, Angie realizes that Gina met Michael when she was 15; she recalls that Cynthia was also 15. She does some math and realizes that Michael was 26 when he met Gina. She asks Ken if he ever went fishing with Michael in the mountains and learns that he did not. She then drives to Will’s house, where he tells her that Baby G has died. The man was shot by his cousins, who said that he disrespected them. Angie tells Will about her hospital visit with Ken, which makes her very emotional. Their cuddling soon turns into sex.

Martha Lam has helped John find a new apartment. John was happy to see Robin at the hospital earlier. Now, he thinks about the fact that Michael stashed an incriminating knife under his mattress, and he wonders why Michael still harbors so much hatred toward him. John has grown accustomed to thinking of himself as a bad person, but he is infuriated to have been blamed for a crime that Woody committed.

A woman whom John has never seen before visits him at work. She introduces herself as Kathy, Joyce’s partner of 12 years. Kathy takes him to Joyce’s office, explaining that she was not allowed at the funeral of Emily, John’s mother, because of Richard’s prejudice against gay couples. She shows him a closet that is full of documents and notebooks, revealing that Emily kept a massive record of everything related to John’s case; she was determined to prove his innocence and was fully consumed by his case. When John arrived at the hospital the morning after Mary Alice was murdered, he was deeply confused and impaired, but his symptoms and appearance were not consistent with cocaine and heroin use. Emily later realized that John had been drugged by someone else without his knowledge or consent. Michael/Woody and his mother, Lydia, had visited John’s home, and John realizes now that this was when Michael planted the knife in his closet.

Now, John asks Joyce what she remembers about their aunt Lydia. Joyce last saw Lydia on the day that Emily died; Lydia had visited her in the hospital, weeping as she repeatedly apologized. John realizes that Lydia was confessing her involvement in protecting Woody.

Will has paid a visit to Luther, Jasmine’s 32-year-old boyfriend. Amanda has confirmed Will’s fear that Jasmine’s case will receive little attention and few resources. Additionally, the DNA from Aleesha was too contaminated to test, and Aleesha’s apartment was too clean.

Will watches a DVD of Detective Dave Sanders taking the witness statement of Julie Cooper, the 15-year-old girl who was beaten nearly to death. (Her severed tongue was recently reattached.) Will receives a call from Michael, who is still pretending that he and Gina are together. Will asks Michael what he thinks about the murdered girls’ age differences and the conflicting manner in which their tongues were removed.

Will arduously reads through a stack of parole reports on local sex offenders. Reading takes him a long time because of his dyslexia, so he takes the reports home so that he can read them with his accommodations and avoid the awkwardness of explaining his methods to others.

When Will sees the rap sheet of John Shelley, he leaves immediately to find Angie. He shows her John’s file, and Angie mentions that John grew up near Michael. Will is annoyed that she is mentioning Michael again, but Angie points out that it’s odd that Michael didn’t make a connection between the current case and a local case from 20 years ago that involved a severed tongue. John has been out of prison for seven months, but two of the attacks took place last year. Will is still inclined to think that John is responsible for the more recent attack.

John goes to a diner. He had stayed up most of the night with Emily and Joyce, plotting his strategy. Suddenly, Robin (Angie) appears and is surprised to see him. She joins him and tells him that she previously lied about her childhood; now, she reveals that she actually grew up in foster care. She asks him about his family and is surprised to learn about his conventional suburban upbringing. When she asks him authoritatively to tell her what he is involved in, John shuts down. The man who was sitting behind Angie (Will) pulls out his badge, and Angie pulls out hers. As Will and Angie take John outside, John faints.

Angie feels incredibly guilty about arresting John. She starts to furiously clean her house and then realizes that she is out of supplies and starts driving. She ends up driving to Michael’s house, and although she tries to look in the garage, the windows have been blacked out with paint.

She breaks into Michael’s house, noting that a heavy lock has been installed on the interior door to the garage. Through the door, she can hear a whimpering sound. She enters the garage and sees a naked young girl who is tied up and bleeding. Suddenly, someone hits Angie on the back of the head, and she passes out.