By Anna Belle
Victim … suspect … victim … it was difficult to tell who was who in the second episode (“Blood Money”) of The Closer which aired June 15. In addition to another episode airing without a clue to the whereabouts of Det. Irene Daniels, Brenda is still dealing with sick Kitty.
What starts out as a simple kidnapping of a rich home developer (Summers) who is being investigated by the FBI for ripping off his investors, suddenly turns into an abduction of his driver (Vargas). When the car is found soaked with more blood than one person can lose and still be alive, Brenda’s squad begins to wonder if the “kidnapping” was staged by Summers and if Vargas is a murder victim.
With Det. Daniels’ forensic accounting talents gone, Sgt. Gabriel picks up the baton, but Brenda doesn’t seem too happy with his results, especially when the ransom money literally disappears right under his nose.
Meanwhile, the rest of the squad is wondering, “Where is the real Lt. Provenza?” He waltzes in late, happy and chipper, craves exercise, smiles and is wearing a brand new tie to boot. And when Lt. Flynn interrogates him about it, he tells him to mind his own business.
And having help from attractive, assertive Det. Mikki Mendoza (played by Paola Turbay) from the Fraud Squad is seriously distracting Det. Julio Sanchez.
With all these distractions, it’s amazing this case gets solved at all and just when you think you’ve got it figured out … Sgt. Gabriel finds the ransom disappeared into a Caymen Island Bank, Lt. Tao analyzes the blood splatter and discovers it’s fake and that Vargas, the limo driver, is actually an employee of Summers.
After finding 15 identical photographs of a house along with other clues at the foreclosed home of Vargas, Brenda places a call to him, with the hope of bringing him in along with his kidnap victim (Summers). When it seems that won’t work she has one final question for him, and as he drives by her, she says, “are you wearing your seat belt, sir?”
At that moment, Plan B is executed and Det. Mikki Mendoza slams her car into his, disabling it, pulls him out, throws the handcuffs on him and places him under arrest. Under Brenda’s careful interrogation, he tries to two-step around her questions but admits that he picked Summers up at the airport, held him for ransom, and has put him in a “hell of his own making.”
The squad figures out it’s the house he has 15 identical pictures of, in a subdivision Summers never finished. When they enter, they find him dead, with his throat cut, and the last thing you hear Brenda say is, “now it’s a murder.”
Photo above: GW Bailey, Kyra Sedgwick, Tony Denison, Photographer: Karen Neal/TNT