A Murder at the End of the World – Chapter 6: Crime Seen

By: Gladys Luna

Darby (Emma Corrin) drowns inside the pool while a human figure watches her. Suddenly, the figure disappears and comes back with someone else who breaks the pool’s glass cover saving Darby from drowning. It is revealed that Lee (Brit Marling) had arrived to the place and saw what happened so she asked for David’s (Raúl Esparza) assistance to get her out of the pool. While she is still confused by what happened, she hears David asking Lee to take care of her while he goes and makes sure to entertain Andy (Clive Owen), who is allegedly receiving his treatment. When the two women are alone and after Darby’s insistence to know the truth, Lee confesses that she was the one who asked her to meet her by the pool since it is one of the few places that are not monitored. She then tells her that Andy’s obsession for Zoomer (Kellan Tetlow) has only gotten worse since the day the kid was born. It started with a simple worry about his well-being that has grown to the man controlling the whole kid’s life and every movement that goes from what he eats to how much he sleeps and she just wants the kid to have a life free of all of that. Lee recalls that when the hotel was finished and her husband showed it to them the first time, he wouldn’t even let the kid to play outside. So, he was forced to ride his bike in the hallways until one day he fell off and Andy smacked her in the face for not taking care of him. Unfortunately, the kid saw it all. She knew that as soon as the hotel was completely finished that Zoomer wouldl lose his freedom and they would have to be confined to a life underground in the safe room. Therefore, she made the decision to escape with her son. On what it seemed to be a typical day, she went to pick him up from school and took him to an amusement park, hacked the New Jersey DMV and took the identity of a woman that looked like her and who also had a young son, got herself a new car and drove all the way to Canada where an old friend would be waiting for her. However, when she arrived Andy was already there waiting for her so she was forced to return with him. Lee knows that escaping from Andy’s claws is not an easy task since he has a lot of contacts and ways to trace them. So, since her first opportunity was a complete failure, she thought that she might use the retreat as an opportunity to flee.

Lee confesses that she didn’t know Bill (Harris Dickinson) was Zoomer’s father, but since Andy already knew she assumes that is why he invited him to the retreat, as a way to know more about his son’s origins. Although, when the artist rejected the invitation he used Darby as a way to lure Bill into it and it worked. Lee asked for Bill’s help to get away and he suggested her to invite Rohan (Javed Khan) who had a boat that she could use to escape and to complete her mission. She also invited David who would get her a safe passage to Buenos Aires, but the plan is yesterday’s news. Darby apologizes for making things worse for her but Lee understands that the young woman was only trying to get to the bottom of the situation. Darby says that she will go and visit Bill’s room again given that she’s been focusing on the killer when all she needed to do was to understand the victim. When she is about to leave the room they hear someone by the door and think it might be Andy, but it turns out to be Oliver (Ryan J. Haddad) saying that David had asked him to take them to his room to keep them safe while he stalls Andy. However, they end up in Bill’s room instead. The guy’s clothes and things are still there, so Darby examines them again in order to find a clue but nothing seems to come out of it. Just then she decides to check on that night footage using Oliver’s device and they realize that the killer has erased himself from the footage but not the part of the footage where he had been. Oliver notices Darby’s book on the desk and gives it to her noticing that it is covered with a lot of blood prints. The young woman recreates Bill’s last minutes of life and comes to the conclusion that he had left his finger prints as a clue on the parts of the book he wanted her to read and that is how Darby starts to recite out loud the same part she uses for her public readings. Although, she stops before going into the pages of the book that she hasn’t allowed herself to read so far but that, unfortunately, are the ones containing more blood fingerprints. Therefore, she summons the courage to continue reading out loud. At this part we are taken back to that moment where she and Bill had gone to the killer’s house and found Patricia Bell’s skeleton buried under the basement stairs. She recalls how the killer had arrived there and pointed at them with a gun while they said one by one by each one of his victims’ names out loud. Bill had put himself between the killer and Darby but, contrary to what he had expected, instead of shooting them the man shot himself leaving Bill dumbfounded and disoriented. Darby tried to get him back to reality and asked for his help to move a washing machine that she could use to climb and get out of there. Once she managed to reach for the first floor, she saw the killer’s body lying there. She checked for his ID and confirmed that it was actually Frank Bell, a former police officer. She went out of the place and ran into a neighbor’s (Annette Wright) house to ask for a phone. She rang 911 and explained what had happened. Later that day Darby found Bill sitting inside the bath tub looking evidently affected. When he noticed her, he invited in and all she could talk about was the case, which he didn’t have the headspace for anymore. Having been so close to dying was a major shift for him while for her it didn’t seem to cause any effect. He tried to open up to her, but she gave him no space for it. That night Bill couldn’t sleep and when the morning came he left and never saw her again until they were both invited to Andy’s retreat.

Back to the present, Darby is now crying out loud while Lee holds her. She feels embarrassed for showing herself like that and confesses that she hadn’t read that part since she wrote it because she didn’t want to realize all of the times she had left Bill before he left her. The trio conclude that Bill knew his killer and they try to come up with the other’s reasons to kill him. Lu Mei’s (Joan Chen) name comes to the conversation but also Eva (Britian Seibert) who Darby believes she is in love with Andy and who happens to have access to the morphine and the pacemaker monitoring system. Darby suggests they need to find a way to get Lee and Zoomer fast out of there since they are the ones who seem to be in the most danger. However, all of a sudden they hear screams outside the door and when they open it they see David standing there beaten up being held by Todd (Louis Cancelmi). Right then Andy shows up saying, “There’s my wife.”