Bellevue – The Man Behind the Curtain

By: Maggie Stankiewicz

Tensions are at an all-time high in the blue-collar town of Bellevue. Annie Ryder (Anna Paquin) is riding high on the tail-end of a life altering discovery, but no one else is willing to share the victory with her. Annie tries to seek validation in Eddie (Allen Leech), who is still mad at her for the previous night’s antics. And when he finally lets her in, she tells him about The Riddler’s true identity. He is Adam (Patrick Labbé), her long lost older brother. His origins are still mysterious and she’s not sure if Adam is her maternal or paternal brother, but she’s destined to find out soon. Despite her best efforts, though, Adam Ryder doesn’t exist within the police data base. There’s still a piece of the puzzle missing.

Before she can dig any deeper into Adam’s identity, Virginia (Sharon Tate) comes to Annie with another lead. They sit down with an incredibly inebriated Tom Edmonds (Vincent Leclerc), who can be placed with Jesse in his white truck, on the night of her disappearance. Tom spits out another alibi for them to confirm,  which means that the mayor, the town priest and Tom all saw Jesse on that fateful night. Annie and Virginia leave the box to tell Peter (Shawn Doyle) about their progress and he makes it clear that he has his eye on Annie. After establishing their comfortable distances from one another, Brady (Billy MacLellan), Annie and Virginia resume their interviews with the three key suspects. The mayor (Janine Theriault) is coy as always, the priest (Joe Cobden) apologetic, but spewing his innocence and Tom continues to slur his way through the interrogation.

The downtrodden detective makes her way to the church, a site of high interest in the Jesse investigation. As she treks through the otherwise vacant building, she stumbles upon a noisy door and a ringing bell. These sounds conjure within her a vision of the night Jesse was killed – and a connection is made. Tom reported hearing a ringing, but it was a chime to the church. This information corroborates with Tom’s alibi. This information only serves to inform the cops that all of their suspects have alibis. Back to square one. The disenchanted bunch go their separate ways to find a new lead, and Annie makes her way into Peter’s office to drop a familial bomb on him. Annie presents Peter with information about her brother before accusing him of hiding the secret from her. He vehemently denies the accusations, and move Adam to the top of the suspect list.

Eddie is trying his best to remove Daisy (Madison Ferguson) from the toxic town, and it’s time for him to lay the foundation of their new lives (unbeknownst to her). They’re in the quaint and quiet town of Oakland, hitting all of the cozy stops on the way. His heart is bursting with both pride and fear for the future. They grew up together, and now it’s his turn to finish the job with Daisy. To watch her bloom. Meanwhile, Peter and Annie make their way to The Rattlesnake to shake down Adam’s lackey. He doesn’t provide them with too much information other than that usage of military vernacular. This points them in the direction of an alias for Adam – and they lock it down. Adam was imprisoned for a laundry list of crimes under the name “Bobby Storms”.

They take to the woods in search of Adam/Bobby, and Daisy does the same – to honor Jesse in a strange remembrance ritual with Bethany (Emelia Hellman) on the water’s edge. As Peter and Annie close in on an abandoned campfire, they find evidence of Adam’s presence. Annie finds an old doll and a ceramic clown statue – items that trigger a repressed memory. Annie balls up, hypnotized but what she had thought was long forgotten. It quickly becomes clear that Adam loved Annie with a wild, possessive fire that consumed him and terrified others. The mantra, “You’re mine,” echoes through her mind. Outside, Peter finds a clue while Annie is snapped back to reality by a call that informs her Daisy has fallen into the water where Jesse was found. Annie screams, summoning Peter, and they run to Daisy’s aid. Daisy is physically safe, but her growing obsession with death is mirroring her mother’s.

With Daisy safely in bed and Eddie sulking on the couch, Annie calls Peter to let him know that a bacteria in the water where Jesse was found has a tendency to make people sick. Daisy was prescribed a specific antibiotic to combat the bacteria, which means that whoever killed Jesse might have been prescribed the very same medication. In an attempt to stay present, Annie leaves Peter with this information to stay with Daisy and Eddie – at least for a little while. She reveals to Eddie the small details about Adam’s possessive love for her. Annie admits that perhaps, she pushes him so hard and loves him so ferociously because the first love she received was possessive, painful, and toxic. They make love in the moments following her admission, but it’s more of an apologetic goodbye than a new beginning. In the afterglow, Eddie tells Annie that he will be taking Daisy and leaving the town of Bellevue, with or without her.

Using the riddle that he found in the forest, Peter finds himself at the church – where the lost and homeless seek solace and a warm meal. He looks around speculatively for Adam – but comes up short until the moment he’s about to leave. Adam spots him, disappointed to find Peter there and not Annie, who he had left the riddle for. They meet in the confessional, Peter with his gun drawn, Adam with his cold, reptilian confidence. The hatred spewed by the two men is nothing short of sinful. Adam makes a move, whispering incoherently to Peter. The phrase stuns Peter, pushing him into a sort of paralysis that buys Adam just enough time to make an escape. He pushes his way out of the church. Peter runs after him, but it’s too late. All that’s left is an etching on the sidewalk: A lion has come to lay waste to your land.

The next day, Adam palms a few tools and torture devices, from hammers to bear traps. He settled on the bear trap and disappears into the typical Bellevue fog. Elsewhere, Annie and Virginia make even more headway on the case, using Peter’s CI codes to discover that Brady had been working with Anthony, the town’s infamous informant. Annie pays Brady a visit at his home to ask why he hid Anthony from the rest of the department. He feeds her an excuse that she doesn’t buy. His fidgety movements and inventory of camping gear have her alarms ringing. He prompts her to leave but she asks to use the restroom first. Locking the bathroom door behind her, she digs through his trash bin and finds an empty bottle of antibiotics. The same ones prescribed to Daisy after her swim in the lake. Annie tries to keep Brady engaged from the bathroom, but he flees from his home with screeching tires. Or so we think.

Annie investigates more of Brady’s property and finds a garage. Inside the garage is a white truck. She calls it in to Peter but gets his voicemail. Before she can leave him a message, Brady surprises her from behind with his gun drawn. He disarms Annie and leads her through a story of the night Jesse died. Brady watched as the mayor, Tom, and the priest tried to do an intervention on a badly beaten Jesse. They didn’t understand her or her pain – but Brady, as he says, understood the alienation perfectly. As he watched from behind a curtain he heard all of the terrible admonishments they fed to her about squashing her freakish urges. It is clear that Brady took these statements to heart – he is hiding a monster deep within. His recollection of that night is a tearful one, but it turns to anger when Annie attempts to get inside his head. Brady switches gears and forces Annie into his truck.

The highway is empty with the exception of Brady’s truck as he drives them to an undisclosed destination. Brady is silently unhinged until Annie baits him with compliments on his cover-up skills. Brady’s actions don’t all add up – like stealing the drugs and making them look like Eddie had done it. Annie gently manipulates him into further admission, telling him that she thinks he wanted to get caught. He starts to cry again, afraid that he is an abomination – just like they called Jesse. He then breaks into a monologue about possessive love, something Annie knows about all too well. Annie deduces that Brady loved Jesse, but as the conversation develops, Brady becomes unraveled. Annie tells her captor that her brother loved her in that possessive way, and Brady laughs. Annie tells him that an intense love like that is honest but damaging – and Brady finally comes clean. He is in love with his sister, Briana, and she hates him for it.

He offered Jesse a ride because he knew how it felt to be judged unfairly, and he wanted to help the teenager. While in the truck Brady revealed to Jesse that they shared a kinship because he loved his sister, also a forbidden way of being. Jesse rejected the notion of their similarities, especially after Brady reveals that he kissed his sister with a lover’s mouth. Jesse reacts with outrage, tired of being placed onto a pedestal of dysfunction. Jesse was not a totem to which truly sick individuals could attach themselves to. Jesse was just a girl trying to exist the best she could. Brady hated the teen’s reaction to his admission, and killed her in a fury.  Annie tries to sympathize with Brady, but the memory drives him mad. He steps out of the car with his gun in hand, presumably to dispose of Annie. He took a step around his truck before being blinded by another pair of headlights. Within a second, the other vehicle had sent Brady’s body flying onto his own windshield. His dead eyes starring into Annie’s.

The mystery might be solved but death isn’t done visiting the town of Bellevue.