Bellevue – The Problem With The Truth

By: Maggie Stankiewicz

Eddie (Allen Leech) wakes up in the middle of the night to find Annie (Anna Paquin) obsessively scribbling out clues and connections related to Bellevue’s infamous murders. Annie reveals to Eddie that Maggie told her Jesse’s death occurred as a form of retribution to Maggie for what she did to Sandy, but the connection is still unclear. Maggie’s alibi places her elsewhere at the time of Sandy Driver’s death. Eddie panders to her compulsive search for the truth for a moment until her father comes up. Annie is walking a fine line – and her father’s head is not somewhere she wants to be. Daisy (Madison Ferguson) interrupts them and offers her two cents about strangulation and both parents instantly reprimand her for entertaining those morbid thoughts.

Having perturbed her family, Annie goes to the station to ask Peter (Shawn Doyle) for her father’s memo books. Peter is hesitant to release them from police custody, but bites the bullet and agrees to sign off on it. Annie Ryder is nothing if not persistent and is quickly seen in her parked car thumbing through the small memo books. Her investigation leads her to the location where Sandy Driver’s body was found. This is his first stop on her journey to re-interviewing her father’s witnesses. Her next stop is with Helen Spencer, who tells Annie about Sandy’s proclivity to wear Mother Mary’s costume as a mask. Annie takes this information and moves on only to discover that a page had been removed from her father’s notebook. Using some good ol’ sleuthing skills she is able to discern what the note says – a 911 call was made. After digging it up, Annie discovers that Lily Mansfield called 911 to report an intruder who left behind some disembodied fingernails.

Virginia (Sharon Taylor) and the good Mayor Mansfield (Janine Theriault) argue about the importance of tourism dollars versus police investigations – Virginia wins. While Virginia is out performing some actual detective work, Annie stops by Brady’s (Billy MacLellan) place with a six pack. Brady is sporting the famous sleeveless tee-shirt. Despite the beer, their plans are less than recreational. As they watch archived tapes of witness testimonies, they uncover an interview with a young Lily Mansfield – who is working the camera and her interviewer over like an underage siren…and the cop interviewing her loves it. Brady asks who the cop was, but she refuses to answer him. This takes Annie back to Ms. Spencer where she asks her about what she meant when she said that Lily was never very biblical. Ms. Spencer reveals that Lily had an affair with an older man in her adolescence.

Annie decides to pay the Mayor a visit to ask her about her tumultuous teen years. The Mayor isn’t quite cooperative, taunting Annie for her persistence and bad reputation. Lily reveals nothing to the troubled detective – so she makes her way back to the station to grill Peter on hiding the missing memo page. She knows the cop interviewing Lily was her father, and that there are far more people involved than Peter is leading her to believe. Annie asks Peter is her father was having an affair with Lily. Two days after the interview he declared the case inactive, and he made his descent into madness and eventual death soon after. This is more than just a case for Annie. This is her history, her origin.

Peter gets a call from his informant about hearing The Riddler’s voice at The Rattlesnake. He elicits Brady’s help, and they leave to scope out the crowd. Virginia doing some footwork elsewhere, and Annie continues her search for answers where her family used to record her height. Even Daisy is up to something as she continued to befriend Bethany (Emelia Hellman). In a quick cut, back to Peter and Brady, Peter has managed to bring in a few suspects who may be The Riddler. He then calls in his informant to make the identification, but it’s no easy feat. This is all happening unbeknownst to Annie, who is well on her way to cracking a code. The revelation? New Horizons. She wastes no time putting in a request for a patient list, but admin says it might take some time. Annie bides her time by listening to Lily’s 911 call once more, while spying on Peter – who is pacing like a mad man inside his office. Annie decides to make a move and confront Peter about his possession of the book.

Annie asks Peter is he took Lily’s 911 call and if it was him who had an affair with her. Peter had responded to her call and collected the fingernails as evidence, but Lily flushed them down the toilet before he could bag them. Lily then told him that she knew he liked her from the interview, and undressed in front of him. This information uncovers a pattern of Peter hiding significant details from Annie – from burning the shed down to letting her believe that her father had an illegal affair. Peter snaps, insisting that he wanting to paint a positive picture of himself for Annie in the wake of her father’s death, but it’s not good enough for Annie. A lie is a lie. Annie goes for a walk to process her thoughts and finds herself at the epicenter of outdoor activity in Bellevue.

Brady plays the guitar in the bed of his truck while Eddie plays happy family with Daisy and his new girlfriend, Briana (Amber Goldfarb). Annie interjects, letting jealousy get the best of her, much to Eddie’s dismay. He pulls her aside and asks if she’d been crying before asking her if she should be there right now. Annie says she wants to go home with their kid to be a family again, but Eddie refuses. Eddie knows that Annie is a little too volatile to exist within a happy family space. He is enjoying a calm and simple relationship, something that Annie cannot give to him – not now. Maybe not ever.

This injects venom into Annie’s blood and she walks away with something else in mind. After meeting up with Briana in the bathroom, Annie has some choice words for Eddie’s new girlfriend. Unfortunately, Daisy hears them all. Annie’s new plan is to make Eddie jealous. This leads her to Brady, who can tell that Eddie has hurt her feelings. As Eddie approaches, Annie pulls Brady in for a kiss. When Eddie has something to say about it, Brady confront Eddie. Like men with too much testosterone, they exchange punches until the women break them up. Daisy, still mad at Annie, leaves with her father and Briana.

Peter is shaken from his exchange with Annie and makes an appearance at Lily’s. His blood is boiling and he screams and shakes Lily until she tells him what she knows. Even so, she insists that she knew nothing about the murders or the fingernails. They push and shove until she begs him not to leave. It quickly becomes clear that they’ve carried out this affair for years and the tensions comes to a head after they physically reaffirm their love/hate for one another. Virginia follows up on a lead, Tom’s wife, and discovers that Tom’s alibi is no longer solid for the night of Jesse’s murder.

Annie’s rough night continues. With a bottle of booze in hand, Annie wraps herself up in Peter’s cabin. It is clear that she’s on the brink of a meltdown – too many chips have been stacked against her today. After kicking around some furniture, Annie meanders outside into the cold and makes her way into the thick woods. Unable to carry on any further, Annie falls to her knees and falls into old habits, digging her nails into the skin of her forearm. A hooded figure grabs her hand to stop her, but when their eyes meet she mutters, “Dad?”. While it is not her father, the resemblance is uncanny – and her certainly cared enough to put an end to herself harm. She runs back to the cabin to look at the threshold where her growing heights were recorded. As she scans up, her eyes fall on an anomaly. The name “Adam.”