Duster – Suspicious Minds

By: Kelly Kearney

After the shady Sgt. Groomes witnesses Jim’s late-night meeting with Phoenix’s new female FBI agent, Nina Hayes, the dirty officer jumps at the chance to blackmail him. Threatening to spill the details to mob boss Saxton, Groomes pushes Jim into a corner. Desperate, Jim enlists the help of an old friend he calls “Sunglasses” to deal with the Groomes problem. But the help doesn’t come cheap—the price is one only the King of Rock and Roll can pay.

Late-night in the Desert with Jim

The story opens in the desert at night where we find Jim (Josh Holloway) standing over a dead body, digging a grave. Lit only by the headlights of his iconic Duster, he gets in two good digs before the shovel breaks. Before he can figure out his next move, he sees headlights approaching in the distance; panic sets in. He can’t make out the car or the driver, but it doesn’t matter, the look is bad and he is forced to pull his gun, ready to add another body to a grave he might have to dig by hand.

But the outcome of that moment will have to wait,as we quickly flash back to fifteen hours earlier to see how Jim’s day began—and how it went so wrong. That body in the desert? It’s directly connected to the signature he scrawled on Nina’s (Rachel Hilson) FBI informant contract. At the end of last week’s episode, Sergeant Groomes (Donal Logue) spotted Jim’s rendezvous with the agent and now he wants $10,000 to keep quiet. Jim doesn’t have that kind of cash, but he does have friends—dangerous ones—who might persuade Groomes to back off… or else. It’s the “or else” that sets Jim’s day spiraling out of control.

To solve his problem, Jim turns to the best fixer in town: a guy named Sunglasses (Patrick Warburton) who operates out of a local bowling alley. Sunglasses might be the biggest Elvis fanboy this side of the Mississippi. He agrees to help handle” Groomes—but he wants something in return–a hefty payday that Jim can’t afford. Luckily Jim does have an idea for a trade that might appeal to Sunglasses and certainly add to the man’s Elvis collection. He knows a way into the King’s Palm Beach house, thanks to Izzy (Camille Guaty)—who once partied there and talked about the layout. This included a certain pair of blue suede shoes on display in the star’s office that Jim knows would look great behind glass at the bowling alley. Jim offers to steal the shoes as payment for whatever plan Sunglasses is cooking up for Groomes—who, we soon discover, isn’t just a dirty cop, but a disgusting pedophile too. Sunglasses gives Jim until the end of the day to get the shoes, and in the meantime, he’ll deal with Groomes.

Walking in the King’s Shoes

The clock is ticking, so Jim heads over to see Izzy, who maps out exactly where the shoes are kept. In exchange for the information, she asks Jim to watch Luna (Adriana Aluna Martinez) while she goes to an appointment. It’s a rare moment of downtime for him with his daughter, and he uses it to map out his plan. Luna, who clearly has this lifestyle in her genes, is happy to offer some advice.

With the plan set, Jim heads to his father’s (Corbin Bernson) house to grab a glass cutter—knowing he’ll need to be quiet when he breaks in to steal the shoes. His dad–no stranger to crime himself, isn’t thrilled that Jim went to Sunglasses before coming to him. The two argue, but in the end, Wade gives Jim the equipment and tries to play referee between his hot-tempered son and his meddling wife (Gail O’Grady). Jim and his stepmother definitely don’t get along—especially now that he knows she turned him into the feds and forced his hand with Nina’s contract. Wade just wants his family to get along–especially after his other son, Joey’s, unexpected death.

Armed with a glass cutter and a plan, Jim heads to Elvis’s house—only to find a sea of cars parked out front. It looks like Colonel Parker is throwing a party, which acts as the perfect cover for Jim to sneak in and mingle with the crowd. Relying on his charm and good looks to melt into the scene, Jim looks like he belongs there. As he follows Izzy’s directions, he is interrupted by a familiar face: Genesis (Sydney Elisabeth), Saxton’s (Keith David) eldest daughter. After an earlier argument with her recovering brother, Royce (Benjamin Charles Watson), about their father’s patriarchal attitude towards her working for the business, it appears she is running her own side hustle behind Saxton’s back. She makes Jim promise to stay quiet about her being there, and he agrees—on the condition that she doesn’t tell her father she saw him either. This is bound to come up again later, but for now, they go their separate ways, and Jim heads to the office for the heist.

Inside, he finds Colonel Parker (Brian Reddy) barking orders into the phone and ogling Hollywood’s young scream queen, Adrienne Barbeau (Mikaela Hoover). The fun twist here is that the real Adrienne Barbeau stars in this episode—not as herself, but as a thorn about to poke Jim and Nina’s side, but more on that later because that thousand-watt smile of Jim’s convinces Adrienne to cozy up to the Colonel to help her land a role in a movie she’s been hoping to book. She agrees to distract Parker, and it gives Jim the perfect window to swap his shoes for those legendary blue suede ones—and rock and roll his way out the front door.

Things Don’t go as Planned

When Jim returns to the bowling alley with the shoes, he walks straight into a serious problem: Sunglasses is in a volatile mood thanks to what went down at his meeting with Groomes. He and his brother Charlie (Peter Murnik) cornered the dirty cop at an old barn—the planned drop site for Jim’s payment and tried a little blackmail of their own to shut him up. They tossed a bag of Polaroids at his feet they’d found hidden in Groomes’ house–the kind of evidence that could end a career and send the cop to prison. It was a stash of disturbing polaroids proving his predatory behavior toward underage children. Feeling trapped, Groomes lashed out, like any wild animal backed into a corner, and made an attempt to strike back by reaching for his gun. He managed to get one shot off—killing Charlie instantly before Sunglasses fired back, knocking Groomes to the ground. Gurgling on his own blood, Sunglasses assumed Groomes’s was a goner so he left the cop on the barn floor to bleed out.

When Jim learns of the wreckage of their meeting he understands why Sunglasses is drunk, bloodied, and mourning–especially when he finds out Charlie was his brother. Now the price of this job just went up but Jim still doesn’t have the money and that is a problem. Sunglasses isn’t in the mood to renegotiate. He’s broken, and angry, and wants Jim to pay for his loss. When he realizes Jim can’t, the grieving Sunglasses pulls his gun out and what follows is a knock-down, drag-out brawl that tears through the entire bowling alley. It’s a full-blown slobberknocker using every piece of furniture and square foot of the place. The fight ends at the end of a lane, where fate deals the final blow: Sunglasses stumbles into the path of the pinsetter, and the machine crushes his head. Now Jim has no choice but to wrap the body up and head to the desert for a late-night burial—the scene where we began.

As the car pulls up behind him, we learn it’s Jim’s father, who was concerned for his son and followed him from the blood trail he left at the bowling alley. He already knows what happened—and like all good dads who are always prepared for the worst, he’s brought an extra shovel. What follows is a darkly tender father-son bonding moment, as the two dig and reminisce about past crimes and how much they miss Joey. Together, they bury Sunglasses, along with their simmering resentments, and any trace of the night’s chaos. Unfortunately, Jim’s problems are far from over because back at the barn, a bloodied and barely breathing Groomes wakes up! With the last of his strength, he radios the station for help. As the episode closes, we see him being loaded into an ambulance—alive, and certain to be a problem for Jim down the line.

Nina and Awan Work the Case

Meanwhile, while Jim’s world is unraveling, Nina is back at the office working closely with Awan (Asivak Koostachin). The two have built a friendship based on mutual trust and respect for each other’s investigative skills. They’ve been digging into Joey’s death—Jim’s brother—and looking for a link to Saxton.

Their search leads them right back to Sergeant Groomes–before he was set to meet up with Jim. It turns out, he was the first cop on the scene of the van explosion that killed Joey. Right away Nina and Awan learn he is more than a suspicious cop who could be covering for Saxton—he’s also a racist and a misogynist too. Their meeting with him is laced with thinly veiled threats, microaggressions, and barbed insults—especially about the former agent Breen who was shipped off to a mental hospital after working on the case.Groomes lays all the blame for any discrepancies Nina found in the file, conveniently on Breen.

Now Nina is more convinced than ever that Groomes is working for Saxton and thinks talking with the former agent’s wife, Evelyn Breen (Adrienne Barbeau) might shine some light on the truth. Her boss (Greg Grunberg) denies the request, so Nina, never one to take no for an answer, ignores protocol and visits Evelyn anyway. Unfortunately, she doesn’t learn anything useful. Even worse, her visit tips the woman off to the investigation—who in turn, tips off someone named “Cowboy” (J.R. Yenque). The only thing we know about him is that he is a D.C. politician and takes fashion tips from Lyndon Johnson. That good old boy is heading out west, but we will have to wait to see which side of the law he is working for.

At a dead end with Evelyn, Nina and Awan break into an impound yard to collect their own evidence from the van explosion. During their unauthorized search, Nina has a heart-to-heart with Awan, who asks her to be honest about her ties to this case as he is risking his career following her lead. She tells him the truth about her father, Virgil, working for Saxton, but the story goes a bit further than what she shared earlier with Jim. After her father quit working for Saxton, Nina saw the mob boss in his store; he never said anything but his demeanor was threatening. Not long after that, her father died in a car explosion–just like Joey Ellis. Now Awan gets why this is personal for her, and because he is as good of a person as he is an agent, he promises to have her back.

By episode’s end, whispers are starting to spread—and it won’t be long before they trace back to Saxton’s trusted driver, Jim Ellis, and that violent shootout in the barn with Sgt. Groomes. Meanwhile, Nina and Awan are racing against the clock, digging for evidence outside official channels, which seem more corrupt with every request that gets stonewalled. If Jim and Nina have any hope of taking Saxton down for good, they’ll need more than a grainy surveillance tape and a bloodstained shovel, or else they might end up going BOOM! just like Joey and Virgil Hayes did.