Women in Blue – Paola

By: Gladys Luna

Jessica (Montserrat Ángeles) and Paola’s (Claudia Pineda) sister shows up for work as she always does, but is surprised to see that her sister is not there. So, she calls her but no one answers. When her shift is over she decides to go to Paola’s house but only her cat is there. Therefore, she decides to go to the police and report her as missing, but the Police Officer Lozano (Julio César Luna) refuses to help her given the amount of time that has passed since the last time she was seen and assumes that she is probably somewhere out there having fun. Meanwhile, a mystery figure is seen coming out of their house carrying what appears to be a body and putting it into the trunk of their car. While doing it the bag in which the body was in opens and we can see Paola still alive. She appears to be waking up, but soon is put to sleep again by said figure.

At María’s (Bárbara Mori) house Alex (Diego Escalona) is putting on tantrum at the news that his mother won’t be able to join them for lunch and cook for them so, he will have to eat whatever his grandmother Luz (Rosa María Bianchi) makes but the kid does not find her food exactly “tasty.” Her daughter Mar (Isabella Oceguera) wishes her the best on her first day as part of the police squad and then they are off to school. María feels guilty for not being able to be there for them but her husband (Leonardo Sbaraglia) supports her and tells her that she should not be so hard on herself and enjoy her first day instead. Valentina (Natalia Téllez) also gets ready for the day, Gabina (Amorita Rasgado) wears her uniform and tries to talk to her father (Mario Zaragoza) but he closes the door on her. Ángeles (Ximena Sariñana) prays a little next to her grandmother before leaving to the station and then María goes to pick up her sister and takes the opportunity to read a police novel while waiting for her in the car.

At the station, Emilio (Christian Tappán) is scold by the President (Alejandro de la Madrid) given that the killer is still on the loose and the newspapers are talking about their inefficiency to catch him. Gabina pours some coffee for his brother Gerardo (Horacio García Rojas) who is obsessed with catching the killer and hasn’t even slept and who also takes the chance to remind his sister once more that their father will never accept her decision of becoming a police officer. The women squad walk in and the police officers make offensive jokes about them believing that they won’t last that much and referring to them as a “knitting club”. Octavio (Miguel Rodarte) meets with the squad and divides them in groups of four and assigns them the locations where they should be for the day. As it was expected, María, Valentina, Gabina and Ángeles are part of the same team and are assigned to one of the city’s largest parks. They are asked to go and pick up the tools they need to perform their job and Valentina gets mad when seeing that they are handed a bag that contains a whistle and some coins. No badge, no gun and of course no patrol. She and her sister complain to Octavio about this but he says that there’s some paperwork that needs to be done so they can give them their guns so, in the meantime, they can use the whistle in case they’re in danger or to use the coins to call the station for an emergency. Before they leave, Emilio talks with Gabina and tells her that he would like her to tell her story as the daughter of a respected Police Commander but she assures him that her father is not really one to enjoy the spotlight so, she is glad to do it on her own.

The squad take the bus to the park and they are mistaken for flight attendants because of the uniforms they are wearing. Once they arrive to the park, people want to take pictures with them or even ask for their help to find an address. Something that doesn’t sit well with Valentina who is looking for a real adventure so, she calls Lucas (Sebastián Buitrón) and asks him to help her investigate the real reason why they don’t have their full equipment ready yet. María watches her talking on the phone and hangs the call then, they are faced with their first mission which is to look for a lost dog. Valentina opposes to it claiming that they were trained for something different so Gabina suggests to flip a coin to decide what to do and Valentina loses. While searching for the dog, they go to the woods until they find him but then, María sees that there is a dead female dead body nearby and blows the whistle to ask for help.

Gerardo arrives to the crime scene and the police officer Vaca (Brian Espitia) who isn’t really a fan of the squad takes him to where the women are. María explains that she found the body and Gerardo gets mad when seeing that the crime scene was contaminated when Valentina covered the body with a jacket out of respect for it. Gabina suggests her brother to take a cast of a footprint found nearby and he gets upset once more when realizing they are one step ahead of him and asks the police officer Vaca to send them back to the station so they can present their statement. When María walks past the body, it reminds her of someone she used to know and, on her way back to the station, she keeps recalling a whole tragic scene in which a young woman named Natalia (María José Mariscal) had died. When seeing her so quiet, Valentina assumes that María was also thinking of Natalia but when confronting her about this, she denies it.

At the station, María calls her family and promises that she’ll be home by dinner but she is interrupted by Vaca who tells her that Officer Lozano wants to meet with them to discuss about what they saw. While he waits for them, he realizes that the woman that was reported missing earlier that day is the same as the one they have found dead. When the squad arrives, they are informed they have found a suspect called “Tito” (Abraham Jurado) and he will be taken to another room so they can take his confession. The women go to another room to work on their statements then Valentina and Ángeles have an argument when the last one says that at least the dead woman’s soul is now with God. María interferes to stop the discussion and asks her sister to leave the other woman alone.

María goes to see Gerardo and gives him the folder that contains all of their statements and while she is there, she hears how they talk about the suspect that they will soon interrogate. Gerardo talks about the suspects’ criminal records and an alleged mental illness that draws María’s attention. They leave to interrogate the suspect and in order to see what is happening, she takes some coffee to the officers that are monitoring everything on the other side of the glass and sees how Gerardo beats and practically forces the suspect Tito into making his confession. The man is terrified and is evident that he does not comprehend what he is been accused of and when María calls them out, she is taken out of the room. Meanwhile, Emilio meets with Gabina for the interview and she is surprised when seeing her father is there too. They are asked to pose together for a photograph and the uneasiness that both are feeling is palpable but they do it nonetheless.  After they wrap, Emilio thanks them for their collaboration and leaves them alone; Gabina tries to talk to his father but he slaps her in the face and tells her that she is no longer welcomed in the house. When María is about to leave, Lozano stops her and tells her to talk to Paola’s sister Jessica and take her to the morgue to recognize her sister’s body. She approaches Jessica and is taken aback when she realizes that the woman does not even know why she is there so, she is in charge to tell her what has happened to her sister.

In the other hand, Valentina is taken a bath when Lucas shows up at her door and confesses that he has been investigating and there might be another reason why they haven’t received their full equipment yet but doesn’t say anything else. María meets with Octavio and lets him know about what she saw in the interrogation room and how she thinks that Tito is not responsible for Paola’s murder but he won’t listen to her and advises to go home and enjoy her family instead. When she leaves the building, she sees Jessica crying at the stairs and offers her a ride home. She takes the chance to interrogate her about the last time she saw her sister so, Jessica tells her everything including about the car she saw waiting outside the diner then, the woman gets offended when María asks her if it was a common practice of her sister to get on strangers’ cars. When she gets home, she finds that Gerardo is mad because she wasn’t on time to cook dinner for them, her son is also upset and her mother had to jump in to cook for them. She apologizes and promises her husband it won’t happen again. Later on, María is in the kitchen cooking for her family so they have some food the next day then her husband walks in and asks her about her day but she is not so open to talk about it. What she does instead, is to trick him into giving her some information about the car that Jessica described without saying the reason behind it. Right then, Octavio calls María and yells at her that Jessica was at the station complaining for the interrogation she was part of and saying that he had to do anything he could to stop the woman from suing her. María tries to provide him the new information he got but Octavio does not believe in her suspicions at all.

Ángeles confesses to her grandmother that she does not want to return to work the next day given the discussion she had with Valentina and the woman tells her that she should understand that people have different points of view and she should accept them for who they are. Finally, Gerardo appears on tv and officially reports that they have caught the serial killer and that he had taken his own life while he was at his cell. Everyone in the squad listen to this and we can see María collecting clues in order to start her own investigation.