What, oh what happened to our little Dani Reese? She’s not answering her cell and she’s not checking in with Tidwell or Charlie. She better not end up like the case this week: a woman shot to death and then covered in her hot tub. Seriously, I would give up on Life right now if Dani didn’t come back.
Let’s get to that later, though, and talk about the dead woman in the hot tub. Her husband is the best campaign manager in California. The husband, Howard, was in Vegas with his team and came home early to surprise his wife only to find her missing. Her car is home, her bed has been slept in but she’s nowhere to be found and her phone goes straight to voicemail. She’s only been missing for a few hours but he pulls some strings and Crews and Seever are on the case.
Crews and Seever find the woman by following her cat who was sitting on top of the hot tub’s cover. Sure enough, she was shot four times and then stored in the hot tub. It’s a good plan because with the temperature of the water, it’s almost impossible to tell what time she was killed. Still, going on the timetable of when she went missing, the broken up husband is cleared and besides, there is one major suspect, PNK, a gun company. See, the victim was working on Initiave 38 which would ban handguns. It was her passion and she was going to push it through when she ran for a senate seat.
The people at PNK tell a different story. According to them, they had the votes four to one against the bill. Crews and Seever are stuck when they catch a break, sort of. They visit Howard again only this time he’s standing in the middle of his house holding a bomb in a box. He quit his job so there was no one around to help when he found the box of flowers on the porch and subsequently ended up holding a ticking bomb. Crews and Seever call the bomb squad and finally get their first real break. The card with the flowers reads, “Who’s the little one now.” While it sounds like that should mean something to him, Howard says he can’t remember.
Crews and Seever go back to the victim’s office and speak to her manager, Ella. Ella is much more helpful and says that “little one” is the victim’s younger sister. They had a falling out about a year ago and didn’t speak anymore but before that, they were really close. The younger sister was the one who got arrested for stupid things and fell into drugs but now she’s a park ranger. Seever and Crews go to see her and she freaks out and shoots at them, claiming that some one came onto the radio and said the person who killed her sister was here to kill her. Kind of crazy but kind of makes sense if you’re big on conspiracies and really, what kind of Life fan are you if you don’t like conspiracies?
The sister explains the falling out came when she was picked up for solicitation. Only, she wasn’t picking anyone up. Even the cop who received the anonymous tip said she didn’t seem like a prostitute. She got out of it when she told them who her sister was. After that, they just kind of fell out of contact. Still, they love each other and Crews and Seever don’t see a killer. They do, however, start to see the strings. Everything’s been planned out perfectly for a frame job. They find the husband pushing family values. Then he sets himself up as a victim with the bomb. Then he pushes them to the sister, who was already the victim of a set-up. Oh, those silly cops, when will they learn it’s always the husband?
Crews and Seever recruit Ella to help them catch Howard. All she has to do is tell him she found a tape made by the wife saying she was afraid Howard was going to kill her. At one of the parties for his new senate campaign (oh yeah, he’s running on his dead wife’s name), Ella walks up to him but instead of helping Crews and Seever, she sells them out. She is, after all, Howard’s campaign manager. But don’t worry too much because our favorite LAPD detectives have something up their sleeves, too. They tell Ella to go ahead and play the supposed non-existent tape only it does exist and the victim is saying exactly what they told Ella. Howard and Ella say some things and they are hauled off to jail. Tip to all you viewers: If you’re ever faced with a legal issue, keep your mouth shut. It wasn’t even the victim’s voice on the tape, it was the sisters. Sneaky, sneaky.
Not so sneaky is Crews and Tidwell’s search for Dani. They find out, through Rayborn’s old security firm, where Dani’s phone is but when they get to it, it’s in the middle of a field with her gun. Near the field are two sets of tire tracks. When they question the FBI, they simply say Dani is in the field and not reachable. Sure, we believe that. Charlie’s mind immediately goes to Roman and when he visits him in his maximum security prison, instead of meeting Roman he meets a man who claims to be Roman. Apparently with money and fear you can even get some one to take your prison sentence. Next week is gearing up to show us all of the secrets kept so far so make sure to check back for one promising episode.
