Her Deadly Game

During the arraignment, Ambrose shares that the gun at the scene is an untraceable ghost gun. After the arraignment, Patsy talks to the media while Keera and Harrison update each other. She tells him about the ghost gun, and Harrison shares that he’s found the private investigator who took the photos of Vince and Lisa. As they drive to the investigator’s office, he tells her that he drove Vince’s route from the fundraiser to his home, and the timing indicates that Vince drove straight home that night. They also discuss the need to offer a jury an alternate theory about the killer’s identity and land on Lisa Bennet as the most likely possibility.

The investigator, Michelle Batista, was hired through email, was paid through PayPal, and doesn’t know the true identity of her client. When she shows them copies of the emails, Keera recognizes the name, Jack Worthing, from the email she received. Batista tells her that it is a pseudonym—Jack Worthing is a character from an Oscar Wilde play, The Importance of Being Earnest. In the play, the protagonist, Jack, creates a fictional brother named Ernest “to do all the hedonistic things Jack wouldn’t do” (140). She gives Keera a copy of the play and the emails.

In the car, Keera and Harrison wonder who hired Batista. Anne had no reason to hide her identity, and Keera received her email from Jack Worthing after Anne’s death. At home, Keera continues to ponder it as she plays a few moves against the Dark Knight. She checks her email to find that Jack has sent another message.

The next day, Keera, Patsy, and Harrison discuss the latest Jack Worthing email, which directed Keera toward “Mary C. Bell in Beaverton, Oregon” (144). Harrison called the woman, who turned out to be Vince’s grammar school teacher, and she told him that Jack called her asking about Vince. She gives Harrison the name of one of Vince’s classmates, Eric Fields.

Keera gives Patsy and Harrison an overview of The Importance of Being Earnest, which she read the previous night. The play is about marriage—how it looks on the surface and what is going on beneath. They wonder if Anne’s isolation, which Vince represented as her withdrawal after the accident, was Vince’s way of isolating and controlling her.

Harrison also tells them that the water sample from the LaRussas’ kitchen isn’t just water. The analysis identified cotton fibers and potassium nitrate, which is found in fertilizer, gunpowder, and stump remover, among other things. The burn mark scraping from the oven door contains potassium nitrate as well, but even with this new information, he can’t come up with a theory that explains it all.

Patsy and Harrison go to Beaverton to interview Mary Bell while Keera visits Vince. When she tells Vince about Jack, she watches carefully for a reaction, but he claims not to know the name. He recognizes Mary and Eric’s names but can’t imagine why Jack sent Keera to them. Keera feels that something is off but can’t identify it.

Rossi speaks to Litchfield, the medical examiner who performed Anne’s autopsy. Although Litchfield’s report identified the gunshot wound as the cause of death, he also noted that Anne had stage-four pancreatic cancer. Litchfield tells Rossi that he would be surprised if Anne hadn’t known—she would be in considerable pain with approximately a month to live. He suggests that they subpoena Anne’s medical records to find out who was treating her.

Rossi wonders if Lisa, who is an oncologist, knew about her best friend’s cancer. Regardless, he knows that Keera will use this information to argue that Anne died by suicide. When Rossi gets back to the station, he calls Ambrose and gives him the news. Ambrose says he’ll come to the station, which surprises Rossi because he’s never done it before. Rossi and Ford consider how this new information casts doubt on Vince’s motive to murder Anne. When Ford protests that it still doesn’t explain how Anne could’ve physically used the gun, Rossi reminds him that Keera doesn’t have to explain it—she only needs to establish reasonable doubt that Vince committed the crime. The idea that Keera now has something to work with makes him smile.

The next day, Patsy and Harrison report on their trip to Beaverton. Mary Bell remembered Vince as “a sweet boy and whip smart” (160), but when pressed, she recalled a time when the other students accused Vince of keeping the money they had fundraised to put on a play. In addition, Eric Fields told them that Vince sold strawberries for his grandfather but raised the prices and pocketed the difference. According to him, Vince was only ever interested in making money—he remembers when Vince started a tutoring business but pocketed the money instead of paying the tutors. Keera decides that this history is too long ago to be relevant.

The firm talks strategy for jury selection and decides that Ella will handle Ambrose’s motions, which he will surely use to try to overwhelm them.

After receiving the police file from Ambrose’s office, Keera goes home. She plays chess with the Dark Knight and resists the urge to pour herself a drink. She spends the rest of the afternoon going over the file. Nothing is surprising except that Lisa’s fingerprints were found on both the refrigerator and oven door handles. As she is reading, Patsy calls. He is reading his own copy of the file and notes that the medical examiner’s report hasn’t been included. They decide to bring a motion to compel, and Patsy points out that if Judge Hung feels that Ambrose did this deliberately, it would work against him.

After they hang up, Keera calls Ambrose and asks for the medical examiner’s report. He tries to blame Rossi, but she knows he is lying. After they hang up, she calls Rossi. He is surprised that the examiner’s report wasn’t included and says he’ll check on it.

Before Keera leaves for the office the next morning, she studies her chess match with the Dark Knight, wondering if he knows how vulnerable he is. When she gets to the office, Patsy is already there and ready for the courtroom. She can tell that he didn’t drink the previous night. Ella filed a motion for the medical examiner’s report, but Keera suspects that Ambrose will present the report in Judge Hung’s chambers this morning, having accomplished his goal. She and Patsy talk about Keera’s developing Lisa-as-killer theory, but at this point, Vince’s motivations will still appear stronger to a jury.

Judge Hung holds the scheduling hearing in her chambers. When she learns that Keera is ready to move ahead with the trial, she reminds Keera that they likely won’t have all the evidence before the trial begins—in murder trials, new information often comes to light as the trial unfolds. When they discuss the motion to compel the medical examiner’s report, Ambrose hands it over as Keera predicted he would. The trial date is set for July 31, about six weeks away. Before Keera leaves, Hung tells her that Patsy should be present from here on so that no one can claim “ineffectiveness of counsel” (180), a pointed jab at her inexperience. Keera snaps at Hung, implying that she is prejudiced, and then immediately regrets it.

Back at the office, Keera tells Patsy and Ella about Hung’s “ineffectiveness” comment. Patsy admits that he and Hung faced off in the courtroom when she was a prosecutor and he’d always won. However, he believes that she will still be fair. Keera tells Patsy that if he is going to be second chair, he will have to maintain his sobriety for the trial’s duration, and Patsy gives his word.

Keera knows that Ambrose is hiding something about the examiner’s report, but the only notable finding is a high level of opioids; there’s nothing else that might help their case. She rewatches the LaRussas’ security tape and notices that when Lisa pulls her bag out of the car, her arm flexes as if it’s heavy. However, when Lisa leaves the house later, she slings the bag back into the car as if it’s empty.

That afternoon, Keera goes to Lisa’s medical practice—she wants to see Lisa’s reaction in person when she asks about the bag. Keera can tell she is lying when she says it was just her water bottle. When Keera asks if she touched anything in the kitchen, Lisa becomes suspicious. She says she doesn’t remember, but Keera can tell she’s not revealing the whole story.

Keera then goes to visit Vince at the jail to tell him about Mary Bell and Eric Fields. She updates him on the police report and about Lisa’s fingerprints on the oven; although the case against Lisa is getting stronger, it still may not be enough. She also tells him about the potassium nitrate and cotton fibers in the water. He shares that Anne gardened before her accident and that there might be fertilizer in her gardening shed.

When Keera gets home, she avoids the liquor cabinet, pouring a glass of iced tea. In her chess match, the Dark Knight is setting himself up for failure but hasn’t yet realized it. Keera decides to approach Vince’s trial like she approaches her chess match with the Dark Knight: Pretend to be acting defensively while looking for the opportunity to make an aggressive move. She gets an email from Jack Worthing, who gives her another name: Spencer Tickman.

The next morning, she and Harrison return to the LaRussa house to go over the crime scene again, working on their Lisa-as-killer theory. They consider the odd evidence of the burn mark on the locked oven—the only reason to lock it is for cleaning, but the oven wasn’t set to clean. When they visit the garden shed, Harrison finds stump remover, consisting of 100% potassium nitrate, but the container is on a high shelf, far out of Anne’s reach. Keera is surprised by this new information. When this happens in chess, her father always advises her to wait and consider her options carefully before acting.

That night, Patsy and Harrison tell Keera about Spencer Tickman, Vince’s fraternity brother in college. Vince was the fraternity’s treasurer and started an unofficial taxi business. After he was caught using the fraternity’s money, he left college and ran from the law, but he was caught, served time, and paid the money back. They still can’t figure out who Jack Worthing is, and they’re running out of time before trial.

Keera gets home late and plays several quick moves, distracting the Dark Knight by sacrificing small pieces while she executes her strategy. She wonders if Jack is a decoy to distract her and decides to use Ambrose’s arrogance and underestimation against him. She will convince him that she believes in the flawed Lisa-as-killer theory and, in the meantime, continue her investigation and develop a better theory.

The next morning, Keera goes to the jail to see Vince. He confirms that he didn’t finish college and seems completely at ease, but Keera senses that something is off. He tells the fraternity story differently, as if he had been targeted by Spencer Tickman and others. Keera warns him that she needs to know anything more about his past that Ambrose might use.