Previously...
- Tim shared with his siblings his theory that the Footprint Killer is targeting all of them and wondered if Loretta Ragan could be behind the plot. 
- An intruder broke into the Brooks home, intent on recovering the digital recorder that had captured Cameron’s murder on it.
- Trevor’s mother, Roz, discovered the intruder. When she tried to flee, the man shoved her out the window. Trevor and Alex returned to the house to find Roz dangling from the windowsill. 


BROOKS HOME

“Who’s in there?” Alex Marshall calls out from the driveway, a fallen window screen lying beside him. 

Above him, Roz Brooks dangles from the ledge of a second-story window. Alex can make out a figure inside the house, a baseball cap pulled low over its face. The entire scene is surreal and terrifying. 

“It’s him!” Roz’s head swivels over her shoulder toward Alex, her face alight with primal panic. “It’s—"

But before she gets a name out, the window slams down, crushing her fingers. She lets out an involuntary shriek, and Alex watches, stuck as if in quicksand, as Roz plummets to the driveway below with a sickening series of smacks and crunches. “Oh my god,” he says as he kneels at her side. He already knows it isn’t good. Her feet didn’t come down first — her rear end, or maybe her back, did.  “Mrs. Brooks,” Alex says, scared to move her too much. A pool of blood seeps out from beneath her, oozing over the driveway. “Roz!"

“What happened?” Trevor Brooks asks, racing back around the corner from the front porch. “Oh my god— Mom—"

Alex’s shaky hand pulls out his cell phone and dials 911. 

“There was someone in there,” he says again to Trevor as he waits for an answer.

Trevor looks at his mother and then snaps back toward the front door. 

“I’m gonna get him."

“Trevor, be careful!"

“I’m gonna kill him!"

“Nine-one-one,” answers a female voice on the other end of Alex’s line. “What’s your emergency?"

As Alex begins to explain, his normally easy words rendered mushy and confused, he watches Trevor bolt back into the house.

* * * * *

In the bedroom upstairs, the intruder freezes before the open window. The sight and sounds of Roz splattering on the driveway below replay in his mind's eyes, brutal and horrific. 

It had to be done, he thinks, willing himself to believe it. 

But there is no time to waste now. He hears Trevor shout, "I'm gonna kill him!" from outside. Pure fear thumps in his chest and between his ears. He hasn't done all this work to be caught now. 

Quickly he swipes the recording device off the desk and bolts. He flies down the stairs, his feet barely able to keep him upright, as he hears the door being unlocked downstairs. Thankfully, the positioning of the stairs means that he has made a break for the back of the house before Trevor is even inside. 

"Stop!" Trevor yells, and the intruder knows that Trevor must have seen him whipping around the corner. He fumbles to unlock the sliding door that leads to the backyard and, after pushing it open, sprints across the deck. He can't go out the gate -- Alex is out there with Roz, and by this point, there's no telling who else has assembled. 

With no other visible option, he runs for the fence. He is able to leap halfway up it. Its ragged wooden top digs into his hands, but he manages to hoist himself up. 

He hears Trevor's footsteps running up behind him but refuses to look back. 

"Stop, you bastard!" Trevor commands. 

The intruder makes it over the fence and hops down on the other side. He is in another backyard. Quickly he finds the fence and runs for it. But instead of exiting through it, he simply opens it and then rolls beneath the deck. 

From his dark hideout, he sees Trevor's sneakers run across the lawn. Trevor takes the bait and leaves through the open gate without a moment's hesitation. 

He knows he doesn't have long, and he has to play this correctly, but for now, he is free.

KING'S BAY POLICE DEPARTMENT

Tim Fisher trails his sister as she expertly navigates the familiar corridors of the precinct. When they reach the police commander's office, they find Brent Taylor seated behind his desk, his head in his hands. He glances up when Sarah taps on the open door. 

"Hey, guys," he says wearily.  "How are you holding up?" Sarah asks as she and Tim enter the office.  Brent exhales heavily. "Exhausted. Frustrated. We sent Helen home not too long ago." "But you didn't drop the charges for Ryan and Sandy's murders, right?" Tim asks.

"Nope. At least not yet." Brent rests his palms on the desk and sits up straighter, as if to signal that he is ready to get down to business. "What can I do for you guys?"

"I understand if you can't talk about this, but you can at least hear us out," Tim says, looking to Sarah for a cue. She motions for him to keep going. "Loretta Ragan needs to be-- I don't know, under surveillance. She's the only living person we can think of who would have this big an axe to grind against our family."

"The pieces still don't all fit into place for me," Sarah admits, "but she's gone after revenge in the names of James and Nick before. It isn't impossible."

"No. Not at all," Brent says. He looks at the open door and gestures for Sarah to close it. Once the lock clicks into place, he goes on. "I already pulled her visitor logs, spoke with the warden at her facility, all of it. I'm not finding any red flags, unfortunately."

Tim groans in frustration. 

"There has to be something we're overlooking," Sarah says. "Whoever is doing this wants us to know the murders are connected--"

"Unless whoever killed Cameron was a copycat screwing with us," Brent interjects. 

"Maybe," Tim says, "but I still don't think Helen is anywhere near diabolical enough to not only murder two people, but leave a calling card like that."

Brent is about to respond when the shrill cry of his cell phone interrupts. He checks the caller ID and, holding up an index finger to tell his visitors to hang on, fields the call. 

"This is Commander Taylor," he says. As he listens, his face falls. "You're shitting me."

Tim and Sarah listen intently, but the remainder of Brent's side of the hurried conversation reveals precious little about what he has just been told. 

Within 30 seconds, he is wrapping up the call. "I'll meet you there."

"What's wrong?" Sarah asks. 

Brent rises to his feet. "There's been another attack."

BROOKS HOME

"I don't know how I could've slept through that," Patrick Brooks says, wiping his tears on his bare forearm. He stands shoeless in the driveway, wearing a rumpled t-shirt and a pair of black athletic pants, as the paramedics load his wife into the ambulance on a stretcher.

Alex is beside him, doing everything he can not to look at the sickening crimson spatters on the cement. 

"She's still breathing," he says reassuringly. "The paramedics got here really fast. There's hope."

Patrick nods limply. 

"You can ride along with her," one of the paramedics says. "If you want."

"Sure. Yes." They help Patrick into the back of the ambulance, and then it dashes off, lights and sirens whirring against the oddly serene summer afternoon landscape. 

Alex looks around. There is still no sign of Trevor, which worries him. One of the officers, a woman whom he recognizes as having guarded Jason's house earlier this year, emerges from the house. 

"There's no one in there," Rosie Jimenez says. "Your friend must still be chasing this guy. My partner is going around the block to look for them."

"Good. I tried to call Trevor, but..." Alex sighs. He can hardly catch his breath after what he just witnessed. "There was a man up there. I couldn't make out his face, but it was a man."

"Did Mrs. Brooks say anything that might help us?"

Alex shakes his head. "She was about to say his name, I think. She knew who it was."

"Okay. That's a big help." She makes a quick note in the miniature pad in her hand. "Commander Taylor says he'll meet you and Trevor at the hospital. He wants to head up the questioning."

"Okay. I can drive there, once..." He looks around again, helplessly.

"Get in the car," Rosie says. "Let's go find your friend, and then I'll give you both a lift."

SNOQUALMIE ROAD

The intruder waits Trevor out for a few minutes before emerging from beneath the deck. After checking that the coast is clear, he discards his baseball cap and hooded sweatshirt, leaving them in the yard. Then he walks, rather than running, back to where he left his car several blocks over, grateful that he had the forethought to park so far away. 

His heart is still beating hard as he navigates a few miles away. Only once he is safely parked in a nondescript spot in a nondescript neighborhood does he peel off the latex gloves and remove the digital recorder from his pocket. He hits play and, realizing it is at the end of the recording, begins to rewind. When he stops to check its content, he hears a voice from beyond the grave. 

"Hello?" Cameron asks from inside the recorder.

He listens, breath clutched tightly in his lungs, as the rest of their deadly encounter from last night plays out. It is faint, but there is no mistaking the other voice in the recording. 

He opens the car door, drops the recorder onto the pavement, and stomps on it several times. Finding it more resistant than he expected, he backs the car up, aims the wheel right at it, and drives over it twice -- first forward and then backward. 

This time, the thing is in at least a hundred pieces. 

He doesn't want to take any more risks than absolutely necessary, though, and today already went horrifically wrong. He scoops up the pieces and dumps them inside one of the latex gloves, which he then stashes inside the glove compartment. 

That's it. I did it, he thinks, but relief is still a long way off -- because if Roz Brooks somehow survives her fall, she knows far too much. 

After Alex joins Officer Jimenez in the squad car, they easily find Trevor three blocks away, scouring the shrubs between two houses intently. They manage to convince him that the officers patrolling the neighborhood have the situation under control, but he insists on going back to the house for a few minutes. When he emerges, shaken and otherwise silent, all he does is ask them to get him to the hospital fast.

They find Patrick in the emergency room's waiting area, his eyes puffy and his cheeks stained with tears. He has a pair of hospital-issued cloth booties on his feet. Trevor swiftly slides into the seat beside his father to comfort him, and Alex remains standing, not wanting to intrude. He is waiting with his arms folded when Brent and another man, wearing a tweed blazer despite the summer heat, enter.

"This is Detective Harris," Brent says. "He's been heading up the investigation. Harris, these are the victim's husband and son, Patrick and Trevor, and Alex Marshall--"

"A family friend," Alex says. "Did you find anyone in the neighborhood?"

"No," Brent says with a trace of something sharp -- anger, annoyance, regret. 

"I don't understand why someone would do this," Patrick laments, his voice raw. "Roz is a good person. And she's hardly ever in King's Bay. She doesn't have enemies."

Trevor's grip on his father loosens as he sits up straighter. He stares ahead at the opposite wall. "I think I know." 

All eyes snap toward him.

"The recorder that I took from Cameron's desk," he says. "When I went back up to my room, it wasn't on my desk. I think the-- whoever it was, he took it. He didn't want us to hear it." "The recorder you went to the office to pick up last night," Brent says. "You said it had a recording of a meeting you weren't able to be at." "Molly had Cameron record the meeting for me, yeah." Trevor drops his head into his hands. "But whoever broke into the house today took it."

Brent and Detective Harris trade a conspiratorial look, one that Alex is unable to read. 

"Did you listen to it?" Harris asks. "Did you hear anything unusual?"

"I listened to most of the meeting," Trevor says. "But it was just a meeting. Nothing weird."

Brent curls his fist and touches it to his chin. "There must be something on it that this person doesn't want anyone else to hear."

Trevor nods. "When my mom wakes up, she'll be able to tell us who pushed her..."

Alex sees Patrick and Trevor practically leap out of their chairs. He turns and realizes why: a stone-faced woman in aquamarine scrubs is walking toward them, a black-and-white surgical cap over her brown hair. The five of them form a tight ring around her.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor says, breaking the thick tension. “The damage to her brain and spinal cord were too—"

A sob overwhelms Trevor as his eyes bulge. “My mom…?"

The doctor swallows. “We did everything we could. She didn’t make it."

“No,” Trevor says as he grabs onto his father. 

“Oh my god,” Patrick whispers.

Alex stands back, trying his best to be respectful in this moment of absolute darkness, but his head is swimming and he, too, begins to cry. 

END OF EPISODE #791

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