SGRoA: Forever Knight, S03 E17: Avenging Angel

A woman is patching up another, and telling her the rules of the shelter she's in. No contact with the abuser, at all, for any reason. She can do what she wants when she leaves, but while she's at Laura Stone's shelter, she can't reach out to the boyfriend/husband.

The woman thanks Laura, and Laura leaves her room, only to hear another woman screaming at the other end of the house. She runs to the room, and has to unlock the door, only to find a woman dead and her daughter curled up in a corner, screaming "He killed my mother!"

Oh, I think I remember this one. We'll see if I'm right about the killer at the end.

Tracy's getting ready for work, and someone starts laying on her doorbell. Tracy's apartment is pretty nice, and I'm not just saying that because her foyer is painted Sassy Peach, like my Phoenix living room was. Detectives must make a decent salary, eh?

Anyway, it's her mother. Surprise! She tried to get a hotel, but there's a film festival in town. Well. THE film festival, I suppose, as this is Toronto.

They hug awkwardly. Tracy says she's welcome to stay, and she has to work, but maybe Saturday they can hang out? Oh, her kitchen's Sassy Peach, too. Trust me, Tracy, that's too much sass.

Trace gets called in, and she tells her mom the sofa folds out and there's satellite TV and OMG IT'S SO AWKWARD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.

So, the press has shown up at the women's shelter, which is A SECRET SAFE HOUSE. Jesus, Toronto. Nick pulls the camera down and then mojos the reporter to GTFO.

The vic was stabbed over 20 times. There's more broken glass in the alley outside than in the room, which Reese notices. They've already put an APB out on the ex-husband, Jack Something. Nick is disgusted by the previous sentences he got for battering - community service, anger management. Tracy goes to the hospital to get the daughter, Julie's, statement, and Nick suggests that Laura go down, too, for support. She comments that he must see a lot of this, and he says he never gets used to it. You know what that means.

He's...in Chinatown, I think? At a cockfight. I'm guessing California, circa the gold rush, given the cowboys and cravats. Lacroix has wagered on the fight, and Nick's all for animal rights all of a sudden. Some dude is smacking a girl around, and Lacroix - who has been the most feminist character on this show, remember - says that she's the dude's concubine, and they have no right to interfere.

Nick does interfere, of course, threatening to kill the dude. Lacroix backs him up. Nick tells the girl she can come with him if she has nowhere to go, but she refuses. SO HE MOJOS HER.

She doesn't succumb, however, and runs off to be with the dude, her "master".

Lacroix chides Nick for his lousy hypnotism skills, and then lays it out for him: That woman has nowhere to go, and nothing to her name. The only thing keeping her alive is being with her abuser, and she knows it, even if Nick is all up on his high horse about why women stay with abusers. "She would have more rights if she were his dog, Nicholas," says Lacroix, looking disgusted. "Let it go," he adds, looking weary. Agree with it? No, Lacroix doesn't. Think it's his problem as someone not-human? No, Lacroix doesn't.

Julie is telling Tracy about how she begged her mom to leave, and how her dad followed her to the safe house. Apparently, the mom wasn't staying in the house with Julie, who left not only because of the violence, but because her dad raped her repeatedly. Her mom was dropping off some clothes for her, and that's how her dad found them and killed the mom, not Julie.

Reese is skeptical that Jack's the perp. Laura's pissed about that, but Reese doesn't seem unsympathetic, just professional. 

Laura goes into the interview room and provides a file on Jack, and has Julie show off some scars he gave her. "Jack Henderson killed his wife. You say the jury's out; I rest my case," she says. Nick and Reese are all, "Well, yeah, but that's not how the law works, so we still have to prove it."

Tracy calls her dad, because her mom's in town, so she has to let him know, I guess? She says something about how Mom never said anything about suing Dad, and then tells Dad she'll just "keep a lid on it". I think she means she won't talk about Dad to Mom, but that's...weird phrasing.

Reese is watching Julie's interview. He doesn't look convinced by her story - maybe because of the broken glass in the alley, not in the room? The strange way she incorporates suggestions from Tracy's questions into her statement? ("Did you try to stop him?" Pause. "I tried to stop him," in weird zombie voice.)

Jack's fingerprints were at the scene, but Reese says that he's holding Julie because her story doesn't feel kosher. They'll say it's for protection.

Tracy's still mediating her parents' divorce over the phone when a call comes in on Henderson's whereabouts - a hospital, because he was all stabbed up. She and Nick head out, and she complains to Nick about her parents' divorce in the car.

Back at the precinct, Laura's providing support to Julie, who has flat affect down to a science. Reese watches from the other side of the glass, and looks troubled.

At the hospital, Jack Henderson says he got cut on his forearm - a defensive wound if ever I've seen one - working around the house. Nick and Tracy go in separate doors, guns drawn, because...Canadian hospitals don't have security? Tracy's going around the back when Jack comes running out, and Tracy pulls her gun on him, pointing it at his head and telling him to give her a reason. Nick pulls her off him and cuffs the dude - who wasn't resisting at all.

They find maps in his car to rural locales, and Nick's figured he was staying at some motel, so he got a warrant to toss the room. Tracy hopes they'll find the murder weapon, but Nick thinks he'll have stashed it somewhere it won't be found.

Nick and Tracy have a good talk about not getting emotionally involved in cases, and how this one is tough to work through. You know, like real partners would. WTF is even happening right now?!

Reese tells Julie they caught her father. She says, "Great. Can I get out of here now?" Zero emotion. Reese smiles gently and is all, "Well, no, because I don't fucking believe a word you're saying." Well. He says he wants to go back over Julie's statement, to make sure it's all as it happened. He tries to get rid of Laura, too, but she stays.

Jack, of course, refutes Julie's story. He says that Julie's mom brought him over there to make peace with Julie, because she wanted a reconciliation. Nick can't believe that she would want that, but Jack says he was an alcoholic, and now he's sober, and he's ashamed of his past behavior.

Well, then why did he run? Running looks guilty. But he says Julie was coming after him, and he ran to save his own life. "Well, why were you going to Collingwood?", which is apparently a town, but I can just imagine him being all, "Well, when it comes to vampires, I like mine evil," and him heading here:

Though the internet tells me it's Collinwood, no G. Weird. Everyone on that show pronounced the invisible G.

Anyway. The uniforms find a knife in his hotel room, and he says he used it to cut off his clothes because he was bleeding everywhere. That...makes no sense, but okay. At least it's back in familiar territory for this show.

Tracy goes home to a drunk Mom, and that's apparently the reason for the divorce. Well, that and an affair. Tracy and she have a fight about the divorce, the drinking, Tracy's being a cop...yadda yadda. Mom throws in a jab about Tracy being alone, and Tracy slaps her. Mom tells her she's her father's daughter, and never had a chance to be anything but what he wanted her to be, and then she leaves.

Nat - who's only been in this episode twice, now - tells Nick that the knife found in Henderson's room isn't the murder weapon. The tip of the murder weapon was embedded in the vic's sternum. The knives are similar, and could be from a matching set, but that doesn't prove anything. Nat doesn't want this guy to get away on a technicality - but seems totally okay with the idea that he could be railroaded into prison if he's innocent.

Flashback Time! Nick is intent upon being a White Knight (HEE) to this Chinese woman, and Lacroix is bored by his nobility. They hear screaming, and of course she's dead. Nick takes this as a personal affront and kills the dude who killed her, while Lacroix stays behind and bites the woman. I'm guessing he's going to turn her.

Back at the precinct, turns out that the search warrant for Henderson's room didn't come through before they tossed the place, so none of that evidence is admissible. Julie's eye witness testimony isn't enough for the prosecutor's office to go on, because she's unreliable. Basically, there's no case against Jack Henderson. Because guys, he totally didn't do it.

Nick's pissed, Laura's pissed, and there's another attack at the safe house because the press are reporting from it and the uniform took off for her break. Laura blames it all on Jack Henderson and the MetroPD's incompetence.

Jack is released. He leaves his address and phone number with Reese, because he doesn't care if they follow him. He didn't do it.

Nick goes back to the shelter to look for more KLEWS. Reese and Tracy are going to re-interview Julie again, but Tracy gets waylaid by Drunk Mom. Laura calls Julie and tells her that she should have the police give her a ride to Laura's apartment. She has Something To Do, and asks Julie where her father was staying while he was in town. She gets off the phone and goes to load her gun. We see where this is going, right?

Tracy and Drunk Mom make up.

Reese and Tracy go back over Julie's story. Of course it doesn't hold up.

Nick finds a bullet in Laura's study, and takes off after her. This is one instance where everyone could figure out where someone's going, so points to the writers for that. But there's this really weird sequence with Nick driving and the Nightcrawler talking and this bizarre music playing over the top. Lacroix says something about a woman crying for justice and a man who studies revenge, and then there's a slow-mo sequence of Henderson leaving his hotel and Laura straight up shooting him on the sidewalk. She goes into custody no problem, before Nick can get there.

Julie finally cracks in the interview room, with Nick and Nat looking on. She hated her mother for staying with her father, she was angry, she felt betrayed. So she stabbed her.

She tells them she threw the knife down a heating vent, and that's the end. No coda, no "did Lacroix turn that woman", nothing. Just -

Next week: Wrestlers! Steroid use! Developmentally delayed nephews! Nick babysitting! That sounds like far too much plot!