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Saturday 20 October 2012

Without A Trace 3.14 "Neither Rain Nor Sleet" Review

A postal worker has a conversation with a colleague saying she doesn’t like video games and then disappears.

4 Hours Missing

Viv (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) drives up to the crime scene?? In tears.  The postal worker’s abandoned truck has been found: number 4281.  Sam (poppy Montgomery) tells her the missing woman’s name is Rosie Diaz (Elizabeth Pena).  She works at the Carpenter Street station and left this morning at 6:30 am.  Her truck was found 3 hours later.  The alley where it was abandoned isn’t on her route.  She was carrying the new video game Demon Storm and this was the only thing that was taken. Viv tells her Reggie plays it and if she didn’t let him play it, he’d only play it somewhere else.

5 hours Missing

Scott (Rob Moran) tells Danny (Enruque Murciano) that postal workers are mugged but not in this way.  Danny asks him how many video packages were on the truck: 316 worth $12,000.  He also asks if Rosie was having problems with any of her fellow workers and who knew what she was carrying?  The postmaster and the sorting people knew but she never had been in trouble.  She used to date Scott and called it off as she had some issues to sort through.

Rosie was a foster mother and was fostering a brother and sister.  Becky (Hillary Tuck) the social worker tells Viv and Jack (Anthony LaPaglia) they’d been with her for 6 months: Shantel (Jowharah Jones) and Malcolm (Jessie Usher).  They were removed 3 days ago as they received a call complaining of abuse.  Shantel thought they were too much trouble for Rosie and that’s why she doesn’t want them anymore.  Rosie promised she’d do anything to make their life better and she loves them.  They never had any such previous calls about Rosie.  Jack wants to see the records of her other foster children.

Danny and Sam do the rounds to see if Rosie had delivered the mail.  Her car is also missing.  Martin (Eric Close) puts out and APB on it.  Sam comments that not every criminal is a mastermind and robbing her own truck and escaping in her own car isn’t a good plan.  Sam thinks she may have needed the money.  Martin says Rosie spent most of her money on the children.  Danny thinks she might be helping out one of her children.

Viv checks Shantel for signs of physical abuse.  Jack asks her what it was like living at Rosie’s for the last 7 months.  It was okay but she doesn’t know if she hit Malcolm.  She and Rosie fought about a week ago.  She was angry when Shantel took her training DVD from the shelf.  She said she’d have to pay for it if it broke.  Rosie doesn’t get angry and it was out of character.

8 Hours Missing

Martin finds the DVD under Rosie’s mattress.  The DVD contains kiddie porn.  Martin says the boy isn’t much older than her foster son.

10 Hours Missing

Danny questions why the children in the DVD didn’t tell anyone and it wasn’t made in her apartment.  Sam says none of them are her foster children.  Danny says she could make a fortune.  One of her former foster children, Luis (Jon Huertas) says Rosie wouldn’t let anyone hurt her children.  He saw her 2 nights ago when he was going to babysit.  Luis told her she couldn’t disappoint anyone.  He’s happy and better off because of her.  Danny asks him what Rosie meant by “long shadows” as he thinks she probably meant something else by this.

He wonders why Rosie would have the DVD if she’s not into porn.  Sam suggests she may have suspected someone at work.  So Danny says the call about the abuse was a threat for her to back off.  She could be accused of mail tampering among other things.

Viv receives a personal call.  Jack asks if anyone brought any video cameras into the house.  Malcolm has a relapse and withdraws.

11 Hours Missing

One of the people on Rosie’s route, King (Bob Morrisey) is on the sexual predators list.  Danny comments call him old-fashioned but someone like King getting porn in the mail isn’t a good thing.  He tells them the girl told him she was 17.  Martin tells him she was 15.  Rosie brought a friend with her and asked him where the DVD came from?  Her friend knocked him to the ground.  She apologized a few days later.  Danny tells Sam that King’s porn is legal.  He also asks her about her and Martin.  Danny faxed the sketch to the post office and no one recognizes the mystery man.  Shantel doesn’t either.  Jack asks her if it’s possible Malcolm is withdrawn because he saw something traumatic..  She tells him he had a nightmare about someone being in the house. About 5-7 days ago.  She’d forgotten he used to have nightmares.

13 Hours Missing

Viv puts a receiver on Shantel as she speaks with Malcolm.  Jack tells her to ask if he recognizes the man in the sketch.  He tells her someone came to the house and argued with Rosie, demanding money.  She gave him $900, everything she had after selling her car. And even Shantel’s DSS cheque.  Malcolm pulled a gun on him.  He’d had the gun in the closet for a long time. Rosie told him he was her brother..

Sam doesn’t find any information on her brother or whether she had any other family.  Sam wonders why she hid him.  Sam tells Martin he wasn't to tell everybody about them but decides not to talk about it.  Someone mailed a DVD to their brother in Vegas it had the original tracker on it.  He bought it form a man at Bronzdale and Whiteplains subway entrance.  Ryan (Pat Healey) tells them Marquez sold them.  He only has his phone number.

14 Hours Missing

Danny finds Rosie’s brother.  They found the man who bought her car.  There was a photo on the visor on the back it said:  Rosie 17, Manny 7 1978 .  Martin says that makes him about 32 or 33.  Sam says the palm trees in the photo mean it could be Florida.  Martin gets the photo analyzed by Tech to read the number plate.

27 Hours Missing

She sees Rosie once a year.  Danny needs her help to find Manny.  She tells him he’s dead when Rosie was 17.  She wanted the family to stay together.  He was killed by a car, Rosie told her he didn’t see it coming.  She didn’t watch many for her.  Her mother told her she should’ve left their step-father and so she wouldn’t be in prison now.  Her other son is called Jorge Hernandez (Lombardo Boyer).

Sam doesn’t find a death certificate for Manny Diaz or Hernandez.  She says no autopsy would be carried out on an 8 year old hit on the street.  Martin gets a call from the Miami register about a mall being built where the family lived.  They found the remains of a 7 year old boy with evidence of blunt force trauma.

29 Hours Missing

Shantel shows Malcolm 4 photos of men named Jorge Hernandez.  He picks the right one.  Sam checked out Ryan, he knew Jorge.  He tells them he only brought he games and left Rosie an Jorge with the truck.  He only paid him $6,000 and not $10,000 so Jorge was angry.  He gambles and was $5,000 short.  He plays at an underground club.

Rosie confronted Jorge saying he called and had her children removed.  He went to the ATM for more money but she told him she doesn’t have anymore.  She got out of the car and told him she’s been helping him for 25 years since Manny died.  He didn’t meant to kill him.  Rosie walked away and he shot her in the back.  Viv tells him Rosie gave him everything.  Rosie is in the park.  Viv tells Shantel there’ll probably be a funeral for her.  When she’s 17 she should come and see her and she’ll see if she can help Malcolm stay with Shantel.

Jack tells Viv to go home.  He asks if he can help her in any way?  Viv has a flashback to her doctor.  He tells her she’s got hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: deterioration of the heart muscle.  The  wall between the ventricles is enlarged and obstructing the blood flow.  He gives her medication to begin with.  The condition is serious and may have killed her uncle.  It’s hereditary so she needs to get Reggie checked out too.  Viv receives a call from work.  Cut to Viv crying in the car at the start.

This episode was all about secrets: Sam and Martin, Danny finding out about them, though he suspected something from episode 6.  Viv and her fate, we finally get to see she’s suffering from a heart condition so more secrets for her to keep from everyone until episode 16/17 when Sam finds out, by accident.

Also Rosie and her brother, Manny’s death; keeping the real reason from her mother.  Her brother Jorge being just like her step father with his hereditary violent streak.  He killed his brother and she had to protect him, then in the end he killed her too.  Who’ll help him now?

Sam and Martin getting carried away like Danny wasn’t there, of course he’d ask what was going on.

Danny: “well I understand why it was hidden under the mattress.  Kiddie porn.”  Isn’t everything hidden under the mattress, or at least the bed anyway.

Danny: “Most kids that leave the system don’t look back.”  As he’s probably had a lot of experience dealing with such children in his line of work: also cf season 1 episode Little Big Man, when his friend Polly - social worker friend, deals with such children.

It’s good the way Danny’s so perceptive when it comes to the little things that suspects or people say that he picks up on when questioning them.  Like here he asks what Rosie meant by “long shadows” as obviously there was something more going on in her life than she told anyone.  The shadows referring to her brother Jorge and her brother Manny.  (See also Danny’s remark in episode 6 Nickel and Dimed about asking the woman at the hotel the for one thing "what’s the other,” line.)

Danny: “Well, we’d like you to come downtown and give us a sketch of that Puerto Rican.”

Danny: “So you and Marty seem, well you seem something.”
Sam: “yeah we are.”
Danny: “good.  It is good Sam.  Why are you hiding it?”  Saved by the bell.  They do that a lot in this.  Especially since you’d like to hear their reasons.  Eg season 2 episode 3 when Viv asks Danny about his real name and his phone rings, again!)  When did Danny begin calling Martin 'Marty?'

If Rosie had sold her car wouldn’t the new owner have to register it, so wouldn’t that come up on the system?  Malcolm pulling the gun on Jorge is exactly what he does to Rosie.

Sam: “You wanna tell everybody don’t you?”
Martin: “Sam you already know how I feel and now Danny’s asking.”  They don’t talk about it, no like it’s something they don’t need to talk about.  They do a lot of this, not talking that is.  Danny already knew anyway.

Why is Sam hiding it?  Is it because she doesn’t want Jack finding out?  Making judgements about her like not being able to find someone outside of work?  Afraid of what he’ll say.  Jorge not meaning to kill Manny just like he didn’t mean to shoot Rosie.

Jack: “I know that you think that I haven’t always been there for you and you’re right I haven’t; I’m here for you now.  If there’s anyway that I can help you?”
Viv: “This you can’t do anything about, but thanks.”  (No, I want my job back, under other circumstances.)

Pun in the title there, since the postal service is meant to deliver through this, but hey something always gets lost, including the postie who doesn't turn up until the late evening round here on most days!

Jon Huertas went on to Castle.

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