"So tell me how this works." "I'm awake with my wife, and I close my eyes," "I open them, I'm awake with my son." "And this has been happening since the accident?" "So you begin working on one case here in reality, and then suddenly you begin working another case there in your dream." "It all feels completely real to me." "You can't tell whether you're awake or asleep at this very moment?" "Well, I can assure you, Detective Britten, this is not a dream." "That's exactly what the other shrink said." "Here's the list of comps from your neighborhood." "Comps." "Honestly, five years ago, you could've sold this house and bought an island." "Now it may take a while just to get back what you owe." "All we have to do is take care of these repairs." "Here are the contracts." "Just get back to me with any questions, and meanwhile, I will start setting up that open house." "I'll be in touch soon." "Great." "Thank you, Heather." "Hey." "Repaint, huh?" "Guess she doesn't know you just repainted the whole house." "A sink in Rex's bathroom?" "I didn't know it was gonna cost me a sink to move to Portland." "Michael..." "You know, you don't even have to deal with any of this." "I can handle it." "Yeah, 'cause you can do the plumbing, right?" "And all the deck repair?" "No, I'm gonna hire a heavyset man with an exposed butt crack." "I'm gonna watch him do it." "You know, we do all these things to the house, we're not gonna want to move." "You know that... they're gonna put a "for sale" sign in the yard, like, any day, right?" "Yeah, I just wouldn't want someone to drive by who didn't..." "Today." "Told the captain I needed to sit down and talk to her today." "Welcome to Ricky's tacos." "How may I help you?" "Chicken burrito, no sour cream, large iced tea, please." "Chicken burrito, no sour cream and a large iced tea." "Is that all today?" "Yeah, that's it." "$6.37." "Please pull up." "You can't go to Portland." "You go to Portland, you'll never know the truth." "What are you talking about?" "The Westfield case, Michael." "It all starts with Westfield." "$6.37." "What was that you were saying about the Westfield case?" "Sir?" "Just now, on the thing, you were, you were..." "Were you talking to someone else?" "You have your mic open or what?" "I didn't say anything, sir." "Detective Britten, can I ask you why you're so interested in this space?" "I was investigating a case here four months ago." "Well, now I'm leasing it for under a dollar a square foot." "We're practically giving it away." " huh." "There was a... a distribution center here before." "You know what happened to it?" "Who knows?" "Probably folded in the recession." "Wherever they went, they didn't leave anything but the rats." "How long's it been like this?" "Oh, I've had this, uh, listing almost four months." "They didn't leave a forwarding address, a contact number?" "No." "No way of getting in touch with them?" "No." "It spoke to you?" "This drive-through speaker," "Yeah ...that you order into?" "That's interesting." "A dream in which something that's usually beholden to your commands, instead is issuing them." "What do you think that means?" "I don't know." "I mean, I like a speaking oracle as much as the next guy, but..." "I don't know," "I wish you could count on them to be more specific." "Dream interpretation relies on accepting that things which seem random aren't." "Your subconscious is assembling a particular set of emotions and memories, and welding them together to create a narrative." "But I do think that there's one thing that we can safely take from it." "As your subconscious begins to make plans for this move, it's also now trying to stop that move by drawing your attention to some some unfinished business." "Does anything come to mind?" "There was a case, around the time of the accident." "Hey, Bird." "Morning." "Morning." "Hey, remember that, uh, Westfield Distribution Center thing we were looking into a while back?" "Vaguely." "Why?" "Whatever happened with that, after I was out for the accident?" "Well, there was nothing to do." "I mean, you got the employment records, taxes, payroll." "I mean, everything came up clean." "Huh." "All right." "Whoa-whoa, whoa-whoa..." "you just got here." "Where you going?" "Records." "Just want to take a peek at the file." "I'll be two minutes." "Really?" "Guys, you're up." "Her name is Sabrina Ferris... 17." "Neighbor says she just came crashing on top of the car." "Apparently, she jumped." "Any other witnesses?" "Yeah." "Neighbor guy says when he looked up, he saw a kid standing on the edge." "He saying she was pushed?" "No, no." "He said the kid walked over a few seconds later." "Where is this kid?" "We're holding him over there." "We're lab partners." "And, uh, she asked me to come over to study, and I did." "And we were, and then she..." "She what?" "She... started kissing me and stuff, and she wanted to... you know..." "We had, we had sex." "So she invites you over... you." "You're studying, then suddenly she wants to have sex with you." "I know." "I don't know." "As soon as it was over, she just started crying." "I tried to talk to her, but she just kept saying that she was sorry, and then just ran out." "I went looking for her, and when I finally found her, she was on the roof, but she was already on the ledge and j-just..." "standing there, just sobbing." "And I tried to stop her, but she just jumped." "What does that mean, "I tried to stop her"?" "You were talking to her or you actually..." "you reached out, you touched her?" "No, no." "I just walked toward her, and... she was already gone." "Why would she jump, Tim?" "I don't know." "You son of a bitch, what did you do to my daughter?" "!" "Daddy!" "Hey!" "Hey." "Did she give him any sign she might be interested in him?" "No." "She was just nice to him because she feels bad for him, that's all." "Why would she feel bad for him?" "He lost his mom." "Never had a dad." "He lives at the foster home at the church." "Kids make fun of him, stuff like that." "Uh, why did she agree to be his lab partner?" "I told her that was a mistake." "That she was encouraging him, and..." "She just said that I had him all wrong, he was a good kid, harmless." "I guess, 'cause she just sees the good in people, that's all." "All right." "Oh, my beautiful girl." "Hey." "Guys, just a heads up." "Your pretty girl case is about to get ugly." "You'll get the full autopsy report tomorrow, but we found your suspect's semen." "Also found vaginal tearing." "Which means that the sex wasn't consensual." "Yeah." "Now, a rape kit isn't easy to run on someone that's taken a ten-story dive, but this one's pretty definitive." "Thanks." "Look, Tim, sex is confusing, complicated." "Sometimes we don't even know what's happening while it's happening." "But the evidence..." "shows us that she was injured." "So she must have wanted to stop." "Now, I know you wouldn't want to hurt her." "You cared about Sabrina." "So, what happened?" "At school, when it's your birthday, um, people write their names on your locker." "Nobody ever did that for me." "And then one year, she did." "Yeah, I know it didn't mean anything." "I know that she was just trying to be nice, but..." "Everyone loved her because she was beautiful." "But I loved her because she treated me like a human being." " If I thought she was gonna hurt herself, I..." " Tim, you got away from yourself." "It happens." "But here's the thing." "If you're honest about it, people will take it into account." "So..." "Why don't we go through everything, from the beginning, in your own words." "All right?" "D.A. says he'll arraign him on the rape charge in the morning, try to work out a plea." "Five hours... got to be a record." "Yeah, I barely had time to put it on the board." "Michael." "You wanted to talk?" "Yeah." "Westfield Distribution..." "records can't find the file." "And what do you need it for?" "Well, there were three different shooters and victims, all the cases tied back to the place." "I know." "And you closed them all, right?" "Yeah, but I was just beginning to investigate the warehouse, the business before the accident." "You know what, I reassigned it;" "It didn't go anywhere." "Well, if we could find the file, I could take a look, maybe dig something up." "We're up." "All right, let's focus on the ones that we haven't closed yet." "Okay?" "Sure." "Hey, this is one for the books." "You guys ready?" "Hotel's going up, recession shuts it down." "New company comes in, buys the property, clears the site, bingo, finds a surprise in the foundation." "Pretty cool, huh?" "Oh." "Whoa." "Okay, now, the concrete keeps out the oxygen, helps to preserve the body, but you can't just chip him out, not if you really want to avoid destroying him." "So I talked to some paleo friends, and I've been using an alternating combination of water jetting, muriatic acid and calcium baths." "I apply it with a paintbrush and then slowly remove..." "Banks." "I'll read it in your book." "Can we skip on?" "Oh, I'm sorry, I just melted a dead body out of a block of concrete, which is kind of impossible, so I thought you might have five seconds." "You did great." "Han Solo didn't look this good coming out of carbonite." "Why are you showing it to us?" "Fractured skull." "Looks like he died from blunt force trauma to the head, and then someone tossed him in this pillar formation." "When was this?" "Well, according to construction reports, the concrete was poured three years ago." "Guess you didn't happen to melt an I.D. out of there." "No, but look at this." "He's got a chipped incisor, and he's missing the tip of his left forefinger." "So I cross-referenced that information with missing persons reports from the time the concrete went in... bingo." "Pablo Cabrera." "Just use your imagination where he seems decomposed." "Let me get this straight." "You're handing us a three-year-old homicide?" "Handing you a miracle." "Hello?" "I melted him out of concrete!" "Anything else?" "Ingrates." "You gonna dump it again?" "Okay, good, good." "All right." "Jose!" "Jose Cabrera?" "Can I help you?" "I'm Detective Britten, this is Detective Vega, LAPD." "Um, well, I'm afraid it's not very good news." "Based on the missing persons report you filed three years ago, we believe we've found your brother's body." "I'm sorry." "Where?" "What happened to him?" "He was over on a three-year-old construction site, Spring Street." "It was... it was inside a block of concrete." "That was one of the jobs he was working." "So obviously the evidence suggests he was murdered." "We were hoping you might tell us who would've had a reason to do such a thing." "To kill Pablo?" "I can't imagine." "He wasn't in the country but a month, and then he just disappeared." "He didn't have anything." "He never hurt no one." "Doesn't make any sense." "Well, if you could think of anybody we could contact, any place we could go to get information about his death, we'd be very grateful." "If you feel up to it, we'd appreciate you coming to help identify his body." "Sure, of course." "What?" "Just thinking." "About what?" "Another case." "So Sabrina had a parking pass in her car from a college in San Diego, time-stamped from two days ago." "Okay." "So two days ago, she drives 300 miles, and according to her father and any of the friends I managed to contact, she doesn't mention it to anyone." "I repeat, okay." "But one of her friends mentioned she has an ex who is a freshman down there." "Where are you going with this?" "Tim practically confessed." "We know she was raped, we know he had sex with her, and we know she flew off the roof." "I mean, the D.A." "actually used the words "open and shut."" "So what does any of this have to do with San Diego?" "Where you going?" "Just take the afternoon." "To drive to San Diego?" "Yeah." "I'm not going to San Diego." "All right, I'll go myself." "What did you stop at that place?" "Two-for-one Tuesdays." "Here, I got you one." "Hey." "Yeah." "Thanks." "Oh, he's right over there." "Thanks." "Detective Britten, LAPD." "Chris Chapman around?" "Uh, I'm Chris." "What's going on?" "Can we talk privately?" "Uh... yeah." "What's this about?" "Sabrina Ferris." "I need to hit the library." "Thank you." "Yeah, yeah." "Come in." "This doesn't feel real." "Yeah, I knew, I knew something was up with her, but this is crazy." "What does that mean, you knew something was up?" "Two days ago, she shows up, out of the blue, acting... just acting weird." "Weird, how?" "Look, you have to understand, we broke up because I wanted to start doing it." "And she's, you know, into the whole abstinence thing, so... eventually, you know, it just ended." "How long ago was this?" "It was almost a year." "You know, and she pretty much stopped talking to me after that." "But then, just out of nowhere, she's at my door, and she's saying how she made such a huge mistake, and how she wants..." "Now she wants to have sex?" "Yeah, she wanted to have sex with me right then." "And she's kissing me and she's all over me, and-and she starts saying stuff about wanting to have a baby with me and-and being a family." "So you have sex..." "No, no." "I mean, it was so obvious that she wasn't herself." "She didn't say anything, give you any kind of hint of why she might be behaving in this way?" "No." "But... she was religious about her diaries." "I bet there's something in her diaries." "That autopsy come back yet?" "No." "They promised we'll have it in the morning." "Why?" "I don't buy Tim for the rapist." "Well, the grand jury disagreed." "Took them all of five minutes to get an indictment." "Well, get ahold of the D.A., ask her to hold on a beat." "His story is looking a lot more plausible." "And why's that?" "'Cause the kid down here has the same story." "Sabrina shows up, tries to force herself on him." "The only difference is this kid says no." "Well, Banks said Tim raped her." "No, no, no." "Banks says she was raped." "But if it happened before and she had sex with Tim, signs would still be there." "Okay, so she was raped at some point in the past, and her response is what, run around looking for other people to have sex with?" "Why?" "That's why we need the autopsy results." "Maybe the rape left her with something she wanted to hide." "Like what?" "Like a pregnancy." "Suddenly she's looking for anybody to be a suitable father in nine months." "The ex says no, so she turns to sweet, nerdy Tim." "All right, I'll drive back and see you in the morning." "Would you give me a second?" "Yes?" "We may have a problem." "He came back again." "You assured us he was under your control." "The warehouse is completely clean." "There's nothing for him to find." "It has been for months." "That's not the point." "The point is he's still looking." "No one is willing to wait until he walks into a place where there's something for him to find." "He's scratching an itch." "There's nowhere for this to go." "Captain, this is a courtesy call, not a debate." "Plans are already in the works." "You just keep your head down, let me take care of it." "Carl..." "Carl, please, just listen to me..." "Yeah, spring street." "I remember that job." "Developer ran out of money, whole thing got shut down." "I don't recognize him, though." "You sure?" "'Cause you barely looked at the picture." "Illegal?" "Uh, we think so." "Of course." "Look, these people... they come and go during the course of a job." ""These people"?" "No offense, officer." "Detective." "Look, I'm not talking about you hardworking guys who come up the right way." "I'm talking about these guys who jump over the fence from Mexico." "They get a bunch of illegal papers, and they wind up getting everybody in trouble." "He was from Guatemala." "You know what I mean." "South." "Why don't you, uh, walk around, show the picture and see what you can pick up." "Partner's a little sensitive." "Yeah, yeah, he's got a bug up his ass about the whole social injustice thing." "Not me." "Thank God." "Yeah, my whole thing is code violations." "Guys not wearing hard hats." "Trucks parked on red zones." "Kind of thing makes me want to call OSHA in here, go through everything with a fine-tooth comb." "You know, maybe while they're at it, we can look at your employment records." "Double-check you're not looking the other way on any of those immigration issues that you're so hot on." "Of course, that could lead to a total shutdown." "And that'd be..." "I don't know, what?" "Hundreds of thousands of dollars a day?" "Well, you wouldn't care;" "You wouldn't have your job anymore." "Or you could take another look, and see if you can't be a little bit more helpful." "See if we can't shake something loose from that big old brain of yours." "Look, I'm sorry." "I really don't recognize the guy." "All right." "So you remember anything in particular about the job?" "Any workplace accidents?" "Fights, problems?" "There was a guy..." "uh, drunk, violent type." "He got into it a couple times." "I would've fired him, but he stopped coming back." "All right." "Remember his name?" "No." "But, uh, some of the guys called him El Diablo." "He had some sort of tattoo of the devil." "You see him since then?" "Nope." "You hear anything about him?" "No." "Look, he probably went home." "All right, a lot of these fence jumpers..." "Undocumented types... they don't stick around very long." "Can I go back to work now, detective?" "I'll call you if I need you." "What the hell did you send me away for?" "Don't ever lose your cool when you're questioning someone." "Make them do that." "Michael, he was being an ass." "Yeah." "You threaten to punch someone in the face, what do they do?" "They duck." "You threaten to punch him in the wallet, they always open up." "So what did he say?" "He doesn't remember Pablo, but he does remember this character called El Diablo." "Troublemaker." "So we hit a bunch of sites, just see if he made an impression anywhere else." "You have any idea how many construction sites there are in L.A.?" "Look, I've seen cases break with less than this." "Sometimes all you have is a faint trail." "You have to follow it until you find what you're looking for." "Or it disappears altogether." "The Westfield case, Michael." "It all starts with Westfield." "I have no idea." "A lot of companies tanked when the economy went into the toilet." "Wherever they went, they didn't leave anything." "Except the rats, right?" "Who told you there were rats?" "Is it Jacobs?" "All right, listen to me." "He'll say anything to move a piece of his property." "I keep this place spick-and-span." "This is crazy." "Excuse me." "Yeah?" "Autopsy's back." "You were right." "They estimated Sabrina Ferris was almost four weeks pregnant." "All right, I'll see you back at the station." "Thanks." "See what you needed to?" "Nothing I haven't seen before." "Hi, Ally." "Detectives Britten and Bird with LAPD." " Was hoping to have a..." " Hi." "Wait in your room." "It's okay." "What's up?" "Uh, we were hoping we could have a quick word." "Sure." "Thanks." "I don't understand." "You guys said Tim did it." "Well, new information has come to light, and it makes it look a lot like, uh, Sabrina may have been sexually assaulted before her encounter with Mr. Wax." "What?" "Mr. Ferris, were you aware that your daughter was pregnant?" "No." "My God." "No..." "That is impossible." "Sabrina... she was a good girl." "I'm sorry if this is upsetting." "I understand how difficult it is, but..." "We've been told she kept detailed journals." "Now, if we can get a look at the last couple of entries, may help us get to the bottom of all this." "I don't think she had anything like that." "Well, it wouldn't be the first time a teenager kept things from their parents." "Yeah." "Uh... sure, let's take a look." "Mr. Ferris." "Yeah?" "Mind if I have a glass of water?" "I have a dust allergy." "Uh... yeah, sure." "Thanks." "No journals, no notes." "Either her friends are wrong, or somebody cleaned up." "What does that look like to you?" "Looks like somebody's moving this dresser in front of that door." "Yeah." "But it's a journal to me." "Here." "Listen, uh..." "is this gonna take long?" "I want Ally to have her dinner in peace, you know?" "Why don't we continue this conversation at the station, Mr. Ferris." "You have a suspect in custody, but instead of prosecuting that case, you drag a grieving father down here and insinuate that he might have sexually abused his daughter?" "To say this is a new low doesn't do it justice." "She knew who the father was, I think she was trying to use Tim to hide that fact." "And when she did what she did, she was so ashamed, she took her own life." "Your own M.E. says he raped her." "Her injuries are also consistent with a prior rape... or pattern of rape." "Pretty soon we're all gonna know who the father was, so... you want to tell us now why your daughter felt the need to barricade herself in her room?" "Why she dragged her dresser in front of her door so often there are gashes in the floor?" "This is ridiculous." "What happened to her journals, Mr. Ferris?" "What, they just disappeared?" "Gentlemen..." "My client isn't saying another word." "If you're gonna charge him, let's get on with it, but if that's all you've got, I suggest you open the door before you see yourselves facing a civil suit." "Take him to the watch commander's office." "So...?" "Nothing." "He's all lawyered up." "And what about the sister?" "Keeping her mouth shut." "Between her lawyer and her father, she's, uh, pretty terrified." "All right, we'll wait..." "I mean, he's not going anywhere." "We'll get him in 12 days when we have our DNA results from the fetus." "Meantime, what, we send that little girl home with that scumbag for two weeks?" "No." "Come on." "How about I give you an introduction." "Hey." "I brought us some hot chocolates." "If I drink coffee this late, I will be up all night." "Detective, you can wait outside." "I'll let you know when I have further orders." "Yes, ma'am." "Can I just..." "Detective." "Yes, ma'am." "You're his boss?" "You know what?" "I am everybody's boss around here." "That's cool." "Yeah." "Sometimes even I can't believe how cool it is." "So, what about you, what do you want to do when you get out of school?" "I haven't really thought about it." "Come on." "You must have, at least a little bit." "A pediatric oncologist." "Impressive." "Especially for somebody who hasn't really thought about it." "I'm pretty good at evaluating people, and I bet that you would pull it off." "But not like this." "You'll never get where you want to go like this." "All right, you want to know what usually happens in this room?" "A man sits in that chair..." "it's almost always a man." "Last month, this guy threw a chair at me." "See?" "Three stitches." "But whether it's the guys in here or the guys out there, I never let them see how scared I am." "And, Ally, I do get scared." "But you have to keep going." "You can be any kind of woman you want." "But if you're gonna be successful, you have to be brave." "'Cause if you're not, even for one second, that's when they pounce." "You know what, I'm not just talking about your enemies," "I'm talking about the people that you're closest to, the ones you trusted." "Like your father." "I know he was molesting your sister." "And I think he took advantage of you, too." "And right now my heart is breaking for you." "But you need to know..." "What your father did was wrong." "And it is completely within your power to stop it." "All you have to do is be brave... and I'm looking at you, Ally, and I know," "I know you can do that." "I need you to think about your sister." "It didn't start till after our mom died." "He said it was because he loved us so much." "Don't you find it interesting that as you try to convince yourself that you need to stay to work something out, some unfinished case, that your subconscious changes your dream from one simple closed case to one you need to reopen in order to find justice?" "Well, maybe I didn't change the story;" "maybe it just happened and I had to follow it through." "Are you familiar with the word "pentimento"?" "Pentimento?" "Does it go in a sandwich?" "It refers to when art historians inspect a painting..." "And discover traces of earlier work." "Evidence that the artist changed his mind in the course of creating it." "Mm?" "This is the perfect metaphor for what your mind has done." "Take your visits to this warehouse, for example." "It's as if you've drawn over your memory :" "Of the case..." "He had some sort of tattoo of the devil." "Detective." "Detective?" "Jose." "Stop!" "Vega, he's running!" "He's over the fence!" "Get down!" "Now!" "You're not Jose." " You're Pablo." " I don't know what you're talking about." "Yeah?" "So why did you run?" "We interviewed men at construction sites all over town, and, uh, we couldn't find anyone who remembered your brother." "But there were quite a few who remember a guy known as "El Diablo."" "Yeah, El Diablo... they didn't like him much, either." "He wasn't popular." "He was a bad guy... you know, he was drunk he was mean-tempered, started a lot of fights." "And when we went back this morning and showed them your picture, they all recognized you." "But not as Jose." "As El Diablo." "See, we were betting that that pretty little tiger tattoo on your shoulder has a devil underneath." "You came across the border, killed your own brother, and took his identity." "We checked into Jose's employment records." "He last worked as a hotel cook." "He stopped showing up three years ago." "Luckily, they still had photo I.D. on file." "Recognize that guy?" "Hmm?" "This guy here?" "And this..." "This is what he looks like..." "buried in concrete." "Mira tu hermano." "Look what you did to your brother." "You really wanted that green card, huh?" "Was killing your own brother worth that green card?" "It was an accident." "As soon as I got here, Jose was on me about my drinking, my attitude, everything." "We had a fight, and he hit his head." "I didn't realize how bad it was at first, but..." "I loved my brother, and I didn't want to hurt him." "I was..." "It's tough to come here with nothing." "Oh, yeah, okay." "Hey!" "In Guatemala, people respected me..." "here, I was dirt... worse than dirt!" "I didn't know how to adjust the way he had." "Why did you file the missing persons report on yourself?" "I made too much trouble." "One of the bosses called INS on me." "I figured if I just... reported Pablo missing, they would stop looking." "I really did become a better person that day." "I stopped drinking, I stopped fighting." "I got myself together, started trying to live the way he wanted me to, the way he would have." "I took his name, but..." "I tried to do the right thing with it." "The thing is..." "You try to put it behind you..." "Try to tell yourself it's in the past..." "But every day I would wake up and wonder..." "Wonder if today is the day..." "It came back to me." "You think something like that would fade after all these years." "But it's the first thing I thought this morning." "And now here I am." "Did you find anything when you visited this warehouse?" "No." "Even when you visited the location in your dreams, still nothing?" "What do you think that means?" "I don't know." "That I'm still missing something." "Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe there's just nothing there?" "Then why would my subconscious keep pointing me to it?" "Because you need an excuse." "An excuse for what?" "To stay right where you are." "To keep everything just like it is." "You can't admit that moving represents a threat to your arrangement, so you simply create a distraction, some unfinished business, a reason you have to stay put." "But it's a mirage." "You've manufactured a mystery that does not exist and can never be solved so that you never have to face the thing that you're afraid of, which is letting yourself move to Portland." "You're an intelligent man, detective." "I believe that if you step back, you'll begin to see the situation for what it is... a frightened mind grasping at straws." "Welcome to Ricky's tacos." "What can I get you?" "Your order, please?" "Uh..." "Large ice tea." "Is that all for you today?" "Yeah." "Yes?" "I'm not gonna lie, Michael,I willbe ..." "Incredibly sad to see you go." "But with everything you've gone through," "I really think it's the best thing for you and Hannah." "I hope so." "So..." "Well, I've just..." "Given my notice..." "I'm not going for a while." "You can save the hug." "Are you gonna...?" "All right." "All right, I'm gonna make sure you land on a good spot up there." "Thanks." "Carl, would you listen to me for one minute?" "Call off your dogs." "Our problem just walked out of my office." "He resigned."