Last week’s episode of Will Trent set up some hints for “Capt. Duke Wagner’s Daughter,” an episode that centers on Amanda Wagner. As the woman responsible for finding abandoned orphan Will and giving him his job, Amanda’s role as his boss is sometimes tough because she has to ignore her maternal instincts towards him. But in this episode, the script is flipped as Will does what he can to protect Amanda.
Season 2, Episode 5: “Capt. Duke Wagner’s Daughter” – Written by Inda Craig-Galván & Rebecca Murga
Flashback – 1995
A young Amanda Wagner (Sidney Park) is patrolling the streets of Atlanta in her police car. She sees an SUV swerving and pulls the driver over. In the backseat, she sees a box of nails and a gallon of bleach, which makes her raise her eyebrows.
Present
“Time to Pay,” reads the message scratched into the interior metal elevator doors. Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn) holds the nail used to write the threat as Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) and Faith Mitchell (Iantha Richardson) investigate. “It was a night janitor,” Will deduces based on the time of the message and the limited access to the GBI elevator. An admin, Caroline (Christina Wren), brings Amanda a box of employee files. Amanda once reported a janitor named Mr. Garza to human resources. They decide to pay Mr. Garza a visit.
As they approach Mr. Garza’s house, Will and Faith hear noises down the road. They run to investigate, seeing an SUV screeching away. Inside the house, they find Amanda on the ground holding the bloody, unconscious body of Mr. Garza. She looks horrified.
Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin) isn’t having a good morning. The automatic coffee maker didn’t work, his daughter Cooper (Jophielle Love) got a brush tangled in her hair, and his son, Max (Owen Trumbly), needs a permission slip signed and a lunch packed. Thankfully, Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) arrives to break the chaos. Michael tells her he doesn’t know where his wife Gina went, and she won’t return his phone calls. She suggests he take the day off, saying she will see if Franklin can back her up on a high-profile case they were just assigned. But Michael is desperate for a distraction. He asks what the case is. She tells him a GBI janitor was murdered, and the person of interest is none other than Amanda Wagner.
Mr. Garza’s home is a crime scene when Angie and Michael arrive. Will and Faith are surprised to see them, asking they they’re there. “They’re taking over this investigation,” declares a voice from behind. It’s GBI Director Edie Reynolds (Jenna Elfman). She’s heard about Angie’s fight to return to work early and expresses her admiration. Will protests this decision, but Edie explains that to avoid any collusion, the APD needs to handle this investigation. Faith leaves to go look for Amanda.
Inside the house, Angie and Michael begin to investigate when Will crouches near Mr. Garza’s body and begins to dictate notes into his tape recorder. Michael objects, but Angie says to let him do it. Will determines that the cause of death was trauma to the back of the head. Based on the coffee grounds on the counter and the outline of a missing antique grinder, he presumes that was the weapon. Will goes outside and sees Amanda and Faith talking with Edie. “I’m looking for a connection to make sure no one else ends up dead,” Edie says, asking Amanda if she knows of anyone who would be trying to threaten her. Amanda reluctantly brings up an arrest she made years ago, a serial rapist who was detained on drug charges. “Name’s Chuck Murray,” Amanda explains. “He was recently released, and he hates me.” Amanda doesn’t know how Chuck could be connected with Garza, but Edie says she will put out a search for Chuck Murray. Will recognizes the fear in Amanda’s faith, and after Edie walks away, he asks her why she’s holding this back. Amanda remains silent. “There’s more to this you’re not saying, and you and I both know it,” Will says as he walks away. Amanda thinks Faith is about to lay into her as well, but she gives her a hug instead.
Angie and Michael visit Mr. Dennis Murray (Don Henderson Baker), who says his son Chuck isn’t there and refuses to give them any information about him. “I know my son, and when that officer came around talking about Chucky dealing drugs, I knew that was a lie,” he tells them. Angie asks if she remembers the officer who arrested his son. He doesn’t, but he describes Amanda before kicking them out.
At the APD, Angie and Michael meet with Captain Heller (Todd Allen Durkin). They haven’t been able to track down Mr. Garza’s next of kin, his daughter Lee Anne. Heller remembers the janitor bringing his daughter to APD softball games when she was a kid and says it would be unlike her to be nonresponsive to their requests. But in the meantime, he instructs them to search Amanda’s condo since her DNA was identified on Mr. Garza’s body and home. On their way, Michael tells Angie that Gina’s sister is going to help him with the kids.
“I’m not here at all,” Will Trent tells Angie and Michael when they find him investigating Amanda’s condo, too. Faith is present too, but she says it’s to make sure nothing gets broken since she’s as close as family to Amanda. We see Will going through some banker boxes of files in Amanda’s home office. In one box, he finds a framed baby picture of himself. “What are you hiding from me this time, Amanda?” he asks the empty room.
Flashback – 1995
The man Amanda has pulled over, Chuck Murray (Chad Gall), is fishing for his license in his glove box as she stands at his window. Her eyes keep glancing back to the nails and bleach in the backseat. She asks him to hurry up, and he surprises her with an attack. His hand grabs Amanda’s collar and pulls her into the truck, her head hitting the top of the vehicle. He pushes her backward, and she falls to the ground. Chuck gets out, picks Amanda out, and throws her against the hood of his car.
“You look good, Amanda,” Chuck Murray (Michael Papajohn) says as he sits in her booth at a coffee shop. “You still think about me,” he says. “That night, we got real close.” Amanda warns Chuck to turn himself in. He talks about his time in prison and all the friends he made there. He doesn’t mind going back. “You confess what you did to me, and I’ll turn myself in,” he gives her an ultimatum. “If you don’t, I’ll do to you exactly what you did to me.” Chuck grins with malice. Amanda looks ready to cry.
In Amanda’s bedroom, Michael tries to call Gina and gets a message that her mailbox is full. He kicks a bag of dry cleaning on the floor in frustration but recoils when it is unexpectedly hard and heavy. Opening the bag, he calls Angie in and pulls out an antique coffee grinder.
At the GBI, Edie puts Amanda on administrative leave and collects her gun and badge. Angie and Michael discuss the case with Will and Faith. Will remembers that when Amanda got the nail in her tire (in the previous episode), she also complained about having misplaced her condo keys. “That’s how Murry got inside and planted the weapon,” he declares. Will starts to give more advice, but Angie stops him and Faith from helping further. When Amanda exits her meeting, Will asks her to come to his house. She declines, but when Caroline shares that reporters are waiting outside her building, Amanda agrees.
“I looked into Chuck Murray’s arrest,” Will tells Amanda in his living room. He asks what she’s hiding, and Amanda goes silent. He knows that she took a leave of absence from the APD in 1995 and that prior to this, her last official act was a traffic stop, for which no ticket was issued. “I tried to call it in,” Amanda confesses. “What I thought was a routine traffic stop took a bad turn fast.” Chuck Murray was close to raping her when she found something to stab the back of his hand with. He released his grip through his pain, leaving Amanda free to run into the road to stop a passing car for help. Chuck took that moment to get back in his car and drive away. Will asks why she didn’t report this. As a female cop up for a promotion and the daughter of Captain Duke Wagner, she couldn’t let it get out that she was almost bested by a man at a traffic stop. She told her father about it, and he agreed she should keep it a secret. “I didn’t see any other choices,” Amanda cries. She explains how, over the years, Chuck Murray got away with a series of rapes, always involving a woman with a flat tire, always the result of a nail puncture. Amanda tried to help one of them, who was ultimately too afraid to testify. “Two weeks later, they arrested him with 28 grams of coke.” Will realizes that is the exact limit to be considered an attempt to sell. “Say you didn’t…” Will asks. “I most certainly did,” Amanda reveals, confessing to planting the drugs on Chuck Murray in order to put him away. “I own what I did,” she says. “I’ve carried it for 30 years. Trust me. It has not been easy.”
The next morning, Amanda tries to leave Will’s house for a jog. “Absolutely not,” he warns her from the couch, where he is also in jogging gear with Betty. He insists on joining her. As they jog, Will reminds Amanda that she’s not alone anymore and doesn’t need to be so stubborn. He expresses his disappointment in learning what she did to Chuck Wagner, saying that he learned everything about being an investigator from her. But their conversation is halted when the red dot of a rifle scope lands on Amanda’s chest. Suddenly, they’re surrounded by a SWAT team and Amanda is pushed to the ground and handcuffed. Will says this is a mistake, asking them to call Edie Reynolds.
Angie goes to Faith to share that Lee Anne Garza’s address was found and she appears to be missing. Angie is going back to Dennis Murray’s house with a search warrant. “Do you want to not take a ride with me and not look at his house?” she asks since she knows Faith wants to help.
Amanda gets ready for a press conference as Will knocks on her door. He tells her Murray can’t hide forever, but she wants to come clean. “He robbed me of so much, and for a long time, I allowed it,” she explains. “I’m doing this for me, Will. I never thought I’d be choosing an outfit for the day I ended my career.” Will smiles at her and says, “Best dressed boss I’ll ever have.” She takes a deep breath before heading out to make her statement.
Angie and Faith meet Michael at Dennis Murray’s house. Michael’s face is scuffed up, and he reveals that he went to confront the man Gina was having an affair with, hoping to find out where she went. He didn’t know, but his wife’s sister says she does. Speakers on the front porch are blasting heavy metal music. They bang on the door, and Dennis answers. Angie shows him the search warrant, and Michael unplugs the speakers, which lets them hear sounds coming from a shed, which Dennis says is Chuck’s workshop. Angie detains Dennis while Michael and Faith break a lock off the door and enter the shed.
On the far wall of the shed are photos of Amanda with nails driven through her head. They hear a woman gasping on the other side of the wall, so they pry it apart to find Lee Anne Garza (Brittney Paul), alive and bound with duct tape. “We got you,” Faith comforts her.
