Cold Case – Recap & Review – The Long Blue Line

photo: cbs

Cold Case
The Long Blue Line

Original Air Date: May 3, 2009

Amanda – Senior Reviewer
amanda@thetwocentscorp.com

It seems like the first episode of a two-parter always feels like one big setup for the second part, and this one was, sadly, no exception. Seemingly unrelated plot bits, Pearl Jam, and a whole passel of red herrings make for an episode that will hopefully make a lot more sense next week. We did get a pretty dramatic cliff-hanger, though…and this marks the first time in Cold Case’s long history that there is no closing montage. Weird.

18-year-old Kate Butler, one of the first female cadets at Pennsylvania Military Institute, was reported missing in 2005, but when her body turns up buried in a mismarked grave and stuffed in a school-issue foot locker, it becomes a homicide. The first interviews are with Kate’s parents, Hank and Charlotte. Hank, a PMI graduate, was staunchly opposed to Kate attending, even telling her not to bother coming home if she couldn’t hack it. Charming! To his credit, he regrets it, leaving his PMI ring in the interview room. Charlotte, meanwhile, produces a stack of hate mail Kate received before even setting foot on campus.

Lilly and Scotty visit PMI, where they learn that Kate never filed any complaints against any of the other cadets, and was determined to be one of the guys, even to the point of shaving her own head, a la GI Jane. Another cadet, Lawrence Gardner, shows them to Kate’s room, the only one with a lockable door. Her roommate was the only other female cadet, Courtney, who lasted a week and ended up attending Bryn Mawr. Courtney recalls an upperclassman, James Addison, who was determined to make life hell for both of them. She says he told her to walk out through the front door or be carried out in a box.

When Scotty and Lilly interview Addison, he admits to trying to run off Courtney and Kate, as well as all the other “weak” cadets. Natural selection, he calls it. Lovely. He, however, says that Kate earned the others’ respect. In a flashback, we see another first-year cadet, Stuart Ryan, being ordered to do ten pull-ups. He can’t, but Kate can easily. This, predictably, wasn’t popular with Stuart.

Back at the office, Scotty and Lilly review Kate’s medical records, which include a visit to the infirmary for a cut on her hand two weeks before her death. Kate claimed the cut was from a bottle, but Lilly, Scotty, and I aren’t buying it. Meanwhile, Scotty’s been combing through the hate mail, finding several letters referring to the angel with the flashing sword that God stationed at the entrance to the Garden of Eden after He expelled Adam and Eve.

The next morning, Lilly and Vera chat with Stuart, who says Kate motivated him, and he points to a civilian who harassed her on football game days while she marched with the color guard. Kat and Jeffries track down the man, Jebediah Buford, a 1982 graduate, and determine that he sent some of the hate mail. Conveniently, he also lives four blocks from the cemetery, and his son, Brandon, was rejected the same year Kate was accepted. Jeb cops to the mail, but tells them to talk to Kate’s boyfriend, a black cadet with whom she was seen having coffee.

Keith Henderson, the only black cadet in her company, insists that he and Kate weren’t dating, they were just friends. The night of the murder, he was on “tours” (punishment) for being seen skulking around the ladies’ latrine, and reluctantly, he recalls seeing a male cadet fleeing the scene and then finding Kate unconscious in the shower, bleeding from a gash on her hand. She refused to tell him what happened, and when Keith reported the incident to Commandant Murillo, Kate denied it. Murillo tells Lilly and Stillman that he assigned an upperclassman to keep an eye on Kate: the charming James Addison.

Lilly visits Addison again, and it turns out he feels guilty for not protecting Kate. In a flashback, he tells of seeing Kate’s injury and encouraging her to tell him what happened. Kate finally opened up, telling him of a cadet with a saber confronting her in the shower. She grabbed the sword, and he pulled it out of her hand, resulting in the cut. Refusing to identify him, she instead insisted on fighting her own battles.

Lilly then goes to a diner, and, with the help of sign-in/sign-out sheets and the Garden of Eden hate mail, she seems to zero in on Lawrence Gardner. Unfortunately, she’s run off the road while driving home, crashes through a guardrail, and winds up in the river. Oh, snap!

In other news, Kat and Scotty both seem to be making some progress with their love lives. Sort of. Kat saucily accepts a date from ADA Bell, which came out of nowhere, but was kind of cute anyway. Meanwhile, The Girl Who Won’t Go Away, Frankie, announces that she’s finally filed for divorce from her husband. Scotty, however, doesn’t bite, saying he’s tired of the back and forth. Me, too! Frankie storms off, saying she thinks he’s making a big mistake. I don’t! I’d love to say we’ve seen the last of her, but I’ve said that before, and she just keeps coming back, like a stubborn head cold.

Lilly, meanwhile, takes this case pretty personally, as one might expect from Philadelphia’s first female Homicide detective. In a revealing conversation with Scotty, she recalls repeated harassment by an older detective, Walter Harris, who even hung her out to dry on a case, but she never reported it, saying it would only get worse. I’m guessing we’ll learn a whole lot more about this next episode, as well as the mysterious letter from Lil’s dad. That is, if she lives to tell about it. Cue suspenseful Pearl Jam music.