“You go pulling a thread, there’s no telling what all unravels.”
When Richard Dowd, son of defense attorney Frank Dowd, is found dead, Voight and the Intelligence Unit initially assume retaliation. Richie appears to be a normal, well-rounded kid. He’s captain of the lacrosse team, was accepted early to Yale…so who wanted Richie dead? Things get a bit more complicated with Voight is told the murder weapon used to kill Richie matches perfectly to a case Voight worked seventeen years ago. Ballistics have come a long way in nearly twenty years, and the lab confirms that the man Voight and his former team put away all those years ago is innocent.
As if investigating two cases, one being nearly twenty years old, isn’t hard enough, Voight has his former boss (now Lieutenant) Denny Woods shadily telling him to not look into the old case. Why? When Voight attempts to pull the old file, he’s told that not only is the file missing, but many of Woods’ files are now mysteriously missing. Valentine, the man who was likely wrongfully convicted all those years ago, has a daughter who Voight seeks out to find the truth. She kept many pieces from the case, including a picture of a receipt time-stamped close enough to the murder that her dad couldn’t have done it. But who did she give the receipt to? Woods. So, it’s obvious Woods is shady and destroyed this case…but why?
Voight is no angel—we all know he’s done terrible things. But he does not stand for innocent lives being ruined, which brings out an emotional side during this hour for him. Can you imagine what it would be like to find out that you helped put an innocent man in prison for life? Yikes. He sets out to make it right, which includes a not-so-nice encounter with Valentine.
Meanwhile, Halstead and Olinsky are unsuccessful at their attempt to get access to Richie’s phone via Frank Dowd. So for the second attempt, Atwater and Ruzek take a stealthier approach. Atwater keeps the ME occupied while Ruzek sneaks in and gets Richie’s thumbprint. Once the team has access, the case falls into place. Richie has many revealing pictures of a girl on his phone—pictures that ended up all over the internet. The team finds the girl, JoJo, and learns the pictures Richie distributed destroyed her to the point she contemplated suicide.
When the team brings JoJo in, she reveals she dated Richie a while back and he didn’t exactly take the breakup well. But before they can really get into it, Woods shows up and turns one of Voight’s classic threats back on him, “Quit digging into this, or we’re going for a ride.” Um, excuse me. Is he threatening to take Voight to the silos? Unacceptable. Get him, Voight.
And that, he does. Naturally, Intelligence doesn’t stop looking into the case. Voight keeps his distance while Erin takes the lead. The team finds that JoJo’s best friend, Eric, happens to be the son of Woods’ most trusted CI, Mark—the CI who gave Woods the intel that lead to Valentine’s arrest and conviction. Aha! Jay pieces everything together for the team—Mark killed the man all those years ago, kept the murder weapon, and his son used the same gun to kill Richie for retaliation for his friend. Goodness.
The problem, though, is amid all this puzzling, Woods drags Voight to a review hearing for directly disobeying orders. Racing against the clock, Erin and the rest of the team work to get a confession out of Mark before the review hearing ends. And that, they do. In fact, the review hearing ends with Woods being stripped of all police power.
I had one problem with this hour…in Voight’s absence, it was Erin who took over as lead. Look, I love Erin and think she’s fantastic at her job. But since Antonio’s departure, Jay has clearly become Voight’s second. So why not Jay? And if we go off seniority alone, why not Olinsky? It’s not a huge deal, I guess, just something that bothered me.
What did you think of the episode? Did you even notice Burgess was missing? (Because I didn’t.) Share your thoughts below!
