I'm starting to get the impression it rains a lot in Seattle.
We're officially past the halfway point of the season, and nobody seems to be in any great hurry to resolve poor Rosie Larsen's murder. The threat of (probably) misplaced aggression against teacher Bennet Ahmed melted away like so much sugar in the torrential downpour as Stan, who I'm assuming didn't drive the guy down to the docks for a poignant heart-to-heart, decided at the last minute not to stomp him to death.
So Bennet is understandably irate when he comes home to find Det. Larsen questioning his wife again. The look on his face said it all: "I'm a suspect three weeks in a row? What about those snotty white kids?"
Before she's kicked out, Linden learns a few things. Namely, Mrs. Ahmed is unable to lift anything heavy due to pregnancy complications (which would appear to rule her out as the woman who loaded a body into a car) and that Bennet had been studying the Koran with a dude - named "Mohammed" - from the Green Lake Mosque.
Yes, last week's fuzzy commentary on racism came into much sharper focus last night as we were also "treated" to Mitch's mother's less-than-enlightened views on race mixing (but really, who doesn't have at least one racist grandparent?).
So the detectives are now looking into this Mohammed character, but not getting a lot of help from folks at the mosque, where they're reminded a non-white girl has been missing for almost a week and nobody on the police force appears to give a rat's ass (sorry Bubba, those Natalee Holloway cases are boffo TV ratings). This combined with Linden's combing through pictures of missing girls last week seems to indicate the serious possibility that a serial killer is at work.
I mean, between that and the use of the Neko Case track a couple weeks ago I'm just waiting for a "From Hell" letter to come in to the police station.
They're also told there are some 40 "Mohammeds" at the mosque, but just when all hope seems lost, Linden gets a tip leading them to an address in the city's Islamic district.
They need the break, y'see, because their warrant for the Ahmeds' house was pulled when one of the neighbors (telescope guy?) backed out.
Elsewhere, Linden's son Jack is getting tired of getting jerked around, and so are we. *Of course* they don't make their flight to California, and *of course* her fiancé is not not answering her calls. This whole non-mystery of whether or not she'll leave before the case is wrapped up is not just insulting to anyone with a frontal lobe, it's a waste of time.
At least she tries to make it up to Jack by teaching him to shoot. There's a "Cat's in Cradle" lyric in there somewhere.
Richmond seems to be taking the unwise track of risking his whole election on the Bennett issue. His adherence to his ethics is admirable, if politically suicidal. Jamie reminds him he could help a lot more people than just one guy by dumping Bennet and winning the election. And if that wasn't enough, his impromptu tryst with Gwen is interrupted by Mayor Adams' campaign ad, which has to be the worst case of coitus interruptus ever.
To top it off, the mayor calls a special session of the city council to cut funding to the All Stars program, even though Bennet hasn't been accused of anything. Richmond gives a pretty speech, but it fails to sway anybody. At this point, it looks like there's *no way* he can pull this election off at the last minute, which of course means he's totally going to pull the election off at the last minute.
The mosque dude's tip leads to a butcher's shop, and after Holder pulls a Brad Pitt from Se7en (to get around that pesky probable cause thing), they walk through a sinister array of hooks and meat cutting implements to discover...an FBI strike team who throw Linden and Holder to the ground and cuff them. Things just got federal, yo.
Next week: The FBI and Seattle PD compare notes, and I bet Linden misses another flight.
