When an environmental activist named Frank Joseph is killed during a break-and-enter at a water bottling plant located in the local native reserve, all evidence points towards his partner-in-crime Allora Crawford, but Charlie and Rex aren't convinced and set out to find the truth.
Tropes
- Big Sister Instinct: Frank's sister Odina is a Tribal Police officer and was keeping Allora safe from the authorities and the hitman targeting her, reluctant about leaving her in the hands of Charlie and the SJPD.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Alan Booth. He was in charge of the plant's development, but had no intention of ever building it. Instead, he had been secretly using one half of the money meant for the plant's planning and testing phases to create roadblocks to prevent the construction from ever starting, while depositing the other half into an offshore account. As a result, he was screwing over both the Evans Company while ruining their reputation, and depriving the reserve's populace of the water treatment plant they so desperately needed for years. Frank stumbled upon evidence that would reveal the whole scheme, but was killed (luckily not before he hid it) trying to escape while Booth covered his tracks and used Frank's bloody bandana to frame his boss Rosalynn Evans. Finally, Booth hired a hitman to kill Frank's partner Allora out of paranoia that she saw what happened when he realized she was at the plant too after finding her backpack and assuming she took the drive, with Booth also paying the hitman to take the fall for everything in case he failed to do the job. Talk about a real scumbag.
- Rosalynn Evans herself to a lesser extent. Turns out the Evans Company had been extracting water amounts from the reserve’s lakes far beyond its legal amounts for years, landing her in trouble with the law. As compensation for it and Booth's crimes, Donovan tells Evans that the plant's construction must be state of the art and started within the next six months, and must be finished before the end of next year, all the while supplying the Reserve's populace with clean bottled water free of charge. She begrudgingly accepts his demands.
- Frame-Up:
- Allora Crawford (Frank's partner) is falsely accused of murdering him since she was supposedly the only other person there that night.
- Rosalynn Evans is also framed when after Frank's bloody bandana is found in her office. She's found to be not guilty since Rex did not pick up Frank's scent the first time he was in there. It was actually planted there by Booth to frame her for the murder.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Frank hid the drive containing information about Booth’s embezzling scheme underneath a pipe inside the plant, marking the location with a symbol meaning "forever" in his people's language (also the same symbol tattooed on Allora), banking on the hope that Booth wouldn't know what the symbol meant and assume it was just another random piece of graffiti.
- She Knows Too Much: Booth hired a hitman to kill Allora when he found her backpack at the plant that night, becoming paranoid that she was the one who took the drive containing the info about his crimes and also saw him kill Frank. Fortunately, the hitman is apprehended before he can do the job.
- Soapbox Sadie: Frank spearheaded the protests against the Evans Company about them not providing the treatment plant they promised when he believed the reserve’s polluted water was responsible for his and his sister Odina's parents' deaths. His activism kicked up a notch when he and Allora decided to break into the plant using Connor's (a plant worker Frank was friends with and wanted to support his message) key card to find proof that the facility was never going to be built (he was right, as Booth was secretly embezzling the company's money for years) and to tag the place with graffiti (Frank was also attempting to spike the plant's water supply with E. Coli but chose not to go through with it). Odina and Allora take over for Frank in voicing the reserve’s environmental opinions after his death and when the plant’s construction finally begins.
- Stealing from the Till: Alan Booth is revealed to have been stealing half of the money used for the planning and testing phase of the plant's development while using the other half to create roadblocks to prevent the construction from ever starting, keeping the money flow going. He murdered Frank after the latter broke into the plant and tried to escape with the drive containing the information about Booth's crimes and later hired a hitman to kill Allora after assuming she took it and caught him in the act.
- Taking the Heat: The hitman cops to murdering Frank after getting captured. Turns out his lawyers work for the same company that also represents the Evans Company, which clues Charlie in that the murderer is a higher-up member of the company.
- Water Source Tampering: During the break-in, Frank was planning on spiking the treatment plant's water supply with E. Coli, which would've made everyone who drank from it extremely sick. Fortunately, with some words from Allora and realizing he was better than that, Frank decided not to go through with it.
