After a woman named Nancy Rubic is found comatose in a graveyard behind St. Julian’s church after nearly being strangled to death, Charlie and Rex discover the crime to be connected with a twenty year-old cold case regarding the victim's long-lost brother Malcom.
Tropes
- Accidental Murder:Twenty years ago, Draper accidentally killed Malcom when he was driving home drunk during a rainstorm. Not wanting to go to jail, he covered it up by burying him in the cemetery while a landscaping job was being done on it. Then when Nancy moved back to the neighborhood in the present day and started asking him questions about her brother's disappearance, Draper became paranoid that she had figured out what happened to Malcom and tried to kill her, only for Tyler's arrival to force him to flee before he could finish the job. His desperation and increasing paranoia also drove him to break into Rita Collins’s house to try and find Nancy’s journals believing that they contained evidence that pointed to him as being Malcom’s killer after hearing Charlie and Sarah talking about them after Malcom's body is unearthed.
- Chekhov's Gun: The noisy fan belt in Ben Draper's truck. It was recorded using Tyler Holden's paranormal investigation gear on the night Draper tried to kill Nancy at the cemetery, revealing him to be the one responsible for the murder attempt on Nancy's life and Malcom's death twenty years ago.
- Constructive Body Disposal: Draper hid Malcom's body twenty years ago in the cemetery while it was having a landscaping job done at the time, hiding it underneath an area that would be later covered with stone tiles. But since the body wasn't buried as deep as what caskets normally are or inside a pine box, its scent was able to be caught by Rex and unearthed.
- Crime After Crime: Had the authorities caught him and found where he hid Malcom's body before the events of the episode, Draper would be facing charges of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and indignities to a human body. But now in the present day, because of his desperation to keep his involvement in Malcom's death a secret, he's added to the list the crimes of attempted murder, breaking and entering, theft, and assaulting a police officer. Draper's punishment back then would have been bad, but now it's going to be far worse.
- Dysfunctional Family: While talking to Charlie, Ben Draper (the Rubic family's longtime neighbor) mentions how Malcom's disappearance completely tore his family apart. Nancy and her mother ended up leaving town, while their father stuck around long enough to drink himself to death. In Draper's words, it was "tragic as hell".
- Foreshadowing: After Malcom's body is unearthed from the cemetery in front of a crowd of onlookers, Draper is the first to approach Charlie asking questions about whether or not it is actually Malcom. Not long after, when Charlie and Rex go to Rita's house about someone breaking in, they discover cedar chips on the floor, hinting that the culprit was at the cemetery. It leads to the revelation that Draper is behind everything, having gone after Rita upon overhearing that she was keeping Nancy's diaries, afraid they contained information pointing to him being Malcom's killer.
- Fortune Teller: Rita Collins, a psychic advisor who Nancy frequently visited when she was trying to find her brother when she decided he was dead, claiming to be communicating with Malcom’s spirit. Nancy also left her journals with her recording her dreams and visions about Malcom, making Draper paranoid enough to break into Rita's house to steal them thinking they contained information pointing to him as being Malcom's killer.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Draper hid Malcom's body twenty years ago underneath the tilestones in the St. Julian's cemetery, it being the perfect opportunity as he was helping with the landscaping job that was being done on it at the time. Charlie even admits that it was actually a smart idea, even though it failed due to him not being buried very deep or sealed inside a pine box, which allowed Rex to find the scent and allow his skeletal remains to be unearthed the next morning.
- It's All About Me: While Draper didn't mean for Malcom’s death to happen, it becomes evident that the only thing he cares about is making sure the events of twenty years ago can't be traced back to him, even if it meant ruining the lives of so many people or increasing the body count.
- Long-Lost Relative: When she was six, Nancy's older brother Malcom suddenly disappeared one day without a trace while he was walking home from his math tutor's house. Afterwards, she spent the next twenty years trying to figure out what happened to him, her childhood home's kitchen filled with maps and pictures indicating every possible lead to his whereabouts (although she didn't have high hopes of finding him alive as Charlie surmises upon noticing the contacts for psychics and ghost hunters amongst all of it). Draper however ended up catching wind of it, leading to him trying to kill her to keep his involvement in Malcom's disappearance a secret. After the case is solved, Nancy decides to give Malcom a funeral so he can be properly laid to rest, with Charlie, Rex, Sarah, and rest of the SJPD promising to attend.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Charlie, Sarah, and Donovan discuss over the course of the episode whether or not Nancy actually had psychic connections with her brother or if it was all just a coincidence that her dreams led to Malcom’s body being found.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Charlie really should've been more careful of how loud he was talking to Sarah at the graveyard about Nancy's journals recording her dream encounters with Malcom when there was a crowd of people near the gate. It made Draper (who was among the crowd) paranoid enough to think there was incriminating evidence inside the journals and went to go try and steal them from Rita, causing her to get hurt.
- Paranormal Investigation: Tyler Holden, a paranormal researcher who is the host of the web show Haunted Truth. He was suggested by one of his fans to go check out the St. Julian's cemetery for EVP (Electromagnetic Voice Phenomenon) when he found Nancy comatose after someone tried strangling her to death with a scarf. He also wound up picking up faint audio of Nancy being assaulted and the noisy fan belt in Ben Draper's truck. Turns out the fan who suggested him to check out the cemetery was none other than Nancy herself.
- Psychic Link: Nancy claims to have this with Malcom, saying that he speaks to her in her dreams while keeping journals recording all of them and leaving them with Rita. Hearing about the journals makes Draper paranoid enough to think there’s incriminating evidence that traces Malcom's murder back to him, and desperately tries to steal them from Rita. After Nancy wakes up from her coma, she claims to Charlie and Sarah that Malcom approached her in her dreams, her brother having wanted to thank Charlie and that his spirit can finally be at peace now that his killer has been brought to justice.
- Revisiting the Cold Case: Twenty years ago, an eleven year-old boy named Malcom Rubic disappeared one day while walking home from his math tutor's house. The SJPD worked tirelessly to find out what happened to him, only for the case to go cold due to a body not turning up and there not being enough evidence to be gathered on it. Donovan is excited about the possibility of finally solving it when he believes the case to be connected to the one in the present day involving Malcom's sister Nancy.
- The Scapegoat: Floyd Walker, Malcom's old math tutor who was the prime suspect for his disappearance twenty years ago. He claims the only reason he was accused was because he's gay (despite Charlie protesting that those accusations were the result of it being another time) and that Floyd's life and reputation was ruined by that one incident. Not helping his situation were the accusations partially stemming from him being fired from his teaching job three years prior to the incident after being accused of inappropriate (though non-sexual) misconduct with a student. Father Xavier later reveals that Floyd had talked to him about Malcom, not because he killed him (which he didn't), but because he felt responsible for what happened due to him refusing to give Malcom a ride home on the night he disappeared, believing that the events of that day wouldn't have happened if he just agreed to do it. Because of it, he has been remorseful of what happened ever since.
- She Knows Too Much: Draper tried to kill Nancy because he believed that she possessed information that pointed to him as being Malcom's killer, and would've succeeded if not for Tyler's arrival forcing him to flee the scene and leave her comatose. He later tries to kill Charlie when the latter figures everything out, but gets jumped from behind by Rex while his guard is down.
- Spanner in the Works: Had Tyler's arrival at the cemetery not forced him to flee and leave Nancy comatose, Draper would have succeeded in killing her. Not to mention Tyler also inadvertently attaining incriminating evidence via his equipment picking up the sound of the noisy fan belt in Draper's truck.
