After a woman named Chelsea Waters is found dead in the snow, Charlie and Rex are left with a pool of seemingly unconnected suspects.
Tropes
- Accidental Murder: Chelsea approached Dr. Copeland with DNA tests revealing him to be the father of her and several other children instead of the intended male donors. Not wanting to let the truth be revealed out of fear that it would destroy so many lives, he followed her to the quarry where she planned to meet up with Hunter and tried to take them by force after failing to convince her to hand them over willingly, which ended in Copeland accidentally pushing her off a cliff to her death.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: As Hunter lampshades, Chelsea’s death would’ve most likely been avoided if he had just listened to what she wanted to tell him in the first place instead of blowing her off and causing Ross to try and get rid of her himself.
- The Baby Trap: Chelsea had gone to New Dawn Fertility Clinic under claims that she was pregnant with Hunter's child. The doctor she was seeing, Dr. Liam Copeland, figured out that she was lying due to her body language and him catching her trying to steal papers with the clinic's letterhead, making Charlie think she was doing it to extort money from Hunter. The truth turns out to be far more complicated, as she was actually there to confront Copeland about him being the father of her, Hunter, and several other children.
- Family of Choice: What Hunter and Ross declare their relationship to be after the case is solved, with Hunter declaring that genetics don’t matter and that he will always see Ross as his father.
- Gene Hunting: Chelsea is revealed to have actually been gathering DNA evidence for the sake of locating family members ever since her mother's death three years prior, revealing her to have at least a dozen half-siblings. Two of them are Hunter and a dental hygienist from Torbay named Kayleigh Pierce, with Ross claiming to be their father due to an affair he had while trying to conceive children with his late wife. He isn't, much to his disbelief. Their real father is Dr. Copeland.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: Dr. Copeland is the biological father of over a dozen children, including Hunter Dobson, Kaleigh Pierce, and the late Chelsea Waters, having artificially inseminated their mothers with his own sperm after the intended samples got corrupted.
- Medical Rape and Impregnate: Dr. Copeland artificially inseminated over a dozen women with his own sperm over the span of three decades after the intended donor samples were too corrupted to use, with Copeland considering himself a "perfect specimen" due to having a high IQ and no health problems. But as Charlie points out, despite Copeland’s good intentions, he still did it without their consent, which makes him guilty of several counts of fertility fraud. The past eventually came back to haunt Copeland in the form of Chelsea, one of the children he conceived, possessing evidence of his crimes while she was looking for her other family members after her mother died.
- Offing the Offspring: Chelsea was one of Dr. Copeland's biological daughters, whom he accidentally pushed off a cliff to her death trying to retrieve the DNA tests from her. His somber tone as he confesses makes it clear that he deeply regrets his actions.
- Pillow Pregnancy: Sarah is reluctantly talked into doing this and pretending to be Charlie's fiancé so they can get Rex into the fertility clinic to conduct a search without a warrant for evidence proving Dr. Copeland guilty of Chelsea's murder.
- Poor Communication Kills: Chelsea was trying to get in contact with Hunter about how she discovered the two of them to be half-siblings. However, she ended up shooting herself in the foot by writing extremely cryptic messages to him that instead made her come off as a crazy stalker, prompting Hunter to look the other way and Ross to try and get rid of her before she causes trouble for them. Hunter eventually came to regret his actions upon finding her dead at the bottom of the cliff after finding out what Ross tried to do, believing that everything could've been avoided had Hunter just heard her out in the beginning.
- Stalker with a Crush: For months, Chelsea had been stalking local snowboarding star Ross Dobson asking him all sorts of weird personal questions and saying cryptic things such as them "being family", prompting Hunter to keep his distance and repeatedly tell her to leave him along. She was actually trying to talk to him about how she discovered the two of them to be half-siblings, but accidentally sabotaged herself with her poor choice of words.
- Taking the Heat:
- When Charlie confronts him about his lies and then mentions that the evidence suggests there might be more than one person involved in Chelsea’s murder, Hunter immediately confesses to being the one who killed her. It doesn't take long for the team to figure out that he's protecting someone, who turns out to be his father Ross. He does however eventually admit to being the one who buried her body in the snow after finding out what Ross had done, thinking that he was the one who killed her and wanted to protect him from being sent to jail.
- Ross almost immediately follows suit with a written confession saying that he was the one who actually killed Chelsea. Allegedly, he believed her to be the product of an affair he had and wrote her a text pretending to be Hunter telling her to meet him at the quarry so he could get rid of her to prevent any controversies that could damage Hunter's career only to lead to a conflict ending in Chelsea falling to her death and Ross burying her in the snow. The team immediately figure out that he's lying due to his timeline not matching up with their forensics. In spite of being told this and that Hunter is actually not his biological son, he fervently declares that he is Hunter's father and doubles down on his false confession. He wasn't lying about the text he sent Chelsea however, meaning he still had an indirect hand in her death.
