The Courthouse

Did anyone else catch Detective Box's very calm delivery of the fact that he would be retiring after Naz's trial was finished? To Helen's surprise, and skepticism, he says he is calling it quits after 33 years on the job. "Enough is enough," he tells her in the stairway of the court house. He wants to spend more time with his family. (We think; it's always hard to tell whether or not Box is being sarcastic.) Could Box be feeling guilty or doubtful of Naz's involvement in the crime? If he is, it's too late. They will be going to trial and Helen will be pulling strings to ensure that she wins the case. A young, white, rich girl stabbed to death in her own home? Someone will be found guilty of that type of heinous crime.

In an odd scene at the coroner's office, we get to see Helen in action. She always seemed a bit sympathetic to Naz, but like Box and Stone, she has a job to do. She takes an image of Naz's cut-up hand to Harry the coroner and coaches him through the angle the prosecution wants him to take. On top of that, Helen obtains street-cam footage from Box that shows the two rude men getting in Naz's cab and him kicking them out. Then, it shows Andrea climbing in the back seat and the cab lingering before they both drive off together.

"He chose her!" Helen says, confidently. The fact that Naz turned away two grown men, yet allowed a young woman in his car, will be the prosecution's evidence of "premeditation."

Helen is also in the process of interviewing the only TWO witnesses. The first is Trevor, a.k.a. the racist guy. The other is the neighbor who called the police, whom we find out is named Eugene. Trevor announces he will voluntarily bomb his testimony and she crosses him off her list, leaving only the weird — and suspicious? — neighbor.

The Streets Of New York

Stone decides to finally put on his thinking cap and get down and dirty with his quest for the truth. The show, as a whole, is more of an inside look at the judicial process from start to finish, rather than the whodunnit crime mystery many viewers thought it would be at first.

He hires a crime-scene photographer to come to Andrea's brownstone. There are some important findings in this scene:

1. There is a third floor to the brownstone that we haven't seen before.

2. The back-door lock is completely broken and won't even shut properly.

3. If the killer walked in through the front door and headed immediately upstairs, they couldn't, from that angle, see if anyone was at the kitchen table, where Naz woke up.

The photographer also finds blood on a leaf — "Could be squirrel blood, though."

Most importantly, Chandra and Stone realize that Trevor is a lying liar and that he was not alone that night. Intrepid (or foolish) Stone goes out in search of the mysterious man (that many of you are convinced killed Andrea.) The man's name is Duane Reade, and he leads Stone into a deserted basement of a motor room. The episode ends with a flash of blue light, and the feeling that something bad is about to happen to Stone.

Thoughts

Let's consider the possibility of Reade being our killer, since he has risen to the surface again as a suspect, which throws a wrench in the DA’s prosecution. We also meet one of Andrea's drug dealers, Cody, who seems like a pretty average guy, and obviously not the top of the drug-dealing food chain. Could Reade be connected to this guy? Ketamine is a not a common recreational party drug like coke or weed, so it shows that Andrea is in deep with a certain lifestyle. Selling drugs, however, was not one of Reade’s previous charges, so it’s unclear how he is connected as more than just a passerby with an attitude and a record.