Will Trent (Season 1), Episode 5: In this weekly episode, Will and Faith investigate the robbery-cum-shooting involving Chris Conlon, a wealthy man who owns a nightclub. It seems like the job of a local criminal uprising, but it might prove to be an insider job at the end of the investigation.
Will deals with his personal issues involving Angie. The two remain unconvincing as a couple, and the episode contains hints for us to pick up on. Angie and Ormewood resolve another murder in the suburbs but uncover a larger conspiracy in an unconnected case.
This episode recap and ending explainer of Will Trent’s episode 5, “The Lookout,” answers all the questions you have about how the mysteries were solved in this episode. Also, just a heads up that Will Trent will now return on 15th February on ABC due to the State of the Union issue in America.
Will Trent (Season 1), Episode 5 Recap:
“The Look Out”
Will and Angie fight as Betty goes missing. The latter mistakenly left the door open, and the little dog could not be found. Betty actually never left, and Angie sees this as an attempt by Will to expose her as a mess-up. The relationship has hit another roadblock. A stickup ring hits tech mogul and former football professional Chris Conlan outside his club.
They attempt to steal his expensive gold chain, but Chris’ partner Brooke tries to stop the robber. In the chaos, she is shot and rushed to the ICU. Faith gets word that her son, Jeremy, has been injured in the stampede outside the club where Brooke was shot.
She reprimands him for illegally entering the club as Will takes an interest in the shooting. Using his innate detective skills, Trent deduces that the robber was alerted by a “lookout” from inside the club that Chris was leaving the premises.
The officer informs him that a local stickup ring has recently been hitting people and disappearing into thin air. Trent bets with Officer O’Hara that he will solve the case on the same night. Then, he uses the photos from the party to ascertain where the lookout might have been posted and taken photos. He cracks the code, and that leads the police to Ava Green, who owns Deux Peches, the company who was responsible for the photos.
They knock at her door and discover that Trent’s hunch is right. Green was running a ring from her apartment. But it was not the one that made the hit on Chris Conlan. The officers discovered that the car outside the apartment was cold and had not been used that night.
This means that even though they nab a ring responsible for many robberies, they are not behind this one. Colan’s expensive chains are not recovered from the house either. Strangely enough, Green seems to have a crush on Trent, and they flirt as he arrests her.
Angie and Ormewood are called to solve the murder of a realtor in the house he had just listed. The neighbors confirmed that Sean Hinchliffe, the victim, came that morning for an open house. Subsequently, someone with a gun murdered him. Sean’s practices are called out to be devious by an HOA representative.
She labels his methods as a “scam” and says that a bereaved housebuyer could have committed this murder. The cops call in the realtors who worked with Sean. In fact, one of them sticks out, and Ormewood personally questions him. Moreover, it turns out that the man is responsible for handling the tech backend for the firm. Sean used to keep the money he owed to his employees in a blockchain escrow that could only be accessed with a key.
With him dead, the account is frozen. But the tech guy tells Ormewood that someone accessed that account an hour ago, indicating whoever did that is the killer. The techie can also track down the person who used the key to drain the money. His name is Gregory Pardee.
The history between the two men is that they were partners in a bitcoin startup that was wildly successful before this. But, before the money could be divided, Sean pulled Gregory out of the deal and took all of it himself.
Ormewood extracts a confession at Gregory’s house, and Gregory is arrested for the murder. Angie also finds an escort in the house with a Zero Mile tattoo. Surprisingly, this happens to be a trafficking ring that Angie has been working for a long time to apprehend. She feels she can help the girl, who was most probably sold by the ring, and that the girl will become a witness in the trial against them. This part of the episode stands resolved with this revelation.
Ava Green tries to talk to Will about the case and explain her innocence. She says that the men apprehended from her apartment coerced her to become a part of the ring and gave her a tiny portion of those robberies. But Will is not ready to trust her now, and her intel proves worthless. Trent and Faith meet with Pudge, the general manager of the nightclub. He speaks highly of Chris and calls him a generous man. The business is running fine with no money problems, either. Narrowing down suspects that would target Chris is becoming hard for the cops.
They meet Chris in the hospital, but he does not suspect Pudge or any specific individual. He is mostly concerned about Brooke, as the next hours are critical for her survival. As the cops are coming around the building, Pudge falls from above and straight onto the car. Two disturbing facts are revealed when Pudge’s body is sent for a post-mortem. First, the fall did not kill him, hinting that someone murdered Pudge by grasping at his neck. Secondly, the chains retrieved from him are fake and not the originals.
Will’s ego is hurt as his hunches and deductions are not working in this case. Angie’s tantrums have been stressful, too, and we can see that in his demeanor at home with Betty. He even starts taking down a wall when he spots a small crack in it to see what is behind but is stopped by Angie, who has come by to pick up her pack of cold creams from the house. Faith and Will bond over the best breakup titles in modern music memory, and then it hits Will midway: Chris Conlon was not the victim.
Will Trent (Season 1), Episode 5 Ending, Explained:
Who was responsible for getting Brooke shot and stealing Conlon’s chains?
The camera footage outside Pudge’s building reveals that Chris came to him before the cops could talk to Pudge. He killed him to cover up for the fact that he wanted to commit insurance fraud by asking Pudge to steal the chains.
Debt was coming due, so Pudge got fake replicas of them made, wore them to the party that night, and insured the chains before the robbery. The case is clear as day now. Chris is brought in for questioning, but he contends that he did not kill Pudge. He did go to his apartment that day to talk to Pudge for a different reason.
He concedes to the insurance fraud but says this was pre-planned with an empty gun. Pudge’s gun is always empty and never misses out on specific instructions like this. The loaded gun was too careless for Pudge, hence raising the suspicion that someone else gave Pudge a different gun. Only Lucas, Chris’ personal manager, knew about his plan other than Pudge and Chris. So, in all probability, he was the one who gave Pudge a different gun that almost killed Brooke. He actually wanted Pudge to kill Chris and not Brooke mistakenly.
Will talks to Ava about Lucas. She calls him a leech and believes he is the one who killed Pudge. Furthermore, Lucas had a reputation for being promiscuous and chasing every girl in his social circles. Will takes Ava to her apartment for something she claims can crack the case.
On her computer, Will finds a photo from a previous party when Chris was not present. It shows Brooke and Lucas kissing, and Will deduces that Lucas did all of this because he is envious of Chris’ success. He has always wanted to be in Chris’ shoes and his lifestyle.
That is the reason why he has been siphoning money from Chris’ business, throwing him into financial trouble. The cops go with Chris to his office, where Lucas keeps the gun. But the safe does not open with Chris’ fingerprint, indicating that Lucas had changed it.
Chris calls Lucas to the office, and the cops wait for the same in the bar. They see another worker use her index finger to open the safe while Chris uses his thumb. He intentionally wanted some alone time with Lucas to kill him for what he did to Brooke.
They rush to the office, where they find Chris holding a gun to Lucas. On Will’s convincing argument, Chris lets Lucas go, and he is arrested. The case is solved, and Ava is released for helping the police with the evidence. Will declines her proposal for a relationship because he still believes Angie will come through. While sitting at his house alone with Betty, Angie does come back to talk things out. The two might patch up their relationship yet.
