Description[]
After a piece of clothing belonging to a murder victim is found in an old van, the team reopens the 1998 murder of a high school girl who had a reputation for being promiscuous.
Synopsis[]
The episode begins in 1998. Students are seated in a classroom for Sex Ed as the teacher lectures them about safe sex and abstinence. A baseball jock named Jerry, starts to make fun of Carrie, the girl sitting next to him, by publicly mocking her about her promiscuity. She tells him to stop. Another girl, Tina, asks the teacher about abstinence (or not having sex until marriage), which prompts Jerry to taunt Carrie more, causing her to hit him with her binder in retaliation and the teacher ordering Jerry to leave the class. Fortunately for him, the bell rang, effectively ending class for the day and rendering the punishment moot. As Carrie stands up from her seat, Jerry assures her that he was just kidding, to which Carrie responds with a scoff as she leaves the class.
Later that night, Carrie is found dead and half-nude in the forest.
Almost a decade later, Lilly Rush and Nick Vera arrive at a crime scene, where the police are investigating an abandoned van in the middle of a field. Kat Miller was there overseeing the van search and called Rush over about a discarded shirt that was found in the van. The name on the tag said that it belonged to Carrie Swett, who was murdered back in 1998. Lilly hypothesizes that it must have been a rape gone wrong, prompting Homicide to re-open the case.
As the team looks at Carrie's case box, papers and photos recorded that Carrie was found bludgeoned to death with a stone and found in the forest half-nude. The only evidence was a set of Carrie's footprints and a ring that says Timothy, which prompted Lilly to think it definitely is a date gone wrong. The others agree with Lilly's hypothesis since the records also noted Carrie's promiscuous reputation at her school. To start the investigation, they track down the owner of the van named Wally, who was a custodian at Carrie's high school. The custodian frantically says he is innocent because he had let the jocks use the van to make out with girls, and the reason why the van was left in the field was because of the engine failing and he didn't want to pay to get it towed.
After finding out about this fact, Vera and Will Jeffries go see the baseball captain Jerry, who now works as a restaurant manager. When they ask about Carrie's shirt in the van, Jerry tells them that he was indeed making out with her in the custodian's van. However, while Carrie thought he did this because he liked her, Jerry's true intention was to humiliate her in front of the school, prompting Carrie to run away while Jerry still held onto the shirt. Jerry claimed it was just a joke. Vera asked where he was on the night Carrie was murdered, to which Jerry answered he was at an away baseball game. Vera tells him that they will check his alibi, but not before calling Jerry a "Grade-D Jackass" for pulling such a prank.
Wanting to find further answers, Lilly and her partner Scotty Valens pay a visit to Carrie's mother Sheila. Sheila doesn't believe her daughter's reputation and she found the way her daughter dressed to be adorable, not skanky. Ever since Carrie's father left them for Ohio, her daughter was all she had and Sheila loved her so much, she lights a candle for her on her birthday every year, wishing that whoever killed Carrie will be brought to justice. When Lilly and Scotty asked about Carrie, Sheila told them that every Saturday, she would take her to school, where she saw Tina waiting for Carrie. Sheila found it odd that Carrie would be going to school on a Saturday.
The team decides to go ask Tina, who told them that the reason why they were in school on Saturdays is because it was for the Hearts Wait club, a Christian after-school club that promotes abstinence and was headed by Nathan, a youth pastor. In the club, Carrie told everyone about how she wanted to be pure again because when she had her virginity taken away, she found that it was out of lust rather than love. The club sympathizes with her as Nathan comforts her. As the team looks at Carrie's yearbook, they not only confirmed that the Hearts Wait club is a legitimate club, but it also explains who Timothy is: an author of a Bible passage that talks about abstinence.
To prod further, Lilly and Vera go to the church where Nathan works and volunteers at. Nathan tells them that at the last club meeting (on the day Carrie died), she acted strangely. The members were doing a trust exercise where they talked about their deepest darkest secrets. When Tina, along with the rest of the members (Phil, Manny and Laurie), said their answers, Carrie couldn't believe what they considered to be their darkest secrets. Wanting to resolve this, Nathan tells everyone to write down their answers on a piece of paper and put it in the empty coffee can so that only God will know. After it was done, the meeting was over, but Carrie stayed a little to peek at one of the secrets. When she read one of them, she looked horrified and ran off, leaving Nathan confused. When Lilly asks about the can, Nathan tells them he dumped it, thinking that the secrets should be kept a secret.
Thinking that the secret Carrie found out led to her death, the team decides to interview the club members. They start with Laurie, who recalled Carrie talking to Phil as they witnessed the baseball team rushing down the hallway. When Carrie suggested that Phil was gay (since they were checking out the baseball team), the latter angrily denied the accusation. Though Carrie had no problem with it, Phil threatened her. This prompted their next interview with Phil (who is now a married father of two), who witnessed Carrie talking to a crying Laurie during Spanish class. Carrie asked what was wrong and Laurie tearfully revealed that she might be pregnant since she and her boyfriend Manny had premarital sex. As Carrie tried to comfort Laurie, Manny arrived and asked what was wrong. When he deduced that Laurie had told Carrie about this, Manny threatened to kill her and took Laurie away. They team questions Manny, who told them that the pregnancy turned out to be a scare and he saw Tina threatening Carrie in the stairway while he was at his locker. When they asked why, Manny said that all he could hear is that it was something Carrie saw. The team then went back to Tina. When they asked about her husband, she claimed he is in Iraq, but Lilly saw through the lie, bringing out papers that prove Tina's husband had filed for annulment. Lilly ordered her to stop lying. Tina came clean and revealed that Carrie walked in on the former describing to Nathan her sexual fantasies of him. During this, Carrie caught Nathan touching himself as Tina went on, prompting her to run off. Tina added that after Carrie's death, the Hearts Wait club disbanded and Nathan transferred out, leaving the team to suspect that Nathan killed Carrie to silence her about the incident.
Stillman confronted Nathan, pointing out that he was supposed to be a leader who guides his students into abstaining themselves until marriage but instead is a sinner himself for doing such a thing. Nathan sighed and confessed what he did was wrong, lamenting that he was weak. However, he insisted that he did not kill Carrie. When Stillman prodded about the secret Carrie discovered, Nathan admitted that he didn't throw the can away and the secret which Carrie read was haunting: "CARRIE IS GOING TO DIE!"
Because it was one of the members who wrote it, Lilly and Scotty decided to interview Tina, Phil, Manny and Laurie together. Lilly showed them the crime scene picture and said the footprints showed that Carrie tried to run in all four directions but was blocked, thinking that there were large things blocking her escape. Those large things turned out to be all four of them: Tina, Phil, Manny and Laurie. Lilly and Scotty started with Phil, who admits that he drove Carrie to the forest under the pretense that he wanted to have sex with her there. The confession switches to Laurie, who said that she and Tina were hiding behind a boulder. Laurie became frightened at the concept of actually doing this and wanted to stop, but Tina told her to shut up and follow her. The girls, along with Manny, appear in front of Carrie, surprising her. The four cornered her and started taunting her, blaming her for "tainting" them (Phil being a closeted homosexual, Manny and Laurie having premarital sex and Tina having impure thoughts about Nathan). The confession then switches to Manny, who said that their verbal assault turned into a physical one as they started to push and hit Carrie. When she fell to the ground, Tina commanded Laurie to kick Carrie despite Laurie not wanting to. Laurie pleaded for them to stop, but Tina refused, quoting that according to Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt stone the whore." Tina then proceeded to grab a large rock and hit Carrie's head with it. Phil dealt the second and final blow with the stone. Carrie pleaded with Manny to help her, but he refused and watched her die. The group left, leaving Carrie's corpse in the forest. The confession ends with all four admitting that they killed Carrie.
In the end, Tina, Phil, Manny and Laurie are arrested and lined up to take their mugshots. Nathan kneels on a pew at the church, lamenting on what he had done. Kat and her daughter Veronica are walking on the street after buying ice cream when they come across a store that sells provocative clothing. As Veronica gawks, Kat rolls her eyes and nudges her daughter to keep walking. Valens pays a visit to Sheila to give her the note that Carrie wrote her secret, which read that no matter who she is, God still loved her. Touched, Sheila blows a candle off the birthday cake for her daughter, happy that her wish to have justice for Carrie finally came true. Lilly goes to the forest where Carrie was murdered and "sees" her ghost strolling in the sunlight before disappearing.
In a brief side story, Scotty was interviewed by Ari Gordon about his role in the hostage standoff during the events of Stalker. When asked about how he managed to shoot the suspect (especially when he snuck in, ignoring SWAT protocol), he replied that she gave him the signal to shoot, which was established when Scotty went to her apartment to check on Lilly after her mother had passed away. When Gordon asked about his involvement in the Burrell case (Offender), Scotty had enough and left, dismayed that they knew about it.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Kathryn Morris as Lilly Rush
- Danny Pino as Scotty Valens
- John Finn as John Stillman
- Jeremy Ratchford as Nick Vera
- Thom Barry as Will Jeffries
- Tracie Thoms as Kat Miller
Guest Cast[]
- Kayla Mae Maloney as Carrie Swett
- Hallee Hirsh as Tina Quinn (1998)
- Shane McRae as Nathan O'Donnell
- Mackenzie Phillips as Sheila Swett
- Mark Rolston as Ari Gordon
- Raviv Ullman as Phil DiPreta (1998)
- Keith Britton as Jerry Wood (2007)
- Chris Emerson as Phil DiPreta (2007)
- Matt Funke as Jerry Wood (1998)
- Carmen M. Herlihy as Laurie Wu (2007)
- Ken Magee as Wally Peranski
- Randall Park as Manny Kim (2007)
- Jerry Shea as Manny Kim (1998)
- Christina Stacey as Laurie Wu (1998)
- Sarah Utterback as Tina Quinn (2007)
Co-Starring[]
- Corinne Dekker as Miss Danbury
- Brie Gabrielle as Girlfriend #1
Notes[]
- This episode was cited by the Culture and Media Institute, a conservative thinktank, as promoting anti-Christian messages.
- Ed Marteson is mentioned in this episode, along with events taking place in Stalker and Offender.
- The title That Woman comes from then-U.S. President Bill Clinton saying "I swear I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky". Footage of this is seen when Carrie's box is first put on the shelf, and is later referenced by Tina in a club meeting.
- This episode, Spiders and Dog Day Afternoons tie for the greatest number of arrests made, with four. This is the only episode where all criminals are arrested for the same crime.
Music[]
- Everclear "I Will Buy You a New Life"
- Marcy Playground "Sex and Candy"
- Dishwalla "Counting Blue Cars"
- Natalie Imbruglia "Torn"
- The Mains "Last Goodbye"
- Semisonic "Closing Time"
- Michael A. Levine "8:03 AM"
- Closing Song: Goo Goo Dolls "Black Balloon"
| Season 5 Episodes |
| Thrill Kill | That Woman | Running Around | Devil Music | Thick as Thieves | Wunderkind | World's End | It Takes a Village | Boy Crazy | Justice | Family 8108 | Sabotage | Spiders | Andy in C Minor | The Road | Bad Reputation | Slipping | Ghost of My Child |
