Description[]
When a young woman, Rosie Miles (Laura Regan) wakes up from a coma, Lilly re-opens the fall in which her 6 year-old daughter Toya (Aynsley Lemon) died. Things get complicated when the mother remembers very little of that night and Lilly feels especially motivated to find the killer, as Rosie was poor and living on welfare, reminding Lilly of her own past, and giving her an emotional bond to Rosie.
Synopsis[]
The episode opens in May 2001. Rosie Miles and her six-year-old daughter Toya are going to bed. Toya is scared. There’s a knock on their apartment door. Someone enters and it sounds like they are headed for the bedroom door. The next shot shows Rosie and Toya falling through the glass window and to the pavement below. They lie unconscious and bleeding. The case box is filed in the vault under ”Miles, Toya — May 2001”.
In the present day, Stillman tells Lilly that Rosie Miles has woken up from her coma. Scotty joins them and tells Lilly that ADA Kite was asking about her. Lilly seems uncomfortable and changes the subject back to Rosie. Stillman wants them to look into her daughter Toya's death since Rosie woke up. The detective originally assigned to the case had few leads — a black man was seen running from the scene that night.
Lilly and Scotty head to the hospital to talk to Rosie. Unfortunately, Rosie has no memory of the night she and Toya fell out of the window. She tells Lilly that she remembers "bruises and butterflies". She says the man in the bedroom hurt Toya, but doesn’t remember the man. Rosie doesn’t know yet that Toya died that night. Down in the vault, Lilly, Scotty, and Stillman go through the case box from 2001. The assigned officer thought it was a burglary gone bad. There was forced entry and a missing VCR. Lilly tells Stillman that Rosie has no memory of that night. According to her doctor, Anita Khosla, she is suffering from emotional memory loss.
Lilly and Scotty visit Child and Family Services and speak with Rosie’s case worker, Josh Freely. He tells them that Rosie got a DUI, but cleaned up after that. Josh made unannounced home visits, and everything always checked out. He never noticed any bruises on Toya. Vera and Jeffries visit Toya’s teacher, Irene Jablonski. She tells them that she last saw Rosie and Toya the night of the school play. The kids were doing "Flight of the Monarch Butterflies" like they do every year. Toya was dressed up with her butterfly wings and singing on stage [writer’s note: the lyrics in the song include the words "fly away"]. Irene saw Rosie in the audience crying but she doesn’t know what about. Irene says that Toya always had clean clothes, and she never noticed a mark on her. Irene believes Rosie was a good mother.
Lilly and Scotty go to the apartment that Rosie used to rent. The landlady, Tammy, tells them that no one has rented it, but her brother stayed there for a little while. Lilly takes pictures, and notices a small hole on the wall near the ceiling in the bedroom. There is a matching hole in the living room. Tammy tells them that she saw a black man running from the building the night Toya died. Tammy believes that Toya slept on the couch because Rosie had men come up and stay with her often. Tammy tells Lilly that she didn’t pass judgment like Lilly is now. Tammy says that the man she saw running from the scene was not a boyfriend because she had rules against her tenants dating black men. She believes that the man she saw that night murdered Toya.
Back at the police station, Lilly tells Stillman that she’s not getting anywhere with the bruises. Vera and Jeffries tell them that CSU traced the holes in the wall and black marks from the original crime photos to cables used for a VCR/television and video camera. The question is, what was Rosie taping in her bedroom? Scotty wonders if she was blackmailing married men with the tapes she was making, but her bank account had less than $200 in it. Lilly points out that you can’t have too much in the bank and still receive public assistance.
Vera and Jeffries look into pawnshops that might have seen equipment with the same make and model as Rosie’s VCR. Lilly and Scotty look through Rosie’s things that her landlady has stored for her. Lilly confesses that she doesn’t like Rosie because she got a DUI with Toya in the car. She believes that Toya had a rough life before her death. Scotty finds an address book among Rosie’s stuff. There’s a page missing, and he decides to have CSU look at it. An expert runs the page after the missing one through a new machine they got, and it reads out the imprint left from the missing page. It has the name Angel and a phone number. Lilly and Scotty head out, but run into Vera and Jeffries. They found the missing VCR and camera at a pawnshop. It was sold at the pawnshop by someone named Angel about a year after Toya’s death. The find out that Angel is a janitor at Toya’s old school.
Lilly and Scotty find Angel mopping at the school. He denies knowing Rosie, but after they tell him that they know his mom is here illegally, he cooperates. Angel says that he and Rosie used to date, but he broke it off. He saw her the night of the school play. Rosie was outside on a pay phone crying about someone hurting her and Toya. She wanted Angel’s help, but he refused. Rosie then told him that she had a tape, and would show it to his girlfriend. Later that night, Angel busted into her apartment while Rosie and Toya were eating in the kitchen. He grabbed the VCR and camera, then a tape. Rosie pleaded with Angel not to take "that tape". It was the last time he saw her but he kept the tape.
Lilly and Scotty take the tape to the hospital to show Rosie. On the tape, there is a pony-tailed man seen from behind approaching Toya. Toya backs up slowly and he keeps approaching her. The tape cuts off. Rosie doesn’t know who the man was or what was going on. She doesn’t remember and neither does Angel. What Rosie does remember is that the bedroom on the tape was Toya’s. Lilly keeps pushing her, but Rosie gets upset and gives up because she says there’s no point in remembering.
Vera and Jeffries find a large sum of money in Rosie’s account. It just appeared since she woke up from the coma. They trace the name of the man who made the deposit, McLean Wykowski, and find that he is Rosie’s father.
Lilly and Scotty go back to Child and Family Services looking for evidence of sexual abuse with Toya. Mr. Freely directs them to the files with all the cases in them. Lilly knows exactly where to go. She goes to "M" for Miles, and digs in. Scotty notices her familiarity with the system and points out her knowledge of public assistance. Lilly replies, "Ellen Rush — two dependents". She finds a file under Miles. Lilly opens it and there’s a picture of a little girl with bruises all over her arms. It’s not Toya, but Rosie.
Lilly interrogates Rosie’s father at the police station. She keeps daring McLean to hit her since he likes hitting girls so much. Lilly reads back what he did to Rosie, including giving her gonorrhea at ages eight and ten. She tells McLean that she knows that Rosie called him from a pay phone at the school. He insists that Rosie was talking crazy about someone hurting her and Toya. McLean tells Lilly that he has changed. He went to see Rosie and Toya that night to apologize to his daughter. He waited outside in his car, trying to get up the nerve to go in. He saw a pizza delivery man enter the building. The man was black.
Lilly and Scotty go back to the hospital to ask Rosie about the pizza delivery man. She doesn’t remember him coming that night. Lilly implies that Rosie might have been seeing him. Rosie tells them that Toya loved her butterfly wind chimes. According to her, the man who made the wind chimes used to come by at night a lot. Outside the hospital, Scotty confronts Lilly about her harsh treatment toward Rosie. In response, she says, "Did your mother ever forget to feed you because she was too drunk or tired or out looking for a man? Toya’s a dime a dozen. Unwanted kid. Mom runs out of food stamps and makes an excuse why there’s no dinner tonight. Oh, and no breakfast either, so thank God for the free cornflakes at school if you get there early. And maybe some kid will give you scraps out of his lunch box later on." Lilly also tells Scotty that there were no good times with her mom.
The next day, Lilly and Scotty take Rosie back to her old apartment to see if she will remember what happened that night. Lilly walks her into Toya’s bedroom. Rosie keeps seeing Toya in butterfly wings. Scotty enters the room and startles her. Rosie explains that "he" was standing right there, just like Scotty. Lilly asks who "he" is, but Rosie doesn’t remember. She suddenly remembers that Toya was hiding in the closet, drawing on the walls. Scotty goes into the closet and says that he knows who "he" is — Toya drew a picture of a pony-tailed man and wrote "Mr. Freely" next to it on the wall.
They bring Mr. Freely into the police station. Lilly plays the tape, but he denies that he did anything wrong. She gets angry and tells him that she has the tape to prove that he was going to abuse Toya. Lilly points out that Mr. Freely was like God to these women, and he took advantage of his position with "their pretty little girls". She says that all the other women and their children who he abused are on the other side of the glass waiting to give their statements. The shot shows the other side of the glass and there's just an empty room.
Mr. Freely buys Lilly’s fib, and claims that it doesn’t matter that he abused the little girls because they’re all "trailer trash" anyway. He went to Rosie’s apartment the morning before Toya died to do a random check. Rosie was in the shower, so Toya let him in. Mr. Freely followed her to her room and told her she was pretty. Toya backed up slowly, but he kept following her. He started to touch her face, but Rosie came in and yelled at him to leave her daughter alone. She wanted to report him, but Mr. Freely threatened her and warned Rosie that he would tell the board that she was drinking again (which was a lie) and they would take Toya away. She apologized, but he left telling her to "just wait until you hear the knock on the door" because he would be coming for Toya.
Vera and Jeffries tracked down a name that they found on the butterfly wind chimes. They were made by a Philip Williams. He worked at Toya’s school making arts & crafts for the kids. He also worked as a pizza delivery man. Lilly and Scotty find him in a pool bar shooting pool. Philip tells them that he knew this day would come. He knew Toya from school. He used to bring her and Rosie leftovers from the pizza place he worked at back then. Philip knew that Rosie didn’t have a lot of money, so he wanted to help. He went to their apartment that night to bring them the leftovers. When he got there, the door was busted open, but he knocked anyway. No one answered, so Philip entered and walked down the hall to the bedroom door. He heard glass break, so he opened the door. When he looked in the room, no one was there.
Lilly goes back to the hospital to talk to Rosie. She tells her that she knows that Rosie didn’t mean to do what she did, and the ADA would not press charges against her. Lilly assures Rosie that she’ll find her a place to go until she gets back on her feet. Rosie starts to cry and she remembers what happened that night. When she heard Philip knocking, Rosie assumed it was Mr. Freely, coming back to take Toya. In a panic, she grabbed Toya and jumped out of the window.
The closing montage is to DJ Sammy’s (featuring Yanou) "Heaven (Candlelight Mix)". Lilly comforts Rosie. Rosie’s father sits alone in a bar looking at a picture of himself and his daughter as a young girl. Lilly walks past a line of sad children at the police station to give their statements about Mr. Freely, and comes to a room where a little girl with a tear rolling down her face identifies Mr. Freely behind the glass. Lilly exits the room once the girl has made the identification. She helps Rosie walk outside in the snow to a van that is waiting to take her to a safe place. As Rosie drives away, she waves to Philip and sees a final vision Toya in her butterfly wings smiling at her. Lilly sits alone at home in her window sill, watching home movies of her and her mother making snow angels.
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
Guest Cast[]
- Laura Regan as Rosie Miles
- Don McManus as Josh Freely
- Victor Togunde as Philip Williams
- Svetlana Efremova as Tammy
- Kathleen Gati as Irene Jablonski
- Christian J. Meoli as Angel Rivera
- Aynsley Lemon as Toya Miles
- Meera Simhan as Dr. Anita Khosla
Co-Starring[]
- Chris Fogleman as Tom Sterling
- K. J. Penthouse as McLean Wykowski
Notes[]
- Toya Miles & Arnold from The Boy in the Box are both the youngest victims of season 1.
- The episode title is a parody of the "Fly Away, Swim the ocean blue" lyric from the song "Reach" by S Club 7.
- The episode was remade as the fourth episode of No Statute of Limitations, and the second episode of Cold Case - Door of Truth.
Music[]
Opening Song[]
Alongside Songs[]
Closing Song[]
