Life: Farthingale (Episode 108)

Charlie is hanging out in his car, listening to a Zen tape "We are none of us alone...") and munching on an apple. He's near the edge of a park and he watches as Ames meets with a man with grey hair and a mustache. He sets down his apple and picks up a camera, then takes multiple photographs of the meeting. Ames argues with the man and storms off. Charlie's phone rings and he asks the caller, "How come you only call me when someone's dead?"

Charlie meets Dani at a house that's empty of furniture. An officer tells them that the victim is in the kitchen: "What's left of him." They go into the kitchen and whatever they see makes them halt and blink in surprise. The camera pans around to show the victim has been cut completely in half and is sitting upright on his waist in front of the open refrigerator door. A fireman tells them that the door protected the top half of the victim but the exploding oven, possibly caused by a gas build up, vaporized his lower half. Charlie reaches into the victim's jacket pocket and pulls out a wallet, then hands the ID to Dani, who notes the victim's name is Edward Farthing but says the address listed isn't the house they're in. Charlie finds another ID, naming the victim as Joseph Gale, and it lists a third address. Charlie crouches down and stares into the victim's eyes, like he's expecting Farthing/Gale to explain the situation, then he stands up and starts exploring the house, observing that there are only enough belongings for one person. Dani wonders why their victim needed two IDs and suggests they check out the addresses. They split up and each door, one to a suburban home and one to a modern condo, is opened by a woman. Both women identify the victim as her husband. Dani calls Charlie to tell him she's with the widow. "Funny you should say that..." Charlie replies.

Still split up, Charlie and Dani talk to Farthing/Gale's wives, Marissa Gale and Elena Farthing. Each woman's relationship with her husband was different - Marissa and Joseph were intellectual while Elena and Edward were active and athletic - but they both report that he said he worked for the government in a secret capacity and that he often disappeared for long periods. When he was at home, he was forgetful and confused. Later, Charlie and Dani compare stories and decide to run both of the victim's identities through the government database, although if he really was a spy they're not likely to find anything. Charlie says if either of the women found out about the other, she could have killed Farthing/Gale, and if both of them found out they could have killed him together. Dani is surprised that his theory is so normal-sounding, since she expected him to think the women are innocent because they seemed like they truly loved Farthing/Gale. He agrees that he does think the wives loved him but he asks Dani what the Chinese symbol for war is. She rolls her eyes and complains but asks him to tell her. "The Chinese symbol for war is two women under one roof."

Karen joins Charlie and Dani at Farthing/Gale's third house and Charlie says that both wives have alibis that check out. Dani adds that they haven't found any evidence that the women knew each other, or even of each other. Karen looks around at the empty house and wonders who lives like that. Cut to Charlie's house, just as empty but it's even more obvious since it's so big. If Michael Scott was recapping this, he'd add a "That's what she said" right here. Ted finds Charlie, who's looking extra fine in jeans and a hoodie, standing barefoot in the middle of his vacant living room. Charlie asks Ted to imagine being married to two women and Ted does, enjoying the fantasy a bit, until Charlie tells him to imagine those wives blowing him up. Ted doesn't understand and when Charlie says each wife is told a different lie, Ted says all husbands lie to their wives, admitting he lied to his wife about the other women and shenanigans on his private jet. Charlie says he never lied to his wife then, looking around, says it might be time to get some furniture.

At the station, Charlie and Dani are telling Karen that the oven was rigged, proving Farthing/Gale was murdered, but phone logs show Elena and Marissa had no contact with each other. The phones in the station start ringing off the hook and officers run around. Karen answers her phone and listens for a moment, hangs up, and tells Charlie and Dani that an officer is down in the parking garage. They race down to the garage and Charlie pushes through the crowd to see Ames, in his car, dead from gunshots to his chest and head.

Documentary: The interviewer asks Ames to confirm that there was another suspect in the Seybolt murders and Ames just looks at him.

In Karen's office, Charlie asks if he's being removed from duty and Karen seems like she'd love nothing better. It doesn't help that, even with an alibi, Charlie admits he'd be the top suspect if he was investigating Ames' murder. Karen tells him that she's handling the investigation and she's not removing him from duty, but he should expect a visit from Internal Affairs. "I always do," Charlie replies wearily.

Charlie walks back to his desk, enduring the stares of his colleagues who had just started to treat him like one of their own. Dani's a little surprised that he's still on duty but when Charlie says now's the time to ask for a new partner, she ignores him. She says she got a hit off of Farthing/Gale's prints and their victim's real name was Rudolph Farthingale. Also, he did work for the government: the IRS. Dani, half-smiling in a totally adorable way, tells Charlie that their field of suspects just opened up. "Who doesn't want to kill the tax man?" They head out to Farthingale's office, where his supervisor shows them Farthingale's bare cubicle, devoid of any personal items. She says he worked for the IRS for 12 years and he was a completely ordinary guy. He worked in tax evasion but he wasn't a field agent; he collected and flagged paperwork on tax evaders, then sent it to the field agents. Dani asks for the list of evaders Farthingale flagged, saying one of them could have killed him, but the supervisor says Farthingale was never identified on the paperwork by his name, only by a number.

Back at the station, Charlie gazes around at his own desk, which is equally as devoid of personality as Farthingale's. He scribbles a smiley face on a piece of paper, sticks it to his computer monitor and grins at it, pleased with himself. Hee. He's interrupted by a man he assumes is from IAD but the man introduces himself as John Garrity, Charlie's union rep. He says he'll be with Charlie when he talks to IAD and suggests Charlie also call his lawyer, but Charlie says she's in New York. Before he leaves, Garrity leans over and, with a conspiratorial look, says he wouldn't blame Charlie if Charlie had killed Ames, given everything Charlie went through. Feeling screwed because even his union rep thinks he's guilty, Charlie calls Constance and leaves a message for her to call him.

In the car, Charlie asks Dani if she wants to know if he was involved in Ames' death. "No," she replies succinctly. He tells her that he'd rather not go back to prison and, with a tiny sympathetic smile, Dani says she can understand that. Obviously trying to get his mind off the Ames case, Dani starts going over what they've learned about Farthingale. And what they've learned is that he was completely ordinary, even mediocre, except for the fact that he had two wives and ended up murdered. They meet Marissa and Elena at the crime scene and, in quite possibly the most awkward and drawn-out explanation ever, Charlie tells them about their shared husband. Dani's body language in this scene is hilarious; she's all hunched over, her arms crossed tightly and her eyes keep darting around like she would rather be anywhere else than in the same room with two women who are learning that they were married to the same men. Each week, I fall in love with Sarah Shahi just a little bit more. Anyway, Marissa and Elena are genuinely shocked, devastated and angry to learn the truth. Charlie and Dani perk up when both women say Farthingale was working on a big case but they differ on what it was about. Marissa says he was "not looking for the person not obeying the law" and Elena says he was "looking for the person not not obeying the law." Even Charlie looks confused by the rampant abuse of double negatives. After the women leave, Dani repeats the phrases and pointedly asks Charlie if it reminds him of anyone. Heh. Charlie wonders if Farthingale, who wanted to be a spy, actually stumbled across something that got him killed. Dani, breaking out the extra pointy point, counters that he could've just been one of those people who sees conspiracies everywhere.

Cut to Charlie's conspiracy wall, where he pins up photos of Ames' body and the man Ames argued with in the park.

In Karen's office, she's berating Dani for not supplying her with evidence to get Charlie kicked off the force. She admits that Charlie's done good work, but still thinks it's better for the department and Dani's career if Charlie is gone. She says Charlie isn't going to let himself be sent back to prison and he's capable of anything to prevent that from happening. Dani silently endures the tirade, looking conflicted and uncomfortable.

Charlie comes down his staircase to see Constance, back from New York and sporting an awful new haircut. Well, okay, the haircut isn't that bad, but girlfriend needs a deep conditioning treatment. Charlie's happy but surprised to see her and Constance admits she's been back for a week. She took a job with the DA because, after Cudahy's attack, she realized most of her clients weren't like Charlie and she didn't want to defend guilty criminals anymore. She also shares that her husband stayed in New York, because they need a break from each other. She tells Charlie to get his ducks in a row, because the DA's office really wants to pin Ames' murder on him. After she leaves, Charlie stands there, completely dazed, and when Ted arrives he tells him that the DA conveniently stole his lawyer right before Ames died.

Charlie meets with the IAD investigator and drives her crazy by responding to every question with a Zen platitude. Afterwards, Charlie and Dani sit at their desks and watch the investigator complain in Karen's office. Dani shifts Charlie's attention back to the Farthingale case and they try to figure out who Farthingale could have pissed off enough to get killed. Charlie thinks since Farthingale split himself in two, they need to put him back together. He suggests they go talk to the wives again, see if maybe they can help them figure out who killed their husband.

Splitting up again, Charlie and Dani go to Marissa's and Elena's homes, respectively, and share what they learn via phone. Every detail each wife shares about her husband is different - favorite music, how he liked his eggs cooked, type of underwear, etc. Finally, they both hit on one commonality: Farthingale was a light sleeper. Charlie and Dani ask them what he would do when he couldn't sleep and each wife points to a chair, where their husband would sit and stare at nothing for hours. Charlie and Dani sit down in each chair and try to figure out if Farthingale was looking at anything in particular. Nothing in the view is the same in either house, but when Dani mentions there are five minor league baseball caps in Elena's house, Charlie focuses in on five bottles of wine in Marissa's house.

They take the caps and wine back to the station and, along with Karen, stare at them and try to figure out the pattern. Karen spots something then dismisses it as nothing, but Charlie encourages her to share. She starts to re-order the caps on top of each bottle by year and as she lists the names of the towns on the caps out loud, Dani picks up on what she's doing and helps her place them in the correct order. "Free State bombings," Dani says but Charlie is confused. Dani explains that Free State is an anti-government bomber who sets off a bombing every few years, then goes back into hiding. He's never been caught. Karen can't believe an IRS agent found Free State but Charlie points out that Farthingale was murdered by a bomb.

Charlie and Dani go back to Farthingale's supervisor and she plugs in the years of the Free State bombings, but there are no results. Charlie starts repeating what the wives said about Farthingale being after someone "not not obeying the law" and Dani picks up the thread, saying Free State is mostly living off the grid but would occasionally pax his taxes when he needed money. The supervisor thinks Farthingale wouldn't be looking into someone paying taxes, since he dealt with evaders, but she looks anyway and again finds nothing. Then she points out that if someone wanted to establish credit one year, they would need to file taxes the previous year. Dani and Charlie realize they need to search one year back from the years of the bombings and when they do, they get a hit. Leonard Slatz has a history of not paying taxes for a few years, then he'll file, then will stop paying again. She notes that he filed the previous year and Charlie realizes Spatz is planning another bombing. Unfortunately, the only address listed is a PO box. Later at the station, Dani gets off the phone and tells Charlie that the box was cleaned out two days ago by a guy in an RV and no forwarding address was left. Charlie gets a call and it's Constance, warning him to get to his house immediately.

Okay, I really want to like Constance, largely because I feel she gets a lot of flack in the fandom for being a pretty woman that Charlie is romantically interested in. But it's hard to defend her when she's worked for the DA for, like, a day and she's already actively working against her new employer. I get that she wants to help Charlie but, here's a thought, if she wants to help Charlie why take a job in the exact place she knows has a hard-on for putting Charlie back in prison? She seems to think her only choices are defending guilty assholes or working for the DA, but she's got other options. Hell, she could earn more than enough having Charlie as her sole client. Constance is being written as stupid, selfish and driven mostly by emotion, and that's unfortunate and maddening, since this show obviously excells at writing fantastic female characters. See: Reese, Dani.

Anyway, Charlie rushes over to his house to find it swarming with cops and the IAD investigator presents him with a search warrant. Charlie prepares to get it over with but as soon as he sees an officer head upstairs, he races after him, which is pretty much the equivalent of Charlie announcing that he's hiding something up there. The cops find the locked closet door in his bedroom and Charlie stalls, joking that he locked the key inside, but the cops just ram the door and go inside. Charlie obviously expects them to discover his conspiracy wall but, to the disappointment of the cops and Charlie shock, the closet is completely empty. Later, after everyone's cleared out, Ted tells Charlie that he took the conspiracy wall down after Constance called to warn him about the warrant. Charlie wonders how Ted knew it was there and Ted reminds him that he was also in prison and he learned there that Charlie must've had something hidden away. I think Ted has just earned himself a big, fat raise.

Charlie takes a page from his own conspiracy wall and pins up all of the evidence from the case on the bedroom wall in the house where Farthingale died. He's sitting on a chair, staring at the wall and processing everything, when Dani walks in, looking at the wall and Charlie like he's finally lose his mind for real. Hee. Charlie explains his process, talking about how Farthing and Gale were common, and mentions that one way was how they saved receipts. Dani gets where he's coming from and looks over the receipts, finding ones from Dandy's Fast Food on each side of the wall. Since Farthing was a health nut and Gale was an intellectual, it's hard to believe either would've eaten at a fast food joint.

Outside Dandy's Fast Food, Charlie and Dani spot an RV park across the street and recall that the guy who closed out Spatz's PO box drove an RV. They head inside and talk to the manager, who IDs them as cops and says he always expected someone to come after Spatz, given all of his anti-government rhetoric. Dani asks if Spatz is there and the guy says he disappeared a few days ago, but he did leave a few boxes of stuff behind. He takes them to the storage room and, as Dani starts to remove the boxes from the shelf. At first I was annoyed by the casual and uncharacteristic way she was tossing the boxes around, considering the guy is a known bomber, but I was cleverly misdirected. The manager takes off and Dani, startled, runs after him. Charlie looks through the shelving and sees a large bomb behind them, and yells for Dani to stop. She's got amazing reflexes because she screeches to a halt the moment she hears him, right before she was about to hit a tripwire that would've blown them both up. They step over the wire and take off after Spatz, who tries to drive off but is stopped by several squad cars surrounding him. He's arrested for the murder of Rudolph Farthingale, who Charlie says was one of their own.

At the station, Dani is in her dress uniform and she asks Charlie if he's skipping Ames' funeral. He says he probably wouldn't be welcome and she has to agree. Charlie is surprised when he sees the man he photographed arguing with Ames walk into the station and over to Charlie's desk. However, he address Dani, asking if she's ready, and Dani introduces Charlie to her father, Jack Reese. The two men greet each other neutrally, then Dani leaves with her father while Charlie tries to process this latest revelation.

While Ames, a cop who might have helped conspire to send Charlie to prison for a crime he didn't commit, is given a full-blown hero cop's funeral, Charlie attends a different service. He joins Elena Farthing and Marissa Gale as they bury Rudolph Farthingale.