“And if that girl turns up dead, I’m going to book you… on suspicion.”

Soap opera cops have a pretty hard life. Somebody gets murdered, and it turns out that over the last couple weeks, eight different people have been walking around saying, “That guy makes me so mad I could kill him!” — often at the top of their lungs, in crowded restaurants. But the soap opera format requires the cops to be slow and methodical, chasing blind leads and arresting at least two innocent people before they find the killer. The night-time cops on CSI can solve a case in one hour; daytime cops have to go the long way around.

By comparison, the Collinsport police have it unbelievably easy. Three new people have shown up in town in the weeks before Maggie’s disappearance, and all three are currently involved in at least one crime. They have nonexistent alibis, and one of them can’t even produce a birth certificate.

And if those aren’t enough people of interest, then there’s also Burke Devlin, who recently came back to town after serving a five-year prison sentence for manslaughter. That’s not a bad place to start; maybe Sheriff Patterson should bring Burke in for questioning.

Continue reading Episode 237: Cold Case →