After two weeks of break, ABC’s detective drama series “Will Trent” is back once more with its 9th episode, and the stakes are even higher for Will this time around. Having to ensure the safety of his dear partner Faith, Will has to find incriminating evidence against the police in time before things spiral out of control. Along with this, the new episode also presents a subplot of Angie Polaski struggling to keep up with her sobriety after she spots someone from her past out on the streets.
Spoilers Ahead
How Does Faith Mitchell Manage To Become A Fugitive Chased By The APD?
The drama in “Will Trent” Episode 9 picks up directly at the local courthouse in Atlanta, where crowds have gathered with slogans for justice for a murdered policeman named Andrew Hollis. Michael Ormewood is also present at the scene, along with the late Andrew’s professional partner Tate Grillo, both of whom are quite vengeful against the man found guilty by the police. Sam Laporte, a young man with a criminal background, had been found guilty in the police investigation and was, therefore, now being presented at court to be tried for the murder of Officer Hollis. It is stated that Hollis had wanted to help Laporte in his landscaping business at present, especially because he was an ex-convict and therefore deserved a second chance. For this reason, Hollis had hired the services of Laporte for the garden in his own house, but the police officer was then found murdered the very next morning, with all evidence pointing towards Sam Laporte to have been the perpetrator.
But all hell breaks loose even before the trial can begin when Laporte manages to walk inside the courthouse with a metal pin, with which he uncuffs himself and snatches away a gun from a guard. Laporte then threatens his way out of custody and tries to escape the building when he comes across GBI agent Faith Mitchell, who was present at the scene to provide testimony for some other case. After the initial gunshots had been fired, Faith was trying to ensure the safety of an elderly woman she met at the washroom, and in order to do this, she ultimately gave herself up to the dangerous Sam Laporte. The prisoner takes Faith hostage and uses her car to drive away from the courthouse, keeping his gun drawn at her at all times. Although Faith makes attempts to escape the situation and her car when they stop at a store sometime later, Laporte catches up with her every time.
During this whole time, though, the man keeps claiming that he was innocent and had not murdered officer Hollis but that he was being falsely blamed for it. To prove this claim, Laporte takes Faith to the house of his friend Glenn, who had been with him the whole time when Laporte visited Hollis’ house for the last time. However, to both their surprise, Glenn is found with a fatal gun wound and his house completely trashed by someone. As Faith rushes to help the bleeding Glenn, police officer Tate Grillo walks into the scene and shoots Glenn dead. When Faith had earlier been taken away from the courthouse by Laporte, the GBI agent had to leave her gun there, and Grillo had picked it up to kill Glenn with that same gun. Grillo then calls the police and says that he found Glenn dead at his house, shot by Faith Mitchell, therefore making the GBI agent a fugitive. As Grillo is then about to shoot Laporte, Faith intervenes and takes him down before she and Laporte flee the scene.
On the other side, Will Trent had already received news of his partner being kidnapped by a suspected police murderer, and the detective had rushed to the courthouse. Later on, he goes to the store parking lot too, where the fugitives have changed cars, and takes notice of the attempts Faith has made to escape. Next, Will receives news of the scene at Glenn’s house and rushes there as well, investigating whatever clues he can find. Although the now-recovered Grillo claims that Faith had already killed Glenn when he walked in, Will finds discrepancies in this account. A pillow lying nearby suggests that Faith was, in fact, trying to help with Glenn’s bleeding, and a test for fingerprints also confirms this later on. Although Michael Ormewood initially refuses to believe that Grillo might be lying, the APD detective also changes his opinion after this test result.
By this time, Faith had also cleverly contacted Will by leaving a voice message on the Instagram account of Will’s dog, Betty. In this message, she states that she had not killed any man and that she had left her gun back at the courthouse, where it must have been stolen by Grillo. Will Trent and his superior Amanda Wagner were both already quite concerned over the fact that the police force, all white men, were angry for revenge against Sam Laporte, a Black man, and they knew that the police force was extremely trigger-happy as well. With these doubts in mind and the clues that he got from the crime scene, Will decides to look into the death of officer Andrew Hollis and also finds Michael Ormewood by his side. Together they call upon Hollis’ widow Maia to visit Will’s house for a chat, and it is through this conversation that Will learns the real truth.
Despite being friends and professional partners, Andrew Hollis gradually started to feel against Tate Grillo because Hollis believed that Grillo was stealing evidence from the police department. Suspecting that the man was involved with some heinous crimes regarding drugs or guns, Hollis started to investigate the matter and was even building a case file with evidence against his own partner. Grillo had gotten a hint of this somehow, and he was extremely angry with Hollis. The police officer had cleverly hidden the file with the evidence somewhere in his house, though, before he was ultimately murdered very soon after. After hearing all of this, there remains no doubt in Will’s mind that it was Grillo who had killed Officer Hollis and had been trying to pin it on Sam Laporte. Maia also says how her words were not believed and deemed unnecessary after her husband’s murder and how Tate Grillo headed the whole investigation and carried it out almost single-handedly. This meant that Grillo had also hidden all evidence of his crime and pinning it on Laporte was also quite easy since the white community was easily convinced against a Black police-murderer.
During their time together, in a weird kidnapper-hostage bond in which the roles keep interchanging, Faith and Laporte had gotten romantically interested in each other. Faith was convinced by now that the corrupt police officer had conspired against Laporte, and she was more interested in the man’s efforts to change his ex-convict ways and dealings in life. She was finally ready to give Laporte a second chance, but the devilish Tate Grillo arrived at the scene with the intention of shooting dead the two fugitives. Grillo starts shooting at the house, making Faith run out and try to create a distraction. But Grillo would not mind killing a GBI agent either since she was apparently on the run, and he needed to hide his crime, and he was about to shoot Faith. Just then, Laporte runs out of the house and attacks Grillo, but the police officer manages to take Laporte hostage instead. With Laporte in his custody, Grillo is about to shoot him dead when Faith has to respond with her last bullet, shooting Grillo in the head and saving the innocent Laporte.
By the time all this panned out, Will Trent and Michael Ormewood had figured out that officer Hollis must have hidden his file of evidence under a bamboo tree in his garden. The two detectives investigate the place and eventually find a safe full of enough incriminating evidence against Tate Grillo. After the initial arrests of Faith and Laporte are made, this evidence is presented, ensuring that the authorities change their decision. Since Faith had actually killed a conniving murderer who was about to kill an innocent man, she is let go. The charge of murder against Sam Laporte is also dropped since the real killer has been proven to be Grillo, but the man is still kept behind bars because of the series of crimes he has committed since escaping from the courthouse and kidnapping a GBI agent.
Who Does Angie See On The Streets? How Does It Affect Her?
During an investigation into Sam Laporte’s residence early on in “Will Trent” Episode 9, Angie Polaski spots a man on the streets and evidently grows disturbed by it. She, in fact, takes the day off from work and is later seen at an AA group meeting. Angie admits that she is struggling to maintain her sobriety of 81 days after having seen the man freely roaming around on the city streets. It is also in this meeting that Angie reveals who this man was—he was Lenny Broussard, the foster parent who had sexually assaulted her when she was just a teenager kept under her care. Unable to live with the fact that he was free on the streets, Angie later gets Lenny picked up and brought to the police station. As soon as she walks into the interrogation room, Lenny recognizes Angie and understands what has been happening. He had been arrested a few years back on the charge of drug possession but had now been released on parole. The man now severely repents for his sexually exploitative actions in the past and says that he has truly changed his ways.
Believing in giving people second chances, as she herself had once been given in life, Angie decides to trust Lenny’s words and lets him walk free. But as the man’s family comes to receive him, and Lenny gladly tells them that the police made some mistakes with him, Lenny is also seen making his teenage daughter extremely uncomfortable by the way he touches her. Angie does observe this from her desk but does not take any action, perhaps deciding to build up a case that would put Lenny in jail once and for all. Later on, at Will’s house, the detective finds an empty bottle of beer in the trash and asks Angie whether she has been drinking. Angie states that it was only non-alcoholic beer, which she had to drink because of a rough day at work. But when Will asks more about it, Angie says that it’s nothing serious enough to discuss and instead keeps her grief to herself and hugs Will.
What Should We Expect From ‘Will Trent’ Episode 10?
Although “Will Trent” has continued its pattern of introducing new cases every episode, episode 9 does seem to leave behind a slight hint of the future with regards to Angie Polaski and Lenny Broussard. Although Angie is someone who gives second chances to people in life, she is also someone who is extremely sympathetic to young people who have been wronged. She already gives Lenny a second chance by letting him go, but she would surely get the man behind bars for his continuing exploitation of his own teenage daughter. Will Trent might also help her out in this regard, while he and Faith would again be involved in some other GBI case next week.
