While season 2 of the ABC detective procedural show Will Trent has covered a number of wacky and serious cases, including the loss of a potential romantic interest in the titular detective, the whole season has been a wait for one specific moment. Will had found out from his mother’s murderer that he still had one living blood relative in the world—an uncle named Antonio Miranda. Therefore, we have been sincerely made to wait for the moment when the two would meet for the very first time, and it has finally arrived to a heartwarming effect in this week’s episode 6. Along with the personal matter, the episode also features the murder of a controversial judge, which the GBI and the APD detectives have to solve together.
Spoiler Alert
Who are the suspects in the murder of Judge Deirdre Ringgold?
When the murder case at the heart of Will Trent season 2 episode 6 is first presented, Will has to end his meeting with his uncle and reach the crime scene. As there is a heavy presence of the media at the place, it is apparent to Will and Faith that the crime is associated with someone high-profile, and Amanda quickly confirms this hunch. The victim of the violent murder is a controversial conservative judge named Deirdre Ringgold, who had made a name for herself for making divisive decisions. Will starts to investigate the car in the backseat in which Deirdre’s body had been found, and he is joined by Angie since the APD officers are also present at the scene. They find out that the perpetrator shot and killed the woman somewhere else before dragging her lifeless body into the car and leaving it there. The lack of any jewelry on her body, as well as her purse being missing, suggest to Will that it was a case of burglary.
However, the theory is very quickly dismissed, as Ormewood announces that they had just found the judge’s purse thrown in a dumpster near the area, with a significant amount of money still inside it. The exact crime scene where the shooting took place is found, inside a dark alleyway. Interestingly, the two biggest clues for the detectives are a stamp logo mark on Deirdre’s hand, the ones that are put on while entering a nightclub, and some strands of a wig found on her body. Very close to the crime scene, Will spots the same logo as on the victim’s hand and immediately decides to investigate the building. The establishment happens to be a drag club, and Will wonders what a judge of Deirdre’s reputation has been doing at the place. The answer presents itself very soon when it is revealed that the woman’s son, Gabe, regularly performs at the club as a drag queen. He is also immensely shocked at hearing that his mother has passed away, and especially that she has been murdered in a vicious manner.
By this time, more clues have been found with regards to the murder, and Faith and Will have a rough idea of the events that transpired at the alley near the drag club. Judge Deirdre Ringgold had visited the bar for whatever reason and was shot by the perpetrator after she left the place. The murderer had been wearing a blonde wig on their head, as suggested by the trace of it found on the dead body, and they had also seemingly tried to stop the bleeding with a pashmina scarf that had been found. The specific gun with which the murder had been committed is also determined based on the bullet casings found at the spot.380 caliber. The victim’s body was dragged to the car and abandoned there, and her purse had been intentionally dumped to make it seem like a burglary gone wrong. When Gabe is called in for questioning at the GBI office, he sincerely responds, along with his lawyer, who is also a performer at the club. The young man reveals that he has been detached from his family for a very long time, having left home at around the age of fifteen. Since then, Gabe had never met his mother until she came to the drag club on that fateful night, apparently to apologize to him.
Gabe states that a major incident had broken their family apart when he took his mother’s earrings and necklace to try them on, but his stepfather, Dalton, took this as the boy’s attempt to steal them. Dalton never liked Gabe simply because the boy was homosexual, and so he was always very prejudiced against his stepson. Deirdre also did not support her son at the time, and Gabe was bitter at her for having remarried after the death of his biological father. During the horrific fight, Gabe had pushed his mother down the stairs, gravely injuring her, and left home, promising his younger sister, Rowan, that he would soon return to take her away, too. Rowan was also a stepchild to Dalton, but the man preferred her over Gabe, wanting to keep Deirdre’s earrings and necklace for her wedding. According to the young man, his mother suddenly had a change of heart and came to the club to apologize to him that night, even giving him the jewelry as a token of apology. Gabe is currently allowed to leave freely, but Will’s question about whether he owns a. 380-caliber gun evidently upsets him. Although he replies that he does not, Gabe is surely hiding some truth.
On the other side, Dalton and Rowan, who are still family, are called in for questioning too. Dalton is absolutely confident that it was Gabe who killed his wife, and the prejudice is very palpable in his insensitive comments. Rowan is not so confident, though, and it is clear that she still loves her brother despite technically being abandoned by him. In fact, Gabe is quite guilty for this act, too, but he admits that his life had taken a very dark turn after leaving home, as he got addicted to drugs, and it was finally the drag artist community that helped him save himself. Amidst all of this, he had not been able to keep the promise of rescuing his sister from the house of their stepfather, and he still feels remorseful because of it.
As part of their investigation into the case, Faith and Ormewood go over the CCTV footage of the alley from a camera in a nearby establishment, and they spot a man who was known to be protesting in front of the drag club for many weeks. The man is identified as Barret Fairhope, an outright bigot who feels threatened by men expressing themselves in any form that is not stereotypically manly, and so he wanted the club to be shut down. As seen in the footage, Fairhope had tried giving a handout to Deirdre when she was entering the club, but she vehemently refused. The man obviously had to argue against her decision, and this led to a fight in which Deidre smacked Fairhope across the face. With revenge against this action being a very possible motive, the detectives get hold of Fairhope and bring him in for questioning. The man states that he did not do anything to Deirdre, but he also admits to a lot of other wrongdoings when Ormewood intentionally acts like a prejudiced white man sympathetic towards him. This gets Fairhope a restraining order against going to the drag club, and he remains a suspect for the detectives, along with Gabe.
Who Actually Murdered Deirdre Ringgold?
Although Gabe is the lead suspect in the case, his statement about his mother having left him the jewelry on the night of her visit actually checks out. Will asks one of the other performers at the club whether they had seen anything like it, and they had indeed seen Deidre leave an envelope for Gabe, into which she had peeked and seen some jewelry. This does remove the only strong motive that Gabe could possibly have for killing his mother, as she had herself handed over the jewelry to him. However, the matter takes a turn when Gabe is arrested at a public park, trying to throw away a blonde wig and a gun with 380 caliber bullets. The young man is naturally brought in for questioning, and he changes his story completely, stating that he had killed his mother, for she had not come to the club to apologize to him but to confront him for his drag acts. However, there are still many discrepancies in this statement, for he says that Deidre did not want his image to have affected her reelection campaign, while the truth was that Deirdre was not even running for reelection. Gabe states that he had indeed stolen her jewelry from the dead body despite there being a witness to prove that the judge had gifted the items to her son. He further claims to have driven his mother’s car away from the club with her body in the backseat, despite the fact that the car had manual gears and he could not drive manually.
In the end, Will figures out that Gabe is covering for the only person he loves in the world—his younger sister, Rowan—and the young man eventually admits this to be the truth. In reality, it was Rowan who had killed her mother after growing tired and frustrated by her prejudice and bigotry. She later admits that she believed it would make her life much better, but the girl regretted the decision right after firing the gun. This was probably why she had tried to stop the bleeding with a pashmina scarf but had failed to save her mother. As soon as Gabe learned that a.380 caliber gun had been used, he knew that it was his sister who had committed the crime, as they had both learned to shoot with a similar gun. Shortly afterward, he sneaked into the house to find the wig and the gun in Rowan’s room and attempted to take the entire blame upon himself by getting noticed and trying to dump them. Finally, Rowan is arrested for her crime, although she gets Gabe’s supportive and understanding lawyer to represent him. On the other side, the vile Barret Fairhope returns to the club, hoping to do some damage, but is quickly brought down by the drag queens and arrested by the authorities, this time surely going to prison.
How does Will’s meeting with his uncle go?
At the very beginning of Will Trent season 2, episode 6, Will meets his uncle Antonio Miranda at a taco food truck somewhere in Atlanta. Antonio is extremely gentle and welcoming, and he cannot help but marvel at how much Will looks like his mother. Throughout this conversation and a later one at a different restaurant, Antonio reveals how Lucy had first moved to Atlanta with a man she had fallen in love with, but he could not keep in touch with her after that time. When he finally learned about his elder sister’s death, he was extremely saddened and grieved, which even made him leave the country and return to their native Puerto Rico. It was only much later that Antonio moved back to the United States, settling in Atlanta after becoming a professor. Will spends a lot of time getting to know how his mother was and what her tastes in music and life were like, with extreme interest since this is sadly the only way to get to know her.
While initially the meeting with Antonio does feel a bit cold and without much connection, it all changes when the man makes his phone read out the menu at the food truck, revealing that he is dyslexic. This disability is literally what makes the two realize how similar, and therefore related, they are to each other, and Will truly enjoys the experience. There is a minor hitch in the bond when one of Antonio’s friends calls out Will for being a police detective, which is a shameful job in the current social scenario, but the protagonist stands up for his career pretty well. Antonio later apologizes for the incident, and in response, Will decides to introduce him to his friends. The characters all gather and spend a warm evening together at Ormewood’s house, where Ormewood is also getting better at being a single parent to two kids.
