Season 3 of Will Trent, the police procedural show on ABC, finally returns to its usual format of covering one interesting case per episode with this week’s episode 3, after having kept us busy with a single case over the past two weeks. This time around, Will and Faith have to investigate a mysterious case of poisoning, leading to death, at a reputed company named Sovrano Industries. Meanwhile, Angie Polaski also gets a chance to exercise her detective skills when a dead swan is found at the residential complex where she is currently working as a security officer.
Spoiler Alert
Who are the initial suspects in the poisoning case at Sovrano?
Will Trent season 3 episode 3 begins inside the office of a famous and influential company in Atlanta, Sovrano Industries, while a usual meeting is ongoing. The CEO of the company, Marcello Sovrano, addresses the team gathered in front of him, which includes his younger brother, Rocco, and also his sister, Sofia. Whatever the main topic of the meeting is, the conversation somehow gets to Rocco’s problems with drugs and alcohol, as Marcello feels that his brother’s sobriety for a month does not count for anything. But before there is any more discussion about the matter, Marcello suddenly starts to choke and cough, with froth coming up his mouth as well. The subordinates and assistants rush to help him when the younger sister, Sofia, and also the general counsel of the company, Jacinta Banchoff, start to convulse and froth at their mouths as well. All three of them are taken to the hospital immediately, and while Marcello and Sofia survive at the time, Jacinta passes away immediately, and the GBI has to be informed about the strange incident.
Faith comes to Will’s house to inform him of the case and take him to the GBI headquarters and has to bear with the protagonist’s picky nature about his clothes. After reaching the GBI office, they are soon informed that Marcello is in stable condition and the detectives can have a word with him and his brother, Rocco. However, as Will and Faith are in the hospital ward, the doctor announces that nothing could be done to save the Sovrano sister, Sofia, and she has passed away, meaning that the poisoning has claimed the lives of two victims. The brothers are quite naturally devastated by this news, and they mention that the family has attracted numerous enemies because of their involvement in a number of professional sectors, like hotels, resorts, cruise ships, and airlines. In fact, Rocco is confident that the poisoning must have been planned by some protestors, who see Sovrano Industries as the big bad facilitators of climate change and the depletion of natural resources.
But as the GBI begins a proper investigation into the case, it seems more and more likely that someone inside the office must have spread the poison, as it is the glasses of juice that are found to have traces of ethylene glycol. It is evident that the poison had been injected into the glasses of juice and had been mixed in with various kinds of juices served during the meeting as well. To be specific, only one glass of beetroot juice and one of grapefruit juice had been spiked with the ethylene glycol, and these specific ones were unfortunately taken by Marcello and Sofia, respectively. But multiple glasses of kale juice had been spiked, and Jacinta had drunk from one of these glasses, which killed her in a very short time. No other food or drinks were found to have any traces of the poison, and so the origin of the various kinds of juice is tracked next.
It is found that the drinks had been brought to the conference room, and also poured, by Marcello’s assistant, Olivia, who was also a part of the meeting. Olivia had rushed to her boss’ aid right after, but the fact that she had handled the drinks makes her an initial suspect. Will and Faith also figure out that Olivia was seemingly romantically interested in her boss, Marcello, but the man was believed to be having an office affair with the general counsel, Jacinta. This gives the detectives a possible angle of a romance turned sour, because of which Olivia might have tried to kill her boss and his illicit lover, and so the assistant is brought in for questioning. Olivia admits that she was once attracted to Marcello but states that her feelings had waned after working at the company for many years. She reveals that she comes from a very humble background, with her parents working at a laundromat, and so she has been extra dedicated to being good at her job. She knows that being associated with Sovrano Industries will definitely take her places, and so she has always ensured that her employers find her useful.
Although Olivia does not seem to have committed the crime, she reveals another crucial piece of information when she says that Marcello had made a specific demand of her before the meeting. The CEO had asked her to serve him some gin, but Olivia did not find this strange or suspicious, because Marcello did have a drinking problem, and he would often have drinks at his office during a usual workday. Therefore, she brought him the drink, and incidentally, this was the very reason why Marcello was able to survive even after drinking the poisoned beetroot juice. As the GBI’s medical expert states, alcohol acts as an antidote to ethylene glycol, and so when Marcello consumed the poison after having drunk gin, his body was able to resist the effects of the poison without any serious issues. This is why he manages to survive after being treated at the hospital, while Sofia and Jacinta pass away.
While Olivia still remains a suspect in the eyes of the detectives, another suspect happens to be a Sovrano sibling named Francesca. An estranged elder sister to Marcello and Rocco, Francesca was the only Sovrano child who had refused to be a part of the family business, for she felt that their industry was built on the foundation of exploitation and unjust treatment of their employees. Although Francesca lives in Europe, far away from her family members, Will is notified that she has been in Atlanta since the past two days before the murders, and so she obviously seems like a suspect. When questioned, though, Francesca states that she does not want any part in the business still and even has no intention of taking her part of the family inheritance, but her unannounced visit to Atlanta does seem a bit suspicious.
What is the real reason behind the deaths at Sovrano Industries?
Will Trent and Faith Mitchell finally solve the mystery behind the deaths at Sovrano Industries when they investigate the various accusations against the siblings running the company and realize that they have their own set of secrets. As it turns out, there were numerous complaints of sexual assault and inappropriate behavior against Rocco Sovrano, but all of them were settled out of court through monetary agreements. In reality, Rocco had indeed committed all these crimes, but he never had to face any consequences because his elder brother, Marcello, kept protecting him by ensuring the victims remained quiet. In fact, Marcello used to make the company’s general counsel, Jacinta Banchoff, offer monetary compensation to the victims on behalf of Sovrano Industries, in an attempt to ensure that they did not take their complaints to the higher authorities. Although Jacinta had initially supported the brothers quite reluctantly, she had had enough when a hotel housekeeper suspiciously fell off a bridge and died after she had refused to sign an NDA. The housekeeper had also been assaulted by Rocco, and when she refused to stay quiet, Marcello and Rocco had her killed, and this was the point of no return for Jacinta.
Therefore, Jacinta Banchoff had planned on quitting, because of which she had even contacted the estranged Sovrano sibling, Francesca, as she knew that she would support her. Jacinta had kept her intentions of leaving the company a secret, but Marcello had somehow found out about it and feared that the woman would reveal all the dark secrets of the family once she was out. It was for this reason that Marcello orchestrated the poisoning, so that he could kill Jacinta without raising any suspicions, and decided to poison himself as well, so that people would genuinely believe that it was an accident or hold Olivia, the one who had poured the drinks, responsible. Marcello knew that the alcohol in his body would keep him alive, but what he did not expect was that his sister, Sofia, would drink the grapefruit juice. Sofia used to take Valium for some physical or mental ailment, because of which she would not drink juice or the grapefruit flavor. However, since she had stopped her medication recently, Sofia wanted to try the grapefruit juice, which unfortunately took her life. Ultimately, Marcello gets arrested for his poisoning plot, while Rocco will be tried for the numerous cases of sexual assault. With all her siblings either behind bars or dead, Francesca promises to support and help all the victims who had been harmed by her family.
How does Angie find a case at the residential complex?
Quite unexpectedly, Angie Polaski finds a case to wrack her brains with at the posh residential complex where she has been working as a security officer after her suspension from the APD. In season 3 episode 2, Angie was seen at a hearing with people from authority, who deemed her still unfit to rejoin the police service. Therefore, she has to continue at the boring yet demanding position of security officer and has to put up with the unfair and obnoxious demands of the head of the HOA, Kathy Humps. At the beginning of episode 3, Angie is shocked and also a bit intrigued when she hears that a dead body has been found near the pond inside the complex, but she soon finds out that it is the corpse of a swan that has died. She is made to pick up the stiffened corpse and keep it inside the security office until the appropriate personnel come and take it away. It is during this time that Angie suddenly finds a severed human finger stuck inside the beak of the bird, and it is possibly because of this that the swan had died.
Angie quickly sends the finger to the APD for investigation, and with the help of her old friends, learns that it belonged to someone who seemingly ran a farm. There is indeed a family that fits the profile, as they have their own small farm, and she goes to their house to check on the matter. The young girl at the heart of this family, named Poppy, was already friends with Angie, and the latter now gets introduced to her father, Brent, and her uncle, Davis. The two men, along with some other family members, run a business called Fierro Farms, and Davis is clearly missing a finger at present. Interestingly enough, the nanny responsible for taking care of Poppy, named Alma, also has a few bruises on her face, which seem to be from getting assaulted, but she has been saying that she fell down during the night. There is a sudden turn in the case when Michael informs Angie that DNA traces of a different man have been found on the severed finger as well, and this second man is a convicted rapist and murderer.
Can Angie make a return to the APD?
When Angie is given the information by Michael, she connects the dots and realizes that the new acquaintance she has made at the residential complex, a handyman named John, must be the convict that is being referred to. John had been recently released from prison and had found employment at the complex just like Angie had, which is why she somewhat relates to him and at least momentarily believes his claim that he had not committed the crime for which he had had to serve the prison sentence. It is John who then reveals that he had seen Davis assaulting Alma, after the latter had removed a stack of documents from the house. John had tried to intervene but had been overpowered, after which he saw Davis accidentally lose his finger at one of the auto-shutting doors in a shed inside the property.
Angie now realizes that something is definitely shady with Davis and Brent, and so she decides to investigate a trailer park she is led to by a bus that was used to transport workers to Fierro Farms. Here, she finds out the whole truth, as the men were forcing helpless immigrants to work for them by taking away their documents and keeping them imprisoned at the trailer park under horrible living conditions. Alma had tried to act against the family by stealing the documents from the house but was caught and beaten up for her brave step. As Angie single-handedly busts this exploitative ring and gets Davis and Brent arrested, she is awarded by the APD with the permission to serve again. Thus, at the end of Will Trent episode 3, Angie Polaski returns to the APD and will be back as a police detective from the next episode, and we can expect to see her and Will together on screen very soon.
