Summary
We finally get a meaningful connection between the disappearances as Megan’s past life begins to catch up with her current one.
This recap of Stay Close season 1, episode 5 contains spoilers.
As if Stay Close didn’t have enough going on, the fifth episode opens with a new character, a somewhat rotund fellow, being arrested in a brief 19-years-earlier flashback. As we see, he’s still incarcerated in the present day, raising the question of who this bloke is and why he’s relevant in what is already a rather complicated story. Time will tell. But there’s plenty more to be going on with in the meantime, as we’ll see.
Stay Close season 1, episode 5 recap
After his discovery in the previous episode, Broome confronts Sarah, Stewart’s wife, about the suitcase full of cash in the basement. She claims it just mysteriously arrived in the log store, and that she kept it quiet because she has been using the money ever since. She needed it more than she needed to know where it came from. She just assumed whoever left it didn’t need it, and she’s still adamant that Stewart didn’t leave it, since he’d never have left her and the kids. Since she and Broome are already prone to keeping secrets, what’s one more?
Erin and Broome are tasked by Goldberg with meeting with the Pink Poirots, a bunch of all-female social media detectives who’re looking into Carlton Flynn and whose efforts could take some strain off of an already overworked police force. Broome is reluctant since he’s adamant that Stewart Green is crucial to everything, despite the lack of evidence, but needs must, and they can’t devote resources based solely on Megan’s word, especially since someone starting a whole new life immediately after the disappearance of her lover makes her as suspicious as anyone else.
Speaking of Megan, she goes to see Fester, asking to arrange a meeting with Ray. Kayleigh and Bea are still following her. She meets with Ray at one of their old haunts, but the encounter is very strained. So much time and history have elapsed since they last saw one another, and Megan has a whole new life that he isn’t remotely privy to. They kiss, though, the feelings between them having evidently not dissipated over the years, but Kayleigh interrupts them. Megan gives her some half-truths, claiming Ray was an old friend, and that she’s perfectly happy for Dave to know what she’s been up to. This isn’t going to go well, is it? Then again, Dave isn’t exactly one to judge.
Broome and Erin go to see Priya, one of the Pink Poirots, and Broome is comically annoyed at having to do so. But Erin proposes a collaboration, which is perhaps just as well since Erin has all kinds of evidence dating back years. And it’s her evidence, neatly arranged, that reveals the connection that Broome has been missing — all the victims disappeared on the third Friday in April, which is Carnival. The exception is Zain Kaleed, whose body was discovered in the woods, supposedly killed by Jamal Alade, the man we briefly met in the cold open, back in 2003.
As it turns out, the killing of Zain Kaleed was an open and shut case. He and Jamal were sexual rivals, there were witnesses to their beef, and Jamal was found with damning evidence, including the murder weapon and a blood-soaked t-shirt. But when Broome and Erin go to visit him in prison, they find him dying of sickle cell, and adamant that he was innocent, set up by the police and convicted by a white jury. His counterpoints are difficult to argue with. Why would he keep the evidence around? How did he get his t-shirt covered in blood, but somehow not his jeans? However, he’s so understandably aggravated by the whole 25-to-life for a crime he didn’t commit thing that he isn’t willing to help.
But there’s a trend emerging. All the men who have disappeared have been violent against women. With that and the Vipers connection, call me crazy but I’m starting to suspect Lorraine here. It’d probably be a fittingly tragic development for Broome, too, having finally fallen for and committed to a woman just in time for her to reveal herself as a serial murderer. Of course, this doesn’t explain the connection to Goldberg and his smiley assassins, though we seem to be making some progress in that regard since Broome and Erin find Harry dead of a supposed overdose, and immediately open a murder investigation. They know something isn’t right there.
Elsewhere, Simona confronts Ray with a shotgun, asking him why the police keep interviewing him about Guy’s disappearance, and he confesses to her that Guy was with a woman that night, which is the detail that keeps being left out. In the flashbacks, it sort of seems like the fight broke out because Ray was trying to stop Guy from cheating on Simona. While she seems to have gotten over her suspicions of Ray, she’s still convinced that someone has taken Guy away from them, and of course, she’s right. After the conversation, Ray tears down all his photographs of Cassie and bins them, having finally realized that it’s super weird to keep them around.
Speaking of Cassie, or Megan I suppose, Broome and Erin take her to the station to lay all her cards out on the table. And it’s perhaps just as well, since the smiley assassins show up right outside her house shortly after, having been given the address by Goldberg. She isn’t there, of course, but Kayleigh is, ready to confront Megan about her stripper past. When she enters the house, though, she discovers that the smileys are already inside.
You can stream Stay Close season 1, episode 5 exclusively on Netflix.
