On Friday,
December 8, Baltimore prosecutor Martin Wells is in jail. The
camera comes to focus to show a spider on its web above him. His
face is wounded. A guard enters and tells him it is time to go - he
is being transferred. As Wells is escorted out, Scully and Doggett
are there and Doggett clearly knows Wells. As Wells is taken outside
through a crowd of reporters, Wells spots someone he knows - Al. As
he yells at Al, he pulls a gun and shoots Wells. As Wells lies
there, given emergency care by Scully, he sees Scully's wristwatch
stop and begin moving backwards.
On Thursday,
December 7, Wells awakes in jail. He is surprised that he is not
wounded. He notices the spider on the floor. Scully and Doggett
enter. Scully shows him a magnetic key card from Wells' apartment
building, found in a dumpster. They think he through it away so it
would look like it was stolen, and like he spent the whole night in
his room, watching Pay-per-View while the murder took place. Wells
doesn't understand what is going on. He doesn't remember anything
and asks Scully about the murder. Before she can, Doggett holds up
pictures of his wife, Vicky's dead body. He starts crying.
Wells is taken to
Baltimore circuit court for a hearing. He is charged with murdering
his wife. Wells' father-in-law is there - he is the man we saw shoot
Wells. Wells slowly understands that it is not Saturday, but
Thursday. He knows the judge on a first name basis, but the judge
feels compelled by the facts of the case to deny bail. When he
orders Wells moved to a more secure facility to protect him from
being harmed by other prisoners he has prosecuted, Wells claims that
if he is transferred, his father in law will kill him. Scully and
Doggett come to talk to him.
Martin:
John..?
Scully: [showing keycard] Mr.
Wells, do you recognize this?
Martin: Yes. Who are you? [Scully doesn't answer]
Martin: John, what am I... what
am I doing here?
Doggett: Don't even. Martin...
Martin: John, what am I doing here?! I'm in this cell and I
don't know where I am or how I even got here and you're acting like,
everyone's acting like --
Doggett: -- I swear to God, on top of everything else, do not
play this with me. I'm not gonna be party to some half-assed, 11th
hour insanity defense.
Martin: What? John --
Doggett: IT'S TIME TO START TELLING ME THE TRUTH!!
Scully asks him the
last thing he remembers - he tells her that he remembers being shot
by his father-in-law. Doggett gets angry and he thinks Wells is
wasting their time and he starts to move away but Scully is still
listening. Wells remembers nothing of the last three days, But
Doggett tells him that he doesn't have any evidence to prove that.
Doggett tells him that he is his friend, and he will listen to him,
but he will not be lied to. Wells tells him that he doesn't
understand any of it, but all he knew was that he didn't kill his
wife.
Scully: If
you truly dont remember, then how can you be certain that you
didn't?
Later, alone in his
cell, he has brief visions of the murder, but nothing clear - a
broken glass being pulled back together and a knife covered in blood
coming out of his wife. Wells notices the spiderweb. In anger he
pulls it away and stomps on it. Wells children, two young girls, are
brought to see him by their nanny, Trina. "Grandpa says they
won't let you come home," they say. He has another vision in
reverse - He sees the broken glass moving again and then his wife
gets up from falling onto a glass-topped table. He sees fallen
pearls from her broken necklace lifting into the air, and then he
sees her screaming. Wells asks Trina to bring a child's doll from
his home - it has a "nanny cam" in it that is activated by
motion. He and his attorney play the tape. They find his wife on the
tape - and see Martin, also.
Wednesday,
December 6, Wells wakes up to see the spider crawling on its web
- unharmed. He is taken to an interview room to talk with his family
attorney, who introduces his defense attorney - whom he seems to
know, but she doesn't recognize him. After much confusion, Wells
realizes that it is, again, a day earlier. His face is not wounded.
The attorneys tell Wells that police have not been able to find the
key card that was used to access his apartment building, and as a
result, they have a weak case.
Later in the jail
exercise yard, another prisoner who Wells prosecuted accosts him. A
third prisoner who has a spider web tattoo on his hand beats him.
Scully and Doggett come to see him - from their perspective it is
the first time they have talked. Wells attempts to explain. Every
morning he wakes up it is the day before. He doesn't remember the
day his wife was killed because for him it hasn't happened yet.
Doggett walks out in disgust. As Scully leaves, she asks him if its
true, why is it happening? He says that he doesn't know, but there
has to be a reason. She asks him what reason, and he tells her that
maybe there’s something that he is meant to understand, although,
he doesn’t know what it could be.
Scully: You
realize you have no way of proving it. If tommorrow really is the
day before today, we won’t have had this conversation.
Doggett: You’ll have to explain it to us all over again.
(under his breath) Remind me to skip that freakin meeting.
Scully: Let’s say it’s true, Mr. Wells. Why do you think
it’s happening?
Wells: We talked about this yesterday, only--like you
said--you don’t remember. Whatever it is that’s going on here, I
think it’s some kind of message.
Scully: Something you alone are meant to understand. Maybe
you already have the answer within you.
Wells reviews the
evidence files. He is taunted again by another prisoner. He tells
Wells that he's looking for some loophole - a technicality that he
can out on. He tells him that he is trying to find out the truth.
The man tells him that he better stick to the technicalities. He
tells Wells that the truth is going to keep him in there. Laughing,
he finally walks away. It is painful for him, but he looks at the
pictures of his dead wife, and has another vision of the events - He
sees the glass again, then her bleeding body lying on the floor.
Next he sees a bloody knife, but this time he sees the hand holding
it - a hand covered with a spider web tatoo.
Wells: I
know who did it.
On Tuesday,
December 5, Wells wakes up at Doggett's home. The news is
reporting his wife's death and the search for the key card. Wells
describes the man and Doggett calls the Baltimore city jail. No
prisoner is there with that description - he must not have been
arrested yet. Doggett is confused. He tells Wells that if he is
trying to admit something to him, or to himself, he wants him to
just come out and say it.
Wells: There
is a reason all this is happening. Maybe I already have the answer.
Wells and Doggett
go to the Wells home and retrieve the nanny cam. There is nobody on
the tape between his wife and the police. His wife was killed before
sunrise, but it is obvious from the reflection of the sun in the
mirror on the video that Wells came into the room after she was
murdered. Wells explains that there was a remote control on the
nanny cam, to stop the tape - their housekeeper, Trina, knew about
it. They go to her home and the man with the spider web hand is
there and Doggett arrests him after a scuffle. The man had
threatened the housekeeper and Trina is so scared that she will not
testify.
Wells talks with
the man alone. Wells prosecuted his brother for possession of drugs
and got him jailed for life. The man accuses Wells of withholding
evidence that could have exonerated his brother, in order to get an
easy conviction. Wells tells him that he will see about reducing his
brother’s sentence if he admits on record that he committed the
murder. The man tells him that his brother hung himself about a
couple of weeks ago in prison. Although the man, in effect, admitted
his guilt to Wells, nobody else heard it and Wells is arrested
because police feel that they have a case against him.
On Monday,
December 4, Wells awakes up at 2:08 am in a Washington DC hotel
room. He tries to call his wife, but gets an answering machine. It
is two hours to the murder. He goes to Doggett's and asks for help -
they haven't seen each other for three years. Wells thinks he has
been given a second chance. He tells Doggett how he suppressed
evidence and sent an innocent man to jail. Doggett tells him that if
he tells him anymore that he knows he could be put in jail. He tells
him that at least his wife wouldn’t be killed. He telephones
Baltimore police but they thought he was a crackpot. He asks Doggett
to call police using his FBI status and ask that they go to the
Wells residence. Wells doesn't wait for Doggett to complete the call
and hurries home to Baltimore.
Police are already
at the apartment when he arrives, but Vickie is not there. It is a
few minutes past the murder time. The officers say they will sweep
the neighborhood, and leave. Wells calls his father in law - Vickie
is not there. Vickie arrives home and Wells is agitated -- they have
to get out of there right now. Before they can leave, the murderer
enters and he and Wells fight. Knocking Wells down, the man grabs
Vickie. He cuts her pearl necklace off, and the pearls fall to the
ground, as in Wells visions. She is pushed backwards onto the
glass-topped table. As he is about to slit her throat, he is
shot...by Doggett who enters with Scully. Wells sees Scully's
wristwatch -- the second hand is frozen, but then it begins moving
forward again.
Three months later,
at the penitentiary, Wells is in prison. Voiceover:
Wells:The
passage of time imprisons us not in a cell of brick and mortar, but
in one of hopes dashed and tragedies unoverted. How precious then,
the chance to go back. Only to discover that in facing the past you
must face up to yourself. But exiting the prison of time doesn’t
free you from the prison of your own character. One from which there
is no escape.
Research
Information
Redrum -- spell it
backwards and you get Murder. Steve Maeda previously wrote Brand X
(with Greg Walker) and a few episodes of Harsh Realm, while Daniel
Arkin previously wrote Arcadia, and Peter Markle previously directed
Christmas Carol and Alpha. Well's court case is 8XAB03 - the same as
the episode production title