Waking The Dead : What Happened and Why in
Sins

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Poor Horton Prison Warden James Reading, head he lost. Reading was murdered in his home in 2001. His 18 year old daughter Cathy discovered his headless corpse when she returned home from wandering around a bowling alley. Some boys fishing in the river opted to open a non-descript garbage bag they found and discovered Reading's skull. A police dive team find a suitcase with several of Reading's trophies.

We join a session in which a man tells his doctor about the glory of watching someone die. Apparently, he killed someone he claims to have loved. He adds that he and the psychologist know that he will die soon, thereby giving the doctor the chance to experience watching someone's life being snuffed out for himself. The patient is rapist murderer Michael Kelleher and the doctor is Damien Hooper, the prison psychologist.

In 2001, the two main suspects for Reading's murder were Kelleher and another sicko rapist murderer, Terry Ryan. Ryan rapes men and women, while Kelleher rapes only men. Kelleher had publicly threatened Reading. You can tell that Reading is definitely involved in something seedy in that prison with the way that both Kelleher and Ryan sneer the word mate in his direction.

Kelleher and Ryan had a shared alibi for the night of the murder in that they were both watching television in a home for ex-convicts. Spence gets to check on the alibi. The guy in charge of the house is just a creep, his name is Paul Owens, but creep seems to fit. Owens does manage to tell Spence that Terry Ryan is now working for a forest heritage. The creep also drops another bit of very useful information that several men on parole or on license just disappear. At the moment, Spence just wants to know where another alibi witness can be found, but the missing parolees will be a key plot point later. Plot - it's a pun.

Cathy Reading comes into the office and Boyd tells her they found her father's head. She gets upset. Grace gets upset with Boyd's insensitivity. Boyd gets upset that Grace let Cathy go home. The usual. Not really sure what Grace wanted Boyd to do here. Is there a good way to say we found your father's severed head in a garbage bag in the river?

Oh hey, Jess Worrall is back. Oh wait, my bad, that's not Jess, that's Ruth Gemmell back for another guest appearance. This time she is playing Linda Cummings, a prison guard. Her hair is all tucked in this time, I guess this means she's not the love interest with the gobs of flowing red hair. We've had repeaters before (check the cast list if you don't believe me) just never major roles each time. Anyway, not only does Cummings evoke suspicion because we know the actor, she also moves some chess pieces around in a board set up near the cells. We have seen Kelleher playing chess, does this mean Cummings is involved in some sort of game with Kelleher. Yes, it does, it just doesn't tell you who controls the game.

Linda Cummings tells Boyd and Grace that Kalleher is dying from prostate cancer. Kelleher tells them that Reading liked to beat the prisoners. Owens said similar things about Reading liking to hurt prisoners, adding, when Reading got you alone he hurt you in places that aren't normal places to hurt someone . Kelleher also claims to be engaged to marry Terry Ryan. Ryan is out of prison, but Kelleher has been re-imprisoned since his 2000 release. He is now serving a new sentence for rape and murder.

Damien Hooper bursts into the interview, angry that they are questioning his patient. Odd that Hooper seems to be the top guy in the prison structure. Didn't they ever hire a replacement warden? Kelleher begins to cry as if on cue. Hooper takes Grace and Boyd to his office. Hooper is a big ole Grace Foley fanboy and he whips out her Love and Rage book to be autographed.

Stella spends some quality time with Cathy Reading. It's not just men who have daddy issues. Oh the stories Stella could tell. Perhaps Stella spends the episode ruminating on her dads, because she is pretty much m.i.a. this episode. If you want to ruminate on Stella and her two (or 3 if you count Boyd) dads, check out Cold Fusion. For now, Cathy explains that she is still living in the home where her father was murdered because Damien says that "what happened here was the past, we decide our future." Damien and Grace-like psychobabble, yes it is Dr. Damien Hooper, prison psychologist who is shacking up with young Cathy Reading and her child.

Stella calls Boyd to let him know that Cathy and Damien are living together. Boyd is unhappy that Damien did not reveal this himself. Does Boyd reveal all of his creepy fetishes for underaged partners? It took forever to pry out of him that he was corroborating with young Clara Gold in Thin Air. Anyway, Damien says he was the executor of Reading's will and Cathy was in his care until she turned 21. Apparently oblivious to the irony, he adds that he and Cathy formed a "bond" when she was 18, and that she is very vulnerable. When Damien learns that Cathy has been to the office and furthermore that a police officer is now in his house, he flies off the handle. He tosses in that given the right circumstances we are all capable of killing, even Boyd. Cryptic or foreshadowing, you tell me. What are the right circumstances for Boyd to kill someone? Given the degree of anger management we have seen him display over the years, I'll have to say if the dry cleaner gives him the wrong shirt.

Spence tracks Terry Ryan down in the forest. Ryan comes at him with an axe. Spence uses his badge to fend him off Ryan is a little chatty and possibly a lot nuts. He says he loved Reading. The real terror was the Beast. He does not identify the beast, but he does identify head prison guard Pike as Reading's killer. Spence gives Ryan his business card, Ryan promises to call, but Spence hopes he stays far away.

Stella sees a picture of Cathy's daughter and asks innocently how old she is. Cathy responds, "why do you want to know?" Seriously, do flags get redder? Crazy Damien shows up and throws Stella out. Later, when Stella tells Boyd there is a child, the only thing he wants to know is her exact age.

Guards Jonathan Pike and Linda Cummings show up to take Kelleher from his cell to the hospital. Kelleher is surprised to see Pike, he is expecting Damien. He tries to convince Pike he does not need to be handcuffed, probably because it will be easier to get to the razorblade he has hidden in his shirt collar. Pike goes to the restroom where he over takes Pike and locks Pike to the pipe.

On the new forensic toy front, Eve has some sort of photographic projection system where she can recreate the murder scene on a 1:1 scale. It's no doubt more fun than a computer graphics recreation. Eve goes into some detail in explaining that Reading was first hit with a non-fatal blow with a trophy. He was killed by two other blows to the head. The upshot is that the killer was really very clever in the method of killing and in hiding his or her own presence forensically. The killer is one smart cookie. Indeed, giving the first casual blow and the later systematic activity, it is either two people involved or as Grace postulates, one killer suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Kelleher takes Cummings prisoner. He grabs Damien just as he is about to pick up Cathy's daughter from school. To help matters along, Spence gets a text message saying, "gotcha love and kisses, K." Why would anyone do that? Spence and Boyd race to Ryan's place and find Linda Cummings handcuffed but unharmed. A helicopter finds Ryan's car in the forest. Boyd and Spence, followed by Grace arrive on the scene to find Eve is already there. The quartet stroll out into the forest to a clearing and find a newly dead Terry Ryan in a shallow grave. Eve takes a look at the field and realizes it is littered with dead bodies.

Boyd, of all people, examines one of the corpses and notes there are no defensive wounds. So wait, Boyd has been paying attention to the forensics all this time? Boyd does not know why Ryan has been killed and not Damien Hooper. Truth is, Kelleher is saving Damien for special events. The first event is telling a tied up Damien that he wants to hurt him. He does a good job at physically hurting him by first beating him and then pouring boiling water into his crotch. It gets worse. It turns out that Kelleher has been filling his therapy session with lies about his life. Kelleher resents Damien for basing his analysis on these lies.

Grace surmises that Kelleher has killed all seven of the victims in the field and led them there because he wants his work known before he dies. They also go with a theory that Damien is going along with Kelleher willingly.

Team Bonding Moment: Spence brings Eve coffee and asks how she knew so quickly that there were bodies in the field. She says she learned to do it in Bosnia. Spence is very sympathetic. That's sweet. Sometimes, I think they film things just to be edited out.

Cathy Reading makes her second appearance in the cold case office and her second rapid exit. This time Boyd starts to ask her about her relationship with Damien when she was 18 and he was 39. Cathy gets upset. Grace gets upset with Boyd's insensitivity. Boyd gets upset with Grace letting Cathy leave before he gets any answers. And people say, Waking the Dead isn't consistent.

Remember the parolees who went missing? Some of them have now been found and Eve is examining their corpses. Eve is also examing dna samples she has collected from a stuff toy belonging to Cathy's daughter Julie. It's probably not a big surprise but Cathy is Julie's mother and her sister. Boyd gives Grace an ultimatum, either she question Cathy or he'll do it.

Spence tracks down Kelleher's hiding spot, but by the time he reaches it, Kelleher has taken Damien to a deserted beach. On the way, they drop off Damien's phone at the halfway house with Owen. Kelleher rapes Damien and then buries him up to his neck in the sand.

Linda Cummings is back on duty. Not even a few hours off for being kidnapped and held captive, I hope there are other perqs that go with the job. Boyd and Grace rifle through Damien's office and find a manuscript, called Bad Machines, describing the murders. They presume that Damien has written the document. It would mean that Damien was straight up psychotic. Or as Grace likes to say this week, suffering from dissociative identity disorder. I'll let you know now, nobody is suffering from this, except maybe Boyd.

Kelleher leaves a video message saying he and Damien killed Reading. He then says Damien killed all the men in the meadow. He is lying, Damien hasn't killed anyone. Kelleher didn't kill Reading or the men in the field. Boyd and Spence grill Pike for more answers. They decide he's not the killer, but he is worthy of tossing into a cell.

When confronted with the truth about her daughter's father, Cathy confesses to killing her father. She says she told him she was pregnant and wanted to keep the child. She seems upset that she meant nothing to her father. I don't even want to know what she hoped she did mean to him. James Reading wanted to continue sleeping with his daughter. Cathy was annoyed and hit him over the head with a trophy. She believed she killed him. We know she wasn't the killer. Boyd thinks Grace's interview is going nowhere and he brings in the skull for a visual aid. Cathy is upset. Grace is upset with Boyd's insensitivy, but hold the presses, no one gets to leave.

Cathy says she called Cummings to help her that night. It turns out that she used to babysit Cathy. That might have been a nice bit of information to have at the beginning of the show. No matter, we had enough reason to suspect Linda Cummings without that tidbit.

Linda Cummings has an IQ of 170. She also spent most of her childhood in foster homes. Boyd begins to pull the pieces together for Cummings to show how she has been part of the murders. She cuffed and gagged herself at Ownen's place. Spence comes in and whispers that they found Damien. They leave Cummings in the room where she believes she is not being observed. Isn't an IQ of 170 supposed to be higher than average intelligence? She calls Kelleher and then we see that Stella has been monitoring Cummings. They trace the call to the south coast and Boyd and Spence race out to find Kelleher. Damien Hooper is nowhere to be seen. We can only imagine he has drowned.

Boyd tries to question a drugged up Kelleher. In the ambulance he shocks Kelleher and tries to force him to reveal Damien's location. Boyd taunts Kelleher with the promise of morphine. Kelleher says that Cummings planned the outing with Damien. Cummings gave Kelleher the razorblade and planted the manuscript. She only wanted Kelleher to get a confession out of Damien.

Grace delivers the bad news about Damien to Cathy. Still, the problem is that there is no physical evidence to prove that Cummings killed Ryan or Reading. They go with the usual trickery angle. Boyd talks to Cummings, appealling to her ego so that she agrees to sign the manuscript, signalling that she wrote it. Only the real killer could have written it.

Next we delve into the world of Boyd's psychosis. They haven't revealed that he is imagining this Joe Luke storyline, but it is the only explanation I will accept. At the start of the episode, Stella helps Boyd trace Joe Luke's mobile (cell phone). Seriously, what? Joe Luke has a cell phone? Why the heck hasn't Boyd called him before now. Boyd finds the phone in an abandoned warehouse, but there is no Luke. At the end of the episode, Boyd goes back to the warehouse and finds Joe Luke on his knees servicing some random guy. Boyd flies into a rage and dangles the guy out of a window. Joe Luke calls him off then runs away. Boyd yells after him. None of it seems real. Perhaps it happened years ago. Perhaps, Boyd is just imagining what would have happened had he found his son. Perhaps he is imagining what would have happened had he named his son Luke and not Joe. Don't know. Don't really care that much.