- Damian Thomas: I know y'all got a job to do, but this story gets old. Rich white guy gets shot, cops go nuts, start rounding up innocent Black men. The FBI gets involved.
- Special Agent Stuart Scola: Okay. A United States congressman was murdered. This country is at a tipping point.
- Damian Thomas: And yet five miles away in his own district, the murders of young Black men barely register, so forgive me if I'm not shedding any tears for this two-faced politician.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Hey, Kelly, have your team start scrubbing through videos from the area surrounding both crime scenes and flag anything that appears in both.
- Kelly Moran: On it.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Ian, you guys run financials on both victims. Look for any common patterns; expenses, accounts. Let's get creative, folks! Our shooter might have plans to strike again. Travel history, online hangouts, common acquaintances. I don't know. Surprise me.
- Special Agent Stuart Scola: We got the shooter, saved a life. Maybe two.
- Special Agent Tiffany Wallace: Yeah. I know. I'm supposed to feel good. What DHS was doing was wrong... in my book, at least, and... I still went over there and I used their information.
- Special Agent Stuart Scola: *We* still ran over there and used the information.
- Special Agent Tiffany Wallace: Yeah. We didn't have a choice. But that is such crap... 'cause we do... have a choice. And today we chose to do what was convenient. I guess what I mean is that... you don't get to pick and choose when to have integrity; when to stand up for what's right, you know? When to be the kind of Black woman you want to be.
- Special Agent Stuart Scola: Look, I get it. I do. And the truth is that sometimes there's a cost to victory. But that doesn't mean that it's not a victory.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: All right, folks, here's the question: how did a progressive ally like Logan Reed end up in the crosshairs of a minority protest group?
- Ian Lim: Well, the protest at Reed's house was organized by Damian Thomas, a community activist who lives in Reed's district, but he despises him. Called him "the worst kind of racist, a white liberal hypocrite who co-opted the civil rights movement for his personal gain."
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: That's pretty harsh. Next question is why did Thomas feel this way?
- Ian Lim: Well, before he ran for Congress, Reed was a prosecutor known for being tough on crime.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Right, so Thomas thought he was a hypocrite. One minute, he's putting young Black men in prison, the next, he's out on the streets protesting with Black activists.
- Special Agent Tiffany Wallace: And he was preaching all his newfound wokeness from his big-ass pad in the suburbs.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: And that. Would Damian Thomas really kill over all this?
- Special Agent Stuart Scola: Thomas' alibi checks out. Security footage from the restaurant confirms that he was having dinner when Reed was shot.
- Special Agent Tiffany Wallace: NYPD says Marcus Ervin was shot last night in Brooklyn around 10:00 p.m. while he was standing in the doorway of his ground-floor apartment after a rock came crashing through his window.
- Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille: Same M.O. as Reed.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: They run the ballistics yet?
- Special Agent Tiffany Wallace: It's the same gun.
- Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille: All right, that's two murders within three hours.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: That we know of. We could be looking at a killing spree.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Game faces, people. We now have two victims of the same gunman who might not be done shooting yet. Three hours after killing Congressman Reed in the suburbs, our shooter resurfaced in Brooklyn and killed this man, Marcus Ervin. He's 20 years old. He's a retail clerk. Lived with his mother, was taking IT classes at night. The question is why; either there's a connection between these two murders or we have a madman on the loose throwing rocks through random windows and shooting whoever walks out.
- Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille: If these two men were targeted, they were not killed for their differences. They were killed for their similarities. What do these two men have in common?
- Cody McCowan: All these criminals running in the streets, and what do you do? You arrest an innocent man.
- Special Agent Omar Adom 'OA' Zidan: If you're so innocent, then why'd you run?
- Cody McCowan: I got outstanding warrants, and I didn't feel like surrendering just yet; more work to do, since the cops don't have the guts to do their jobs anymore.
- Special Agent Maggie Bell: [showing him footage of his assault of Marcus Ervin] This your idea of police work?
- Cody McCowan: That's called payback.
- Special Agent Maggie Bell: For what?
- Cody McCowan: Race riots last summer.
- Special Agent Maggie Bell: Oh, you're referring to the protests.
- Cody McCowan: Looked more like riots to me. This punk Marcus threw a brick through the window of my mom's bar. Looters stormed inside, started destroying the place like animals. Cops didn't do a damn thing to stop it.
- Special Agent Omar Adom 'OA' Zidan: So that gives your brother Jack the right to take a bat to his head?
- Cody McCowan: To save our mom's bar! It's called self-defense. And the Internet runs with it. All of a sudden, we're evil racists. They started it, not us. We were minding our own business, and then they started protesting and looting. But my brother's the one who got sent to prison, and now he's hooked up to a feeding tube, so hell yeah I kicked that kid's ass.
- Special Agent Maggie Bell: Yeah, but that wasn't enough. That's why you went after Marcus again, right? But this time, you killed him.
- Special Agent Omar Adom 'OA' Zidan: Right after you killed Congressman Reed?
- Cody McCowan: What the hell are you talking about?
- Special Agent Omar Adom 'OA' Zidan: Come on, Cody, you said it yourself. Your brother got screwed. You wanted revenge.
- Cody McCowan: Yeah, but I didn't kill anybody.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: So, Tiffany and Scola just called. Damien Thomas, the community activist who told us about Marcus' murder, he was just killed 30 minutes ago. He was shot in the chest after somebody threw a brick through his office window.
- Special Agent Maggie Bell: Are we sure this is related?
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: ERT pulled a second slug from the wall. Preliminary ballistics are a match to the other two murders, which means...
- Special Agent Omar Adom 'OA' Zidan: Cody McCowan isn't our killer because he was here in our custody when Thomas was shot.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Right. And our spree shooter is still out there and still killing people.
- Damian Thomas: You think I killed Logan Reed?
- Special Agent Tiffany Wallace: You stood outside his house last week with a gun yelling that he needed to disappear, so, yeah.
- Damian Thomas: I admit I got carried away with that, but I didn't mean what I said. I don't even own a gun.
- Special Agent Stuart Scola: All right, let's try this again. Maybe this time don't treat us like idiots.
- Damian Thomas: [he's shown a camera still with said gun circled] Come on, man. I took that gun off a kid at the rally. He was a hothead. I don't stand for violence.
- Special Agent Stuart Scola: Except for when you're making death threats.
- Special Agent Tiffany Wallace: Or someone throws a brick through the congressman's window.
- Damian Thomas: The hothead did that. It's a good thing I took away his gun.
- Special Agent Stuart Scola: You give it back to him?
- Damian Thomas: I got rid of it at a gun buyback. I got the receipt, if it helps.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Based on the Rikers telephone record, Cody McCowan learned of Jack's prison yard beating 10:04 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Then six hours later, in what seems like a direct response, beats Marcus in the street. Then, last night, both Marcus and Congressman Reed are shot and killed.
- Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille: Any luck tracking Cody's phone?
- Ian Lim: Yeah, I just got up on the new number. No location data, but for the past two hours, it's been pinging off the same three towers in Brooklyn, putting him somewhere within these ten square blocks.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Okay, okay. We are looking for an address in Flatbush. Does Cody have any relatives there? Any friends from the BKB? Any references on social media posts? Let's go. I want to be kicking in a door in 20 minutes, and I need someone in here to tell me exactly which one.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Fifteen minutes ago, Congressman Logan Reed was shot and killed at his home in Scarsdale. Now, as most of you know, Logan Reed was a rising star in the Democratic Party, a former prosecutor. He rose to national prominence last summer during all of the racial unrest. Love him or hate him, he was one of the most talked-about politicians in the country.
- Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille: The story just broke online, so the entire country's about to start asking if this was politically motivated. We need answers and fast.
- Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine: Let's get some, people. Go to work.