While driving to the hospital in Albany, Jude informs Emmy about the FBI’s investigation and the allegation that their father was on a Giglio list. At the trauma center, they find Mandy’s room unguarded, a serious lapse by Deputy Chief Brett Temple. Layla Paulson, who stayed with Mandy well past working hours, informs them that Mandy is semi-conscious and that her first words were to ask for her father.

Emmy gently questions Mandy, who confirms that she and her mother were packing their bags to “get away” and “hide.” She says that Allison had been searching the dining-room table for a lost fake driver’s license. Later, in the hospital cafeteria, Sherry shows Emmy and Jude photos of severe, days-old bruises on Mandy’s back. Jude deduces that they were likely inflicted by a left-handed attacker wearing a ring with a stone or sharp edge. Sherry then reveals her most significant finding: An X-ray of Mandy’s shoe shows a hidden circuit board, which Jude identifies as a GPS tracker. The discovery leads Emmy to a new theory: Mandy, not Allison, was the killer’s primary target.

The next morning, Jude finds one of Myrna’s index cards, which reads, “Filipendulous: hanging by a thread; dangling” (179). She recalls the painful memory of bringing a newborn Emmy to her parents as an 18-year-old. Myrna and Gerald presented her with a “choice”: Take Emmy and leave, or leave without Emmy and let them raise the child as their own. Either way, they wanted nothing more to do with her.

Jude’s sister-in-law and childhood friend, Celia, arrives and reveals that she and Tommy figured out that Emmy is Jude’s biological daughter. During Myrna’s illness, she often called Emmy Jude’s “baby.” Celia has also noticed the maternal love in Jude’s eyes when she looks at Emmy. Jude confirms the secret, claiming that Emmy’s biological father was a musician with a drug addiction who was murdered in a drug deal. Celia advises Jude to tell Emmy the truth before she finds out.

Later, Cole tells Jude that Brett spoke to an Atlanta reporter. The resulting article implied that once sworn in as sheriff, Brett would arrest Bill Garrison. Overwhelmed by the case, Emmy has a moment of vulnerability with Jude, admitting that she’s both angry at and grateful for her presence. Recognizing that she has hit an investigative wall, Emmy accepts Jude’s guidance to refocus on the physical evidence. They decide to return to Allison’s house.

At Allison’s house, Jude encourages Emmy to re-examine the crime scene with fresh eyes. Emmy notes the immaculate neatness of the garage and the interior of Allison’s car, recalling that her friend kept a messy home before she married Bill. Jude states that insisting on an obsessively clean home can be an abusive control mechanism. If Bill was coercively controlling, he likely dictated Allison’s activities and restricted her digital access. She theorizes that Allison, worried about her daughter’s relationship with Woody and unable to use location-sharing apps, hid the GPS tracker in Mandy’s shoe. Jude helps Emmy analyze Bill’s statements about the murder, revealing them as a calculated effort to control the narrative by immediately blaming Reggie.

Inside, their search of the foyer yields key clues. Drawn to the painting Christina’s World, which she and Allison discussed in their book group, Emmy finds the number “2002” written in green marker on the back of a print. On the entry table, she finds a keychain with two mysterious keys—a high-security dimple key and a barrel key—that don’t open any locks in the house. Finally, a library book, Feynman’s Tips on Physics, stands out as uncharacteristic of Allison’s reading taste. After another fruitless search of Mandy’s bedroom, Emmy receives a text message confirming that they can now interview Mandy’s friend Skylar Guthrie.

Emmy and Jude interview Skylar. She tells them that Bill locked the refrigerator to control what Allison and Mandy ate and that Mandy had severe bruises on her arms and back. She also reveals that after Bill moved out two weeks prior, Mandy’s mood improved, and she suddenly had a lot of money to buy expensive clothes. Skylar believes that the money came from the unidentified older man whom Mandy was secretly seeing.

As they leave the Guthrie house, Emmy and Jude are confronted by the notorious local crime boss, Lee “Bubba” Rawley. Lee states that his grandson Woody has an alibi, as a DeKalb County chief deputy was questioning him on an unrelated matter at the time of the shooting. He also claims that Bill Garrison has massive gambling debts and that Woody was intimidating Mandy to pressure Bill to pay. 

After Lee leaves, a shaken Jude confesses that he’s the reason she fled North Falls 40 years ago. She was escaping a potential manslaughter charge for nearly killing him in a drunk-driving accident.

Jude explains to Emmy that Tommy was also in the car when she T-boned Lee’s truck during a drunken drag race. After the accident, the town turned against her, forcing her to steal a car and flee. 

Emmy confirms Woody’s alibi and also learns that Allison had a $200,000 life-insurance policy with Mandy as the beneficiary. Meanwhile, Deputy Gregg reports that the security guard from the Lazy Eight motel overheard Allison screaming, “You took the last good thing from me” (235), at Bill the night before her murder.

Overwhelmed by competing theories about conspiracies and corruption, Emmy recalls her father’s warning about developing a “cult of a case” (237), where an investigator latches onto one theory and ignores conflicting evidence. She realizes that she has been distracted from what is most important: the trail of clues—the number, the keys, and the physics book—that Allison left specifically for her. Emmy decides that their next stop is the library.

At the library, Emmy and Jude find the gap on the bookshelf where Feynman’s Tips on Physics belongs. While searching books by the same author, Jude finds the number “2002” written in green marker inside Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! The librarian, Barbara, confirms that Allison had been frequently checking out a different Feynman book and had a key to the library’s secure microfiche archives. She lets them into the archives, where Emmy uses Allison’s keys to open a locked newspaper drawer and discovers a hidden burner phone.

Jude calls the only number stored in the phone and reaches FBI agent Reid Foley. Foley confesses that Assistant Director Samuel Callaghan lied; Allison had provided solid evidence proving that Police Chief Reggie Wilder and his drug squad were corrupt. However, just two days before her murder, the FBI denied Allison’s request for witness protection, leaving her devastated. Foley relays that Allison concluded that Gerald never asked Reggie to make the evidence disappear—Reggie acted on his own and lied to her. Realizing that Allison was researching the 2002 archives of the North Falls Register, Emmy and Jude decide that their next move is to question Aunt Millie, the paper’s former police-blotter writer.