Harlan Coben’s I Will Find You Recap Episode 2: Loose Ends
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
Playing the motive game is part of the fun of mysteries. Now that the table setting was done with the first episode, let’s try and play the motive game with the characters that we know so far.
Ted Wesson’s (Christopher Redman) motive was simple: money. He was paid to keep an eye on David Burroughs (Sam Worthington) whilst he languished in jail. That he was a jerk to him, too, he probably just did for free; Matthew’s death was big news, and people were convinced that David did kill his three-year-old son. Things changed when Rachel Mills (Britt Lower) came to prison with a photograph of a boy who could very well be Matthew.
That was actually one of my points of interest in the first episode – Why did Ted insist that David see Rachel, when David has refused visitation the whole time he has been in prison? Ted was not instructed to make sure David and Rachel spoke; Ted only informed whoever was paying him about David’s visitor after the visit. Was it curiosity that led him to insist on the visit? Or, did David truly never had even a single visitor for the past five years? Perhaps his only visitor requests were from the press wanting to interview him – there had to be some, given the notoriety of the case – and he has refused them all. If insisting that David and Rachel spoke to each other was Ted’s call, then everything that happened afterwards stemmed from that decision. David did not even want to get out of his cell, Ted had to threaten him.
Ted tried to take Sumner’s advice and get away, but following a phone call, he sent his wife and daughter off and he remained in his house. Whoever paid him must have guessed that he would be one of David’s first stops, and they were right. After David escaped the police roadblocks and vehicles and helicopter with Rachel’s help, they headed to Ted’s house. David went in alone with Adam’s gun. Ted got the jump on David, but after showing that he knew little – he could not even tell David if Matthew was truly alive – he shot himself in the head. That was to protect his family, to make sure the buck would stop with him.
Ross Sumner (Eric Johnson) was a more interesting case. The obvious motive would not be money because he was wealthy himself. He was in jail because the police found six bodies in his family’s estate and two more in his Upper West Side penthouse. Why did he put himself in physical danger and attack David in prison? Was he bored? Was it for a chance to get work detail and mingle for a short time when, given the heinous nature of his crimes, he would otherwise not have been permitted there? Whoever was behind the conspiracy certainly had money, and I wonder if this mysterious someone was also part of Sumner’s social circle before he went to jail.
What about Philip and Adam MacKenzie (Peter Outerbridge and Jonathan Tucker)? I appreciate that the FBI team, led by Special Agent Max Williams (Chi McBride) and his daughter Sarah Greer (Logan Browning), were not fooled for a second by the story father and son concocted. By the time the FBI plane landed, they already knew of the bond between Philip and Lenny (Hugh Thompson), David’s father, as they worked homicide together for 20 years. Adam was David’s childhood best friend. Philip expressed regret for involving his son in David’s escape, but for Adam, David was family, it needed to be done. Later, Adam was shown digging up Matthew’s grave, a move he kept from his father.
And Rachel? She was Matthew’s aunt, of course she wanted to know what truly happened to the boy. Rachel’s familial feelings notwithstanding, she was also a journalist who has been wanting to get out of the teaching job she was forced to take and into what she truly loved doing. She must have known that the FBI would go after her as well, now that she had aided and abetted a fugitive, but she was full throttle ahead in the investigation. In secret, she emailed her old editor Jim about the incredible story she was working on.
Rachel and David headed to New York to find Hilde Winslow. Since that all they knew was a PO Box, and the location would not open until the morning, Rachel purchased a burner phone and reached out to a man named Hayden (Milo Ventimiglia). Rachel borrowed Hayden’s place for the night, and it was a massive apartment; given that we saw Hayden drop 1.5 million at auction like it was nothing, his New York pad was not a surprise. Hayden was in Boston, and when he saw news of David’s escape, he checked his home security camera. There David was, in his living room, with Rachel. The fact that Milo Ventimiglia was cast here, I am taking as a sign that Hayden has a major role to play in the story.
Hilde was a good lead; the problem was, the FBI knew about her, too. David’s cell neighbour asked for his flashlight in exchange for providing Agent Max information on what happened the night that David allegedly tried to kill Ted Wesson. According to the neighbour, Ted opened up David’s cell using his emergency key; he did not ask the shift guard to buzz him in. That ensured that there was no record of the door opening at that time of the night. Max wondered if Ted tried to kill David and not the other way around, and David went to Ted’s house to settle the score. When he remembered that he neglected to provide the promised flashlight to David’s cell neighbour, Sarah pointed out there was no flashlight on the inventory of David’s things. A search of Davis’s cell revealed not just the flashlight but Matthew’s murder book, with Hilde’s name encircled.
Rating: B+
Strays
🕵️Rachel told David that Cheryl had remarried and was expecting a baby girl.
🕵️Someone erased the footage of Rachel’s prison visit a few hours before the FBI got there.
🕵️This was the story of how Rachel lost her job at The Globe – She was investigating a series of sexual assaults at Lemhall University, a story that some faculty and boosters wanted to bury. One of the victims was a kid named Catherine Tullo, whom Rachel pushed to come forward. The night before they were supposed to meet, Catherine took her own life. Catherine’s parents blamed Rachel, and they sued The Globe for wrongful death.
🕵️The man in a suit, who was either a policeman or someone pretending to be one, based on the badge, was the voice behind the burner phone that Ted had, which David now possessed.
🕵️ Ted has been getting one thousand dollars a month from a company called REH Holdings since the month David arrived in prison.
Episode Writer: Robert Hull
Episode Director: Brad Anderson
Original Release Date: June 18, 2026