What If She's Lying

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“What If She's Lying”
Day Break episode

Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 8
Written by	Paul Zbyszewski Henry Alonso Myers
Directed by	Bryan Spicer
Production no.	108
Original airdate	January 29, 2007
Episode chronology
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"What If He's Not Alone"	"What If They're Connected"
List of Day Break Episodes

What If She's Lying is the eighth episode of Day Break which was first available through ABC.com.

[edit] Summary

Hopper believes that his sister Jennifer is hiding something from him. By visiting his estranged mother, he hopes to find clues in his father's old police files pertaining to his present situation, but is led instead, by reason of missing files, to his father's former partner, "Uncle Nick." Meanwhile, Fencik and Buchalter are identified as the men tailing Hopper, and Chad's entanglement with Buchalter boils over. Jennifer's secret turns out to be a pivotal turning point in Hopper's case.

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Seeking any information his father may have had on the Contreras murder, Hopper is forced to visit his mother after his sister denies having any of their father's belongings. His mother leads him to his father's goods in storage, but the police case notes are curiously missing. His mother insists that she never touched them, and that she, his sister Jennifer, and "Uncle Nick" (the former partner of his father) are the only ones with keys to the storage space. Hopper confronts Uncle Nick at his boat in the marina about the Contreras case, and after some pressing, confirms that he and Hopper's father were involved in the case, but that the two of them received great pressure from within the department to drop or bury the case.

Hopper tells Nick that Alberto Garza, just before his death, had sent Hopper a Santayana club board of directors' hourglass with Miguel Dominguez's fingerprint, and a second package to Hopper's sister Jennifer with a murder photo and case number for what turned out to be Isabella Contreras' murder. The younger Hopper inquiries as to why Garza might have sent the package to him, without even knowing him. In response, Nick tells Hopper that Garza was the actual prosecutor that Hopper's father had contacted regarding this same "Jane Doe" case long ago. His father had in fact identified Miguel Dominguez as a suspect--but Dominguez was locked up in Pelican Bay at the time of the murder.

Hopper theorizes that his father must have found other compelling evidence, because Hopper senior, according to Nick, was going to bring the case to prosecutor Garza anyway. Uncle Nick said that his partner was scared out of this plan by unknown men, who must have been "higher-ups" in order to make the murder report contain holes "like Swiss cheese." Nonetheless, he notes that with his father's persistence and diligence, the case notes may very well still exist. Since they were missing from storage, Uncle Nick suggests that either his mother or his sister Jennifer have been holding out on him.

It is all too true that Hopper's sister has been hiding something. It is not her father's case notes, but a briefcase full of allegedly "dirty" money that their father left behind when he shot himself. Out of the original one hundred thousand dollars in the briefcase, kept in a safety deposit box, Jennifer has spent all but eight thousand on her family. She believes that the unknown men, whom the Day Break viewer recognizes as connected to Detweiler and the man/men above him, are after this money, and the bruises on her arms inflicted by them the night before are palpable reminders to Jennifer of how far they will go to get the briefcase.

Hopper is able to capture a surprise Polaroid of the two men tailing him. He asks his partner Andrea to see if she can use her county sheriff contacts to put names to faces. When Chad Shelten sees that photo on Andrea's computer, with which she is able to find out the names "Fencik" and "Buchalter", he is visibly shaken.

Even though Buchalter "owns" Chad, by means of an undisclosed secret, Chad is so agitated by Buchalter's handling of things that he initiates a slugfest in which both men receive a beating. Buchalter visits the shadow boss and suggests that Chad should be killed. Seeking to take care of two birds with one stone, Jennifer is then forced to attempt to kill Chad under threat of harm to her family. Andrea appears at the scene while following Chad and pulls out her gun, pointing it at Jennifer and pleading with her to stop. At this point, Jennifer is so emotional and afraid for the safety of her family that she runs out into the street, where the shadow men run her over and she later dies at the hospital.

The next repeating day, Hopper goes straight to Jennifer's house, demanding to know the truth. She takes him to the safety deposit box and shows him the briefcase with the remaining money. Upon returning to her house, the familiar car is parked outside and Jennifer's husband is marched out at gunpoint by the shadow men. After the briefcase is handed over, Jennifer's husband is released and the shadow men leave.

When the day repeats, both Hopper and Jennifer feel the day is somehow different. Hopper discovers that it's not the money the shadow men are after; hidden in their father's briefcase, he finds the old autopsy report of Isabella Contreras, who once worked at the Santayana Club. The autopsy revealed that Isabella was pregnant at the time of her death. In this autopsy report, Hopper sees written in his father's handwriting three names: Alberto Garza, Conrad Detweiler, and Tobias Booth. Hopper tracks down Tobias Booth, a local politician, who happens to be eulogizing the just-slain Garza. Hopper recognizes by voice that Booth is the "shadow man" whom he earlier heard giving orders to Conrad Detweiler.