‘The Killing’ Recap: Pied Piper Killer Still At Large; Pastor Mike Becomes A Suspect

The Killing continued its third season in "Eminent Domain," last night’s episode, which brought Holder (Joel Kinnaman) and Linden (Mireille Enos) back to the scene of the crime where Seward (Peter Sarsgaard) allegedly murdered his wife, Trisha.

In the third season’s sixth episode, the detective duo worked tirelessly to gain a new perspective on the ‘Pied Piper’ serial killer. Linden and Holder begin the episode by interviewing hospital-housed Angie (Laine MacNeil) – the one surviving victim. They present her with a series of mug shots to see if she recognizes her attacker. Alas, Angie tells the detectives that the face of her attacker is not among those presented. Frustrated, Linden pressures Angie for more details. Angie has already told them everything – that her attacker had told her to sit in the back seat of his car, and said he’d ‘save’ her, before going in for the kill. The one thing she is sure of is that she would recognize his eyes – which were clearly visible through the rearview mirror – anywhere.

After the interview, Holder seemed ready to rule out Mills as a suspect, but Linden disagreed and rushed off to deal with a hysteric Danette (Amy Seimetz) after she had stormed into the police station and been arrested for causing a scene at the front desk. Danette turned over her missing daughter’s phone, which she found last week in her boyfriend Mills’ (Ryan Robbins) possession, but wasn’t of much help to Linden. Danette’s daughter, Kallie (Cate Sproule) has yet to turn up dead, or alive, and Angie failed to I.D. Mills as her attacker.

Linden returned to the office and was reprimanded by Adrian’s foster parents, who complained about her after she paid a secret visit to the little boy that sent him sleeping in a closet – something he did in his previous home with his mother, Trisha. With this fact in mind, Linden and Holder go to Trisha’s old apartment, and explore Adrian’s old closet bedroom. Once in the closet, Linden sees glow-in-the-dark stars carefully decorating the ceiling and notices a grate in the bottom of the door. She theorizes that Adrian could have witnessed his mother’s murder.

Invigorated by this new lead, Linden brings it to Seward after being forbidden to speak to Adrian. Seward, who earlier in the show witnessed his neighbor’s suicide, had just received a visit from his deadbeat father, and was not in the best of moods when he was forced to meet with Seward. When Linden told Seward about the possibility of Adrian being a witness to his mother’s murder and confessed that she doubted Seward’s guilt, Seward lost it. Twelve days from execution, Seward is clearly not in the mood to clear Linden’s conscience, and told her he never wanted to see her again.

Defeated, Linden and Holder return to the drawing board and study the victims. Holder hypothesizes that the killer, whoever he may be, seems attracted to the idea of saving lost girls, and that he made the girls sit in the backseat so that they wouldn’t be able to see each other, ‘like a confession.’ Holder’s theory quickly transformed into a new suspect when, after hearing that Angie had run away from the hospital, Linden and Holder find themselves in Pastor Mike’s (Ben Cotton) office, which is decorated with pictures of lost girls.

–Olivia Truffaut-Wong

The Killing airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on AMC.

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