With just two episodes left on “Gracepoint” (8 p.m. Central Thursdays on Fox), it seems like a good time to revisit the question I posed earlier in the 10-episode run: Who killed Danny Solano? As with my first set of theories, I’m basing this analysis not so much on detective work – that’s the job of Emmett Carver and Ellie Miller, after all – but on theories about how TV shows tell mystery stories.
I think we can eliminate the following suspects because they have already gone through the ringer of being suspects (or will in episode nine, in the case of Vince, based on the previews):
- Tom (Ellie’s son and Danny’s best bud) – In the pilot episode, he was the first one we were supposed to suspect because he deleted phone messages from Danny and his computer hard drive. While mysteries sometimes circle back to the initial suspect, I don’t think that will happen here because Tom has acted shifty as heck throughout the series, from pointing a finger at Mark Solano (Danny’s dad) to disappearing into the woods for a couple days to smashing his computer. I think it’s more likely he is protecting the killer (or thinks he is).
- Mark (Danny’s dad) – The actor who plays Mark, Michael Pena, is playing things suspiciously close to the vest, and he does point a finger at Paul in episode eight, just as Tom pointed a finger at Mark. While Mark isn’t as clearly off the hook as his wife, Beth (who has performed many actions, including listening to a psychic, that don’t jibe with a guilty person), he does have a pretty good alibi — he was cheating on his wife with Gemma at the time of the killing.
- Paul (the priest) – Mark tips off Carver about Paul’s past drug use and high school relationship with Beth. Similar to Tom, Paul is so front-and-center as a suspect that I can’t get behind this theory.
- Susan (the shifty trailer-park woman) – Susan is the most obvious “Hey, look at me!” suspect of the first eight episodes, as we’ve known since episode one that she has Danny’s skateboard in her closet. As part of her housekeeping job, she also has access to the cliff-top dwelling where Danny’s blood was found — presumably the murder site. And what was with her threat to the newspaper editor that she knows men who can rape her? Susan doesn’t appear to know anyone very well other than her beloved dog and Vince. Susan isn’t the killer, but – like Tom — she knows more than she is telling and will no doubt provide the detectives with key clues if she decides to talk.
- Vince (Mark’s employee and friend, who also has some sort of relationship with Susan) – Is he Susan’s son? It kind of seems like it, but it’s never been explicitly stated. I think we’ll find out in the penultimate episode, and Vince – whose possible motive is that he feels he is underpaid by Mark — will be cleared as the last innocent suspect brought in by the detectives before the actual killer or killers are found out in episode 10.
This next group deserves a closer look because they haven’t been presented as obvious suspects yet:
- Chloe (Danny’s sister) – Chloe, who had cocaine hidden in her room in the first episode, certainly seems sad about her kid brother’s death, and episode eight seems to clear her of any suspicion when it turns out she is sneaking away from school to dance (with her boyfriend, Dean, providing drum accompaniment) – it’s her way of grieving. It’s interesting to note, though, that in episode six she brings Dean before journalists Renee and Owen with a story about how Jack Reinhold abused Dean and his friends when they were kids. With Jack subsequently cleared as a suspect (and having committed suicide), it seems like Dean and his friends were lying about Jack. Was it at Chloe’s behest?
- Dean (Chloe’s boyfriend) – Or, possibly, it was Dean himself who was motivated to divert suspicion away from himself and onto Jack. But Dean does have an alibi from his uncle for the night of the murder.
- Gemma (Mark’s mistress and the inn proprietor) – She was one of the first people to be suspected (due to being a link in the cocaine-dealing chain) by the detectives, but then was quickly dismissed. Sometimes TV shows circle back to their earliest suspects. She has an alibi for the time of the murder (she was with Mark), but possibly Gemma was in cahoots with Paul to kill Danny and break up the Solanos so each can get their desired partner in the breakup.
- Raymond (the psychic) – Raymond provided a clue to Beth when he told her Danny was killed by someone close to him, and that Danny doesn’t want that person to get in trouble. But the bigger question is whether there’s room on “Gracepoint” for a psychic. Is it that type of show? I say, no, the show is too grounded in realism to have a character who literally communicates with the dead. That would mean Raymond is lying about HOW he got that tidbit of information, but not necessarily the information itself. We also have to wonder how he knew that Tom was hurt and bleeding. It’s interesting to note that Raymond is a phone engineer, and that the phone number of the backpacker (the far-too-obvious suspect from episode eight) was possessed by both Danny and Tom. Perhaps Raymond did some sort of phone tapping to acquire his “psychic” knowledge.
- Joe (Ellie’s husband) – In Fox’s “Suspect Everyone” poll, six characters have at least 9 percent of the vote, then it’s a big drop-off down to 2 percent. Out of those six, five have obvious cases to be made against them (Tom, Paul, Mark, Vince and Susan). The other is Joe, in third place with 15 percent of voters thinking he is the killer. I can’t think of any motive as revealed on the show so far, but perhaps Tom is motivated to delete his computer hard drive because it has information pointing to his dad as the killer. Perhaps father and son, Joe and Tom, are both mixed up in the killing — perhaps Tom accidentally killed Danny and his father is protecting him. Maybe Joe instructed Tom to smash the computer while he went out to the cliff house to destroy some other evidence.
So, whodunit?
Although she has only 1 percent of the vote at the Fox site, with two episodes remaining I’m going to guess Danny’s older sister Chloe is the killer. Perhaps I’m influenced by the excellent ending to the first case on “The Killing,” but I feel like Chloe accidentally killed Danny while she was mixed up in something related to the cocaine. While a lot of viewers are rightly focused on Tom’s actions, and the possibility that Joe is mixed up in it, I keep thinking about Chloe and Dean going to the journalists to accuse Jack of molesting Dean and his friends when they were kids. Once we got to know Jack, it was clear that the accusation was a lie to divert suspicion.
At any rate, I bet most of the characters I listed above are at least peripherally connected to that fateful night, and it should be fascinating to find out exactly how.
Who do you think killed Danny? Share your theories below.