RJ Decker episode 6 ending explained: how a woman died in a hurricane that never made landfall
The medical examiner's report on Ava Kwon reads like a storm damage survey, and the storm in question never touched Florida.
R.J. Decker is ABC's Fort Lauderdale crime drama, created by Robert Doherty and inspired by Carl Hiaasen's 1987 novel Double Whammy. Scott Speedman plays R.J., a former photojournalist and ex-con who now works as a private investigator. Season 2's sixth episode, "Blame It on the Rain," aired on October 20, the last episode before the season finale on October 27.
The wedding that wanted a hurricane
The episode opens on a bride named Blair, who has sold her followers on a wedding shot in the middle of Hurricane Matilda. The storm turned away, and she blames the friend who told her it would hit.
"Ava promised me a hurricane, and I promised my followers a hurricane wedding," Blair says.
Ava Kwon was an atmospheric science student, one of the groom Ryan's friends from school. Her body is found outside the wedding, badly beaten. The police are already treating it as a homicide, but Ava's research partner, Sloane, hires R.J. anyway.
What the autopsy found
The medical examiner's report doesn't match a beating. R.J. is working the case alongside Fort Lauderdale police detective Mel Abreu, played by Bevin Bru, and the report lists:
- blunt force trauma, multiple impacts, broken bones and internal bleeding
- water in her lungs, with drowning as the cause of death
- debris pulled from her wounds, vegetation and building materials
- internal injuries consistent with impacts at more than 100 miles an hour
If the examiner didn't know better, he'd say she died in a hurricane. Matilda never made landfall.
"How's somebody killed by a hurricane that never came?"
Why there was no hurricane
The storm that never came has its own culprit. Shortly before she died, Ava sent her friends a map from the National Hurricane Center showing Matilda over the Abaco Islands, about 180 miles east of Florida. A storm that hits the Abacos, with a high-pressure ridge pushing it west, has nowhere to go but Florida. By morning the map had changed, and it now said Matilda had never hit the islands at all.
The man behind the wrong map is Cody Janczyk, a National Hurricane Center employee who has just been fired. He had set up a bet on a prediction market, "Will Matilda hit the Abacos?", posted a fake map to win it, and collected. Ava worked it out and made a scene at his office hours before she died, which gives him a motive. He tells R.J. he never even saw her.
"Human misery is gonna happen anyway. You might as well cash in on it," Cody says.
He's guilty of fraud. He didn't kill Ava.
The hurricane that killed her
R.J. finds the weapon through his client. Ava and Sloane's research involved testing how building materials hold up in extreme wind, and their school has a hurricane simulator. Its fans reach 140 miles an hour, it pumps water at 1,000 gallons a minute, and it goes from a breeze to a Category 4 storm at the push of a button.
That's where Ava died. The killer locked her in the simulator, dumped her body outside the wedding, where she was expected, and counted on Matilda to take the blame. Inside, R.J. and Mel find a dented door, cleaned on both sides, still smelling of bleach.
Who killed Ava
Patrick, one of the people with access to the lab. He had been stalking Ava, letting himself into her apartment and taking her things. The case closes on a series of small clues:
- a pair of Ava's gold-and-turquoise earrings, which she'd accused her old roommate Heather of stealing, found on the floor of the lab's break room
- the T-shirt Ava's body was found in, one of the items stolen from her apartment, which Patrick put on her to get rid of the clothes with his blood on them
- footage from a hardware store of Patrick buying batteries, plywood and propane. Almost everyone at the lab knew Matilda had turned. The killer, who was counting on the storm, didn't
- scratches on his arms, which a court order forces him to show
The idea of checking storm prep comes from R.J. watching his friend Wish get his bar ready for the hurricane. Ava had found Patrick at the lab with his stash of her things. "I was in love with her," Patrick says when his sleeves come up. He hurt her, couldn't let her go, put her in the simulator and stood there while it finished the job.
How the episode ends
Two scenes set up the finale. R.J. goes on a second date with Trudy, a crime scene tech, and asks to kiss her before dinner, "just to get it out of the way."
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Then Emi Ochoa, played by Jaina Lee Ortiz, finds Mel waiting for her after a meeting at a friend's law firm. Emi has been looking at the case of Gabriel Romero, who confessed to killing a police officer, Officer Werner, and has served ten years of a life sentence without parole. He says he confessed because he was told it would get him life rather than something worse. Mel has come to stop her.
"Helping your friend, helping Gabriel Romero, would be a mistake," Mel tells Emi.