Spiral Episode 2

I'm cooking dinner as I'm watching this so you'd better not be gross, Show.

For the long-running mystery (concerning the brutal murder of Elina), Prosecutor Pierre Clement confronts his friend Benoit. Yes, he knew the dead girl. He loved her. She had been at his house earlier the night she died but he claims not to know anything about the crime itself. His weak alibi is that he went to a casino and lost a lot of money.

For the secondary mystery, Clement arrives at a bloody crime scene. A black woman in handcuffs sits outside in the hallway while inside Coke Cop tries to calm a crying white woman. The victim, stabbed to death, is a small infant. Captain Laure Berthaud fills the prosecutor in on what they know. The woman in handcuffs is the baby's nanny. The crying woman is the neighbor who had called the police. The mother is away working as a checkout girl at a grocery store. (I'm sorry but there's no way in hell a checkout clerk can afford a nanny. I don't care what country you live in - no way.)

Back at his office, and with the help of a translator, Clement talks with a deaf old man. The conversation has something to do with key rings. Apparently this is a third case that has nothing to do with anything.

Coke Cop has found Ghislaine Androux, the mother of the baby. She's a former junkie back in rehab, this time for alcohol abuse. Berthaud is the one who has to break the bad news to Androux.

Coke Cop then meets with his informant/hooker girlfriend/dealer about the Elina case. She's not heard anything on The Street. 

On the advice of Clement, Benoit goes to tell his tale to Judge Roban. He explains Elina was a  professional escort (aka high price hooker) on the side. The Judge shows Benoit a list of names taken out of the diary. Does he recognize any of them? Benoit nervously laughs and says of course he recognizes the names. Everyone would. They're very prominent and powerful names.

Clement's estranged wife, Marianne, stops by his roomy apartment to bring him a painting. They seem to get along well, so why are they living apart?

Berthaud's other cop, Fromentin, has been keeping tabs on a ring of deaf keyring peddlers. Berthaud, with the translator from the earlier scene, come out to join Fromentin where they can see the deaf peddlers giving their profits to a Fagin type guy. The translator is acting odd. Berthaud calls for a swarm of backup and they storm the rundown building where Fagin and his deaf gang live. Everyone is arrested. Is selling keyrings that much of a crime in France?

Meanwhile, back at Clement's apartment, he just got some from Marianne. Benoit stops by to tell Clement how the talk with the judge went. He's worried about the diary and all the names in it. Benoit helped introduce Elina to some of her important clients and he worries that if these men are called in to be questioned it will go bad for him. He tries to talk Clement into "borrowing" the diary long enough to see just what and who is in it. Clement refuses. Benoit warns that Marianne's father's name may be in the diary. 

Hello? What about the dead baby? Are we ever going to get back to that?

Karlsson meets with her prospective new employer, the crazy lawyer guy who lives way in the back of the office. Crazy Lawyer has been disbarred and can't legally practice but can't give up the law. It's in his blood! He wants Karlsson to be his puppet, basically. He pulls the strings behind the scenes while she appears in court. Karlsson agrees before she learns Crazy Lawyer was disbarred because he was convicted of rape.

Berthaud goes out to dinner with the translator. I guess she got tired of waiting for Clement. I still think there's something up with the translator, like maybe he knows more about the deaf keyring case than he's letting on. Perhaps he's even a part of it.

Finally we get back to the dead baby case. The nanny is brought in to testify to Roban. She claims the baby was full of "evil" and she was just trying to get it out. With a knife. The nanny has already been psychologically evaluated but the judge wants her to be reassessed. 

Berthaud is meeting with, and flirting with, Prosecutor Clement when she gets a call from Judge Roban asking her to investigate Benoit. Clement overhears this and becomes concerned.

One of the deaf gang is released so that he can be followed. Berthaud and the translator are in a car watching as Fagin drives up in a van and forces the deaf guy inside. Berthaud knows the kid is going to be beaten. While they wait for the inevitable, she tries to get the translator to talk to her. The translator confesses he's engaged to be married. Whoa, guess they had more than dinner that night! Berthaud says it's no big deal, they just has sex. No reason to tell the fiancee anything. 

Why so slutty, Berthaud?

Clement goes to visit his father-in-law. FIL's business manufactures medicine and with the help of Benoit he is able to sell his product out the backdoor to other countries.

Crazy Lawyer Rapist advises Karlsson to get in on Elina's case. This is one of those cases that will blow up and get everybody's name in the papers. 

Elina's parents have come to Paris to identify her body. I warned you not to get gross, Show! There's no need to show me Elina's pulpy face again. As the stricken parents are leaving the morgue, Karlsson ambulance-chases her way into becoming their lawyer. 

Androux is upset to learn the nanny won't be criminally tried since she's found to be insane.

Benoit, still anxious to get his hands on the diary, blackmails his friend Clement. So let this be a lesson to you all. Beware a "friend" who offers you a sweet apartment in Paris. To protect his family, Pierre agrees. He waits until Roban leaves the building to sneak into the judge's very messy office. Clement doesn't know what the diary looks like so he has to search slowly. Slowly enough so that Roban, who remembered he left something behind, comes back to his office and catches Clement in the act.

What the hell did the deaf keyring kids have to do with anything? Why was the murdered baby even included in this episode? They barely touched that storyline. This show goes everywhere but where I want it to go.