It is raining heavily. Alone inside a car, a
troubled young man is having a conversation with himself. “Look, I
think what we’ve been doing is wrong… Maybe it’s better if we just
call it quits … People are getting hurt … I don’t want to do this
anymore!” He tells himself there’s got to be another way. He decides
somebody is right. “Just tell me when to go.”
He gets out of the car holding a toolbox, and approaches a house. He
knocks on the door, and tells the woman who answers that her
landlord sent him out. He tells the woman that he’s working for his
landlord, who is his uncle, and they are changing out all of the
shower heads at no charge. The woman asks about her broken
dishwasher, but the young man can’t offer any help with it. She
tells him if he wants to come in, it’s dishwasher
first.
Inside the kitchen, the woman asks the young man if he’s new at
this. Very ominously, he pulls out a roll of measuring tape.
Hours later, the woman’s body lies at the center of a police crime
scene. An officer announces that she was strangled with the
measuring tape. Another officer opens a journal at the scene,
revealing the words GOD IS NOWHERE written on a blank page. He calls
Detective Victor Krantz over to take a look at it. “This is her
journal,” the officer says. He turns another page, and reveals an
artist’s sketch of a very familiar young man. Paul Callan.
”So, who the hell’s Paul Callan?” asks the detective.
The next day, Paul is playing some street hoops outside at a park.
Detective Krantz approaches him. He introduces himself, and tells
Paul that Father Calero says good things about him. He asks if Paul
knows a woman named Gretchen Albright, who was murdered the night
before. Paul says no, and asks why Krantz is telling him all this.
Paul tells him the short version of where he was during the time of
the murder, and what he was doing.
“Sitting alone in the dark, waiting for the walls to talk.”
“No kidding?” asks the detective.
“It’s part of my job … the people I work with, we investigate
strange things,” says Paul.
Krantz doesn’t like what he’s hearing. “If it helps, I didn’t kill
anyone,” Paul tells him.
“Maybe it does,” Krantz says. He asks Paul if the words GOD IS
NOWHERE mean anything to him. Paul stops dead in his tracks. “No,”
he says.
“See you sometime tomorrow,” Krantz says. He wants to hear the long
version.
Alva is busy at Sodalitas when Paul walks in, asking him about
Gretchen Albright. Alva knows about her already, and was the one who
told the police where to find Paul. “A heads-up would’ve been nice,”
Paul says. Alva maintains that it would’ve been counterproductive
and would have given the police the wrong idea if he had warned
Paul.
Alva tells Paul about Gretchen. In flashback, she is seen preparing
a cake for her daughter’s 2nd birthday. The glass mixing bowl falls
and shatters inside the sink. She cuts her arm pretty badly. Guests
are arriving, so she simply wraps her arm and goes to greet them.
When she comes back into the kitchen, she notices the dishtowel
she’d wrapped her hands with. She sees the words “GOD IS NOWHERE”
scrawled in her own blood.
Paul tells Alva about lying to Detective Krantz about the phrase. He
says he doesn’t know why he lied to him. He asks Alva how Krantz
connected the phrase to him. Alva figures the detective probably
“googled” “GOD IS NOWHERE” and came up with results that included
Alva’s research. “Why am I different?” Paul asks. He recaps that
Alva has interviewed six others who saw “GOD IS NOWHERE,” while Paul
saw “GOD IS NOW HERE.” What makes him different?
”It’s the kind of message that reveals the reader, isn’t it?” Alva
asks.
“Maybe I read it wrong.” Paul turns and walks away.
Later, Paul is searching through old files. Evelyn is working in the
background. He asks her where Alva went. She says he’s at a physics
lecture in Boston with some friends. “He has friends?” Paul asks
sarcastically. She asks Paul why he’s working late. He’s looking for
the hemography files. Evelyn informs him that Alva has been keeping
those in his office – she thinks he’s been working on them lately.
Paul sees her out and locks the door. He attempts to break into the
window to Alva’s office, but clumsily shatters it. Giving up all
hope of stealth, he just crawls into the opening and retrieves the
box marked “hemography.”
He examines the other case, and comes upon the picture of himself
that was in Gretchen Albright’s journal. On the back of it is a
date: 3/25/98. Looking at another file, he sees his name again. This
time, in the dreams of someone he’s never met. File after file, Paul
sees his own name connected to people and events he had absolutely
no clue about. Finally, Paul sees a line of text about his own
father, which blows his mind.
Alva returns, and Paul immediately confronts him. “You lied to me!
Every one of those six people that saw ‘God is Nowhere’ in their
blood also saw
me. One of them even dreamed about my father!” He wants to
know why Alva didn’t tell him.
“It wasn’t necessary,” Alva says. Paul angrily kicks the wall. He
says he joined Alva’s organization looking for answers, ones that
were right in Alva’s office all along. “And you found them.” Alva
replies coolly.
Paul tells Alva he spent a few hours tracking those people down, and
four of them are dead. All four killed within the last week, and
Gretchen was the most recent. Alva honestly did not know this, and
asks if Paul has said anything to the police yet. Paul says that he
has not yet but he will, because it’s better if they hear it from
him. Alva tells him this might become very dangerous for him. Paul
thinks it already is.
Later, Paul is at his apartment packing, and Evelyn stops by to find
out what happened with Alva. Paul tells her he lied about
everything; about how the GOD IS NOWHERE people all dreamed of him
and details of his life without ever meeting him. He also tells her
how those people are now being murdered. He tried to track down the
last two to warn them: Danielle Franklin in Denver, and a person who
used to be named Kenneth Webster, but according to Alva’s files, has
since changed his name and disappeared. Evelyn wonders why Alva
would keep all this from Paul. Paul has no idea, but he knows he has
to stop it. He’s headed to Denver to try and warn Danielle. Evelyn
tells him he could also be on the killer’s list. Paul feels
connected to these people, and wants to be with them. “Why?” Evelyn
asks.
“Because I know what it’s like to be alone in the middle of things,”
Paul explains.
He hopes to be able to answer some of Danielle’s questions, and
maybe she can answer some of his. He shows Evelyn Danielle’s file,
and in it where she told Alva of three dreams she had: The first
about Paul got pneumonia when he was seven, which happened; the
second, which she had in 1983, about Paul getting into an accident
and being healed by a little boy; the third of Paul at a café
talking to a man, who is his father. The man’s saying something,
Paul is angry, and the water in the nearby fountain turns red.
Evelyn asks that if the woman knew anything more, wouldn’t it be in
the transcripts? Paul says Danielle saw what he saw. She’s had
dreams that have come true. “Can I tell Alva you’re in Denver?”
Evelyn asks.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he says. She doesn’t like this.
At the airport, the troubled young man who murdered Gretchen
Albright makes his way through the crowds. He makes his way to a
local gun shop, and browses through the selection. He finds one he
likes, a Jericho, and buys it and some ammo. The store owner asks
how old he is; the boy tells him he’s 19. The owner looks at his
I.D., and tells him that since it’s an out-of-state I.D., he can’t
sell the boy a handgun. The boy looks him over for a brief moment.
“Would you like a rifle?” the shop owner asks…
Back at SQ, Evelyn walks in and Alva heads her off, looking for
Paul. She tears into him about withholding information from him. She
demands to know why.
“Because Paul is on a spiritual journey. This is something that few
of us undertake, and then in Paul’s case, it is not that one
chooses, rather one is
chosen.”
“Why did you
lie?” she asks again. Alva tells her that he’s sure she’s
read reports that violent crime is dropping, while in point of fact,
the level of
random violence is rising dramatically. Child abductions,
sniper attacks, suicide bombings – many of those perpetrators
believed they were doing these things at the request of a higher
being. Evelyn reminds him she was a cop, and that people kill people
because they are drunk more often than because God tells them to.
Alva admits that may be true, but Paul’s particular problem isn’t
booze.
“If Paul is in any danger because of this,” she tells him, “you had
no right to keep this information from him.”
“What would you have me tell him, that he’s capable of great good or
great evil?” Alva asks. He doesn’t want to plant that idea in Paul’s
head because then it will be nearly impossible to uproot. Evelyn
says they should plant the idea that he’s good. Alva says that even
some who walk the path of good come to a bad end: JFK, Martin Luther
King Jr., Joan of Arc, “even John Lennon.” Evelyn asks what happens
if Paul gets involved with the others. Alva says they don’t know who
this killer is, and if there were anything to be gained from
contacting the others,
he’d
be doing it. He’s never seen anything like this before; people are
being murdered simply because they shared a paranormal experience.
“Now is a time for keeping one’s head down.”
Detective Krantz walks in. Paul left him a message about another
murder in Colorado, and Krantz wants to know where he is. Evelyn
tells him flat-out: “He’s on TransNational Airlines flight 629 for
Denver.”
At the airport, Paul is stopped by two detectives and is escorted
away. Meanwhile, at an undisclosed location that he has broken into,
the troubled young man is talking to his mother on the phone. He
hurries her off, and looks at the hunting rifle he bought from the
gun shop.
Inside an interrogation room, the two detectives are asking Paul
some questions, and taping the conversation for the record. They ask
why Paul is so convinced Danielle Franklin is in danger. Paul tells
them of the hemography, and of the murders related to the
experience. He already knows they won’t buy it. And they don’t.
Back at the house which is now revealed to be the home of Danielle
Franklin, the troubled young man hears her answering machine switch
on, and listens while Danielle checks her messages from elsewhere.
He hears the message from one of the detectives, and hears one from
Paul, letting her know he’s headed to town and he’s trying to
contact her. The young man checks Danielle’s organizer, and realizes
she is picking up her messages from her salon where she is scheduled
for an appointment.
Back at the precinct, Paul is still explaining the situation to the
detectives. His cell phone rings, and it’s Danielle Franklin,
outside of the salon and approaching her car. She can’t believe that
it’s really him, after all this time. She says he even sounds the
same, as he does in her dreams. She asks if he’s okay. He doesn’t
understand what she means. She tells him she had another dream about
him: a bad one. Paul tells her to get to the police station as soon
as she can; it’s important that they talk. She thinks so too, and
she says she’s going to be right over. As she sits down in her
driver’s seat, the young man appears in the passenger side window.
“Danielle?” he asks…
The scene is now a crime scene. A uniformed officer is explaining to
a detective that Danielle Franklin was killed by a single rifle shot
to the head, fired from no more than 3 feet away. So far there are
no witnesses. Inside the interrogation room, one of Paul’s
detectives gives him the bad news. He is angry and near tears. “If
you hadn’t stopped me, I could’ve saved her!” He attempts to leave,
but the detective says that Paul knows an awful lot about a murder,
and may be working with the killer. Just as Paul resigns himself to
this, Alva walks in with a writ of habeas corpus, signed by a judge.
Paul is summarily released.
Inside a diner, the young man is listening to a CD player while
staring into space. Outside the window, a policeman can be seen
pulling up to the diner. The boy turns to walk away, and runs right
into a uniformed cop.
At the police station, Paul grudgingly thanks Alva for getting him
out, but blasts him for keeping this information from him;
information which could have saved Danielle Franklin’s life. As they
leave, the detective that released Paul stops them. He says they
just caught a guy 15 minutes ago, and he had a pocket full of
Danielle Franklin’s credit cards. On the other side of the
interrogation room, the detective explains that they’ve already
notified Detective Krantz in Boston – they think there is a link
between Gretchen Albright’s murder and Danielle’s. Paul insists he
hasn’t seen the murderer before, while Alva wants to have a
conversation with the suspect. The detective refuses. Paul and Alva
leave, and the detective has a good look at the unseen person in the
holding room, who is revealed to be someone other than the troubled
young man who’s been committing these murders.
On their way out, Alva asks Paul if he is coming back to Boston.
Paul isn’t sure, and he isn’t sure if he’s coming back to SQ even if
he does. He thinks that he and Alva are looking for different
things. Paul is looking for answers to his own mysteries, while Alva
remains a mystery to him. He doesn’t even know why Alva started SQ
in the first place. Alva pulls him aside and gives him a name:
Hector Salgado, the new name of the former Kenneth Webster, the 6th
person to see the words GOD IS NOWHERE. The only one still alive.
Alva advises against Paul tracking him down. He apologizes to Paul,
saying that he kept the information from him because he thought it
would be detrimental to Paul. He hands Paul the most recent
information they have on Hector. Paul asks why he’s doing this. Alva
says that in his attempt not to influence events, he influenced them
greatly. He offers Paul a ride to the airport, but Paul declines.
Outside the police station, he further explains things
do have meaning, and they eventually add up. He relates a
story about hearing his dead mother’s voice among the sounds of
other bird calls – ravens. It was what eventually led him down the
path that led him to creating Sodalitas Quaerito. “It led me to you,
Paul,” he says.
In New Mexico, Paul pulls outside the last known residence of
Kenneth Webster. He knocks on the door, and the person who answers
is the same troubled young man. Inside, he confirms that Paul is the
same person everyone has dreamed about, though he does not have the
dreams himself. The young man is nervous and evasive to Paul’s
questions. He tries to rush Paul out of the house, but it’s too late
– the
real Kenneth Webster arrives at home, and the young man
bashes Paul in the face with an iron.
Paul wakes up minutes later, and stumbles into the kitchen to find
the young man beating Kenneth with the iron. Paul attacks him, and
knocks him out. Then, he calls the police. Kenneth is still alive,
but badly injured. In the police car, where both men are suspects,
the man tells Paul that he knows who he is. “Tommy comes to me too,”
the young man says. Paul takes immediate notice of this.
The young man says he almost finished it. He knows that it’s all
over for him; he’ll never spend another night as a free man. He is
desperate to know that he did the right thing; that it wasn’t all
for nothing. Paul has no idea what he’s talking about. “You’ve gotta
know, because it’s up to you know. The voice told the man about them
all. “God’s voice,” he says. He knows it’s Him, because he saw GOD
IS NOW HERE in his own blood. “We’re the good ones, right?” he asks.
“You saw the words too...” Paul is stunned.
“Yeah. Six months ago,” the boy replies. “And then that kid Tommy,
he said he knew you, or would. And then a few weeks ago, God’s voice
came on inside my head, and he told me about the nine people who saw
the words all wrong. And every time I closed my eyes he showed me
what they were going to do. To everyone.” The man tells Paul that
now it’s up to him.
“Nine people?” Paul asks.
“There [are] three more out there. Tommy calls them ‘The
Darkness’ and God made it so clear: Kill them all before they
can get their act together. I never knew God talked like that,” the
young man says.
He tells Paul that he shouldn’t have stopped him back there, because
if Ken Webster isn’t dead then that leaves four for Paul. He is
weeping. “I hate this. Oh God I’m so scared,” he says. Paul just
leans his head back and takes this all in.
In the station, the boy is booked, fingerprinted, and processed
while Paul watches. The police uncuff Paul, and lead him away from
the young man. The young man sees an opportunity to grab one of the
uniformed cops’ guns. He breaks free and grabs it.
“Now it’s up to you, Paul,” he says sadly. “Tell my mom I’m sorry.”
A gun shot rings out.
Later, Paul is having his wounds treated, and the doctor tells him
that he’d be dead if the iron was any heavier. Paul asks about
Kenneth, and the doctor tells him he’s in intensive care, but
they’re hoping for a full recovery. “Either way, you saved his
life,” he says.
Paul watches Kenneth silently from the doorway. Slowly, he advances
on him. He takes a pillow and holds it over the injured man’s face.
Kenneth struggles while Paul advises him to “let go.” He flatlines,
and the doctor runs into the room in time to catch Paul in this
deadly act.
At the same doorway and, having finished his daydream, Paul
continues to watch Kenneth sleep…
Back at SQ, Alva sits quietly alone, reading. Paul walks in and Alva
tells him it was healthy to take a few days off. Alva asks him if he
had spoken with the boy before he killed himself. “What did he say?”
Alva asks.
“Nothing. He was out of his mind,” Paul lies convincingly.
Alva assumes that Paul has decided to stay on. “No I haven’t,” Paul
says.
A moment of silence, and then Paul asks: “What have you got?” They
both sit down as Alva begins to run the details of their next case.
Episode Summary written by Moski