REPORT: RED ROCK JAROD
FILE #: 219

We see a man, at night, digging a deep hole in the desert floor. We see a glimpse of a tube-like canister about the size of an adult human. And we see the flash of the strobe on a Polaroid camera. One photograph develops before our eyes, and we can see the image of a young woman with duct tape pasted over her mouth.

IN MISS PARKER’S HOUSE Miss Parker is having nightmares about her last altercation with Mr. Lyle. She shoots him, and he plunges into a river. The alarm clock by her bed goes off, and she’s startled awake from her dreams.

IN JAROD’S NEW LAIR, Jarod is calmly going through a newspaper looking for articles to cut out when the laptop computer on the table beside him announces that he has received an e-mail transmission. Jarod stops what he’s doing with the newspaper and looks at the computer. There are two messages: an outdated unopened one with the subject “Hey” on it, and a new one with the subject line: REFUGE. The indicator is flashing. Jarod opens this electronic letter immediately and reads it: HAVE URGENT INFORMATION CONCERNING YOUR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. PLEASE MEET ME IN DRY RIVER, ARIZONA. SYDNEY. Jarod goes through the almanac on his computer and locates Dry River, Arizona.

IN DRY RIVER, Jarod — posing as Jarod Barber — arrives to find the town a small one on the edge of the desert with little street traffic. He parks his car, and walks up to a house where there is a room-for-rent sign. Two men are playing a board game on the front porch, but when Jarod addresses them, neither of them respond to him. He tells them he doesn’t mean to interrupt their game, but he would appreciate it if they’d at least acknowledge that he’s there. Still the men don’t answer him. “They can’t hear you,” says a female voice from behind him. Jarod turns to find Deputy Miller there. She tells Jarod that the brothers on the porch are stone deaf; they’re not being rude, they just can’t hear him. Jarod thanks her for the explanation, then tells her that he’s looking for a “distinguished looking” man named Sydney, and asks if she’s seen him. In response to this request, Deputy Miller pulls out her gun and tells Jarod he has to come with her. Jarod asks what she’ll do if he doesn’t cooperate with her, and she says she’ll kill him if he doesn’t.

SOMEWHERE IN DELAWARE, Miss Parker, Broots, Sydney and Sam the Sweeper are combing a back alley for clues. Broots had received an anonymous tip that information they were looking for was there somewhere. As they go through the area, all of them are unaware of the fact that they’re being photographed by a person who keeps to the shadows. Sam finds a manila envelope tacked to the back of an old traffic sign, and alerts Miss Parker to it. Miss Parker removes the envelope, opens it, and finds inside her mother’s old security pass. The expiration date on the pass has been obliterated, and replaced with the date of Catherine Parker’s death. Miss Parker is not amused.

IN DRY RIVER, Jarod tells the deputy that if he’s being arrested, he has the right to make at least one phone call. She tells him he’s not officially under arrest; she’s just brought him in for questioning. When he asks for more information, she tells him to just “go with the flow” and not fight it. As she escorts Jarod, who is handcuffed, to his jail cell, the deputy is interrupted by a young boy who runs into the sheriff’s office to tell her that her son, “J.R.”, passed out at a nearby church and his friends can’t revive him. Jarod tells the deputy that he has some medical training and asks if he can be of assistance.

At the church, Deputy Miller and Jarod (still hand-cuffed) find JR on the floor with a group of friends around him. JR is cyanotic, going into shock, and only barely conscious. Deputy Miller informs Jarod that the boy is hypoglycemic, and the boy’s friends inform Jarod that JR hasn’t had anything to eat since lunchtime. To get JR’s blood sugar back up to par, Jarod reaches into his shirt pocket, fishes out a PEZ dispenser, and puts some of the candy into JR’s mouth. As the candy dissolves, JR’s blood sugar level out, and he slowly regains consciousness.

Despite Jarod’s help with her son, Deputy Miller returns Jarod to the sheriff’s office and locks him in a holding cell. He talks to her, through the bars, about JR and says he knows that the boy is showing classic symptoms of a congenital heart defect. “Why hasn’t he had a transplant?” Jarod asks. Deputy Miller tells him that her son is on a waiting list, but that it’s been difficult to find a matching donor heart because JR has a rare blood type, AB-Negative. Jarod says AB-Negative blood occurs in only one in three hundred thousand people; he knows he has the same blood type. Before the conversation can get much further, Jarod is interrupted by the arrival of Sheriff Delmont. Delmont looks in the cell at Jarod and asks his deputy, “This is the guy?”

AT THE CENTRE, Sydney shows Broots and Miss Parker an e-mail transmission he’s received from Jarod. It distresses him because it seems to be in response to a message Sydney never sent. The message reads: RE: REFUGE. MESSAGE RECEIVED. WILL MEET IN DRY RIVER AS REQUESTED. HOPE REMAINS HIGH. JAROD. Miss Parker asks where Dry River is, and Sydney and Broots tell her it’s in Arizona. She says she’ll go there herself to check out Jarod’s message, and that, in the meanwhile, she wants Broots and Sydney to give her mother’s security pass to Angelo and see if he can “empath” anything from it.

After Miss Parker leaves, Broots and Sydney supply Angelo with the badge and other items they had found at the alleyway earlier. Angelo goes through the pieces carefully then affects the aspect of a person with no thumb. Broots and Sydney understand that Angelo is emulating Mr. Lyle, and call Miss Parker immediately to warn her. Miss Parker is still in denial about Mr. Lyle being alive. She had, after all, shot him at point blank range when she caught him at Hillman Marine. Sydney is emphatic, however, telling her she must be careful.

IN DRY RIVER, the sheriff removes Jarod (hand-cuffed again) from his jail cell at shotgun point, and then drives him to the edge of town where a ramshackle compound has been built up around an abandoned warehouse and a dilapidated house trailer. The compound is protected by a vicious attack dog and Jarod doesn’t want to cross the dog’s path, but the sheriff forces him to, and then directs him inside the house trailer.

Inside the trailer, Jarod can see that the place is a mess: mismatched and peeling furniture, heaps of junk and bloody bandages lying in a pile on top of a stove that may or may not work. Jarod turns to the sheriff and says that he can tell, by the way he’s being treated, that something terrible has happened. He wants the sheriff to tell him what’s going on. The sheriff says he can’t tell Jarod anything, and Jarod asks him why. “Because I won’t let him,” comes a voice from another part of the trailer.

Jarod looks to the where the voice came from and is alarmed to find Mr. Lyle standing there. Lyle is dirty and disheveled, and the hand that lost its thumb to the yakuza is wrapped in filthy bandages. Lyle walks up casually to Jarod, picks up a crowbar, and bashes Jarod in the head with it. Jarod tries to deflect the blow, but can’t defend himself while his hands are cuffed together. The blow catches him in the temple, and he crashes to the floor unconscious. Looking bored and distracted, Mr. Lyle walks to a nearby mirror checks himself out in it (seemingly unaware of the fact that he looks terrible) and says, “And so… it begins.”

After a few hours, Jarod regains consciousness and find himself in the warehouse section of the compound. He’s seated in a chair, but his hands are cuffed behind him and over his head. He’s disoriented at first, and it takes him a moment to realize that Mr. Lyle is walking around him taking pictures of him with a Polaroid camera. Jarod scowls at Lyle as one picture is snapped, and Lyle remarks, “Oh, that’ll be a good one.”

Jarod says he understands now that the e-mail message attributed to Sydney that brought Jarod to Dry River had come from Mr. Lyle. Lyle mocks Jarod with feigned surprise and says, “You are a genius.” Jarod asks Lyle how he knew about “Refuge”, and Lyle tells him, “Before I found myself thumbless in the desert, I was head rat at the cheese factory.” Although Jarod had escaped from The Centre with a load of DSA’s, Lyle says, he still had access to every foot of surveillance tape ever generated there and had gone over Jarod’s and Sydney’s conversations carefully before making his move against Jarod.

Jarod then says he’s noticed that Lyle had been able to compel the local authorities to work with him, and Jarod wonders how Lyle accomplished that. Lyle brags that before he set his trap for Jarod, he extorted help from the local sheriff by kidnapping the sheriff’s pregnant wife. Lyle has buried the woman alive somewhere in the desert, and supplied her with oxygen produced by a gas-powered generator. Unfortunately, the generator has only about 7 hours of gasoline left in it. When it runs out of gas, the oxygen will stop flowing, and the woman and her unborn child will suffocate to death. “You’re insane,” Jarod says. Lyle rolls his eyes, gives Jarod an apathetic glance, and reminds him, “Psychiatric diagnosis can be really subjective.”

IN PHOENIX, Miss Parker leaves the airport in Phoenix and drives to Dry River. She doesn’t realize it, but she’s being followed by a helmeted man on a motorcycle.

IN THE WAREHOUSE, Lyle tries to “pretty” himself up by putting a shabby necktie on over his worn and dirtied shirt. Without his thumb, though, he has trouble with the knot. He tells Jarod that he’s going back to The Centre to meet with the Triumvirate. They were going to meet soon to finalize their decision on his permanent replacement, and he wanted to get to them before they had to make that decision. Jarod tells him the Triumvirate won’t just let him stroll back into The Centre after everything that’s happened, and Lyle says, “I bring back their Golden Boy… its business as usual.”

Lyle says once he’s been reinstated at The Centre, he’ll see to it that changes are made there. He’ll eliminate Miss Parker, Sydney, and others whom he considers to be a threat to him. He then sidles up to Jarod and says that if Jarod will join him, they could run the place together. “I can be your friend, Jarod,” Lyle promises. Jarod’s eyes flash at Lyle and he says, “Like you were my friend when you tried to stop my heart?! Why did you try to kill me?” Lyle just smiles at him and doesn’t answer.

The sheriff arrives at the warehouse and tells Mr. Lyle that there’s a tall brunette woman in town who’s asking questions about someone named “Jarod” and a guy with no thumb. Lyle understands that the brunette is Miss Parker, and he tells the sheriff that if he ever wants to see his wife alive again, he’ll see to it that Miss Parker departs from Dry River. Reluctantly, the sheriff leaves to do as he’s told.

BACK IN TOWN, Miss Parker is showing photographs of Mr. Lyle and Jarod to Deputy Miller when the sheriff returns. Miss Parker tells them that she’s working security for a large corporation, and that Mr. Lye is being tracked down because he murdered an office full of the corporation’s personnel. Deputy Miller asks about the photo of Jarod, and Miss Parker tells her that Jarod is a man who is mentally unstable. She trying to find him so she can return him to his family, she says. The deputy and the sheriff look at one another then tell Miss Parker they haven’t seen either of the men. Miss Parker isn’t entirely convinced by their performance but understands that she’ll get no information out of them, so she leaves the office.

When Miss Parker is gone, Deputy Miller turns to the sheriff and tells him that things are getting out of hand; he must go to the FBI or something. The sheriff says he can’t do that; if he brings anyone else into the case, Mr. Lyle will never tell him where his wife is, and she’ll die. He hates being a pawn in Lyle’s game, but there’s nothing he can do to stop it right now.

The sheriff then leaves the office, gets into his car, and drives back to the compound to tell Lyle he’s gotten rid of Miss Parker. What he doesn’t know is: Miss Parker is following him to the compound. And what she doesn’t know is: the helmeted man on the motorcycle is following her.

AT THE WAREHOUSE, Lyle returns to his sprucing up, and Jarod mentions to him that he’s getting a little tired of Mr. Lyle’s “back from the dead” routine. He tells Lyle that he knows about his stepfather (who’s in prison for s murder Lyle committed) and had once visited Lyle’s stepmother. “She seemed a touch confused,” Jarod says. “…Kept trying to feed a couple of dogs that didn’t actually exist.” Lyle attacks Jarod with the crowbar again, pressing it lengthwise across Jarod’s throat, trying to crush his larynx. Although it’s difficult to talk or breathe, Jarod hisses out a reminder to Lyle that if Lyle kills him, Lyle will have nothing to offer the Triumvirate. Lyle casts the crowbar aside and walks around behind Jarod as Jarod struggles to catch his breath.

Lyle walks over to a makeshift worktable nearby and opens a metallic case. Inside the case is a bottle of liquid sedative, a syringe, and a set of scalpels. Jarod sees the stuff and tells Lyle that it’s against the law for him to impersonate a doctor, and Lyle smiles vaguely and says, “That’s really funny.” Lyle then informs Jarod that along with the photographs he’s taken of Jarod, he’s going to offer the Triumvirate physical proof that he has Jarod in custody. He tells Jarod not to worry, though, “You’ll be asleep when I cut off your thumb.” Lyle then injects Jarod with a syringe-full of the liquid sedative.

As the sedative starts to take effect on Jarod, Lyle is interrupted by the return of Sheriff Delmont. Delmont tells Lyle that he’s tired of Lyle’s game; he wants his wife returned to him immediately. Lyle meets the sheriff’s fear and agitation with an attitude of impassiveness and boredom, and asks him he knows what it feels like to die of suffocation? Lyle tells the sheriff he can arrest him if he wants to — and never see his wife alive again — or the sheriff can go away and leave him alone.

Before their conversation is finished, Mr. Lyle sees Miss Parker’s car pull up near the compound. The sheriff panics and tells Lyle he didn’t know she was following him there. Lyle again looks dully annoyed, and tells the sheriff to just get rid of her. The sheriff leaves Lyle, and goes after Miss Parker. He arrests her for trespassing on private property and takes her back to the station where he puts her in a holding cell.

BACK IN THE WAREHOUSE Jarod is slipping into unconsciousness, under the influence of the sedative. He fights the medication and tries to stay awake. His speech slurred and his eyes almost closing, Jarod implores Lyle not to maim him. Lyle ignores his pleas and prepares to cut off Jarod’s left thumb with one of scalpels from his kit.

In a drugged blur, Jarod sees Lyle suddenly jerk and collapse to the floor in a heap. A man walks up to him, and Jarod looks up to see a foggy image of his brother, Kyle. “They said you were dead,” Jarod mutters before losing consciousness. Kyle smiles at him and says, “Not hardly, big brother.”

AT THE CENTRE, Broots brings Sydney a packet of photographs that were just received in the mail. The photographs are of them at the alleyway, and of Miss Parker getting ready to leave for Arizona. They show Angelo the photographs, and he takes them into his hands and starts to say, “I decide who lives or dies… I decide who lives or dies…” Broots and Sydney both realize that the photographs must have come from Kyle. Broots is astonished and remarks, “Man, this is turning into Night of the Living Dead!”

Sydney then decides that he and Broots should get to Arizona so they can inform Miss Parker first-hand about Kyle’s re-emergence. They’ll take a Centre jet to Phoenix and then a Centre helicopter to Dry River.

AT THE COMPOUND, Jarod awakens to find himself on the decrepit couch in the house trailer. He’s still a little groggy from the medication, but recognizes Kyle immediately when his brother walks in saying, “I thought you’d never wake up.” Jarod gets to his feet and throws his arms around Kyle, but is still a little unstable because of the drugs, and falls back to the couch again. He tells Kyle he thought Kyle had died in the van fire, and Kyle tells him — in a somewhat flat and emotionally detached fashion — that that was the idea. After Jarod and Harriet Tashman had escaped from the overturned van, Kyle says, he had managed to crawl out. To keep the pursuing FBI agents from getting to close, he fired off a shot into the van’s fuel tank — which caused the explosion Jarod and Harriet saw. The explosion and subsequent fire caused enough of a distraction so that Kyle was able to crawl up to the main highway and hitched a ride out of town. Since then, he’d been stalking Broots and Miss Parker, hoping that they would eventually lead him back to Jarod… which they did.

Expressing a suddenly soft and vulnerable aspect, Kyle asks Jarod if he’d been able to find out anything else about their parent since the last time, they saw each other. Jarod shows Kyle the GENE note Sydney’s brother, Jacob, wrote before he died. “Is that our father’s name?” Kyle asks. Jarod tells him he doesn’t know. Kyle’s mood changes again, and he’s detached and expressionless once more. In a few more seconds, Kyle’s mood blackens considerably, and he talks to Jarod about wanting to kill everyone in the Centre who ever hurt them. “We’ll start with Lyle,” Kyle says, and then they’ll go on from there. Although he completely understands Kyle’s rage, Jarod is distressed about his brother’s display and keeps himself quiet for a time. When Jarod’s able to move around more effectively, he and Kyle go back to the warehouse in search of Lyle. Jarod finds Mr. Lyle standing up against a wooden bracing pillar in the warehouse: his hands cuffed over his head and his ankles in shackles. Mr. Lyle’s face has been battered, and Jarod asks Kyle what happened to him. Kyle smiles slyly and says Lyle fell down and bumped his head. Kyle then displays an enormous knife and threatens to kill Lyle with it, but Jarod intervenes saying they need Lyle alive so they can find out where the sheriff’s wife is buried. Jarod begs Kyle to keep a hold of his temper; to let Jarod teach him how wonderful it feels to save a life rather than taking one. Kyle agrees to help Jarod find the sheriff’s wife, but he still goes after Lyle with the knife. “Don’t worry, big brother. This is what I do,” Kyle says, and uses the knife to torture Lyle into telling the brothers what they need to know.

AT THE SHERIFF’S STATION Miss Parker talks Deputy Miller into letting her go, so she can find Lyle and hopefully find the sheriff’s wife before it’s too late.

OUT IN THE DESERT, Jarod and Kyle arrive on three-wheel all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to the spot indicated to them by Mr. Lyle. They shut off the ATVs’ engines and can hear the sound of a small gasoline generator sputtering as it starts to go dry and shut off. The brothers run to the spot where the generator is sitting and follow the out-flow tube to the spot where Sheriff Delmont’s wife is buried underground. Working feverishly together, Jarod and Kyle manage to dig up the canister in which Linda Delmont is being held. Kyle uses his knife to break the seal on the canister, and the brothers force the lid off. Kyle reaches into the canister, and pulls out Mrs. Delmont and removes her gag. Her arms, wrists and ankles are bound with duct tape, so she can’t embrace him, but she falls against Kyle and weeps against his chest, thanking him for rescuing her. Kyle at first looks startled by the woman’s reaction, but eventually he lets her lean on him and tries to comfort her. Jarod smiles as he watches his younger brother soothe and gently caress the crying woman.

AT THE COMPOUND, Miss Parker arrives to find the warehouse empty. She sees the bracing post with the handcuffs and shackles attached to it, but can’t find anyone around. When Mr. Lyle walks in from another part of the warehouse, the two startle each other. Miss Parker attacks Lyle, pistol-whipping him, but is distracted when Lyle’s attack dog starts barking. Lyle then gets the upper hand and throws Miss Parker against the wall, wrenching her gun from her hand. “Gee, you’re beautiful when you’re angry,” he quips.

AT THE SHERIFF’S STATION, Jarod and Kyle return Mrs. Delmont to Deputy Miller and the sheriff. Miller is overjoyed, and squeals in delight to see that Mrs. Delmont is all right, and Mr. Delmont embraces his wife, kisses her and cries over her return. Jarod observes Kyle as Kyle watches the emotional exchange between these people who obviously care so much about one another. Kyle seems strangely fascinated by the display of affection, but also seems to have trouble understanding or empathizing with it.

Jarod then tells the sheriff to take his wife to a hospital to make sure she and her baby are okay and promises that he and Kyle will take care of Mr. Lyle. The sheriff offers Jarod his shotgun, but Jarod refuses to take it. Kyle, on the other hand, reaches past Jarod and accepts the weapon with a broad smile. Jarod gives Kyle a worried glance as the sheriff tells them to be careful. Kyle says, “Don’t worry, sheriff. I’m no hero.”

AT THE COMPOUND, Jarod and Kyle arrive to discover that Mr. Lyle has somehow escaped from his shackles. They look around the warehouse and trailer, but can’t find him. They then walk out to the grounds surrounding the warehouse and search there. Lyle appears out of the shadows, holding Miss Parker by the throat and threatening her with a gun. “Shoot him, you moron!” Miss Parker shouts to Kyle. Kyle raises his shotgun and aims it at Mr. Lyle, but Mr. Lyle turns his gun toward Jarod and tells Kyle that if he doesn’t put the shotgun down, Lyle will kill his brother. Kyle keeps the shotgun poised, aimed directly at Lyle’s chest. He tells Lyle that The Centre had stolen their lives and freedom from them, and that threats of death don’t frighten them anymore. Lyle insists he’s going to shoot Jarod. Kyle tells him to go ahead, “And then I’ll shoot you.”

For a moment, everyone is distracted by the arrival a small black Centre helicopter, which is carrying Broots, Sydney and a handful of Sweepers. The helicopter circles the compound, casting its lights on the scene below.

Kyle looks to Miss Parker, but says to Mr. Lyle, “How’s your knife wound?” Miss Parker picks up on the cue, and elbows Lyle in one of the spots where Kyle had tortured him with the knife earlier. Lyle screams and doubles over, and Miss Parker scrambles away from him. As soon as Lyle is in the clear, Kyle shoots him in the shoulder with the shotgun. The force of the blast twirls Lyle around and he collapses to the ground. But then he forces himself up again briefly, and aims his pistol point-blank at Jarod. Lyle pulls the trigger — and Kyle steps in front of Jarod and gets Lyle’s bullet in his back. Kyle stumbles forward against Jarod who, shocked and anguished, grabs his younger brother, holds him for a moment, then lowers him to the ground.

The Centre helicopter lands, and Broots, Sydney and the sweepers rush out of it, but Miss Parker waves them off, keeping them away from Jarod and Kyle for the moment. On his knees, Jarod holds Kyle’s hand and begs his brother to stay with him. He tells Kyle he’ll get him to a hospital, and that they’ll then be able to spend time together, learning new things and learning how to be happy. Kyle tells Jarod it’s too late for that; he’s dying and won’t be coming back this time. Jarod leans over Kyle and insists that Kyle hang on, but Kyle has no more strength. With his last breath he says, “I’m sorry, Jarod…” Jarod asks, “For what?” And Kyle responds, “For everything.” Kyle’s hand then slips outs of Jarod’s and he stops breathing.

Jarod looks up imploringly to Sydney, as though silently asking him to save his brother’s life even though he knows Kyle is beyond saving. Miss Parker says to him, “It’s time to come home now, Jarod,” but Jarod ignores her, gets to his feet, and says between his teeth, “Where’s Lyle?”

Everyone looks around, but Mr. Lyle is nowhere to be seen.

Miss Parker and the sweepers start to move in on Jarod, but they’re intercepted by Sheriff Delmont who says to Jarod, “I don’t know who you are, but I figure I owe you at least one Get Out of Jail Free card.” He levels a shotgun at Miss Parker and tells her and the others to back off and leave Jarod alone.

Rather than fleeing, Jarod uses the opportunity to turn his attention back to Kyle. He lowers himself on his knees next to Kyle’s body, picks up his brother’s lifeless hand, leans over Kyle and starts to sob. When he’s a bit more composed, he carries Kyle’s body to the Centre helicopter and loads it on board. Sydney asks where Jarod is taking Kyle, and Jarod answers that he’s taking him someplace where he can do some good. Jarod climbs into the pilot’s seat of the helicopter and flies off, leaving Sydney, Broots, Miss Parker and the others behind.

The episode ends with Jarod on a Trail South cross-country bus. He’s looking through a red notebook, and we can see a newspaper article pasted into the book with a headline that reads: ANONYMOUS MAN DONATES HEART TO DYING BOY. With the article is a photograph of Deputy Miller’s son JR. “Good for you, little brother,” Jarod says, looking out the bus window. “Good for you.”