Episode 9 of "The Hunting Party" unfolds in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the year 2016, painting a harrowing picture of a woman desperately struggling against her bonds while tethered to a chair. Her fateful end arrives swiftly, as she is suffocated right before the eyes of another woman, similarly tied to an adjacent chair. This brutal modus operandi (MO) belongs to the psychopathic Tom Beecher, whose dark story we will delve into soon.
Cut to the present day in Casper, Wyoming, where Lily, immersed in her studies at the library, remains oblivious to the sinister presence that stalks her. That fateful night, a van accelerates menacingly from behind, heralding impending doom.
Elsewhere, Sarah, Dulles' daughter, sits alongside Shane, watching the recorded interviews on tape. Given Dulles' lack of expertise as a child psychologist, his intense interest in Shane raises eyebrows.
Meanwhile, we uncover the tragic demise of Dr. Michelle Elliot, Head of Research and Development at Whitmore Sciences, in a supposed car accident shortly after the Pit explosion. Whitmore, it transpires, supplied medications to the Pit for use on inmates. The timing of her death, concurrent with these events, seems suspiciously convenient, prompting Bex to agree that this could be James Whitmore's clandestine attempt at cleaning up loose ends.
Bex and her team are hastily summoned to the airbase once more when Tom Beecher's presence is detected. He is the one who earlier in the episode had run Lily off the road, and it is also a case file from Bex's past that she is all too familiar with. Beecher's twisted MO involved prolonging his victims' suffering, predominantly targeting young women in their 20s. He would keep one alive for days, searching for a second victim, only to torture and murder the first in full view of the second, echoing the harrowing opening scenes of the episode.
Upon Beecher's arrival at the Pit, a cascade of strokes left him confined to the medical wing for the bulk of his incarceration. Remarkably, he emerged as the solitary inmate to depart those confines, evidently neither comatose nor beleaguered when we next encounter him. Meanwhile, with Lily Jacobs in captivity, Bex instructs the parents on how to navigate the inevitable phone call, with the police standing by. They intercept the call remotely, tracing it to a motel where they successfully locate and apprehend Beecher. But the girl? It transpires that she is not Lily. Instead, another girl occupies the space, and even more alarmingly, the audio of Lily was a prerecorded deception. So, where is Lily truly?
Perhaps the clue resides in Beecher’s file, or rather, the suspicious dearth thereof. Its oddly barren contents prompt Odell to contact his source, who verifies that Beecher was part of Dulles's "special projects." He has been subjected to experiments, a scar across his cranium serving as testimony to this. Beecher's short-term memory has been manipulated, suggesting Dulles may have utilized him as a desperate attempt to treat his own advancing Alzheimer's.
Determined to uncover the truth and exploit Beecher’s compromised memory, Bex and her compatriots devise a plan to recreate the motel scene, administering a sedative to Beecher so he remains oblivious to their machinations. The girl in the bathtub, portraying the victim, is none other than Jennifer Morales. Beecher transports her in his van, which is discreetly tracked and monitored. However, his suspicion is aroused when he notices graphite on the steering wheel, a telltale sign of fingerprint dusting—a glaring oversight indeed. After transporting Morales to an isolated location, he realizes he has been set up.
In a bid to prevent harm coming to her, Morales plunges a blade into Beecher’s abdomen. It is at this critical juncture that the rest of the team arrives. Realizing that this marks the conclusion of his journey, Beecher slits his own throat, bringing an abrupt and grim end to the chase.
The sole path to unraveling this mystery at present lies in meticulously examining every one of Beecher's adhesive notes plastered across his motel room. Or perhaps, does it? Intrigued by his humming of Moonlight Sonata while en route, Shane posits that this melody might hold the genuine key to solving the puzzle. Morales conceives the notion that the musical notes could correspond to letters, forming a code. With Lily's responses serving as additional pieces to the puzzle, they eventually decipher the message: "Pit Explosion, Free Now," accompanied by a series of directions that inevitably guide them to Lily. Thanks to Morales' ingenuity, Lily is rescued, prompting Shane to return home, where Sarah eagerly awaits. She has scoured through every tape, uncovering evidence that suggests he was once a patient at the Pit, with his mother, eerily, observable through the glass partition on the opposite side. Meanwhile, Bex encounters Odell's contact, who deems it prudent to discuss the explosion with her, setting the stage for further revelations.
