The Sinner
4×06: “Part VI”
Directed by Batán Silva
Written by Gerald Cuesta

* For a recap & review of Part V, click here.
* For a recap & review of Part VII, click here.
The town’s rocked by Brandon turning up dead. Harry’s seen as “a Jonah” in the fishing community, as if he brought about all the bad luck in Clark Harbor. He’s too busy trying to keep investigating to worry about that. He also found a pack of nicotine gum on Brandon’s body, just like he found in the sand on the shore where security footage showed the mysterious figure with Percy. Meg doesn’t think Brandon would be involved in Percy’s death, even though their relationship ended abruptly. It’ll definitely be an area of further investigation for former Dt. Ambrose.
Meanwhile there are cops from nearby Portland on the mainland coming to do their own investigating in the community. Harry’s getting iced out of the official stuff. Now, Mike Lam’s brought in for questioning because of the Lam-Muldoon feud. He knows focusing on Mike is a waste of time. He saw evidence of a “premeditated hit” on Brandon, too. Someone’s covering tracks. Unfortunately, Harry has to go it alone from here.

Harry goes to talk to Brandon’s widow, Kat. She only asks if they “arrested that Chinese guy yet.” Harry asks why Brandon would be out on the water alone without a crew. This starts a bit of yelling about Brandon being a cheater from Kat while Brandon’s mother yells back about it being disrespectful. Harry asks about Valerie, but Kat doesn’t know anyone by that name. He isn’t getting very far here. Though he seems to have Meg on his side. She starts asking Brandon’s mother about whether he’d mentioned Percy or any problems between them. This just makes the grieving mother angry at Meg, believing Brandon’s being accused of something.
Meg gets more shit from her sons because she’s been talking with Ambrose. We see the divide between Sean and Colin continues, even if Colin wasn’t outed as a creepy uncle like many expected (at least not yet…). Colin also blames Brandon’s death on Mike, like a lot of other people in Clark Harbor. He then tells his mother they may never get closure on Percy. “Maybe that‘s for the best,” he says. He thinks something drastically changed in Percy after she returned from the mainland—something nobody in their family could fix. Yet Meg’s not willing to just forget and let go. She needs to know, even more than poor ole Harry.
A flashback shows the family together at the table talking about their industry. Percy got mad about the family talking as if the water belongs to them. She talked about the Indigenous history of the island, and how their people, the Irish, didn’t show up until “the 1850s.” This made Meg and Colin angry, incapable of looking past their own whiteness.

Out on the town, Harry meets a guy named Raffa who worked on the boat for Brandon. Raffa says he wasn’t out on the water the night before. Harry asks Raffa about whether Brandon was having “an affair.” He doesn’t get much playing nice so he tries digging a bit harder, mentioning there are Portland cops around and they might start looking into immigration status. Raffa talks about being a paramedic back home in Honduras. He fled to America and doesn’t want to go back. So he tells Harry a couple weeks ago Brandon called him to help a hurt young woman who was out in the boat with Brandon. Sketchy, big time. Raffa knew things weren’t right. He took ring nail, used on boats, out of the woman’s wound. Just wildly suspicious. And Raffa also says Percy showed up, seeing the woman before Brandon took off in his truck.

What secret is Mike Lam hiding? And why?
Hmm.
Meg hears CJ with the cops and they refuse to listen to him. He knows something about Brandon, so Meg tries to ask him about it. Not exactly two people you’d expect to share info. But Meg insists she’s sorry for how things have gone down, that she was only scared for Percy and wanted to find out the truth. CJ says he loved Percy. He first asks who Brandon was meeting early at the docks in the morning, “some boat from off island.” He’s sure there’s something illegal involved, and that Colin and Sean might be involved. Then he says he’d been following Brandon, hoping to dig up dirt useful against the Muldoons. He followed Brandon to the disposal yard where the fisherman met two men and got the shit beaten out of him.

Harry later goes to the yard and sees a boat with the name VALERIE. He pokes around inside the dilapidated boat. He finally comes upon a place setup with a tripod, a mattress, lights, and it’s obvious there were shady things occurring out there. Simultaneously, Meg goes to the owner, Don, an old friend of hers, and asks if he knows what Brandon had been doing at the disposal yard. She mentions the woman who was possibly hurt there, as well as the men attacking Brandon. Don is very clearly hiding something and won’t give an inch, no matter how hard Meg presses for info.

When Meg calls Harry their reception’s spotty. That’s right about the time Harry’s attacked by men with guns. He rushes to hide while the men hunt him down. He runs for the woods when he gets the chance, making it into the trees before either of the men shoot him. Yet the men keep pursuing their target, and Harry has to go on running, particularly after the men use their truck to track him again after he slips away. After a while Harry comes tumbling out onto the shoreline, hiding by a tree stump with only a knife to defend himself if his attackers find him. The men keep looking until nightfall. They’re even communicating with somebody via radio. Harry sits hiding with only his vision of Percy to keep him company. Eventually he heads out of his hiding place, getting the jump on one of the men. He escapes back into the woods after wounding the man and falls into the road as a vehicle approaches; thankfully Meg’s inside.
Later on, Colin goes to a payphone on the nearby street corner. Awfully suspicious. Could that have been Colin on the radio with the men? Or, perhaps Sean? No matter who it was, VALERIE gets lit on fire that night.