Ep11

     Stone is at the batting cages. In the cage next to him he notices the Judge (Jerry Hardin) coaching his granddaughter Sarah. The Devil shows up and taunts Stone as he swings. He gives him some mail, which is addressed to Carl Traynor, 153 Green Street.
      That night, Brian Reid shows up on Green Street. In the house, upstairs in the bedroom, Carl and Katharine (I don't hear her name mentioned anywhere, but there is a Katharine in the credits, so I assume this is her. E-mail me if you have better info)   are fooling around. The doorbell rings and Carl goes downstairs to answer it. Brian is looking for a Charles Reid. Carl tells him he has the wrong house, and yells at him to go away. Carl starts to go back upstairs, but there is another series of knocks on the door, this time very loud and forcefully. Carl peeps through the peephole and sees Vic, a muscular man who chides him with a British accent for hurting Brian's feeling. Vic breaks the door down, and beats up Carl.
      Upstairs, under the bed, Katharine is listening. She hears two voices talking, Vic and Tammy. Vic tells Tammy to meet at the rendezvous.
      Stone shows up at Carl Traynor's house just in time to see Katharine running out of the house. After watching her drive away, he approaches the house. The front door is open, and he finds Carl's body inside. There is a steaming boot print on the carpet. Stone opens a briefcase, and finds a flyer for Carl's Rent-To-Own.
      The next day, Stone visits the store. In Carl's office, he finds Katharine going through the desk. Stone confronts her about being at the house, and tells her they can talk over coffee, or down at the station.
      Over coffee, she tells him there were three of them, Brian, Vic, and a woman. After they left, she tells him, sobbing, that's when she found Carl. Then in a normal voice, she asks if he is married.
      Stone visits a motel, looking for Vic. The manager asks what took so long, he called last Tuesday to complain. Vic had paid for a single, and then moved two more people in. The manager wants to know how Stone knew it was a woman and a boy, Stone tells him "We're the police, we know."

     The manager knocks on the room door (#113, LOL) and asks Vic to step outside. Vic asks the manager to stand in front of the peephole, which he does despite Stone's warning. Vic punches through the door, and Stone kicks the remains of the door in. Inside, the room appears empty, but then Vic bursts out of the bathroom (which is full of smoke for some reason) and knocks Stone into the wall. Stone picks himself up and goes back outside, but Vic is nowhere to be seen. He does find Brian laying on the concrete.
     <commercial>
      Brian wakes up back at Stone's place. Stone tries to talk to him. He asks his last name, and about his friends, but Brian won't say anything. Stone offers him something to drink, and while he checks the fridge, Brian picks up a baseball glove and ball. Stone has an inspiration.
      Back at the batting cages, Stone sets Brian up with a helmet and bat. Brian misses the first shot, but hits the second. Stone says, "Wow, looks like we got another Ted Williams here."
      The Judge is in the cage next to theirs, and says, "There's a name I haven't heard in years."
      Stone notices him. "Hey, you're back."
      "Well," nodding towards his granddaughter, "she's quite the little slugger."
      "I'm, um , Zeke Stone." He extends his hand, and The Judge does the same, then they realize there is a chain link fence between them.
      "Thurston Bristol," he responds, and sizes Zeke up, "You look a little young to be a Williams fan."
      "Well, no one has ever had a swing like his. At least, no one that I know about."
      "Your son is quite the bruiser, I see."
      "No, uh, Brian's just a kid I know."
      "He can really sock the ball."
      "Fast learner."
      "Good teacher."
      "Did you play ball or something?" Stone asks.
      "Only in my dreams. In reality, I was a judge."
      "What do you do now?"
      "Now? Now... I try to spend my time being a little less judgmental."
      "Well, it was good talking to you. Maybe we can talk later or sometime."
      "Yeah, right. I'll see you around." The judge turns back to Sarah.
      Stone turns to Brian, "Well, did you hear that, he thinks you have potential?"
      Brain finally speaks, "Maybe I do."
      Stone starts asking him questions about hie friends, and gets Vic and Tammy's names. When he asks about the house on Green Street, Brian tells him Vic was looking for someone who used to live there. Brian tells him he is starting to sound like Dr. Morris. Brian is getting upset with all the questions, so Stone backs off, and gets him started swinging again.
      Stone and Brian are eating fries on a park bench. When Stone asks, Brian tells him that Dr. Morris was supposed to be helping him, but he just got worse. The fries are terrible, so Stone takes Brian back to the hotel to play pinball.
      Max and Stone watch Brian play pinball. Max gives Brian a jacket. Brian says he is hungry, and Max suggests that they have ice cream. Stone goes out to get them after Max says she will watch Brian.
      Vic and Tammy are pacing and forth, arguing, in front of two windows in an apartment. From the outside, we can only see one of them at a time while the other is behind the wall. They are arguing who to find first, Dr. Morris or Charles Reid. When Tammy insists, Vic agrees to find Dr. Morris first.
      Stone returns with the sundaes. Max is back at the front desk, and Brian is no where around. Max tells him that Brian was falling asleep, so she put him up in Stone's room, where he is sleeping. She also tells him that there is a woman waiting to see him, and Tammy introduces herself to Stone as Brian's sister. Tammy says that Brian paged her, and that she's heard nice things about him. Stone is very suspicious, and when he suggests they take the ice cream up to the room, Tammy tells him that her boyfriend Vic is upstairs with him.
      Stone goes into his room, gun drawn, but a quick search finds it empty. He calls downstairs to Max on the phone, but the woman is gone.
      <Commercial>
      Vic enters Dr. Morris' office. Things start off calmly enough, but then Vic picks up a copy of Morris' number one best seller, ‘Beaten Down: A Case Study' and smashes it into the desk. He berates the doctor for not caring about Brian, and just worrying about his book. Then he wraps a belt around his fist and beats him to death.
      Stone goes to Lacy Hill Realty. He talks to Maggie about 153 Green Street, and asks her to pull the chain of title. She says she will fax it to him first thing in the morning.
      Back at the hotel, Max is reading a newspaper, one of the headlines is ‘Police Seek Leads in Psychiatrist's Bizarre Murder', or as Max puts it, "Somebody went wacky and beat that shrink to death."
      That night, Brian goes to the batting cages. Stone walks up behind him "Hey, Brian. Thought you might come back here. I've been waiting all afternoon. You remember your pal, Dr. Morris? Somebody killed him. I did a little bit of research. It seems, uh, Dr Morris wrote a few books. His biggest was called ‘Beaten Down: A Case Study' on one of his patients he treated in 1956, about a kid who was raised in a pretty brutal family. You see, his stepfather, when he was drunk, he would wrap a lather belt around his fist and then knock the kid unconscious."
      As he listens to Stone, Brian has ended up standing in front of the place. We watch him flinch as the baseballs punch into his body. The physical pain can not hurt him, but the memories obviously do. "Do we have to talk about this?"
      "Oh, it's not easy for me either, kid, I was raised by a father who knocked me around pretty good too. The world is full of monsters.
      "This quiet kid, one day walked out and robbed a store. Later, when the police caught him, he told him they'd caught the wrong guy, so they put him in a psych ward, where Dr. Morris was doing his internship.
      "The day he went home, he turned to his old ways. He tried to rob an old man, but the old man fought back. So the boy beat him to death. The police tracked him down, and he resisted arrest. So they shot him."
      "And he died."
      "Yeah. And he went to Hell for killing the old man. Which is where he stayed, until a few months ago. Sound familiar, Brian?" Stone raises his gun.
      "What are you doing? Who are you?"
      "Just a guy with a job that really sucks. Especially this time."
      "I don't get it..."
      "You gotta go back, Brian. I'm sorry."
      "Maybe first, you would rather beat me... with your fist. Like my stepfather did." Brian is swinging the bat, his breathing heavy. He hits the fence in front of Stone, and then runs. Stone does not follow him.
Stone is sitting in a bar. The Devil shows up, tells him to be a good little hell cop and send him back. Stone wonders why a boy who wasn't old enough to drive was old enough to go to Hell. The Devil explains that Brian clearly knew what he was doing was wrong, he made ‘the choice'. The Devil suspects Stone of wondering what his own life would have been like with Brian's father, or what if Brian had had him for a father? The Devil boasts about how many of his offspring are in Congress, but Stone cuts him off. The Devil says he is quite proud of them right now.
      Back at the batting cages, Brian is waiting for Stone. He suggests that he move in with Stone, but Stone says he must send him back. Brian, holding the bat, morphs into Vic. Vic starts knocking Zeke around, telling Zeke that Brian doesn't need him, that he and Tammy can take care of Brian.
      "Where did you come from?" Stone wants to know.
      "Brian watched a little bit too much TV. I used to live inside his head, but now, I'm free to roam. Brian's a good boy, you see. Too bloody good. He couldn't protect himself."
      They fight, and Vic turns back into Brian . Brian waves the bat in front of his face, and with each pass, he changes to Tammy, and then Vic again. They fight some more, and when Stone is knocked to the ground, Vic runs.
      At the hotel, Stone's fax is waiting for him.
      The current owner is Brian's stepsister, and she is rents it out. Stone finds out that he is the second person today who has asked about her father.
      At the nursing home, Tammy enters, and then changes into Vic. Vic finds Charles Reid, and old man in a wheelchair, and takes him away ‘for some fresh air'. <commercial>
      The nurse and Stone are standing where Charles Reid usually is, but he is not there.
      Vic breaks a chain on an off limits section and rolls him into it. Vic tells him about a young boy that just couldn't get on his good side. "Tonight, Charlie Reid, this is your life." He morphs back into Brian. "The final chapter, that is."
      Brian can't quite bring himself to kill Charles, Vic and Tammy egg him on. Brian then physically splits into all three personalities.
      Stone finds the room, and sees the four Reids. Vic and Tammy tie Stone up in plastic, but when Vic tries to take out Stone's eyes, Brian shoots Vic. Tammy goes back with him too. Stone collapses on the floor, so does Brian. Stone reaches out a hand to him, but as Brian reaches for him, he also gets pulled back just before they touch. Stone watches him go. The tattoo burns itself off of his right forearm.
      Back at the batting cages, Stone sits on a bench with Judge Bristol, watching his granddaughter hit the ball. "I understand," the judge is telling him, "but you're not the first son who didn't get along with his father. It's tough, but I tell you, no man is the father he wishes he were. I made a lot of mistakes with my own son. I guess I try to make up for that now, with his daughter."
      "Yeah, well, at least you get a second chance, right."
      "Yeah, in a way. But you've got to move on, you can't spend your life trying to fill up that empty space where your father's love should have been. You'll have children of your own someday and find out exactly what I'm talking about."   The judge pats him on the shoulder and stands up.
      "Uh, Thurston, you, uh ... mind if we get together again sometime? You know... just talk?"
      "Consider my court in session. Now Mr. Stone-"
      "Zeke."
      "Zeke, don't brood over things that are beyond your control. Life is too damn short." Thurston walks away.
      Stone remains on the bench. "Tell me about it."