Taa Alts Iisigo (Just A Small Piece) – The episode begins with Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) realizing that he is chasing a man and not a monster. He tries relaying the information to Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) but the information comes across the radio skewed. Chee decides to head into the desert on horseback after speaking with dispatcher, Natalie Bluehouse (Natalie Benally). It doesn’t take him long to locate Joe’s cruiser but not Joe. Several seconds later, Chee receives another transmission from Joe, this time he gives him his direct location and the location of the suspect. Chee goes after Joe. Although he finds him, George Bowlegs (Bodhi Okuma Linton) is long gone. Chee tries getting Joe to safety but he insists that he go after the suspect. Chee obeys the order and nearly catches the suspect but loses him in a shootout.
Joe wakes in the hospital and is in the process of getting dressed when Sheriff Gordo Sena (A Martinez) shows up. Gordo tells him that he was shot with a horse tranquilizer. Joe tells Gordo that he has a gut feeling that it was Roberto ‘Budge’ De Baca (Raoul Max Trujillo who killed Michael Halsey (Phil Burke) but it was not Budge who was in the canyon with him. Grodo tries to get Joe to get back into bed until Emma Leaphorn (Deanna Allison) comes but Joe tells him that Emma won’t be coming. Gordo tries convincing Joe that he hasn’t done anything wrong but Joe reminds him about being bound to BJ Vines (John Diehl).
Gordo and Joe meet Chee back out at the crime scene. While Gordo goes off to check the latest, Chee tells Joe that someone raided his truck and gives him back his wallet. They also found George’s campsite but still no George. After finding a time schedule for the train at the campsite, Joe suspects that it was George who ransacked his truck. He suspects that he was looking for money for a ticket to Reno. Chee and Joe also notice something under the coal in the campsite’s fire pit.
When Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) and Ivan Munos (Alex Meraz) arrive back at the border patrol station, they argue about how to proceed. She wants to go straight to the authorities but he gets her to agree to discuss it over lunch. Bernadette heads directly to the dark room to get her pictures processed. While doing so she realizes that Ivan purposely destroyed one of the photos. She shares this information and her discovery about PIGs (Pipeline Inspection Gadgets) with Eleanda Garza (Tonantzin Carmelo). Garza warns her that she needs to be careful because Ivan could be in on things with Senior Chief Ed Henry (Terry Serpico). Bernadette suspects the drugs will be arriving at Spenser Farm soon and tries to convince Garza to go with her. Garza reluctantly tells her that she knows a judge who might be able to get them a warrant.
Agent Sylvia Washington (Jenna Elfman) visits Emma at home to return some of her belongings. Sylvia also comes out and asks Emma if Joe was really with her the night Vines died. Emma doesn’t really give her an answer and says that no one in Washington cares about them.
Back at the police station, Joe realizes that he has seen Bernadette have some of the rock/crystal-like substance they found at George’s campsite. After assembling the small square rock substance he realizes that this is likely the mold for the arrowhead found in Ernesto Cata’s (Alonso Rappa) mouth.
Over lunch, Bernadette tells Ivan that she is thinking about dropping what they discovered. He says that doesn’t sound like her. She tells him guys like Tom Spenser (Bruce Greenwood) make mistakes all the time and they will likely make another. He also invites her over from dinner that evening but she turns him down and says maybe tomorrow.
Chee and Joe head to the dig site and find Doctor Reynolds’ (Christopher Heyerdahl) assistant in the process of packing up. She tells them that they’ve lost their grant. They ask her about the mold and the arrowhead. After she shows them a piece of the same arrowhead that she recently found, Joe discovers that Reynolds was rigging his own site to make it look like they were finding real artifacts. This is what George and Ernesto also stumbled upon. Joe tells the research assistant to head straight to her hotel and pack then go directly to the police.
Not long after this, Joe and Gordo are at the station, unveiling their plan to pick up George at the train station. The session is interrupted when Emma comes in and asks to speak with Washington. In private, Emma tells Sylvia that she was right about her trying to be a good person. This was until Vines took her son and she became consumed with revenge. Emma also says that she initially blamed Sylvia for bringing the trauma back after finding Vines. Despite this and Emma saying that Joe became consumed with revenge, Emma tells Sylvia that he was with her the night Vine went missing. When Joe follows Emma out of the station to find out what the talk was about, he discovers her truck full of suitcases. She tells him that she is going to stay with her sister and leaves.
Ivan rushes back to the patrol office, busts into Ed’s office, and tells him that he is out. Ivan also tells him that nothing better happen to Bernadette. Ed tells him that is why he chose him because he is loyal. Ed also tells him that there is no out.
Bernadette and Garza are shown racing to the Spenser Ranch. When they get there, they charge the property and bust into the mysterious barn. They don’t really find anything. Garza goes back to her cruiser to call for backup while Bernadette continues to search the property. In another barn, she finds a white van and a locked door that leads to a family of 3.
By the time Bernadette realizes what’s going on, Garza pulls a gun on her and Budge puts a bag over her head. This is where the episode ends.
Dark Wind Review
Not a bad way to go into the finale. This wasn’t the most action-packed episode for a pre-finale episode but I wouldn’t necessarily say that it was bad either. It did have some good points. For one, I sure wasn’t expecting Reynolds to be the killer. And I certainly wasn’t expecting him to be the killer for seeding his own dig site. If he was, why did he lose the grant, or was he just lying to his assistant? He probably lied to her. Not a bad episode, I did think the part where Garza and Bernadette raided the Spenser Ranch was a bit dumb. Two cops going in to make a big bust like that? I’d have to give the episode a 5.7 out of 10.
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