Hello and welcome to what is bound to be a rather hefty edition of Bridging the Gap! Seriously, have you read this issue? There is a lot going on. Let’s get to it.
Jo, Accessory to Murder
As I discussed at length last column, it seemed very much up in the air whether Jo had actually let Lonnie die or not. Whether that was intentional or a side effect of the unusual structure of the issue is anybody’s guess, but in this issue she admits her guilt damn fast. So, that clears that up. And bearing in mind what we learn about other characters and about Hoodie later this issue, this makes her just one among many characters with blood on their hands but scanty knowledge as to what’s going on in the big picture. Something to think about.
Pushing Hoodie
Early in this issue, when Elle just begins projecting images of her dream wall, she gets this vision of Hoodie surrounded by syringes. And while the syringes are by no means a new image (she saw a giant Dr. Hammond brandishing a syringe in one of her first wall visions, way back in #3), the juxtaposition with Hoodie certainly is. I’m not willing to move too too far beyond my initial, prosaic hypothesis – that Elle was initally injected with propofol – but we shouldn’t forget about these syringes, or what Elle’s likely drug-induced amnesia entails for the project. Somebody sedated Elle in the first place, and we still don’t know who that is.
Two Recorders
As Jo explains, it seems that the police received one recorded version of a conversation involving Lonnie, with one voice garbled and difficult to identify, while the one that Jo briefly listened to last issue was the original. The picture that emerges is fairly straightforward: with Lonnie dead, Dane was no longer needed to take the fall for Elle’s attack. So, the Jairus Project orchestrated things such that the police could clear Dane’s name while still not being able to identify a key player. The identity of this person is, of course, a mystery, but I think we can assume that they are deeply involved in the conspiracy. And importantly enough, Jo now has a measure of proof as to their identity.
Confessions, or, Hoodie Revealed (Kinda)
One of the things about this issue that’s actually kind of refreshing is the fact that there’s a fair amount of explaining going on. Some mysteries are being cleared up – no doubt in order to make room for new ones, but hey, that’s why we love this series. Anyway, the most important of the reveals is that Hoodie is more than one person, and we get this by implication as two separate people admit to crimes which we saw Hoodie commit. This, of course, means that more than just these two people could potentially be donning the hood at well, but, for the moment, Hoodie is Eddie and Frankie. Both characters with “ie” at the end of their names. That… may have been a hint, and I guess that implicates Lonnie too. Huh.
Anyway, let’s take a closer look at the things that Eddie and Frankie confess to in this issue.
Eddie Killed Lonnie
This shows that Eddie has been acting as Hoodie on his mothers’ orders, in this case getting Lonnie’s blackmailing and possibly bean-spilling self out of the way. This action still seems pretty extreme to me; if what Lonnie wanted was money, couldn’t they have just given him a good deal more of it and sent him off somewhere remote, with someone to keep an eye on him maybe? I mean, how much more convenient is a murder and all the cover up it entails? I guess this just speaks to how important secrecy is to the Jairus project, that the conspirators would literally kill to preserve it. But moving right along: Eddie confessing to this murder means that the Hoodie who went into Dane’s apartment last issue and injected his things with peanut solution was, of course, Eddie, and it was Eddie who gave the apartment a clean sweep before the police arrived.
Continued belowFrankie John Doe’d Lonnie
Oh man, we all knew Frankie was mixed up, but “greasing some palms” and getting Lonnie’s unidentified body cremated? It’s not exactly murder, but it’s serious. Frankie must have some serious connections.
Anyway, since Frankie enters wearing a hoodie and makes it clear that he’s involved in clandestine activities, we can assume that he has been acting as Hoodie more than just this once, and therefore takes orders from Min – if not directly, then possibly through Eddie. Frankie gets angry with Eddie for not texting him about the recent developments, so this at least indicates that they’ve been communicating regularly.
Eddie Coma’d Crenshaw
Ah yes, the incident with the deer. Turns out it was nicked from the prop department at the Vineyard, and Eddie set the whole thing in motion.
Now, the one thing I don’t quite get about this is what, exactly, the Jairus Project expected to gain by having Eddie cause Crenshaw to crash his car. In the grand scheme of things, it seems highly unlikely that Crenshaw would be injured in just the right way to be put into a coma, or, as Eddie seems to have been hoping, simply unconscious for a short time; more likely, he would be injured in some other way, or simply killed. Crenshaw being put in a coma probably wasn’t in anybody’s plans; they just wanted him out of the way, and if he’s alive so they can question him, so much the better. But now, in his coma state (which Elle apparently can access), he seems to be sort of useful to Elle, and to her figuring out what’s going on. So… joke’s on the Jairus project, I guess.
Anyway, this amounts to Eddie again attempting murder on the Jairus Project’s behalf. So far, he seems very much on their side, but he contradicts this notion pretty fast.
Elle Was Not Attacked
Not the most shocking reveal in the issue by a long shot – we’ve had lots of clues pointing in this direction, from Elle’s note in #9, which hinted as voluntary involvement in the Project, to a subtle visual clue back in #6. Of course, “Elle was not attacked” does not exactly equal “Elle got into this knowing everything it would entail”, but it does imply more complicated circumstances as well as some participation on her part. That, and the multi-decade span of the project does seem to necessitate commitment on the part of the person it depends on most.
Eddie follows this by saying that while he was the Hoodie who was on the station platform when Elle was knocked out, “unlike others, [he’s] been trying to help her”. This casts something of a new light on his character. Yes, he followed orders from Min, acting for the benefit of the Project, and coma’d Crenshaw and killed Lonnie. But it sounds like he was involved in the subway platform struggle that Elle has mentioned, and he was acting in her best interests in doing so. Of course, we only have Eddie’s word here, but taken at face value, Eddie trying to stop Elle from doing something at the subway platform sounds a lot like Eddie interfering with and possibly trying to sabotage the course of the Jairus Project — although the struggle, while obviously traumatic, could very well have been for her benefit in some other way. Could he have been trying to prevent her suicide, perhaps?
Crenshaw, and How Elle Has Been There Before
Like Eddie, Crenshaw pretends toward acting in Elle’s interests all along, and as he and Elle have something of an intense conversation in her dream space, he reveals that they have been visiting this limbo “further back than you can imagine… involving more than you could possibly imagine.” Again, this gestures toward the long time span of the Jairus Project, and that it’s been in progress in some form since Elle’s birth. But the second part there, “involving more than you could possibly imagine” does seem to underscore a supernatural aspect. Remember that weird glance in issue #8, which seemed to indicate that something outside scientific knowledge was hiding in that briefcase? This series hasn’t been terribly explicit as to how much or little of the paranormal is involved, and it’s beginning to look like one of its most important mysteries.
Continued belowInterestingly, Crenshaw later mentions that Min hired him, and tries to expand on this (“But she answers to–”) before Elle cuts him off. It’s been fairly easy to demonize Min, but Crenshaw emphasizes the fact that she was just following orders – just like Eddie and Frankie were. Could she, in the end, just be another pawn? A higher-order one than the others, to be sure, since she has direct access to The Fifth, but has The Fifth really been letting her in on everything? Crenshaw, at any rate, seems convinced of his own innocence, so there’s that. Could his only real crime be the fact that he followed Min’s order, and Min’s, that she followed The Fifth’s?
Eddie and Miles
Miles accidentally reveals that he and Eddie are in a relationship, and this leads Eddie to reveal something of his own motivations re: The Jairus Project. Meanwhile, Dane assumes that Eddie having a secret life accounts for his willingness to follow Min’s orders: he wants to be a “good” son and live up to his mother’s expectations. This does seem a little pat to me, though, and I feel like there’s definitely more to this relationship than meets the eye – particularly since Miles is Dr. Crenshaw’s assistant, and Eddie very nearly killed both of them.
Now, Miles and Eddie being involved does cast a rather weird light on my theory that Elle is Miles, but bear with me for a second, because I am not willing to let this crackpot theory die. Could a romantic relationship potentially be a cover for another kind of relationship? That is, could Elle (possessing Miles’ body after the manner I explained) be teaming up with Eddie in some way that would require an excuse for them being seen together often? It’s a long shot, but it’s interesting.
More Than Any One Person Could Ever Know
Eddie’s elaborate hideout set-up is somewhat surprising in that it seems to indicate that he doesn’t know very much about the Jairus Project, all told. He’s puzzling through the mystery like the rest of us, even as he acts out Min’s orders. And in saying the above, he’s emphasizing the importance of everybody putting together their little bits of information in order to try to get at what’s really going on. This is something I’ll return to at the end of the column, but the important thing to recognize here is that it doesn’t seem like the Hoodies ever really had any full access to the Jairus Project’s plans, and aren’t anything resembling the “Big Bad” they have been built up to be over the course of the series.
The Mysterious Old Dude
This is one tidbit that I don’t really know what to do with. Dane mentions that he saw an old guy at the Peterssen lodge, and that Elle was yelling at him. But who the hell could this old guy be? Obviously not Mr. Peterssen, because Dane would have recognized him, and probably not Crenshaw (he’s beardy, but far from old). There doesn’t appear to have been any casual mention of an old guy over the course of the series, either. Could this be The Fifth? The garbled voice on the recorder? Or could this just be another minor player who’s to come forward with some small piece of information? Anyway, Elle being angry with some key player at some point prior to her “attack” would definitely complicate things, but it’s hard to presume much further than that. The fact that Elle had a photograph of the lodge in her pocket at the subway station does underscore its pertinence, though.
They Have to Kill Elle
Eddie reveals all that he knows about the Jairus Project, which amounts to pretty much what we know: that it says “Jairus” on the briefcase, and that Elle/Katie referred to Jairus when she went into her weird trance. Jo assumes that Hammond is involved, Eddie confirms. All told, these characters and us, the readers, are now pretty much on the same page. We’re being given a moment to catch our breath and mull it all over – before, I’m guessing, things get even more complicated.
Continued belowNow, why do Dane, Jo, and Eddie (and they specifically) have to kill Elle in order to interrupt the Jairus Project? My best guess is that this has something to do with the Markov Chain that Katie/Elle recited in #6 and which Joe and Frankie mull over in #7. Its substance seems to be that the Jairus Project takes four days (we’re on the second one now), and that its ultimate success depends on which day Elle wakes up. Now, killing Elle would be one way of making sure she doesn’t wake up when the Jairus conspirators want her to, but it does seem drastic. I’m betting there’s more to Eddie’s plan than meets the eye.
Recap
We’ve learned:
(well, a heck of a lot, but let’s keep it to the essentials)
-that Jo definitely let Lonnie die;
-that Hoodie is and has been Frankie and Eddie, and possibly others;
-that Eddie is working against the Jairus Project somehow;
-that Eddie and Miles are involved romantically;
-that Elle has been in her dream space many times before, and
-that Min hired Crenshaw.
I suspect:
-there’s much more to Eddie and Miles’ relationship than meets the eye;
-that Crenshaw was working against the Jairus Project just like Eddie, and
-that while everybody shares guilt, they share it mostly by association and chain of command.
All told, this issue has cleared up a lot of details but left the big picture as obscure a mystery as ever. One trend, though, is that – just as in real-life clandestine operations, actually – most of the pawns involved are being kept oblivious to the big picture and to the consequences of the orders they are carrying out. They share the orchestrators’ guilt, because they are following the orders and executing the crimes, but they have incomplete knowledge – and in a way, this protects them, but it also leaves them open to being massively screwed over (see: Dane, Crenshaw, Lonnie).
More and more, it’s beginning to look like the only people who are really in the know are The Fifth, Min, Edward, and possibly Dr. Hammond, and that nobody really knows as much as the Fifth does. Elle may in fact know more than all of them, when she finally remembers. But lucky for us, this gap in knowledge, involvement and responsibility between the minor players and the major ones leaves some wiggle room in which the less in-the-know can execute bits of sabotage as they put together the pieces and figure out what’s going on. “Mind the gap”, indeed.
Comments, observations, crackpot theories? Be sure to leave them below.
