Chicago PD season 6, episode 17 recap: Pain Killer
Who’s the real target?
When Voight pulled the thread, Price admitted that the man was Michael Rankin, who had gotten screwed in a real estate deal and expected Price to make him whole. He’d figured he’d just deal with him later. And though Rankin’s car was spotted near the scene of the shooting, he turned out to be just a witness to the crime.
Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) and Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) got details on the suspect when they found where he had taken the shot from. Tracing his movements, they found out that it was actually Voight, not Price, who the shooter was following and trying to kill. Well, that’s one way to pivot a Chicago PD episode!
Digging into Voight’s recent activities, Burgess asked why the perpetrator waited to attack until Voight was at Price’s event. Antonio also tracked the car to a retired prison guard named Melvin Barnes, but Melvin was murdered before Intelligence got to his apartment. So who killed him and took his Toyota? And why was the Toyota found in a parking lot near a courthouse?
The implication was that Voight wasn’t the only target. But of course, just as everyone got there, the sniper began to take multiple shots and it was off to the races. The fleeing suspect shot an innocent woman as he ran from Antonio and Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins), and that was enough of a distraction for him to get away again.
So where did Chicago PD go next? While Voight revealed that he knew the judge who had been the target at the courthouse, Atwater and Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) found out who the rifle abandoned at the scene was registered to.
Drew Bayless was quickly hauled into the interrogation room, but said his gun must have been stolen while he was out of state. And there was surveillance footage to prove it.
The real suspect was clear as day on the camera: a man named Darius Tatum. What was his connection to everyone? Voight had arrested him when Darius was 17 and involved in an armed robbery, but the deal he’d cut for Darius didn’t go through. Instead, he’d gotten screwed by the system and now, he clearly held a grudge.