The IU is a ticking time bomb. The outfit has increasingly been feeling the squeeze from its corrupt superior, Chief Deputy Charlie Reid (Shawn Hatosy), and while Reid doesn't factor too heavily into the Chicago PD episode "Black Ice," the tension carries over to a case involving sex trafficking.
Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) kicked off the episode by trying to help his father, Bob (Jack Coleman). Bob moved in with him upon after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and the two men struggled to make sense of a letter Bob got regarding a secret bank account in Florida. Ruzek was unsure whether his father set up the account and simply forgot, or was being tricked.
The bank account mystery got postponed, though, when Ruzek nearly hit a man crossing the street with his car. He noticed the man in question had a crazed expression, and instead of heading home, he chose to follow the man to a nearby bridge. Sure enough, the man tried to jump over, and Ruzek grabbed his arm. The man panicked, however, and fell to his death.
Ruzek investigated a suicidal family man
A disappointed Ruzek went underneath the bridge to identify the man, who was named Frank Bailey, and discovered that Bailey had actually been stabbed prior to going over the bridge. There was foul play involved, and to make matters even worse, the ice that the body landed on broke away, meaning the crime scene was effectively gone. Rotten start to the case.
Ruzek and the rest of the IU track down Bailey's wife Evelyn and his kids. Everything seemed to be on the up and up, but a distraught Evelyn snapped upon being questioned, and physically hit Ruzek as he tried to get answers about Bailey's personal life. Despite this volatility, Ruzek eventually discovered an odd inconsistency in Bailey's whereabouts during his last night.
He told Evelyn that he was working late, when it fact, he had gone to an underground rave. Ruzek went to the location of the rave, discovered blood on the floor, and tracked it to a series of hidden rooms in the basement. It turns out that the rave was a cover for a sex trafficking operation, in which dozens of kids are held and transported. Bailey was stabbed while inside one of these rooms, and stumbled out into the street right before Ruzek nearly ran him over.
Things did not look good for the seemingly wholesome family man. Bailey got in touch with the men who operate the sex trafficking ring through a guy named Steve, who Ruzek confronted and used as a means of locating some of the kids in danger. Upon locating these kids, Ruzek is ambushed by one of the trafficking enforcers and nearly killed. Bizarrely, one of the girls being trafficked jumped in to help attack the officer.
Ruzek made a heartwarming discovery about his dad
Thankfully, Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) showed up and helped her fiance out. They use the enforcer to determine what really happened the night Bailey went to the rave. It turns out that the businessman was attempting to choke out an underage prostitute, and Salton, the man in charge of the trafficking operation, stabbed him in an attempt to protect the prostitute. Salton is arrested, but was somehow not the most morally reprehensible person in his deadly encounter.
Ruzek reconvenes with his father at the end of "Black Ice." It turned out that Bob did open the bank account in Florida, and did so in order to put everything he had in a trust fund for Ruzek's daughter, Makayla (Ramona Edith Williams). The former cop figured it would help to alleviate the stress that he has put his son and his daughter-in-law to be under.
It was a touching reveal, and one that proved a welcome contrast from the horrific actions of the perceived family man that Ruzek investigated for the bulk of the episode. Chicago PD can be bleak, but there's often a silver lining, a reason to believe in the good of people.