Dead End

Plot

Lindsey is sleeping and his alarm goes off. He’s brushes his teeth, puts on his prosthetic hand, puts on a tie from his closet, and pauses to look at his guitar in the corner of the closet before shutting the door.

A man talks to his family in the kitchen as they get ready to leave for their day. He’s standing in the kitchen reading a newspaper while he eats a muffin. He tells his family that they’re late and they start leaving. He calls out to his wife that he will get his daughters books and his son’s vitamins. He picks up the backpack and walks to the counter for the vitamins while still reading the paper. He reaches out to pick up the vitamin bottle, grabs a butcher knife instead, and stabs himself in the eye.

Cordelia is leaving over the counter in the lobby of the Hyperion as the vision of the man stabbing who stabbed himself in the eye hits her. She gasps and stumbles back into the bookcase pulling books from it. She falls to the floor and Angel runs to her calling her name. As Gunn and Wesley come up Angel tells Gunn to “get her some water.” Angel sits her up and asks her what she saw as she gasps for air and coughs. She leans into angel’s arms sobbing and is unable to speak.

In a staff meeting at Wolfram and Hart, Lindsey and Lilah report on their division. Lilah’s on edge as Lindsey conveys more information about their cases than she does. When the conversation turns to Angel, Lindsey expresses his opinion with annoyance and Lilah gives a report on the situation. Nathan Reed informs them that their division will be re-evaluated on Friday. The meeting adjourns and Lilah approaches Lindsey and says: “Could you stab me in the back a little deeper? I still have feeling in my legs.” Lilah’s worried about the re-evaluation but Lindsey doesn’t seem concerned. Nathan Reed interrupts their conversation and asks Lindsey to come to his office. In his office, Reed advises Lindsey that it’s unprofessional to express his attitude toward Angel in front of his colleagues. Handing Lindsey a business card, he tells him he’s made an appointment for him that will take all day so he cleared Lindsey’s calendar. Lilah watches the meeting from the hall.

Sitting in a chair at her desk, Cordelia tells the crew that the man from her vision “had to be crazy but he didn’t feel crazy.” She says that he felt normal until he stabbed himself. Gunn and Wesley press her for more details, but she doesn’t have any. Angel says they’ll figure it out and Cordelia begins to weep again. Wesley suggests that they start calling hospitals but Gunn isn’t receptive to the idea. He realizes he’s the one who will be calling hospitals while Wesley checks morgues and Angel rousts some demons to see if “there’s a new terror in town.” As Angel leaves, he asks Gunn to keep an eye on Cordelia.

The nurse finishes taking Lindsey’s blood pressure as Doctor Melman enters the examination room and introduces himself to Lindsey. Lindsey asks the doctor what’s going on and the doctor explains that Lindsey was pushed to the top of the donor list for a hand transplant. The doctor performs the procedure and a Pockla demon enters and performs magic to accelerate the healing.

Gunn is on the phone with a hospital trying to find information on the man from Cordelia’s vision. Cordelia is behind him dusting. As Gunn hangs up the phone, Angel returns and asks how she is. Gunn says she’s been pretty quiet and that “she grunted once around noon and got on with the maniacal cleaning.” Wesley returns and the three of them determine that they’ve gotten nowhere. Wesley suggests that they need more information and assigns the task of talking to Cordelia about it to Angel. After Gunn and Wesley walk away from the counter, Angel approaches Cordelia and awkwardly tries to start a conversation. She asks him what he wants without turning around to look at him and he tells her that they need help and asks her if she can look at the vision again. She apologizes and says that “he’s probably dead by now.” Angel tells her that he might not be and that there might be others. Cordelia closes her eyes and presses her fingertips to her forehead as she says: “I wish it would stop hurting.” She asks Angel what he wants her to do and he tells her that maybe she could “look again.” She says she’s been doing it all day but she goes back into the vision and this time she sees the name of the school on the daughter’s backpack.

The sun rises and Lindsey wakes before the alarm. He holds up his new hand and examines it. His alarm sounds and he uses his new hand to turn it off. He washes his face and opens the closet to get a tie. As he pulls a tie from the rack, he looks at this guitar in the corner. He sits on the bed and plays the guitar.

Lilah walks up to see Lindsey shaking hands with their client. Nathan Reed introduces her to Mr. Kraigle and she shakes his hand. Lilah conveys her discontent over Lindsey being chosen to run the division and they enter the conference room to meet with the client. They’re discussing the case when Kraigle noticing that Lindsey has been writing during the entire meeting, asks if Lindsey is “getting all of this down.” Lindsey looks down at his legal pad and the smile leaves his face as he sees that his hand has been writing the word “kill” over and over on the piece of paper. Lindsey gets up, says he has to go, and leaves without an explanation.

At his apartment, Lindsey sits at a small desk trying to get his hand to write on its won again. He opens the desk drawer and pulls out a letter opener with his left hand. He pokes his right hand with it several times drawing blood, but does not react as if he has any sensation in the hand. He drops the pen from his right hand and picks up the letter opener examining it. He drops the letter opener and holds up his right hand flexing his fingers. He sighs and asks his right hand: “Who are you?”

A delivery man hands Angel a box and Angel thanks him and tells him to keep the change. The delivery man complains that it’s only a dollar as he leaves the hotel lobby. Angel sets the box on the counter and starts taking out all the food. From her desk, Cordelia asks: “What’s all this?” and Angel answers: “Lunch. I was hungry.” She asks him what’s going on because he doesn’t eat food and he tells her that it doesn’t keep him alive but he can eat and that he sometimes gets a “hankering” for something. She’s suspicious of his excuse as she looks through all the different types of food on the counter. He admits that he couldn’t remember what she liked and she wonders why he didn’t ask her. He tells her that he didn’t want to upset her because everyone’s been asking her if she wants anything. She asks: “So you did this instead?” He answers: “Yep.” She smiles widely and says: “I love you” and he smiles back at her. She tells him he should smile more often as she walks back to her desk carrying a sandwich. The vision hits her again and she tells Angel that the man was happy about his eye as if it were new. Gunn and Wesley return. Wesley tells them he thinks they found the man and that his name is Joseph Cramer. Gunn tells them that Cramer’s children didn’t show up for school and his wife called the school to say she was taking them out of the country. The house had been cleaned from top to bottom removing any clues that might have been there. Gunn found a piece of molding they missed and holds it out to Angel for him to smell it. Angel says that he will just trust Gunn about this information. They realize that they still don’t have enough information and Angel says: “There’s only one thing we can do now.” The others desperately try to think of some other solution so they can avoid having to endure Angel’s singing, but nobody can think of anything else to do.

Lindsey is on stage at Caritas playing the guitar and singing. Angel and the crew enter the bar and are surprised to see Lindsey. All the patrons are enjoying listening to him except Angel who criticizes his talent. Lorne and the crew tell him to be quiet. Lorne approaches Lindsey and he asks Lorne what he should do about his new hand. Angel criticizes his singing again but Cordelia, Gunn, and Wesley compliment him on it. Angel asks if everyone is drunk and Lindsey becomes angry at Angel’s presence. Lorne explains that they are both there for the same reason but Lindsey is not open to the idea of working with Angel. He puts his drink down on the bar, tells Angel he will kill him if he sees him outside of the club, and leaves. The crew thinks they should follow Lindsey but Angel says they should follow his hand as he picks up the glass Lindsey left behind showing the fingerprints on it.

At the Wolfram and Hart building, Lindsey enters Nathan Reed’s office and searches his computer for information about the hand. He looks at file on Lilah and closes it. He does a search on Fairfield Clinic and reads the results.

Angel returns to the hotel and tells the crew that the hand belonged to Bradley Scott who was recently paroled. They wonder how he got his information and Gunn and Wesley get when he admits that he hired a private detective since they no longer have a friend on the police force. Cordelia finds that Scott worked for Wolfram and Hart before he went to jail and Angel tells them that he disappeared after reporting to his parole office only once.

Lindsey leaves Reed’s office and stops in the hall to watch Lilah taking files from the file storage room. He leaves the hall before she notices him.

Lindsey pays a visit to Bradley Scott’s parole officer and asks him about where the clinic gets its body parts. The man gets suspicious and punches Lindsey. He punches Lindsey again and says: “You’ve got three seconds to tell me what your game is.” As Lindsey explains that it’s personal, the window of the man’s apartment is shattered. The man shoots at Angel through the broken window, grabs Lindsey in a choke hold, points his gun at Lindsey, and walks over to the window with him. He yells out the window to Angel that he’s going to shoot his friend, but Angel doesn’t respond. As he sticks his head through the window, Angel lassos him around the neck and Lindsey gets the gun from him. Lindsey starts yelling at Angel waving the gun around and using it to punctuate what he’s saying to Angel. The parole officer gets nervous and asks him to be careful with the gun. Angel tightens the rope around the man’s neck as he and Lindsey continue to argue. The man refuses to tell Angel anything because Wolfram and Hart will kill him if he does. Angel morphs into his vampire self and threatens to live off him for a month which convinces the man to talk.

Cordelia has her head on the desk and is sniffling as Gunn and Wesley watch her through the door. They close the door and start discussing how the visions seem to be causing her more pain and the after effects seem to be lasting longer. Gunn says that “she’s been cranky lately, but it’s not like she’s crazy” when they hear her saying Angel’s name. They push the door open rapidly and startle her. They find that she is actually talking to Angel on the phone and not herself. She tells the phone that she’s ok and that Gunn and Wesley were just playing with the door. She listens some more and tells the phone: “Ok, we’ll wait here. I’m fine. Just get it done.”

Angel and Lindsey are driving in Angel’s car. Angel tells Lindsey about the man stabbing himself in the eye and asks Lindsey if his hand has “been doing anything funny lately.” Lindsey doesn’t say anything so Angel starts to psychoanalyze him. Angel stops the car, gets out, opens the trunk, and pulls the bound and gagged parole officer up so he can see. He asks the parole officer if the building across the street is where he took Bradley Scott and the man nods yes. Angel shoves him back into the truck and closes it. Angel asks Lindsey if he recognizes the place, but he doesn’t. Angel says the security is probably extensive since the building is associated with Wolfram and Hart and Lindsey offers to hack into the system with his laptop. Angel says: “That seems like a big bother. Why don’t we just fight?” Misunderstanding Angel, Lindsey prepares to battle him, but Angel instead suggests that he move to the side and throws an axe through the door window shattering it. They fight the men who come out and they go inside. They look around and Angel says the floor is hollow. He finds a door hidden under a rug and they go below. They enter the room and see people in life support chambers. Some have had body parts cultivated and others have not yet. They are all alive. Angel looks around and sees a symbol on the wall that he recognizes. He says that “a Pockla blessed this place.” Lindsey asks who they are and Angel explains that they are demons who know how to regenerate flesh. He thinks it’s probably the reason why some of the transplants aren’t “taking so well.” Lindsey says that he thinks one of them was there when they gave him his hand and Angel corrects him and nods in the direction of Bradley Scott. Lindsey recognizes Scott from working with him in the mailroom. Scott begs Lindsey to kill him and Lindsey asks Angel what he should do. Angel says: “I know what I’d do, but this is your deal.” He tells Lindsey to hurry no matter what he decides to do because they’ll be coming for them soon and they need to help the ones they can. Lindsey apologizes to Bradley Scott and pulls the plug on his life support chamber as Angel releases the people who haven’t yet been mutilated. Lindsey starts to destroy the equipment, but Angel stops him and tells him to help the people get upstairs. Angel turns on two oxygen tanks and hurries up the staircase. He pauses at the top and tells Lindsey to get in the car. He uses his lighter to ignite a piece of paper, drops it down the stairwell, shuts the trap door, and runs from the building just before it explodes.

Angel asks Cordelia how everything in her head is. She’s confused by his question and he asks her if she has any vision aftermaths. She says it’s better and explains to Angel, Gunn, and Wesley that the visions are “starting to take a toll.” They all look at her with compassion and concern and she says: “It’s part of the job, right?” with a look of resignation on her face.

In a Wolfram and Hart staff meeting Nathan Reed starts to tell Lilah that they’ve chosen Lindsey to head the division when she interrupts him and starts to dig for something in her purse. Lindsey stops her and says that it’s clear they’ve chosen him. Reed agrees and Lindsey continues saying that Lilah could’ve had the position but she didn’t have what it takes which is an evil hand. He gets out of his chair, walks over to Reed, and asks him if he knew they gave him an evil hand that’s been writing the word kill. He walks pas the security guard, punches him, takes his gun, and shoots him in the foot blaming it on his evil hand. He shoots some glass items on a table behind Reed and Reed flinches with each shot. Lindsey tells him he should’ve chosen Lilah. She looks at Lindsey suspiciously as he explains that she has files on everyone in the room containing information that they wouldn’t want the Senior Partners to see. He says he’s leaving anyway, turns and walks out of the conference room. He grabs Lilah’s behind as he passes her and she jumps. Reed announces that the minutes should be changed to reflect Lilah’s promotion instead of Lindsey’s.

Lindsey puts a duffle bag and his guitar case in the bed of his pickup truck. He says: “If you’re here to kill me, grab a ticket and get in line.” Leaning against the tailgate, Angel tells him that he likes the truck and starts talking about how everyone in the 1950’s though life now would be like the Jetsons. They talk and Angel tells Lindsey that he is there “to say Bon Voyage and don’t come back.” Lindsey tells Angel he can have Los Angeles and opens the truck door. Angel says: “I’m glad I didn’t have to do something immature here.” Lindsey smiles at him and tells him that the key to Wolfram and Hart is to not let them make you play their game, but to make them play yours instead. Angel thanks him and tells him he’ll “keep that in mind” and not to drive to fast because there are a lot of cops. Lindsey gets in the truck and pulls away from the curb revealing a sign on the tailgate which reads: “COPS SUCK.” Angel watches him speed away with a smile on his face.