Will Trent Season 4 Episode 7: Call Paul

A woman is attacked and killed in her home. Trent recreates the murder mentally — and his intrusive thoughts put himself in the attacker's place. No forced entry, no robbery, the husband out of town; the knife Mrs. Hornbaker grabbed is missing. Then Paul arrives, insisting he knows the killer: his cartoonish sketch of the man slides into a confession of sorts — he was having an affair with the victim, Joelle. The husband storms in accusing Paul of killing her after she broke it off; Paul insists he ended it — after break-up sex.

Nobody thinks Paul is the killer. The nail gun belongs to Brent, a victim of a different open case: serial killer. Will tells Amanda something is off about this killer. Elsewhere Ormewood, Franklin and Angie work a hit-and-run: driver Benjamin Price died of an allergic reaction to pepper spray — white skunk hair on the bumper; a dive into his phone surfaces Luna's message and a woman yelling "You killed my baby." Their trail ends at Daphne, the skunk mother, who rehabilitates injured skunks a mile from the scene.

Paul's sketch aside, the episode's real reveal is the past: Paul entered Will's life right after Anna's death, tried to start a game of Cops and Robbers, pointed a toy gun at Will — and Will threw the first punch. The bully story was backwards. Paul helps Will make sense of the monster within: the Ulster-shaped rage that died in Episode 2 but keeps showing up in Will's head.

Will admits that a year ago he would have insisted none of this was happening; now, after months of therapy with Dr. Roach, he worries he may be lying to himself — and that in hunting killers he sometimes understands them, feels comfortable inside their minds. Too comfortable.

After a drive-by nearly kills Paul, he moves in with Will. Dinner with Angie gets awkward when Paul assumes they're having a baby, and he drops the bomb that Will started their first fight. That night a Cobb County detective calls: the same killer may match his unsolved Martin Hill case — killed with his own steel hedge clippers, an autographed Deion Sanders bat stolen. Martin was the first victim. Will's dissociative episode ends with him stabbing Ulster's ghost — which turns into the victim — nearly hurting Paul in the process.

Clarity arrives: the killers find their victims through Anuli Springs water. And Daphne's account closes the B-case: she threw a stone at Benjamin's windscreen and pepper-sprayed him in fear, fleeing before his allergic attack — but his throat was crushed, so someone else was there.

The hour's resolution runs on two tracks. The serial-killer case gains its shape: Joelle and Brent were not personal targets, Martin Hill was the first victim, and the victims are found through Anuli Springs water — the hunt now has a pattern. The B-case splits cleanly: Daphne's pepper spray caused the allergic reaction, but Benjamin's crushed throat means someone else finished him.

The emotional resolution belongs to Paul. The foster-home origin story reverses — Will threw the first punch at a toy gun in the aftermath of Anna's death — and Paul, living in Will's guest room after the drive-by, becomes the first person Will tells the truth about the monster within: that he sometimes understands killers, and it feels too comfortable.