ABC’s police procedural show, Will Trent season 3, is back once more after taking a season break last week, and episode 9 brings back the same intensity as some of the earlier episodes this season. The central characters have to deal with two worlds that they are not all that familiar with, as the GBI officers investigate the murder of a famous rapper, while the APD detectives have to solve the mystery of a death at a swinger party. Although some of the plotlines in season 3 episode 9 are a bit predictable, the ending still introduces a surprising new plot element, which will be further explored in the rest of the season.
What happens at the Atlanta Grooves Festival?
Will Trent season 3 episode 9 begins at the Atlanta Grooves Festival, which is one of the most anticipated events for fans of hip-hop in the city. The famous rapper duo, known as ATL’s Most Wanted, performed one of their latest tracks to some fans before they went up to the stage for an official performance. As they are being escorted towards the stage, the event manager is informed that the elevator is currently not working, and so the rappers have to go up to the stage via the stairs
The alley to the staircase is very dimly lit and quite empty, and it is here that an altercation breaks out with a group of young men, seemingly some fans who have come to attend the music festival. Amidst all the chaos and the scuffle, one of the members of ATL’s Most Wanted, New Milli, suddenly sees his fellow rapper, H. Beltline, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Someone had just stabbed H. Beltline fatally, while New Milli managed to get away with a stab wound on his knee.
As shown earlier in Will Trent, Faith’s son, Jeremy, had dropped out of college because of his extreme passion for hip-hop music, and he had been trying to get into the industry as a composer through several music studios. While Jeremy was supposed to attend the Atlanta Grooves Festival too, he’d had to cancel his plans at the last minute to help his mother move house once again.
Faith had recently decided to move in at Michael Ormewood’s house, both because she needed a place to stay after having sold her previous penthouse and also to help Michael earn enough to weather his expensive divorce procedure. Therefore, Jeremy had decided to help her with the packing and moving, and it is now he who first breaks the news of H. Beltline’s murder to her. Soon, Faith is officially informed about the matter, and she is assigned to the case as well.
Will reach the crime scene first and has a word with the security officer as well as the event manager at the place to realize that the murder had been planned from before. The elevator had not stopped working, but someone had intentionally disabled it at the time to ensure that H. Beltline and New Milli would have to walk through the dingy alleyway towards the stairs. Therefore, the group of men had also been strategically placed at the spot to start the altercation and create a distraction, which was then used to attack the two rappers.
Although no murder weapon is found at the scene, Will realize from the shards of glass all around that a broken bottle had been used to kill H. Beltline, and so it must have been taken away by the offender. As far as the motive is concerning, though, nothing significant can be found, as ATL’s Most Wanted had recently changed their image after initially getting famous for glorifying violence and crime.
The first major clue arrives when someone sends Faith a video of another rapper, known as Slo Blizy, in which he is seen openly flaunting a blood-stained broken bottle and claiming it to be the same weapon that had been used to kill H. Beltline. As Slo Blizy has an electronic mask covering his face at all times, his identity remains a mystery, but a lead is found when it is revealed that the rapper has just signed a new contract with Off the Rope Records after his shocking video went viral. Will and Faith decides to check on this record label, for this is where they can find out more about the supposed offender.
As it turns out, Jeremy has also recently started working with the studio, where he has come up with a new composition for a song, but nobody can give the detectives information about Slo Blizy except for the owner. In a shocking twist, Will discovers that the owner of the Off the Rope Records company is none other than his old friend-turned-suspect, Rafael Wexford, who has been making regular appearances throughout Will Trent season 3. Rafael, however, is extremely unhappy to see his old friend at the office, for he feels that the GBI detectives are unfairly meddling in all his businesses. Therefore, he refuses to tell them anything, even when Will joins him for a round of boxing, and promises to dig out all his secrets.
A few hours later, a rap battle breaks out on the internet when New Milli calls out Slo Blizy
for murdering his friend, and although the latter had seemingly committed the crime only to get attention and notice, he suddenly went off the grid and disappeared from the internet. This seems highly suspicious to the detectives, and as Faith recognizes the building from where the rapper recorded his last video, she and Will rush to the place to find out more. Instead of getting answers to their questions, though, they are left even more confused when Slo Blizy is found dead, with his throat slit in a similar fashion to H. Beltline, making it look like an act of retaliation.
Who had killed H. Beltline, and why?
As the investigation progresses, Will and Faith interrogate another rapper, called Peanut, to learn that many of the artists and rappers working with Off the Rope Records are actually drug dealers as well. Peanut mentions that H. Beltline and New Milli also used to sell drugs through an established dealer named Frankie Sanchez, but they had stopped doing so a few months earlier when they turned their lives and the public image of their group around to make more meaningful rap songs.
It takes the GBI some time to track down Frankie Sanchez, but doing so brings them very close to solving the case, as a hoard of arms and ammunition is found at his house, along with 500 pounds of meth, which can be used to threaten him and make him open up about the murder.
Sanchez revealed that, although the rappers from ATL’s Most Wanted had stopped working with him, New Milli had borrowed a significant amount of money from him a few weeks earlier, which he was yet to pay back. This gives the detectives enough information to pressure New Milli to start talking, and the rapper does quickly give in and confess to the murder. It was actually New Milli himself who had murdered his friend and co-rapper, H. Beltline, because the two had been having dissents recently. While H. Beltline had wanted to change their image and turn their lives around, New Milli still felt that rapping about violence and crime and writing lyrics disrespecting women would bring them more money and notoriety. Along with the genre of music, New Milli also wanted to remain associated with Frankie Sanchez and deal drugs through him, since it was also bringing them easy money.
Therefore, New Milli asked H. Beltline to have ATL’s Most Wanted go back to their roots, but when the latter repeatedly refused, his friend made a plan to kill him and remove him from the scene. He paid a group of men to start an altercation when the duo would be passing through the alley on their way up to the stage and used this distraction to grab hold of a glass bottle that broke on the spot, and he used this to stab H. Beltline fatally. New Milli then also stabbed himself with the same weapon to make it seem like he had been attacked as well, and this initially fooled the detectives as well. But New Milli could not afford to stop with just this one crime, because one of the event staff at the festival found the murder weapon and quickly removed it from the spot.
This event staff happened to be the rapper, Slo Blizy, who then lied about having committed the murder and showing the murder weapon to the world just to gain notoriety. The decision did make Slo Blizy earn the new deal with Off the Rope Records, but then it also caught New Milli’s attention, who feared that the man would easily tell everything to the police and eventually lead the police to him. Therefore, New Milli went ahead and murdered Slo Blizy as well, to hide his first crime and to ensure that he would be able to earn as much money as before, both through his music and also illicit, by dealing drugs.
How does Angie solve the swinger party murder mystery?
While the GBI detectives are busy solving the murder of H. Beltline, Angie and Michael are tasked with investigating a death at another unusual site after a woman named Lilith died while spending time at a swinger party. As they interrogate the manager of the parties, Keir, and then Lilith’s boyfriend, Albert, it becomes clear that the woman had a strong fondness for asphyxiation, and she enjoys regularly being choked in bed.
As the detectives learn some more about the unusual practices of swinging couples, it becomes clear to them that Albert had been waiting downstairs at the party while his girlfriend was getting intimate with a different man in one of the private rooms, as is quite common in swinger parties. It was later that Lilith was found dead in the room, which got the police involved in the matter.
Therefore, it is important for the detectives to find the man who had last spent time with Lilith, and while going through the guests’ list, they realized that one of the men had used a fake name to get in. They track down this man, thinking that he could be the offender, only to realize that he had hidden his original name because of his high-profile job, which could have been at risk if his sexual fantasies were exposed.
