Chapter 85: A Killer’s Hope and a Tragic Rescue
Spoiler Warning: This page contains detailed plot points from Chapter 85 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations.
Summary
After surviving a car explosion, the narrator crouches against a tree and reflects on Will Brogan’s desperate hope. He has been cleaning up his trail since killing Daisy Hansen: burning her car and body, luring Troy to the scene, and deleting evidence. Now he sees an opportunity to pin Jarrod Maloof’s murder on the narrator and stage her death as self-defense. A wounded Brogan opens fire from the trees, then demands she stand so the story holds. She refuses, knowing a shot in the back won’t fit his narrative.
Baby emerges from the trees holding a police Glock, aiming at Brogan but frozen. The narrator realizes her sister’s emotional fullness makes pulling the trigger impossible. A dry branch snaps, Brogan turns, and Baby still cannot fire. An unseen shooter hits Brogan from the side, and his wild return fire strikes a second person. A second explosion knocks the sisters together.
The narrator knows Baby would not have come alone. Rushing to a clearing, she finds Dave Summerly lying behind a log with two bullet holes in his chest. Baby shakes him and strokes his hair, but the narrator recognizes that Dave is already gone. Love outpaced a killer’s hope, but at an unbearable price.
Key Events
- The narrator deduces Brogan plans to murder her and frame it as self-defense, further tidying his escape.
- Brogan shoots at her from cover, then steps out and orders her to stand; she refuses.
- Baby appears with a gun and sights Brogan but cannot shoot despite having the perfect chance.
- Brogan turns at the sound of the branch, and a second shooter intervenes, hitting him.
- Brogan’s dying shots strike Dave Summerly, who had accompanied Baby into the woods.
- The car’s second explosion sends the sisters tumbling together.
- The narrator finds Dave dead; Baby grieves, but the narrator’s grief is already settling into grim certainty.
Character Development
- The Narrator: Her love for Baby becomes her paramount fuel. Wounded and disoriented, she still refuses to give Brogan the self-defense setup. Her immediate, silent deduction that Baby brought Dave shows her deep understanding of her sister, even as the truth devastates her.
- Baby: Her inability to kill is framed not as cowardice but as the cost of being “full to the brim with feeling.” This emotional transparency nearly costs her life, yet it is also the quality her sister most cherishes. Her later frantic grief over Dave confirms the depth of her attachment.
- Will Brogan: A desperate man whose “struggling, flickering, fading hope” drives the chapter’s violence. Even with a broken shoulder and chipped teeth, he clings to the fiction that he can walk away. His death completes his arc but also shows how a calculating mind unravels under pressure.
- Dave Summerly: Though present only in his final moments, his choice to follow Baby into danger and his fatal wounds reframe him as a protector. His quiet death contrasts with Brogan’s noisy scheming, cementing the chapter’s emotional weight.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Killer’s Hope as a Catalyst: The chapter explicitly names hope as “unspeakably dangerous,” treating it not as a virtue but as a motivator for escalating violence.
- The Unreliability of Self-Defense Narratives: Brogan’s plan hinges on a staged scene; the narrator’s refusal to stand up is a deliberate act of narrative sabotage.
- Emotional Fullness vs. the Act of Killing: Baby’s paralysis illustrates what the narrator calls “the mental absence that you need to take someone’s life,” positioning empathy as both a strength and a vulnerability.
- Sacrifice and Cost: Dave’s death is the price of the rescue, making clear that the sisters’ survival is not clean or triumphant but marred by loss.
- Fire and Forest Explosions: The burning car, smoke, and second detonation create a hellish atmosphere that mirrors the internal chaos of the characters.
Why This Chapter Matters
This is the climactic collapse of Will Brogan’s plan. Every scrap of his hope is burned away in the forest, and his death closes the primary villain arc. At the same time, the chapter delivers the series’ most emotionally jagged moment: the sudden, irreversible loss of Dave Summerly. The narrator’s instant recognition that Baby brought him—and that she herself unwittingly set the stage—reveals the tangled loyalties and unintended consequences that have defined the entire investigation. It shifts the story from a puzzle about justice to a raw examination of what survival truly costs.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does the narrator describe Brogan’s hope as “unspeakably dangerous”?
Because a killer who still believes he can escape will take any risk. Brogan intended to kill her, pass it off as self-defense, and then eliminate Baby too, all in a desperate bid to keep his misdeeds hidden.
2. What does Baby’s freeze when aiming at Brogan reveal about her?
It shows that she is so emotionally present that she cannot summon the detachment required to kill. The narrator sees this as her essence—feeling everything fully—but in that moment it also becomes a lethal liability.
3. How does Dave Summerly’s death change the emotional landscape of the chapter?
It transforms a victory into a tragedy. The sisters are saved, but the person Baby relied on pays with his life, underlining the cost of their involvement and the narrator’s unspoken guilt for having drawn them all deeper into danger.