How It All Goes Down
Rachel
- Rachel has the nagging suspicion that the police won't find anything to convict Dr. Abdic; there has been no news since he was arrested.
- Plus he's kind of hot. A hot guy can't be a killer, can he?
- Rachel remembers that "Ted Bundy looked like Cary Grant" (15.5). Judge for yourself.
- Sure enough, that evening the suspect has been released without charge.
- The news causes Rachel to start drinking again.
- After keeping her hangover at bay with some coffee the next morning, Rachel checks her phone; she has a missed call from Scott.
- She calls him back but he does not give her a gracious hello: "You should have told me […] what you are" (15.30), he sneers into the phone.
- Scott says Dr. Abdic denied having an affair with Rachel, and Detective Riley told him that Rachel is a mentally unstable alcoholic. (Admittedly true.)
- Then Scott hangs up on her. Ouch.
- Rachel spends the next day wallowing in self-pity. She doesn't even pretend to go to work on the train.
- She's going to have to go to work for real soon, though, because her bank account is overdrawn.
- Tom calls, and finally tells Rachel what happened that Saturday night: Anna saw Rachel, and Rachel was drunk and abusive toward her, so Tom went out to find Rachel; she had fallen and cut her hand.
- Rachel denies cutting her hand, but Tom tells her there was blood on it.
- Tom says he went to get the car to bring Rachel home, but when he came back she was gone.
- Rachel asks if Tom saw Megan that night.
- He says he didn't and wonders if she did—and if she did something to Megan.
- "No, of course I didn't" (15.70), Rachel says.
- When Tom gets off the phone, Rachel imagines him going to play with his daughter; she feels miserable.
- On Monday morning, the girl is back on the train, going to her imaginary office.
- Oh wait, no—she decides to go find Scott.
- He's furious that she tracked him down, but he lets her into his house.
- She apologizes for lying about some things but tells him that most of what she said was the truth.
- They both still think Dr. Abdic did it.
- When Rachel gets home, Cathy is waiting for her.
- Cathy's learned that Rachel has been faking going to work for months. And guess what? She's furious.
- Rachel tries to explain to her, as if it's totally normal to pretend going to a job you got fired from.
- Since the jig is up, Rachel spends the next day drinking and watching the news.
- Good thing, too, because there's breaking news: A body has been found, and it's probably Megan's.
- Rachel spends the rest of the night trying to piece together her memories. Now she doesn't have a disappearance to solve; she needs to solve a murder.