# "Without A Trace" ends with a mystery
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 12, 2006, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473 "2006-05-12T03:18:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/1 "2006-05-12T03:18:58Z")
I thought the way that tonight’s episode ended was absolutely perfect. It kept the focus of the episode where it was supposed to be.
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Who do YOU think was in the trunk?
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/2 "2006-05-12T03:27:50Z")
> [@Snooooopy](#):
>
> I thought the way that tonight’s episode ended was absolutely perfect. It kept the focus of the episode where it was supposed to be.
>
> .
> Who do YOU think was in the trunk?
The scumbag reporter.
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### Author:  [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/3 "2006-05-12T05:29:23Z")
The guy. I’m going with logic here. They could have spun it either way, but the scumbag who “bought” the girl let her go free.
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### Author:  [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/4 "2006-05-12T06:07:29Z")
> [@Ogre](#):
>
> The guy. I’m going with logic here. They could have spun it either way, but the scumbag who “bought” the girl let her go free.
I was thinking just the opposite. The Rapist was using the other guy as a cutout, not to mention they were in an out of the way place. My thought was he went and got her after knocking out the other guy. I just can’t picture preppy kid following the black kid around NY, offing him and then hiding the body in the trunk of a car and driving it to another location. That seems more like something a con would do, hence I chose the girl.
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### Author:  [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/5 "2006-05-12T06:59:46Z")
Hm. Could be, but it kinda looked to me like the rapist was settling in to take some shit out on the pimp, and I doubt the girl needed much more incentive to get the heck outta Dodge. I also think the white kid in the other case was a sociopath. He showed no emotion the whole time, he made up the kidnap-at-gunpoint story (without showing the least regret that he hadn’t called the police at that time). I believe he was probably calculating enough to be able to track the boy down, murder him, and get rid of the body.
Also, if it happened my way, it would really drive home the show’s larger racial point, but that may be neither here nor there.
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### Author:  [@Madd\_Maxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Madd_Maxx)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/6 "2006-05-12T12:29:09Z")
My wife and I watched it last night too. It seemed to me that Jack was looking at the girls mother, and it seemed that the scene focused on her face more than the boy’s mother. Plus the rapist guy was already shown to be violent having beaten up the pimp boyfriend and the first girl he had done it to mentioned that “Mr. Frank” was not very nice, which seemed to imply that he had beaten her too. Plus the fact that a man would have an easier time killing the girl than the preppy boy would have had killing the other boy since they were both similiar ages/sizes. Plus it kind of balances the whole thing out, which appeals to the audience’s “sense of fairness.”
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### Author:  [@ShelliBean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShelliBean)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/7 "2006-05-12T13:27:08Z")
I thought the fact that super-hot-dark-haired agent (that’s what I call her) was the one at the scene and she was originally working the girl’s case pointed toward the girl. Either way, I must be hormonal because it really teared me up at the end.
Also, was Congestive Heart Failure senior agent mad at Jack because she thought he was behind the weaselly interviewing, or because she could see that he was taken aback at the idea that racism would touch him (powerful white guy).
And finally, what the heck is up with lion-face girl? I missed a few episodes and all of a sudden there’s some liger in a suit telling Jack what to do.
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### Author:  [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/8 "2006-05-12T14:48:49Z")
> [@Snooooopy](#):
>
> I thought the way that tonight’s episode ended was absolutely perfect. It kept the focus of the episode where it was supposed to be.
Really? I thought it was infuriating. The enjoyment of a mystery story (for me, anyway) is trying to guess what happened and then _finding out if you’re right or not_. Having a story that sets up the mystery of whether a missing person is alive or dead and then _not telling you_ is like having a conventional murder mystery and not revealing the killer at the end. Completely unsatisfying.
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### Author:  [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2006, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/9 "2006-05-12T15:49:53Z")
To further murky the waters, after I posted last night, my wife mentioned the whole “every lie contains a grain of truth” theory. Her theory is that preppy boy tracked down the black kid and used a shotgun to force the him into a car. I countered with the crackhead girl not seeing it, and mentioned that outside a crack house is probably the best place to kill someone without the police wasting much time on it.
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### Author:  [@Batsinma\_Belfry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Batsinma_Belfry)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2006, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/10 "2006-05-13T01:27:41Z")
> [@Stuffy](#):
>
> I was thinking just the opposite. The Rapist was using the other guy as a cutout, not to mention they were in an out of the way place. My thought was he went and got her after knocking out the other guy. I just can’t picture preppy kid following the black kid around NY, offing him and then hiding the body in the trunk of a car and driving it to another location. That seems more like something a con would do, hence I chose the girl.
Yep, this is the conclusion I came to.
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### Author:  [@plankter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plankter)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2006, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/without-a-trace-ends-with-a-mystery/356473/11 "2006-05-13T14:01:51Z")
Since only Vivian was working the boy’s case, and Elena called in the DB in the trunk, I figured the girl was dead.
> [@Snooooopy](#):
>
> I thought the way that tonight’s episode ended was absolutely perfect. It kept the focus of the episode where it was supposed to be.
> [@tim314](#):
>
> Really? I thought it was infuriating. The enjoyment of a mystery story (for me, anyway) is trying to guess what happened and then _finding out if you’re right or not_. Having a story that sets up the mystery of whether a missing person is alive or dead and then _not telling you_ is like having a conventional murder mystery and not revealing the killer at the end. Completely unsatisfying.
Normally I would agree with this, **tim** , but in this case the reveal would be so unsatisfying to me either way that it was better left unstated. I’m also giving this ending a pass because it fit with the episode as opposed to feeling tacked on as a last-minute “shocker” by lazy writers. **cough,_CSI_,cough**