Another episode with William Shatner, and this time his character is quit despicable and totally unlikable. He plays it well, mind you, and it is another good episode, but not one of my favourites because this Fielding Chase is not simply arrogant, but immoral, deceitful, a man who won’t stop at anything to get what he wants, who lies to everybody, I did not like him at all.
The motive for the murder is also quite grey, because this Chase is totally jealous and possessive of Victoria, a 25-year-oold girl that he calls his daughter but he adopted her when she was ten. He loved her mother first, but never married her, he lost her to someone else and always regretted it, and promised to raise the child as his own. Now, he’s raised a child for 15 years, it is indeed normal and right that he calls her his daughter, but what is not so normal and not so right is that he can’t bear to leave her live her life as she wants. He wants her always by his side, doing what he wants, forever living in his house…
Gerry Winters is a investigative journalist, working for Chase and his radio show. Gerry does not like Chase, who takes his work never acknowledging his name. Gerry is a friend of Victoria, though, and wants to see her free of her domineering father.
When Gerry makes a clear insinuation that Chase’s interest in Victoria does not resemble that of a father, Chase slaps him in the face, right in front of a lot of people, even threatening his life. They never liked each other, but now things are at a point of no return because Gerry wants to take Victoria away from him, wants her to find her own way. Victoria wrote a book, a novel, and Gerry had his friend Lou read it, who liked it very much. When Victoria tells her father about this, he calls the publisher Lou works for telling him to refuse her book. Gerry is so angry, and convinces Victoria to go to New York with him.
At this point, his fate is clear, Chase will kill him to stop him from taking Victoria away. The method is quite ingenious, in a simple way. He fakes regret and calls Gerry asking for a meeting. Chase tells him to call the next day to fix a meeting, at precisely 4pm. The next day, then, Chase drives to his house and enters from the back with a key that he took from his daughter. When Gerry makes the call, Chase waits until the answering machine starts, which is after he hears Gerry start talking and telling him to answer. Chase then pick up the phone in the other room, Gerry’s other phone, and talks to him (which is one of those movie things, really… like how people can always open and close doors without anyone hearing anything, now he speaks with a normal tone of voice, not whispering at all because he’s supposed to be at home, and Gerry doesn’t hear him just a few meters behind him, he only hears him on the phone…)
The exchange only a couple of phrases and then Chase shoots him three times, he wanted to be sure I guess, and then he pretends to hear the shots on the phone and be very alarmed… all this because he will have recorded proof of what happened, his alibi that he was elsewhere when the murder happened. Then he cleans the phone, leaves the handkerchief on his way out and drives away, and four minutes after the shooting he calls the police. Since he can’t call from his house, obviously, he calls from his car, and he tells Colombo that he rushed out in his alarmed state and then he thought of the police and called from the car.
Now, I must say that to make it clear that Gerry was not after Victoria in any way, that he was only a friend to her, they made the character gay, and also still in mourning after his partner died. So even if he started seeing someone, he was nothing serious (why then they said that this actor Ted had the keys to his house? You give your keys to someone you’ve been seeing for nine days, really? I think it’s pretty absurd…)
Colombo investigates, of course, very surprised that not only there is a witness, but also a recording of the murder. He learns from Victoria that she should have been at home, but her father insisted that she checked something at work, and also that she thought she had lost the key to Gerry’s house, but it was there the next day so she thought she just imagined it, being in shock as she was.
Colombo also learns that Chase has cable tv at home, because otherwise he can’t see anything because of the mountains, or something. Anyway, this will lead him to check for phone reception. He gets a cell phone (just for a trial run, he says, he didn’t buy it) and he tried every direction, but there’s no way he could have made the call at that moment, because there is no way he could get a signal. That’s how and when he arrests him.
At least Victoria is not there to witness his arrest, she had just left him to go to New York with Lou, who resigned from his post and is still very interested in her book and in working with her. At first she didn’t want to go, but after Chase played a dirty trick during his live conversation with a senator, she can’t stay any longer. Good girl, she believed him long enough, now there was no saving it. They had that conversation already, she told him she didn’t accept to divulge false stories or ruin an innocent’s name, and he still did it.
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