"The Pretender" (1996) playing "Nicky Parks"(as Seth E. Adkins)
in episode: "Silence" (episode # 2.16) 4/4/1998

IN PADUCAH, KENTUCKY , Miss Parker, Sydney and Broots arrive at Jumbo
Jim's Carnival Equipment company, and find the place overseen by an
adult dwarf. He shows them Jarod's last lair: a carnival side-show
tent set up inside the building, that's filled with all different
kinds of mirrors... including a mirror made up of fragments which,
when put together properly, form a face. The proprietor tells them
that Jarod made it so he could get "another look into his soul."
Sydney suggests the mirrored face may also represent Jarod's "attempt
to reconstruct a shattered personality."

IN EL PASO, TEXAS , in a DEA safe house, Jarod -- as Jarod Leary --
walks through the home to make sure it's secure. When he enters the
living room, he sees a woman named Carla and her young son, Nickie.
Jarod says "hi" to Nickie but before the boy can respond in any way,
the house is attacked by outside gunmen. Bullets come flying through
the windows and rip apart the living room area. Carla screams and
drops to the floor. Jarod grabs Nickie, drags him into the kitchen,
and then covers Nickie with his body until the shooting is over and
the assailant's speed away in a car. Nickie is shaken, but makes
no
sound. Jarod tries to comfort him by telling him he's all right; it's
all over....

The next morning, Nickie and his mother, Carla, are put into a DEA
transport van, protected by agents with rifles and shotguns, and
driven away to a secondary location, while other agents look over the
safe house grounds for evidence of the shooters. By his car, Jarod is
packing up his things. He opens one of his red notebooks, and inside
it we see newspaper clippings with headlines that read: "FIVE-YEAR-
OLD WITNESSES DEA MURDER" and "CHILD WITNESS REMAINS TRAUMATIZED.
SILENCE ENTERS THIRD WEEK." There is also another headline which
reads: "CORRUPT DEA AGENT KILLED IN DRUG DEAL GONE BAD" and a picture
of an agent named Antonio Cruz. It was Cruz's killing that Nickie
witnessed, and everyone believes the shooting was done by a drug
dealer named Vasquez, but without Nickie's testimony the Feds can't
arrest Vasquez on that charge. Nickie can't testify yet, however,
because he was so traumatized by the events that took place on the
day Cruz was killed that he's become hysterically mute.

Putting various toys into a box that he's going to take with him to
the new location, Jarod is met and confronted by two other DEA
agents: Andrew Stess, and Roger Bingham. They both chastise Jarod for
trying to steal their glory, and for doing their jobs for them by
protecting Nickie from the shooters the night before. Jarod tries to
explain that he was only doing his job, but Stess confronts him
with: "You wanna be a hero? Do it on somebody else's watch." Stess
and Bingham then walk away, and Jarod is met by another DEA agent,
Commander Davis. Davis is no more supportive than Stess and Bingham
were.

Looking over the toys Jarod is gathering up, Davis picks up a Slinky
and asks Jarod what all the toys are for. Jarod tells him he uses
them in child therapy, and hopes they'll get Nickie to relax and to
trust him. Davis mocks him with, "You think a damn slinky is gonna
help him talk..." Jarod explains that the therapy isn't that
simplistic, but Davis isn't interested. He tells Jarod he has two
days to get Nickie to talk, or Davis will employ his own methods to
get the traumatized boy to speak.

AT THE CENTRE , Angelo is suddenly removed from his space and put
into a holding cell by the Triumvirate, and Mr. Raines is shocked to
find himself under Tower review. He makes his way to Miss Parker and
confronts her with accusations: he believes she is the cause of this
upset and he demands to know what she's up to. Miss Parker simply
blows him off, and refuses to respond to him.

AT AN UNDISCLOSED MOTEL , the DEA's second safe house location, Jarod
is let into a sealed room where Carla and Nickie are already waiting.
It's night, Nickie is ready for bed, and is playing with some toys on
the mattress of one of the two full-size beds in the room. Jarod
brings Nickie his box of toys and starts unpacking them: a Mr. Potato
Head, a Slinky, a Magic 8-Ball, and a Wheel-O. Nickie rejects all of
them, and Jarod steps away from him to give him some space.

Carla says she doesn't understand why, if Jarod is a "shrink", he's
wearing a gun like the other DEA agents. Jarod explains to her that
he's an agent who is also a "psychological reconstructionist" . He
uses various techniques -- including play therapy -- to help people
who are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress syndrome to remember
events that cause their trauma and then deal with their fears. In
order for him to help Nickie, he explains to Carla, he needs to know
what she remembers about the day Nickie witnessed the murder.

Carla tells Jarod that she had taken Nickie and his cat, Charlie (in
a cat-carrier) to the Laundromat with her. Nickie was playing with
Charlie, and Carla was having a conversation with another woman in
the Laundromat. Carla lost track of time, ad didn't realize that
Nickie was gone until she heard the "popping" sound of gunfire out in
the alley behind the Laundromat. She looked around to find Nickie
gone, and rushed out into the alley to find him. She saw the dead
body of a man draped over some cardboard cartons and other trash in
the alley, but couldn't find Nickie or his cat anywhere. The police
were summoned, and it wasn't until hours later, when the body was
finally going to be moved, that Nickie was found. He had been hiding
in the boxes when the shooting started, and the dead man had fallen
on top of him. Nickie was so terrified that he had been unable to
move... and was now unable to speak. "Can you imagine that kind of
fear?" Carla asks Jarod.

In a flashback, Jarod remembers a time when, as a child in The
Centre, he had become so fearful and disassociated from himself that
he had been unable to speak for 36 hours, and had simply sat on the
floor amid a scattering of ripped-apart photographs with his arms
wrapped around himself, and rocked himself back and forth. Back in
the present, he relates to Nickie's fear and admits, "It must have
been terrible."

AT THE CENTRE , Mr. Raines walks across the parking lot at night to
his sedan, and finds his Sweeper, Willie, lying on the ground barely
conscious. Suddenly, a man comes screaming out of the shadows and
attacks Raines with a straight razor. The man slices through the
hoses on Raines' oxygen tank so Raines can't breathe, and then
continues to slice and dig at Raines' arms and body until Miss Parker
arrives on the scene and scares the attacker off with a gun.

AT THE MOTEL , Stess and Bingham come into the room to check on Carla
and Nickie. Bingham is busily playing the lottery, using a coin on a
scratcher to see if he's won an instant jackpot. Stess, meanwhile,
berates Jarod for "playing with [his] little toys" instead of doing
his job and getting Nickie to speak again. Both men then leave the
room. Jarod is sitting by the beds in Carla and Nickie's room,
watching Nickie continue to play with his toys. One toy, especially,
seems to keep Nickie's attention: a small doll shaped like a woman,
with its head broken off of its body. Nickie tries and tries to put
the toy back together, but can't make the pieces fit.

As a bedtime treat, Carla brings Nickie over a tray with a glass, a
spoon, a carton of milk, and a container of chocolate powder. She
pours some milk into the glass, and lets Nickie add the chocolate to
it with a spoon. Nickie stirs the chocolate into the milk, and Jarod
is intrigued. He's never had chocolate milk before, and asks Nickie
if he can try some. Nickie hands the glass over to him, as Carla
walks the milk carton back to the refrigerator in the kitchenette.
Just as she enters that part of the room, bullets start raining
through the windows.

Carla drops to the kitchenette floor, and Jarod grabs Nickie, pushes
him down between the beds in the room, and lays on top of him to
protect him from stray bullets and flying shrapnel. As quickly as it
started, the assault stops, and everything is silent again... except
for the sound of Nickie's mother lying on the kitchen floor as she
says, "Jarod... I've been shot."

An ambulance comes to take Carla to the local hospital, and Jarod
promises her he will watch over Nickie until she's able to re-join
them. Commander Davis storms through the motel room, and tells
everyone he wants to find out who's leaking their safe house
locations to the assassins; he even suggests that he'll force all of
his men to take polygraph (lie detector) tests if he has to. Jarod
goes to Nickie and tells him they have to go to another safe house.
Nickie evades him, and instead searches the room from the broken doll
he was playing with before the shooting started that night.

Jarod watches Nickie as he finds the doll and tries again to repair
it. Jarod looks around the room and then takes to Nickie a small
Tupperware container. He tells Nickie if he puts the doll inside the
container it will be safe there. Jarod then shows Nickie a photograph
of his own mother in an attempt, perhaps, to help Nickie appreciate
the fact that Jarod understands and empathizes with Nickie's distress
over Carla's injuries. Nickie drops the head and body of the broken
doll into the Tupperware container... and takes the photograph of
Jarod's mother and slips it into the container, too, so they'll all
be "safe." Jarod seals the lid on the container and gives it to
Nickie saying, "There. Nickie, after a while it won't be so bad, and
you'll feel strong enough to put ' the hurt' in a safe place."

Jarod then takes Nickie to a third safe house: a huge mansion. The
estate was built on top of a maze of underground tunnels that connect
all four corners of the property to the mansion. The tunnel system
could be accessed by various locations around the grounds, including
a large manhole-covered drainage vent in the main driveway. Through
the tunnels, one could get into the house through a "cubby hole" in
the wall under a staircase. Jarod shows Commander Davis the
cubbyhole, and Davis then assigns different men to each of the
tunnels' access points so no one can get into the house via the
tunnel system.

AT THE CENTRE , Raines, still bloodied and shaken from the attack in
the parking lot, is getting a quick patch job from Sydney, until he
demands to be seen by a "real" doctor, and has Willie take him away
in a wheelchair.

With Raines gone, Sydney tells Miss Parker and Broots that while
Raines was under the influence of the anesthesia he was using, Raines
kept repeating an odd name: Einnad . Sydney also tells them that the
attacker had been very methodical in his attack, and had carved the
numbers 1-5-5 into Raines' arm with the straight razor.