US Television: Breakout Kings, Episode 1.8, "Steaks"

Breakout Kings
Season One, Episode Eight, Steaks
Original Air Date:  April 24, 2011

The team is called in when two men escape prison in the coffin of a large inmate they killed.  As they have taken a guard hostage, they must be found before they can do anything to him.  When they find the guard dead and learn that the escapees have an agenda, the team must work fast.  Ray gives the cons an incentive:  whoever does the best work on the case can claim a free steak dinner being offered by a new restaurant.

At Cayuga Correction Facility in Auburn, New York it is breakfast time.  The prisoners are shuffling through the line to get their scrambled eggs and one of the inmate serving the eggs, Carl McCann (Matthew John Armstrong), removes a bag of white powder from his shirt sleeve and pours in on a portion of the eggs and covers it with a spoon of more egg.  When a heavyset inmate (Michel C. Foucault) arrives in front of him he gives him a single spoonful of egg.  The inmate tells McCann to keep them coming and McCann gives him another large spoonful.  The heavyset man sits down with his breakfast and begins to eat as McCann watches on from the food line.  He soon begins feeling the effects of the powder.  He grabs his chest then his head falls back in death.  The prison doctor calls the time of death as 10:17 and tells an inmate orderly in the infirmary, Oliver Day (Jonathan Keltz) to call Potter's Field to tell them they need special accommodation for a large corpse.  A white truck carrying the large pine box and four inmates to assist with burial enters Potter's Field followed by a car.  Back at the prison, the doctor is examining the knee of another prisoner.  He asks his nurse to get the man a cold compress but she cannot open the door to get it.  At Potter's Field, the men get out of the truck to begin the burial while the guard watching them, Officer Dirk Ferris (Jesse Bond) taunts them the entire time.  When the nurse cannot open a door she calls the doctor over for assistance.  The doctor struggles with the door and once he finally manages to get it open, the body of the heavyset prisoner falls out onto him.  At Potter's Field, when the box hits the ground, the lid bursts off and McCann and Oliver Day jump out of the box.  They overtake Ferris and take his rifle.  They take the keys to the car and put Ferris in it then drive out of the cemetery.

At the office in Brooklyn, New York, Julianne gives the team the folder of information on McCann and Day.  Ray tells them after the escape, the prison took another look at the dead inmate and found he had been given a poison found in household cleaner.  McCann was in for felony robbery.  He would pose as a traveling salesman and gain entry into homes then rob the residents at gunpoint.  Day was a relative lightweight.  He stole a car on an alleged dare.  The elderly man he yanked out of the car had a heart attack and died.  He was in prison for 25 years on a felony murder charge.  Julie gives them the family details of both escapees.  McCann grew up in Tallahassee and was orphaned at 13 when his parents died in a car accident.  He went into foster care and has no family left.  Oliver Day's parents retired to Scottsdale, Arizona and Marshalls in the Arizona field office are paying them a visit to see if they know anything.  He has a sister, Janice, who works at a design firm in New York.  Charlie tells Ray and Shea to go speak with the sister then looks to Shea and asks if he's boring him.  Shea is looking over a flier for a new restaurant and comments that there is a coupon for a free steak dinner attached to the flier, something that interests the cons.  Shea says he will fight for it.  Charlie takes the flier telling him he'll get nothing and like it.  He tells the team about Dirk Ferris being held hostage by McCann and Day and there isn't any time to waste.  Ray asks Charlie if he's ever read Zig Ziglar, motivation is like bathing, you gotta do it every day.  Charlie hands Ray the flier and Ray tells the cons whichever one of them does the best on the caper gets the steak dinner instantly motivating every one of them to dive into the case.

Ray and Shea go into Manhattan, New York to speak with Day's sister, Janice.  Ray introduces them and she tells them to make an appointment.  He asks her if she's aware her brother broke out of prison and she tells him she is and tells them they can set up a time with her assistant, Jeffery and she might be free early next week.  Ray asks what her problem is and she proceeds to tell him that she spoke to the prosecutors about her brother stealing a car at 18 didn't warrant 25 years and no one listened to her.  She told the warden Oliver was having a hard time in prison and he didn't do anything about it.  She has no love for anyone in law enforcement, including "you two idiots".  She again tells them to make an appointment or she will call security and picks up her phone.  Ray grabs the receiver and puts it down telling her he will cuff her for obstructing justice and march her out in front of all her colleagues.  He tells her about the guard Oliver and McCann took hostage and she must work through her hurt feelings to help them.  She doesn't know where Oliver is as he hasn't contacted her and tells them she hopes they never catch him.  Shea asks about the hard time Oliver was having in prison.  She tells him Oliver told her bigger prisoners were taking his stuff.  Shea asks if this was the personal area of the body no one wants anyone messing around with.  He mentions seeing Day's intake photo and how he looked at 18.  He tells her he's seen what happens in prison and it isn't cool but if he does something to the guard before they can find him he'll have an even tougher time when he does go back in because the guards will know he messed with one of their own.  She insists Oliver would never hurt another person, despite what has been done to him.  Ray asks her if Oliver ever told her he was sexually assaulted.  She could see the shame in his eyes and he wasn't the same person anymore.

A guard brings McCann's possessions to the office for the team to look through.  Lloyd takes the boxes but Erica grabs one from him.  Lloyd tells her when they need someone to run really, really fast he will defer to her.  When they need someone to discern psychological traits through personal possessions, he's got it.  She tells him these things are hard to come by and she likes hers rare.  Charlie hangs up the phone and tells them Ray said Day was being assaulted in prison.  He asks the guard if he was aware of that.  The guard says Day came in young and tender and he didn't like his odds but what could they do about it.  Lloyd theorizes that Day is probably suffering from some sort of complex post traumatic stress disorder so he's a wild card.  Charlie asks the guard if McCann had a rep as a predator or a punk.  The guard doesn't know as he was only in the prison for eight months and kept to himself.  They weren't cell mates and were only on the same pier for McCann's first two months then McCann was transferred to a different cell block and would have had zero chance of crossing paths with one another.  Julie receives an ATM hit on Dirk Ferris' bank card.  It was used five minutes ago at a convenience store in Binghamton.  Charlie orders her to have the store pull the security video and notify the local police department and have Ray and Shea meet them there.  As he and Erica are leaving, the guard asks Charlie to bring Dirk home as he's a friend of his.

McCann returns to where he and Oliver are hiding out with the guard to find Oliver standing over the man holding the rifle and blood splattered on his shirt.  He shot the guard and told McCann the man deserved it.  McCann, angry, tells Oliver he won't let him blow things for them.  He was only able to get $80 out of Ferris' account and the security guard around the corner gave him a strange look.  They need to be smart unless they want to go back to prison.  When he tries to grab Oliver's face in his hands, Oliver recoils then allows McCann to touch him.  He says he doesn't want to go back.  McCann tells Oliver he owes him because he had the plan for getting them out and there's $100,000 out there waiting for them and he'll never get it without him.  Flying under the radar and not getting caught is something he brings to the table.  He'll get the stash like he promised but Oliver needs to get it together.  They leave the guards body behind.

The team arrives at the scene and Charlie notes that either they find McCann and Day or they will find more bodies.  Ray adds the information that a security guard from across the street thought he heard a shot.  He walked over, saw the preachers car pull up and then leave.  He has nothing further.  Erica notes they tortured Ferris as there are three shell casings when one would have done the job.  Shea cites two sets of footprints that McCann and Day are still together which Lloyd sees as some kind of relationship.  He theorizes it is probably something imbalanced such as McCann being the 'daddy' and Day following his orders.  He feels Day is the one who killed the guard because he's capable of anything after what he went through in prison.  Erica questions why Day is still running with McCann if he is the one abusing him.  Lloyd explains that victims of abuse sometimes become dependent upon their captors and are reduced to an infantile state.  Ray suggests that they thought they could help each other escape and orders them to stop with the theories and find the escapees.  On Ferris' wrist Charlie finds a "D" burned into the skin; a "D" for "Day".  Ray asks why he would leave his initial and Shea explains that is how you mark your "property" in prison; a tattoo or a brand.

In their hotel room, McCann gives Day pointers on how to be successful selling door to door while he's putting on his suit.  First, you have to look good to make a good impression.  Day wants to know why they can't just rob a liquor store.  McCann tells him home invasion is a one-stop-shop.  They can food, money and a car and clothes.  Plus, Day can get on a computer so he can track down the Terry Miller they are looking for.  The second thing he must know is he must be confident in his product.  They are selling vacuums.  When Day says no one wants to buy it McCann insists all they need is for someone to open the door.  He asks Oliver what he's going to do with his half of the money.  Oliver tells him he's going to Alaska and get a fishing boat.  McCann tells him when he was a kid he played baseball on a traveling team.  He has a postcard from Tallahassee that he carries with him as a reminder.  His dad used to take him to tournaments.  The first thing he's going to do is catch a ball game in Florida.  Oliver asks about the third thing he must know as a salesman.  McCann picks up the rifle, cocks it and tells him this is the third thing.

At the office, Lloyd, Shea and Julie are continuing to go through McCann's belongings.  Julie found one odd thing.  A novel titled "Columbus" by Derrick Haas.  Both men checked the book out of the prison library multiple times.  Lloyd takes the book and looks through it and finds that they were using it as a code.  There are dots under certain letters.  Charlie asks how long it will take to crack the code and Lloyd says it will depend upon how sophisticated the code is.  Julie tells them the preachers car was found behind a hotel in Poughkeepsie, New York.  Since Ray and Erica are close by he wants them to respond and he and Shea will meet them there.  Lloyd is to remain behind and crack the code.

In Poughkeepsie, they find the preachers car still there as Day and McCann left on foot.  Ray and Erica look through the trash and find the tie and a cologne insert from a magazine leading them to believe the men wanted to look presentable for someone.  Ray remembers what McCann was in for and looks through the notebook of one of the responding police officers.  He finds the information that the maids closet was broken into and a vacuum was stolen and asks the policeman where the closest subdivision is.

McCann rings the doorbell of a house and goes into his sales pitch when the resident answers.  The man isn't interested by he continues the pitch anyway.  The man insists he isn't interested by McCann continues.  Finally, the man opens the door to tell McCann to leave and, when he does, McCann kicks the door in and Day comes in from around the corner with the rifle.

At the office, Lloyd is working hard on the code.  He has the chalkboard covered with letters with dogs under them and photocopies of pages from the book taped to one side of the board.  Cracking the code is harder than he anticipated as he feels either McCann or Day is really intelligent.  Julie supplies it was Day as he was in all AP classes with a 4.2 GPA and an academic scholarship to half a dozen colleges.  She continues of how sad it is to see photos of both men after a few years in prison.  Lloyd tells her that is because prison is awful which is why he wants the steak dinner.  It's why even though Ray and Charlie crap all over him, working on the team isn't that bad of a situation for him because every time he tastes real coffee, smells perfume or looks out the window and sees the water it is like a little tiny taste of freedom.  She comments she should deprive herself of things sometimes so she will appreciate them more as an experiment.  Lloyd remarks that he has 25 years.  It isn't an experiment, it's his life.  She apologizes telling him she forgets sometimes where he goes when he isn't there.

The team combs the subdivision but turn up empty handed.  Finally, Erica joins Shea and Charlie to tell them a woman across the street said a man came to her house wearing a suit and holding a vacuum.  She pretended to not be home and the man went up the cul-de-sac.  Using process of elimination, they find the house where McCann and Day struck.  Charlie knocks then notices shoe prints on the front door.  He draws his gun and kicks in the door and goes inside.  He sees the vacuum McCann was carrying and can hear a radio.  He goes upstairs into the kitchen and finds the man who lived there has been killed.

Julie puts an alarm out on the man's car as the team goes over the house.  Shea finds a case near the old man's bed.  Inside, there were places for two handguns and six clips. When Charlie and Ray both give him a strange look, he puts the case down and opens his jacket to show them he didn't take the guns or clips.  Erica adds that McCann and Day didn't find any substantial money but that one of them did to a computer search but cleared the history.  Charlie has her call Julie to call in Electronic Surveillance to ping the computer remotely and clone everything inside it.  Charlie finds a photo of the old man who lived in the house and comments he served in the Marines in Okinawa, something that further motivates him to catch McCann and Day.

McCann is driving the old man's car and is annoyed that it is almost out of gas.  Day simply suggests they fill the car up but McCann notes the idea is to keep moving and especially not to beat old men to death because they talk back.  Day, who is in the back seat, traces over an "S" that is burned into his arm.  McCann pulls the car over and proceeds to chastise Day about his behavior.  He refuses to let Day's mess spill over onto him as he has plans.  He doesn't want to go back to where he has to walk around with his fists clenched and sleep with one eye open but he can't get anywhere without the money so Day better get it together and deliver what he promised.  McCann starts the car moving again but within seconds it runs out of gas completely.  Their only option is to walk to the next town about a mile away.

Lloyd is painfully close to cracking the code and mumbles to himself while Julianne is having her own problems with someone she's talking to on the phone.  He finally cracks the code and screams "GOAL!".  When she comments that's for a touchdown he screams "TOUCHDOWN!" and announces he cracked the code.  He shows it to her and starts to explain but she wants him to cut to the chase and explain it in laymens terms.  First, he congratulates her on her assertiveness and then tells her Day and McCann are making a reference to a house.  He doesn't know which house but he will find out now that he's cracked the code.  A hit comes in on the old man's car and calls Charlie with the location.

The team head to the small town of Webster Grove, New York and Charlie splits the team up ordering everyone to take a store and ask for information.  Charlie goes into a drug store and identifies himself to the pharmacist who is oddly uncomfortable but denies seeing the men and tells Charlie he walked to work that day when Charlie suggests he check to see if his car is still parked outside.  He tells Charlie they are closing and asks him to exit the store the way he came in.  Charlie looks around and then glances into the security mirror and sees the men crouching in an aisle.  Charlie tells the pharmacist he will leave him his number so he can call if he sees anything and writes the words "Stay Calm" on a notepad.  Charlie pretends to leave the store, making sure to silence the bell over the door when he opens it and steps outside.  When Ray leaves a business next door, Charlie nods toward the pharmacy.  Ray motions Shea and Erica over telling them to cover the back.  Shea asks with what but Erica immediately volunteers.  Ray hands her the keys.  When Charlie comes back in, the bell sounds leading McCann and Day to think he left.  They order the pharmacist to open the register.  Charlie slowly moves in on the men as they hurry the pharmacist to empty the register for them and Erica moves the car into place at the back of the store.  As Charlie up an aisle, he passes a motion-sensing Christmas decoration which starts to play a song.  McCann and Day start shooting.  Charlie returns fire and Ray moves in to return fire as well.  During the shootout, Charlie's heart starts to give him problems.  He calls out "my heart" and falls to the floor.  Ray can see Charlie struggling in the security mirror and calls to him.  Day gets a shot off that hits Charlie in the leg.  Ray stands to fire upon the men and Charlie struggles to his feet as Day and McCann run out the back of the store taking the pharmacist as a hostage.  Erica has the door blocked but McCann orders her to move the car or he will kill the hostage.  She has no choice but to comply.  They leave the store and McCann orders Day into the car with the pharmacist then turns to Erica ordering her to remove the keys from her vehicle and throw them to him.  He picks them up and gets into the car with Day as Ray moves through the back of the pharmacy with Charlie close behind him.  McCann speeds away as Ray and Charlie come out of the store and Erica tells them they took the keys.

Lloyd continues working on the code and knows the men are after the money as it is in the code but he still doesn't know where the house is.  Julie tells him the Marshall's 'geek squad' found a search on the old man's computer for a Terry Miller.  She does her own search and finds there are 4,500 Terry Miller's in the United States.

At the scene, Charlie describes the pharmacists car to the police.  When the officer leaves, Ray tells Charlie to relax, something which Charlie thinks he cannot do.  He tells Ray the bullet just grazed him and his heart episodes are rare and he should mind his business.  Ray comes back that they were in a fire fight and his partner was useless; it is his business.  Charlie shushes him so no one can overhear and tells him to do his job or find himself another one.  Ray hands Charlie a cane and tells him the EMT said to use the cane and go home but he assumes Charlie will follow only half that advice.  The police officer returns to tell them the pharmacist and his car were found dumped behind a big box store.  The pharmacist was tied up but he's fine.  Ray knows they've switched cars but Charlie points out it will take hours to figure out which car out of all those in the parking lot could have been taken.  Julie calls Ray to tell him about the Terry Miller search and that she found a recent home sale to a Terry Paul Miller fifteen miles from where they are now.  Miller did time for drug possession.  She tells them Lloyd cracked the code and has found constant reference to a house and Miller's house could be the house they are speaking of.  McCann and Day drive up in front of a house and McCann asks Day if he's ready.  Day smiles and says "yeah".

Charlie, Ray, Shea and Erica arrive at Terry Miller's house and can hear a big dog inside barking.  Charlie knocks on the door and the dog continues to bark, something that unnerves Ray as "big ones bite".  Charlie knocks again identifying them as U.S. Marshall's.  Miller asks what they want and Charlie tells him to open the door and Ray adds to put the dog away.  Miller asks what they want and Ray suggests his stalling could mean he's looking for a weapon.  They hear the sound of a door closing and Charlie turns to Shea and Erica telling them someone split out the back.  They split up and head to the back of the house while Ray kicks in the front door and he and Charlie go inside, guns drawn.  They find Terry Miller standing in the living room with his hand in a jar.  Charlie orders him to remove his hand but he doesn't.  Again, he orders him to remove his hand, the dog barking all the while.  Charlie again orders Miller to remove his hand from the jar.  Outside, Erica is chasing the man who left Miller's house.  Shea comes over the top and jumps down onto the man, taking him to the sidewalk.  Ray tells Miller if he doesn't release whatever weapon he has in the jar he will shoot the dog on a count of three.  He starts to count and reaches two when his phone rings.  He answers it and Julie tells him she made a mistake.  She gave them the wrong Terry Miller.  The dog lays down and she tells them Lloyd finished the code and the house stands for Kellen Stackhouse (Andrew Jackson), Day's former prison in cellmate.  Stackhouse had a rep as a sexual predator.  The Terry Miller they want was Stackhouse's prison pen pal, who he is now engaged to.  The two live 20 miles south of where they are now.  She apologizes and Ray hangs up.  He tells Miller, who still has his hand in the jar, the incident was a big mistake.  Charlie asks him why he didn't remove his hand from the jar as he could have been killed.  Miller pulls a bag of weed out of the jar and shows it to them telling them he was scared.  Charlie holsters his gun and apologizes to Miller on behalf of the U.S. Marshall's and tells him he won't have any problems.  Shea and Erica come in the back and Shea throws the man he apprehended down onto the floor as Charlie and Ray exchange a look.

Kellen Stackhouse returns home to find the backdoor of the house has been broken into.  As he's looking at it, Day comes out of an adjoining room and hits him, knocking him to the floor.  Stackhouse is tied to a chair and Day tells him to imagine how hurt he was to hear in the yard that he was getting married and his invitation must have gotten lost in the mail while he heats a "D" branding iron over the stove.  When the iron is hot enough, he goes to Stackhouse who tries to talk Day out of hurting him.  As Day is getting ready to brand Stackhouse, McCann comes into the room saying he can't find the money anywhere.  He tells McCann to keep looking but the latter insists there isn't anywhere else to look as he's emptied everything.  Stackhouse asks what he wants and says he can help find it.  McCann asks where the money his rich girlfriend has is.  He tells them they keep around a grand under the television in the bedroom and says they can take it.  McCann tells him they want money not just a grand and they know his prison pen pal has a stash that he told Day about and demands to know where the $100,000 is.  Stackhouse him his girlfriend is a lab technician and she inherited the house they are living in and they have no money there.  McCann raises his gun on Day when he realizes that Day lied to him and that everything was about getting revenge on Stackhouse.  Day tells McCann he had a plan, too and he is going to stick with it.  McCann lowers his gun and leaves the room.  Day holds the branding iron to Stackhouses stomach.

The team drive up outside the house and Charlie orders Ray to take the back and Erica and Shea to watch the sides in case someone tries to escape.  Stackhouse is screaming in pain as Day removes the iron and picks up his gun.  He warns Stackhouse not to pass out as they are just getting started.  McCann comes back into the room with the $1,000 from under the television and tells Day he's taking the car and leaving.  He goes outside and Charlie jumps him causing the money and the Tallahassee post card to fly from his hands.  Charlie asks where Day is and if there are hostages in the house.  Day comes outside holding a gun to Stackhouse's who is in front of him.  Charlie orders Shea to put McCann in the car and for Erica to go with them and asks Ray if he has a bead, which he does.  Day tells them if they shoot, he does and Charlie assures him no one is shooting anyone.  Charlie tries talking Day out of shooting Stackhouse but Day tells them about Stackhouse trading him for smokes or food every single day for 5 1/2 years.  He shouldn't be able to live after turning him into an animal.  Charlie tells him no one can make him something he isn't but if the pulls the trigger it is on him.  A car drives up and Stackhouse's girlfriend gets out to run to him.  Charlie yells to Erica and Shea to get her out of there and the two hold her back.  Day addresses Terry and tells her about Stackhouse preying upon him in prison and torturing him mentally and sexually, something she apparently didn't know.  Ray moves in and is able to take the gun away from Day and Stackhouse can walk away while Ray cuffs Day.

Day is put into the back of a police cruiser with McCann as Charlie steps up and asks McCann if the Tallahassee post card belongs to him.  He tells him 'no, that never belonged to me'.  Stackhouse tries to tell Terry the things Day said weren't true but she only looks away from him.

The team returns to the office and Lloyd comments they are back in time for 'din din' leading Ray to ask why he's so sure he's getting it.  He says he cracked the code that cracked the case so they will now be cracking lobster tails while he enjoys his surf and turf.  Ray holds up the coupon and says Charlie should get it as he did his job even with a bum leg but he did promise it to a con.  He gives the coupon to Erica because it was her that got behind the wheel in two seconds when he asked for backup at the pharmacy.  She tears the coupon up in front of Lloyd and Shea as she is a vegetarian "who likes to win".  Ray goes into Charlie's office to tell him he can take the cons back to Maybelle so he can go home and rest.  Charlie throws his cane against the wall.  He points out Day wanted to be 18 again before anything ever happened to him.  The cons would like to have a meal at a restaurant like they used to.  Even though he won't admit it, Ray wishes he had his family back.  He stands and pins the Tallahassee post card to the cork board behind his desk and continues that he wishes his heart worked like it did back when he was a kid.  McCann just wanted to go back to when his parents were alive and life was good.  The truth is, there is no going back.

Breakout Kings airs every Sunday night at 10:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on the Arts & Entertainment Network.
For more information:
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