Zoe’s story comes back up in Chicago PD season 12, episode 14. Ruzek will stop at nothing to find her.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for Chicago PD season 12, episode 14.
There’s a lot going on for Ruzek in the latest episode. Not only does he need to deal with a case of a missing Zoe, but he needs to handle his dad, who is struggling with his dementia. However, his dad could help to crack the case.
Ruzek gets a call from the foster mom in Chicago PD season 12, episode 14
Ruzek alerts everyone to a problem when the foster mom looking after Zoe calls. She is seeing a vehicle circling the block and she’s worried. As Ruzek heads there, he gets another call. Someone is in the house, and by the time Ruzek gets there, it’s too late. The foster mom has been killed, and Zoe has been taken.
It leads to a search for Zoe and her “dad.” Is this a chance to get justice for so many lives?
Ruzek’s dad tries to help but his dementia is getting worse
My heart breaks for Ruzek and his dad. Chicago PD is showing a side of dementia that we don’t often see. A lot of shows will focus only on the family members and how they deal with dementia, but Chicago PD is trying to show us Bob’s side of things. When he’s lucid, he knows that he is fighting this disease, and he is going down swinging.
At one point, Bob shows up at the precinct. He knows where Zoe’s “dad” has gone. However, when he gets there, Bob forgets it all. Ruzek has to take him home, but it’s not all a dead end. Ruzek goes through notes Bob was making, and he figures out that a former alias was as an Army vet. That likes means a fake military ID, so he can access VA hospitals. There is one close to where Bob wanted Ruzek to go.
The search for Zoe begins in Chicago PD
When Cronin runs away from the VA hospital without treatment and steals another vehicle, Intelligence puts out another bolo. Well, we find out that the vehicle was involved in a crash. Cronin was alone, though.
As he bleeds out from his own injuries, Ruzek decides to attempt to get answers. He needs to know where Zoe is. Zoe was taken somewhere between the white pick-up and the VA hospital. She could be anywhere, injured and scared. Ruzek does go a little far in finding Zoe, but it’s not surprising. Wouldn’t you do that when it came to finding a vulnerable, innocent child?
Fortunately, the ambo is able to get to Cronin in time and get him to a hospital. With him alive, Intelligence can question him. However, Cronin plays the victim. That’s the usual way to do things, right? These guys will do everything they can to avoid facing the consequences of their actions. As much as I would love for Indiana to make him face the death penalty, Voight has no choice but to make a deal to take the death penalty off the table. It’s the only way to get the guy to talk.
Of course, the talk goes as well as you’d think. He sends Intelligence on a wild goose chase so that he can take his own life. It’s the coward’s way out, and now Zoe is in far more danger.
Voight refuses to believe that Zoe is lost to them. Cronin may be dead, but Voight will do what he can to find him. There has to be something, so Intelligence gets to work. Cronin took her into the VA hospital but didn’t bring her back to the car. So, where is she?
I love that we have this mystery. So much is focused on finding the suspect or questioning the killer. We don’t often see the hunt for a missing child, but that’s what we get in this episode. We see the police work that goes into finding a missing child, with the way various people have to bounce ideas off each other. Ruzek and Burgess continue to work together well, bouncing ideas and figuring out that if Zoe left a message one, she probably did it again.
Sure enough, she did. While at the VA hospital, she left a note from a ripped out page of a magazine to ask for help and note that she’s at a motel. There happens to be an abandoned one, and Zoe’s toy outside makes it clear she is there. Now they need to figure out which room since she’s not calling out.
They manage to find her. I love that she runs straight to Ruzek when she sees him. I can’t help but think that Burgess and Ruzek need to go through the adoption process again to take Zoe in. After all the trauma she has been through, Ruzek and Burgess are the ones who would be able to help her. They’ve already proven that they can do it with Makayla. Of course, they have Bob to focus on right now, first.
One thing I like about the ending with Zoe is seeing that confusion of feelings. She knows that her dad is a bad person and she was scared and tried to run away. That didn’t mean she wanted him dead. When she finds out that he is dead, she questions who she’ll be. She has an element of Stockholm Syndrome. Her dad is the only constant in her life, and losing him, even if he was scary, puts all sorts of questions and doubts in her head. It’s so tragically realistic, and Chicago PD has done a great job with this.
Is keeping Bob at home the right thing for Ruzek and his family?
As much as I know that Ruzek thinks he is doing the right thing in looking after Bob, there’s the question of whether keeping at house is the right thing. I think Ruzek panicked when he originally thought Bob should stay, but the dementia has progressed too much and too fast. It’s done exactly what Bob said it would.
Sometimes, you have to accept that you can’t look after everyone. That’s what Ruzek realizes in this episode. It’s time to get Bob into a facility, one that is close and he can visit daily. When Bob questions Ruzek’s name, it’s a clear sign that it is time.
This is absolutely heartbreaking. Dementia takes so much from people, both those caring for the person with dementia and those living with it.
Ruzek wants to get Zoe’s real name back in Chicago PD
The end of the episode makes it clear that the Zoe case isn’t done. Ruzek needs to figure out who Zoe really is. He has DNA and the right paperwork to be able to put her DNA in the database, but the whole team has to do some leg work to figure out who she could be. There are many missing child reports out there, and it means working through each one of them.
That has to be hard. These parents are getting some hope that the police have found their child, only to find out that Zoe isn’t their child.
However, there is a match. While the match for Zoe’s mom leads to someone who is deceased, there’s a match to that woman’s mom. Zoe gets the opportunity to meet her grandmother.
We finally get the real name: Marie.
I do want to end this review by saying just how amazing of an actress Annabelle Toomey is. She sold it as Zoe, bringing both innocence and smarts to her character. I could feel the fear for her life, the love for Ruzek, and the confusion over everything she was feeling for the man she called her dad. There were no emotions meeting her biological grandmother, but that made so much sense. This woman was a stranger to her. I could see any child living like this. I look forward to seeing more of what Toomey can do.
Chicago PD airs on Wednesdays at 10/9c on NBC. Catch up the following day on Peacock.
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