Alert: Missing Persons Unit – Season 2 Episode 4 “Maya” Recap & Review

Maya

Episode 4 of Alert Missing Persons Unit season 2 starts at a bar, and the crowd cheers for a performer. Outside, two girls head towards the bar’s back door, talking about getting food from Canary, saying she always has food for them. The performer opens the door and hands the two girls some food, and they bid each other goodbye. One of the girls, Maya, is abducted soon after she and her friend go their separate ways. 

Two days later, Mike and Nikki volunteer at a local school where Mike teaches the kids basketball, and Maya’s friend approaches them. She tells them about her disappearance, and the team starts looking into it by sending Jason and Mike to find Canary, who gives them Maya’s backpack, which he found on the road on his way home on the night of her disappearance. Nikki and Kemi find photos of some girls inside the bag who might help them learn more about Maya. 

Meanwhile, Jason tells Nikki about the car bombing, saying he looked into it despite her warnings and that the file was whitelisted. Jason suspects that Braun is connected to the case, and as they argue about the basis of the accusations, Mike walks into the room and reports that Braun wants to have lunch with him.

Consequently, Kemi identifies the girls in the photo and discovers that Maya is registered in the camp database under a different name, Hannah Marie Sutter, from New Jersey. Nikki orders Kemi to issue the missing person’s alert. Elsewhere, Maya wakes up in a locked room in an unknown place, chained to a bed and with a CCTV camera pointed at her. She is scared and starts hyperventilating, yelling for someone to get her out of the room. 

Maya’s parents show up at the missing persons unit, and Kemi gets into an altercation with Kemi during questioning. Maya ran away from home, but the parents did not report it, saying that she had run away two times earlier and they just let her be waiting for her to come back home whenever she was done acting out. Kemi gets angry at their indifference and lack of concern about Maya’s welfare, while the parents defend themselves by saying that Maya is a problematic child. It seems that Kemi went through a similar situation with her parents, so she gets angry at their indifference and lousy parenting. 

The team gets feedback from a social worker working in a shelter for teenage homeless people who says that Maya had come to the shelter, but they did not have a bed for her. Mike is concerned that some teenagers spend nights on the streets when the shelters run out of beds, and the social worker shares the same concern.

Jason notices a boy with drugs in the shelter and approaches him. He talks about the person who sells them drugs, and they realise that the pickup point is a few blocks away from where Maya disappeared. Meanwhile, Maya discovers that more people have stayed in the same room, meaning that her kidnapper has abducted other people before. 

On the way to meet up with Skit, Jason suggests that Mike change his clothes so he does not appear obvious, but regardless, Skit knows that they are police officers. Skit attempts to run away when they ask about Maya, but a citizen trips her, helping Mike and Jason make the arrest.

At first, Skit is not forthcoming during questioning, but threatening to charge her with possession gets her talking. She says that Maya came to her occasionally, and the last time she saw her, she did not have money. Skit refused to sell her without cash but insisted that she had something coming up that would get her some good money. She promised to get back to Skit when the deal came through but never showed up.

Kemi tracks Maya’s girlfriend Caitlyn, and she says that she met Maya for the first time at a soccer camp, and being with her felt right. However, she was not ready to be someone different from her family, so she did not come out to her parents like Maya. However, a couple of days ago, Maya arrived at her house asking to stay with her, but Caitlyn told her to leave. Then, a few days later, she found a note in her locker saying Maya would remain within the city and she would not go without Caitlyn. 

The note Maya slips into Caitlyn’s locker leads the detectives to her workplace, which is a gay bar. The owner knows Maya and says he gave her odd tasks in the bar, like taking out the trash and doing the dishes so she can make some money. He remembers seeing her a few days ago, and she seemed motivated. The bar owner also mentions that many street kids vanish in that area and is glad someone is finally looking into their disappearances. Meanwhile, Maya tries to free herself by using her earrings to unscrew the bed. 

Following the hunch from the bar owner, Kemi looks into the cases of missing kids, many of whom are all over the state. She narrows the search by finding out the ones reported missing outside the state, and Jason brings in Canary to help identify the ones that disappeared close to home. Canary is quite helpful since she is good with names and faces and gives them a background of where these kids used to work before their disappearances. 

Someone gives Maya a makeup set at the mysterious location, asking her to make herself pretty for the camera. Maya tries to plead for the person to let her go, and she will not talk to the police, but he only orders her to clean up and get some rest since bidding will start in a few hours. 

Kemi finds out something interesting about the bar owner. All the businesses that Canary mentioned that offered the homeless children some work belonged to the same bar owner, and a few years ago, he was arrested for a sexual offense involving a minor. Mike and Jason head back to the bar, but after questioning David, they find out that he is not at fault, and the sexual offender charge was made by his boyfriend’s parents, who were homophobic when he was 18 and the boyfriend was 17. 

Jason figures out that something is fishy about a bartender they had talked to earlier at the bar. He mentioned that he had never missed a day of work, but David told them he had called in sick. Kemi looks into the bartender, and he looks clean, but looking into his utility bill, Kemi notices that he has several optical fibre connections going into his house, meaning he needs data for uploads and downloads. Wayne gives Kemi a toolkit to help her search through the dark web for the bartender’s IP address, and she finds out that he is online trying to sell Maya to the highest bidder. 

Richard, the bartender, notices the police IP address, but before he can investigate, everything shuts down. Therefore, he heads down to the basement, planning to get rid of Maya and protect his business, but she has unscrewed the bed. She uses the bed frame to attack Richard, takes the key, and sets herself free. However, Richard is on his feed before she can make it out the door, and they fight. Fortunately, Mike, Jason, and the SWAT team arrive at the house and hear Maya’s screams. Mike and Jason breach the door and shoot Richard to stop him from hurting Maya.

The detectives take Maya back to the MPU, and Nikki asks Kemi to stay with her while they wait for her parents to pick her up. Maya opens up about her living situation with her parents, saying that whenever she leaves home and has to stay on the streets, regardless of the hardships, she never feels as alone as she does with her parents. Kemi shares her story and says that when she was taken from home, it was not her parents who came to her rescue but the police. She tells Maya that she does not have to feel alone and asks that she call her anytime she wants to talk. Maya is overwhelmed since no one has ever looked out for her before, and no one has ever missed her. Kemi gives Caitlyn’s message and asks her to start working on herself, take her medications, see a therapist, and become a better person, and then she will be ready to face the world in a few years and find her place.

At the end of the episode, Mike talks to Nikki about Jason, asking if he is up to something that would make Braun concerned, but Nikki lies, saying she is unaware. Later that night, she and Jason sneakily meet up, and she hands him the homicide police report indicating that someone confessed to the car bombing and the case is closed. However, it seems like Jason is not willing to let it go. 

The Episode Review

Once again, we see Kemi’s empathetic side in this episode. She did an amazing job relating to Maya and making her feel safe. Sometimes, it can be hard to understand our kids, but Maya’s parents kind of gave up on her. Thankfully, the team saved Maya, and hopefully, she will get the help she needs. 

We are also curious about Braun. Jason seems to be on to something, and if he is right, this will affect Nikki’s job. We know Jason won’t let his suspicions go so will Nikki support him even when she risks losing her career?