The Outsider Trivia Quiz

Answer: A park

After the body of a boy, Frankie Peterson, is found in the woods in Figgis Park in the Oklahoma town of Flint City, investigators sum up their evidence and the eyewitness accounts of locals to make an arrest, showing up at a packed little league game to place coach Terry Maitland in their custody.

As it turns out, several witnesses are able to identify him as the perpetrator of the heinous crime committed without fail. His wife, Marcy, contacts their attorney, Howie Gold, to step in and protect Terry in the face of what he believes to be a wrongful arrest.

It's wrongful, Terry claims, because he has an airtight alibi. He wasn't even in Flint City at the time.

Answer: English teacher

Detective Ralph Anderson follows up on Terry Maitland's alibi in Cap City while Marcy deals with cops infringing on her home life in the hours that follow the arrest. Howie Gold ends up arriving at the police station to find out what's happened, but he supports his client through and through, protecting him from the prying questions of both Anderson and District Attorney Samuels.

Despite tons of DNA evidence at the crime scene and in the supposed getaway vehicle, Terry has a steadfast alibi-- he was in Cap City, for sure, at conference for English teachers at the Sheraton Hotel and he sat in on a speech given by author Harlan Coben.

Despite this, he's still sent to prison for the weekend to await his arraignment on the following Monday.

Answer: Howie Gold

Howie Gold hires on private investigator Alec Pelley to run some errands for him and the Maitland family and Terry spends the weekend in a cell, but there are a number of developments in every other direction. Terry's alibi is backed up by the three English teachers who accompanied him to Cap City and, interestingly, Maitland was filmed for a public access Q&A session at the Coben event; he's literally featured on TV. Meanwhile, the Peterson family copes with the loss of their youngest son and Arlene, his mother, has a heart attack in the family home, later tragically dying in the hospital before the weekend comes to an end.

Answer: False

On the day of his arraignment, Terry Maitland is brought across Flint City to the courthouse only to be shot and killed by Ollie Peterson, Frankie's older brother. After Det. Anderson kills the gunman, he asks Terry to make his dying declaration, but Terry, even in his last breaths, claims he's innocent.
In the coming days, Grace Maitland awakens in the night and believes she sees a man outside her window with a bulging face and straws for eyes. Fred Peterson, the last surviving member of the Peterson family, sees the same figure in his yard when he tries to hang himself from a tree. He's later saved by a neighbour, but paramedics fear that he lost brain function in the suicide attempt.

District Attorney Samuels contemplates retirement in the aftermath while Ralph Anderson is placed on mandatory psychiatric leave. Nevertheless, he manages to check into the case's evidence files, stumbling across a piece of evidence from Dayton, Ohio, a city Terry Maitland was known to have visited, but which was found in the van he allegedly never drove and, interestingly, which an unrelated boy stole and left in Dayton to be picked up by the killer.

Answer: To see his father

Ralph still has nagging doubts about the Maitland case after he's suspended from work, so he visits Marcy at home after Terry's funeral. She sends him away, but later calls him back to speak to her in the presence of Howie Gold and Alec Pelley because she believes he may have doubts about her husband's guilt. Sure enough, Ralph believes there are grey areas in specific leads, especially in Dayton, when Terry took the family to visit his father in an Alzheimer's home. Sarah Maitland seems to remember her father receiving a cut from an orderly at the institution, but nothing else was out of the ordinary during their stay. At the same time, a belt was found at an old barn outside of Flint City, and it happened to be the same one allegedly worn by Terry on camera after the crime was committed. Detective Hoskins, who investigates the scene, feels as though he's being watched. Something emerges from the darkness and strokes the back of his neck.

Answer: Said man does not appear in any video footage

Ralph and his colleague, Yune, discuss the continued work on the case in a local diner, touching on the evidence found at the barn including the belt buckle and other clothes linked to Terry Maitland. Ralph believes that someone wearing the same clothes was outside the arraignment, but there is no record of this in the video footage of the shooting. At another gathering, Alec Pelley also recalls seeing the burned man in the crowd. It also happens to be the same man Grace meets in her dreams, though she claims that he has her father's eyes. She sends a message from said man to Ralph asking him to stop investigating.

Alec Pelley, meanwhile, attempts to contact a man by the name of Bill Hodges in Ohio, in an attempt to dig up more about the events in Dayton during the Maitlands' visit, but he appears to have passed away two years earlier. Instead, he hires Hodges' former colleague, Holly Gibney, to do the legwork, and when she does she finds that the trail leads to a man named Heath Holmes who worked as an orderly at the Alzheimers Facility where Terry's father was kept. Heath also happened to have murdered two girls in much the same fashion as Terry allegedly did. When she discovers this, she decides to bring her evidence to Flint City.

Answer: Skin cancer

Detective Hoskins continues to see a dark figure at home and traveling around Flint City and, one morning, as the back of his neck continues to throb, he sees a figure in his shower with the word MUST tattooed onto his finger. He's told that he has skin cancer, but it can be taken away if he does what he's asked. The same figure visits Jeannie Anderson to warn her to tell the others to stop their investigation.

It turns out that the figure resembles a bouncer at the gentleman's club where Terry Maitland was seen after the murders (right down to the tattoos saying MUST and CANT) named Claude Bolton, but he's confirmed to be in Texas visiting his mother. As Ralph remembers, Bolton got a cut when he shook Terry Maitland's hand.

Holly Gibney arrives in Flint City and meets with the others to link the events in Dayton to the events in Flint City. She surprises the investigators with a DVD copy of a Mexican Cholita film involving a creature known as El Cuco said to live off the blood and fat of children. It's also, allegedly, the 'eater of sadness'. They decide to head to Texas to speak to Bolton in-person, but they don't know that Hoskins is also watching from a distance, spurred on by a figure they refer to as 'The Outsider'.

Answer: Five

To confirm Jeannie's encounter with the Outsider, Holly creates a black light and shows much of the same residue found at the crime scenes; the Outsider definitely visited the Anderson house. Holly, Ralph, Howie, Alec, and Yune all take a charter flight out to Marysville to visit Claude Bolton (who meets them at the airport) and they find a man who has spent years in prison but who has completely reformed himself to lead a clean life. Hoskins, meanwhile, reaches Texas and is told specifically to get rid of Ralph Anderson who, as it seems, is someone who has had an immense impact on his mental health. Bolton quickly identifies the group when they arrive in Texas and waits for the right moment.

Answer: A cavern

The five from Flint City head to the Bolton House and, in an attempt to shield Claude from having their plans discovered through his mind, they send him out to dinner to speak with his mother, Lovie. Through their discussion, they discover that El Cuco typically hides away near a graveyard to be close to the familial memories of its inhabited form.

This allows them to deduce that the Outsider must be near a local landmark known as the Marysville Hole. Detective Hoskins already knows this, though.

He's been compelled to bring his Winchester out there to stand guard and protect the area against intruders. Ralph and Holly stock up on items at a local Home Depot and prepare to bring the others out to the Hole in the morning.

Answer: Howie Gold

On the fateful morning, Det. Hoskins sets himself up in the hills next to the Marysville Hole and the others head over, not realizing that the Outsider has anticipated their arrival. Hoskins manages to get several shots off, hitting Howie Gold in the head and killing him instantly and striking Alec Pelley in the neck. Yune is shot in the arm as the remaining group members hide away in the gift shop, but they're granted a reprieve when Hoskins is bitten in the leg by a diamondback rattlesnake, poisoning him instantly. Ralph kills him as he and Holly run to the Ahiga Path and the back entrance of the hole.

When Ralph and Holly descend into the caves they find the Outsider hiding in the Chamber of Sound, a cavern that could crumble around them at any excessive noise. The Outsider, too weak to leave, provokes a stand-off and Holly, egging the creature on, bashes it in the face, crushing its visage and killing it. They leave as it breaks apart behind them.

In the hours after the fight, Holly, Ralph, and Yune escape the area and form their alibi. They fly back to Flint City that day and begin the long process of clearing Terry's name.