World Literature

The “Chekov’s Gun” dramatic principle formulates that there can be no unnecessary elements in a story. If a gun appears in Act I, it must be fired at some point in Act II or Act III. Louisiana spiritual leader Billy Lee Tuttle is the unfired gun of “True Detective.” He was introduced in “The Long Bright Dark” and we know that not only is Tuttle related to the governor of Louisiana, he is deeply concerned with the murder of Dora Lange and its religious implications. The Tuttle Gun wasn’t fired in tonight’s episode of “True Detective, ” “The Locked Room, ” but the hammer may have been cocked.

In the opening act of “The Locked Room, ” Hart and Cohle track down the roaming congregation once attended by Dora Lange. There they discover that she came to services accompanied by a “tall man with a shiny face.” Hart and Cohle also learn that the pompadour’d and side burn’d revival preacher was enrolled at Billy Lee Tuttle’s university for a few years.

This meeting leads to a fruitless roundup and interrogation of local miscreants and “B&E men” with similar features. When this doesn’t work, Cohle raids the department’s case files and rifles through photo after photo of dead women and girls. He eventually stumbles on the case of Reanne Olivier, a woman who supposedly drowned, but whose body was discovered with severe abdominal lacerations, meth and LSD in her blood, and a familiar spiral scribbled on her back. Reanne Oliver may be the progenitor of Dora Lange.

The detectives interview Reanne’s grandfather, Henry Olivier, and are given the name of boyfriend, Reggie Ledoux. They also learn that in high school Reanne was a student at Light of the Way Christian Academy, a school funded by Billy Lee Tuttle’s ministry.