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An Innocent Man: Brady (Eric Martsolf) is powerless to save Tate (Jamie Martin Mann) from his legal woes.
Brady happens upon a horrifying sight on New Year’s Eve after noticing that Tate has been away from the party at The Bistro for way too long.
“Brady goes outside to look for his son and finds Holly Jonas in his arms, completely overdosed,” says Eric Martsolf (Brady). “And there is a packet of drugs on the ground.”
Considering Brady’s own past with narcotics, and that of Tate’s mother, Theresa, the scene hits Brady hard. “That’s kind of the meat and potatoes of the whole storyline to Theresa and Brady, given their histories and their pathways with drugs,” explains Martsolf. “The way they met was through drug abuse. Their relationship was founded on that. Could their son have taken that course? Initially, they’re both in disbelief about that. ‘Of course not. We’ve raised him to be weary of drugs, because of our history.’ But I think as parents, we all have that fear in the back of our heads. No one is immune to the powers of substance abuse.”
As Brady comforts his son, Holly is rushed to the hospital, and Rafe and Harris show up to investigate. “It certainly looks like Tate is in the hot seat for this,” notes Martsolf.
When Rafe asks if Tate was involved in supplying drugs to Holly, he vehemently denies it, swearing the pills belonged to Holly. EJ enters and calls Tate a liar, scoffing that his stepdaughter doesn’t do drugs. Convinced Tate is responsible for the crisis afoot with Holly, EJ vows to make him pay. Seeing Tate cower under the pressure of EJ’s questioning and afraid his son is going to be railroaded, Brady makes a rash decision. “He’s like, ‘Let me take the fall for this,’ ” says Martsolf. Brady then “confesses” that the drugs were his.
At the police station, Martsolf continues, Rafe reveals he “doesn’t believe” Brady’s story. “And Tate looks awfully guilty in this scenario.”
Meanwhile, Theresa takes Tate home and fills John and Marlena in on what happened. John goes to help Brady, and Theresa tries to convince Tate to let Brady take the rap. However, Tate later shows up at the police station and says he was the one who had the drugs — and that if anyone should be arrested, it should be him.
“At this point, Brady doesn’t know what to believe,” sighs Martsolf. “He wants to believe that his son didn’t do this. But in the back of his mind, he knows that anybody is susceptible to something like that. So [Tate’s confession] just complicates the spider web even further.” Brady tries to get Tate to see he’s making a huge mistake by confessing, but Tate digs in. “T things look bad and all arrows point towards Tate,” sums up Martsolf.
John reminds Brady they need to trust the system, and Theresa and Alex arrive with Justin, who’s been hired to handle the case. The group is shocked to learn that Tate’s bail was revoked, courtesy of EJ. When EJ arrives, Brady has to be physically restrained from attacking him.
“EJ’s just throwing the book at this poor kid, and Brady believes that the reason is because of his and EJ’s history,” says Martsolf. “Back in the day, they went at it hard, not just physically, but emotionally, with one another. So Brady’s assuming that this is just payback, that EJ’s using his son to get back at him for all those years of turmoil.”
Things go from bad to worse, when EJ announces he’s charging Tate as an adult. The terrified teen is led away in handcuffs, leaving Theresa sobbing and Brady seething.
“Their son is going to an adult prison where he could be prey to everything we know about prisons,” says Martsolf. “This is not a juvenile facility. This is serious. Brady goes on a mad tear trying to figure out what the truth is. It’s hard at this point, because Holly is in a coma. Basically they’re just biding time for this girl to wake up to hopefully set the record straight. But until then, this poor kid is in a maximum security prison with his life potentially on the line.”
