With only three episodes left, Harlan Coben’s Shelter is finally letting us know what’s going on with the missing children in the Kasselton community, which was the major mystery. The first answer in “Candy’s Room” (Season 1, Episode 6) is about what happened to Dylan Shakes, the young boy who went missing 20 years ago and seems to be the cause of a lot of strange things happening in town. At the memorial that Mrs. Friedman made, Mickey figures out that the man in sunglasses who seems to work for Bat Lady is actually Dylan (he’s still alive!). When he was a child, his father crushed a lit cigarette into his eye, which left it forever crooked. This is why he wears sunglasses.
It turns out that Bat Lady is a good person who took him in after the last time his father hurt him. It’s not clear why he ran to her house instead of to Mrs. Friedman, his old Little League coach, who seems like a more trustworthy guardian. Mrs. Friedman and Dylan’s dad had a tense relationship, and when he shows up at the memorial, she even questions him. He says that he is a bad father, but he also says that he didn’t take him to the doctor the night he went missing. In the big picture of the mysteries, Dr. Kent’s role is still a wild card, and his showing at the memorial doesn’t tell us what he knows.
The other unknown? The key to the puzzle seems to be the blonde “butcher” with the scar on his face. He watches Dylan and Mrs. Friedman’s reunion at Bat Lady’s house from the outside. Adult Dylan even defends Bat Lady’s photoshop work to Mickey by saying that “we all have our own butchers,” or demons that we have to get rid of. He seems to Mickey almost like a mirage, a scary picture that follows him everywhere.
The news about Dylan, Bat Lady, and the butcher comes right after Mickey said he didn’t believe his father’s body was in the grave and that he didn’t think he was dead. When he tells Shira, she’s not surprised. She’s had the same feeling about her brother’s death, especially when she thinks about the strange message she got hours before he died, so she goes to Hannah for help. Adult Dylan tells Mickey that he’ll find “the truth” when he digs up his father’s grave, which only makes things worse.
Shira also tells Mickey the truth about why Brad went into Bat Lady’s house in the first place all those years ago: she was the bully who pushed him to go in, and Brad was never the same after that. It’s clear that she feels a lot of guilt about that. Hannah agrees to help get to the grave and also tells Shira that she loves her, which is basically the same as asking for a second chance with their relationship. Ken later tells Shira that Hannah asked him for a divorce. This comes as a surprise to Shira, so she turns down his request to help fix up their marriage. However, she isn’t exactly excited about the chance to date her old best friend.
At the end of the show, when Mickey finds out what will happen to Dylan, his need to be a hero kicks back into high gear. Adult Dylan says that Ashley is Mickey’s project and that it’s his job to protect her, so he goes back to the suspicious building where he and Rachel found OctoFace in the last episode. It’s a strip club, and he’s only 14, so he gets a lot of attention. A girl named Candy takes him away and tells him that Ashley is being kept in the “dungeon.” Candy seems to be really upset about what happened to her friend, and she even says that she feels like Ashley’s situation is her fault. She tells Mickey that following Ashley’s tracks is dangerous, but she still tells him how to get to the prison.
But before he can save Ashley, he runs into a group of bad guys who catch him. In a confusing sequence, the leader of the group briefly gains his trust by acting like a double agent who knew his father and used to help keep kids from being trafficked, but she quickly takes him into another trap and shows her true colors. Mickey is put in the back of a car and taken to the beach, where he will be killed. He gets away from their gunfire by jumping into the water, but he’ll have to come back up for air at some point, and who knows what will happen then.
But before he can save Ashley, he runs into a group of bad guys who catch him. In a confusing sequence, the leader of the group briefly gains his trust by acting like a double agent who knew his father and used to help keep kids from being trafficked, but she quickly takes him into another trap and shows her true colors. Mickey is put in the back of a car and taken to the beach, where he will be killed. He gets away from their gunfire by jumping into the water, but he’ll have to come back up for air at some point, and who knows what will happen then.