Is The Killer Framing Ben On 'Secrets & Lies'?

Quite a few crazy things happened on the third episode of ABC's newest drama Secrets & Lies entitled "The Affair," from Ben Crawford's daughter potentially being pregnant, to Detective Cornell once again only targeting Ben for Tom's murder and seemingly not focusing on anyone else as a possible suspect. Honestly, that one is really starting to bug me ,and it's only the third episode of the whole series. But one of the biggest mysteries relating to Tom's murder has to be Ben's discovery that someone planted his flashlight back into his truck, the same flashlight that was used to kill Tom. Ben, of course, makes the mistake of holding the flashlight and then later wiping it off and hiding it from the cops, and of course Detective Cornell can tell that Ben is worried and stressed about something. Is the killer trying to frame Ben for the murder or just trying to cover up his or her tracks? It really depends on the identity of the killer.

So if that's the case, who is the killer? If the series follows its Australian predecessor then it's possible the killer is (SPOILER ALERT!!) Ben's younger daughter Abby. In the Australian version of the series, Abby's counterpart Eva heard her parents fighting over her father's affair and was worried that her father would leave them, so she murders her brother and tried to frame Jess, Tom's mother. And while Abby has said a few choice lines that make it seem like there's more to the kid than meets the eye, I'm just not sure yet that she's the killer. And I'm not sure what she would achieve by putting her dad's flashlight back into his truck and seemingly making him look guilty.

Any of the neighbors or the Crawford's friends could be the murderer, including Ben's now ex-best friend Dave who apparently can hear every single argument and conversation the family has from his guest house. Ben is already suspicious that Dave tried to hit on and/or sleep with his daughter Natalie and if he really is capable of that, maybe killing a little boy isn't such a stretch.

Or maybe the murderer isn't necessarily trying to frame Ben, but instead is actually trying to taunt him? Perhaps by giving the flashlight back to Ben the killer is trying to prove that he or she can't be caught and knows that he or she cannot get caught, at least not by Ben. Maybe the killer knows Ben will make the dumb mistake of trying to hide the murder weapon rather than make the slightly risky yet ultimately smarter decision to bring the weapon to the police and ask for their mercy. Though maybe Ben's idea to hide the murder weapon actually is smart considering how much Cornell is gunning for him.

Speaking of Cornell, here's a completely crazy, probably implausible theory: What if she put the murder weapon back into Ben's truck? What if the police found it and she's trying any method she can think of to prove that Ben is the killer by watching his reaction with the murder weapon and see what he'd do with it? Yea that one is most likely wrong because that's just plain ethical. But I'm starting to get restless about who could be Tom's killer. I hope that the next few episodes focus more on some of the other people in the Crawfords' community, because right now all I can believe is that Ben is not the murderer. And there's just so much more to explore beyond that.

Images: Brownie Harris/ABC; secretsandlies, patrickdempsey/Tumblr