In Them: The Scare, Detective Donald McKinney becomes Dawn’s partner in the strange homicide cases she is handling. Jeremy Bobb plays McKinney.
When Detective Donald McKinney is assigned as a partner to Dawn, the latter expresses her disappointment by saying that their investigation styles are completely different.
McKinney doesn’t like diving deep into cases and prefers to get them solved as soon as he can. According to him, the easiest answer is usually the right one.
Hence, in Bernice Mott’s case, he is quick to hold Malcolm, the 16-year-old kid from her foster home, responsible due to his size.
Dawn doesn’t pay heed to McKinney’s assumptions and continues investigating her way until she is led to believe that McKinney could be the murderer.
The suspect
During the investigation of Bernice Mott’s case, McKinney shows his ruthless behavior when he beats Curtis Maynard up and how careless he is when it comes to the lives of others; he merely sees it as paperwork.
He also frequently makes derogatory comments about Dawn and her ethnicity.
When Dawn concludes that the killer they are looking for is big, red-haired, and someone who can easily pass by people without being noticed, she and Diaz suspect that it could as well be a mailman, a trash collector, or a police officer.
Dawn thinks McKinney fits the description of the killer, while McKinney, feeling left out of the investigation, attempts to fix his relationship with Dawn, only to make it worse.
The Lamar Watkins murder
Dawn investigates McKinney and looks into the Lamar Watkins murder. McKinney was a patrol cop back then, and his version of events was questioned by another cop.
While that other cop quit, no report from the I.A. was submitted. The investigation was closed a few days after it was opened.
Dawn meets this other cop, Mr. James Stenson, and learns about McKinney’s group and the fact that Watkins’s wife swore that the cops brutally beat her husband to death.
McKinney’s group claimed it was a gang-related murder, but Stenson begged to differ. McKinney’s report didn’t match what Stenson saw.
Hence, Stenson spoke up, and that’s when McKinney and his group came after him, wearing masks. He couldn’t prove it was them, but he knew it was them.
As an initiation rite, they tattooed an insignia on Stenson’s right calf. Stenson hacked it out using a razor one day when he lost his mind.
McKinney’s death
Even though she is warned not to mess around with McKinney, Dawn continues to investigate the cop. Eventually, she is caught by McKinney, who warns her to stay away from him. Dawn is scared off by McKinney and his large group of white cops.
Near the end of the series, when Dawn is investigating the strange murders again after getting involved in Benny’s death and being detained, McKinney finds strong reasons that will paint Dawn as the murderer.
He grabs the chance he gets to arrest her. In the struggle, McKinney shoots Diaz, who raises his gun against McKinney after watching him be unethical.
Dawn is able to kill McKinney. During this interaction of theirs, McKinney confessed his part in the Lamar Watkins murder.
Dawn has an audio recording of the same, which she presents to the panel investigating her. Diaz has testified that Dawn killed McKinney in self-defense.
In an attempt to keep McKinney’s acts a secret, the panel drops all the charges against Dawn in Benny Alvarez’s case.
The panel also agrees that McKinney matches the description of the killer they were looking for. While Dawn assures the panel that the killings will stop, she rejects the desk job offer they give her after everything that has happened between them.
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