In True Detective: Night Country, the Wheeler case is responsible for the difficult relationship that Liz and Navarro share now.
In the third episode of True Detective: Night Country, Liz agrees to share what happened between her and Navarro with Peter by telling him about the Wheeler case, which imploded her partnership with Navarro.
About William Wheeler
The Wheeler case is the last one Navarro and Liz worked on together. William Wheeler was a terrible man, involved in crimes such as sexual assault and armed robbery.
The last time Liz and her team dealt with him, he was involved with an eighteen-year-old girl. He used to beat her up hard. She was sent to the hospital twice, with broken arm, smashed jaw, and some other things.
Liz and her team did go to Wheeler’s place a few times, but the girl wouldn’t report Wheeler, who always had a story to explain her injuries.
Liz and her team knew how this was going to end, but there was nothing they could do.
The death of Wheeler and his girlfriend
Eventually, the cops got a call. Liz and Navarro headed to Wheeler’s but were too late. Wheeler had killed his girlfriend and shot himself.
However, that’s what Liz tells Peter. The flashback scenes reveal that Liz lied. Wheeler was alive when they got there. He had killed the girl and was mocking them.
Much like with Annie’s case, Navarro struggled to move on from this one too. She was convinced that there was something that they should have done.
Navarro blamed Liz. Things got nasty with Navarro, forcing Liz to send Navarro to the troopers.
However, Annie’s involvement in the Tsalal men’s case brings Liz and Navarro together again.
Navarro gets overly attached to the victims of her cases, but that results in her studying them in depth.
No one but Navarro may now play a crucial part in solving the Tsalal men’s case, considering the immense knowledge that she has about Annie.
The truth
In the fifth episode of True Detective: Night Country, when Connelly uses the Wheeler case against Liz to stop her from investigating the Tsalal men’s case, she wonders who might have told him about it.
Liz realizes that Peter may have looked into it. Hank probably accessed Peter’s laptop and found out about it too, and he possibly shared the details with Connelly.
Peter’s investigation reveals that Liz and Navarro meddled with the reports to close the investigation.
Wheeler’s suicide was staged. After finding him laughing with his partner’s dead body nearby, Navarro killed Wheeler.
Also Read: Anne Masu Kowtok’s case in True Detective: Night Country explained