Making things even more confusing — or perhaps titillating — for Richmonders is that the drama’s police chief is played by Peter Horton (“thirtysomething”). Horton’s character, Nick Brustin, was introduced in an episode titled “Boom, Swagger, Boom,” which was scheduled to be broadcast Dec. 30. He’ll show up again on a Jan. 13 episode titled “I’m Your Boogie Man.” The faux chief of police and the FBI’s top Richmond agent, Lisa Cohen (Leslie Hope), will then hook up, according to an ABC spokesman.

Cohen gets around, as they say. And in the early going she’s seemed to be more interested in women than men. In the episode scheduled for Dec. 30, she sleeps with a man she later realizes may be a serial rapist and killer. Richmond has more than its share of interesting goings-on lately, but this is clearly one case in which fiction is even stranger than truth.

Style attempted to ask Richmond’s real chief of police, André Parker, what he thinks of the series’ plot twist — and perhaps how well he knows the local FBI chief — but he declined to comment. — Don Dale