Tonight on NBC their drama Chicago PD returns with an all-new Wednesday, April 22, 2026, season 13 episode 18 called, “The Wicked River” and we have your Chicago PD recap below.
In tonight’s Chicago PD season, 13 episode 18 called, “The Wicked River,”as per the NBC synopsis, “A deadly house party leads the Intelligence Unit to uncover a family’s alarming secret. Atwater faces a personal turning point. ”
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On tonight’s Chicago PD episode, Detective Atwater was expecting a child with a one night stand. They’ve technically known each other since the Police Academy. Tasha was former Chicago Police. She put in her papers to go work in Miami. She liked it down there. The weather was nicer. She also felt police were treater better down there.
It was no secret that the city of Chicago was making lot of cost cuts in their emergency departments. This on top of the anti-cop sentiment made Tasha feel better about going to Miami and wanting to stay there. She already found an OBGYN. She wanted to have the baby down there. She told Atwater over dinner.
Atwater wanted to be involved. This was his first child. He wanted to do it right. He wanted to be a good dad. Unlike his own who went to prison. Atwater has already helped raise his siblings and he was excited about a child. Its just that there was no future between the parents. Tasha and Atwater barely knew each other.
They met years ago then nothing for ten years. They then worked a case together that resulted in them sleeping together right before Tasha made her big move to Miami. They were never in a relationship. It also doesn’t look like either wants to be in a relationship.
Everything about the possibility of coparenting was going to be hard. They didn’t even know how to talk to each other about what they should or who gets to decide what.
Their dinner was awkward to say the least. They were leaving the restaurant when they noticed some kids arguing about something. Atwater overheard them saying where’s the ambulance. There was a girl who got injured at a party. Her name was Emily Johnson. Her boyfriend Ellis Powell called 911. It was taking them forever to arrive.
Ellis said that he noticed Emily was at the party. These kids were high school kids. They were all illegally drinking. It took Ellis a minute to realize something was wrong.
He went looking for Emily and he found her in desperate need of help. She was tied up. She was blindfolded. Her assailants even stabbed her several times in what looked like a frenzy. Ellis interrupted them. They knocked him out and took off. It appears to have been a robbery gone wrong. It was Emily’s house so she noticed when men went upstairs.
Emily must have confronted them when they attacked. Sadly, she died on the way to the hospital. There’s been a crew robbing houses during house parties. The parties were often thrown by kids.
They put it up on Insta. They didn’t care who shared up. Most of the kids at the party of the attack couldn’t help bragging about being there on social media. They didn’t even care that someone died. Ellis’s parents were the only ones worried about the kids having lawyers. Ellis’s father was a big time lawyer by the name of Alan Powell.
The dad was friends with people at City Hall. It’s how he heard about the party. It’s why he went rushing down there to make sure his son didn’t get arrested for illegal drinking.
They were all young. They posted so many photos that the cops found a matching shoe goes upstairs to what determined left the prints in blood. The person with the shoes has a football ring from Rosedale High School. Tasha recognized it because it was her old school. She still new the neighborhood so she went on the books as a CI and she helped them find the right pawn shop.
They found the items stolen from Emily’s at that pawn shop. It also gave them a name of one of the suspects. His name was Dwayne Coleman. They tracked him down and were unfortunately too late to stop him getting stabbed right in front of them. Coleman died. They checked his phone. He had called Ellis.
Ellis met him when they were on the same football team in college. They tried asking Ellis about it and his father refused to let him be questioned. Later, they found the other man that robbed the house with Dwayne. His name was Chris Watson.
Chris was soon seen being driven around in one of the Powell’s cars. He then got out and tried to make a run for it. The cops arrested him. They found thirty grand in cash on him.
It was hush money. They thought Ellis’s father was worried about another body dropping and had paid off the only other man that could testify against his son. It turns out Emily broke up with Ellis. She dumped a day before the party. He got angry. He killed her. He then killed one of his friends and his parents convinced him to buy off the other to keep everything secret.
The cops were just wrong about which parent was helping him. It wasn’t Alan. It was Ellis’s mother, Toni. Toni wasn’t right herself. Alan accidentally revealed as much and then he stayed quiet as a means of not incriminating his family. It was too late for Ellis. They messaged him from a suspect’s phone. He ran off into the park.
They followed him and Ellis heard Atwater coming. He pulled out a knife. He tried to attack Atwater. Tasha stopped him. Neither of the cops were harmed. Ellis was arrested. And Atwater was so worried about Tasha’s condition that it told everyone she was pregnant.
Later, the two talked. Tasha admitted she actually hates Miami. She mostly write parking tickets down there. She was lonely. She missed Atwater and so she needed some reassurances before she comes back to Chicago.
She wants to know if what they have was real. It wasn’t just for the baby. Atwater said they’ll make it real. They’ll work on it until it was real and that seemed a good start.
THE END!