Entertainment

Seattle murders reunite partners in crime in ‘The Killing’

Since we last saw them and almost never saw them again, Det. Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) — who had busted out of the Seattle PD last season — has been working a minimum-wage job on the ferry.

On the good side, she’s got a hot, younger lover. But then again, it’s Seattle, so she’s depressed anyway.

Meantime, Det. Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) has been working his way up the SPD chain, playing good cop, if not being a good cop. In other words, he’s been going along to get along — trying to look the other way instead of looking deep. Welcome back to “The Killing”and to Seattle’s filthy underbelly — its lost kids.

The best show that almost wrecked itself by not delivering one season/one crime as promised — dragging it out instead into two seasons of “who killed Rosie Larsen?” — brings Linden and Holder back together for a third season on the trail of what appears to be a serial murderer.

Only thing is, Linden had bagged the serial murderer, Ray Seward (Peter Sarsgaard), several years earlier and he’s awaiting execution on death row. Anyway, remember those drawings of the trees and that shack that had become a focus in the Rosie Larsen case — drawings that had been done by the son of the serial murderer, who had been left as a toddler with his dead mother’s corpse for days on end?

Well, remember those drawings again — because they’re back, and they’re connected to the new string of murders.

The bodies of young, teenage homeless hookers are showing up with their throats slashed and their ring fingers broken — their cheap rings taken as trophies. Holder’s new partner, a lazy slob, doesn’t care about the dead kids and is focused on doing as little as he can whenever he can.

When he tries to pawn the case off to another cop, Holder, who still has a bit of the dedicated cop in him, thwarts his efforts. Into the mix are the kids themselves, who are just spectacular. There’s Kallie (Cate Sproule), a homeless 14-year-old whose mother is such a bum she who won’t let her daughter spend the night — even when it’s raining outside.

Kallie’s friend, Bullet (Bex Taylor-Klaus), another street kid, is a gender-bending lesbian who is tough-as-nails but is the only one in the world who cares about Kallie.

Lyric (Julia Sarah Stone), is a 15-year-old who turns tricks to support her boyfriend, Twitch (Max Fowler), a hustler who thinks he’s going to hit it big as an actor and model when he gets enough scratch together to get to LA.

It’s the similarities to the previous case that get Linden involved again. At the end of this Sunday’s two-hour premiere, she figures out the locale of those drawings — and, once there, makes a “gruesome discovery” (as they like to say in press releases).

These kids are so tough, so dirty and so helpless — yet somehow still hopeful — that it will break your heart. The fact that someone’s out there killing them will get you involved.

So far, so great. But if they don’t solve the crime this season, I think we’ll all be ready for the kill.