Emmanuelle is a partially blind private detective working out of Santa Barbara, and the ex-girlfriend of Burton Guster. She is portrayed by Kali Hawk.
Plot[]
In S8E5 Cog Blocked, Emmanuelle is first introduced via an email she sent to John Russell after his death, using the alias Angela Bennet:
Dr. Alan Champion Meet me tonight at the Buena Vista Lounge Come Alone! -Angela
Emmanuelle arrives at the lounge, expecting to meet John Russell (also known as "Dr. Alan Champion"), but realizes Gus was not him after he spoke. She shoves Gus with her walking stick, and whacks Shawn across the face to make her escape. As she disappears, Shawn complains that they got smoked by a blind ninja, and Gus mentions that her hair smelled of magnolia blossoms.
After Shawn and Gus break into her place, Emmanuelle shows up, standing in the doorway. She stands perfectly still, while the two make funny gestures, believing she can't see them at all, but when Shawn moves, she points a gun directly towards his location. Gus moves in the other direction, but Emmanuelle pulls a second gun. She tracks both their movements with her weapons as they move back in place. She demands to know who they are.
After hearing Gus is a private investigator, she reveals she is too. Gus accuses her of not being blind, but Emmanuelle fires back that she has astigmatism (severely blurred vision resulting in near-blindness). Gus continues to interrogate her with rapid-fire questions, none of which she answers, and their back-and-forth gradually shifts to flirting, with Gus referring to her as "Honey Bunny", and asking if she's single because she is incredibly attractive. Emmanuelle tells Gus "Don't tell me what I am."
She finally reveals she was hired by John Russell, to look into "something big", and that her real name is Emmanuelle, or Em for short. As their flirting escalates, Shawn finally snaps, and tells them to compare rates on Expedia and get a room already.
She lowers her guns after hearing John is dead, and joins the crime-fighting duo for the next stage of their investigation.
In The Blueberry, Gus questions Emmanuelle further, asking what connection a death certificate had to John's case. She replies it had something to do with insurance fraud, but she didn't know much else. John insisted on investigating on his own, but she followed and took pictures just in case. Gus calls her brave, and Emmanuelle says, "Don't tell me what I am."
Emmanuelle fights with Shawn over having shotgun in Gus' car several times throughout the episode, leading to him throwing loud and childish tantrums upon losing.
Eventually, the investigation turns up evidence that John Russell found fradulent transactions in his company, and had been looking into it before his death. As they exit the building, a gunner takes a shot at the trio, blowing the mirror off The Blueberry. Emmanuelle tells Gus to be careful as he runs off, and he says, "Don't tell me what to be."
She attends John Russell's funeral, and smiles proudly as Gus takes the stage and solves the case, exposing John's boss as the murderer. After Gus quits his own job, she meets him at the Russian nightclub Shawn is bartending at for their first official date.
Emmanuelle and Gus date off-screen, breaking up sometime before S8E9 "A Nightmare on State Street".
Gus mentions in the beginning of the episode that Emmanuelle still hasn't called him back, and his nightmares are getting worse. He says they had such great chemistry, and he thought she was "the one". He intended to make her his bride. Shawn pipes up, saying their chemistry was hit or miss, although she was tall, like Wilt Chamberlain in Conan the Destroyer.
Gus later says he saw a real future with himself and Emmanuelle, just like everyone did. Further on in the episode, he's seen leaving her a desperate voice mail, where he says they "Know each other. Biblically." which confirms the two had a physically intimate relationship before breaking up. Shawn takes his phone, telling him the ball had been in Emmanuelle's court for a while now, and that Gus had sent her five dozen roses and a cake with Nelson Rockefeller's face on it.