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Holmes has a flu as the episode opens, but that's not enough to keep him from helping to investigate an unknown body found in an abandoned building. He does some show-offy detecting to identify the body as belonging to Trent Annunzio, a professor at Garrison University. Having established that, it is easy to demonstrate that Annunzio had been spending a lot of time in illicit Chinese gambling dens. And those all have really good security cameras, so they learn that he was killed by Raoul Ramirez. It's all going pretty smoothly!
But that's not the whole story! Because Raoul was hired by a mysterious figure that could have been one of Trent's assistants who was having an affair with Trent's wife. He even confesses! But even that is not the whole story, because Trent's wife tearfully admits that they were not legally married. And Trent was physically and psychologically sadistic to her, making her perform weird acts on video. But the videos have vanished.
Finally, Holmes puts together the plot. Trent had himself killed because he was dying of inoperable eye cancer and wanted to frame his assistant and have his wife deported. Pretty complicated! He's able to prove all this, because before he went to Raoul Ramirez, Trent went to another guy who was more suspicious and had hidden cameras. This show has a lot of hidden cameras, doesn't it? The assistant and the wife get married to keep her in the country and, I guess, live happily ever after.
While this is going on, Watson is going out to Rikers to see an ex-boyfriend who's been getting hopped up on heroin. He's accused of crashing his car, but he can't remember if he did it. Holmes helps Watson determine that he didn't, so she gets him off. Then the episode ends with Watson and Holmes waiting for him at the 59th Street Clinic, even though they know he probably won't show up.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!With no warning, a guy in a black ski mask levels a gun at a man. Well, I guess there could have been some warning before the episode started. I mean that we, the audience, get no warning. Because it's the way the episode starts. As he pulls the trigger, we cut to the Brownstone, where Holmes has a fever of 101 degrees. He gets a text from Gregson about a man left in an abandoned building. And boredom is worse than a fever, so it's time to go. We're jumping around a lot so far, aren't we?
It's raining at the abandoned building, so everyone's concerned about Holmes's sickness. They're less concerned about the dead guy, because he's already dead. His eyes were shot out. Bell says it's the gun was very close to the skin when it was fired. Holmes notes there are no shell casings or skull fragments, so the body was moved here. But Bell knows that, so it doesn't count as an astonishing deduction. Watson is worried about Holmes dying of exposure because this abandoned building is missing big chunks of wall and ceiling. Holmes eyeballs the situation and examines the victim's wrists. He reports that the victim was on his feet all day (because of his comfortable shoes) but had a job where he couldn't just wear athletic shoes. And the marks on his fingers from dry erase marker mean that he was a professor. And he's been to China. His tie reveals that he's from Garrison University. And the time he spent explaining all this has allowed him to muck with his iPhone to provide a specific identity: Professor Trent Annunzio.
Now they've gone to talk to Trent's widow June. She met him five years ago in Beijing and moved here two years ago. Watson gets a call from someone named "Liam" at Riker's Island, so she steps out for a second. As June talks, Holmes noses through her CDs. Then he points out that Trent was murdered in a personal way, like someone had a grudge. She says she saw Trent the morning, and he had to stay late for a meeting.
Outside, Holmes plans on going to Garrison to talk to the coworkers. Watson, however, is going to Rikers to talk to Liam, who she says is an old client.
Holmes and Bell are getting a brief tour from Trent's Teaching Assistant, a Mr. O'Brien. Contrary to what June said, O'Brien says Trent did not have to work late for a meeting. They're let into his office, but Holmes is more interested in the office across the hallway. Bell thinks the office is pretty cramped for a department head, who could have picked any office. Holmes decides he was going to an underground Chinese gambling parlor. Bell can't help but ask why, and the answer is that there are a lot of thirteens in his life. He didn't want the office across the room because its number was 14, which is unlucky. And his underwear was red boxers, which is considered lucky. And his clothes reeked of cigarette smoke, but his teeth were white, suggesting that he was not a smoker. Bell is reluctantly impressed, and I like how he's filling the traditional "Watson" role of someone who Holmes can show off to. Bell finds Mahjong tiles in Trent's desk, and they're different shapes. He says they're calling cards to different club and dares Holmes to ask how he knew that. Holmes won't do it, but Bell tells him anyway: poker clubs use custom chips, so Mahjong clubs presumably use the tiles. Holmes won't admit it, but he appears to be slightly impressed.
At Rikers, Watson tells Liam he looks terrible. And that is because he's using again. But he needs her help because the cops say he did a hit and run, but he doesn't think he did it. She's skeptical that his total blackout means he couldn't have hit someone. The evidence against him is that there was a picture of his car speeding away, but he thinks he left the keys in his car. So could she just put in a good friend with her friend at the DA's office? Nope. He gets touchy: "You treat all the guys you slept with this nice, or is it just me?" Watson answers, "Just you."
Watson joins Bell and Holmes in Chinatown. Bell is pleased that Watson will deal with Holmes because in the car, he wouldn't shut up about the effect of tides on crimes. Holmes explains that's he's considering writing a monograph, which is exactly the kind of reference to the original stories that I like. Anyway, Holmes and Bell have investigated two gambling parlors and gotten nowhere, so Watson is just in time for the last one. An impassive man with a neck tattoo lets them in. Holmes offers to help with Watson's client. He's clearly jealous that she had another client. She says there's no chance he's innocent.
Bell interrogates a man in English. Watson fills Holmes in on Liam's situation, concluding, "If this is how he bottoms out, I have to let it happen." Bell says no one here speaks English, so it's useless. It's weird that they wouldn't bring an interpreter. Especially after going to two other Chinese gambling dens. Holmes talks to a janitor in bespoke clothes, pointing out that he clearly speaks English and recently applied bleach to one specific part of the floor. The official explanation is that drunk threw up, but there's an awful lot of floor that's been bleached. And those spots on the wall that were recently spackled seem more like the results of stray gunshots than the sort of thing that happen when someone throws up. So Holmes would like to see the footage from the security camera that he says is hidden behind the fake smoke detector. He makes a good point that you don't want to mount a smoke detector above a Hitachi grill. The guy gives up and tells a minion to fetch his computer.
On the video, someone comes in waves a gun around, takes money from Chinese gamblers, and shoots Trent Annunzio at close range. The guy in charge defensively points out that they got robbed too. Holmes says there's got to be another video because the shooter clearly didn't have a mask on at the front door. He runs roughshod over the inevitable objections about how they want to handle it themselves. So the video shows a great full-face shot of some guy, just before he puts on a ski mask. Holmes: "Detective Bell, I give you Trent Annunzio's murderer."
At the police station, Holmes flips through mug shots looking for the face from the video. Watson thinks he's going too fast, but he insists he is merely taking the minimum time required. Watson gives him some tea, which is neither the coffee he asked for nor the kind of tea a British person likes. Watson explains that there are some Chinese herbs in there, but she can defend it from a medical standpoint. Because he's sick, remember? To change the subject, Holmes has Liam's arrest record. Just in case she wanted to be sure about him. Bell comes in and reports that he's identified the suspect as Raoul Ramirez, who was recently in Sing Sing. Watson goes with him, but Watson lingers with Liam's arrest record. I don't think she's supposed to have that.
Raoul is in the interrogation room and Bell is going through the evidence against him. Since it includes clear video of him going into the gambling den he shot up and a bunch of wallets they found in his garbage, including Trent's, it doesn't look great for him. Raoul says he was hired by someone, which is really all he can say at this point. His story is that he came home last week and found an envelope with a thousand dollars in cash. And then a mysterious voice on the phone said he'd get nine thousand more for killing Trent by shooting him once in each eye. The plan was for Raoul to do him tomorrow night as he walked to his car. But after following him around, he figured, you know, might as well rob a gambling den at the same time. He never met the guy who hired him because all the communication was through scrambled-voice calls or texts. Raoul happily lets the police have his phone, although I don't think "I only killed that guy for the money!" is the sort of plea that gets you completely off the hook.
Gregson looks at Raoul's phone, where there's a photo of Trent, I guess so he'd know who to kill. Holmes barely looks at it, but Watson says the bottom left of the photo has a discolored rectangle. Holmes starts paying attention again and explains it's a picture of a picture in a frame. And there's a reflection of a Chinese good luck charm that Trent kept at his office. Gregson suggests that all they need is to find someone with access to Trent's office who lived in Raoul's neighborhood. Holmes has just the guy!
It's O'Brien! The TA from earlier! He lives two blocks away from Raoul, which Holmes knew because he spotted his keychain. He has a motive because he applied for a job at Berkeley, but Trent torpedoed his application with a mean anti-recommendation. And Bell found a complaint letter he'd been writing on his computer, although he never sent it. Watson tells Holmes he doesn't look clammy anymore, and he admits that he feels better. He's not ready to credit the tea, though. The police have now found a burner phone in Mr. O'Brien's bedroom, and of course it's the one that sent messages to Raoul. He says he's never seen it before. Holmes calls Gregson over to ask why he'd save the phone, when obviously it's meant to be thrown away. And he didn't panic when they went to search the bedroom. But then Bell tells them the kid confessed to everything. Gregson: "Thank god for stupid people."
Later, at the brownstone, Holmes watches video of the ensuing interrogation of O'Brien, who is agreeing with everything the police accuse him of. But he's just repeating information, not volunteering anything. So Holmes isn't convinced. On the floor, he's got a bunch of O'Brien's paperwork including bank statements and whatnot. Watson observes that he downloaded a lot of music: over a hundred songs, mostly bad (according to Holmes). Holmes gets some chips from an upper bookshelf, which isn't strictly relevant to anything but was a neat detail. Watson says she looked at Liam's file. And there wasn't a scratch on him and no bruise from the seatbelt, which doesn't match the giant dent in the car. Holmes says there have been a series of joyrides in Astoria, where Liam lives. But all the other stolen cars were hotwired. And nothing was stripped or stolen from Liam. She thinks maybe a keychain she gave him was stolen but nobody noticed. Holmes suggests that Liam could have sold it, since addicts do that sort of thing. He'd also like to know how long she worked with Liam before sleeping with him. She gracefully declines to answer. Anyway, she's going to Rikers tomorrow so he'll be on her own.
After Watson leaves the room, Holmes notices that O'Brien bought The Pina Colada Song and Kiss From a Rose. And then we cut to the home of June (the widow, where we see that the CDs he was looking at earlier include a mix CD with those two songs on it. Holmes and Bell are talking to her about why she'd have mix Cs made from O'Brien's music. Holmes says O'Brien had no idea the phone was in his room. She says she didn't know anything about the phone. But why would O'Brien confess, Holmes wonders. Well, he could have thought June left it there by accident. Or maybe he's a sap who realized he was set up but took the fall anyway. She wants them to leave. Bell leans on her, so she shows them a Chinese army manual of how to beat a suspect but leave no marks. Because Trent used those techniques on her. He also made her do things while she taped them. But she had nothing to do with Trent's death! And neither did Brendan! She promises! Holmes asks why they would trust her judgment, considering she stayed with a crazy sadist. Well, she says, Trent was not really her husband. He wouldn't marry her because if she wasn't married, she wouldn't be able to go to the police without being deported. And Brendan came to her house once and found her. She says the incriminating videos were all on his computer. But the folder is empty. Bell wants to take her to the station.
Watson shows Liam pictures of his car. He apologizes to her. She says he's apologized before. He decides the keychain she gave him is missing.
Watson comes home to find Holmes deconstructing the Annunzios' computer. The hard drive does not appear to have been swapped out. It would probably have been a better idea to see if any files had recently been deleted because it can be pretty hard to actually scrub data completely off a hard drive. He feels bad that a woman may be separated from her infant daughter. He'd also like some more tea, as he's come around on the Chinese herbs. Watson says Holmes was correct about Liam and admits that isn't an ex-client. He's just an ex who started using. And even after she hosted an intervention and sent him to rehab, he kept at it.
Holmes's phone rings. Trent's autopsy revealed traces of chrysanthemum and mulberry in his stomach. And since Holmes has recently been studying Chinese herbs, he knows those are for eye pain. Watson says there was a picture of him and his students where everyone had red-eye but him. So she suggests that there could have been a melanoma in his eye.
Holmes and Watson are now talking to Gregson with the news that there was uveal melanoma, which is "As painful as it is untreatable." Holmes's theory is that Trent only had a few months to live, so he set up his own murder. Imagine, he says, a sadistic monster who discovers his wife is cheating on him and learns that he's dying painfully. He finds a convenient murderer in Raoul Ramirez and plants evidence in O'Brien's apartment. He gives a recommendation that gives O'Brien motive and destroys the videos that are evidence of his treatment of June. He even plots to have his eyes destroyed to hide all evidence of the melanoma. The only flaw in the plan is that when O'Brien did the job at the gambling den, it meant the murder didn't point at O'Brien. Gregson says they have too much evidence on O'Brien, including the phone and confession. And they already handed June over to ICE, who have started deportation proceedings. So if it's a master plan, it's a damn good one. They need actual proof this time, since the alleged villain is dead and won't be able to confess.
Holmes is in the bathroom, looking at the usual array of pictures connected by string. His theory is that looking at evidence in new location might help. Watson wants to take a shower, so she needs to help him. She notices that O'Brien and Raoul really did live right to each other. So they need to figure out what Trent did to find a convenient murderer. Holmes engages in some product placement so blatant it even includes sound effects from a particular computer's television commercials. Then he goes online to the New York Sex Offender Registry because rapists are all in a convenient database accessible to the public. And surely there's enough crossover between rapists and murderers to make that work. Raoul was the second one on the list. Dennis Kaminski was the first name, and his crime was setting up video camera in bathrooms.
Watson has gone back out to Rikers and tells Liam he doesn't need to say anything. He expected more disappointment from her and claims that he wants to get clean. She says he shouldn't do it for her. But she offers the 59th Street Clinic as a good place to go. She won't be there waiting for him when he gets out.
Gregson and Holmes are talking to June. She's a little unsure about Trent being behind everything. But it turns out that Dennis Kaminski was suspicious about this magical envelope of cash and thought maybe the police were trying to set him up. So he used his experience with hidden cameras to protect himself. And that means that he had video of Trent coming to his door. Good enough! So O'Brien comes in. He's free, but June is still going to be deported. Unless they were serious about being married? Gregson says his understanding is that they could get married today and the deportation proceedings would stop. Trent's okay with that. So's she! Holmes tells him, "Good show, Mr. O'Brien." He walks out of the police station, looking a little uncomfortable.
Watson sits on a wooden bench at the 59th street clinic. Holmes comes in and sits to her. She says he didn't have to come. But he claims that he'd kind of like to meet the ex, so he sits on the bench to her. She's pretty sure he's not going to show.
Holmes: "Yet here you sit."
Watson: "Give him ten more minutes."
"There's someplace else you have to be."
"Not tonight, Watson. Not tonight."
I like it. There's a chance that Holmes is here because of jealousy, but I like to think he's just honestly trying to show support for a fellow addict.
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.