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Watson gets offered a case of her own where she has to look through files to discover who's been robbing falafel carts. Now forget about the case, because Watson doesn't have time to work on it and Holmes solves it offscreen.
In the actual case, someone breaks into Captain Gregson's house with a gun! But his wife not only gets the intruder to leave, she also manages to shoot him in the shoulder. The ensuing investigation quickly establishes that Gregson and his wife are separated, which is a shame for them, but not actually that useful in terms of getting the case solved. Holmes goes through Gregson's spam folder and finds a lot of emails from a weirdo who's obsessed with him. He and Watson look the guy up, and he does indeed have a bullet wound in his shoulder. But he gave it to himself because he was going to pretend to be the intruder. So that was a dead end.
Luckily, someone named Sam Clennon gets shot by someone who seems to be the same intruder! Well, I guess it wasn't that lucky for the guy who got shot. He just got back from Afghanistan and now he got shot in his own home. Holmes sees that he'd been stabbed at some point, and the guy who did it is in town. He seems a little unstable, and explains that he stabbed Clennon because they had a fight about Clennon having an affair with a married woman. But he has no bullet wound, so he's off the hook. The married woman in question is Beth Loney, an archaeologist played by Sarah Wynter. She suggests they talk to James Monroe, Clennon's commanding officer, who turns out to be Gregson's neighbor.
The neighbor is James Monroe and he's also been shot. This returns everything to square one until Holmes deduces that Roney stole a copper bowl from an archaeological site in Afghanistan and had an unknown accomplice kill Clennon and Monroe. She manages to get rid of the bowl without her noisy dog objecting to the visitor, which means it was her ex-husband, who never even showed up on screen. And Gregson decides to be nicer to his wife, so maybe they'll get back together.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open on a holding cell, which Holmes describes to Watson as "the human condition in all its sordid glory." Watson thinks this is a dumb way to spend a Friday night. Holmes disagrees, because Friday night means a full cell, and that means lots of opportunity to look at people and deduce how they got there. Watson does some deducing, but she gets stuck on a guy with a lot of tattoos. Holmes gives her a hint involving Yorkshire terriers, which annoys her. She goes off to get a coffee, and a man who looks like Eddie Pepitone asks to do him .
At the coffee machine, Watson is interrupted by Craig Basken of the night shift. He wants help with a string of falafel cart robberies that have left him stumped. She takes the case and Craig stammers that Holmes once called him a bell-end. He wants just Watson on the case and she takes the files.
A woman gets home while talking to her child on the phone. The child hasn't called her back from college, so she's leaving a message. Before we can get farther into the situation and start having opinions on whether she needs to let her kids have some space, a man in a ski mask asks where her husband is. He's got a gun and was waiting in the dark. She says she doesn't know where her husband is. Then she hits the car alarm remote control in her hand, which sets off red lights and honking. Nice! While the intruder is distracted, she runs upstairs, slams the bedroom door behind her and gets a gun. She shoots through the bedroom door, then calls the police to tell them that she shot at an intruder and there's blood. She thinks he's gone now, but she wants them to check on her husband. He's with the 11th precinct: "He's the captain there. His name's Tommy Gregson." Why, that's Captain Gregson!
When Gregson gets to his home, police are already there so he's immediately told that his wife is in the kitchen. Bell is on the lawn, interviewing a neighbor who was working in his garage when the gun went off. Holmes gets there and Bell makes him wait a few minutes, because the Gregsons need some time alone before being interrogated. Bell has to repeat himself, but Holmes does, in fact, stay outside the house for the moment. Luckily, he has this neighbor to talk to. The neighbor's name is James Monroe and he's heard it all before: "Yes. Like the fifth president." By the time he got outside, the intruder was running down the street. But he'd taken his mask off, so he knows he had dark hair. Holmes says there's blood on the car over here. Watson speculates that he couldn't have lost much blood if he was running down the street.
Inside. Mrs. Gregson (whose name is Cheryl, incidentally) didn't have the alarm on while she was out, which makes Captain Gregson unhappy. She's a good witness as befits a policeman's wife: the intruder had a Glock, possibly a 21; he was about 6'2" and maybe 170 pounds. She'd recognize his voice and is prepared to describe the mask to a police artist. Bell asks if there's been anything unusual going on at home. No, but Thomas is not living here at the moment. There's an awkward silence, broken by Holmes asking for how long. It's good to have someone around who's willing to ask the difficult questions. The answer is about a month. Cheryl's mother gets there and she goes off to be fussed over.
Alone with Bell, Holmes and Watson, Gregson says his wife is the victim and his target, so he can't run the investigation. But he "encourages" them to run the prints and blood immediately. Holmes suggests that he'll need to investigate Gregson's personal life in detail. Gregson is fine with that: "Whatever you need. Just help Marcus find this guy." Yeah. "Help" him.
Back to the Brownstone. Holmes is working on a laptop while Watson goes through paper files. Gregson once turned down a promotion that would have required him to work for Internal Affairs. Holmes reports that Gregson's emails are largely about cute kitties. Also, he knew that Gregson was separated because he stopped bringing lunches. But he didn't say anything, because Gregson's work didn't suffer. He also mentions that he's an excellent detective, which is quite a compliment from Sherlock Holmes. He takes a moment to describe marriage in entertainingly insulting terms, starting with "the elaborate ruse" and moving onto "an unnatural arrangement which forces its participants into an unhealthy monogamy." And there are more, too! Watson has turned up twenty cases with potential perps, but Holmes thinks it's a fool's errand because Gregson's criminals should be relatively smart. And you can't be that smart if your plan is to go shoot the police captain who arrested you and think you'll get away with it. Consequently, he's after an idiot. Like this guy: Dustin Bishop. Holmes went through Gregson's spam folder, and Mr. Bishop has been sending letters that all ended up there. This one (in Comic Sans, which is a great touch) is entitled "I'M GETTING UPSET!!!" in which he's angry that Gregson doesn't answer his emails. Another one is titled "LISTEN TO ME OR PAY THE PRICE".
Gregson comes in to work and there are a lot of people being extra-nice to him. Bell says the only prints on Cheryl's car were hers, and although they have a good DNA sample from the blood, it doesn't match anyone in the system. He adds, "And Holmes and Watson are running down some Holmes-and-Watson thing." It's just part of the process now. Bell has to ask if the separation could be related to the attack, and Gregson says it's just a temporary situation.
Holmes pounds on Dustin Bishop's door. He'd like to talk about his correspondence with Thomas Gregson. There's no answer, but Watson hears the water running. Watson picks the lock, although Holmes looks like he really wants to do it instead. They creep in. There are news clippings and pictures of Captain Gregson up on the wall, but they're neatly arranged and are not connected by yarn. So this guy's only a little crazy. They go into the bathroom, where Bishop is lying on the ground. He's been shot and lost a lot of blood.
The police arrive. Gregson does not like the look of the clippings wall. Bell says Bishop is at the hospital, where they took a .38 slug out of his shoulder. He's stable, but not conscious. They're running his DNA now, but Holmes says it won't match the blood on the car. Gregson thinks it was his wife's bullet in his shoulder. But Holmes says there's a Glock 21 and a .38 in the kitchen, plus old antipsychotics that haven't been refilled in a while. The blood on the car tells him the intruder was shot in the left shoulder, and Bishop shot himself in the right shoulder. So he was going to confess to a crime he didn't do because he's crazy. Sheesh. Gregson doesn't like this at all.
Someone comes home and checks his mail. A man in a ski mask shoots him in the back. BANG!
Morgue. Bell says the dead person is Sam Clennon, and he was probably killed by the same man who threatened Cheryl Gregson. They have security footage of someone climbing a fence and Cheryl has confirmed that it looks like the same person. Sam has scars from shrapnel wounds, a bullet wound and a stab wound. The shrapnel and bullet wounds, plus the heavily tanned face, tell Holmes he's been serving in Afghanistan. But the stab is weird, because that's not the kind of wound you naturally get in the modern military. Holmes thinks there might be a connection between Clennon and Gregson that would shed light on what person would want to shoot both of them. Gregson wants to leave and Bell says a dog walker saw a light blue pickup truck parked in front of his house.
Watson stops Basken in the halls and explains that she can't check out those files for him. But Basken says it's all taken care of, because Holmes gave him the solution already.
Police conference room. Holmes is studying something when Watson comes in to yell at him for solving her case without telling her. Holmes says he only knows most of the detectives as "Not Bell." That's not quite as complimentary as calling Gregson an excellent detective, but it still suggests he holds Bell above the rank and file. Anyway, he was up late and used her case as a palate cleanser. In his opinion, they're partners and they assist each other, so it doesn't matter who solved the case. What matters is the result. Bell comes in and tries to get them to come talk to Clennon's mother. Watson stomps out in a snit.
Cheryl Gregson brings out hot coffee to the police outside her house, and then she's surprised to see Captain Gregson there. He asks if she's seen Steven Accorsi, who she claims is a friend. He came twice, once to move furniture and the second time, she made him dinner, which seems to really aggravate the captain. She says nothing happened, but she's allowed to have dinner with whoever she wants. She wasn't happy in their marriage. The captain threatens to pick up a floozy at a bar, which doesn't scare her. She's mad about 28 years of missed weekends and dinners.
Bell, Holmes and Watson are breaking the news to Sam Clennon's mother. Mrs. Clennon says her son made it through three tours at Afghanistan, and then got killed in his own town. She's never heard of Thomas Gregson, nor can she think of anyone who'd want to hurt Sam. Holmes asks about him being stabbed. She says that in his last tour, there was a guy named Jacob Esparza who had trouble adjusting and came at Sam with a knife. She suggests trying Lt. James Monroe, Sam's commanding officer. Holmes notes that it's the fifth president, and Watson says they talked to him outside Gregson's house. Bell, not to be left out, adds that he had a buzz cut and a tattoo on his left arm. Aw, Bell wants to prove he observes things too!
Gregson gets a call as he leaves his home. Holmes tells him to get his protective detail over to Monroe's house. The intruder never used the name of the person he was looking for; he just asked Cheryl where her husband was. And Monroe's address comes up as Gregson's on "Maps Earth." So Gregson grabs two uniformed officers and bangs on Monroe's door. There's no answer. He pops the door open, and Monroe's dead on the floor.
Later, in Gregson's office, Bell says Monroe probably died shortly after Clennon. Jacob Esparza's height and weight match what they're looking for. And when Esparza left the army, he claimed that the others had it out for him. Holmes adds that he's a high school dropout, which helps explain why he hit the wrong house. Bell goes out to investigate Esparza. Holmes sticks around, claiming that Gregson gave him furtive glances, which he interpreted to mean that he had a question. Gregson says he was going to, but he decided not to ask him something. Holmes asks, "About your wife?" Gregson considered asking Holmes to investigate the "friend" she had dinner with and then he reconsidered. And it's probably too late for his marriage anyway: "I don't think it's gonna work out." Holmes gives him a look, starts to leave and then awkwardly says, "If you should need someone to talk to, and then please know I'll, um, make Watson available to you." Love it.
Jacob is being interrogated. He thinks it's funny that Clennon and Monroe are still messing with him even after they're dead. He's calmer than Bell expected, and he says the story about him cracking up is crap. He proposed to his girlfriend, went to Afghanistan, and then she started having an affair. And while he was there, he found out that Clennon was sleeping with a married woman, so he called him out and Clennon got physical. Jacob says he defended himself and the only reason that the reports say the stabbing was unprovoked was that that Clennon was Monroe's boy. He doesn't have an alibi, because he was home alone. Bell asks if he'll take off his shirt so they can look for bullet wounds. He does, and he seems pretty fit. And un-shot. He shrugs, "Guess I got nothing to worry about."
Holmes stops Watson while she's brushing her teeth. They're going to Queens to visit Elizabeth Roney, who was an archaeologist that Clennon was having an affair with. And maybe she had an affair with Monroe, too!
Ms. Roney has a dog who barks at Holmes incessantly until she tells it to shut up. Bark! Bark! Bark! She prefers to be called "Beth." Inside, her house is full of artifacts. She's been remotely overseeing a dig in Kabul for the last couple of days. She has videochat monitors set up. Holmes would like to talk to her husband. She says she was involved with Sam Clennon in Afghanistan, but it wasn't an affair because she was already going through a divorce. The set-up was that she was there to recover everything she could from a Buddhist temple that Sam's unit was guarding. She went to Mes Aynak and her husband went to Arizona. And she was never involved with Monroe. She says her husband Cameron wasn't a bad person, and also he didn't know anything about what she did in Afghanistan.
Brownstone. Holmes meditates. Watson found the Basken file outside her room. He thought she might want to do it herself, but she doesn't find it fun if it's already solved. She doesn't want busywork; she wants to be useful. Holmes explains that he's not just meditating for the fun of it; he's learning about Mes Aynak. There were lots of ancient Buddhist temples on the same spot, and also a huge copper deposit that was supposed to be mined. But before it could be mined, the Afghan government set a limited amount of time to remove the Buddhist stuff. And corners were cut. Holmes thinks maybe they stole stuff from the site. Nothing was reported, but that might just mean they carried out their robbery successfully.
The morning, Watson is asleep at a table in the living room. Holmes congratulates Watson on trying to work through the night. He's brought tea, Tibetan dried bread and the solution. He studied the list of things brought back. Every temple on that site has had a particular green copper bowl (which makes sense, what with it being an area rich in copper), except the dig where the security was overseen by Monroe and Clennon. He thinks the bowl was stolen. He's a picture. And there was one just like it on a shelf in Roney's home. She kept it off the catalog and slipped it to the military to get it back to the states. Bell is getting a search warrant right now. Holmes anticipates proving the bowl stolen, then leaning on her.
They go into Roney's home. The bowl is gone! Bell says they have nothing on her. I notice the videochat monitors are pointing right at the spot the bowl was hidden. I wonder if that'll come up! Like, they could demand archived footage to show the bowl there the day. But nothing like that happens, so never mind.
Roney is in the interrogation room. There's no sign of the bowl in her house and she denies ever having it. Holmes thinks it must have been passed off to a co-conspirator, specifically the man who shot Monroe and Clennon. Bell says she wasn't away from her computer for five minutes all day, according to her videoconference partners. I am sad that the videoconference does not prove to be evidence.
Brownstone. Holmes is listening to Buddhist chants until he gets fed up and smashes the record and announces that he's giving up on meditation. Holmes doesn't like the complete lack of suspects. And in other news, he's brought down a trunk he loathes. He supports Watson's instincts to improve herself, but he can't slow down for her. The trunk contains "the handful of cases in all of my career that have eluded my deduction." He's run dry on them, so she's free to work on them. This is quite a gesture of trust by him. He says, "You might even success where I have failed." Then he backs up slowly.
Back to the main case: None of the neighbors heard anyone approaching Roney's place. Watson points out the dog didn't even bark. The dog! Of course! This is a reference to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, in the Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze," where the story hinges on a dog not barking.
Holmes, Watson and various police go back to Roney's place, where the dog barks at them. Roney doesn't want to quiet him, but animal control gets her to. They brought an arrest warrant because they know her ex-husband Cameron killed Clennon and Monroe. Holmes says he's her new partner. His credit card showed he was in New York, not Arizona. And the news that the blood had his DNA made him roll on her. She still tries to deny it, so Holmes explains everything: "Your neighbors didn't recall hearing anything unusual between our two visits. Including the barking of your dog." So what man could get in and out without upsetting the dog? Arrest! Apparently the dog only barks at men, which I didn't really notice. But there you do.
Holmes knocks on Gregson's office. He's lying down on the couch, which is obviously what you do if you have a couch in your office. He did a background check on Steven Accorsi, whose name Gregson did not even give him. He seems aboveboard aside from parking tickets. Holmes verifies that Mrs. Gregson knew the Captain didn't like Steven. She chose someone to get a reaction from him. Holmes says the pictures of him are still on display in the house, which Gregson attributes to not wanting to let the kids know. Holmes says he usually cheers the end of a marriage, but he's come to appreciate partnership. He advises Gregson that the very smallest gesture can speak volumes. He's still willing to talk about "the charade that is wedded matrimony," but he recommends considering Cheryl a partner.
Gregson brings Gotham the doggie (the one Roney used to have) home to Cheryl. She likes the doggie! He says all the right stuff about how the separation isn't just a waiting period and how she deserves better than second position and he'll work to give it to her, but not by invading her space. And so forth. To be honest, I'm not that invested in Captain Gregson's marriage.
Watson opens the trunk. Holmes is way in the background, watching. He leaves without saying anything. It's a good scene, but there's not much to describe about it.
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.
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