PSYCH: “Autopsy Turvy” Recap

Chief Vick calls Woody in to her office, and she’s livid. It seems Woody made a very serious mistake on an autopsy, by ruling a death and accident that new information suggests was a murder. The victim, Bob White, was drunk and fell, then hit by a bus. A missing earlobe discovered by mortician Grace Larson suggests it was murder. Grace is an old flame of Woody’s from his forensics school days. She says the Woody she knew would never have made a mistake like this one. Woody’s job is on the line, so Shawn and Gus step up to help him. As if Woody didn’t already have enough to worry about.

Shawn and Gus go to the scene of the accident. Bob was drunk, lying in the street, and the street light was out preventing the bus driver from seeing him. As they reenact the scene, they are approached by Whip Chatterly, the owner of a bookstore across the street that specializes in crime novels. He’s excited to meet Shawn Spencer, and offers them his assistance. He fancies himself a murder expert.

Whip doesn’t come off well on first impression, and Gus thinks they’ve hung out with enough crazy white people this year. Whip has them turn away while he opens a secret passage in his store, but Shawn watches him from a glass reflection. Whip confesses he just wanted to get them in that room, and that’s enough crazy for the boys, they’re out of there. Whip follows and begs for an autograph on his Yang book. He really wants to help them, and sweetens the deal by offering snacks, but Shawn and Gus are still hell-bent on getting away.

At the morgue, the Chief meets with all involved and reveals Shawn agrees that the victim was murdered. Woody is still rattled that he made such an error. Since Grace has kept her credentials up, the Chief hires her to assist in this case. Grace and Woody bicker, and the Chief warns Woody that if this murder goes unsolved he might be out of a job. Woody and Grace go through the contents of Bob’s stomach, and the clues lead Shawn and Gus to a Thai restaurant they know, where they learn Bob had dinner just hours before his death. He was a lonely man, and didn’t have a girlfriend. He didn’t consume any alcohol, because he was allergic, but he did have plum cake that had a small amount in it. Grace suggests maybe someone injected the alcohol into him, and she and Woody continue the exam. Bob had left some carnival tickets behind on his table, but Whip says they weren’t carnival tickets at all and leads Shawn and Gus to the victims next stop.

By the time they reach their destination, they have learned that Woody and Grace found the injection site between Bob’s toes. The tickets Bob had were to a retro diner dancehall. It looks like a speakeasy, people are dressed in period clothing, some in uniform. They call Henry in on the case to help them question the women present. They finally locate a woman, Sandy, who knew Bob. She reveals that he was there that night and was very paranoid. He believed someone was following him. Whip suggests Bob made a perfect victim, lonely, kept a regular routine, no one would miss him. The woman reveals that she sent him to someone who could help him, a psychic. The psychic admits Bob came to see her, and told her he was in love with a woman named Penny. She told him the woman cared for him, because Sandy asked her to and she owed her a favor. Bob was happy and rushed out to find Penny. The Psychic loses her mysterious accent when she learns Bob was later murdered. The psychic draws the death card and tells Whip that she sees death in him. She wants them all to leave, the bad karma is too much for her. Once outside, Whip is freaked out over her prediction, he thinks he should leave the crime work to Gus and Shawn. They offer him a ride home, and a stop at Arby’s along the way.

Lassiter and Juliet search Bob’s apartment. They find an address for a woman named Penny, just moments before Shawn calls to tell them he feels a connection between Bob and the name Penny. Shawn and Gus meet up with Juliet and Lassiter at Penny’s door. She invites them in, and they find that she has an audience seated in her apartment. She’s a live performance artist, and these people all pay to watch her go about her daily life. Lassiter tells them all to get out, but they think he’s just part of the show and give him a round of applause. Penny milks the drama of bobby’s death reveal a bit too much, and Lassie reaches boiling point. He orders them all out, and makes Penny comply.

Grace and Woody are still conducting a thorough autopsy on Bob, and Woody discovers pigment fillers in the nail beds. The two are disturbingly flirty and romantic over the corpse. Woody reveals that he and his wife are separated.

Penny says Bob came to the show every day but they never spoke, then he showed up two nights before and professed his love for her. He’d said a fortune teller told him she felt the same. She threatened to call the cops if he didn’t get out. She watched him walk away, and saw that he talked to someone in a black Impala, then got in the car with them. Shawn says that whoever was in that car was probably the last person to see him alive, because they are probably the one the killed him.

Back at the lab, Shawn and Gus are a bit disturbed at the sight of Woody and Grace examining intestines while romantically sharing a bowl of strawberries. Woody tells them about the pigment fillers, common in acrylic paints. The preserving agent in it suggests it was probably used outdoors. The guys had seen a mural in their earlier travels, so they go to inspect it more closely. Shawn finds a stamp on it that looks just like one he had seen in many other places during the investigation, including Whip’s book. He thinks Whip committed the murder in order to immortalize himself, and he wanted them to catch him. Shawn calls Lassie to meet them at Whip’s place. When they arrive, they find the black Impala in the garage. They also find Whip’s body inside it, with a note thanking them for helping reveal him as the killer.

In Woody’s lab, Shawn laments being ensnared in Whip’s lies, and being left without snacks. Woody has Cakesters, guess it was the least he could do after Shawn solved the case for him. Shawn and Gus take their leave and head home, but on the way Shawn realizes he had missed a call from Whip around the time of his death. When he plays it, he hears a gun shot and then a car door slamming. Gus thinks it’s the creepiest butt dial ever, but Shawn points out that Whip couldn’t have slammed the door himself after he was dead. They go to search Whip’s book store and the secret room. Whip had been watching old surveillance footage, mostly of a person dressed in Sherlock Holmes garb who never showed their face. Shawn looks through books on Whip’s desk and notices parts of several pages missing. At the same time, Woody has found a capsule in Whip’s esophagus, and hidden inside it were tiny bits of paper (the ones from the book pages). Grace tells Woody this could be a game changer, they may have to pull an all nighter.

Shawn realizes that Whip was the killer’s mark, he made a perfect one because of his generally creepy nature. Shawn notices “Sherlock” pulling their earlobe, and realizes that Grace Larson has that same tic, and she does it a lot. He calls Woody to warn him, but Grace won’t let him answer, she has him at gunpoint. She places the pieces of paper in her pocket and tells Woody he ruined everything by digging for answers in Whip’s death instead of just closing a case that seemed clear cut. Her fingerprints were on those pieces of paper. All these years she has wanted to be as good as Woody. She didn’t want to be a mortician, she applied for every forensics job that came open. Woody tells her she’s insane. He isn’t ready to die, he hasn’t seen Gloria Estefan in concert yet. He gets on his knees to beg her, and is rescued by Juliet and a team of cops. Luckily for Woody, she had been working late at the office when Shawn called.

The Chief reinstates Woody’s status as Chief Coroner. He’s thankful, and maybe more than a little inappropriate. He hits on the Chief, with Gus and Shawn trying to get him to shut up. They rush him out of the room, leaving a bewildered Chief Vick looking as though she was having second thoughts about Woody’s tenure.

Psych airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on USA.