ELEMENTARY Recap: One Way To Get Off

It looks like a burglary in process as a man with a painted white face and all black “I’m a burglar clothes” walks through a big house. He gets to the dining room where he shoots a tied up man and woman in the back of the head.

Breakfast time at Casa de Holmes, there isn’t a lot of talking though since Holmes is still mad at Watson for going to his friend Alistair. Watson wants to talk about Irene but Sherlock gets a text about a double homicide. He makes up a reason to go the kitchen and leaves Watson at the house. He is clearly still mad.

Holmes gets to the house we saw in the opening. The murders remind the captain of murders that happened in the 90’s. That man was caught though, so why a copycat now…or did they get the wrong person years ago. A detail that not even the captain remembers from the original murders was duplicated in this murder as well. Holmes thinks Cruz (the man who was convicted) didn’t work alone.

At the precinct Watson is calling Sherlock but he is ignoring her. Holmes wants to go to prison to talk to Cruz but the Captain doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to even admit the crimes are connected. Watson shows up at the precinct where she and Holmes start to fight. He will follow the rules of their agreement to the letter but he will not disclose his personal feeling or past to her. Watson says fine, swings around and leaves, she’ll check in with him in two hours.

Detective Bell who has yet to argue with anything Holmes says has found emails the victims had received threatening them. They were from a contractor they had a dispute with.
Bell, Homes and the Captain pay the contractor a visit. Holmes pretends to use the bathroom but instead checks out the contractor’s basement. He hears a woman crying in a hidden room behind a cabinet. She is chained up and almost naked. Sherlock is talking to the woman who was locked up as she gets into an ambulance. Her name is Katia; she was sold a couple of weeks ago to the contractor. She is also his alibi.

Watson is making use of her two hours away from Sherlock to check with the psychologist at the rehab facility Holmes attended. The shrink wasn’t too much help.

Holmes wants to talk to the task force about the original cases, specifically the missing shoes from each of the crime scenes. The captain is playing the role of doubting Sherlock this episode, someone has to do it.
Holmes starts with the ballistics from the original case and compares them to the bullet used in the shooting last night. They match and thankfully this convinces the captain to go with Holmes to question the incarcerated Cruz about his partner. Before they go to question him they go over all of the case files from the original killings with the task force.
I should mention that the Captain isn’t too happy that Holmes called in his old partner (Callie Thorne). I should also mention when Holmes starts asking questions about their partnership and how it ended it sounds an awful lot like the questions he is refusing to answer with Watson about Irene.

Watson is still at the rehab place talking to people, all of whom didn’t like Holmes. She sees the gardener and engages him in conversation. Turns out Sherlock talked to him quite a bit. The gardener even has some personal things from Holmes that were left at the facility, letters from Irene Adler.

At the prison the Captain and Holmes are talking to Cruz. Cruz seems pretty nonchalant about the fact that they are there; he did see the papers after all. He says he is innocent and now that there was another murder it helps prove his case. Cruz goes as far as to accuse the Captain of planting evidence against him.
Next Holmes and the Captain check in on the alibi Cruz had. It was a woman who recanted the moment Cruz confessed. According to her son she died four years ago.

That evening Holmes goes over the Cruz interview videos from the original case when Watson shows up. She barely says anything too him, just goes upstairs and pulls out the letters from Irene.
Holmes sees something on the tape, something big enough to go upstairs and ask for Watson’s perspective. It’s the mug in the video that Cruz drinks his coffee from. It turns out to be the same mug that was found at the third murder scene. The evidence, the fingerprints on the mug, which really solidified Cruz as the murderer. The evidence was planted.

The next morning Holmes confronts the captain. He says he absolutely did not plant evidence; he goes as far as to kick Holmes out of her office. When he gets home Watson gives Holmes the letters she got from the gardener. She didn’t read them though; she doesn’t want to find out through snooping. He takes the letters and put them in the blender. Watson agrees to not ask any more questions about Irene.

Sherlock goes over the case with Watson, he found a suspect, someone who was in prison for the last 12 years, which would explain the 13 year absence in murders. The police are looking for him since he didn’t check in with his parole officer, but Holmes thinks he has a lead on where Victor may be.

The Captain asks to meet his old partner and confronts her about planting the evidence. She says they had the right guy; she just needed to make it stick. He says he isn’t going to let this go, he will own up to whatever his part may be.

Watson and Holmes get to the motel where the suspect is staying. Holmes picks the lock on his door and they check out his room. Holmes finds a loose floorboard and under it a gun. Possibly the murder weapon. He doesn’t get to have the moment for too long, the Captain calls; there was another murder, a triple homicide this time.

At the newest crime scene the Captain is showing Holmes the evidence, including some cigarette butts. Bell calls, they have Victor, the man Holmes suspected, in custody. But it turns out Holmes now doesn’t think he did the murder, or at least this last one. He gets to the precinct and throws an orange at Victor’s face. It hits him in the face which somehow proves he didn’t do it. Holmes says Victor is blind in one eye; he couldn’t have hit a moving target (the third person from the last murder). He goes on to say the cigarette butts from the crime scene were planted as well as the gun, by the only person that would benefit from someone being convicted of all of the murders, Cruz. Cruz working with someone else to frame Victor, now they just have to identify the silent partner.

Watching Cruz do a TV interview Holmes has an idea. It seems to lead him to the son of the woman who originally was going to be Cruz’s alibi before she recanted. Holmes takes Detective Bell with him to visit Shawn. He states Cruz was his father and he found out, that is why he volunteered at the prison library where Cruz had a job. Holmes tells him Cruz is going to turn on him without a second thought.
Holmes must have gotten Shawn to give up the details because he and the captain present Cruz with the shoes from the first murders and tell him he is getting charged with five more counts of conspiracy. Cruz is not so happy about that.

Back at home Sherlock opens up for just a moment. He says he and Irene were quite close and she died. He did not take her passing very well. That is all he is willing to share though and we fade to black.

Elementary airs Thursday 10/9c on CBS