- Sherlock and Kitty investigate after a man's severed hand is found in the street; Gregson gets in trouble with the brass and his daughter when he punches another cop; Sherlock discovers a manuscript that Watson has written about his cases.
- A man's hand is found in the street. Sherlock and his new protege, Kitty, investigate to find out where the rest of his body is. Meanwhile, Sherlock discovers that an old laptop he loaned out to Watson contains evidence that she has written a book about him.—schuchat
- When a severed adult male hand is found, Sherlock's deductive powers quickly find the rest of the corpse under an impounded car. His new 'detctve apprentice' Kitty can admire his puzzling methods on the case, which involves a plot to rob Amit Hattengatti's employer's secret, biometry-secured vault. She's puzzled to be asked, so late, to sign a confidentiality contract because Holmes found proof on her predecessor's laptop that Watson secretly based a manuscript on his cases. Captain Gregson risks his career and rapport with his ingrate daughter, NYPD cadet Hannah, who resents his violent dealing with a fellow cop who took liberties with her.—KGF Vissers
- "Elementary" - "Rip Off" - Nov. 27, 2014
We open on a "Law and Order"-style cold open. A woman on her phone steps in a bloody puddle and sees a disembodied hand. Accordingly, she screams.
Meanwhile at the brownstone, Kitty is doing some kind of experiment with Clyde the turtle. He has a choice of a bell or a buzzer when he's fed and, for some reason when she feed him he keeps hitting the buzzer. Sherlock arrives and asks Kitty to sign a non-disclosure agreement. She's confused since they've worked together for months. He insists. They get the call to check out the hand.
From the messy break of the hand and the dirty spot on an otherwise street-cleaned street Sherlock deduces that the man was dragged away when the car was towed. They go to the tow lot and find the man, his belt hooked into the undercarriage.
At the M.E. they learn-- even though Sherlock already knew of course-- that the man was a murder victim, blunt force trauma. He was also a cancer patient and recently had chemo. Sherlock discovers in his belongings that he was an orthodox Jew so they go to synagogues with the man's photos.
They strike gold at one synagogue. They talk to the man's brother, apparently his name was Moishe, an all around good guy with no enemies who ran a post office-type store.
They go to the store and talk to Moishe's employee Amit. Amit confirms that Moishe was a good guy, pointing out that he was an orthodox Jew who hired someone named Amit. In inspecting the backroom of the store Sherlock discovers a hidden safe. Inside is a separate ledger book with a cryptic code, partially in Hebrew. Amit says he can't think of anyone else who might've wanted to hurt Moishe and he himself, a grad student, was in a study group all night.
Back at the brownstone working on the case, Kitty reaches for a laptop and Sherlock pulls it away asking her not to use that one and that he recently purchased one for her use. She wonders what's up between this and the NDA. He says he's raw from recent "literary espionage." When Joan left she returned the laptop to Sherlock and thought she had successfully trashed the book she had been working on: "The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes." Of course, he managed to find the 474 page manuscript and is incensed. He says if she's retained copies he will demand their surrender when she comes from Copenhagen. Kitty says she understands why he's mad but Joan has a right to her stories. He says the title made it seem more like his stories.
Suddenly he has an epiphany: Moishe was a diamond smuggler. He thanks her for making him angry since it can be a good distraction and a pathway for such epiphanies. From the ledgers Sherlock was able to deduce that one of the mailboxes in Moishe's store belonged to a diplomat: a dead diplomat. Knowing that the box and its contents would get less scrutiny from customs he used it to have conflict diamonds sent to him from Tel Aviv. Kitty says she's sad they're seeking justice for a scoundrel. Also a hypocrite since Sherlock found a stain in the ledger that likely came from a shrimp po' boy. A no-no for an Orthodox jew.
As they begin to run down jewelers that take conflict diamonds at the precinct, Holmes see a man delivers a briefcase in a box.He goes to the cop, whose lips he read to learn this information, and open the box. Inside is a briefcase, found in a dumpster, full of diamonds and with handcuffs attached. The killers took his hand off to take the briefcase.
With the help of some crash test dummies, Sherlock determines it would've taken 495 pounds of pressure to rip off Moishe's hand and that it could conceivably done by a human, a weightlifting human. He finds lists of weightlifters who claimed to have clean and jerked 500 pounds but when Kitty runs them down none have any serious rap sheets.
They go to a local meathead gym and while they and Bell wait for the manager to arrive, Kitty asks how Joan is an author. Sherlock doesn't have an informed opinion since he only read the first page.
They then run into a famous lifter named Dana, who claims to have pulled 530 pounds. Sherlock starts to ask him about the murder and the guy blows him off. Sherlock challenges him to arm wrestling. He says if Dana wins he gets $200 and if Sherlock wins he will answer his questions. Everyone crowds around. Sherlock claims the English way is not to go side to side but back to front, so when he pulls Dana's hand to his own chest he will have won. They start and Sherlock immediately lets his hand go resulting in Dana's hand smack back into his own face, bloodying his nose. Someone hands him a towel. Sherlock gives him the money and hands Bell the towel, now full of fresh DNA evidence. Crafty!
They use this to pin him to the crime and he arrives at the precinct with his lawyer in tow. He wants to make a deal. He wants to make a full confession to Gregson and Bell and talk about crimes that haven't happened yet in exchange for leniency. He claims he feels bad. He says he was hired to kill Moishe but he took no pleasure from it but his family needed the money. Except he lost it playing cards. He never met the guy but says his voice was Dutch-sounding. He also gives them a bunch of emails from this man who uses awful street lingo about "icing" Moishe and giving the guy "fat stacks." He says he has a list of three other kills the guy wanted including Amit at the post office store.
Sherlock and Kitty go back to the store and Amit says he knew something was going on but he didn't know what and tells them that he does remember a run in with a man named Leonard, whose last name he can't pronounce, with a Dutch-sounding accent. The man came in and quarreled with Moishe and threatened to kill him. Amit says it was none of his business. He notes he witnessed this as did two regular customers: the other two names on the list.
They run down the man, Leonard, he is South African, explaining the accent. They bring him in and lean on him and he admits to all of the diamond smuggling stuff but claims he didn't kill Moishe. Listening to him talk, Sherlock realizes he's telling the truth. When he runs some of the awful email street lingo by him Leonard is perplexed. Sherlock knows that Leonard is being framed somehow. Bell still wants a confession out of him.
Back at the brownstone Sherlock and Kitty try to work through the puzzle. If Leonard didn't do it, who did? Sherlock still seems distracted by Watson's book. Kitty says she knows he's afraid to read it and that he fears her judgement. He claims this is not the case. She offers to read it for him and let him know if he should steer clear. He demurs and says she didn't share it she obviously meant to dispose of it he can't in good conscious let her do that. So, she promptly pours her soda on it and destroys the laptop. She says if he doesn't need to read it then neither does she and now he can focus on the case.
They get an email from Bell saying they found Dana's money he claimed to have gambled away. Kitty looks at the picture of his payoff and notices it's wrapped with the same pink rubber bands from the post office store. She posits he left the stains on the ledger and that he was an active partner in the diamond smuggling. When Moishe started making noise that he wanted to get out, he had recently learned he was in remission and regained his virtue, he wanted to get Moishe out of the way and do it himself. He was also member of the gym where Dana worked out and maybe heard him cry poor between sets. Sherlock entertains her theory.
They bring Amit in. They figured it out. He was in cahoots with Dana's lawyer. Sherlock actually compliments his plan: to bribe Dana's attorney to bribe him and say the right things about Leonard. Bell compliments the plan also. They say it's now a race to who confesses first to get the best deal. Bell tells him to cheer up since he can finish his doctorate in prison.
Back at the brownstone Sherlock is packing up the dummies. He tells Kitty she's making great strides. And then he admits that she was right that Watson has a right to tell her stories and that he was mildly nervous about subjecting himself to her full appraisal. He rips up the NDA he made her sign and she should feel free to produce to her own memoirs. She says she's not much of a writer. He says to let him know if that changes because if she does, someone might be interested to read it.
In the night's uncharacteristically personal b-story we meet Capt. Gregson's daughter Hannah. It turns out she's also a cop and she's been sleeping with her partner Stots. And it further turns out that Stots is a bad man, a hothead who hit her. So, accordingly Gregson slugged him. Unfortunately, he did this in full view of a bunch of other cops who had know idea the pair were sleeping together or anything else. Hannah, who is ambitious like her dad and someday wants to be captain as well does not want to be perceived as weak by her peers or supervisors, as someone who needs her daddy to fight her battles. Especially a battle she told him about in confidence.
Gregson correctly points out that Stots is her partner and she will have to see him every day and if she doesn't report him he could hurt someone else. She brushes this off and says he needs to come to her precinct house and, in full view of everyone at role call, shake Stots' hand to show everything is all good. Gregson is tortured by this idea.
Kitty lip reads one of these exchanges and asks Gregson to coffee to offer some advice. She thanks him for the kindness he's shown to her by keeping her secret. And then she tells him that he must do what his daughter has asked because it is not about him, but her. And further, whenever someone who has been victimized has someone act on their pity or give them specific look, they feel victimized all over again. Gregson hears this but is still torn up.
Ultimately, he goes to the role call and shakes the guy's hand. Stots informs him that he is leaving the police force and going to work for a friend's security firm. He tells Gregson to please relay this to his friend, the "English" girl.
Later, Gregson runs into Kitty entering the elevator at his precinct and asks her what she said to Stots to scare him all the way out of the police force. She gives him a sly smile and asks "Does it matter?" The elevator doors close.
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