Elementary: Who is that Masked Man Recap

Synopsis for 4×14: Sherlock continues to look into the attempt on his father’s life while also investigating the death of some Chinese gangsters who were shot in an arcade.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Joan and Sherlock, sometime between last week and this episode, made their way up to Quebec, Canada. Joan inserted herself into the house of a young woman and paved the way for Sherlock to steal some documents. It was quickly revealed that the young woman was the daughter of Sabine, the woman Sherlock’s father had been seeing at the time an attempt was made on his life. Sherlock had taken documents regarding Sabine, because he believed she may have played a part in the attempt on his father’s life.

Meanwhile, in China Town, three Chinese gangsters were gunned down in an arcade. Fleeing the scene was someone who appeared to be a small elderly woman that has presumably been the one to kill the gangsters. The NYPD was brought onto the case the next day, and suspicion was cast toward a rival gang.

Whoever pulled the trigger appeared to have been an ally, able to get behind enemy lines. They faked a seizure, probably to catch the gangsters off guard, and then when they rushed to help they were gunned down. Eyewitness testimony was useless in this case, as all anyone had seen were some inconspicuous people leaving the area… including an elderly woman.

Sherlock and Joan turned toward the leader of the snake eye boys (the gang members that were gunned down) regarding the death of his men. He, naturally, claimed to know nothing about the gang and said he wasn’t a leader. He also had an alibi. The nephew of his mistress had ended up in the hospital that very night, and he had gone to the hospital to be with her and him as he’d been mugged and assaulted.

In the midst of the case, Sherlock’s father muscled his way into the brownstone, upset about the earlier theft. Apparently he and Sabine’s daughter remained in contact, and when she realized what had happened she had called him. He was displeased to hear of Sherlock’s suspicions as it was clear he truly cared for Sabine and her daughter. Sherlock insisted that it was a lead he had to run down, regardless of his father’s personal feelings, and that it was the best lead he had whether or not Sabine was actively involved or not.

They looked into the assault the gang leader had mentioned and believed it to be connected. The nephew had been in the same area as the shooting, and Sherlock surmised that he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to and that the attacker had gotten him. They went back to the scene of the mugging and in a garbage can nearby found the costume that the assailant had been wearing. There was a mask and everything, created from mortician’s putty, made to look like a little old Chinese woman.

After the discovery, they pulled the two gang leaders (one overseeing the men who were shot, the other under suspicion of having orchestrated it) to let them know it appeared that a white man had been the killer. So unless either of them had allowed a white man into their gang, they could call off the impending war.

Thanks to help from the leaders, they were able to track down the wife of a former gangster who the mask had been modeled after. She said that a “white man with brown hair” had come into her place at a retirement home to take pictures of her. He’d also stolen her clothes.

However, when they tried to get video tapes of the man from the home it was revealed to the team that they only had closed circuit cameras. It was a dead end, so they had to turn to the men who had been shot to see what could be discovered about them.

As a short interlude, since Sherlock was still looking into Sabine, Joan and Sherlock discussed his mother. Apparently Sherlock’s father divorced his mother, and kicked her out of the home after shipping the boys off to boarding school earlier than initially anticipated.

Due to a prenuptial agreement, Morland would have full custody of their children and Sherlock’s mother was only given a modest stipend to live off of. It was so modest in fact, as Sherlock said, that when the apartment building caught on fire her apartment went up like a tinderbox. She was killed, and Sherlock still blamed his father for it.

They finally got a break in the case when Sherlock realized the good Samaritan, Sven, that had found the aforementioned beaten nephew worked with the retirement home as a mortician. He would have the ability and materials to make the mask, but they didn’t have a lead on his motive.

Regardless, they searched his home and found the plans and materials for three masks, not just the one that was used. The guy had run, but they were able to track him through a text message. Apparently he’d been given less than a year to live and sort of “snapped” after he was given the news. They were able to track him down and bring him in, and he admitted to almost everything. Except, for some reason, he refused to explain what the third mask was for.

Sherlock took a break to return some documents to his father, who gave Sherlock some other documents that he’d apparently kept from both him and Mycroft as he’d promised their mother he wouldn’t tell them. His mother had been an addict like Sherlock, and when her habit became worse, Morland sent them off to boarding to get them out of the house while he tried to convince her to seek treatment.

She refused treatment, and in the end the best thing he could do (though he admitted it was petty to an extent) was to divorce her and get her out of the house. However, he admitted to still feeling guilty over her loss, and clearly still blamed himself, too, for being petty at the time even though he seemed to believe it was what he needed to do for his family.

Back to the case, things became clear as it was wrapped up. Sven had been working with the Willowbrook retirement home for a while and had embalmed a body which had been killed via overdose. As discovered earlier by Joan, the retirement home had gang ties and was in place to try and convince tenants to leave their money to the retirement home, money which went directly to lining the pockets of the three snake eye boy gangsters who were shot.

After he’d discovered the tenant had been killed, he brought it up to the staff at Willowbrook and the director had him attacked and stabbed. After that, with his own death looming on the horizon, he planned revenge. He would kill the three guys profiting off of the scheme, and pretend to be the gang leader to shake down the Willowbrook director for the money.

In the end, he’d killed bad guys and secured a financial future for his wife and children.

Sherlock updated his father on the case, and let him know that Sabine was not directly involved in the attempt on his life. Rather, her email had been monitored by a mercenary who had been paid to make an attempt on Morland’s life. Finding the mercenary would probably be easy, but finding who hired him would be a different beast altogether. Sherlock and his father were left on rocky ground once again after Sherlock asked if Morland had given him the information on his mother “just to be terrible.”