Person of Interest: Sotto Voice Recap

Synopsis for 5×09: The Voice, an old villain, returns and creates a bit of chaos as the team race to save a man’s wife, while trying not to get blown up. Oh, and Shaw beats the crap out of some Mexican Coyotes falsely transporting people to the border. Go Shaw!

Rating: ★★★★☆

Somewhere a few miles south of the United States border, coyotes transporting a family try to kick them off the truck sooner than they would have liked. However, Shaw just so happened to be another passenger, and she made quick work of them and sent the family on their way with the truck while she footed it to the border still free of Samaritan.

Back in the City, Team Machine got a new number. A lowly locksmith appeared to be breaking into an investment firm. With a bomb in hand, Reese broke in on him and managed to get him to put down the bomb so he could take him into custody. He got him back to the precinct and into an interrogation room where the guy seemed awful squirrely about cameras. He refused to talk about what was going on, even after Reese disconnected the camera.

Reese and Fusco had a moody moment as Fusco went to help an officer bring in and process a bunch of gangster Templarios in order to escape Reese’s attention.

When Reese returned to the interrogation room, Easton explained to him why he’d broken into the investment firm. His wife had been taken and was being held hostage until he agreed to complete tasks laid out for him. A package containing the bomb was delivered to his house and he was told to go into the investment firm and blow it up in order to save his wife. When he played the message on his phone for Reese, Finch (listening over the comm) immediately recognized who it was. It was a villain known simply as “The Voice,” from an episode last season. He’d taken a 911 operator hostage over the phone in order to have information about a murder deleted from the 911 database.

Reese returned to Fusco and asked him to keep an eye on Easton, but Fusco refused. He said he had his own case which had just been tossed over to him, one about a cab driver who had been picked up with an unregistered gun. He brushed Reese off and told him to “put a uniform on it,” then went to interrogate his own suspect. Befuddled, Reese did ask a uniform to keep an eye on the guy while they got a swat team together to pursue a lead as to where Easton’s wife was being kept.

At the warehouse, Reese realized too late that it had all been a trap after he received a call from the Voice telling him as much. A lot of officers in the building got injured in the explosion. Finch ended up going to Elias to see if he had any information on the Voice, and the two teamed up (as Elias said he did not want to lose another friend) to go track down a known associate of Elias.

Fusco’s suspect ended up seeming innocent; a victim of circumstance. It did not take a lot of police work to put together that the suspect, Amir, was full of crap. His gun had a number of bodies attached to it, and the suspect immediately dropped his confused, innocent facade and requested a meeting with the prosecution in order to make a deal.

Root had her own number and was unable to help the boys in their quest. She’d been following an electrical engineer who ended up working for Samaritan. He was attempting to tap into a system that would provide Samaritan an even greater reach, and before she could shoot him, someone else beat her to the punch. She proceeded to pursue whoever it was.

Elias’ contact was a bomb maker who worked out of a defunct school. They wanted information on the Voice, and Elias was going to get it in whatever way he could. That included holding his contact at gunpoint until he gave them the information they needed. As the team got closer to unraveling everything thanks to the work Finch and Elias were doing, Easton tried to make a run for it and Reese stopped him and found out that the Voice had slipped directions under the door. Easton was supposed to go downstairs and release the Templarios.

They went down to holding and found that someone had beaten them to it and the gangsters were taking over the precinct after most of the police had been drawn out by bomb threats in the area.

Root chased down the shooter who had taken out Samaritan’s people only to come face to face with Shaw, who had finally been freed. Shaw claimed she was taking on Samaritan one person at a time, but had to stay away from her team because of the danger she posed. Her grasp on reality was unsteady and she couldn’t know if she was playing right into Samaritan’s plan or not. She also said she’d killed everyone in the simulations and worried she may do it again, this time for real.

Fusco and Reese ended up working together to face the Templarios and realized that Amir, the suspect Fusco had been interviewing, was the Templarios target. Amir explained that he was an old hitman for the Voice and had been asked to take out past employees. Then, as insurance, he figured out who the Voice was and planned to give up his name in an exchange for immunity, or some other deal. One of the officers Fusco had been working with turned against them and tried to end the job, but was stopped.

Shaw and Root had a moment where both threatened to kill themselves, Shaw claiming she’d do it to protect Root (the one person she’d been unable to kill) and Root claiming she’d do it if Shaw did it. They were at a standstill.

They finally put all the pieces together and realized that the whole thing had been a setup from the beginning. Finch found the Voice’s base of operations and looked through his finances to find that there had been a payoff to an actress who looked like Easton’s wife. They claim to the conclusion that Easton was the Voice, and that he had done everything to get to Amir and kill him before he could talk. He succeeded, and was about to shoot Reese when Fusco saved the day and got grazed by a bullet for his troubles.

The Voice ended up escaping, only to be found by Finch and Elias who proposed a truce. Yet as the Voice drove off, Elias blew his car to high heaven and that ended his reign. Finch was appropriately horrified.

Finally, Reese decided to read Fusco in on everything that was going on and told him about Samaritan. He was back on the team.