Synopsis of 05×02: A gangster enlists Sherlock’s help in solving the murder of his favorite smuggler and the case becomes interesting when everyone realizes at the center of it all is a rare Chinese artifact. During all the excitement, Joan helps Shinwell with a couple of things.
Following through on her offer to help, Joan used her sister’s connections to get Shinwell a place outside of the halfway house where he had been staying. Naturally, the apartment was not in the best shape but as he put it, it was his own place. He asked her if she did this for all of her former patients, and she told him it all depended on the help they needed.
Meanwhile, Sherlock got taken by a gang and was presented to the leader. He pointed out they had brought him to a miserable place to execute him and assumed they wanted something. It turned out they did. Someone had killed one of their favorite smugglers – Ray Torres – and a number of other associates.
They wanted to know who, and wanted Sherlock to find out for them. Refusing to take their money, Sherlock made them a deal: he would find their murderer if they were willing to get him information on a drug dealer peddling heroin laced with fentanyl which had recently killed someone he knew.
The deal was struck and Sherlock began the investigation. Rather quickly, they were able to tie the attack to a North Korean ship that had come into port. When they brought in the Captain of the ship he copped to everything, but it became clear that he hadn’t been the one to murder Ray Torres and his men. He may have been working for shady people, but he was not a killer.
When the Captain docked, Torres and his crew stormed the ship in retaliation for the North Koreans stepping on their territory. In the middle of the raid, they ended up stealing a locked box of unknown origins that the Captain had been asked to smuggle into the country.
In an attempt to get any information they could on Torres, Sherlock looked into him and found that he had a home and what appeared to be a mistress. Sherlock and Bell went to check it out while Joan went to see Shinwell.
In her conversation with him, he mentioned that he had a daughter he’d lost contact with while he was in prison. All he knew was that her mother had died and his daughter had been placed in someone’s care. He wanted to enlist Joan’s help in finding her.
At the Brownstone, Joan encountered some men in suits who offered a large sum of money (50 million dollars) for her to insure that the contents of the box that had been stolen off of the North Korean ship made it into their hands. She turned down the offer and escorted the shady fellows out of the apartment.
Bell and Sherlock, on the other hand, found Ray Torres’ lover and found out it was not a mistress, but a young gentleman. Torres’ partner explained that Ray had come across an object worth a lot of money and had plans to auction it and get them both out of the dangerous life Torres chose.
Using some sand on a desk where the object had been kept, Sherlock revealed that the object in question was the Imperial Jade Seal of China, which had once been traded by the emperor for 15 cities. It was a priceless artifact that had been missing for a very long time.
Sherlock explained it to Joan, and she shared about the representatives of Taiwan who had offered to purchase it, leading them to believe there was more at stake than they initially realized. Turning to the auction, Sherlock was able to bribe the catering company which supplied expensive snacks for Torres’ auction and went to the site.
While there, they noticed that a metal bar stretching across the bottom of a garage door had been bent in at two places. Jumping through logical hoops, Sherlock realized that the indents had come from an armored car owned by a gentleman who was CEO of Vax Geological, a company that invested in mines, fracking, and other similar projects.
Sherlock also knew that the CEO had a life long passion for Asian art, so he seemed like a good suspect to look into. However, they were unable to secure an appointment and instead decided to ambush him when he made his way to his car.
As they waited for the ambush, Sherlock shared his thoughts on Joan’s search for Shinwell’s daughter. He pointed out that Shinwell stepping back into her life might not be the best thing for her, and pointed out that Joan’s life would have been further harmed by her mentally unwell father’s presence in it. He cautioned her in her search.
His lawyers were waiting for him, along with a body guard, and served Sherlock and Joan with a restraining order. Somehow they’d seen them coming. Sherlock and Joan turned to the hacker collective, “Everyone,” to try and dig up some dirt on Vax and his organization, and while they worked at the Brownstone they received another visitor.
A young Chinese girl, daughter of the Minister of Chinese Commerce, pointed out that China had better access to financial resources than Taiwan. When Sherlock asked her if that meant they were offering more money, she smiled and said she “didn’t know” but it was clear they were being offered another bribe for the seal.
Sherlock had been ignoring his drug cartel client until Joan pointed out that he would be the one to show up on their doorstep next if he didn’t answer. They met for an update, and Sherlock realized quickly that his client had fulfilled his side of the bargain in an unconventional way. He killed the drug dealer and presented Sherlock with the body, then gave him an ultimatum.
Sherlock had two days or else he and Joan would be cut into pieces. When Sherlock reported the body to the police they ran an investigation and knew who did it, but the individual had been shipped off to a country without extradition. Smooth work, drug dealer dudes.
After “Everyone” pulled through, Sherlock took the information they found and stood outside of Vax Geological. He accused the CEO of killing people, shouting it through a bullhorn, and the CEO’s lawyer approached him and threatened him with the restraining order.
Naturally, Sherlock was standing just outside of the perimeter outlined in the order, and when she accused him of slander he insisted that the CEO (Vax) had admitted to the killing of the men as they’d all died in his mine. However, Sherlock was ready to take it a step further and release the names of the others who were involved but never brought to justice, since Vax took all the heat. It scored him a face to face with the man himself.
Vax appeared nonplussed and said he did not care if Sherlock released the names. Rather, he agreed to a meeting because he wanted to help Sherlock find the seal as he had won it rightfully in an auction. He presented paperwork insisting that the artifact had been in the United States before an agreement was made to return stolen antiquities, and therefore did not qualify.
Joan, on the other hand, found Shinwell’s daughter’s aunt, who had been her legal guardian. The aunt was not pleased that Shinwell was looking for his daughter and wanted to know how well Joan knew him. She insisted that Shinwell was dangerous and that men like him can’t change. Understandably, the aunt refused to give permission for Joan to tell Shinwell about his daughter, and Joan left empty handed.
When she checked back in with Sherlock, he and one of his irregulars that he called “C’ was appraising the documents Vax had given them. She claimed the documents had been forged and the item most certainly had come into the country only recently. She did supply them with the name of a gentleman who was a curator of his family’s museum who may had been involved.
She had tried to contact him about another antiquity when she discovered that he had been unreachable somewhere in Asia – probably North Korea. They believed that he had claimed it, the Korean’s smuggled it, Torres stole it, re-auctioned it, then invited the curator (David) to the auction without realizing he was auctioning something David had already paid for.
Sherlock went to investigate David, but instead found an active crime scene as David had been struck in the head with a heavy object. That object just so happened to be the seal that everyone was looking for, and it was in police custody. When Sherlock realized that the killer had been tall and left handed, he pieced together the final picture.
Vax, broke from a landslide caused by his company which resulted in water contamination, had made a deal with China. If he was able to return the seal to them, they would choose his company for a new, lucrative business deal that would win him back his fortune.
Vax bid on the seal and killed Ray Torres because he was unable to fulfill payment. He took the seal, but when he realized Sherlock was on his trail he decided to leave it with David and have him killed. It would end up in NYPD custody and then automatically returned to China, the rightful owners.
Though he was not the one to directly hand it over, they would give him the credit and the deal. Though Sherlock had no proof, he told Vax that in exchange for a confession and justice through the court, Sherlock would not give Vax over to the drug dealer who was upset that his favorite smuggler had been killed. They made a deal.
Joan found Shinwell at a park and informed him that she had been unable to connect him with his daughter. He said it was okay because he had already found her. Joan had been one of a few people he had put on the case, and they sat and watched his daughter play soccer. Shinwell explained that all he wanted was to know she was okay, and he had no plans to step back into her life. Maybe people really can change.
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