♪ ♪
You know, this whole time with Grace,
I've mostly been working from home.
But now that I'm gonna stick around, I had an idea
about where I'm going to hang my hat.
Okay, so if this your way
of trying to get a piece of my office...
No. I was thinking something...
a little cozier.
You want a locker near Penny's.
Just a place to stash my kit.
And...
maybe get in her ear a little bit.
You two do get along, don't you?
She reminds me of someone.
I love that.
You know, back when I was coaching,
I used to pair the freshmen with the seniors and just...
watch 'em grow.
Senior?
Okay.
Careful.
You know, just yesterday I taught Penny and Beau
how to make queso with a blowtorch.
You ask me, they're already getting quality mentorship.
You do have a murder
that needs to be investigated, don't you, Joshua?
I'm going.
FOLSOM: Allie! I didn't think I'd see you here.
You've got your level 3 exam on Friday, don't you?
I thought you'd be, uh, taking a few days off to cram.
Indeed, it would be wise to do so, Mr. Folsom.
But the untimely demise
of Lady Fanny Prince is not a matter
that will resolve itself.
I'm sorry, did we just step through a portal to 1812?
That's Lady who now?
Don't worry about it. Her real name is Shelby Winslow.
She's part of a little festival up at the hotel there.
Regency Romantics Weekend.
There's a few dozen other ladies and gentlemen
dudded up in the ballroom. Looks like a hoot.
Well, not anymore. May I?
Jack released the body. Go for it.
What happened?
What, she get Alexander Hamilton-ed in a duel?
No, footprints show her running for her life,
all the way from inside. She must have slipped
and the killer caught up.
I'm shocked she made it this far.
It's really hard to sprint in a corset.
Well.
Any witnesses?
Not exactly. The groundskeeper heard the gunshot.
Actually, he was the one who called it in.
Any chance he's our Aaron Burr?
No, his hands tested negative for GSR.
And he wears size 14s.
These prints are ten and a half.
I'll tell you what else doesn't fit. How is her head
still in one piece? I mean, that caliber--
serious business.
Yeah, and look.
There's no exit wound, either.
Huh.
Well, how up to date do you think
our ballistics lab is on musket balls?
I know it sounds weird, but, I mean,
w-what else explains what we're looking at here?
I suppose.
Mm, smaller powder load,
less velocity, unrifled barrel?
Maybe a flintlock?
He would have had to have been close.
I think he was really close.
Short and coarse.
Pretty sure she yanked this out of somebody's beard.
Nicely done, Lady Fanny. She put up a fight.
So up close and personal.
I wonder if they knew each other.
This is weird. Uh...
I think there's some sort of chemical interference.
The mold isn't setting properly.
Smells like chlorine bleach.
Huh. Well, who takes the time to bleach
their crime scene but doesn't rake over his footprints?
I don't think he brought it down here to clean up.
He might have tracked it with him.
I hear the other scene is saturated with the stuff.
There's another crime scene?
RAJAN: Mm. And another victim.
There's another crime scene?
RAJAN: Mm. And another victim.
Cops are keeping the whole place locked down.
Chavez took Beau up there to get started.
If you can help Penny,
I'm gonna go take a look myself.
All right, well, keep an eye out
for any gentlemen who's missing a chunk of beard.
Tell me, CSI Rajan,
what items need to be impounded separately
from other items as evidence?
(scoffs) Don't tell me Folsom's roped you
into playing University Challenge, too.
I'm going to assume that's, like, a crappy British Jeopardy!
For what it's worth, I told him
if anyone's got that test handled, it's you.
Hm. Thank you.
It's nice of you to help.
It's all Josh.
You know him: he's invested.
Okay.
Meet Clarence Mosley. 37, Libra, organ donor.
In town from Santa Fe.
Huh. According to his driver's license photo,
the hole in his head is new.
Dinner was being served next door, this place was empty.
Nobody heard a thing, apparently.
It's consistent with the wound on our other victim.
So, the tread of these shoes
is identical to the footprints we found in the sand trap.
Same triggerman?
Mm-hmm.
And I'm pretty sure they struck here first.
What makes you think that?
Well, there's no trace of dirt or sand.
They would have tracked it with them.
Yeah, biggest regret of my life was
buying my kids a sandbox. You wouldn't believe
where you find that stuff.
Guys.
You're gonna want to see this.
FINADO: Murder in black and white.
But not the murderer.
They say a picture's worth a thousand words.
Mm, but this one isn't saying enough.
♪ ♪
♪ Who... are you? ♪
♪ Who, who, who, who? ♪
♪ Who... are you? ♪
♪ Who, who, who, who? ♪
♪ I really want to know ♪
♪ Who... are you? ♪
♪ Oh-oh-oh ♪
♪ Who... ♪
♪ Come on, tell me who are you, you, you ♪
♪ Are you! ♪
Hey.
Hey, Max.
How you do...
Hang on a... hang on a sec.
You ever see little powder marks like this?
JACK: Yeah, but only once.
Same marks are on the lady I just pulled
out of the sand trap. What kind of gun leaves those?
Maybe one with a damaged barrel.
FINADO: Allie was hoping we'd get some ideas, but all you can
really see is the murderous bulge behind the curtain.
ROBY: "A murderous bulge," that's probably something
we don't want to say again, huh?
One other thing.
There's this crusty schmutz around the bullet hole.
Schmutz?
It's a technical term.
It looks organic.
Gonna be curious to see what GCMS has to say about this.
Wait, you think the murder weapon left that?
Yeah, I got to think so, right?
Maybe the muzzle of the gun
left that trace there before the trigger was pulled.
If the killer was shooting blind,
I wonder if he even knew that Shelby was in there.
You think Clarence was the main target?
I don't know.
It might explain how she had all that time to run
all the way down to the 17th fairway.
Right?
Wonder what the motive was--
somebody cut in line for rum punch?
A croquet rivalry gone too far?
Okay, we got two dead bodies and a conference full of suspects.
All right, time to start swabbing for GSR.
WOMAN: How dare you, madam.
Implying I'm a suspect.
It's an affront to my good name.
Mrs. Perlmutter, we're actually
trying to exclude you as a suspect.
This is an absurd inconvenience.
I still have a conference to organize, you know.
So Prudence Perlmutter is your real name?
Of course.
Why would I adopt a false identity?
Shelby Winslow,
she was going as Lady Fanny Prince.
Shelby never had the proper respect for the classics.
She preferred those déclassé bodice-rippers
to Jane's exquisite prose.
Brontës were more my jam.
Everybody's got their thing, right?
Regency Romantics Weekend used to be
a refined appreciation of a bygone era.
And what is it now?
It's been usurped by young people
indulging in their tawdry fantasies.
Like Shelby and that debauched rake,
Clarence Mosley.
Too much flirting for you?
If only it were limited to flirtation.
Shelby Winslow was married.
Clarence knew and didn't give a damn.
You ought to talk to Mr. Winslow.
The cuckolded husband.
Certainly seems like a prime suspect to me, Inspector.
It's detective.
And we will. You're free to go, Mrs. Perlmutter.
Indeed.
Hm.
Do you like her theory?
The cuckolded husband?
Why not?
I mean, the rest of these dandies can
all alibi each other.
Hmm.
Love makes people do crazy things.
Anti-psychotics.
Uh, the analysis of the beard hair in Shelby Winslow's fist
shows the killer was on haloperidol.
At least, sometimes.
He went off his meds?
LC-MS shows that there was a ton of it
in the bottom two-thirds of the hair,
but not in the 8.6 millimeters near the root.
WILLOWS: Sample is about an inch.
Beard hair grows less than half a millimeter a day,
which means...
it's about three months of growth?
So he stopped treatment
about four weeks ago.
We're looking for an erratic bearded man.
Where are we ever gonna find one of those in Vegas?
I might be able to get us closer.
That, uh, crusty trace we rubbed off the murder weapon?
It's grackle scat.
Remind me of what a grackle is.
Oh, it's a blackbird. They're all over Vegas.
Like pigeons, only Halloweenier.
Do you know what they call a group of grackles?
A plague. Murder of crows,
conspiracy of ravens, a plague of grackles.
My favorite is a parliament of owls.
I like preponderance of evidence.
How does this help?
GC/MS found traces of agave, yucca,
desert kangaroo rat, and a whole lot of corn.
Sounds like your keto diet.
Well, I'm hoping this particular menu
can serve as a sort of geographic fingerprint.
You think it's distinct enough to narrow down a search area?
Well, the good thing about grackles is
they're homebodies this time of year.
They stay around wherever food is plentiful. The murder weapon
had to be around the birds long enough to get crapped on.
I've never heard of using bird poop to solve a crime before.
If we match a plague of grackles to the mix of food
in our sample...
You might get a general idea
of where the murder weapon's been hanging out.
Uh, animal control can help me catch some grackles
around the city.
Sure, collect scat samples
from different neighborhoods and we might
be able to match our crime scene sample.
Proof's in the poop.
We hope.
Yes, we do.
Yeah.
That's Shelby.
You don't seem that torn up
about your wife's death, Mr. Winslow.
She was cheating on me.
Did you know that?
I thought if I went to that...
dorky costume party she might cool it, but no.
She and Clarence were right out in the open.
I'm gonna need to see your shoes.
Ten and a halfs.
Yeah, so?
Same size as the killer.
RAJAN: There's no sand here, though.
And it's a different tread.
Did you shave this morning?
I shave every morning.
Where were you last night at 9:00, Mr. Winslow?
Nobody at the Regency event
remembers seeing you after cocktail hour.
Shelby and Clarence
looked like they were gonna knock
the tea and crumpets off the table and go at it.
So I went to The Eclipse.
Lost a grand on the Raiders game.
Anyone go with you?
No.
But... here.
Look, I know how it is.
Husband's always the first suspect.
A lot of times, husband's guilty.
Look.
I didn't like that she was sneaking around
with a guy in a powdered wig.
But I didn't shoot my wife.
Okay. I'm starting to think this guy didn't shoot his wife.
RAJAN: What makes you say that?
Well, for one, neither
of these victims have a bullet in their head.
As in, the killer fished it out?
As in, I'm not convinced there ever was a bullet to begin with.
All I found in the wound tracts were bone chips.
And very small traces
of... Okay.
I think this is avian fecal matter on the chips.
The guy who was indoors had more of it, actually.
You don't look surprised.
ROBY: The murder weapon left traces
of bird poop on the curtain where Mr. Mosley was shot.
RAJAN: It is strange, though.
I mean, excrement being inside the wounds,
not just around them.
And then there are these powder burns.
Shelby has the same marks.
What kind of a gun does that?
What if it wasn't a gun at all? I mean, look
at the characteristics of the wound canal. Something
both penetrated and was removed from the wound.
Penetrating trauma
at a consistent depth in both victims.
Something like this could have done it.
A captive bolt pistol.
And there would be no projectile.
Yeah, a weapon like that would eject a rod
at high speed into the victim's brain.
And that would explain the fecal trace
and that brain matter transfer.
Because the same bolt was used in both victims' heads.
A bolt gun.
Isn't that something they use on livestock?
Our killer had a different kind
of slaughter in mind.
♪ ♪
MAN: Hey, take him! Take him!
No! No!
Detective Castricone gave me the heads-up on this one.
Said the M.O. looked like our photo booth couple.
Yep. Looks like a bolt gun was used to blow the lock.
Yeah, it did this, too.
RAJAN: Wait.
We know him.
Is that Lamont Moore?
Uh, I can't believe this.
I-I chased a killer out of this guy's house.
Stop!
Alan Herskovitz.
Yeah, but that makes no sense.
Herskovitz was crazy.
He heard voices.
Why would someone else want Lamont dead?
Hard to see how this connects to anything. I-I mean,
I can't picture Lamont hanging out
with the Jane Austen Time Travel Society.
I have a hard time believing
he's just the unluckiest dude in Vegas.
So, must be something we're missing.
♪ ♪
REPORTER: Tonight, a third homicide victim has been discovered downtown.
With no suspects yet identified, some are asking,
is there a serial killer active in Las Vegas?
A Las Vegas PD spokesperson
declined to comment on the status...
Got to be the same killer.
How many bolt gun-carrying weirdos
could be running around Vegas?
Mm. This motel is a long way from Pride and Prejudice.
What would bring the killer here?
Lamont's landlord said he hasn't been home in weeks.
Well, maybe he knew he was being hunted.
He came here to hide?
This does have a vibe of a place you go to lay low.
Well, not you. You'd find a place with a minibar
and you'd pack a lot more shoes.
♪ ♪
RAJAN: He had a ton of cash
and was staying here under an assumed name.
Lamont really was trying to stay off the grid.
Mm.
Speaking of grids, pop quiz:
can you tell me how the grid search method differs
from the strip and spiral search methods?
Terrific segue.
Mm.
Very natural.
You really want to do this now?
That level 3 test is no joke, Al.
Written exam, the oral boards,
the-the practical scene--
it will kick your ass if you're not ready.
You don't want to have to take it twice.
The grid search provides double coverage of the area.
I know the handbook. I'm ready.
Hey.
Look what was on the dash of Lamont's truck out there.
RAJAN: Amaranth Hotel.
That's the same place they held the Regency Romantics Weekend.
CHAVEZ: Looks like we've got a connection.
I'm gonna go speak to the manager if you two want to join.
Um, no. You two can go up.
I'll stay here and practice my grid searching.
MAN: You know, I always thought Lamont was a little sketchy.
Is he, like, your prime suspect?
We are looking at a potential link.
Actually, I...
He's been out of work for weeks
Actually, I...
He's been out of work for weeks
with "COVID." Just got back to work four days ago.
But he's so unreliable, I wish he'd just stayed away.
Well, you're in luck, Mr. Smith.
Hmm?
Well, you're in luck, Mr. Smith.
Hmm?
Lamont's another victim.
He's...
(coughing) Wow.
You good?
Yeah.
(coughs) I think I know where our bleach came from.
Oh.
FOLSOM: Fumes are intense here.
I think luminol can show us the way.
It loves bleach as much as it loves blood. Do you know why?
You are not quizzing me, dude. Keep spritzing.
All right, hit the lights for me.
♪ ♪
Hey.
Where's this door go?
That's the Earl Grey Banquet Hall down there.
That's where we found Clarence.
FOLSOM: So, the killer engages Lamont here.
FOLSOM: Lamont defends himself.
Both men are covered in bleach.
But Lamont gets away.
Killer lags behind,
follows him.
Then somehow Clarence is the one who gets killed. Why?
(sighs) I don't know, boss.
Maybe... wrong place, wrong time?
Maybe wrong face, wrong time.
Clarence Mosley and Lamont Moore could almost be cousins.
Do you think this is a case of mistaken identity?
I mean, the killer did just get splashed with bleach.
Maybe some got in his eyes.
♪ ♪
ROBY: If he lost sight of Lamont and sees a guy
that looks like him duck into a photo booth...
FOLSOM: He never gets
that looks like him duck into a photo booth...
FOLSOM: He never gets
a clear look at the guy that he's killing
through the curtain. He might not have even known
that Shelby was in there, too.
ROBY: And once Shelby ducks out of the photo booth,
he realizes the mistake
and then he's chasing a witness down the 17th fairway,
puts her down...
...but leaves a piece of himself behind.
FOLSOM: But he's still oh for two, so he gets
Lamont's address from a work ID,
tracks him down at a hotel room,
finishes the job.
This killer's made a real hash of this.
He still got his man in the end.
I'll tell you one thing.
Hmm?
I'll tell you one thing.
Hmm?
Clarence might not have been the intended target,
Mm-hmm.
but our best lead's from his scene.
Which evidence is that?
The poop.
Oh, you are a handsome fella, aren't you? Yeah.
Even if you have been eating rancid fried chicken.
Don't you want to get to know our guests?
I'm good. I appreciate wildlife from a distance.
Ooh. Hey.
Hmm.
Your friends tell us anything useful?
Yes and no. I mean,
everybody's stool sample contained
elements of the magic mix.
Agave. Little bit of yucca mixed in.
That goes for most of 'em. But none of 'em
are even close to the perfect match.
So we haven't ID'ed our killer's
geographic fingerprint.
I couldn't even swear the trace left by the gun
was from a bird in Nevada.
Thinking of going broader.
You know? More grackles,
more samples.
Uh-huh.
Before you do, Penny,
what are you thinking and not saying?
Oh. No, it's-it's nothing. It's just...
It's-it's a hunch. It's not based on
anything concrete.
Spit it out.
anything concrete.
Spit it out.
Corn.
Everything else in the droppings from the scene
is from a desert ecosystem.
Agave, yucca, kangaroo rat.
Right.
But the scat at the scene is almost half corn.
Where would a grackle
have access to that quantity of corn around here?
Our murder weapon, the bolt gun,
is usually used as a cattle stunner. Could be...
livestock feed?
You know, in a previous life,
I knew the GMO guys making herbicide-resistant crops.
A lot of corn-based feed in GMOs.
Corporations, they patent the chemical makeup.
It's easy to identify.
Well, a microarray from the MiSeq FGx
could give us the exact variety of the corn.
We can match it to the GMO product.
Good thinking, Penny. (chuckles)
Oh! Gah! Scared the crap out of 'em.
Just means more samples.
Way to go, boss.
Nicely done.
You hear about our third victim?
Our old pal Lamont Moore?
Yeah. This is the second time somebody came after this guy.
Lamont's not the president of Honduras.
Why do people keep trying to assassinate him?
You know, maybe we should talk to the first guy
who came after him.
Alan Herskovitz.
It's all by design!
WILLOWS: He'll be medicated now.
Might be willing to fill in some more blanks for us.
Maybe you could call your guys at the NDOC,
see if we can talk to their newest patient?
Better than dealing with that crap.
Ah. Looks like you're about to close up shop.
How can I help?
I've already dusted for prints.
Housekeeping is much better than you'd think.
I only found one set of prints. Probably Lamont's.
Well, you've bagged everything there is to bag.
What's left?
Saved the best till last.
Luminol.
Huh. Just Lamont's shoe prints.
None of the killer's.
Hey, uh, Al.
Hmm?
Question.
What do the letters R.A.M. stand for?
(scoffs) I'm not doing trivia with you.
If you don't know, you can just say.
(sighs) Rhodamine 6G, Ardrox and MBD.
Say the long version.
You say the long version.
Say the long version.
You say the long version.
I've passed the test.
(groans) Rhodamine 6G,
Ardrox and seven p-Methoxybenzylamine,
four nitrobenz, two oxa, 1,3 diazole.
Happy?
Okay, now draw it.
Seriously?
Wait. He walked into the tub?
Whoa.
Buddy.
Mm.
I've heard of shower shoes,
but come on, man.
Hold on.
What's that?
Someone's unscrewed this recently.
There's something tied to this.
Careful.
Max.
Thank you. Yes.
Lamont Moore wasn't just a victim.
He was supposed to be a killer, too.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
What are you guys talking about?
Lamont Moore was being blackmailed.
We found this dossier hidden in Lamont's motel room.
And somebody wanted him to commit a murder.
Who was Lamont supposed to kill?
That's what's
really crazy.
Somebody else we've met recently.
Albert Santoni, aka Peter Nesicolacci.
The guy who killed that chef.
And it's not just Lamont.
At least three cases we've worked on
in the last few weeks--
they're all connected.
♪ ♪
These are our players.
At least the ones we know.
Now, all of these cases,
all of these people are related.
ROBY: Okay, slow down.
How do you think they're all connected?
All of these people were treated by the same psychiatrist, one
Dr. Leon Sarkisian.
WILLOWS: He electroshocked
his patients in front of mirrors.
Kids with mental disorders.
Alan Herskovitz.
He killed Lynn Zobrist.
♪ ♪
And then he went after Lamont Moore.
Lamont Moore--
we know someone just took him out.
Now, he had a file on Peter Nesicolacci,
aka Albert Santoni.
Albert was the Italian-speaking dishwasher
who killed Chef Dario Donnelly.
♪ ♪
So, Lamont was interested in the case?
No.
So, Lamont was interested in the case?
No.
He was interested in Albert before there ever was a case.
Folsom and I found an old dossier
stuffed in the overflow pipe
of Lamont's motel bathtub.
Along with...
this note.
ROBY: "Keep your secrets.
Cull the rotten fruit."
RAJAN: Someone was ordering
Lamont to kill Albert.
ROBY: But he didn't.
Because Albert jumped off a building
before we could arrest him.
FOLSOM: Hold on.
No!
Lamont never acted on the instructions he was given.
He just seemed like a troubled soul when we met him,
but there was a sweetness in there.
I think
Lamont paid the price for resisting someone's command.
Okay, so what's the link to
Clarence and Shelby? Were they
patients of this quack Sarkisian?
No.
patients of this quack Sarkisian?
No.
And there's no connection to anyone else on the board.
I-I mean, I think there's reason to believe
that these two were innocent bystanders who just got
caught up in this mess.
Okay. Well, the only person left alive on this board
is Alan Herskovitz.
We were already planning on paying him another visit.
Let's talk to him, find out if the voice
that was telling him to murder people was just in his head
or someone was whispering in his ear.
♪ ♪
ROBY: Hello, Alan.
Have we met?
We have, haven't we?
We're the reason
you're here.
Mm.
There's so much that's...
fuzzy. I...
I have trouble remembering.
Yeah, well, we're here to talk about what you do remember,
starting with him. Lamont Moore.
You broke into his house,
tried to kill him.
You remember that, don't you?
Well, he's dead now.
Someone came and finished what you started.
We just want to know who wanted him dead.
You said someone put you up
to it.
Um, I don't want to talk to you.
You don't want to come off as sane.
I get it.
You'd rather die in a psych ward than on death row.
We're not here to take that away.
Have you seen
one of these before?
Hmm?
Where did this come from?
Where did you get that?
We were hoping you would tell us.
You said that someone was speaking to you.
A voice.
Is this what you were talking about?
You're already too late.
WILLOWS: Too late?
Too-too late for what, Alan?
Don't you get it?
This is all by design.
A thing begun is already half done.
There will be more.
More what?
More blood.
More reckoning.
The wheel will spin
and there's nothing that you or I or anyone
can do about it.
Alan, Alan, stop.
Alan, just-just stop.
Alan...
Nurse!
Oh, he's either crazy or stone-cold committed to the act.
Oh, either way,
I-I'm not sure there's much difference.
He's not gonna give us anything more.
If we find out who killed Lamont
and our two bystanders,
maybe we'll figure out the rest.
Ooh, every time I stray from the physical evidence,
I think I'm gonna end up in a place like this.
Let's get back to it, then.
'Cause if he's right and there's more blood coming,
we better work fast.
All right, got the addresses. Now all we have...
Can I ask you a question?
Uh, yeah, yeah. Shoot.
You've been here for five months
and somehow you have no fear.
I wouldn't say no fear.
Bears, snakes, large erratic insects, skin cancer...
But I mean, with hypotheses.
You just put it out there with no hesitation.
How do you do that?
I think I've had the fear of looking stupid
beaten out of me.
I've been married a bunch of years,
I've got kids.
I know exactly how stupid I am.
Say instead of you, you were me.
Well...
first, I would give myself a break.
Yeah?
And then I would remember,
I mean, you have to make stupid mistakes,
ask stupid questions.
I mean, the only way to become less stupid
is to be stupid.
Ooh! Boss, hey, uh, the poop is talking.
Hope it's saying good things.
FGx analysis gave us a precise
chemical breakdown of the corn in the grackle poop
on the murder weapon.
Well, look at that.
And the corn in the grackle scat has a proprietary
bacteria-derived protein active against rootworm.
That protein is exclusive to
Fat Cow brand GMO livestock feed.
And how common is it?
Only a half dozen feed buyers in the greater Vegas area.
All right, let's split up and check 'em all.
I want to find this guy fast.
Before he gets any further down his hit list.
Yeah, okay. I'll let you know.
Folsom and Beau struck out.
Hope we're not about to do the same.
I already feel better about this place than the last one.
I'd call that a plague of grackles.
It's full of tools.
Maybe this is how the murder weapon got crapped on.
Farm belongs to a guy named Richard Ambrose Sloan.
He's definitely got the name of a serial killer.
I don't think I can arrest someone
based on vibes, but
this dude would be a great candidate.
Do you think anyone's home?
Richard Sloan? LVPD.
The door is open.
Mr. Sloan, we're coming in.
LVPD. Anyone home?
Mr. Sloan?
CHAVEZ: Hello?
RAJAN: Richard?
Hello?
I don't think anyone's here.
Hold still.
RAJAN: Hey!
Stop!
Get off her.
Okay.
Richard. Richard, listen to me.
You don't want to do this.
I have to.
You don't want to do this.
I have to.
I don't want to shoot you.
The plan is in motion. We must not interfere.
Interfere with what?
The Basilisk. The Basilisk commands me.
The path must be clear. The Basilisk knows all.
I don't know about that, but I know that
you didn't want to kill those two people at the hotel.
It wasn't part of the plan.
The path must be clear.
Hey, I'm not part of the plan, either, dude.
No choice. You help or suffer.
I had to find Lamont Moore.
The Basilisk is very clear:
let no one
stand in its way.
But I was blinded.
Aah! (grunting)
The wrong man.
I had to clean up the mess.
I had to clear the path.
The Basilisk commands it of me.
Richard, you're just making a bigger mess.
Richard. Hey, Richard, Richard, lis-listen to me.
Chavez!
PARAMEDIC: BP's dropping.
Dispatch says they have an OR waiting for him
at Desert Palm.
That's if he makes it that far.
This is my punishment. My...
my failure. I didn't protect the Basilisk.
W-What do you mean? Who is the Basilisk?
It found me through time.
It sees everything. It s...
it saw my failure.
This guy's crazy, too.
Richard...
No, no, no, Ri-Richard,
wake up!
Richard Sloan's in surgery.
He was still breathing, but unlikely he'll make it.
You did the best you could.
Did he tell you anything?
Mm. Even while
Did he tell you anything?
Mm. Even while
he was bleeding to death, Sloan kept talking about the Basilisk.
The Basilisk?
I looked it up.
The Basilisk?
I looked it up.
It's an Internet thought experiment
about an omniscient artificial intelligence.
Like Siri?
On meth.
Supposedly, in the future, the Basilisk
will torment anyone who doesn't do its bidding.
So, in Sloan's mind, we're all doomed.
Sloan believed this AI was talking to him from the future,
telling him to kill Lamont Moore.
So, why does a sci-fi villain
want to kill a hotel janitor?
♪ ♪
RAJAN: True believers in the Basilisk think the AI
will kill anyone who tries to stop its rise to power
or anyone who fails to help it.
So, if the Basilisk
told Sloan to kill Lamont,
then I'm sure it made a lot more sense once he stopped
taking his Haloperidol.
So, meanwhile, back in reality,
Sloan's being manipulated by somebody.
Just like Alan Herskovitz.
I don't think
Just like Alan Herskovitz.
I don't think
it's a computer or a disembodied voice
or the Easter Bunny talking to either of them.
No.
I mean, odds are it's the same person
behind all of it.
Whoever it is,
I've got the feeling they're not done.
You know,
following the corn was the right instinct.
But you know what would have happened
if I hadn't dragged it out of you?
We'd still be staring down a dead end.
I thought, you know... (short chuckle)
Beau's a big-deal chemist and you're a legend,
so, there's... neither of you thought of it,
then there's no way it could be right. Right?
Wrong. Obviously.
It's just... the corn thing was...
it was worse than a guess.
It was a gut feeling, a hunch.
We don't play hunches, we test hypotheses.
Yeah, I know.
We don't play hunches, we test hypotheses.
Yeah, I know.
But I was thinking that you noticed that
I was thinking something, so maybe next time
you could just ask me.
You don't get paid to sit around until someone asks your opinion.
Speak up.
Or hang it up.
Allie. Hey. Are you doing okay?
Yeah. Still a little jittery from the adrenaline,
but I'll be all right.
Okay.
So, I got to drive Serena home
after she talks to IAB about the shooting.
Mm, don't worry.
I mean, I think it'll go in her favor.
Sloan didn't really give her much of a choice.
Knowing Serena, as soon as I get her home
she's gonna tell me to get lost
so she can recoup with reality TV and shots of mezcal.
You want to run flash cards?
Josh, um...
things are complicated.
What do you mean?
I was just in a life- or-death situation
with your girlfriend,
and all I should have been thinking about
was getting us both out okay.
And you did.
I was thinking about you.
And what would you do
or say if things went wrong?
Allie, it's not...
You're the most important person in my life here.
But you're with Chavez now.
We can't be friends.
Not like we have been.
Tell Serena I'll see you both on our next shift. Yeah?
WILLOWS: So, this is Sloan's laptop.
ROBY: Yep, and there you have it.
Someone did send Sloan a dossier
on Lamont.
And blackmail, too, just like the papers
Allie pulled out of Lamont's tub.
Mm-hmm.
Uh-oh.
Wait a minute, what happened? Where'd it go?
Got me. I didn't touch it.
Well, try clicking on the thing...
Oh!
Whoa-whoa! Penny,
Oh!
Whoa-whoa! Penny,
what's going on?
That file didn't close by itself.
Someone's accessing the computer.
Maybe through a RAT.
A rat?
Remote access Trojan. It's a malware program
that lets a hacker take over.
Like, they could have closed the file
while we're looking at it?
It's not just the files.
while we're looking at it?
It's not just the files.
It can control the whole machine.
Including the webcam.
If someone was keeping tabs on Sloan...
They could have been watching him through the camera.
Captioning sponsored by CBS
and TOYOTA.
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org