- Holmes and Watson must find the source of anthrax that may be used for a terrorist attack.
- "Elementary" - "No Lack of Void" - April 10, 2014
Sherlock is working on his Northern Ireland accent and Alistair is helping him over breakfast.
Joan goes to see Bell to drop off some files. Gregson asks her to look at a man in holding who is sick. A man lies on the floor in a cell. His name is Apollo, he's a pickpocket. She snaps on gloves and checks his pulse. He's dead. She flips him over and blood pours out of his mouth. She tells Gregson to quarantine everyone because she thinks he died from anthrax.
Sherlock goes to the hospital to check on the others who were in the precinct who were evacuated. Joan, Gregson, and Bell are fine. Everyone else seems fine too. He swallowed a small plastic bag of white powder that tore in his stomach. He probably thought it was cocaine and when he was fingered for pickpocketing he swallowed it.
They look over the surveillance footage of Union Square where Apollo got the anthrax. He pretended to be stumping for charity and then he would pickpocket people. Sherlock seems grumpy. Joan asks if something happened with Alistair. Turns out he's dead. HIs partner told Sherlock he died a week ago from his a massive heart attack and he missed the funeral and is clearly upset but doesn't want to talk about it. They notice Apollo bumping into someone and figure out he picked his pocket and stole his sunglasses, but there were not glasses in the case, it was the anthrax.
They track down the man, Charlie Simon, who works at a lab in Columbia that might have access to anthrax. He's nowhere to be found. His roommate says he hasn't seen him. And he knew he'd done time but figured he'd need a second chance. He said he took odd walks several times a day and came home and smelling like antiseptic. They tell him about the anthrax and he gets freaked and calls his parents.
They deduce the address where his lab was, a storage unit near his apartment. Folks in his hazmat suits check it out. They find him dead in the lab, from anthrax. They poke around and find red-stained trays, they're for growing anthrax. They figure out he created enough anthrax to kill thousands of people.
Gregson presents all the evidence to date about the anthrax to a large group of police. They found other prints in the lab belonging to a man in Eugene, a radical anti-government leader who met Charlie in prison. Their mission is to find him and to consider him armed and dangerous. Gregson wonders where Holmes is and she says he had person business.
Sherlock goes to see Ian, Alistair's partner. He apologizes for not getting in touch with him when Alistair died. Sherlock says Ian made Alistair very happy. Ian seems uncomfortable with this. He then gives Sherlock a book that he thinks Alistair would've wanted him to have, a first edition of "Waiting for Godot," the first play Sherlock ever saw Alistair in. Sherlock asks Ian how Alistair was. Ian says happy, working on a play, small theatre, big role. He asks about Jeremy. This name rankles Ian. Ian says you know how it was between them. He says they had dinner about a week ago and Alistair didn't talk about it which wasn't unusual. Sherlock says he's having trouble reconciling Alistair's passing with his vitality and joie de vivre and he wonders if there's more to it than meets the eye.
Joan and Gregson go to see the brother of the potential anthrax dude Eugene at his cattle farm. They're very different and don't get along, especially about him taking government to run the farm and that their mother takes Social Security. They ask if they know where to find him. He gives them an address and Sherlock says he'll keep an eye on the place until the hazmat and other cops arrive.
Sherlock des his stake out ad has a vision of Alistair. The vision says he shouldn't be mad. Sherlock says he will be what he likes. Sherlock sees a man put cases in a truck. He goes to investigate the cases in the unguarded truck. Yup. Full of anthrax. The truck is filled with letters addressed to congressmen, presumably to send them the anthrax. The men come back. A fight ensues and Sherlock disables the men but ends up covered in anthrax.
At the hospital Sherlock explains he wasn't covered in anthrax but talcum powder and baby laxative. She is mad he went on the truck by himself. She wonders if this willfulness has to do with Alistair. He says he's dead and it's sad and that's all. They still need to find Eugene and the actual anthrax.
They interrogate the truck guys who are radical anti-government types working with Eugene. They threaten him with jail time but he says he'd rather do that then help government stooges. Sherlock points out that this guy was worried that it was anthrax even though it was harmless powder. They realize Eugene fleeced him and sold him fake anthrax and kept the real stuff for himself, basically duping him. They ask again for his help. They set up a meeting. Gregson calls and tells Joan and reminds him that Sherlock is still in the doghouse for the stunt he pulled.
A man comes to the brownstone and says he's Jeremy and doesn't appreciate that Sherlock is insinuating Jeremy was involved in his dad Alistair's death. And he says he didn't have a heart attack and Sherlock lied to her. It turns out that Alistair died of a heroin overdose and Sherlock lied to her and she wonders why. She asks what's really bothering him. He talks about how good to him when he became an addict. He had 30 years of sobriety under his belt and doesn't understand how he could have overdosed. Of course relapse is always a risk but he hopes it was something else and his death bothers him and it bothers him that it bothers him. Sherlock will have 2 years, Alistair had 30. It's just really bothering him.
Turns out Eugene is now dead. He had a fight with his brother at the cattle farm and his brother shot him.
They bring the brother in. He said he shot him because he had to. Eugene came to the farm at 3 am. The perimeter alarm went off, he found Eugene in the barn dumping white powder into the cow's troughs. He realized it was the anthrax and he was poisoning the milk supply yelled at him to stop and Eugene ranted at him about the government and went for his gun so the brother shot him. They ask him if he knows where the rest of the anthrax is. All he is knows he mentioned "friends up north" and that other governments needing teaching a lesson.
They discover that Eugene was married and that his anti-government leanings were a thing of the past. And after some digging Sherlock begins to smell a rat. They begin to debate. Sherlock gets mad and smashes a plate. Then Joan smashes one. She says this all about Alistair and none of it means anything to Sherlock and that he is an addict and he will have to take it one day at a time. Sherlock says he knows and that it's simply that Alistair was a good friend and there aren't many people he can call that and it's unsettled him. He says he's no more likely to use today then he was the day before. Joan gets a text from her mom telling her to throw away her milk because the anthrax scare has spread. Joan notes it's too bad since the brother's dairy farm was already struggling and only subsisting on government subsidies. Sherlock gets a lightbulb and maybe Eugene didn't want to kill people, but cows.
Gregson, Sherlock, Watson and Bell go to see the brother and ask about his livestock insurance. They note if his entire herd was wiped out he'd get 2.6 million. And they note that the farm was willed to both brothers so they'd share the money. So they deduce he and his brother cooked up a plan to kill the cows-- Eugene was over his radical days so he used other people to make and work up the anthrax-- and then killed his brother to get all the money when the police got onto him. They figure he had rest of the anthrax and they found it at his mother's house. He's done.
Sherlock goes to visit Alistair's grave and sees the vision of his friend again. He tells the vision he was on the way to a meeting and was going to speak so he came to collect his thoughts. The vision of Alistair apologizes for letting Sherlock down. Sherlock says what Alistair did has nothing to do with him and he came to the grave because he loved him very much and he wanted him to know he'd be missed. Alistair quotes a sweet poem. Sherlock looks again and he's gone. He is crying.
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