Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 10: Finance Bros

Bill Hepson survives a near-death experience on his private jet, reassesses his values, and retires from Hepson Capital, the successful venture capital firm he runs with his twin brother Peter (Alan Ruck plays both), in favor of giving away most of his assets to worthy causes. One week and $3.6 billion later, Peter kills him.

He ditches his usual Brioni suit for a getup matching Bill's loosely flowing, aging-hippie wardrobe and power-strides through Queens, stalks up to Bill's fifth-floor walk-up and hurls his brother out of the hallway window to the pavement, all while recording a call-in appearance on a major business cable show. He then finds and pockets an envelope of cash on Bill's corpse, leaving the scene to look like a mugging or home invasion gone wrong.

Nobody in the neighborhood has a bad word for Bill. He had ingratiated himself with local characters by handing each of them $100 just because, and Duncan of Duncan's Donuts (Ethan Herschenfeld) liked him as a friendly man and a good tipper — which makes it strange that Bill walked right past Duncan that morning, yelling into his phone and acting as if he did not know him. Peter, by contrast, draws Elsbeth's attention immediately.

His alibi looks solid: he called into Ava Mornay's show (Tina Benko) from his office in Manhattan to rebut a CEO forced out after Hepson bought a controlling interest, his assistant (Bridget Kim) called Captain Wagner to inform him of it, and the show's call logs show a Manhattan number.

Elsbeth watches Peter's past appearances on Ava's show and finds a pattern: he talks nonstop, talks over Ava, and never asks questions. On the day of Bill's murder he broke that pattern — he asked Ava a question and let her talk for roughly 30 seconds, and he sounded a little out of breath, which does not fit a call from a Manhattan office.

Elsbeth puts the alternative to Wagner and Ava: Hepson Capital recently invested in a VPN company, so the Manhattan number on the call log does not by itself place him in the office; and within the 32 seconds Ava took to answer, he could have made the call, asked the question and killed Bill.

The motive arrives with Ava's tutorial on cobalt, a vital element for phone batteries whose mining is an ecological disaster. Bill's charity funded research into alternative battery technology; without the ongoing investment, cobalt stays in batteries. The day before Bill's death, Hepson Capital took a big position on cobalt.

The proof is smaller than any of that. Ava explains cobalt and insider trading at the restaurant where Peter had met her for lunch, where the two had a disagreement and an unsuccessful blackmail-based negotiation; he left $5 on the table to cover his share of a $300 meal. That bill came from Bill's collection of print currency — old bills from the 1800s and contemporary bills with unusual printing errors or unusual serial numbers. Bill, in liquidating his assets, intended to sell the collection and had visited his bank to arrange it, taking along the envelope of cash Peter stole from the body.

As he is cuffed and taken into custody, Peter says, "I admit nothing. You think I'm going down for this?"

Peter's plan depends on the broadcast, and the broadcast is what breaks him. His alibi has three layers — the live call-in, his assistant's call to Wagner, and call logs showing a Manhattan number — but Elsbeth shows that on that one appearance he asked Ava a question and gave her about 32 seconds to answer, and that he sounded out of breath. Hepson Capital's investment in a VPN company supplies the means for the Manhattan number to be misleading. The motive is money at industrial scale: Bill's charity funded alternative battery research that threatened cobalt demand, and Hepson Capital took a big cobalt position the day before Bill died. The evidence is a spiteful gratuity: the $5 Peter left on the table for a $300 lunch came from Bill's collection of print currency, the same collection Bill had taken to his bank to sell, in the envelope Peter stole from his brother's body. As he is cuffed and taken away, Peter says, "I admit nothing. You think I'm going down for this?"

Resolved inside the episode: Bill's killing, with Peter taken into custody. Not resolved inside the episode: any charge outcome or trial for Peter — he admits nothing, and no court proceeding is shown. Also left open: Elsbeth and Kaya look at a photograph of Judge Crawford and agree that there is more to do, and no step against him is taken on screen. The Van Ness thread is closed only as far as the press correction goes; who provided Amber Van Ness's report to the press is described as unidentified police sources, and the recap names Lieutenant Connor as the likely source without the episode confirming it.