Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 13: Tearjerker

Captain Kershaw reopened the Andy Merton baseball bat murder case as a favour to Wagner, and now she needs one back: keep Detective Rivers out of her hair. Rivers arrives at the crime scene assuming everything - that the dazzlingly wealthy real estate magnate Nathan Jordan was murdered by his wife-on-paper Deborah and her boyfriend Dr. Jason Yamamoto for his money - and he declares it his crime scene before he even introduces himself to Kaya and Elsbeth.

The last night of Nathan's life was a deliberate high: lobster with extra butter, foie gras, caviar and three martinis, much of it hand-fed to him by Chloe in a sparkly silver dress. Chloe surreptitiously adds medication to his final martini, takes him back to his enormous apartment overlooking Midtown, helps him into navy pyjamas with white piping and tucks him in; Nathan tells her they had a perfect day together.

As she leaves she places a bottle of medication beside his other meds, leaves the balcony door open, and throws a fancy doggy bag with a Tomahawk steak down the garbage chute, as she had at the restaurant. The open door bangs in the high wind, waking Deborah and Jason, who come to tell him off and find his corpse instead.

At the scene Deborah explains that she and Nathan had long since parted ways as a couple but that she managed his daily medications; he had been declared medically incompetent, and arthritis made pill bottles with child-safety lids, buttons and fiddly foods like butter-dipped lobster difficult for him. Rivers leaps on the pentobarbital Chloe left on the tray and accuses Deborah of overdosing him.

Elsbeth tells him he is jumping the gun and needs more evidence; Rivers throws up his hands and says he is calling Captain Wagner because he cannot work like this, and Kaya asks why he is lead detective when her promotion paperwork has been submitted and she is standing right there.

Elsbeth and Kaya follow Nathan's transaction history on a payment app that is not Venmo: six figures to someone listed only as C in the past year, with emoji including an upward arrow and a skyscraper pointing to Above The Sky. A bartender confirms that Nathan and Chloe were the only people in the restaurant that night, and describes a building in trouble - occupancy down 30 percent, the tower swaying, upper-floor balconies unusable in high winds at 1500-plus feet, and items sent down the chute reaching terminal velocity.

A group of residents has a civil lawsuit against Nathan working its way through the courts. Chloe turns out to be an unorthodox consultant at 5,000 dollars an hour whose advertised services are culinary arts, decor and fashion styling, who holds a master's degree in art history and helped Nathan build his eye for blue-chip contemporary art.

The mechanism is the chute: two steak orders thrown down it land with a tremendous racket that makes the AI-driven security cameras on every floor swivel toward the refuse room and away from the corridors, which is why the footage does not show Chloe entering or leaving Nathan's apartment. Deborah, questioned by Elsbeth after Rivers is sent to the observation room, says she had Nathan declared incompetent to protect the inheritance for their grown children and talentless grandchildren after he began spending on contemporary art, rare books and a Cezanne worth 9 million dollars.

The break comes when Deborah tries to return a rare Keats volume delivered the day of his death and a dealer notes damage that was not there at sale: DNA testing of the damaged page matches Chloe. Nathan did not want to continue his slow decline, so he enlisted Chloe to give him one last perfect day ending with the Keats reading, and pentobarbital was chosen because it would point at Deborah and Jason, whom he resented for having him declared incompetent, and because dying meant not facing the lawsuit.

Every assumption in the episode is wrong in the same direction. Rivers assumes Deborah and Jason killed Nathan for his money; the pentobarbital and Jason's supply of it look like proof, and even that turns out to be right in fact and wrong in meaning. Nathan chose the drug precisely because it would point at the two people he resented for having him declared medically incompetent, and dying before the residents' lawsuit resolved meant he never had to face its consequences.

The mechanical puzzle is the chute. Two orders of steak thrown down it - once at the restaurant, once from the apartment, supposedly for a dog that does not exist - make enough noise on the way down that the AI-driven cameras on every floor turn toward the refuse room and away from the corridors, so no footage shows Chloe entering or exiting. What breaks the case is not cameras but paper: Deborah's attempt to return the rare Keats volume delivered the day of Nathan's death reveals damage the dealer says was not there at sale, and DNA from the damaged page matches Chloe.

Unresolved inside the episode: Rivers cannot be fired, because his uncle is the chief of detectives, and he is being sent to mandatory counseling and told to wear a tie next time; the residents' civil lawsuit against Nathan is still making its way through the courts; and Chloe, who does not mind that Elsbeth and Kaya are the ones who caught her, says she knows a great many good defense attorneys, so no charge or outcome is shown.