Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 18: I Know What You Did Thirty-Three Summers Ago

The hour opens by restating the stakes. Elsbeth, Captain Wagner, Kaya and Detective Rivers are investigating Judge Milton Crawford (Michael Emerson) surreptitiously and on the double: he is a powerful, well-respected sitting judge and a candidate for the federal bench, and Elsbeth has been suspicious of him since her jury duty on a murder trial where he pushed the proceedings toward a guilty verdict despite irregularities in his behavior and weaknesses in the prosecution's case.

The recap also recalls that in “One Angry Woman” Crawford broke into financial adviser Andy Mertens's apartment and beat him to death with a Yankees-branded baseball bat while Andy begged for his life and promised to keep his secret.

A 1992 flashback shows how that secret was made. Teenage Andy (Ian O'Boyle) and a young Crawford (Ethan Dubin) break into the Stockport Yacht Club swimming pool after hours with Sherry Mitchell (Ava DeMary). After bragging about his family's position at the club, Crawford sends Andy away to be alone with Sherry, and when she rebuffs his advance he attempts to rape her. The in-pool scuffle ends with Sherry fatally cracking her head on the pool's edge, and Crawford pressures Andy into agreeing to tell the police that both of them were present for the accident.

Elsbeth and Wagner drive to Stockport while lawyer Victor Landis (Pun Bandhu), sent by the White House to determine whether Crawford belongs on the federal bench, invites him to disclose any skeletons. In Stockport the two learn that Andy worked at the yacht club that summer and then surprised everyone by taking a last-minute scholarship to a university in New York, never returning home. Sherry's sister has always believed the death was accidental and hands over a box of Sherry's memorabilia, including her diary and an evidence bag holding her very slightly bloodstained fanny pack.

At the site of the now-filled-in pool, Elsbeth reenacts the night at such length that the retired detective originally assigned to the case first asks if she is all right and then announces that watching her work is way better than pickleball.

Elsbeth herself is the one who tips Crawford off. Not knowing that Victor exists or that he is doing his own due diligence, she is overheard talking with Wagner as they prepare to leave the yacht club, and Victor immediately calls Crawford. What follows is Crawford's retaliation: Wagner takes an earful from the police commissioner, is threatened with internal affairs investigations and learns his precinct's personnel budget is cut by 25 percent immediately — a cut likely to land hardest on Kaya, the most recently promoted detective.

Elsbeth's Department of Justice contact Agent Celetano is fired, the consent decree under which Elsbeth is seconded to the NYPD is likely to be swept away, and her ex-husband learns he may be disbarred in Illinois over a misconduct investigation. Crawford also has every record of the Stockport evidence removed, including the DNA sample Claudia Payne (Gloria Reuben) took from his glass of scotch.

On the day of Crawford's nomination, Andy's girlfriend Delia Kirby (Meredith Holzman) — the woman Crawford had tried to railroad into a guilty verdict — guns him down on the courthouse steps and tells Elsbeth, before being dragged away by police, that she had nothing to lose.

With Crawford dead, Kaya points out that his assassination may turn him into a folk hero or a martyred fighter for justice; Teddy (Ben Levi Ross) decides not to apply to law school because he cannot tolerate working inside such a corrupt system; Kaya worries about losing her job; and Elsbeth, weighed down by guilt over putting her friends in harm's way, considers dropping the whole thing. Wagner refuses to be out, telling them, “We do what we can every day to try to make the system a little better.”

Crawford dies on the courthouse steps on the day of his nomination, shot by Delia Kirby, the woman he had tried to railroad into a guilty verdict in Andy Mertens's murder trial. Delia tells Elsbeth she had nothing to lose before police drag her away. The recap states that the writer is not convinced Delia was acting entirely on her own behalf and expects the remaining episodes of the season to reveal any plot details around the murder — within this episode, no accomplice or arrangement is shown.

The hour closes on the consequences rather than on a case outcome. Kaya notes that the assassination may turn Crawford into a folk hero or a martyr for justice; Teddy abandons his law-school plan; Kaya fears losing her job; and Elsbeth considers dropping the investigation. Wagner's closing speech — “We do what we can every day to try to make the system a little better” — is where the episode leaves the team.

Unresolved inside the episode: whether anyone else was behind Delia's shooting of Crawford; who, if anyone, instructed Andy's killing; the fate of the erased Stockport evidence and Claudia's DNA sample; and whether Wagner's precinct, the consent decree and Elsbeth's ex-husband's Illinois licensing matter can be recovered.