We’ve all had lousy coworkers, but I think there must be an elite degree of lousiness reserved for the unearned and unsubstantiated cockiness of a nepo baby who is also an armed agent of the state. In a most unwelcome sequence of events, Captain Wagner finds himself stuck with just such a person in the form of Detective Rivers (Braeden de la Garza), who Captain Kershaw (Jenn Colella) has identified as an ideal candidate for Wagner’s mentorship. Kershaw helped out Wagner by reopening the Andy Merton baseball bat murder case, and now she needs him to return the favor by keeping Rivers out of her hair while another detective resumes their investigation.
This would have been largely fine but for the loud and immediate assumption of being the boss that Rivers takes with him wherever he goes. In fact, assumption is his primary tool as an investigator. He doesn’t wonder about the circumstances of Nathan Jordan’s (Larry Pine) death, because he assumes that the dazzlingly wealthy real estate magnate was murdered by his wife-on-paper, Helen (Victoria Clark), and her boyfriend, Dr. Jason Yamamoto (Phil Nee). They obviously conspired to kill him for his money!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back up just a tad to the last night of Nathan’s life. He went out on a high, first enjoying an evening of rich delicacies — lobster with extra butter, foie gras, caviar, three martinis — many hand-fed to him by a very beautiful woman in a sparkly silver dress. The woman, who we’ll later learn is named Chloe (Jordana Brewster), surreptitiously adds some medication to Nathan’s last martini, then takes him back to his enormous apartment overlooking Midtown, helps him into some really sharp navy-with-white-piping PJs, and lovingly tucks him in. Whatever their financial arrangements for this care may be, Nathan is genuinely fond of and grateful to Chloe for giving him such a perfect day, and she seems no less sincere in her fondness for him.
As she leaves the apartment, she places a bottle of medication next to his other meds in the kitchen, leaves the balcony door open, and then throws a very fancy doggy bag (Tomahawk steak!) down the building’s garbage chute. She’d done the same when they were leaving the restaurant, which turns out to be on the top floor of Nathan’s sky-high apartment building. We’ve seen some strange murders on Elsbeth before, but perfectly good steak hurled down a trash chute is an extremely deviant act. There’s a strategic method to all of this madness, though, as the open balcony door swings and bangs the wall freely in high wind. The noise wakes Nathan’s wife, Deborah, and her boyfriend, Jason, and when she comes to check on and yell at Nathan for being thoughtless and inconsiderate about leaving that door open again, instead, she finds his corpse.
At the crime scene the following morning, Rivers doesn’t even introduce himself to Kaya and Elsbeth before declaring that this is his crime scene. Pal, crime scenes aren’t like calling shotgun when you pile into a car with your bros. Summon some professional decorum, please. Deborah fills in the details we need: she and Nathan had long since parted ways as a couple, but she had a caregiving role, managing his daily medications. He’d been declared medically incompetent, and his arthritis made it difficult for him to do things like open pill bottles with child safety lids or button up his own pajamas or even feed himself fiddly foods like butter-dipped steamed lobster.
Despite Deborah shooting down his assumption that she was only married to Nathan for his money (she paid his way through business school decades ago and already had access to his funds), Rivers is suspicious of the pill bottle Chloe added to the tray. It’s pentobarbital, which can be fatal if administered in too high a dose, and he immediately jumps to the conclusion that Deborah did just that to Nathan.
At this point, Elsbeth loses her remaining shreds of cool, telling Rivers that he’s jumping the gun and needs more evidence to make an arrest. This swaggering baby, who has chosen sexist remarks as the cherry on the sundae of his terrible behavior, throws up his hands and says he’s calling Captain Wagner because, and I am not kidding, he “can’t work like this!” Kaya, who is a justifiably aggrieved party, wonders aloud why he is the lead detective on this case when her promotion paperwork has been submitted and she’s right there. Hmph.
At least Rivers doesn’t try to participate in Kaya and Elsbeth’s context-and-clue-gathering work back at the station. They consult Nathan’s transaction history on an app that is Not Venmo™, but sure does have an interface very reminiscent of Venmo’s. There’s a pattern among his public transactions (PSA: check your settings) with a person who is only listed as C — they’re accompanied by explanatory emoji, which are pretty easy to decipher. The most recent transaction includes an arrow pointing up and a skyscraper — that’s got to be a reference to their evening at Above The Sky, the restaurant in Manhattan Towers, Nathan’s apartment building.
A helpful bartender (Paul Deo, Jr.) explains that Nathan and Chloe were the only people in the restaurant that night, as it’s open exclusively to building residents and their guests, but occupancy in the luxury high-rise is down 30 percent due to skyrocketing rent and insufficiently grand amenities. The building sways, the balconies on upper floors are unusable due to high winds at 1500+ feet up, and items sent down the garbage chute “reach terminal velocity … it sounds like a neutron bomb!” That all sounds like a big problem, and sure enough, a group of residents brought a civil lawsuit against Nathan, which continues to make its way through the courts.
The knowledgeable bartender also fills in helpful details about Nathan and Chloe’s lavish menu, but of Chloe herself, he only knows that he’s seen her often in the company of many other very wealthy men about town. When Kaya and Elsbeth bring in some of those men, they’re as effusive in their praise — she’s elegant, brilliant, beautiful, so knowledgeable — as they are tight-lipped about what she actually does. They describe her work as consulting. Oh, I do love a good euphemism!
Armed with the knowledge from Not Venmo™ about the six figures Nathan sent Chloe in the last year alone and the pajamas that would have required help to button up, Elsbeth is convinced he wasn’t alone in his apartment that night. The most logical next step is to pay a call on the elegantly brilliant (and probably also brilliantly elegant) Chloe herself. The vibe at her place is welcoming and cozy but with a strong hint of seduction just under the surface. Chloe’s consulting rate is $5,000/hour, and her advertised services include culinary arts, decor, and fashion styling, but she’s also got a little wardrobe full of sexy costumes on hand and, perhaps most confounding of all, a massive painting in its well-insulated custom wood shipping crate. She describes much of her work as making her clients feel like real people, by caring about them and asking about their day. Elsbeth doesn’t come right out and say it in Chloe’s presence, but she’s a very successful sex worker who contains multitudes. There was no personal advantage motive for her to kill Nathan — their working relationship is now over, and she could have continued to make excellent money continuing to work with him.
What we now know, and what Elsbeth and Kaya are on a mission to figure out, is why Chloe took two orders of steak to go, ostensibly to feed Nathan’s dog, who does not exist. They’re the reason that the security footage from that night doesn’t show Chloe entering or exiting Nathan’s apartment! Items sent down the rubbish chute land make a huge racket on their way down, causing the AI-driven security cameras on every floor to swivel towards the refuse room and away from the corridors where a person who wished to evade detection might be.
Back at the station, Rivers’s interrogation of Deborah is going about as well as you might imagine. He’s hounding Deborah so much that she can scarcely get a word edgewise, and her body language shows how scared she is. Elsbeth tags in and sends Rivers out to the observation room with Wagner. She learns pretty quickly that although they loathed each other, Deborah and Nathan shared an interest in making sure that their grown children and (as Deborah puts it) talentless grandchildren are looked after financially. In fact, that’s part of why she had Nathan declared medically incompetent — he’d been spending money hand over fist on contemporary art, rare books, and even a Cézanne painting worth $9 million. She was protecting Nathan’s money for the sake of the aforementioned grandchildren and making sure that he was taking his medications for gout as well as arthritis on their correct schedule.
Once Deborah is on a roll, she also explains that her late husband was extremely vain. Losing his looks and mental acuity as he aged were totally horrifying to him. This reminded me of what he said to Chloe as she was tucking him in, that they’d had a perfect day together. Was his last day alive his last day by design? Armed with new knowledge about the trash chute/security camera connection and new questions about Chloe, her relationship with Nathan, and that painting, Elsbeth pays another call on her at home.
Sure enough, the Cézanne that Deborah told Elizabeth about is the painting she and Chloe chatted about earlier. Keeping it seems wrong, because she believes art should be publicly available for everyone to enjoy and interpret. As it happens, Chloe has a master’s degree in art history, so she and Nathan often discussed and strategized the acquisition of what she calls blue-chip art investments, helping him develop his eye for contemporary art in the process. She couldn’t afford to eke out a living as a gallerist, but has put her knowledge to work in her unorthodox consulting career.
Elsbeth isn’t ready to let Chloe entirely off the hook, but with no motive for her, Deborah, and Jason and airtight alibis for all of the people suing Nathan, things aren’t looking great for making an arrest. A glimmer of hope arrives courtesy of Rivers, who has arrested Jason on the grounds that the good doctor had lots of phenobarbital at his office, in the same dosage and format as those found in Nathan’s apartment. Those pills are illegal in the U.S., so Jason must have acquired them on the black market, and his staff all call him Dr. Sandman? Oh, dear. Well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Under interrogation from Rivers, Jason claims that he had a fling with Chloe and she used her proximity to him to steal pentobarbital from his office. Chloe denies the affair, saying she sought his care as a physician, not a potential client.
The key to the case is eventually discovered, thanks to Deborah’s unsuccessful attempt to return the rare volume of John Keats delivered to Nathan on the day of his death. The dealer noted some water damage that wasn’t present at the time of sale, but what if it wasn’t water at all? A D.N.A. test of the damaged page yields a match with Chloe, which lets everything else fall into place. Nathan didn’t want to continue his slow decline, so he enlisted Chloe’s help to have one last wonderful day together, concluding with Chloe’s garbage chute/security camera antics, and crying as she read aloud to him from the Keats anthology after helping him into his favorite PJs. Using pentobarbital would point the finger at Deborah and Jason, who he deeply resented for having him declared incompetent, and his death would mean not having to live with the consequences of the lawsuit. Chloe doesn’t mind that Elsbeth and Kaya are the ones to catch her, and besides, she knows lots of really good defense attorneys. I foresee a very light plea bargain in her future.
From This Week’s Tote Bag
• To Wagner’s disgust, Rivers can’t be fired, because his uncle is the chief of detectives. Ugh. At least he’s going to mandatory counseling and will be wearing a tie next time we see him.
• Friends, hear me out: a March Madness-style bracket of Elsbeth’s outerwear. This week’s magnificent peacock blue-and-cream blazer (which includes lovely suede elbow patches!) and equally resplendent cream dress coat with some kind of iridescent thread woven in, making it sort of glow deserve more than a mention in these bullet points!
• Cam, whose texts are usually pretty buttoned down, concluded a message to Kaya with a heart emoji. This is not a drill! Stations, everyone!