Moriarty is indeed a spider at the center of a very large web of crime. And another of his agents has surfaced in New York.
Philip van der Hoff, a member of the NYC Landmark Protection Council with a known heart condition is found dead, presumably of a heart attack. But from behind bars, Sebastian Moran recognizes the dead man as someone he was meant to kill by Moriarty’s order. Angry that he was set up to be caught, Moran arranges a meeting with Sherlock to tell him that the dead man is a lead to Moriarty. Moran intends to keep this information between the two of them, and kills the supervising prison guard for good measure.
Sherlock doesn’t go to Gregson with this information, but he does let Joan in on it. They break into the morgue to examine van der Hoff’s body. Marks on his skin indicate electrocution, and an autopsy performed by ever-the-doctor Watson indicates that the man’s pacemaker sent the electricity through his body. The pacemaker had been hacked.
Sherlock connects van der Hoff to the vote being made on the landmark status of Taggart Speakeasy Museum. The owners of the property have been trying to get the status removed so they can renovate, and over the years, members were changing their votes in favor of that status removal. Sherlock finds that these members were all being bribed by Robert Baumann, who offered them home renovations for their changed votes. The last thing van der Hoff did before he died was change his vote.
Unfortunately, before Sherlock and Joan can get to Baumann, he is killed by a falling air conditioning unit. What appears to be a freak accident turns out to be something that wouldn’t be hard to plan, as Sherlock discovers after dropping an air conditioning unit off his own roof. He now believes they are looking for one of Moriarty’s agents – one who specializes in murders that don’t look like murders.
The next victim is likely to be Hillary Taggart, the last living relative of the original owner of the Taggart Speakeasy and an advocate for its preservation. Instead of warning her, Sherlock and Joan observe her to figure out how the murderer might go about killing her. From Taggart’s medical bracelet and a strange cultivation of bees found in the park she jogs in, it appears the killer is planning to use her bee-sting allergy to murder her.
works within 10 minutes, but if I drink a bit then the effect may start later. But still the erection is great and lasts to the next day.
Sherlock and Joan stake out the park that night, and Joan expresses her concern for Sherlock, regarding the way he reacted to finding Moran. Sherlock assures her he will not try to kill the killer, in short, because before Joan, the only meaningful connection he’d had was with Irene Adler. But now he has Joan, and he’s not such a loose cannon with nothing to lose.
The heartfelt moment is cut short as the presumed killer appears to tend to his bees. Sherlock apprehends him and they take him back to the brownstone. The killer is Daniel Gottlieb, a former engineer. The give him the option of giving up Moriarty in return for special treatment in prison. Gottlieb talks, but he doesn’t know much about Moriarty. He had been approached by a man while he was working in the UK who said he knew Gottlieb was a serial killer. After that, Gottlieb was employed through calls and encrypted text messages. But more interesting than that is the fact that Sherlock was once one of Gottlieb’s targets. He intended to kill him by a staged accidental overdose, but his employer called it off.
Having sent a text from Gottlieb’s phone saying something went wrong, the mystery employer responds saying to meet at the Parthenon. Sherlock and Joan stake out the Parthenon, and follow the suspect who leaves when Gottlieb doesn’t show. The suspect meets, presumably with his boss, on the other side of some train tracks, blocked by a passing train. Sherlock works so photographic magic, taking rapid-fire photos as the train passes, then taking the slivers that captured the image of the person on the other side and piecing them together. From this cut together photo, Gottlieb identifies the man that approached him in the UK.
With help from Sherlock’s British contacts, he obtains records on the man at the tracks, whose name is John Douglas. Sherlock tracks him down and goes to meet him on his own, disassembling Douglas’s gun and flaunting a bag said to be full of the “instruments of his demise” (it’s just a scare tactic, the bag was full of Legos). Douglas insists that he isn’t Moriarty, but he knows why Irene had to die. But before he can say any more, Douglas is shot dead in the back through the window of his office.
With Douglas dead and Gottlieb confessing all of his kills to the cops, Sherlock receives a text on Gottlieb’s phone that neither of them can decipher. Sherlock takes the phone to Moran, who also insists he can’t read it, but Sherlock is convinced he’s lying. And he is. By the time Sherlock cracks it, it’s too late. The message read: “Moran, you never told me you had a sister. She dies or you do. Your choice. M.” Sherlock calls Gregson only to learn that Moran repeatedly bashed his head against the mirror in his cell, and likely wouldn’t survive the night.
Finally, a call comes in to Gottlieb’s phone. Sherlock answers, and finds himself speaking Moriarty himself. Will Sherlock be able to hold it together as old wounds are opened?
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