The Mystery of the Locked Boxed starts off with a quick view of a large apartment which can only be described as a bachelor pad, even with a rock climbing wall in the middle of the living room. The housekeeper is doing her rounds when she finds a body and can’t help but scream at the sight of her boss dead in front of her.
Laura and Jake are called to on the horrific scene with young Zac Romero killed on his bed with what appears to be multiple stab wounds all over his body. Zac was a billionaire that owned a nanotech company before he was even 21, he was a genius. The crime scene appears to have no phone anywhere looking as though someone has taken it, perhaps the killer; Jake gets Max to put a trace on it.
Laura speaks to the housekeeper and she says that no one was here when she left last night and while speaking to her Laura finds a popsicle stick with no wrapping in the trash, however, the housekeeper says there was no popsicles in the fridge before she left only the home cooked meals his mother brings over. The housekeeper says he didn’t have anyone really in his life only his business partner and his mother, he mostly stayed at home on his computer; he called his home the fortress of solitude in reference to superman. Got to admit I love superman references.
Bose and Soto speak to the head of security at Zac’s apartment and he tells them that no one could have got into the apartment without being seen. Every entrance has a security guard and cameras at every angle, every floor has keys that can’t be copied and Zac’s apartment was the only apartment on his floor so only he had the key. Even Bose is stuck on how someone could have got into the apartment, she does have a theory how someone might have gotten in but it would have been very difficult.
Laura heads over to the mother’s house, she tells Laura that Zac was a genius and he was too smart to stay in school with people his age, he wanted to go full time at Colombia and she let him. She wanted the best for her son and she thought this was it. Every Sunday she came over his house to give him some home cooked meals. The last time she spoke to him was two days ago when she called him but because he never answers the phone so she got his business partner to literally hand the phone to Zac. She says as much as she doesn’t like Shane Allen he was the only person to get through to Zac.
Bose and Soto speak to Zac’s business partner, Nolan Ross or opps wrong show almost the same character, Shane Allen. What Bose and Soto can gather from him is he is a major ass and he has the technology knowledge to get through Zac’s apartment without being seen, however, he has an alibi for the time of the murder. Shane tells them he helped Zac move into his current apartment because he found a crazy woman in his previous apartment, Abby Pollard. When going to Abby’s house she comes out with a knife and tries to attack Soto.
Max comes back with the report of the popsicle stick found in his apartment saying that it wasn’t the killer’s, it was Zac’s. To Laura this doesn’t make any sense because the housekeeper emptied the trash before she left the apartment and the stick just came out of nowhere with no wrapping. Laura sends Max off to find out which store sells those popsicles.
Abby is a confused woman thinking she was married to Zac, she claims to have had dinner with him on multiple occasions, however, Zac actually had a restraining order against her. Laura comes into the interrogation room playing nice cop and gets her to reveal that she saw a man yell at Zac at a restaurant two nights ago even though the security footage doesn’t show him leaving his apartment; Abby might be a deranged woman but Laura doesn’t think she is the killer.
Their only lead is to find the man that Abby claims was yelling at him at the restaurant near his apartment, a white man in his forties with a baseball cap, not much to go on. Reynaldo confirms the knife Abby attacked Soto with is not the murder weapon that killed Zac. He isn’t sure the weapon was a knife at all because the wounds aren’t the right size and shape. Basically the only thing he is sure on is he has not found any print, hair or fibre on the body at all.
Bose and Soto confirm with the restaurant that Zac came there two nights ago and had an argument with an older man. Abby, however, wasn’t inside having dinner with Zac she was watching him from outside at the bus stop.
Max finds out the popsicle is from a happy meadow dairy bar and there is one place between the restaurant and Zac’s apartment that sells the ice cream. The owner helps them out and says he remembers Zac coming into the store two nights ago. He also tells them they he felt sorry for Zac and could see that he wanted to avoid the paparazzi at any costs so he used to help him out, the store had a plumping leak last year and when they opened up the wall they discovered a hidden door that leads to Zac’s apartment building and the owner used to help Zac out and let
him use it to come in and out from his apartment.
Laura has a hunch the mystery man with the baseball cap would come to Zac’s wake, her hunch comes through and they catch him and they find out he is Zac’s biological father that was trying to get money out of him and was yelling at him two nights ago because he found out Zac had a new development called Hi-Fi and Zac wanted to give the technology away for free. Even the father was an asshole that wanted money from Zac he had an alibi that couldn’t put him in Zac’s apartment at the time of death.
At the wake Shane was there and Bose looks over his shoulder while he was texting and saw he was making dinner plans with someone. Laura thinks that Shane could have killed Zac because even though his business arrangement with Zac gave him a lot of money if he found out that Zac wanted to give the technology out for free he wouldn’t make any money from it.
They track down where Shane is meeting his ‘dinner date’ which appears to be a business transaction with another technological business owner. During the meet Shane pulls out a phone with a superman cap cover on it and Laura realises that it belongs to Zac. Laura and Jake cut the meeting short and pull Shane into interrogation. Bose finds out that Shane wasn’t selling the technology to put it out to the world he was selling it to someone that would make it not see the light of day. Even though Shane was trying to get money out of Zac’s technology his alibi was pretty solid, a girl from the club says they were together.
Max and Bose go through all the evidence and Zac’s phone and notices Zac had never checked his emails, voicemails or messages. There were a number of voice mails from the same number but they never spoke in the messages. Laura listens to one of the messages and realises she knows who it is, because she hears wheezing in the message and remembers Zac’s friend at the wake that had asthma, Jordan Pelham.
Jordan had nothing going for him; he lost his job and was still living at home. They recover previous messages Jordan had left Zac and he spoke of how bad is life is now and how he wants to kill himself but because Zac never listens to his messages he never got them. Meredith realises that at the wake Jordan spoke about how him and Zac used to play with the latest gadgets and according to his credit card records he brought a drone, Bose believes Jordan programed it to fly into Zac’s apartment undetected and kill him.
They all head to Jordan’s apartment and see him with the drone, they burst in there grab Jordan but the drone flies up without breaking it Jake throws a baseball at the drone and knocks in down. Case closed, Jordan is going down for the murder of Zac Romero.
In the end scene we finally find out what is wrong with Jake, the forgetfulness, the trips and the dizzy spells. He has a minor heart condition and has to take blood thinners once a day, Laura is extremely worried about him but he reassures her that he wouldn’t be doing this if he was endangering himself and of course her.
This episode was quite good; I enjoyed the twist to the story with a drone killing someone. I would rate the episode 9 out of ten and look forward to the next episode.
