Bryant Vallery was an astronomer at the Santa Barbara Space Center whose mysterious death still haunts Lassiter a month later. The 42-year-old succumbed to a heart condition despite living a healthy lifestyle without drinking or smoking, but since the autopsy didn't turn anything up it was ruled death by natural causes. Lassiter knows that it must have been murder and that he's simply missing something, but the department wouldn't let him pursue the case any further. He shares all this with Shawn in a drunken stupor while generally depressed, so Shawn decides he'll solve the case and have Lassiter believe it's all his doing so that he can take full credit for it and regain some confidence.
After ensuring Lassiter remembers nothing of the previous night's events, Shawn's next step is to interview Bryant's widow Mary. She mentions that Bryant had partnered up with fellow astronomer Hugo Rainier and suddenly started working really long hours about two weeks into the eight months during which the space center had access to the new digital telescope. He also started feeling a bit off, so they cancelled their 4th of July trip. Mary suspects Bryant might have been cheating on her, owing to the long hours, his obsession with work and the growing distance between them. She has a hard time believing this could be true, though, as he wanted a child with her and he was a good man who simply wasn't the type to cheat. When the interview is over, Shawn informs Juliet of his scheme and she agrees to play along. She pretends to Lassiter that he had asked her to follow up with Mary and informs him of her suspicions of cheating, which motivates Lassiter to re-open the case.
Shawn and Gus go to the space center. Shawn initially wants to "grill" intern Jessica, but when he realizes Gus has a thing for her he sets the two up to help both Gus and the investigation. He then enters the observatory and meets Hugo, who doesn't seem very affected by the death of someone he spent so much time with. He tells Shawn they had to petition for five years before finally being allowed to use the telescope when Bryant suddenly died with two out of the eight months left. He also indicates that they hadn't made a discovery yet, and neither has he on his own since then.
During the conversation, Shawn noticed just by looking at the fore edge of a closed logbook that one of the pages was torn out and tells Gus outside that Hugo is hiding something. An excited Gus reveals that Jessica gave him her phone number and that they will be going on a date tomorrow, but his excitement soon dissipates when he learns that Juliet and Lassiter have run Bryant's phone records and discovered that he frequently called Jessica at night. They now suspect her of knowingly engaging in an affair with a married man and lying about it, or worse: maybe he's the one who dumped her and she killed him for it.
Shawn and Gus try to break into the center's observatory the next day and are discovered by janitor Vernon Stallings, who circumvents the lock for them. He tells our duo that "Big Bad Bryant" took away his key to the observatory after several items went missing, including mail. Vernon admits that he's read it and tells our duo that Bryant became "quite a jerk," as he was trying to dissolve his partnership with Hugo and actively applying to more prestigious jobs with a higher salary that he didn't seem qualified for, such as at NASA. Once inside, Shawn and Gus open the logbook with a missing page and figure out the torn-out page must have covered the window of time between 08:39pm and 10:42pm on June 21st. Meanwhile, Juliet and Lassiter discover that Bryant opened a safety deposit box on that day.
Gus goes through with his date with Jessica, throwing all subtlety out the window and asking her about her ex almost straight away. To his relief she says that she broke it off immediately when she discovered he was married about a month into the relationship, and any further calls he made had no effect. She also tells him she needs to work early tomorrow because Hugo has organized a press conference, explaining that Bryant and Hugo had almost certainly discovered an extrasolar planet about six months earlier and only needed to wait for it to complete an orbit in order to verify its existence. She also says that something like this is a huge boost to someone's career, which would explain why Bryant was applying for better jobs. This establishes a possible motive for Hugo to murder Bryant depending on who actually found the planet, and more evidence against Hugo is a suspicious plant in his garden and their new knowledge that he wanted Shawn to think there never had been a discovery.
At the press conference Hugo claims he made the discovery at 9:55pm on June 21st, right inside the window covered by the missing page. It is now clear that it was in fact Bryant who made the discovery, and that he was about to dissolve the partnership because he wanted to take sole credit and was already in talks to move on to a more prestigious job with a higher salary. Hugo wanted this for himself and was so consumed by jealousy that he killed Bryant before tearing out the page that revealed who was on duty at the time. Shawn receives a call from Henry, who explains that the plant they found in Hugo's garden is foxglove. Gus knows that some foxgloves contains a substance called digitalis that can kill someone slowly by causing arrhythmia of the heart and would not turn up during an autopsy unless it's specifically tested for. Lassiter and Juliet show up at the press conference based on their own investigation, and together the four arrive at the conclusion that Hugo poisoned Bryant every day for six months by putting the foxglove leaves in his tea. Lassiter then ensures the reporters will write about more than astronomy by arresting Hugo even before his big moment in the spotlight is over.
Trivia[]
- To add insult to injury, Hugo opens the press conference by dedicating his supposed discovery to Bryant.