'Common Law' Episode 1.10 Recap: "In-Laws vs. Out-Laws"

In-laws are hard. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, they’ll love your spouse and your spouse loves them more than they love you so there are no problems in the relationship. But that is rarely the case. Most of the time what ends up happening is that the in-laws hate the spouse, he/she took your parents baby away from the next. Sometimes, the spouse can’t stand the in-laws, the parents are just too much for them to handle. Dealing with the in-laws can get a little crazy. Wes and Travis don’t have that problem like the other couples in therapy do. As we already know, their just detective partners so that means no in laws. But mentors are kind of like parents, they guide and in a sense sort of raise you in your adulthood. So one could only imagine the mess the guys find themselves in when both of their mentors become involved in a case.

Dan, the man in charge of neurotics, was trying to catch a Hispanic drug gang making a deal when someone began firing shots. By the time Dan got on to the scene, the guy or guys that got away were gone and they only had one witness with four dead guys, one of them being Dan’s informant. The witness, Charlie Perez, was a man in a business suit who came out to his car a little drunk in order to take a nap in the parking garage. When shots began firing, the man hid under his car and waited there until LAPD arrived on the scene. Dan, Travis’ mentor, was in charge of the case so he decides to give Travis a call and ask him to come out and help. Travis and Wes leave therapy early and show up on the scene. Charlie had begun puking so he was currently in the bathroom. When Wes and Travis head over to the bathroom to talk to the guy, they shove the door open to find him gone. He had escaped through the window. Dan hasn’t quite lived up to everything Travis thought him to be.

Back at the station, everyone sits in the briefing room and go over the facts of the case. Dan tells everyone that he looked up Charlie and found out that he owned a limo service but when Dan went to the DMV to found Charlie’s address, Charlie wasn’t in the system. Fred, Wes’ mentor, walks in on that. He asks the room if anyone tried looking up a different name. Fred is in charge of Missing Persons and has a bit more knowledge of the topic of disappearing witnesses. He pulls out a photo and shows everyone Charlie’s aka Carlos Perez picture. Carlos turns out to be a two time felon and an ex con so uses the alias Charlie to run his business. Wes and Travis jump up, reaching the same conclusion. Carlos is probably one of the shooters. Travis dismisses everyone in the room and hands the case back over to Dan. However, Dan tells Travis he wants him to help and take over the case. Dan’s new boss is close to firing him so Dan needs a little help. Travis takes the opportunity to help out his old mentor and goes out to his desk to tell Wes. Fred is sitting in Travis’ seat and is criticizing the crime scene photos when Travis arrives. Wes and Travis take Fred and his pet dog, Snowy 2 (named after a previous dog called Snowy who passed away), to the scene  so he can get a better look than what the pictures provide.

Fred leisurely walks around the scene with Snowy 2 while Wes and Travis stand off to the side. Travis gives Wes a hard time about Fred and talks about how slow he is and how they need to go and follow other leads. But Fred is determined which becomes obvious when he pulls out a black bandana and sets out the ground and then sits on it with Snowy 2. He’s waiting for the answer to come to him. Travis gives Wes a look and then tells Wes that he should be terrified because that’s the future Wes. Travis then turns to Fred and asks if its ok if they leave to go do other stuff. Fred dismisses them since the guys can’t stop talking. Wes shoves Travis and then they are off to Carlos’ house.

They knock on the door but only hear noise of someone hastily shuffling around. Travis knocks down the door and the guys rush in, looking for Carlos. Instead, they find his wife and daughter. The wife explains that Carlos came home about an hour ago and told his family to pack up and get ready to leave and that some men may come after them. He gives them a bunch of money and then leaves. The wife then tells the guys about how Carlos got involved with the drug gang. He was trying to start his business but because he was an ex criminal he couldn’t get a license. So he started going by Charlie and asked Miguel, a drug lord, for a loan. Miguel gave Carlos the money but had Carlos go to the exchange that Dan was trying to bust, which is how Carlos got into the mess he is in. The guys leave Carlos’ wife with promise of sending an officer over to protect them and then leave to go talk to Miguel at his carwash.

At the car wash the guys find themselves in a shootout with Miguel’s bodyguards. However, Miguel is able to calm down his guys and Wes and Travis are able to make arrests and start questioning the guys. Crime scene techs and other officers arrive on the scene while Wes and Travis stand off to the side, questioning Miguel. The man defends himself and says he is a legitimate business man that loaned Carlos money when Carlos threatened Miguel and his family.  Carlos did business for the cartel so he could pay back all of Miguel’s money on time. The guys don’t think Miguel is innocent like he says he is and allows an officer to come and take Miguel to the station. Wes and Travis head back to the station after Wes receives a message from Fred saying he found something. Fred spent hours at the crime scene and found a spot of blood that doesn’t match Carlos or any of the other dead bodies that the crime scene techs must have missed. Somebody else was there. Fred ran the DNA from the blood through the system and figured out that the blood was a partial match to blood found at massacre similar to this one that occurred in Mexico. What happened in Mexico was that an assassin, El Ingeniero, killed at least 13 top men in a drug cartel. Fred proposes the idea that El Ingeniero was at the scene. Dan shoots the idea down, saying that El Ingeniero was a made up story that men in drug cartels tell each other when they’re bored, and explains how the real lead is Carlos. Fred and Dan start arguing. Wes cuts in saying that the detectives can follow up on both leads. He proposes that him and Travis put taps and start tracking Carlos’ cousin and other limo driver for Carlos’ company while they look for El Ingeniero. Everybody wins. Fred and Dan leave and Wes and Travis look at each other. They may not have to deal with in-laws, but they got the next best thing.

As Wes gets ready to leave for the night, Fred walks up to him. Fred thanks Wes for letting him tag along on the case since this will probably be Fred’s last. Wes looks surprise so Fred explains that Missing Persons is being shut down and Fred is being forced in to early retirement. He hopes that finding El Ingeniero for Wes’ case will help him keep his job. Wes apologizes to Fred and promises to try to help him out by solving the case and giving him the credit for it. The next day in therapy, the guys realize that they both promised their old bosses help and promised to give them credit for solving the case. They launch into an argument over whose previous boss deserves the case. Dr. Ryan smiles at their situation and explains to the guys how similar their predicament is to dealing with in-laws. She tells the guys to follow their instincts, which only upsets them since their instincts are too give their own boss the credit and not the others. The boys give up and after therapy head to the station to get back to the case. Dan comes up to the guys and tells him that on the tap on Carlos’ cousin’s phone told them that Carlos called and is planning to leave town in about two hours. Dan is ready and has a team set up to catch him. As the guys keep walking towards Wes’ and Travis’ desks, they find Fred sitting there. Fred asks if Wes is ready to do work with him. Wes and Travis look at each other and talk with their eyes in the way only best friends can do. Wes stays with Fred while Travis leaves with Dan. Wes asks Fred what the plan is. Fred gives Wed the case files about El Ingeniero from the massacre in Mexico and tells him to look at it and then wait for the truth. Meanwhile, Travis and Dan are staking out the spot Carlos plans on leaving in a limo from. Carlos shows up on time and Travis and Dan make the arrest. Dan’s lost witness is found.

Before Wes and Travis walk in to the interrogation room to talk to Carlos, Dan starts yelling about how he should go into the room with Travis instead of Wes. In Dan’s mind, it makes sense since he found the witness and the case was his before he gave it to Travis. However, Travis turns Dan down and explains that Wes is his partner so therefore, Wes needed to be in the room. Wes and Travis go in and start talking to Carlos. The man explains that when he borrowed the money from Miguel, he knew that part of paying Miguel back included doing him a favor. So Miguel had Carlos go to a hotel and pick a man for him. The man Carlos picked up was tall with cropped blonde hair and his eyes were two different colors. El Ingeniero. Fred jumps into the conversation by pushing the intercom button and telling Wes to ask for more details for the sketch artist. Dan then joins in by telling Wes over the intercom to ask where the money Carlos took went. Carlos began explaining about how he gave the money to his family when the Captain enters the room. The public defendant is here and wants a minute alone with Carlos. Wes and Travis leave upset because they didn’t get all their questions answered. As they walk out, Fred and Dan get into a fight about what’s important in the case. Wes and Travis watch and wonder if they look and sound that bad when they fight. While they’re watching, an officer comes up to them and says that Carlos is ready for them again. The guys head back in but don’t tell Fred and Dan in order to make their lives a little easier.

Back in interrogation, Carlos tells the guys a different story. He says he sent the lawyer home because he’s ready to talk and doesn’t need a lawyer for that. Carlos begins talking about how he went to the exchange in the parking garage by himself and that there was no one else but him. Travis notice that Carlos hands are shaking and asks about it. Carlos takes his hands off the table and sets them in his lap and repeats what he said earlier. Wes and Travis are no fools though and ask why the sudden confession, what did Carlos’ lawyer say, and why does Carlos look so scared. Carlos just says that the entire ordeal was his fault and leaves it at that. Travis looks at the video camera footage in the station to see Carlos’ lawyer while Wes calls Civil Services. Carlos’ lawyer signed in as James Wilder, but Civil Services doesn’t have any public defender by that name. Travis continues watching the video footage and notices that Carlos’ lawyer manages to hide his face from all of the cameras. But Wes notices a slip up. On one of the cameras, the mystery man is looking away from the camera and keeping his face hidden, but that causes him to look into the glass wall in front of him, giving the guys a semi good look at his face. The man was tall and blonde and the detectives bet if they had better resolution then they would notice his eyes were two different colors. Carlos’ fake lawyer seems to be the mysterious El Ingeniero. However, Carlos won’t confess now. El Ingeniero has scared the poor man. Wes and Travis decide to head to the hotel where Carlos first mention he picked up El Ingeniero from and see if he is still there. However, at the hotel they find out that El Ingeniero has already checked out. But, the clerk that Wes and Travis talked to was able to confirm what El Ingeniero looked like and that he had one brown and one blue eye. The detectives leave and head back to the station to try to question Carlos some more. After a few minutes of Wes calmly telling Carlos the reasons he should give up El Ingeniero and Travis yelling at Carlos what will happen if he doesn’t confess, Carlos finally cracks. El Ingeniero came in and showed Carlos a picture of his family. El Ingeniero has them as hostages and threatened Carlos with their lives in order to cover his tracks. The case just got harder.

Wes and Travis are pacing by their desks and calling around looking for Carlos’ family and El Ingeniero when Dan and Fred walk in. Dan jumps in and starts making all of these plans. But Travis gets some nerve and tell Dan no, it’s Wes’ and Travis’ case so they’ll decide what to do. Wes is impressed and Dan is a little hurt but admits that sitting around and waiting and following Fred’s lead was the right thing to do. Wes and Travis are back to thinking of what to do next when Travis remembers Miguel, the leader of the drug cartel and possibly the only man they know who knows how to get in touch with El Ingeniero. Dan butts in again, but this time he merely suggests what the guys do next. He tells the guys that they should question Miguel and jokingly ask if they’re ready to get their hands dirty. Fred and Dan leave to go snag Miguel.

Later, Fred and Dan walk into the interrogation room with Miguel, who is freaking out. His hands are cuffed in front of him and there’s a big white bandage on one hand from where Snowy bit him. Wes and Travis tell Miguel that they had a sudden breakthrough with their memory and remembered that Miguel was holding one of the guns at the shoot out at the car wash. Miguel protests because, of course, he actually wasn’t. But the guys disagree and tell Miguel that it doesn’t matter what he says, the jury won’t believe him and he’ll end up going to jail for attempted murder on two detectives. Miguel cracks and tells Wes and Travis that El Ingeniero is leaving the country tomorrow. He also says that he knows El Ingeniero never leaves unless a job is done. Wes and Travis rush out to figure out the next step in the case.

The next morning, LAPD drive into the airplane hangar just as El Ingeniero drives in. There’s a shoot out, but Travis gets a shot on El Ingeniero and brings him down, closing the case and saving Carlos family, who were being held in El Ingeniero’s car. Dan gets shot in the arm, but once paramedics arrive on the scene, they confirm that he’ll be fine. Dan and Travis talk right before the EMTs load Dan in the ambulance. Dan confesses that maybe it is time for him to retire and take on a desk job. He tells Travis to give the credit to Fred instead and leave him out of it. Dan is then loaded up and taken away. Back at the station, Carlos is reunited with his family. The captain tells the guys that Carlos has agreed to testify against the cartel in exchange for being put under the witness protection program. He congrats the guys on another job well done. However, Travis jumps in and says that all of the credit should go to the Missing Persons Department. Right as he finishes his sentence, Fred walks into the office and disagrees. He forces Wes and Travis to take all of the credit and comes to turns with the fact that it’s time for retirement. He then leaves and that is the end of another great episode of Common Law.