Motive returns to the USA network tonight with an all new Sunday, July 17, season 4 episode 3 called, “Index Case,” and we’ve got your Motive recap down below! On this evening’s episode, it’s a race against the clock to stop a killer.
On the last episode, Angie temporarily filled in as Staff Sergeant during the investigation into the murder of a football player’s wife.
On tonight’s episode per the USA synopsis “it’s a race against the clock to stop a killer who’s inadvertently spreading a deadly pathogen through the city.”
Tonight’s episode looks like it is going to be great and you won’t want to miss it, so be sure to tune in for our live coverage of USA Network’s “Motive” at 9:00 PM EST! While you wait for our Motive recap hit the comments and let us know how excited you are for another Motive recap tonight.
Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
Detective Kennecki was kindly transferred out on tonight’s episode of “Motive”. Admittedly, no one in working in homicide could stand him so him leaving wasn’t going to be such a big thing for them however, they now had to get used to a new detective and Detective Paula Mazur wasn’t really a people’s person either. The new detective had joined up with Angie and Brian on a case involving a young man found dead at a spa. So as part of the welcome committee, Angie had tried to break the ice by bringing her new partner a cup of coffee and unfortunately Paula wasn’t even willing to take it just to be nice.
Paula had apparently had her coffee and so she didn’t bother to say thanks but no thanks. She simply said no. Hence Paula was someone that a happy go lucky person like Angie was going to have to accept just as she is. Brusque! However, if there was something that Paula had going for her then it was her commitment to duty. Paula had wasted no time whatsoever jumping right into the case and she along with Angie were concerned about what happened to Chris Mancuso. Chris Mancuso was an environmental consultant and therefore he traveled around a lot yet Chris had something of a ritual after he’d come back from his many trips. He would always visit the spa.
The spa had a chamber where people could float in mineralized water as a way to soothe them so that’s what Chris always did when he came back home. Yet, Chris who had been found in a chamber hadn’t been found in water and there was a strong chemical smell coming from the chamber. So Betty had later run some preliminary tox screens and she found out that their victim died from asphyxiation relating to those fumes. Betty said that someone had injected chloramine into Chris’s tank and that doing such a thing turned Chris’s soothing place into a gas chamber. And so both Paula and Angie looked into how the killer did it.
The chamber that Chris was in couldn’t have been opened from the outside without Chris being aware of it so the toxins must have come in through the pipes. But as the detective were checking the pipes, they realized someone had done a little bit more than just poison Chris. The detectives had also noticed that their killer had preset the chamber into self-cleaning mode while Chris was dying. So that meant someone knew enough chemistry to poison Chris with a mixture of ammonia with bleach as well as to have the tank clean itself to remove most of its evidence. And therefore all of those things added up made Chris’s girlfriend Kiera seem guilty.
Kierra had hated the fact that Chris was always traveling and she worked in microbiology at a major lab in the city because she worked for a biomedical company on the brink of a breakthrough. So Kierra could have been a great suspect however what would be her motive because it couldn’t just be because she didn’t see Chris enough. Though as the detectives were wondering this, Betty ended up surprising them all by calling in a Code Orange at the Medical Examiner’s office. Which was kind of serious. Betty had unfortunately, call such a code in after the blood work she ordered on the victim came back and showed that he had been affected by a highly dangerous pathogen. That showed itself to be highly contagious.
So was it only by calling Code Orange that Betty was able to warn everyone that they could be in danger if they happened to have been exposed to whatever Chris carried. For that was the most troubling part. Betty had found out that Chris was sick, but she couldn’t identify the pathogen and CDC wasn’t much help either so later Betty had to again throw caution into the window when she decided to stay on at the Medical Examiner’s office because her results had come back positive and she wanted to track the progression of the virus for herself.
Yet, it wasn’t just law enforcement that had been exposed. Kierra had also gotten sick and people at her office were beginning to show symptoms as well. And because Chris’s first stop in the city was to go to the spa then that meant his killer was the one out there infecting everyone. So again that made Kierra a viable suspect. She did after all claim that she hadn’t seen her boyfriend since he left for Chile and yet she was sick with the same pathogen so either she was lying or someone that worked with her had killed her boyfriend.
The detectives figured that Chris might have a nasty run-in with his killer on the day he died so that didn’t give the killer that much time to do everything because they would have needed time to argue with Chris, kill Chris, and then infect several people. Beginning with Kierra and staff at the lab and ultimately infecting several members of the general public. But Angie had an idea. She said that they could use a map of the infected in the city to create a geographical profile and it was that same profile that had them taking a second look at Kierra’s boss. Kierra worked for Dr. Logan Tenwick who was the chief research scientist for Turner which was the biomedical firm they worked for and apparently Logan believed he was on the brink of finding a cure for breast cancer of all things.
Logan though wouldn’t seem like the sort of guy that would kill someone much less his second-in-command’s boyfriend however, it began to look that way after everyone at the firm got tested while he refused to come in to check himself out. So to be frank, the only reason Logan wouldn’t want to get tested after everyone else he worked got checked out was because he knew he was sick and didn’t want anyone to know about it. Just in case it revealed something else he was trying to hide. And so Angie and Paula were already feeling pretty sure about Logan when he surprised them by trying to break into a lab and steal antiretroviral.
Although, that attempt to steal whatever could fix him had helped everyone in the end. Logan had apparently been too sick to even flee the building so the detectives had found him hiding in the basement and there they were finally able to take him to get treated. So the detectives had ended up saving Logan’s life because by tracing Logan’s progression after he had been infected, the doctors were finally able to recognize the mutated form of MERS for what it was and treat it. And so everyone that was infected received the cure before any of their conditions could get worse, but that also meant Kierra was finally recovering from what Logan did to her when he directly infected her.
So the only thing that later both the police and Kierra wanted to know was why. Why did Logan kill Chris? Though sadly it turns out it was because of Kierra. Logan had found out that Kierra was quitting her job and he had blamed Logan for it because he thought Logan was holding her back and stopping her from reaching her full potential on his breakthrough project with him. And so the truth is Logan killed Chris for nothing.
Kierra wasn’t quitting because her boyfriend asked her to. She was quitting because she knew that Logan wasn’t getting anywhere with his research and that he was living a fool’s dream. Kierra had said that Logan’s research was flawed and that he was lying to everyone about their being a breakthrough just around the corner because he couldn’t face the truth. That none of his experiments were working and that he wasn’t close to anything. Much less a cure for breast cancer. However, the only thing that had stopped Kierra from reporting Logan’s fault logic to the board was Chris.
Chris had said that she shouldn’t ruin Logan’s entire career over it and that she should just quit. So she was quitting and she was going to be starting over with Chris because he was about to blow the whistle on his own boss for corrupt business practices that was actually a danger to others. And together they planned on starting from scratch far away, but unfortunately, Logan hadn’t known that Chris had been his saving grace so he had tried to confront to him.
Logan had known about Chris’s spa habit as well so he had gone to see him before he could enter though there he had to talk Chris into breaking up with Kierra. So that had been the step too far. Chris had said that Logan had crossed the line and that he was going to be reporting him for harassment and so Logan had killed him to keep that from happening. As it happens half of the board had wanted to get rid of him so a harassment claim would have cost him his job as well as Kierra.
So if Logan hadn’t tried to pressure Chris then Chris would probably have died from the disease and Logan wouldn’t have lost everything he worked for.
THE END!