The Closer: Tijuana Brass (Episode 409)

Just plain Brenda. So the last time I saw this guy, his name was Haywire and he was being crazy on Prison Break. Or rather, being in someone else’s crazy hallucinations on Prison Break, in which he was still crazy. And now he’s finding dead bodies in an alley, in the covered back of a pick-up truck and administering Catholic last rites, so… still crazy? He calls the authorities, and next thing you know, Brenda and her entourage are on the scene.

The two dead are Tijuana police officers, Jacinto Gonzales and Carlos Gomez. Taylor’s there, having called Brenda in. Flynn gives him guff about having to call the “elite” PHD in, as he supposedly called them in the LA Times article Ramos published the day before. Taylor is like, you think I called you elite, asswad? He pulls Brenda aside to tell her they need to respond to said article. “Everything Ramos wrote was trash,” he says. Brenda says Pope’s taking it seriously, since he’s after her for a meeting. She’s more concentrated on the scene, at which the coroner is just arriving. Because of all the dead people on Mondays, according to Taylor. Brenda asks how they have IDs already, then; turns out that the officers’ badges, passports, wallets, and weapons are arranged in the cab of the truck as though on display. The truck isn’t the crime scene, just a drop off. “So two Tijuana police officers murdered elsewhere are driven underneath a bridge to Los Angeles and abandoned in a stolen pick up truck. So strange,” Brenda muses. Taylor says that the thing was called in by a guy on a cell who happens to a priest, one Father Donahue.

Daniels calls Brenda over, as the coroner’s pulling jewelry from the mouths of the dead. Bracelets, to be exact, which Sanchez says are worn by members of the Ochoa cartel, which means that the deaths are drug related and the cops are probably dirty. The coroner says the men have been dead six to nine hours thanks to multiple GSWs from a .45. Brenda asks Sanchez to contact Tijuana and gives various assignments to the others. Provenza draws Brenda’s attention to the victims’ foreheads, which have been anointed with olive oil. She catches wise and tells Daniels to bring in the priest.

In Pope’s office, the man himself is telling Brenda how to deal with the Catholic church. If anyone would know, he would. He angrily asks if she’s read Ramos’s article. He misspelled her middle name. Pope slams the paper down and points out a quote for her (after putting on some seriously awesome glasses): “Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson confesses that 90% of the time, Priority Homicide Division is deployed by her superiors in an attempt to anticipate media coverage. Did you actually say this?” Brenda protests while Will talks over her, accusing her of having told Ramos that the press dictates how he runs his division. Brenda says the article is about how PHD handles more white murder victims than Robbery Homicide, which is how Pope assigns cases. He tells her the police commission is up his butt to dismantle her department. Taylor arrives as Pope says that Part 2 of the article, due next week, has to be a whole lot sunnier to the LAPD and PHD in particular than Part 1. Taylor says they need to get ahead of the story; PHD has shown the efficacy of team investigation, and that lesson needs to be applied to the rest of the force’s structure. Brenda’s like, what does that mean? Pope: “Priority Homicide has run its course. It’s over. It’s done. I’m shutting it down.” Brenda stutters through the when and why, and Pope tells her it’s done. Today he and Taylor are restructuring the LAPD to stand up under the scrutiny of the police commission and the media. Brenda’s keeping her rank and salary, but she’s not in charge of PHD anymore. She’s dismissed. She looks at Taylor, who nods, but the look on his face is like, don’t worry, we’ll take care of it. When Brenda leaves, Pope looks a lot less angry and a lot more upset.

In the Murder Room, Flynn reads the article while the investigation has mostly come to a halt. Provenza wants to know about Father Donahue. Daniels explains that he runs a small parish on his own, and immigration thinks he harbors illegals. Brenda is sitting in the corner barely holding her shit together and generally making everyone nervous. Provenza asks Sanchez if they heard from Tijuana; they’re sending a comandante to do his own investigation. Officially the dead men had no business in LA. Brenda, her head in her hands, asks Flynn about the dope dogs that searched the truck. No dope, but blood in the cab. Provenza and Gabriel tag-team an explanation of a shots-fired report from the night before that they’re following up on, specifically a dude named Mateo Hernandez who denies having heard the shots. They’re trying to bring him in; Brenda supposes he’s either a deaf illegal immigrant or his job is the crime scene. She readies to go there and tearfully tells everyone they’ve done excellent work, as always. “Really. Always really excellent work.” Fritz arrives to tell Brenda to lay off Mateo Hernandez, since he’s helped in some drug trafficking investigations. Brenda’s like, this might inconvenience you, but now he’s a suspect, so come with me while I go ruin your career some more. In the Murder Room, everyone does that thing where they just look around at each other and say nothing. It’s like The Hills.

At Mateo’s work, his boss tells Brenda that the guy basically made the place into an impenetrable fortress. Fritz says he’s heard Mateo isn’t the kind of guy to whack two dudes. Brenda: then why are there two shells on the floor there? Cut to Tao mugging for Buzz’s camera, saying that the shells are from a .45. On his desk is a bulletin from Donahue’s church. There’s blood on the walls, a mop in a bucket with blood in the water, and clear evidence tying the site to the truck. Mateo went outside when the patrol came and told them he hadn’t heard shots; he rearranged the shelving to hide the bloodstains, dragged the bodies to the car, and drove the stolen truck to his church. Brenda is bound and determined to speak to Father Donahue, though Provenza tries to slow her up. He tells her they all read the article and it wasn’t good. Gabriel adds that now isn’t the time to be taking on the Catholic church. Provenza: “Let’s fight one Pope at a time.” Fritz interrupts to say the FBI’s faxing over declassified info on Mateo. Provenza’s all, see? Fun side project!

Back in the Murder Room, Fritz asks if Pope is hassling Brenda about the article. She’s too flustered and distracted to talk about it. Tao has a report for Brenda on the fingerprints found in the truck: some are the victims’, some are Mateo’s, some are unknown. Brenda gives Fritz the floor. Mateo’s real name is Manuel Rivera, and he used to be a comandante. He didn’t bow to the Ochoa cartel, so a year ago, he came to LA to help take down the Ochoa’s American distributors. Fritz thinks that the two dead officers were sent by the cartel to kill Mateo/Manuel. Flynn asks how Gomez and Gonzales knew how to find him, given the new, FBI-issued identity. Mateo’s nephew from Mexico visited him recently, and on returning to Mexico, was murdered for Mateo’s location; local federales say he was collateral damage in a gang-related shootout. Sanchez asks for the name to look him up in the Mexican morgue records, since they post all photos of the dead online. He was beaten to death, not shot; investigating officers were Gonzales and Gomez.

The team theorizes how the killings the night before went down, either self-defense spur of the moment, or premeditated self-defense in the form of murder. Brenda asks Tao to see if the blood the drug dogs found in the truck matches the victims. Taylor arrives with Comandante Martin Vasquez, Tijuana Internal Affairs. Brenda ushers him into her office, and Taylor holds her back. He tells her that he knows how it sounded this morning in Pope’s office, but he’s working on it. When she’s less than enthusiastic, he clues her in that it might not be PHD that the police commission has a problem with, but Chief Pope. He’s in charge of race relations at the LAPD and it’s blowing up in his face. Taylor thought Brenda would want to help keep their friend from early retirement. Brenda, ever the selfless one, is pissed that it would be at the price of her own division. Why should she be the fall guy, she demands. Then she realizes that she and Taylor do not exist in an invisible Cone of Silence, so she shuts up to return to her case. Taylor is like, you make someone a bridesmaid and they shit all over you.

Brenda asks Comandante Vasquez says that didn’t know Manuel/Mateo that well, and as far as the dead guys, he doesn’t know if they were corrupt. The prevailing philosophy in his line of work is “trust no one.” Brenda: “I know the feeling.” Vasquez says that corruption comes from decent people giving in or giving up. He’d like to thinks the deaths of his officers are self-defense on Manuel/Mateo’s part, but who can say. He wants to talk to the coroner. Downstairs, the awesome ME replicates the crime, playing the part of Manuel/Mateo. Gabriel is Gonzales, and Brenda, facing him, is Gomez. Manuel/Mateo shot Gomez, then turned the gun up, blew out Gonzales’s elbow before turning to shoot him in the face. He demonstrates this with a sponge, which he totally squirts in Gabriel’s face. That sounded dirtier than it was. Gabriel is grossed out. The ME hands him an antibacterial wipe. On second thought, maybe two. Gabriel just grabs the whole container. The comandante steps in from the corner and says that the ME’s theory seems to support self-defense. Brenda wonders why, if that’s the case, he didn’t call the police or the FBI. Vasquez says that according to Brenda, Manuel/Mateo tried to talk to the FBI a week ago; given their lack of response, he may have thought someone in the Bureau was giving him up. Gabriel, scrubbing behind his ears, thinks that’s paranoid. Vasquez says that paranoia is how they stay alive. He himself sleeps in a different place every night: someone’s home, a hotel, a church. Brenda latches onto this last thing. Gabriel tells her that they are NOT going to the church. Oh, yes they are.

Vasquez decides not to go into the church with Brenda and Gabriel, since seeing a Tijuana police officer might spook Manuel if he’s really taken sanctuary in the church. Gabriel tries one more time to talk Brenda out of taking on the Catholics, since it is a bad idea. Brenda’s like, thanks, but I am not listening to you. She heads to the rectory on her own. Father Haywire answers, and Brenda lies her way in by saying she spoke with someone at the Archdiocese. Lying to a priest, I love it. This woman wills top at nothing. Nothing! The living room has two dining trays in it; Brenda asks if Fr. Haywire was on his own. He had company, but he was called away. She requests a glass of water. The TV’s on a Spanish program; she asks if he watches a lot of it. His congregation is mostly Latino, so he uses it to help his Spanish. Brenda uses the opportunity of his turned back, as he gets the water, to steal a fork off the tray. She thanks him for calling in the murder but then gets hardcore on him, telling him that his last rites interfered with her crime scene. She wants to find out what happened to these men, and she takes her job seriously. So does he. How did he know about the bodies? He can’t say, because it was revealed under the seal of confession. Brenda asks if the confessed is a man or woman. Fr. Haywire: “Yes.” HA! Brenda is less amused. Haywire asks Brenda if she’s familiar with confession. She would say so. Again, hee. I love it. Brenda badgers him some about Manuel/Mateo, but Haywire’s totally done talking to her. He’ll tell the archdiocese they spoke. When Brenda says she needs his help, Haywire says he’ll pray for her. It will take a year’s worth of novenas, Father. She tells him that if she, the FBI, and the Tijuana PD know Mateo/Manuel came to see Fr. Haywire, soon the Ochoa will know, too. She shows him a photo of Mateo’s dead and pulpy nephew and says this is what happened to the last person who knew where he was. Haywire asks what she would do if she found Mateo. She would hold him on homicide charges until she checked out his story. Haywire says that he holds Mass at the county jail three times a week. Every Latino gang member in the city knows that someone named Manuel Rivera or Mateo Hernandez is going to show up because the Ochoa has offered $50K for his death. He won’t last an hour in the county jail. Brenda says they can find a safe place for him. Haywire says that’s not her problem. If she wants to protect Manuel, actions are more powerful than words.

The PHD team is corralling people and press outside the church. Provenza is like, really? This is what we need after that article? Brenda thinks this is the best way to keep people from getting into the church. Vasquez doesn’t think this is going to work. Brenda doesn’t care; she hands Tao the fork she stole and asks him to get prints. He says the blood in the truck was 7 days old and the same type as Manuel’s nephew. Brenda asks Gabriel to find out who owns that truck.

Pope’s office, damage control. Guest of honor: Ramos. He tells Brenda no hard feelings, since he did call her elite. Taylor says that’s the problem, and Pope agrees. Priority doesn’t assign value to victims. In fact, Ramos has jumped the gun, according to Pope. The department’s undergoing a major reorganization, and the first part of that is dropping PHD because of the misinterpretation. Ramos says that he didn’t misinterpret, the facts speak for themselves, plus what Brenda said about Pope deploying her to media-heavy cases indicates that the department lets the press direct its investigations. Pope stutters that’s not true, RIGHT BRENDA? Brenda says she was irritated and spoke without thinking. Pope blows smoke about the terminology of “priority” in PHD; Taylor adds that they used the best detectives because of the experiment involved and the difficulty of the cases. It’s not at all racial. But PHD’s out, and “Major Crimes” is in, under Brenda’s direction. They give Ramos the credit for the shake up; he asks if it’s cosmetic or real change. Brenda’s like, it is so totally real. It is so real, I am going to tell you right now all the things I wish I could investigate as well as homicide, like fraud, kidnapping, and rape. They’re major crimes, so they’re part of her unit! Also, Commander Taylor will report directly to her, coordinating all the departments, and she’ll keep her “elite” team. “Oh, it’s gonna be great!” Taylor and Pope: screwed with their pants on.

Brenda’s searching for candy when Gabriel flags her down. He has the license and registration for the truck. Tao confirms the prints on the fork. She has one more set of prints for him to match to the ones in the truck. In the media room, Daniels and Buzz have video of the dead men’s border crossing to go through. Brenda’s going to look at it before “questioning the suspect.” Vasquez, watching, is like, you have Manuel? Nope, but she knows where he is, and she knows he’s safe. They see the truck, and Vasquez says he thought it was stolen. Brenda: “Nope. That’s just what you told the San Diego police this morning when you realized your plan to kill Manuel had gone terribly wrong.” Doesn’t even look up from the computer to say this, calm as chamomile.

They all look around, like, whu? She wants to keep watching the video, as well as Vasquez’s passport. When he doesn’t comply, she has Sanchez and Gabriel forcibly take it from him. He’s like, what the hell, lady, I’m helping you! Yes, Brenda says, what better way to evade murder charges than investigate the crime yourself? He protests that he didn’t do the murder, but Daniels says he did commit a crime by having two passports. One of which is stamped the very same time as the dead men? Turns out the truck is registered to him under a different name. Plus, Tao has given her a positive print match between Vasquez and a set found in the truck. And the blood in the truck that he owns? Manuel’s nephew. Vasquez tells Brenda, basically, you don’t want to do this. She explains why Vasquez is there, helping: if Gomez and Gonzales weren’t successful in killing him but she brought him in for murder, putting him in county lock up would get him dead one way or the other, given the Ochoa’s bounty on his head. Vasquez says that Brenda can’t prove anything. She says if she can, he’ll be liable for the death of Gomez and Gonzales as well. She hesitates before arresting him, wondering what name to use. He says it doesn’t matter, so she uses Mateo/Manuel’s names. Sending him to county lock up with a wanted man’s name, protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. Sanchez reads his rights. Vasquez says this is murder. She says he can stop it, and then asks for his confession. He won’t give, though he does try to attack Brenda. The men carry him out as he says they’ll all die for this. As they start to take him away, Vasquez shouts that he can make them all rich. Flynn answers for them all, saying that if he sees Gomez or Gonzales, tell them hello.

Before we’re done, Brenda finally meets Manuel/Mateo face to face. She goes to the church, which Fritz says is beautiful. Brenda: “Don’t start.” Ha. She lets herself into a confessional. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she sighs. Haywire asks how long it’s been since her last confession. She says she almost got one the night before, but then Manuel, AKA Mateo, was killed in county jail. It’s been reported in the press, which is why the police are gone. Haywire is safe, and so is his friend. He asks what will happen to the real Mateo now. Brenda says they can get him a new identity with the FBI, but if Haywire knows anything about immigration, he knows the government can’t find illegal aliens for crap. Haywire says he’ll pray for her. She leaves, and on her way out, recognizes the janitor as Manuel. She wishes him luck, and he blesses her, since he’ll need it.