Forever S01E02 Recap: Look Before You Leap

After a quick recap of Henry's never ending condition the episode opens with a frantic woman in a cab. She pleads with the person on the phone to wait, begging him not to do anything rash. She spots something on the bridge and forces the cab driver to stop as she opens the door in traffic. She runs from the cab and climbs over the guard rail, leaping off to her screaming death. Her body washes up on shore.

Henry's first patient has an axe stuck in his head. The detectives think it to be a homicide,but Henry has another story. The drunk soccer fan tried to cut a branch interfering with his connection,  fell from the ladder, and the axe fell from the roof killing him. The woman jumper however, Henry concludes is a suicide. He's never seen a jumper with fractures as hers, she was facing the wrong way and there was a good deal of lead paint beneath her nails, clearly a homicide. Detective Jo Martinez plans to look into it since Henry has yet to be wrong.

Jo's boss however doesn't think time should be wasted on the jumper. Between witnesses and the cab driver's statement that the woman was hysterical before her leap, its a clear suicide. She asks what she's missing, and Jo tells her that the ME has helped out on a number of homicides. The Captain brings up Jo's personal life, telling her that she can't cut her any slack, and if the ME is as good as she says then they'll find better use of his talents.

Henry is asked to rule the jumper as a suicide, but he refuses. Her family wishes to speak to him, but Henry doesn't like to talk to the families. They come in anyways, and Henry is forced to tell them that it looks like she fell to her death. They're adamant that she didn't commit suicide, she was set for an internship in Paris, and they're sure it had to be something else. Henry offers his condolences, but the parents think he has no idea the pain he's going through without having a child of his own.

Past. The baby that was found in the wreckage is happy and healthy, and he needs a home otherwise, Abigail tells Henry, he'll go into an orphanage. She's named him Abraham, and she clearly thinks Henry would be the perfect person to adopt him.

The father has become the son. Abe has Henry try some sauce, but he's distracted with the current victim. He can't get the girl's death out of his mind, but he's done his job and its up to the police. He doesn't want to get caught up  in the messy entanglements of life. Abe points out that's the point of life, and he has a date.

The jumper leapt to her death in the middle of the bridge, and Henry sets out on his bicycle to take a look for himself. The impact of falling is one of the worst ways to die. He climbs over the rail for a better look, and finds not only clay marks and paint missing, but also a shoe print. Henry spots something above, and as he grabs it, he nearly falls himself. He manages to get back to the top of the bridge, but gets hit by a truck, killing him.

Running nearly naked with just a pizza box covering, Abe  picks him up, his date interrupted by Henry's bad night. Henry was right, there was someone else on the bridge, the girl was indeed pushed.

Henry's steps are light as he gets to work. Under the jumper's nails is paint that matches the bridge, and something more. She scratched someone before falling. On Henry's desk is a gift, offering his condolences on a painful death. Someone is stalking again. Henry tells Jo his findings, and she's surprised to hear that he personally took a look, but he has a special relationship with death. Henry is quick to run out.

He takes his newest note to Abe, who notices a watermark on the paper. They no little about his fan, but Abe thinks he may be able to find out more about the sender. Jo arrives to tell him what she found. The jumper Vicky had checked into her Paris flight, not normal behavior for someone who was about to leap to her death. They head to her school to ask more questions.

Vicky was well liked, and was a shoulder to cry on to those in her dorm. Her parents are in her room, and they're excited to see Henry, thinking that they reopened up her case. Her death is an unexplained death at the moment. No boyfriend. At the moment she was working on translating an Egyptian Codex. The mother mourns, and Henry tells her that he will find out who did this. Outside the room, Jo cannot believe that Henry told the mother that they would solve the case, considering she's not suppose to be looking into the girl's death, and sometimes these cases go years without being solved, but Henry has plenty of time.

They head over to see where Vicky was studying, and they meet her genius professor and see the codex. He's speaking to a group of students about the Codex. Professor James Brown is more than happy to talk about his greatest student. He gushes over the codex, and Henry notices that it was a love letter. They were about to publish their work, and Henry asks if he smoked, because of the way that he holds his pen. He's a former smoker. Professor Brown claims to not have been too close to Vicky, that he was at Opera with his wife, but later Henry tells Jo that they were having an affair, between the title of the paper and the signs of cigarettes in Vicky's bed. There was also a picture in her room wearing his scarf. It's all circumstantial at this point, but Henry has nabbed the pen for a DNA comparison. The DNA is a perfect match to that under her nails.

Henry is impressed by James's brownstone. Her block was extremely popular in the artistic circles. They question her about her and her husbands whereabouts. Henry points it must have been awkward sitting in an opera about betrayal, noting that her husband was never with her, one program was crumbled. He further reasons that she new about the affair and was trying to remind him of happier times with a newly placed picture. Her home is old, and they wouldn't have to bring any shame to her family. She's surprised that he knew all of that. Jo asks her question again, and this time she answers honestly.

James is taken into custody and questioned. They know about the affair, and that Vicky was leaving to study in Paris. His life was unravelling, and Jo says that Vicky was trying to stop him and fell. James tells her that it wasn't like that. He loved her, and he had the strength to break it off with her. He was happy for her, and Henry believes he's telling the truth. He notices a skin condition, and asks him to remove his shirt as his lawyer arrives. They leave, and Henry believes the skin got under Vicky's nails in the heat of passion, not as she fell.

Henry laments over the injustice of James spending his life in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Abe ponders that it could have been a crime of passion,  but Henry notes that the crime was meticulously planned. On the paper front, it was manufactured for a Hotel that has been closed for at least 6  years. It came from the Hotel Montliogne, on that he stayed at in 1945, and even wrote a letter on the stationary. As Abigail lay sleeping Henry wrote his letter and left, but Abigail woke and gave chase. He tried to leave her because things wouldn't work. So long as he loved her, she didn't care how it ended. Life is about the journey, not the ending, and she wasn't letting go.

Henry investigates further. If the professor was telling the truth, and he broke up with her, she wasn't letting go, Vicky was a fighter. The scuff marks on her shoes prove there was a struggle. She was lured up there. He opens her mouth, and finds some flesh between her teeth.  He tells his assistant to check that against James's, but Jo arrives, telling him its unnecessary, there's another body.

James's body was found at his desk with a suicide note. The detectives think its a clear case, but Henry thinks he was murdered. There was too much blood on the floor, he was drugged and sedated, and his wounds go from the inside out, instead of outside in. The suicide note is written by a left handed person, and theres an improper usage of the word for love in French.

Jo looks through security footage, and she recognizes James's wife Amanda.

Henry gives his condolences to the student that showed him around earlier. He notices
that Tucker is typing with his right hand when he's left handed. He also concludes that he was upset over not being given more credit for the research, and for Vicky falling for the professor, not him. He called Vicky saying that he was going to jump, and she came because that's the type of person she was. Killing the professor and making it look like a suicide tied up all the loose ends. Tucker notices that the police haven't arrived, and looks to tie up Henry's loose end,  but slitting his throat. It lacks his regular flare, but improvising is his only option, even though a camera is catching the whole exchange. Henry points out the camera, but its too late for that. Tucker carries Henry out of the room, and Jo see it all. Jo goes after Tucker, and with her partner, Hansen's help they take him down. Henry gets a little cut but he'll live.

Hansen looks over the camera footage, still unable to believe Henry was telling him to shoot Tucker. The captain clears the room, and takes Jo aside. She gets a slight reprimand for going after the case when she was told to back down. She is impressed Jo stuck with her gut, and trusted her ME with a sixth sense about death.

Henry faces Vicky's parents, doing the human thing, and offering comfort and allowing them to start healing. Jo faces her husband, and Henry looks at Abigail. Abe misses her as will, she'd be 94 if she were still alive. Henry always knew she would be gone some day, and hoped they could all be a proper family. Abe tells him that they were a proper family, that he's enjoyed his life. Henry gets a call from his mystery fan. He's done playing games, he asks about the hotel Montliogne. It was an easy manner of looking through records, which helped him finally understand why it all matters, because he still cares. He's a child the caller says. He's been around for thousands of years, and tells Henry to call him Adam.