The Sniffer S02E05 "Episode 5" Recap

A party girl named Alyona is murdered in her luxury apartment. Sniffer immediately picks up on the fact that she had sex shortly before her death, meaning that the mystery man is one of three suspects. Altona had been paying her own tuition to attend an expensive university and investigators are unsure how she afforded this in addition to her apartment.

Tatyana's psychiatric doctor tries to make a sexual pass at her and is surprised when she rejects his advances. When he can't find proof of her hiding her pills that she's supposed to be taking, the doctor orders that she be given injections as a means of taking her 'medicine' but in actuality it's to make her more pliable and subservient to his advances.

Alyona's parents are brought in to answer some questions. When Sniffer picks up that her father was in the apartment recently he admits in private that Alyona helped him with living expenses by providing monthly payments. Alyona's mother doesn't know about any of this and her father asks them not to tell her mother about any of this. He tells them that Alyona secretly worked in a strip club called "Star" and he only found out about this by accident.

Viktor goes to Star and learns from another dancer working there that Alyona was clever about picking up different sugar daddies to date and pay for her every few months.  Alyona's landlord is brought in for questioning next and he claims to only have been in her apartment once a month to pick up the rent but Sniffer is able to pick up on his scent as one that was in the apartment more recently. Viktor allows him to leave without further questioning because he can't think of a motive for murder.

One of Alyona's closest friends is able to pick out another student at the university as the man she had slept with on Friday. He had sex with her only half an hour before she was murdered. The man admits that they have fought in their relationship but he is insistent that he didn't kill her. Sniffer reminds Viktor that the three scents he picked up on were what he picked up on from the bedroom but not necessarily the entire apartment. When Viktor catches the landlord at Star, the man admits that Alyona was trading sex to rent the apartment but they had both agreed to this arrangement. The landlord's lawyer comes in and shows traffic surveillance photos of the landlord speeding through traffic and getting caught. He was 120 kilometers outside of the city, meaning he can't be the murderer.

Sniffer visits the psychiatric facility to check on Tatyana, who is lethargic and despondent from the drug injections. The doctor claims that sniffer's last visit with her triggered a PTSD episode and this is why her progress isn't better. Sniffer is willing to continue paying for her treatments but is saddened that she still appears to be so ill.

One of Alyona's best friends Liza is found dead in a body of water with some signs that she has ben tortured. Liza's body was found near a token belonging to Alyona's boyfriend. He is brought in once more for questioning and he says that he forgot the token when he left her place. When he returned to try to get it back, he called out for Alyona but she didn't respond. He heard running water and checked the shower where he found her dead before running away scared. Viktor doesn't believe his innocence but Sniffer isn't so certain that the boyfriend is the killer.

Alyona's mother is going through an old album of photos she finds among Alyona's things when she finds some provocative photos of Alyona. She grabs a rolling pin from the kitchen, goes out to the shed where her husband is working and knocks him over the head. When Alyona's mother is questioned by Viktor, she shares that her husband isn't Alyona's biological father and in hindsight she realises that he must have been molesting her. She blames herself and believes he is the one who killed her, saying that the night of Alyona's murder, she only saw the light from the shed but doesn't know for certain that he was out there.

When Viktor questions Alyona's step-father, he admits that he and Alyona started sleeping together seven years ago and it stopped once she got accepted to university. Alyona's father says it was a mutually passionate relationship. Sniffer finds a USB drive in the shed where the man was working. It was given to him by Alyona. She accidentally caught Boris, the landlord, killing a fisherman that was fishing on his property at his country home. The man says he was afraid to come forward because Boris is really well-connected. Liza had helped Alyona to try to blackmail Boris with an edited version of the video.

Sniffer gets a call while talking about the case with Viktor and it's the same strange dial tone that was used to trigger the prison guard to murder an inmate. Sniffer leaves and Viktor gets a call from the tech expert that had enhanced the surveillance content of the car that was speeding through traffic and it's revealed to have been Boris' lawyer at the wheel of the car. Viktor tracks Boris down at Star and chases him through the club until he gets outside. A random sniper shoots Boris dead and Viktor shoots (but doesn't kill) the sniper. He also takes the sniper's gun from him before he can shoot himself.

Finally, Sniffer gets to the holding cells in the police department, knocks the guard out, and prepares to shoot Alyona's step-father before he somehow manages to break out of the trance. He sniffs the gun and is able to deduce how he stole the gun from an evidence locker and upon sniffing the guard, he is able to figure out that the was the one to knock him out. He is alarmed to see that there are surveillance cameras there so he is likely to have been caught on camera doing these things. As he leaves, Alyona's step-father has a heart attack.

The Sniffer is available for streaming on Netflix.