Our recap of Elementary season 3, episode 16 attempts to piece together Sherlock’s past in order to clear his name from murder charges.

“For All You Know,” does not give us an all access pass to Sherlock, narcotic enthusiast. Nor does it fail for not doing so. In this week’s Elementary season 3, episode 16, Sherlock calls attention to his time spent without Watson or the audience present. The off screen work that Sherlock does is typically fed back to the audience in exposition form. The nights he spends working through evidence, the calls he makes, the visits he pays people, a majority of it takes place without our eyes. Sherlock keeps a heir of mystery about himself not only to the audience, but Watson as well.

Just as Watson should not be so comfortable with Sherlock’s mysterious walks, maybe we should not get too comfortable with the detective we’ve grown to trust.

Detectives Demp and McShane are the first to poke at our faith in Sherlock by presenting him with a case that places him as the prime suspect. Maria Gutierrez, the woman recovered from a construction site, died three years prior from a blunt force hit to head and a note was found on her body that is written in Sherlock’s hand on a receipt from a bodega two blocks from his home dated during a time where a day sober was a laughable idea.

Sherlock is the first to admit there is mounting evidence against him. While he has an inkling that his moral compass would prevent him from committing murder, he was prone to paranoia, hallucinations. In the months following Irene’s death the spiral to rock bottom left him with one acquaintance, his drug dealer Oscar. As the only person Sherlock spent time with, he reaches a dead end as Oscar admits his recollection of that time period is anything but clear.

Joan may have gotten a few doors slammed in her face by Maria’s family, but Sherlock meets a much worse assault as he heads home. Bruised over a great deal of his upper body and face, Sherlock was able to pick pocket the wallet of his assailant. Maria’s brother, on parole for burglary, is greeted with an offer from Sherlock in exchange for information. If he wants to cause Sherlock more pain, he may smash his hand with a a wrench. Watson and Sherlock walk away with his hand in tact, no parole violated, and the name of a congressman in Queens Maria used to clean for.

The episode pushes and pulls the viewers over the line between guilt and innocence. At the start you want to rattle the detectives who doubt the singular mind of Sherlock Holmes, but the more Sherlock speaks of his own doubts, the less assured one becomes. Sherlock treats this case like any other, placing a blurred out photo of himself on the crime board as he stares at it. Taken by accident during the time in question, it serves as the perfect reminder that no detail about the man he was is easy to make out. Even Watson, who he admits knows him better than anyone, cannot deduce anything about that Sherlock Holmes. The blessing of forgetfulness is turning into more of a nightmare as he tries to chip away at the brick wall he built to that period of his life.

Detective Bell sends over a list of the frequent visitors to the soup kitchen that Maria worked at and one name stands out. At Oscar’s apartment, Sherlock pins him to a wall hoping that his withdrawal symptoms would give him a clearer look at the details of that night three years ago. Unfortunately, it does. Oscar is convinced that Sherlock not only had a hand in the murder, but that he did it.

Sherlock toys with this idea back at the brownstone and begins to apologize to Watson for allowing Maria’s brother the opportunity to torture him in order to get information. Again, this is a side of the detective that happens off screen for Watson. His proclivity for violence and threats exist on his track record, but they exist closer to the early days of his recovery. If anything the pain would have been a distraction from the torture of looking at his own life. Watson may offer an empathetic ear for the guilt he feels, but not for the shame he caries. An anonymous voice does little to ease his troubles, and Sherlock is arrested that night for the murder of Maria.

Watson pays Oscar another visit and gets more than she expected from the man who scored a hit the night before. Hidden deep in the city is Oscar’s insurance against Sherlock Holmes. His time with Sherlock was not all drugs and fun, waking up at times with Sherlock holding a knife to his throat. One night he found a bag stashed there with bloody clothes and he took it in case Sherlock ever tried to drag him down, he would present this as evidence.

Closer examination of the evidence proves that the shirt does not belong to Sherlock and the blood pattern belongs to another murder. Obtaining the bag of evidence was not the only part of that week Sherlock does not remember. In a closer look at his files, Watson realizes that Sherlock got Maria to safety, stashing her in a place where he uses to hold witnesses for safe keeping. Maria witnessed her boss trying to cover up the murder of a woman he had an affair with and took the evidence to Sherlock so that he could help not only her job, but the job of her employer. But before Sherlock could pay Maria another lucid visit at the safe house, the congressman got there first.

Sherlock may never quite be able to ignore the tiny specks of Maria’s blood on his hands after this week. They are the marks that the work of his future will honor the blood of the past. His name is clear and he continues to make moves away from the man he no longer wishes to know. Oscar may not be ready to leave his demons in the past, but Sherlock is ready to never visit with his again.

Watch Elementary season 3, episode 17, “T-Bone and the Iceman,” Thursday, March 12 at 10:00 p.m. ET on ABC.