The Forgotten Episode 1.11 Patient John

A Latino man is found buried in a seepage pit, which is just as gross as it sounds. He had needle marks in his arm and small traces of Warfarin (aka rat poison) in his system. But Candace discovers that Warfarin can also be used as a blood thinner.

A frequent visitor to an emergency room near the house where the body was found remembers seeing the victim sick in the hospital parking lot. He was with an unidentified man. Alex discovers a hole in a fence that leads to the yard of the crime scene. There's a bloody handprint on the fence. The victim was most likely alive when he was stuffed into the seepage pit.

John Doe had a corrective operation at birth to fix a foot that was turned at the ankle. We mention this because the victim had specialty workbooks like Walter's, but they were different sizes. Walter tracks down the guy who traded shoes with John Doe which leads them to the headquarters of the Chicago Association of Mechanical Engineers. The victim was a maintenance man there. His name: Andy Santiago.

The supervisor says Andy was trying to bring his wife and kids to the States from Venezuela. Alex and Walter catch a coworker named Robert Chung going through Andy's personal belongings. Apparently, he didn't like folks who weren't born in the USA. Chung is a bigoted thief but not a killer. They also find a pre-pay credit card that Andy was loading up with money. Letters from home reveal that someone was threatening to kidnap his family unless they received $5,000. Andy was about a thousand bucks shy.

Andy was getting some side income from a place called the North Michigan Biological Plasma Center. He was donating plasma for money, which explains the needle tracks. A guy named Greg leads Candace to believe that Andy may have signed up for a clinical trial elsewhere to make the extra grand.

Remember Horsemama from Railroad Jane? Well, guest star Susan Ruttan returns as the eccentric friend of the Forgotten Network. Unfortunately, she shows up at Candace's office, where our favorite insurance worker is already on thin ice with her new supervisor.

Nevertheless, Horsemama has compelling info related to the case regarding a doctor named Rayburn who has to approve clinical trials regarding hematology. That's the good news. The bad news is that Candace's boss catches her with Horsemama. In the ensuing showdown, Candace quits her job. You know, she never liked it there anyway. So maybe that's actually good news, too.

When Alex and Tyler meet with Dr. Rayburn, he claims there have been no "unresolved problems" like the ones they've described. Strange choice of words, wouldn't you say? Alex and Tyler would. Outside the doc's building, they catch him hightailing it over to a clinical trial facility where the good doctor meets a woman to sift through some files. Alex pops in and says, "Hey, I hope you guys aren't planning on shredding those."

As Russell questions Dr. Rayburn, Alex has a chat with the lady doctor who was with him. They discover that Andy was rejected for their trial because he had Warafin sensitivity. Rayburn was panicked because of another patient named Greg Beaudette. Greg was the name of the guy Candace met at the Plasma Center. Greg is a professional drug test guinea pig. Candace figures Greg set up Andy for the exam under his name.

Tyler and Candace head back to the Plasma Center where they see Greg is hanging out. Tyler plays the role of a guy who's up for a high-paying sleep deprivation study. When Greg takes a seat next to him, Tyler turns on the video camera on his laptop. Their conversation is transmitted to Detective Russell and Alex at the police station. Tyler tricks Greg into confessing to the scam he ran with Andy. When Greg realizes what's happened, he makes a run for it. Fortunately, Alex is there to smash his nose in. He says, "That was for Andy."

Greg could have saved Andy's life when he got sick. But instead he chose to think only of himself. Andy lost his life that night, but his dream lives on. Russell informs Alex that they are going to be able to get his family out of Venezuela just as Andy had dreamed. That dream became a reality thanks to the dedicated team at the Forgotten Network.