It's a beautiful day, and the birds are in the trees, and a boy and his grandpa are sharing some quality time together in the park, and we all sit back and pick up our knitting and get ready to enjoy another heartwarming episode of . . . Special Victims Unit. Grandpa is telling Little Boy about the wonders of bird watching, but Little Boy thinks it's boring. "Grandpa, that's no fun! THIS is!" he says, flinging his Frisbee high in the air. That's right: what could be more fun than a lesson in Sick Irony Physics? Because the way that Frisbee sails through the air and promptly heads for a hedge thicket is due to the special electromagnetic pull that dead bodies in parks tend to exert on Frisbees, balls, badminton birdies, et cetera. Try it sometime, kids! Sure enough, our boy's Frisbee just about changes direction mid-flight and plummets right into the thicket. Grandpa says he'll get it, and makes his way through the bushes. Good call, Gramps, because the Frisbee has landed right to the body of a woman in a business suit; she appears to have been shot in the face. He staggers back in horror, then turns protectively towards the little boy, who has just come up behind him, still wondering about his Frisbee. Grandpa hugs him. "I'll buy you a new one," he says. A new Frisbee? That kid's going to need a damn Sony Playstation to get over this. Soon Stabler and Benson are on the scene. It turns out the murder/rape victim was an ADA named Karen Fitzgerald. "I know her -- I knew her -- she was my age," stammers Benson, who says they had drinks together a few times after court. "The case is all yours," says the cop at the scene. So's this episode.
Roll the opening credits. Now we really feel dirty.
Cap'n Cragen comes out of his office and gets on everybody's case about getting on the case. Jeez, one commercial break and he turns into a hardass. I have to note here that Cragen looks kind of thin and pale in this episode, not quite his cuddly old Muppety self. I hope he doesn't have a tapeworm. Anyway, Benson says that ADA Fitzgerald was a hard worker, a one-hundred-percenter, a mover and a shaker. "You knew her?" Cragen asks. Benson says she was an acquaintance; she wishes they'd been friends: "She kept her head down and just concentrated on getting the bad guys in jail." Stabler remarks that with all the cases she'd worked on means "a dump truck full of perps -- people with a grudge." Cragen wonders if there's any evidence that Fitzgerald knew her killer. "He held a lot of anger," says Jeffries. "The guy beat her with a rock, raped her, and then took time out of his busy schedule to shoot her. Twice." Family members of Michelle Hurd get to hit the sack early tonight, now that her character has uttered her One Memorable Line for the whole episode.
Munch pipes up: "Anyone remember the Labor Day rapist?" Blank looks from everyone. "Raped someone on Labor Day?" he says, impatiently. Oh, we thought it was a rapist who was throwing a special three-day linen sale. He points out that although the Labor Day crime wasn't a homicide, it was a lot like Fitzgerald's assault -- also happened in the Central Park Ramble, same time of day, a similar beating. The case is still open. "So you're saying the same perp, then," says Cassidy, speaking up with that kind of sweet, hopeful, Bobby Brady hi-I'm-here-too quality. "I've only had this partner a few months, but he's beginning to think like me -- only slower," says Munch. Cassidy's face falls, and you just know he's going to be out at the swing set working extra hard on those pull-ups. Cragen begins to assign tasks to the squad: "Jeffries, Briscoe, grab the Labor Day files and see what was missed." For the first time we notice Sergeant Lenny's nephew in the background, out of focus. Jeffries has a look like, "Oh great, I get paired up with the extra-with-a-legacy."
Our first chung-chung! takes us to the Ramble in Central Park. The homicide cop is showing Stabler and Benson the area where Fitzgerald was found. A series of plaster casts made from indentations in the ground show where Fitzgerald apparently crawled on her hands and knees, which creeps me out so much that I know I'll have to throw away those cute little plaster handprints my future child will bring home from kindergarten. The trail of handprints stops suddenly, seeming to indicate that the victim had to beg her assailant not to kill her or hurt her. You know, I don't think I'll even send my kid to kindergarten or let him/her out of the house, okay? The homicide cop and Benson discuss more gory details: the way Fitzgerald was beaten with a rock and then shot at close range. Then they climb over a ridge. "Did you find a book?" asks Benson, who'd learned that Fitzgerald used to read in the Ramble during her lunch hour. "No book," says the homicide cop. Of course, that means Benson finds it two seconds later. The location of the book indicates that Fitzgerald was probably dragged into the bushes from a bench a few yards away. A birdwatcher is on the bench peering into the trees through binoculars, and Benson and Stabler approach him, apparently blocking his view of a bird. "Hey! Hey!" Birdwatcher bitches. Benson flashes her badge to shut him up.
At the station, Birdwatcher tells them of a guy who almost pushed him off the bench at around the time the crime occurred; again he whines that he had just spotted some damn bird. "Did he say anything?" asks Benson. "Did you say anything?" Birdwatcher says irritably, "I'm not comfortable talking with people, that's why I watch birds. I like being alone!" He gets himself into an adenoidal tizzy and adjusts his horn-rimmed glasses. The Audubon Society files an anti-defamation lawsuit. The detectives have him seated in front of a PC; six mug shots appear on the monitor screen. "What's that?" asks Birdwatcher. Duh -- it's Benson's "Hot Hunks of Attica" screensaver. Actually, though, it's the state's sex-offenders database. Benson patiently explains to Birdwatcher that they're going to go through a series of screens and he should "holler if you recognize anyone." He stares at the faces on the very first screen for about five seconds. "That's him!" he says, pointing to one of the mug shots. "Are you sure?" asks Benson. Birdwatcher isn't sure. They show him a few more screens and he picks out another guy because he can't decide, and then he whines for a soft drink and he can't decide what kind, and then he drives a fully-loaded eighteen-wheel big rig truck back and forth over our last nerve.
"The Bird man ID'd ten people," Stabler tells the squad. "Larry Bird and the Partridge Family," Munch says to nobody in particular. Has anyone checked to see if Munch's pupils are dilated? Anyway, it turns out that two of the ten were cases that Dead ADA Fitzgerald handled, and Cragen hands one of the mug shots to Cassidy. "Kenneth Maggio, convicted of forcible sodomy, out on parole," he tells everyone. Cassidy brandishes the photo like it's a Pokémon card ("Look! I got Pervo-chu!"). Benson holds up the other photo, a Mr. White. "Where does he land on the atrocity bell curve?" asks Munch. "Date rape, copped a plea, did no time, he's a realtor," says Benson. We barely get a chance to contemplate how atrocious real estate is before the scene cuts to Benson and Stabler interviewing Richard White in his glossy office. White is in his forties, with gray hair and the perpetually smug look one usually sees on personal-injury lawyers and male porn stars. He is telling the detectives he was shocked to read about Fitzgerald's murder in the paper. "Nobody deserves to die that way," he says. "I actually felt for the woman." "Felt what?" asks Benson. "Happy that the woman who prosecuted you on a date rape charge wouldn't have occasion to prosecute you in the future?" Benson, roll up your sleeve, because it sounds like you need to change your "Understatement" patch. White explains that the charges were reduced and that he was advised to plead guilty. "I was innocent," he says, and goes on to say that even though he was railroaded, he has no hard feelings towards Fitzgerald: "She was just doing her job, and I forgive her." "Do you forgive Louise Billings, too?" asks Benson, asking about the woman who accused White of the date rape. White smirks: "Louise was confused. She didn't know how the world worked." He starts to swivel with a swagger in his big leather executive Captain Cockmaster chair as he explains that he and Louise had dinner and sex a month after they'd broken up, and she "thought it meant more than it did" and then filed charges out of anger. "Sounds like everyone involved was wrong but you," observes Stabler. White smirks again: "It happens." White gives his alibi -- he was previewing a house in Astoria during the time Fitzgerald was killed. Benson looks at him as the Prick-O-Meter alarm in her head begins ringing.
Out on a sidewalk somewhere, Jeffries waits by the entrance to a building. Hey! They let Jeffries outside! Yay! She'd been in those dark file rooms for so long that her hair had become the color of a dead Boston fern. An Orthodox Jewish man comes out of the building with his nose stuck in a book, and Jeffries stops him, along with another cop. It turns out this guy may have been a witness in the Labor Day rape case. "The man I saw running in the park? Do you want me to look at pictures?" "That's why we're here," says Jeffries, blinking in the sunlight. At the station, Cassidy and Munch sit around while Orthodox Man peers at photos on the Dickbag Database. "Detective Munch, it's been two hours! Must I keep looking at these?" Munch nods: "It would be a mitzvah." Orthodox Man's face lights up, as if he lives to hear a Hebrew word. "Are you?" he asks Munch. Munch suggests that he looks at another twelve photos, "for the Twelve Tribes." This totally thrills Orthodox Man. Okay, he needs to get a life -- an Orthodox life, of course, but really, he could use one. He turns back to the computer screen as Cassidy downloads another six perv pics. He points to one. "That's him! That's the putz who ran into me and called me a Jew bastard on Labor Day!" Munch and Cassidy look at the screen: the putz is Jean DeSeault, a Canadian who had been deported. Cassidy goes off to call Montreal. Orthodox Man doesn't want a ride home because Shabbat starts in ten minutes. Munch insists: "Even with God's help you're never going to make it to the South Bronx." Orthodox Man smiles, because he's just so damn happy he's come across another Jewish person in New York City!
Chung-chung! That's the sound of the writers' sledgehammers hitting a couple of plot points. Benson and Stabler are at the property management company that White mentioned in his alibi. The guy in the office shows them a padlock doohickey with a little electronic device that enables real estate agents to enter houses on their own and then somehow it sends a fax back to the property management people, and yes -- chung! -- there's a fax confirming that White was showing a house. Stabler gets a call on his cell phone and learns that -- chung! -- White's Labor Day alibi checked out. Bonus chung: White's real estate company specializes in shithole houses. Let's move on.
Back at the station Cassidy skips over to Munch's desk to tell him, "I got the Labor Day rapist!" He'd called forensics. "They never matched the pubic hairs found on the Labor Day vic to anyone," he says. Cassidy has yet to grasp that, now that he's in the Sex Crimes department, he really doesn't have to say PUBIC hairs. I mean, come on, I'm trying to drink a can of Coke here. Anyway, Cassidy had forensics check into the Canadian guy DeSeault, and they found DeSeault's DNA evidence from a offense matched up. Now DeSeault has split to Canada, where authorities are looking for him. Munch is so not impressed: "Oh that's great, Cassidy. While Dudley Do-Right is out searching the ten provinces, that's about four million square miles, DeSeault could have come back to this country and done Fitzgerald. He's still a suspect." "Yeah, go ahead Munch, rain on my parade," bitches Cassidy. "I don't just want to rain on your parade, I want to blow up all the floats," says Munch. And while you're on this destructive kick, Munch, could you mangle some more metaphors in the English language? Because it's really, um, funny.
Anyway, Munch and Cassidy pay a visit to another of Fitzgerald's perps. They visit him at the donut shop where he works for minimum wage. "Police!" shouts Munch, walking into the really scuzzy back room of the bakery. "We're looking for Kenneth Maggio, he committed sodomy," Cassidy snickers. Maggio is a big guy with a shaved head and a filthy white uniform. I get it -- he's Mr. Not-Clean! "What do you want?" he hisses. Munch holds up a donut and waggles his finger through the hole. "Does this turn you on?" he taunts. Aw, guys, leave the poor sodomist alone! Munch goes on: "Isn't it a little dangerous for you to be working around all these helpless donuts?" I cringe and hope to God that Munch doesn't make a joke about "Krispy Kreme." Maggio's alibi for the Fitzgerald murder is that he was with his lover -- a guy named Frank. "Oh, I get it, too gay to rape a DA?" says Munch. Maggio goes apeshit. "You want to know why? I'll show you!" He unzips his fly. "See? See?!" It turns out that when he was in prison he was attacked with sulfuric acid . . . down there. "Can't even rape a friggin' ant!" he mutters. Maggio drops his pants. Munch glances over and winces at the sight of the . . . red herring.
Back at the station, Munch talks about a Kennedy conspiracy theory and does a pretty lame impression of that detective guy on Homicide who used to talk about conspiracy theories. Benson asks him if Maggio looks like a suspect. Munch says no, and explains why: "Acid on the scrote." "Ooooowwww," shudders Benson, playing along like she has a scrotum. "So does anyone look good for Labor Day?" asks Cap'n Cragen, as if he was trying to get the gang together for a picnic or something. Munch mentions DeSeault: "Canada can't find him, so they've got the dog sleds out looking for him now." Oh, bring on the Canadian jokes, Munch, go ahead, but don't come crying to me when Neil Young won't let you smoke a fatty with him, okay? Cragen wants to stay on the case. He turns to Stabler and Benson and asks them about White, the real estate guy. "His alibi looks good," says Stabler, "but I went through the White trial transcript." It turns out that Fitzgerald really dragged White through the mud before the plea bargain. "He had to have hated her," he says. Dear writers: could you get more boring than naming a bad guy Richard White? Couldn't you have just flipped through an Ayn Rand book and found some creepy bizarro rapist names?
Chung-chung! Munch and Cassidy go talk to Richard White's ex-girlfriend and accuser, Louise Billings, at her apartment. "Richard could be a really sweet man," she says, "but sometimes he could be abusive." She says that sometimes he demanded weird things sexually. "Like Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde," says Cassidy. Yes, he really says Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde. Finally, says Louise, after three years the stress got to her and she broke up with White. The set designers have once again gone for the handy Psychological Character Development Through Decor approach: she has slipcovers over everything, poor woman. Munch asks her how White handled the break-up. "He said he understood," Louise replies, but then she said he kept running into him, about two or three times a month, and they'd make friendly small talk. "Didn't all these meetings seem odd -- in a city of this size?" Munch observes. Well, maybe she hangs out at the Central Perk coffeehouse. Anyway, according to Louise, during one of these meetings White was particularly charming and she asked him up to dinner, for old time's sake. "He got drunk," she says, "and then I saw Mr. Hyde." She says he made her crawl to him and beg for forgiveness. "I . . . did," she says, breaking down into sobs. Munch comforts her: "It probably saved your life. And it took a lot of courage to face him in court." Louise stops crying and says, "Karen Fitzgerald gave me the strength to do that." Then she tells the detectives that White sent her flowers after the trial, with a note that said "no hard feelings." In the background, the Creepy Minor Chord Concerto keens a little louder.
Stabler and Benson interview Karen Fitzgerald's best friend. She IDs White as the jerk who'd been smiling at them from a nearby table when she and Fitzgerald had lunch together a month ago. Fitzgerald had gotten rattled and left the restaurant when she saw White, but never mentioned why. Stabler and Benson exchange their patented we-know-why-don't-we-yes-we-do looks. "He's stalking her," Benson tells Cap'n Cragen in his office, in case we didn't know why. Meanwhile, Munch and Cassidy note that White's business partner was his character witness in the date-rape trial and corroborated his alibi in the Fitzgerald case. "She might be the weak link," says Cragen. "If you were clean, why would you stay with garbage like White?" "Maybe she's afraid," says Stabler, idly massaging a beautiful bicep through his sleeve.
Chung-chung! The Nautilus weights clank in my fantasies of Stabler doing bench-press reps, all sweaty . . . Sorry, where were we? Oh yeah -- Benson and Stabler go to talk to White's business partner, Kimberly Phillips, who, on the job, is just leaving the house White mentioned in his alibi. Once again we're shown how the electronic key doohickey thingy on the front door works, and somehow there's a beeper involved, and I am still confused. Phillips's story is that she met White a couple years ago at an open house and he proposed that they go into business together; at first she blew him off but then he sent her, ding! flowers with a card saying ding!that his feelings weren't hurt, and then, ding! she kept running into him, and finally she changed her mind. "And you've done well together," Stabler presumes. "Yeah, very," Phillips nods and smiles a little too desperately, like she's on the Home Shopping Network. She says she has a closing in half an hour and scurries off. "Well, she's holding out," says Benson. "I'm getting that too," says Stabler. They try to figure out why -- maybe she's scared, but if White were a threat why wouldn't she just go to the police? "Why did Louise Billings let him into her apartment?" says Benson. "He controls -- somehow, he controls." With what, the Sleep of Ages?
Stabler and Benson talk to Cragen, who reminds them that White isn't the only suspect. "Munch, Cassidy and Canada are dealing with DeSeault. We're hanging onto White until we have a reason not to," says Benson. She thinks White's got something on Phillips: "Enough to make her do what he asks." Benson continues, "I understand this guy, Don. He hates women who take control. He always finds some way of getting it back." She points out that Louise Billings took control by breaking up with him; Karen Fitzgerald took control by prosecuting him: "And we know what he did to get control back from her." Cragen decides they ought to bring in White and talk to him. "It sounds like he would enjoy taking you on."
White and Benson are in the interrogation room. "What was it like before you became a detective?" White smirks. "I mean, did you wear a uniform? You're still wearing one now," he says, looking down at her neutral pantsuit du jour. "Oh come on, we're not here to talk about me," says Benson. Yeah, can we talk about Stabler? Anyway, Benson uses her sweetest voice to tell White that his alibi is shredding: "Anybody could have used that lock box if they had the right code -- you didn't have to be there -- your partner says you weren't." "She wasn't telling the truth," says White. "How can you be so sure?" counters Benson. "Because you're not," he replies. Benson turns away with an "oh, dang" expression on her face and she chews her L'Oreal-ed lip. Oh, and good move, Benson: walk all the way across the room so White can check out your ass. "You dress down, but you're very attractive," he says. "Is this some of your famous charm, White?" Benson asks him. Follow with some call-me-by-my-first-name-while-I-call-you-by-yours blah blah banter. Benson gets creeped when White knows how long she's been with the SVU, and where she went to college. "It's public record," he says, with a big smug-ass look on his face. Benson gets in his face. "You know who you are?" she asks. Go, Benson! Tell him he's a sick bastard! Or a dicksmack! Or a slime-licking ferret-crap lowlife uglyhead fell-off-a-shitwagon pus bag! But no, she says, "You're a nosy parker!" A nosy parker? What the hell is that? "And you're a bitch!" snaps White. "Did I hit a nerve?" Benson snaps back. "I don't have any nerves," says White, reaching up to creepily caress her forehead. "How about you?" Benson flinches but stares him down. "We'll see," she says. White leers, then steps away to the door, saying he has a house to show, "unless you've got some evidence . . ." "Go with God," says Benson, coldly. Cap'n Cragen comes to the door and signals to Benson to let him go. White turns back to her and gives his most twisted scum-tastic smirk ever before he leaves. "Do you have to let him back on the street?" Benson asks Cragen. "You gave it your best shot, it didn't work this time. We're going to get him back here and when we do --" the camera cuts back to Benson, glaring and nodding while sleazy guitar licks twang-twang with outrage.
At the station, Munch and Cassidy have news: the other suspect, DeSeault, was found dead by Canadian authorities in an unheated cabin in one of those obscure Canadian towns where all those Canadian bastards go; he'd died of an OD from "skag," which is one of those funny Canadian terms for heroin. "Poor guy," says Munch, speculating that it must have been hard to score smack in an obscure Canadian town. Shut up, Munch, or else Wing Chun's going to come out of her ice-fishing shack and whack your toque off with her hockey stick. The other bit of news is that White's and Phillips's realty company is also in the loan business, which makes way more money because they keep screwing low-income borrowers. And they own the foreclosures, so they don't risk anything, and Kimberly Phillips isn't officially a partner in the loan business -- and -- and -- I'm getting irritable and dizzy, which means it's time to kick off this week's Complicated Financial Sub-Plot! Or else it means I need some more skag. Guess it's both. So Benson and Stabler nail White's and Phillips's banker with a quick chung-chung! to get their accounts, then they figure out that White is paying Phillips under the table. Stabler's cell phone (with free minutes on weekends, free plot points anytime) rings yet again. They'd been checking with the property management company, and although Stabler and Benson had talked to Kimberly Phillips at the Astoria house, the real estate lock box thingamajiggy had White's name on the record. "She's carrying around White's beeper," Stabler says. Busted!
thing, Stabler and Benson are showing the account statements to a nauseous-looking Kimberly Phillips, who fesses up. After she initially turned down White's sleazy business proposition, he almost lost his temper, then when he sent the flowers the day she was really freaked out: "He had no way of knowing my home address. That scared me." Then, she says, he followed her to the open house where she'd finally accepted the offer. "You could have called the cops," says Benson. Phillips laughs bitterly. "I DID," she snaps. "They blew me off." Good one, Benson. Phillips explains that she couldn't complain under the harassment laws because her life wasn't threatened. "He was offering me a job," she says. "And a job that pays you $150,000 per annum, tax-free," says Stabler. Even though White's relationship with Phillips just has to do with all that musty money and business stuff and isn't sexual at all, the set designers have thoughtfully placed an eight-foot plaster statue of a female nude in Phillips's office, where we can see it in every other shot. Or maybe White, pig that he is, blackmailed Phillips to keep it there. Anyway, Phillips admits that all this coerced her to back up White's alibi in the Fitzgerald rape. Benson leans in: "You knew his history. You'd seen Fitzgerald in the courtroom. Didn't you put it all together?" "Yes," says Phillips, sobbing. "He threatened to kill me if I said anything. And I knew that he would." There's a freaked-out silence. "I'm getting a warrant for Mr. White," says Stabler. Benson turns white as a sheet with lipstick on it.
Chung-chung! White's apartment, a sprawling loft decorated in Euro Rich Bastard. The place is swarming with cops and White obviously isn't there. Stabler dumps some rolls of film and a notebook into an evidence bag while Benson finds a map of Central Park with the Ramble circled and a list of times and dates. Obviously, White had been stalking Fitzgerald before the rape. Munch comes down the stairs, gleefully reading off the titles from a stack of magazines he's found: "Chains and Sluts . . . Whips and Spikes . . . Whores on the Rack. This stuff makes de Sade read like Beatrix Potter." Oh, thanks for making an association like that, Munch; now I'm going to have nightmares about Mr. MacGregor chasing me with a rake and a cat-o-nine-tails. Nobody's found the .44 used to shoot Fitzgerald. "White must have known we'd be here eventually," says Stabler. "He's gone -- for good." Benson's found a photo of Louise Billings, the date rape vic, in White's freezer. "No food in the fridge," she notes. Chirst, I'd go on the lam just to avoid cleaning out my fridge.
It's evening at Sex Crimes Central. Munch comes in and tells Benson that they're looking for White, starting with vacant houses that White's company foreclosed. "I hear you may be in this guy's sights, the way you squared off with him in the interrogation room." he tells her. "Nah," says Benson. "He was just trying to mess with my head, it's nothing to worry about," she says, and at this point everyone at the prom notices a big huge bucket of HELL YEAH IT'S SOMETHING TO WORRY ABOUT! suspended above her head. Munch looks thoughtful. "Yeah, well . . . everyone at SVU has got your back." Aww. Benson thanks him. He offers her a ride home but she says she's waiting for Stabler to get back from forensics. "That's just as well -- I didn't bring in my car," he mutters. Heh. Stabler comes in with the ESDA report -- Electrostatic Detection Apparatus -- that picked up traces of White's writing in the blank notebook they'd found. The writing turned out to be a list of places: a gym, a pharmacy, a laundry, a grocery store, and so on. "I called them all, to see if Fitzgerald had used any of them," says Stabler. "She didn't." He looks up at Benson. She's like, "What?" He hands the report folder across the desk to her. "This is your gym, your laundry, your grocery store." Benson reads the list in shock. Yikes.
Benson is in her kitchen pouring herself some orange juice when a knock on her door startles her. She goes over to the peephole and asks who it is. It's Stabler. She opens the door, which I'd like to mention is SO not locked, like Benson thinks that she is so buff in her tank top that she can whack any intruder with her Tupperware pitcher. "One of your neighbors let me in. I was in the neighborhood, I thought I'd give you a lift to work." Benson is annoyed. "You were in the neighborhood?" Apparently Stabler had gone across town and back. "That's a lot of neighborhood," she quips. She says that she appreciates everyone's concern, but White may just have left town and may not be looking for her. "Okay," says Stabler. "I sure wouldn't drive all the way to Queens to save your ass," she says. "Yeah you would," says Stabler. Okay, people, I would drive all the way to Queens just to LOOK at his ass. And I live in Chicago. ["Hey, pick me up, will you? It's on the way." -- Sars] Rrring! goes Stabler's cell phone. It's the Plot Twist Hotline again. "We'll be right there!" says Stabler.
A chung-chung! of fate has befallen Louise Billings, who has been shot dead in her bedroom. Benson and Stabler talk to the neighbor who heard the shots. He'd looked through the peephole and had seen a man leave the apartment. "You saw his face?" asks Stabler. "Yeah," says Neighbor Guy, freaked out, "he turned and looked directly at my door -- I swear he could see through it." Stabler holds up a sheet of mug shots. Neighbor Guy points at White's photo. "That's him. Only -- well, he don't look so nuts in the picture!" Benson and Stabler hand the photo to the homicide guy and head back out. "Should have seen it coming," says Benson. "White had a picture of her in his freezer; he was fixed on her." She says they should have offered her protection, but Stabler says they can't protect everyone the way they'd like. "Are you going to sleep tonight, Elliot?" asks Benson. "Or are you going to think about her?"
At the station, Cap'n Cragen is rallying all units to cooperate: "We don't need the glory, we need White off the streets." He orders Jeffries and Little Briscoe to re-check the vacant foreclosures; Munch and Cassidy are to protect Kimberly Phillips. He calls aside Benson: "I don't want you out there today." Benson protests earnestly: "Captain, when I first came on board here, you told me that I don't get to pick the vic. So what if I'm the potential vic. The same rule should still apply. Let me do my job." Cragen finally agrees: "I want you back here safe tonight." Benson nods. Aww, aww some more. Cragen goes off shouting more orders. Then: "Is Olivia Benson here?" A delivery boy shows up at the door to the office carrying -- uh-oh -- flowers. "A dozen red roses," says the boy. "Your boyfriend must really love you." Stabler takes the card and reads it: "No hard feelings." Oh, except from the ENTIRE FLORAL INDUSTRY.
The lady at the flower shop finds a receipt for the delivery order -- charged to the platinum credit card of a Lila White. "Lila White?" asks Benson. They trace the address and the chung-chung-a-tron transports them to Lila White's home in Riverdale, New Jersey. Lila is Richard White's mother. Now it's my favorite time of the show: Freud-In-A-Minute! Lila White sits in her living room, lavishly decorated in Repressed Rage Regency. "Mrs. White, what time did your son get here?" asks Benson. Around nine a.m., says Lila White. "He looked disheveled. Harried," she says, in an overdone marblemouthed High Soschiety Accshent. What, is Gatsby throwing another party or something? Lila says she usually only sees White when he wants to borrow money. "He's a taker," she says. Stabler asks if she knows why her son wants to borrow money. "I assume because he hahd none. Rich-ahd's nevah been good with money. He learned from his fah-ther." And what about Big Daddy White? "He's dead," snorts Lila. "I'm sorry," says Benson. "I'm not!" says Lila, who explains that White tries to use her "to play off guilt that he thinks I feel, because his fah-ther killed himself." She says White's father was a "taker," too. We learn that Lila brought up little Richie White "to know how the world worked -- to take control!" Okay, we get it already; she probably also made him wear little frilly dresses. "And yet you still give him money," notes Benson. "Well," says Lila, "he is my son ahfter all." Stabler asks if she knows where White was going after he left. "Bahck to Manhattan; he was going to look up some special lady friend." She snorts again. "A policewoman. I told him he should drop her before she started taking from him. No offense. I understand you people don't make any real money. And for that, you get to deal with filth all day." "All shapes and sizes," says Stabler, staring intently at Lila. She glances over nervously. Heh.
Stabler gives Benson a ride home and offers to walk her in (it's night). More back-and-forth about how Benson doesn't want extra protection, but Stabler is going to keep an eye out because he's a stubborn SOB, yeah yeah yeah whatever. Just get your Avon Fashions-clad butt inside, Benson.
The members of The Sense of Dread Orchestra play their cold heavy hearts out while the camera pans in closer and closer on Benson sleeping in her bed. When the phone rings, Benson wakes up gasping. She answers it. "Hi, Olivia." It's White's voice. "Where are you?" she asks him. He says he wants to see her and "I know you want to see me. You've been trying all day. Let's meet -- somewhere you feel safe." "The station house," says Benson. White laughs. "Make it the Ramble. A bench that brings back fond memories. You know the one. Seven a.m." "Don't be late," says Benson. White warns her that if he sees even one cop, "we'll never consummate our relationship." Click! Benson looks up in a daze. Whereas I would be hitting the star, six, and nine buttons into fucking oblivion.
Early morning in the park. The bench where Benson is sitting is pretty secluded. She looks all around. Wow -- she's so nervous she's licked half the lipstick off her lips! Up the path, she sees someone coming her way. It appears to be a homeless guy pushing a squeaky stroller full of junk, but you never know -- it could be White with a Samsonite Travelcart full of scary S&M gear. Oh wait, no: it really is just a homeless guy. As he squeaks out of earshot, Benson looks up the path again; there's a couple out jogging, but one of them seems to be clutching the other's sleeve. Just when they reach Benson's bench the female jogger screams and -- oh shit! White's got her! He's got a knife! I'm confused! But he was using her as a decoy, apparently; he lets her go and then lunges at Benson with the knife. Just then Stabler pops out of the bushes: "Drop it!" Then Cragen, Jeffries (outside again!), Munch, and the whole gang spring out like action figures, guns pointed. Cool! White steps back and a stunt extra trips him to the ground, then Benson grabs his arms behind his back and cuffs him. "You lying coward bitch!" he growls. The jogger, I guess, has just jogged off. Don't let us interrupt your workout or anything, lady.
White's in the interrogation room alone, looking straight at the two-way mirror, where in the room Benson, Stabler, and Cragen are watching. "He wants to confess," Benson tells Stabler. Stabler wants to go in, but Benson stops him: "No -- he wants to play my reactions while he's doing it." Stabler and Cragen get it: White will get off on it. "Which is good," says Cragen. He'll be thinking with the wrong head and give you the advantage." "Wrong head" -- nice, uh, euphemism. As Benson makes for the door, Stabler reminds her that White needs to cop to using the gun. "Olivia -- I thought you stood me up!" says White, as Benson comes into the interrogation room. She says cheerily that she had a few things to take care of. "Make-up? Hair? You look nice," says White. He's handcuffed, so at least we know he can't abuse Benson or, you know, himself. He asks Benson how her mother's doing. She frowns. "Fine. How's yours?" "You met her," says White. "About your mother, though -- Serena, isn't it? Is she still carrying around all those scars from that rape? Is she still having nightmares?" Can we kick him in the wrong head now? Please? Benson wants to talk about Fitzgerald. "She liked to read in the Ramble," White snorts. "Same time, same day, every week." "That must have made it easy for you," says Benson. She asks him about the stalking. White insists they both liked to go there to relax. "Do you relax?" he asks Benson. "Seeing what you see . . . knowing how the world is . . . how bizarre and ugly it is." Benson nods. "Yeah. I relax." White looks her up and down with X-ray Pervo-vision. "Bath? Chanting? Yoga?" Benson gets an "ew!" look on her face and walks to the other side of the room as White begins to talk about the Fitzgerald attack and how he squeezed her trachea: "It sounds a bit like -- styrofoam peanuts crunching." "That's very descriptive," says Benson. "Thank you," White replies. And I'm switching to bubble wrap. Right now. Forever. He goes on to detail how he hit Fitzgerald with a rock, she yelped "like a whipped dog," and he made her crawl to him to beg for his forgiveness. Then he says he raped her. "I think she liked it. What do you think?" "Doesn't matter what I think," says Benson. "It does to me," replies White. "You're still listening, so there must be something you're enjoying about my story -- maybe something's lacking? I know -- you want me to say I killed her." Benson asks him if he did. White grins. "I had a knife, and I cut her, and I watched her blood seep into the ground taking her life with it." Stabler watches through the mirror. "He'll never say he used a gun," he sighs. "He gets that detail wrong, he can duck the death penalty," adds Cragen. Back in the room, Benson looks frustrated. "You look disappointed, Olivia," says White. Benson pulls a chair close to White and coquettishly asks White to tell her once again how he killed Fitzgerald. White laughs. "Thrill-seeker. No. I'm through. Do what you can with what you got. I don't think you can kill me with it. Pity." He leans in closer to Benson and whispers: "I'm fixed on you. And until I'm dead I'll always be in your head. Just like your mother will always have somebody in her head. We're joined at the hip now, aren't we?" Benson stares at him in disbelief. He turns to the two-way mirror. "Detective Stabler -- how are Kathy and the kids?" Stabler's eyes narrow in outrage and shock, and we all get the willies. Really.