Blessed be Sars, Pooh,and Chels, for they sayeth snarky things.
First, a legal disclaimer: "Although inspired in part by a true incident, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event." Except for those RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES of the HILLSDALE COLLEGE CASE. comes the L & O rip-off voice-over intro. Sexually-based offenses are heinous, man. Chung-chung!
A middle-aged woman in a maid's uniform enters a hotel room somewhere in Manhattan. "Housekeeping!" she calls, and when there's no answer she starts picking up clothes of the floor, scowling, and complaining in Spanish. My Spanish isn't very good, but I'm pretty sure she's saying, "Oh great--so I get to find the dead body in this episode? They think I don't know this is the first two minutes of the show?" She opens the french doors into the bedroom part of the suite and then turns away quickly. "Oh, please excuse me, Miss," she says to the person in the bed. Hello? Maid? There's that DEAD person Dick Wolf told you to keep an eye out for. The maid does a double-take and then crosses herself and begins calling for help. Behind her we see a woman in black lingerie lying on the bed, obviously dead, because she's filmed from the sort of really unflattering thigh-maximizing camera angle used only on dead people.
"These hotel scenes suck," complains one of the forensics cops as she dusts for yet another set of fingerprints. Let's hear it from our woman on the inside! Benson and Stabler stroll on in and notice that the room's been trashed and apparently robbed. Stabler goes over to the bed, and the camera pulls in closer to the dead body's body in her teensy sheer panty-and-cami ensemble in order to point out the sex-crime element here, in case some of us had forgotten in the seventy-three seconds since the voice-over announcement in the L & O title screen that these cops specialize, oh! in sexually-based offenses. As the cops discuss how she died, the camera pans helpfully all the way across her body, from her feet, up her leg, and over her chest in order to establish that there are marks on her NECK. Cause of death: asphyxiation. Did we mention that she's wearing little black panties? Because she is. Anyway, Stabler points out the way the vic's arms are crossed over her chest, as if her killer wanted her to appear peaceful. Benson nods. "A burglar-rapist with a conscience." Whatever. The camera cuts back to the vic in her dead bikini'd glory. It's all like a grim Victoria's Secret commercial. Laetitia, what is death?
Cue opening credits. Roll the usual montage of headlines, hookers, and kiddy-killer kreepyness.
Time for some jovial station-house banter! Jeffries tells Munch, and everyone else who may have forgotten, that sexual assault is all about power: "Aggression, control, male domination -- remember?" "A rape is a rape is a rape," says Munch. There's a loud crunch. Somewhere beyond the grave Gertrude Stein grinds her teeth which such fury she chomps her pipe in half. Munch goes on: "But I'm just saying you can't rule out the sexual aspect." Before Jeffries gets a chance to whap him upside the head with a Susan Brownmiller book, Stabler and Benson come up expressing amusement at Munch and Jeffries's "lively" banter. Cap'n Cragen pops out of his office like the party pooper he is and wants the facts about the case. The victim was strangled; the case reads like a robbery-rape-homicide, except there's no sign of forced entry or a struggle. "The staging bothers me," says Cragen. "Arms crossed -- post-mortem personalization." He says it doesn't sound like a stranger killed her. And hey, don't worry about that "post-mortem personalization," because that last scene did a fine, fine job in turning our Special Victim back into an anonymous slab of cheesecake. Anyway. Stabler speculates the killer could have been a remorseful stranger. "You can't rule out anger," says Little Briscoe, who pops out of nowhere and walks past Cragen. Cragen's like, did I feel a slight breeze?
"Tell me about the victim, people," says Cragen. Benson's got the info: "Sylvia Hadley, married; husband's in Baltimore. She and her father-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Hadley, and his wife were in town attending the National Conference of Christian Colleges." "Not the Benjamin Hadley," says Munch. "More powerful than Pat Robertson?" The story Munch tells is that Hadley is president of Midvale College, which he transformed from a podunk college into a think-tank for the neo-conservative movement . . . and now the neo-conservatives are working secretly with the government to launch a satellite into space with special telescopes that will spy on the Kennedys and the Freemasons. Okay, so Munch didn't actually say ALL of that stuff, but you know he's thinking it. Benson opines that "neo-conservative think-tank" is an oxymoron. Hey, it's MY job to make fun of the Religious Right, Benson. Anyway, Sylvia Hadley's husband is flying in, and Stabler plans on talking to her in-laws. "Be direct, but be discreet -- I can smell the politics a mile away," says Cragen. No comment.
In the morgue, M.E. Rogers is tending to one of the stiffs, dusting it or something, when Munch and Jeffries come in. Cue Rod Stewart singing the Munch 'n' Rogers Love Theme: If you like dead bodies / and ya think I'm sexy/ come on girl and let me know . . ." "Oh, it's you," says Rogers, coldly. Heh. She tells them the scoop on Sylvia Hadley: manual strangulation, time of death between 6:00 and 9:00 pm the night before, evidence of bodily fluids, yadda yadda yadda. Don't get me wrong, I like M.E. Rogers, but it seems like the only time she ever gets to appear is when they need someone to say "semen."
Chung-chung! The Versailles Hotel, where Stabler and Benson talk to Dr. and Mrs. Hadley. Unfortunately, space does not allow me to constantly mention Dr. Hadley's Mustache of Moral Indignation and Mrs. Hadley's eyebrows which have been specially groomed to arch Heavenward for that Martyr Look. So let's just call them "Dr. and Mrs. Holy" so you'll understand. The Holys tell the detectives that on the night of her death Sylvia had skipped an awards dinner for the Christian Educators Coalition. I sure as hell would, too. I mean, I'd be kind of curious to see what kind of dress THE STATE OF KANSAS showed up wearing, but still. Mrs. Holy says Sylvia seemed tired. Her husband agrees. "She and Brad have been burning the midnight oil on the annual report." "Brad" is Brad Weber -- "our financial guy," explains Dr. Holy, "he's staying here as well, his firm has a New York office." My eyelids immediately get heavy at the prospect of another elaborate money-grubbing double-dealing sub-plot. Stabler asks if there was anyone who had a personal grievance against her. Dr. Holy gets all bitter: "A drug addict or a rapist broke into her room!" he says. "How about lack of personal responsibility as a motive, or atheistic hedonism?" "Ben --" his wife protests. The profile of a killer emerges: obviously a psycho who came from a broken home and got inflated grades in school and saw the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit and listened to KISS records backwards.
Benson and Stabler hit the security offices of the hotel for some boring lead-hustling. The manager mentions that another hotel had some sort of burglary, but the guest was out of the room at the time and there was no forced entry. He gives them key-card records, which don't tell them squat; also videotapes from the security camera, although the manager figures they won't be much good because there are no date stamps on the tapes. That sucks.
Chung-chung! Mondregan Weber Investments! Just try to stay awake! Stabler 'n' Benson talk with Brad Weber, the man with whom Sylvia was burning the midnight oil, and who appears to also wear the midnight oil in his hair. He manages the college's endowment and he says that after he met with Sylvia on Sunday afternoon he worked late. "Then I left the office, did a little window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, and came back to the hotel and crashed." The way he says "window-shopping" is enough of an alibi for me.
At the police station, Munch talks with Sylvia's husband -- a.k.a. Dr. Holy's son, Holy Junior -- and asks if they were having any marital problems. "My wife was not having an affair," says Holy Junior, through clenched teeth. Munch is like, "O-kay," and Jeffries asks if there was any kind of financial trouble, or trouble with colleagues. "No! Do you have to put our private lives under a microscope?" growls Holy Junior. Okay, Junior? Three vague questions does not "a microscope" make. Though it's not like you'd really know any of that controversial "science" stuff. Holy Junior furrows his brow. "This isn't about my wife -- this was one of your New York psychos out roaming the streets. Only it's not P.C. to do anything about them." Yeah, yeah, whatever, all the cops just sit in their squad cars and read Maya Angelou all day long.
Enter Benson 'n' Stabler. Exit Holy Junior. Benson reports that Brad Weber's alibi checks out; Munch adds that the hotel staff alibis do too, like we were really wondering. "Security guy told us about a burglar who's hitting the big hotels," says Benson. Stabler adds that the police already has a robbery task force on it. "What, burglaries aren't sex crimes?" asks Munch. Man, he's got a point, because so far this season they've discovered that money-laundering is a sex crime, and real-estate swindles are sex crimes, and mob hits are sex crimes, and elaborate cover-ups by American aristocracy are sex crimes, and -- well, you get the idea. Benson gives Little Briscoe a big honking box. "Go through this box of security videotapes and check 'em out like a good man," she says. "There's no time stamps. Have fun!" Little Briscoe is about watch hours and hours of beautiful New York people doing nothing in particular and talking about really stupid mundane things. He's about to discover what it was like to recap Wasteland.
Over at the "Sussex" Hotel, Stabler and Benson talk to the woman whose room was robbed by the Hotel Burglar. She says that she came back to her room to discover her safe was cleaned out and her jewelry was gone. "But what really bothered me," she says, "was something the other detectives dismissed as an idiosyncrasy." "What was that?" asks Stabler. "The burglar masturbated in my underwear," she says. "Now they're sitting in some evidence lock-up somewhere. Not that I want them back, though." She has one hell of a "not-so-fresh feeling." After some more questions, Underwear Lady mentions seeing some guy in a red baseball cap who always seemed to be in the lobby reading the paper. "We rode the elevator up once -- he creeped me out bad," she recalls, and she said she always recognized the baseball cap. "I'd thought, 'some men never grow up,'" she says. Mmm-hmm, sistah!
Chung-chung! to the 31st Precinct Burglary Task Force. Benson and Stabler think the top Burglary Cop is a big fat meanie for not calling them when the case of the hotel thief got, you know, stickier. "It's a standard set of robberies," Big Bad Burglary Cop snorts. "You think all these guys are rapists in training." Stabler and Benson bitch him out for labeling the hotel guy as a "no threat" when it was pretty clear he was going to hurt someone. "Now a woman's dead because you wanted to protect your collar," says Benson, in a "so there, you big doodyhead!" tone of voice. She and Stabler stomp out. Big Bad Burglary Cop follows them out to the front steps of the station. "So nobody called you! So nobody wants to call you, ever! You know, you guys are up to your necks in perversity twenty-four-seven!" Oh, so they're the ones that pitched the idea for Making the Band. "My people don't want whatever it is you got," says Burglary Cop, like, ooh-ooh, the SVU got pervert cooties! "Ten bucks says the only cops that'll hang out with you are Brooklyn SVU," he says. "You lose," says Stabler, "Bronx SVU." Aw, Stabler -- me and Pooh and Sars will let you sit at OUR lunch table. Meanwhile Benson has just gotten off the cell phone where she was talking to 1-800-PLOT-POINT. "The victim was pregnant," she tells Stabler. "Hey, whaddya know -- double homicide," quips Stabler, as he shoots Burglary Cop the stink-eye. Ooh, he's sorry now.
"I wasted WAY too much time being fat!" says Kay S. from Bloomfield, MI., reporting her not-typical results from Slim-Fast. Now she gets to dance around in a flower field like a fucking half-wit because she doesn't have to fit things like CHEWING SOLID FOOD into her schedule.
Back at the cop shop, the SVU works all feverishly to catch that spoogy burglar. Little Briscoe's off somewhere watching the security videotapes. Stabler has got himself a snazzy map of the precincts set up on an easel and everything, with little x's showing places where the burglar left his, uh, mark. "He's only hitting the hotels with key-card access to the rooms," says Stabler. Munch wonders if the burglar's got something that cracks the codes to the locks. "I thought only the feds had that technology," Stabler says. Munch, speculating the guy could be ex-FBI or CIA, inserts his Herbert Hoover joke here. "People!" calls Cap'n Cragen, "I think you should all listen to this." He turns on a boom box radio. Ooh, is he going to play the theme to Footloose? No, it's just the news, with Dr. Holy's smarmy voice squawking forth as he gives a press conference. The SVU gathers around. "At Midvale we still believe the absolute truth -- that morality and family strength is still important! We will not rest until the killer is found!" says Dr. Holy. He blathers on about how Sylvia's murder is part of a larger tragedy in America, yammer yammer moral decay Tinky Winky yammer et cetera.
Chung-chung! The Ralliston Hotel. A guy in a red baseball cap steps out of an elevator and pays no attention to Munch and Jeffries, also in the elevator, and doesn't even notice that Munch is wearing his dorky black Spy Vs. Spy fedora. Red Cap goes down the hall and enters a room using a little beep-bip-beepy electronic device. This gives Munch and Jeffries a chance to play walkie-talkies to call Stabler and Benson, who hustle into an elevator to meet them. All together they bust into the room and catch Red Cap red-handed. Well, okay, he wasn't using his hands yet.
Red Cap is being brought out of the hotel in handcuffs when Big Bad Burglary Cop pops out of a car and approaches the SVU. "Hey, that's our call!" he barks. "Like hell it is," says Jeffries as she hauls Red Cap down the street. Big Bad Burglary Cop hassles Stabler about how his squad is the special task force appointed by the commissioner, and his ongoing investigation takes precedence. Stabler and Benson are like, oh yeah? Well our captain talked to the mayor, nyah nyah. "He didn't like hearing about your unwillingness to cooperate," says Stabler. Big Bad Burglary Cop grabs his arm; Stabler whips around and they shove each other. Stabler stares him down. "Don't touch me," he says. "I don't like to be touched." Big Bad Burglary Cop backs off. Red Cap looks back at Stabler. "If that's the guy that's questioning me, I definitely want my lawyer present," he says. Hey, Stabler, if you don't want to be touched, that's okay. I'll just lick instead.
In the interrogation room, Red Cap gleefully admits to Munch and Jeffries that he broke into the rooms because he used to work as a programmer for the company that makes all those key-cards, and he was fired because he objected to the way they made hotel rooms and safes easier to break into than a wet paper bag, and he just wanted to make a point, and he has all the stolen goods neatly catalogued in his apartment ready to return. Clunk! That's the sound of his lawyer shitting a two-hundred-pound brick.
Munch and Jeffries decide to go "bad cop," ooh, and tease Red Cap about his underwear fetish. "I realized that's just who I am!" says Red Cap proudly. My, he's got spunk! But when Munch and Jeffries accuse him of the rape/murder, he denies it: "No! I wouldn't hurt anyone -- I'm not wired for that!" "'Boxing the clown' into women's underwear -- that's pretty freaky," says Munch. Mommy, where's the clown? That man on TV just said there was a clown! Red Cap gives his alibi: Sunday night he was at the SoHo East stealing the diamond-studded dog collar off a terrier left in someone's room. "Cute dog," he says. Sick puppy.
The SVU tells Dr. Holy and Holy Junior that they've caught the wrong guy. Holy Junior raises holy terror, then he and his dad go holy-rolling out the door. "I hope you've got some ideas." Cragen tells the squad. "Maybe Sylvia was having an affair," says Benson, and excuse me, but I need to take a moment to point out that if she keeps wearing sweaters as clingy as the one she has on in this scene, we're going to have to start calling her "Detective Bosom." Maybe the problem is just that her bra isn't quite fitting right and she has a slight case of "bifocal boob" (tm Sars). Hey, it happens to everyone. Anyway. "Why else wouldn't Sylvia tell her husband she was pregnant?" she wonders. Jeffries agrees with the affair theory, since there was no sign of a struggle -- as if the victim felt guilty or even knew her attacker. Munch speculates that Sylvia "isn't quite as family-oriented" as Dr. Holy and Junior. Maybe she was trying to get herself kicked off 7th Heaven.
Back at the hotel, the room service manager tells Benson and Stabler that Sylvia was "a pain in the ass" and kept ordering hors d'oeuvres all the time. He and one of the waiters agree that she could have had someone else up in the room with her, since the bathroom door was always closed whenever she let the waiter in. And apparently on Saturday night she went down to the hotel bar because she couldn't get her mini-bar restocked. Man, that IS wild. Do you know how much they charge for those little bags of chips? "People do all sorts of things in hotels," smirks Mr. Manager McDuh. Stabler 'n' Benson talk to the hotel bartender, who says Sylvia was there Saturday night with a guy: "It looks like they worked together, and she was laying it on pretty thick." Cue standard bartender monologue: I see it all the time blah blah blah women with their martinis trying to lose control blah blah blah sing us a song you're the piano man. The story is that she left the bar drunk with -- Brad Weber.
I'd just like to point out that the tough-talking animated claymation weeds in the "Round-Up" weed spray commerical are about ten times more menacing than any of the potential perps on this episode.
Benson and Stabler bring in Brad Weber and question him with all the snottiness of a Truth or Dare game at a slumber party turned ugly. Brad says he wasn't having an affair with Sylvia Holy. "She hit on me," he protests. "It felt like harassment. I could lose my job!" He says he ordered beers and drank them slowly, but it still went to his head, and they wound up kissing at the door of Sylvia's room. Cut to Benson rolling her eyes. Cut to Stabler shaking his head. But Brad picks up on Stabler's raving hetero married faithfulness, you know, with his Reverse Gaydar, and says he was hit with the sobering thought that he was about to cheat on his wife, so he went back to his own room. But Stabler and Benson's continue to pick on Brad and ask him about the night -- the night of the murder. "I was in my room -- I told you!" he says. "Did you watch any pay movies?" Benson asks. "My God, no!" says Brad, as the prospect of watching Home Alone 3 or Wild Wild West torments his soul. "That is not good for your story," says Stabler.
the detectives talk to Dr. Holy and Junior amid bush-sized bouquets of Christian sympathy. They ask Dr. Holy about Brad. "With what judgment he judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure he meet, it will be measured to you again," sayeth Dr. Holy. Stabler asks if they can leave the scripture out of this just for a moment, for Chrissakes. "Is there any pertinent information to this investigation we should know about Brad Weber?" Dr. Holy sighs the Weary Sigh of The Righteous before he tells them that Brad is always a little "in the tank" at the college receptions, and that he has a tendency to hit on women. Benson asks him if he thinks there was a "personal connection" between Brad and Sylvia. "We only needed a financial update once a month," says Dr. Holy. "But Sylvia chose to work more closely with Brad on the management of the endowment." Nudge, nudge, know what we mean? She wanted to "manage" his endowment? Holy Junior gets defensive. "Come on, Ben," Dr. Holy says. "Late nights? Two or three times a week? I suppose you just didn't want to see it." He pats Junior's arm like a good sport while Junior snivels. "What if Sylvia was in a relationship that she wanted to end, and Mr. Weber didn't want to lose the account?" asks Stabler. "God help him," says Dr. Holy. "I had prayed that it would be a stranger." He tries to wrangle his mustache into some permutation of "shock."
Stabler and Benson go back to the station and fire up the Brad Weber grill. "We heard you're in the bag at every Midvale function," taunts Stabler. "Do you know how nerve-wracking those things are?" protests Brad. Finally, Brad's got no choice but to defensively bore everyone with the Dreaded Financial Subplot. "Nobody knows what goes into keeping that college afloat," he says. He explains that he and Sylvia were meeting so often because "there's a huge balloon payment quarter." He explains the trustees were nervous, Dr. Holy made a bad deal, high risk, high interest, you're getting very very sleepy, percentage rates, equity collateral catalytic converter . . . As my head slumps over I vaguely hear something about Brad Weber agreeing to take a blood test to prove he's innocent.
In my sleep-haze I also hear Cragen giving everyone those useless orders in one of those useless scenes at the station. Whatever. Zzzz.
Finally, a chung-chung! revives me. Munch and Jeffries have chung'd it over to NYU to talk to a professor who used to teach at Midvale. "We understand Dr. Hadley learned some of his management technique from Stalin," says Munch. "One could say that statement is accurate," says Professor Syntax P. Loquacious. Prof explains he taught at Midvale because Brown was getting too P.C. "Midvale was a good place to teach a classic curriculum," he says. And the toga parties rocked. But then, says the Prof, they started with cutting out Darwin, then other texts, then the college turned into something he hated. Anyway, the Prof mentions that Sylvia Holy seemed to work with Dr. Holy an awful lot, and that Holy Junior was a useless little weenie who worked for Daddy.
Benson and Stabler crash Sylvia's funeral, where Dr. Holy preaches to a congregation of bored extras. Dr. Holy chokes up as he tells mourners about Sylvia and manages to get in a plug for Midvale College. Mrs. Holy sits by the podium. Her look of suffering couldn't be more profound if she were plagued with boils. Dr. Holy announces a memorial fund in Sylvia's name and says, "Thank you everybody for making this day all about me." Well, practically. Stabler 'n' Benson talk to Holy Junior, who confesses that his wife had "changed" in the past couple years, what with her traveling all over the country, going around with a cell phone to her ear, et cetera. "It was like I didn't know her anymore." He looks confused; vaguely betrayed. He's straight from the pages of a Chick Publications tract called "A WIFE'S CAREER . . . OF SIN?"
Time again to see what's up at the Think-Out-Loud-Tank of the SVU: No one thinks Brad's a suspect, since his DNA came up negative. Munch thinks that since the college is a family business, the Holy family might be dysfunctional. Stabler thinks that Mrs. Holy is "the glue that holds the family together." Benson thinks that it'll be tough getting DNA samples from the Holys. Cragen thinks they should bring in Mrs. Holy for questioning. "It's time we found out just how strong this glue is," he says.
Benson leads a zombie-like Mrs. Holy into Cragen's office and offers her a seat. It would appear that the glue is really strong, and that Mrs. Holy has been sniffing it. Benson asks Mrs. Holy about Sylvia's and Junior's marriage. "A marriage is a working partnership," says Mrs. Holy, "consecrated by our Lord." "Okay!" says Benson, in a tone of voice that is cocktail-party code for "now I must run away!" But here she has to stick around. "So Sylvia Hadley was faithful?" asks Benson. "She was -- faithful to all of us," she says. Benson smells the weirdness, and asks Mrs. Holy about Sylvia's pregnancy. Mrs. Holy's face freezes into the grimacing perma-smile of codependency. She says she didn't know about the pregnancy, and Junior wouldn't have known either. "Oh God, I prayed for forgiveness. I forgave him -- how could this have happened? How could he have done this?" Benson doesn't get it. "How could your son have done what, Mrs. Hadley?" "Not my son," says Mrs. Holy, "my husband. He had an affair for two years with Sylvia." The music swells! Hear the twisted chords of the Incest Theme!
The SVU decides to round up Dr. Holy and Holy Junior and question them separately. Dr. Holy sits around and refuses to speaketh until his lawyer arrives. "That's fine by me, anyway, your DNA is going to corroborate your wife's story," says Benson, casually. "What . . . story?" says Dr. Holy. He's beginning to freaketh out! But just then Munch calls Stabler and Benson out of the room. "The kid's got something interesting," he says. The kid? Why it's -- Little Briscoe! "You're not going to believe how wild those videotapes are!" he says, like he's Bob Saget. Nobody cares. Little Briscoe tells everyone how he had to refer to the hotel schedule and watch for visual clues in order to figure out the time of day on the tape. "In the evening on Friday, there was a Girl Scout meeting, Sunday morning, the cardiologist's convention checks out, and that afternoon, these wedding guests arrive -- you can tell, because they all got these neat welcome baskets loaded down with Maker's Mark --" Everyone's eyes begin to glaze over. Finally Little Briscoe gets to the point and pulls out a photo. "My best guess is this guy was on the elevator on Sunday between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. -- to him," he points out, "is a guy with a bottle of Maker's Mark!" Go, Little Briscoe! He nabs a product placement AND a suspect! (Okay, technically, you can't have a product placement for liquor. That's why they put it in a scene with a CRIMINAL. See how it works?) So who was in the elevator? Holy Junior. And boy, does he look like he could've relaxed with a smooth, mellow, premium aged whisky.
"Ben Junior wasn't in Baltimore," says Benson. They bring in an ADA, and the entire squad does a merry Balalaika dance as evidence mounts against Holy Junior. "He bought an 11:00 a.m. Baltimore-to-New York express train ticket!" says Stabler. Stomp-stomp, hey! "An ATM withdrawal at Times Square Sunday night!" says Benson. Stomp, hey! Stomp! "Here's a photo of him in the lobby!" says Jeffries. Hey! Hey! Stomp-stomp-stomp! "What's your theory?" asks the ADA. Stabler blames Those Wacky Financial Shenanigans and thinks Sylvia tried to blackmail the Holys. But Cragen thinks Sylvia wanted to blow the whistle on aforementioned Wacky Financial Shenanigans. The ADA guy asks, "Where's the sex crime in this?" Hello! THANK YOU! Benson explains, duh, "she had sex before dying, not necessarily rape." Oh -- so by "sex crime" they actually mean: "Sex!" "Crime!" Okay, so what if Sylvia also had, say, a sandwich before dying? What would that mean, huh? Would there be a separate Sandwich Crimes Unit or what? But I digress. Benson hands the ADA a folder with DNA results. ADA raises his eyebrows. "Talk about Old Testament," he says. Swarms of locusts descend. Oh, okay, so they don't.
Interrogation room. Dr. Holy. Holy Junior. Cap'n Cragen. Ready to rumble! Holy Junior tries to play dumb. Dr. Holy cranks his halo up to 200 watts. The lawyers flail about. Cragen lets in Jeffries to kick some white Republican ass. She comes in carrying her trademark Manila Folder of Destruction. "These are the lab results," she tells Holy Junior. "Your wife's throttled neck and a piece of skin from under your finger? Perfect match." Holy Junior stammers. Jeffries goes on, "And these are the DNA results from semen found in Sylvia. Also a match." Now Holy Junior is confused as the dreaded Folder gets passed around to the lawyers. "What the hell's going on here?" he asks. "Ask your father," says Cragen. "It's his sperm." A nation goes ew! The truth dawns slooowwly on Holy Junior. "My . . . father?" He turns to Dr. Holy. "YOU!?" Dr. Holy flinches. Holy Junior gives his statement: he'd been suspicious, he'd traveled to New York and gone to Sylvia's room where she'd laughed at him; he became overwhelmed by the thought of his own wussiness, snapped, and attacked her. He breaks down crying and Cragen shuts off the tape recorder. "We can finish this later," he says. As Holy Junior is escorted out, he shouts at Dr. Holy, "To think I came to you to fix this!" Dr. Holy just sits there with his hands clasped and his nostrils flaring with the wrath of the Lord.
Cragen holds open the door as Mrs. Holy floats in. "Sharon -- did you hear? Poor Ben," says Dr. Holy. Mrs. Holy glares at him. "Protecting me from the truth?" she says. "How thoughtful of you. How Christian." But Dr. Holy is still giving his sermon on Mt. Denial. "What are you talking about?" "It's not something the medical examiner would easily miss," says Cragen. He tosses Destructo-Folder at Dr. Holy. "What were you going to call him?" asks Mrs. Holy. "Son? Ben the Third?" How about like, "Brother Holy Junior Junior?" Mrs. Holy stares Dr. H down. "Two years of watching my husband -- my soon-to-be-former husband -- fornicating with my son's wife." My personal rating of this episode goes up a few points for the use of the word "fornicating." Dr. Holy stands up and reaches out to Mrs. Holy, but she turns on her heel and storms out. Cragen looks across the room at the scene. All this sin befuddles him. Dr. Holy squirms under his mustache. Amen.