Harm

A woman walks fearfully down some steps in some park in the middle of the night. She looks around, after hearing something (or someone) rustling but doesn't see anyone. That's because he's right in front of her, covering her mouth with a gloved hand. He's also wearing a balaclava. She struggles as he rips open her shirt and pulls her panties down. She struggles a little too much, and out comes a knife. She's stabbed in the chest, and the attacker grabs her bag and runs off. She lies on the ground, breathing shallow. Time lapse shows her still lying there in the morning, and in the background, people go about their day.

Eventually, she's found, and Fin strolls up -- Chester's already there, as is M.E. Warner. Hmm. Maybe Chester and Warner were having "breakfast" this morning? The victim is Kate Simes, according to her library card, and she's a long way from home. The blood around her has completely dried, so Warner figures Kate's been there since around midnight, but rigor mortis indicates she only died a few hours ago. "She could have been saved," says Chester. He leans in to get a closer look, but Warner doesn't let him get too close, because of a disgusting giant lesion on her right arm. "What's that?" asks Fin. "It's a lesion," says Warner. Thanks, Warner. She doesn't know what it is, and will have to get back to them. See, this is why I carry a picture database of lesions on my iPod, just for moments like this.

Back at the lab, Warner pulls Simes' body out from the fridge so Kate's mom can identify her, with Elliot and Olivia looking on. Mrs. Simes confirms it, and then backs away, sobbing. The detectives quiz her but she's not of much use: doesn't have any idea what her daughter would be doing in the park that late at night, and doesn't know anything about any lesions. The recent picture she has for the detectives, though, is of a woman with long blond hair instead of the short black hair Kate's sporting now. "She said she wanted a change," says her mom, and Olivia asks if anyone, like an ex-boyfriend, had been giving her trouble. Mrs. Simes identifies a student, Jackie Solomon, at the girls' school where Kate was a college counselor, whose father threatened Kate, who then began receiving hang-up calls.

In the headmistress's office, Chester and Fin watch a video of an all-girl rock group. Think the Donnas, only crappy. And dressed in bikinis and hijabs, singing lyrics that go thusly: "Come on, Mr. Terrorist/Show me you're a man/Slap me around/like your good book says you can/Or maybe you're just too much of a ditz/Is that the real reason why you blow yourself to bits?" Then the girls rip off their hijabs. The blond one now freeze-framed is, I presume, Jackie Solomon. With more than a little irony, Ice-T calls the song offensive, and the headmistress tells him Kate Simes thought it was, but as headmistress, her opinion is more delicate. Translation: Jackie Solomon's daddy is a major donor. Jackie lost an aunt on 9/11, says the headmistress. "And that excuses this garbage?" says an indignant Ice-T. Nope, says the headmistress, which is why she didn't stop Kate from sending letters to the colleges Jackie's applying to.

So Chester and Fin visit Jackie (played by someone closer to 30 than high school age) and her dad. Nice pair, these two. She has no problem calling her dead counselor a bitch and raging about her freedom of expression, while he tells his daughter to "shut up" and complains about the half-million he's spending to get his spoiled-brat daughter into the Ivy League. The dad's alibi is that he was at the New York Tolerance Centre he and his daughter had to attend after his daughter exercised her freedom of expression. Frankly, a songwriting workshop might have been more useful; I'm trying to think of any time it might be accurate to describe a suicide bomber as a "ditz."

Back at the ME's office, Warner tells Elliot and Olivia that Kate wasn't wrapped, but the lesion comes from leishmaniasis, a parasite carried by the female sand fly -- not from New York, but most likely from abroad. "In the past few years, the highest incidence has been in the Middle East. Trouble is, no one in Kate's life seems to know about any trip, so she must have kept it a secret.

With some swift and -- as Munch points out, having scoped out the highly effective security cameras at the Port Authority -- Orwellian detective work, plus the help of Elliot's friend in the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Kate's determined to have flown to Turkey. Fortunately, for the detectives if not for civil rights, the Turkish authorities were only too happy to provide the video feed from the Big Brother cameras all across Turkey, apparently, including Diyarbakir, where the big difficulty in spotting Kate was her new, short, black 'do. "Could she have been hiding from someone?" asks Elliot. His FBI buddy says, "Maybe she was trying to fit in, like one of our agents." Olivia's confused, because Turkey's not on Warner's list of places you could possibly get leishmaniasis in. No, but then she crossed the border into Iraq, says FBI guy. Nice how he doles out the information in the most dramatic possible. He brings up another security photo. Hey, how's that bin Laden hunt coming along?

A confused Mrs. Simes looks through the photos of Kate at various checkpoints, saying when Kate was out of town, she'd said she was helping rebuild homes in New Orleans. Should be easy enough to break that alibi: just call up New Orleans and ask if all the houses are built yet. Mrs. Simes says Kate speaks Arabic, but doesn't think she was recruited by the government, since her volunteer work at the refugee clinic keeps her so busy.

That would be a women's refugee centre, where Kate used her Arabic to translate for refugees seeking asylum. Olivia and Benson want to see Kate's files. "She kept them on her computer. There was a break-in two weeks ago and it was stolen," says the centre's director, who adds that Kate kept her flash drive in her bag. Elliot says they found Kate's bag, but there wasn't a flash drive in it. Olivia asks if anything unusual happened Monday, and the director says some guy called six or seven times looking to talk to her.

A dump of the phone records leads us to the apartment of Haroon Abbas. His wife answers the door and informs the detectives that Haroon died Monday night. "He was driving his cab. They say he had a heart attack." "Who's they?" asks Elliot. "My Haroon did not have a heart attack. He was murdered! By your government!" says Haroon's wife. Well, this should make the detectives' jobs easier.

Mrs. Abbas says she and Haroon were granted asylum because they helped the Americans during the first Gulf War, but then 9/11 happened, and Haroon was treated like a terrorist and tortured in an Iraqi prison camp. "He lost fifty pounds in that camp. They broke his body and crushed his soul. He was never the same." Some friends helped them get Haroon back to New York, but she doesn't recognize Kate in the detectives' picture. Haroon did seem nervous about having to meet someone Monday night. "They found him, and they killed him," says the grieving widow.

How? Well, that's for Warner to figure out. There aren't any scars on Haroon's body, but that's the point: inflicting pain without long-term physical or psychological damage. And all the signs point to Haroon being tortured military-style -- ice bath, stress positions, sleep deprivation. Fresh wrist marks, torn rotator cuffs, and signs of hypothermia. A phone call from Fin tells Olivia they found Haroon's cab, which had a business card for Dr. Kelly Alvin of the Mercy Hospital Clinic for Torture Survivors, which is where we'll get a whole host of answers.

A video shows Haroon, using Kate as his translator, telling his story. The director tells Elliot and Olivia that Kate came recommended from the Women's Refugee Coalition, and that Haroon was the first person she'd worked with. His horrific story of questioning and treatment galvanized Kate, who urged Haroon to keep a journal, and to go public with his story. She even talked about flying to Baghdad to verify his story. She'd been typing the journal on her computer, which explains the break-in. Olivia asks if Haroon mentioned anyone who might have wanted him to keep quiet. Yep, says the doctor, playing more of the tape: an emotional Haroon explaining (through Kate) that he saw his torturer at a diner.

There are, according to Elliot, three hundred diners on the West Side. Luckily, Chester happens to know which ethnic groups congregate at which diner, which reduces the potential canvassing to eight or nine places.

Chester's the one who strikes pay dirt, with a diner owner who recognizes the photo of Haroon, saying he's a cabbie who used to come in all the time. "Then one morning, I look over, he's white as a sheet." He was staring at a couple, and then puked all over the place. The woman he was staring at said she was a doctor and tried to help, but her husband wouldn't let her. And then Haroon took off.

Elliot and Olivia catch a bite to eat while Chester sifts through the credit card receipts. Make the new guy do all the work, huh? Elliot's skeptical that this supposed torturer killed two people to cover up his use of stress positions in Iraq, but he might get a chance to find out: Chester's found a receipt for a doctor, Faith Sutton.

So it's over to Saint Bernadette's Hospital, where special guest star Elizabeth McGovern is waaaaay too breezy with detectives from the Special Victims Unit to not be suspicious, and confirms she was there when Haroon chundered all over the place. But the man with her wasn't her husband but an old army buddy, George Tomforde, who was in that morning from Jersey.

A member of New Jersey's finest and an acquaintance of Tomforde's takes Elliot and Olivia to Tomforde's front door, which is ajar, and they enter a completely empty house. Despite the cop's puzzled "what the hell?" Elliot still feels it necessary to ask if Tomforde said anything about moving. No, he did not.

George Tomforde: special forces. Served in Desert Storm. Likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. Currently working for a mercenary outfit called Helios, which is totally not Blackwater, which you can tell because it has a different name and everything, and is based in London. So we're thinking Tomforde worked Abbas over, found out about the book, which would be really detrimental to Helios and its half-a-billion dollars' worth of business in Iraq. Tomforde pushes too hard, Abbas dies, Simes is killed as part of the cover-up, and now Helios has whisked Tomforde out of the country.

A trip to Helios's convenient New York office produces Tomforde's file, which the Helios guy is reluctant to hand over, citing national security, but does so, apparently realizing that if his company's position is to be that Tomforde was an aberration, they can't be blocking the investigation.

The file makes for some interesting reading, what with all the letters of reprimand for excessive force, abuse of authority, and refusal to wipe his sweat off the exercise equipment. And look! It's Dr. Sutton, who's identified as part of Tomforde's interrogation team.

So the detectives bring the doc into the office, where she tries to pretend she wasn't hiding anything from the police. She says all she did was oversee various interrogation plans. "Nobody likes to be called a torturer," says Elliot. Sutton slowly sits down before replying. "We used stressors tailored to psychological vulnerabilities to gain information. I'd hardly call that torture," she says. We'll see you season on 24, I'm thinking. Sutton recognizes Haroon in his photo, but only from heaving at the diner, and not as a former questioning victim. Elliot tells her to cut the crap, but she claims not to know anything about a telltale book. Olivia outlines the scenario of Sutton being compared to Mengele on the cover of the New York Times. Just the Times? Or are we just going to assume that if the person's name isn't "Torre," the Post just doesn't want to hear about it? Sutton says her work is humane and vital to the intelligence needs of the U.S. effort in Iraq.

Huang and Warner are listening in, either because they're needed to offer their professional analysis of Sutton's answers, or they just have nothing better to do. Huang's all ready to give her the benefit of the doubt, saying she clearly wasn't directly involved in any torture, and Warner stares at him like he's crazy. She wants to know why he's defending her, and he says she's a respected psychiatrist who lectures on post-traumatic stress disorder. "Problem is she isn't treating it, she's causing it," says Warner. She clubs Huang with the Hippocratic Oath, but he goes down swinging, telling her that when he tricks a perp into making a confession, he's not really doing no harm, but he is serving the greater good. Warner slaps a copy of Abbas's autopsy report in his hands and tells him to read it, and then try to say Sutton's working for the greater good.

Hey, Steven Weber's back as Matt Braden! I guess he was available. This interview is over, says Casey, who comes in with Braden, although Sutton insists she doesn't mind answering questions. She's never even met Braden before. Elliot says it's no surprise to see Braden representing the doctor, but Braden warns him not to get holier than thou, what with Elliot's insidious techniques of positioning himself between Sutton and the door, not to mention sitting her in a chair that wobbles slightly, so she won't be able to comfortable. Not really comparable to what Braden did, as we'll find out.

Time for the group huddle as the detectives, prosecutor, psychiatrist and medical examiner all brainstorm on how best to proceed. Turns out Tomforde's been shipped to Bahrain, which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S. So is no one to answer for the deaths of Abbas and Simes? Warner is out for Sutton's head, despite Huang's objections: "That woman's interrogation methods led to Abbas's death, and God knows how many others." Olivia's on board, since if they can prove the methods led to Abbas's death, she could be charged with criminally negligent homicide. Casey calls it a stretch. "No, it isn't," says Warner, and she and Casey pay a visit to the clinic for torture victims, where we learn Sutton's methods are in use all over the world. We also watch a horrifically cheesy montage of victims describing the waterboarding and religious humiliation they endured, set to plinky piano chords. When it's all done, Casey agrees that torture is bad (and after having a half-dozen anvils dropped on my head, I have to agree), and Elliot and Olivia stroll into Saint Bernadette's to arrest Sutton.

Oh, God, hasn't this episode lasted like two hours already? Braden attempts to get the charges dismissed since Abbas suffered his injuries in Iraq, where the torture (which he calls "benign method of interrogation") is legal because the President said so. I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not far off. Fortunately, Casey argues a good case for New York jurisdiction.

Braden stops Casey on the steps of the courthouse, so they can have an inane, simplistic argument about the ends justifying the means. He thinks they do, because when he used to be a cop, he broke a suspect's arm in two places so he could find the location of a missing girl. Ah, the old ticking bomb scenario. Braden says that missing girl is now going to law school. Casey asks him, "What if you were wrong?" and his brilliant answer is that he wasn't. Then his cellphone rings, and we find out the judge bought Casey's argument. Like there was any question.

After playing some more of the videotaped Haroon interview, in which he describes his torture, Casey questions a confident Warner about the injuries that caused Haroon's death. Unfortunately, she can't be as confident when Braden forces her to admit that she can't say definitively that Sutton's interrogation practices caused Abbas's death.

Sutton's on the stand now, and Braden questions her about this time when they interrogated a dude and found a major munitions dump. Oh, and that dude's cousin is Haroon Abbas, so...Braden, are you actually going anywhere with this? Because I'm not sure that "torture sometimes works, not that my client did any torturing, and the dead guy had a cousin who was a terrorist, so even if he was tortured to death, which he wasn't, or at least not by my client, he probably deserved it anyway" is much of a strategy.

There's some more eyeroll-inducing questioning, during which Casey brings up Abu Ghraib. Casey shows a picture of a prisoner in a stress position, and gets her to expound on the brutal-sounding details, but has a hard time to get her to admit she had any idea these techniques could lead to long-term injuries. Sutton then goes all Colonel Jessep on Casey, wanting to know how she'd protect the soldiers in Iraq (which includes her son, which we didn't know until now, although you'd think it would have come up).

Then a juror has a heart attack, and Warner and Sutton have to team up to help him. Well, at first it's Sutton doing all the work, while Warner just exchanges meaningful looks with Casey.

So a mistrial is declared, to Casey's chagrin, as she and Elliot and Olivia head into the squad room. Maybe she'd prefer to continue prosecuting a case with a jury featuring a man who had his life saved by the defendant.

Braden's there, waiting to tell Casey there's no point in a retrial, since he polled the jury and found they were split anyway. Oh, and we have some time for more simplistic arguing, this time with Elliot, who knows a few things about laying hands on suspects. Not that he's proud of it or anything. "Some of us don't have time for regret; we're too busy protecting lives," says Braden. "I think you mean 'destroying them,'" says Warner who came all the way from her office just to tell them she reported Sutton to the state board for professional conduct, and they're reviewing the case.

Sutton ridiculously tells the medical board that "traditional medical ethics don't apply" in Iraq. So yeah, she's done. Or at least temporarily suspended; even that can ruin a career, she tells Warner outside the courtroom. She wants to know if Warner is happy. Well, I don't imagine "happy" is the right word, but given that Warner was doing her best to stop Sutton, I'm not expecting her to be dejected right now. "This country's at war. I've got skills to contribute to that fight. You really want me not to use them?" Warner brings up the Hippocratic Oath again and tells her she doesn't get to ignore it when it's easier to: "The oath was written for times like these." Yep, and Jack Daniels is made for episodes like this.