In a clearly not-what-it-appears-to-be opening, a man in the woods targets a woman with his rifle scope, as she seems to be on the run from someone. He says, "Prepare to die, bitch," and is about to squeeze the trigger, when a sudden splotch of paint on his left shoulder lets us know he's one of those guys who takes paintball way too seriously. He's checking in with his "head dork" or "squad leader" or whatever when he comes across a dead body. An actual dead body. And he practically craps his pants.
On scene, Warner tells Stabler and Benson that there are fluids in her panties. Blunt force trauma to the head. Her earlobes are bloodied, but one of the earrings was left behind -- a bejeweled beauty that goes for $5,000. Warner can't just know this; she has to sheepishly explain that her sister is a buyer for Sachs.
So the victim is Shelby Crawford. She's got elevated an blood-alcohol level and black latex wall paint with rust flakes in her hair. The paintball players all willingly gave DNA samples, and none of them match. Well, for sure. Judging from the guys I knew in college who were really into paintball (which, I must admit, can be kind of a rush), a good chunk of them would have been virgins.
Shelby's in the system, it turns out, for DUI. "Wrapped her Saab around a lamppost," says Warner. Saab, you say? I guess we're not starting the interviews in the projects this week.
Nope: we're over to Mumsy and Daddy Crawford's house on Park Avenue. Mom ("Lydia") tearfully says Shelby hadn't touched alcohol since the accident. Daddy floats the possibility that Shelby was lying to them. That's in between getting ready for a quadrille. We've got a dead debutante on our hands. Mom and Dad have some recent pictures, as in the night before, getting dressed up for some useless Silver and White ball. There's a picture of her and her two best friends, Anna and Claire, as well as a picture of Shelby with her boyfriend, Doug Walshen, who Lydia says is "Every mother's dream." Except in the picture, Shelby looks like she's passing a kidney stone, and Olivia points that out. Doug wouldn't do this, insists Dad: "He's from a good family." Mom's too busy crying about the thought of Doug at the ball right now, waiting for Shelby.
At the ball, Doug does an absolutely lousy job of pretending to be distraught over Shelby's death. "I worshipped her," he whines. Elliot asks if she worshipped him back, since in the picture it looks like "she's about to have a root canal." Bad mood, says Doug: "You know how girls get." Elliot asks if she's got her eyes on another one of "these penguins." No, of course not. So where were you last night, Doug? The Plaza. "Right where Shelby left me."
Meanwhile, in the washroom, Benson is interviewing Anna and Claire, just two among many tiara-wearers readying for a long life of contributing absolutely nothing to society. So what was up last night? Well, you know Shelby: She always did her own thing. Does "her own thing" mean boys on the side? Anna runs off crying, saying she can't do this. So Olivia asks Claire what happened. Claire says maybe Shelby hooked up with Tony (his last name turns out to be Ramirez, but Claire can't remember it). He's not at this ball. "He goes to public school," explains Claire. He's in a band, though: "Sticky Butterfingers." With a name like that, they've got to be good, right? Claire tells Olivia where the band practices.
Tony Ramirez cries about as well as Doug Walshen, as he explains that he and Shelby were in love. The last time he saw her was last night, when he went over to her place: she snuck down by the service elevator, and they "fooled around for a while." "You had sex while her family and friends were inside?" says Elliot, making a mental note to get some more information on those convent applications for his girls. "Yeah. It was hot," says Tony, through the tears. He's got an alibi for the night of Shelby's death: they were playing the last gig of their "Poison's Cupcakes" tour. He got a video mail message from Shelby, calling from the parking lot the ball, where she's getting drunk with Anna, and the detectives raise eyebrows at the fact that Anna never mentioned that. Really? The debutante didn't mention the drunken message she helped her murdered friend send? I'm surprised too.
A been-there, done-that maid leads the detectives up to Anna's room, explaining that Anna's parents are in Tahiti for three weeks, before heading to Paris for the spring collection. Well, what's the point of being rich if you can't neglect your kids for short-hand characterization on television? "Miss Anna, you have visitors," says the maid, knocking on the door. The detectives go in, and find Anna engaged in a major tonsil hockey session, with none other than Doug Walshen. Everyone's heading down to the station to sort things out.
Olivia and Elliot interview Anna and Doug, respectively, each detective trying to get the interviewee to admit to killing Shelby to remove her from the picture. Instead, the two idiots bicker about each other, with Doug sneering that Anna was "just a mattress" and claiming that the "crazy bitch was always jealous of Shelby." Neither, however, admits to anything.
The detectives confer. Elliot likes Doug for the murder, but Olivia likes Anna, because it's sexist to assume the man committed the murder. Cragen strolls in and asks about "Tony Whambam." His DNA matches the fluids found in Shelby's panties, but she wasn't raped. Olivia says either Anna or Doug did it. Cragen's idea: "Put the rats in the cage, let them fight it out."
This turns out to be a whole big waste of time. The two of them bicker at each other, each of them accusing the other of killing her, and are just getting physical (violently, not erotically) when the detectives break it up and Cragen says they "got a hit on the earring," which was sold at a pawnshop ("Big Jerry's") in Alphabet City. Fin and Chester are checking it out.
Chester reads the chit back to the nonplussed pawnshop owner, that the ring was sold by Sunshine Smith, who lives at 6789 Peekaboo Lane. "Now that you read it back to me, it does sound a tad bit suspicious," allows the pawnshop owner. Judging from his girth, this must be Big Jerry himself. Helpfully, he's got video footage of Sunshine Smith herself, a ragged little waif. "This girl doesn't weight 85 pounds soaking wet. No way she could take Shelby down herself. Must have had friends," says Fin. Or family, says Big Jerry, who adds that the girl said they hadn't eaten in days, and her dad told her pawn the ring. Homeless family, says Chester. "And murder's how daddy brings home the bacon," says Fin.
Olivia and Elliot look at the tape with TARU tech Ruben Morales, who says he's "sweetened" the pawnshop security video, by which it looks like he means he used the television's remote control to up the brightness. Olivia notes a symbol on the kid's jacket; she saw a kid tagging it on a bench, and he hit her up for subway fare, said he'd been living on the streets. Elliot asks Ruben to find youth shelters near the pawnshop, and instead of telling Mr. So-Called Detective to Google it himself, Ruben finds one three blocks away.
At the New York Youth Crisis Center, the detectives talk to Paige, who identifies the Dickensian waif in the video as Josie, who visits the shelter and takes a creative writing class. "Josie is special. That's why it hurt so much when she went back to Phalanx." What's a phalanx now? It's a street family (but not with actual blood ties). There are two parents in charge. In Phalanx's case, it's Cole Roberts and Cassidy Cornell, explains Paige. There's even an evocative photographic exhibition of Phalanx decorating the walls of the shelter, taken by a former member. "Playing house with homeless kids," says Elliot. It's not a game, says Paige, telling them the street family problem is nationwide: "Every city's got them now." Josie was raped by her mother's numerous boyfriends, Paige tells them, before finally acknowledging that the detectives wouldn't be here if Josie weren't in trouble. Yeah, of the murderousness kind, says Elliot. Paige says that if Josie were involved, it's Cole's fault. He tells the "children" that he loves them, and makes them earn it by making them do his bidding. That's pretty much why I had a kid, to make her do my bidding. Of course, my bidding generally consists of hugs and fist bumps, not murder.
Not yet.
The detectives glean Phalanx's main hangout from one of the photographs, and they stroll into a ramshackle little camp that Olivia says looks just like her sleepaway camp, and find Cassidy, otherwise known as Ann, George Michael's plain, boring girlfriend from Arrested Development. ["...Her?" -- Joe R] And hey, here's Cole! He's considerably older than Cassidy. He says the rest of the kids are out panhandling in the West End, but it looks like their shift's over, because here they all come, all dirt and rags, like a worst-case-scenario Kid Nation. Olivia spots Josie, and Cole orders the kids to scatter, which they do. Olivia goes after Josie, while Stabler chases down Cole, who runs down the street and hops on a garbage truck, just out of the grasp of Elliot, who almost gets hit by a car for his trouble. Olivia has better luck snatching Josie, who snarls, "Let go of me, bitch!" Tsk. What are street parents teaching their non-children these days?
Josie's no less friendly at the station, where she's all "Up yours!" and spitting on Elliot, as the detectives tell her they know she pawned Shelby's earring, but they don't think she killed Shelby herself. Don Corleone would be proud: she's not going against the family, because her own mom kicked her out when she was nine, blaming Josie when mom's boyfriend snuck into Josie's room at night. "I was nine," spits Josie. The detectives try to sow some doubt, asking where the money goes; the cash she got for the earring should have meant a big feast, but she hasn't had a meal in a couple of days. "Cole said we'd eat when it was time." So she hitchhiked to New York from Arizona. "Guy made me do stuff for him every night until we got here," she says. Then her ride pulled over on the FDR and pushed her out and left her there. "Dad would never do that to me. I'll never talk."
Cragen comes up with a brilliant suggestion: Bribe her with food! Elliot's skeptical, and Olivia balks, calling it coercion. "Interventions aren't always pretty," says Cragen.
The detectives seem to get over their reservations quickly; Elliot strolls into the interview room with the Joey Special (two pizzas) and after they ask Josie if they mind if they eat there, Olivia gleefully goes for dessert first: a chocolate chip cookie. Then she goes for an ice-cream sundae, with syrup and sprinkles. Meanwhile, Elliot is stuffing his face with the "best pizza in the city," which, for these guys, is any pizza box that doesn't have a bomb in it. Olivia offers some ice cream to Josie, who barely hesitates before accepting. "As soon as you tell us about the earring, we can all eat together," says Olivia. "I wasn't there when the rich girl died," says Josie, but her "parents" were. She digs into the ice cream, and hits up Elliot for some pizza. She says Cassidy heard the rich girl called Cole a name. "'Stupid fag.' That's a no-no. Time for SOS," she says, explaining that SOS stands for "stomp on sight." Sure she didn't say "Fagin"? Cole beat her with the lock on his "smiley chain." Elliot asks what colour the lock was, and Josie says it was rusty, so they painted it black. She says she doesn't know where Cole is now, but she wants to go home; Cragen brings Paige into the room, and Josie runs into her arms. They'll stay at the shelter tonight, figure things out in the morning. Josie asks about her brothers and sisters. "We're going to do everything we can," Olivia assures her.
But the former Phalanx hideout is deserted, unsurprisingly to the detectives. But they do find something disturbing. An area marked as Josie's room (which is actually just an area covered by a blanket. Painted in ugly black letters is "Josie equals traitor. Traitors must die." "We gotta move her," says Olivia.
But they're too late. They find Paige at the shelter, blood sprayed all over the walls, no sign of Josie. Cole's got her.
Warner's found the same paint residue and rust flakes on Paige -- Cole beat her with the same rusty lock he killed Paige with. And Chester finds a book of Josie's short stories in Paige's office, writing about lions and cubs and crows, in thinly veiled allegories of her parent's crimes. One story involves three dead "crows" that lead the detectives to think Cole's killed three other people. That's when Cassidy shows up, screaming that the detectives have to save her baby.
At the station, she says Cole decided Josie knew too much. "I tried to talk him out of it, but his mind was made up. Cole was crazy mad," she said, adding she had to protect her other children and took them to a squatter camp in Astoria. Not that she'll admit to having any idea where Cole might have taken Josie. The detectives don't believe her, despite her claiming to be a good mother to her kids. "A good mother doesn't let her kids rob and kill," says Olivia. You say that now, Liv, but just wait until you have one of your own. But Fin shows up with some news, and they're not going to need Cassidy to find Josie; she just turned up. From the look on his face, we know we're going to the morgue.
Josie was stuffed down a manhole. Cassidy can't handle looking at it, but Elliot forces her to, telling Cassidy that Josie's eyes were gouged out, her cheeks were slit from ear to ear. Olivia adds that Josie was tortured for over twelve hours. Casey stumbles away to puke in a sink while the detectives badger her for Cole's whereabouts. She screams that before she met Cole, she was sold by her mother for three years to her drug dealers. "It was hell!" Elliot says Cole's going to hell for what he did to Josie and the others. "What others?" says Cassidy.
Enter Casey, to lay out the law for Cassidy, about how she, as the lioness in Josie's stories, is an accessory to the crimes described therein and just as guilty as he is. Cassidy finally gives up, saying she wants a deal: "I talk and you give me a one-way ticket to San Francisco." She says she can meet up with a new street family there. Casey assents, provided Cassidy gives them the info.
Over a montage of bodies being dug up, Cassidy spills the details: the first one, two months ago, was a homeless man killed by Cole to scare the kids into respecting him. A new rule for the family was introduced: Honor thy father and mother, or die. Well, it's an old twist on a biblical classic. I'm sure that "or die" was supposed to be on the stone tablet too, but Moses was running late. Did anyone break that rule? Yep, Burnsie Ross. Buried in Central Park. Said he could make a better father than Cole. Cole stabbed him thirty times. Also, Larissa Rhedd, who was Cole's wife before Cassidy. She's to the highway in Riverdale, and was put there for banging a drug dealer to cop her heroin. When Cole found out, he left her for Cassidy. This was long ago, mind, but when Cole introduces a new rule, it applies retroactively to past transgressions.
There's one more: Shelby Crawford. "I was taking a piss in the bushes when Cole spotted the rich girl. She was talking on a fancy phone," says Cassidy. Cole wanted the phone, not to mention her diamond earrings, which would feed their family for months. Shelby was too drunk to put up any kind of a fight, and Cole was walking away with the loot, when she started insulting him. Cole came back and asked Cassidy what Shelby said, and she told him. And that was it for Shelby: "He hit her with his smiley chain. Just once, but she was dead." "California, here you come," says Olivia. But before that happens, she has to testify against Cole. Which she can't do if they don't find him to charge him. Cassidy tells them that when it gets cold the family shacks up in an abandoned warehouse in Fort Greene.
Benson and Olivia check it out. By themselves? This guy's a suspect in at least six murders! So yeah, check it out by yourselves. And then, if that's not enough, why don't you try splitting up? Cole jumps Elliot, starts choking him with the infamous smiley chain, and it's all Elliot can do to break free and start laying down a beating of his own. Olivia takes enough of her sweet time showing up to help that I thought she was only going to see Elliot going apeshit and she was going to have an inner conflict about testifying against her partner when Internal Affairs starts sniffing around Elliot for police brutality. "You're going to break my wrists!" yells Cole as Elliot handcuffs him. "I'm Irish, but I'm not that lucky," says Elliot.
Elliot lays down some truly horrific morgue photos of his victims (especially Josie's, which will give you nightmares for a while, I promise you). Cole reacts angrily, saying the cops just PhotoShopped the pictures. As for the stories that Josie wrote, Cole says Josie was just a bad apple, and he defends his status as "father" to a bunch of street children. "They come to me, as refugees from Babylon," he says. Elliot's all, "Babylon"? "Your world, where drones work McJobs and have no idea what it is to really be free," explains Cole, who snorts at Elliot's use of the phrase "real father," since Cole's "real father" was a "violent bastard" who beat on Cole for laughs. Elliot calls him a sociopath, and gets called a hypocrite in return: "I give them real love, freedom to be themselves! Freedom from the abuse!" he yells. The murders? Just him and Cassidy safeguarding their children, says Cole, who doesn't believe Cassidy would ever side with the cops against him.
Trial, part 46. Cassidy's on the stand, with Cole glaring at her. She says the family was hanging out in Prospect Park, telling stories, until the homeless guy, tweaked out, asked Cole for a beer, and, after being refused, pushed Cole into a tree. Cole dragged him into the bushes, and made her follow, but she didn't want to. "She's lying!" yells Cole, who gets warned to hush up. "Cole started whaling on the old guy," says Cassidy, because he was disrespectful in front of the children. Casey introduces the smiley chain into evidence, which Cassidy says Cole used in all his murders. "Traitor! Whore!" yells Cole. Judging from his lawyer's reaction, I don't think the profane outbursts were part of the defense strategy. "I'm sorry, my love, I'm so sorry," says Cassidy, but Cole's in no mood to hear it. "You have broken every covenant of the Phalanx family!" he yells, and even his own lawyer is telling Cole to shut up. Cole gets forcibly removed after he tries to hop the table to get at Cassidy. We can only imagine that the defense lawyer's closing remarks to the jury began, "I know it looks bad, but..."
Back at the station, the detectives crow about the twenty-five years, consecutive, that Cole got for each murder, but with ten minutes left, we know there's another twist coming, and here it is. Cassidy's parents, looking rather well-to-do, come looking for Elliot, as he's the one pictured on the cover of the New York "Ledger" with their daughter, whose name isn't Cassidy, but Helen. Elliot refrains from saying Cassidy's mom looks pretty good for a crack whore.
Cassidy's now at the station, wanting to know where her promised bus ticket is, but Elliot wants to show her something. He lifts the blind on one-way glass, and shows her the distraught couple in an interview room. "They look familiar to you?" Elliot asks. Despite visibly reacting, Cassidy claims not to know them, but confesses, upon further questioning, that she was lying about her mom's pimping and admits to being from Park Avenue. Park Avenue? Where Shelby was from? Ain't no such thing as coincidences on this show, folks.
"I just can't believe she was this close, all this time," laments Cassidy's mom, being interviewed by Olivia. Her father says they looked for her everywhere, hired private detectives. In a cross-cut interview, Cassidy says they never had any time for her, except to boss her around, to eat her vegetables and keep up her grades, et cetera. "They smothered me with their rules," she snits. You mean, acted like parents? asks Elliot. "No! I'm a parent, and I would never act that way," she snaps. "Right, and now six people are dead," points out Elliot, rather brilliantly. Like he's never made a parenting decision that left six people dead. "Does it make you feel like a big tough guy to boss people around and flash your little badge like it actually means something? Well guess what, man? It means nothing." And then, after Cassidy's mom mentions Helen going to St. Winnifred's, Olivia finally clues in. "Did she know Shelby Crawford?" "Yes. They used to be friends."
Time for some double-team questioning of Cassidy by Elliot and Olivia, who suggest to Cassidy that Shelby must have recognized her in the park, and Cassidy freaked. "You knew that she was going to blast your fantasy life to pieces," says Olivia, and Elliot figures she didn't call Cole a stupid fag: "You just told him she did because you knew he'd fall for it." Olivia says she was afraid Shelby would go back to school and tell everyone, and her parents would come looking for her. "I didn't want to go back. My life was a living hell." Elliot mocks her for calling life with cooks and chauffeurs "hell," which is hilarious, given the way rich people are consistently portrayed as amoral and hedonistic on this show. Cassidy says they don't understand, and Olivia admits that she doesn't understand a girl who has everything lying about being raped.
But this interview is over, because Daddy walks in. "Let's go," he orders crisply, as though his daughter hasn't been on the streets for months. Elliot says they're not done, but Daddy has the same respect for police authority that all rich people do on this show: "Charge my daughter now, or we walk out the door. Come on, Helen. They can't touch you." The detectives let her walk.
But Casey says they have a good case for manslaughter two against her, since what she told Cole was what prompted him to kill Shelby. There's just one problem: they need Cole to testify against her.
Cole: "Screw you." Olivia: "She disrespected you." Cole: "Okay, I'll help you." I've truncated it, but that's the gist.
So Cole testifies about robbing Shelby and walking away, saying that Cassidy stayed behind. "I was checking out the diamonds under the street lamp when Cassidy came up to me and told me that the rich girl called me a fag." That pissed him off (given that he's not, I suppose?), and Cassidy said he had to do something about it, or he wasn't a real man. "She was firing you up," says Casey, like this is the first time she's hearing this story. She was right, he says, explaining that under their laws, disrespect is punishable by death. Speaking of getting fired up, Cole is awfully pissed off about all Cassidy's lies, sitting there in her fancy clothes and jewels: "Two weeks ago she was on the streets in rags, pretending to be one of us, lying about a lifetime of abuse." So why should we believe you, Casey asks, since you're going to jail for the rest of your life anyway? "Because I'm not denying killing six people. I may have been a strict father, but I never lied. Go ask my kids." Hee. I may have killed people, but lying? Fuck that!
Well, if you can't trust a six-time murderer, who can you trust? Cassidy/Helen is found guilty, and reverts to the Park Avenue princess she is when she hisses at Casey, "I hate your guts." I guess you won't be sitting to her in the cafeteria, then, huh?