Meet Lori and Roger, security guards. Roger's kicking back, reading a tabloid article someone I'd imagine is named something like Whitney Peers who drove drunk and forgot her panties. Lori, meanwhile, is loading a bunch of large boxes onto a cart and Roger looks up long enough to tell her to lift with her legs; he's clearly a prince. She gets into the elevator and he watches on the security camera as the boxes all fall off the cart, then when he turns away, there's a loud bang and the screen goes snowy.
Lupo, Green, and the gang are there to work their magic, and are told that it was a pipe bomb that went off, and Lori was breathing when she was taken away. Lupo borrows a flashlight from a tech to gaze upon the rubble in the elevator; because you don't become a TV detective without an uncanny ability to find little details the professionals missed, he notices a small spring that seems to be from an alarm clock. He then moseys over to talk to Green at the front desk. As Green tells him that Roger went to the hospital with Lori, Lupo finds a pamphlet on prenatal yoga so that this can all get a little more tragic with Lori being pregnant.
Green interviews Roger who explains that Lori was delivering the packages, which were generally medical supplies and specimens. As the camera pans around we see Lupo doing some awesome smell-the-fart acting since he realizes Roger's a giant douche who doesn't actually do any of the work. Roger tells them this wasn't her normal shift and Lupo jumps in to drily tell him it was good of him to ride to the hospital. Roger doesn't pick up on it, just goes on to say he tried calling Lori's husband but couldn't get a hold of him. He looks a little like he wants a medal for calling six whole times. The doctor then comes into the hallway and explains that Lori's out of surgery but had a massive stroke and is in a coma, with only a 5% chance of recovery. The baby is stable and as long as she's on life support will be fine. I wonder if this will become somehow pertinent later, or if it's just an interesting detail?
Lori's husband, Ryan, hangs over her bed and explains to the detectives that she was working overtime since money had been tight. When they mention that he was hard to get a hold of, Lori's mother-in-law cries out that he was in a bar. So Lori's really been surrounded by upstanding male figures lately, I see. Ryan gets on his prissy/angry face and he, his brother, and Lori's parents all start shouting insults over one another. Lupo cuts in to lead the brothers away from all the yelling.
It turns out that Lori has been living at her parents' and Ryan babbles a bit about things being hard. He and his brother Dean have a business but it's been slow. Lupo rather pointedly asks if, since Lori couldn't be in the same house with Ryan, she was afraid of him, which Ryan vehemently denies before he sits down to cry silently yet dramatically while Dean tries to comfort him.
Green, meanwhile, is talking to her parents who have to admit that Ryan wasn't actually physically abusive but that they argued, and Green realizes correctly that it was their idea she move out. Her dad explains that it was just supposed to be a "wake-up call" for Ryan to get serious about his life. Already I think Lori might be having a better time now not having to be in the middle of all these really annoying folks.
Bum bum! At the bomb squad lab, they learn that the pipe bomb wasn't built correctly, in some detail that I'm sure will assist a hooligan somewhere to perfect his homemade explosives. It should have been a bigger explosion but because of the amount of nitro it blew some other part first. The tech tells them that it was packed in a small white box with an unreadable address label. Green muses to Van Buren that maybe Lori wasn't the target, and she helpfully muses over how the building was full of doctors and labs and tells them to do a threat assessment.
While he's on the phone, Green sees a cute butt in a skirt (seriously, that's all you could see going up the stairs) pass by, then heads in to Lupo, who is watching sped-up security camera footage. Green mentions that he just saw Lupo's sister-in-law and asks how she's doing; Lupo grunts a, "better," asks Green if he likes kids, and then stops the footage to point out a messenger dropping off a small white box. My head is spinning and just in case you were wondering, none of that will be mentioned again this week. Well, anything about sis and kids -- the white box plays a rather central role. They're able to read the delivery company name off the courier's shirt, so off they go to investigate.
They're talking to a doctor at the office where the delivery was picked up, who assures them that they don't use boxes like these for their specimens. He leads them to the hallway to show where the specimens are left for pickup and asserts, "But this is not my package." And you know a man knows when it's his package. (Too easy?) The hallway is full of doctors' offices and he rattles off some names, one of which will turn out to be important later but which I never caught at all the first time around. This might be why I never went into detective work. One lab that doctor uses is Genitech, which is in the building where Lori worked.
A puzzled tech can't believe they were the target and rattles off a whole list of tests they do there which are all routine, and she and another doctor assure the guys that nothing they do is controversial. Lupo guesses that maybe they were wrong in a diagnosis, and they admit that they screwed up an amnio that showed a fetus had Down's Syndrome. The parents terminated the pregnancy only to find out that the test was wrong, and the couple just settled with the insurance company. Green and Lupo go to visit them, and in asking for their whereabouts when the bomb was sent, Green manages to offend them royally by suggesting maybe they could have still had the baby, Down's Syndrome and all. The husband tells him to shove it, and they say they got an apology from someone named Hoffman. They then explain that they were at an adoption agency at the time of the bomb, which then checks out.
Van Buren comes in and asks Green about what he might have done since they got a complaint, but he denies that he did anything wrong and Lupo unconvincingly agrees. She, in her own measured way, gives him what for and leaves. After Lupo asks, "So?" Green volunteers that once he was once engaged and his fiancée was pregnant, but that when their amnio came back they had a difference of opinion on how to handle things. He challenges Lupo that he must be sorry he asked, but Lupo seems as unconcerned as if he just said he likes one sugar instead of two in his coffee. And then that's the end of that, too. Instead he just tells Green that Hoffman used to be a professor at Hudson but then left a cushy job to work at Genitech, so they go to find out if it was his choice.
A man at the university tells them Hoffman just left to go make some good money. Also, it turns out that he'd received a death threat nailed to his office door while there. The threat alluded not-so-nicely to gays; it turns out that his research was to try and find a "gay gene" and that he claims he found it.
Hoffman, who turns out to be the guy they spoke to earlier along with the technician at Genitech, tells them nothing he works on now is controversial but expounds a bit on the gay gene and how if homosexuality is hard-wired, then it's no longer a choice. Great for gays, bad for radical conservatives. Speaking of, the guy who sent the death threat was an undergrad who...
...Now works in a Christian ministry. He acts all calm, high and mighty, and spouts about temptation and how if you have a gene for addiction, you don't have to give up and get high. Lupo impresses him by recognizing a bible verse he spouts, and they leave the kid looking self-satisfied while they walk out musing about the repercussions of this gene existing combined with the general stupidity of people -- the bottom line is, things could get messy. They head off to the university to find out more about the research, where a timid girl sort of leads them to ask the right questions. They don't get specifics about the research, but they do learn that a Dr. Bellamy called to ask about Dr. Hoffman -- Dr. Bellamy who has an office down the hall from where the bomb was picked up.
Dr. Bellamy is bald, haughty with a dash of creepy, and coy about giving them any information. He didn't make the phone call so they ask a number of questions about his patients and who might have done so. Bellamy doesn't give them anything, so when he goes to let a patient in, Lupo reaches over and does some fancy fingerwork on Bellamy's BlackBerry, emailing the patient schedule to himself. Green gives him a bit of a warning about his tactics but clearly is pleased with the outcome, especially when it turns out that Ryan's brother Dean has an appointment each week just at the right time to have dropped off a bomb for pickup.
Back at the office, they talk to Van Buren about their suspicions that Dean did a job for Ryan, trying to get out of his marriage, but she points out that all they have is the call coming from Dean so to start with him. They do, at his father's house. His dad is grizzled and has heart problems and just as they announce they found nothing, Lupo asks about his heart medication -- nitroglycerin, and with a ton of pills missing from the bottle, natch. With dramatic music booming in the background, they show up at the brothers' work and arrest Dean, who tells a confused Ryan to take care of their dad.
Dean's lawyer tells Cutter that he doesn't want a deal, and though he and Rubirosa do a lot of blustering, Dean says nothing and finally his lawyer hands them a motion to suppress the evidence, telling them to ask their detectives what happened.
Van Buren is clearly not amused as Lupo plays dumb and tries, clumsily and embarrassingly, to convince them that he didn't just grossly break the law. Cutter seems to have a light go on over his head and he heads out; despite the appearance that they'll work around it, Van Buren is mightily ticked.
Cutter tries to convince McCoy that the info was in clear sight, they try to smart-ass each other and Cutter claims Lupo just emailed himself something he could see on the screen already. (Yes, if he had bionic vision.) McCoy's having none of it.
Later, in the judge's chambers, neither is he. He'll allow the call to the university to stay in, but the pills and his psychiatrist won't be allowed. He's also going to reduce bail. Lawyer whose name we never learn, 1. Cutter, 0. Cutter heads out to Rubirosa and they head into his office, where he swings a baseball bat while they try to figure out what info they could use. He asks when Lori learned about her new shift; the supervisor left the message with Lori's parents so Rubirosa heads off to find out what happened.
At the hospital, Lori's dad tells Rubirosa about how Lori never liked her brother-in-law Dean, calling him a leech. He's overacting just enough to convince the world he'll turn out to have a hand in something somehow. When her mom comes back, Rubirosa learns that Lori was already in the building, having a test done at Genitech that day when she got called in to work.
Hoffman's greasy lawyer tries to shut down all their questioning, including explaining that he can't speak about his work since he's applying for a patent. There's a record of Lori having had an amnio there. Cutter throws around some threats, since Hoffman never mentioned that he'd seen Lori, which gets Hoffman to argue he had nothing to do with the bomb. They finally get him to admit that he used her as a research subject; through that he learned that Dean was gay and Hoffman wanted a DNA sample as part of his research for the DNA marker for homosexuality.
Rubirosa and Cutter are explaining it all to McCoy, and Cutter grandly explains how if this marker exists that parents could abort possibly gay fetuses and then the gay population could be wiped out. Their new theory is that Dean didn't want that happening and tried to bomb Dr. Hoffman to stop it -- they had the right suspect, wrong motive. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
Dean's lawyer has called them out to his house, where Dean is sporting the latest celebrity fashion: the police ankle cuff. She tries to make a deal where he pleads guilty and can be paroled after 15 years, but Cutter wants to take it to the courtroom (because otherwise this episode would be 20 minutes too short). Dean speaks up for himself for the first time and explains that he's always been "discreet" because of his father. He tried to come out but his dad wouldn't take it, so he gave up, and pleads that a trial would be embarrassing for his dad. Cutter asks if the embarrassing part is Dean being gay or Dean trying to kill Lori, and Dean basically tells him it's a toss-up in this family.
Hoffman is up on the witness stand, explaining that he wanted a DNA sample from Dean, so she had Lori call him and ask and that he refused. He's then asked by Nameless Defense Attorney about the death threats he's received. She manages to bring it around to show that he's working on a patent for a screening test for fetuses to see if they carry the gene. Unsurprisingly, the gay community isn't thrilled at the prospect. He asserts that he just wants to find the truth, he's not political, and then gets defensive when she reminds him that various medical journals had rejected his work. Somehow this then comes around to the big reveal -- that Lori's baby tested positive for the "gay gene."
Ryan's on the stand, trying to sound like a noble little brother to a gay man, who beat up some neighborhood bullies that had beaten up Dean in high school. His lawyer asks if Ryan thinks Dean was capable of sending the bomb, and Ryan says there is no way. Cutter then takes his turn, first asking if Ryan loves his wife and unborn child. Ryan responds with a resoundingly convincing, "Sure." Cutter then asks if Dean received any counseling, and Dean's lawyer tries to object when she sees where it's going but she's overruled. Ryan has to admit that Dean saw a shrink in the very building where his wife worked. Unnamed Lawyer is finally given a name by the judge - Parish. She calls for an approach and tries to stop the testimony, but Cutter points out that it's her witness and it works, and Judge Bell seems delighted at the genius of it all and overrules her objection.
McCoy comes upon Cutter in the office that night and actually compliments his work that day, then argues with him to help figure out the closing arguments. Rubirosa comes in as they're wrapping up their spritely debate to say that the defense just added Lori's father as a witness.
They visit him in the hospital where his tune has changed, rather than calling Dean a leech he calls him family, which is why he claims to be sticking up for him now. They clearly don't believe him but seem to be at a loss as he leaves the room. Things take another bad turn when they learn that Lori's been scheduled for an abortion the morning -- right now she has a 5% chance of living, but if she carries the baby to term it's almost 0%, so Ryan signed the order, I'm sure it was out of the goodness of his pure, giant heart.
They fill McCoy in on it all, and as they try to figure out why all of these things are happening so fast, a little light goes on that Lori's loving father might be homophobic. The rainbow-colored light over their heads gets brighter as they put together that he probably didn't want a gay grandchild, so he offered to be Dean's alibi if Ryan would abort the baby. Again, not to make light of death or anything, but 'unconscious' must almost be a relief to Lori with family like these guys. McCoy sighs heavily and says he'll go to the judge to try and get a stay to postpone the termination.
In Bell's beautiful apartment, McCoy explains everything to the judge, pointing out that though they aren't 100% sure, it will be too late if they wait until tomorrow to cross-examine the witness. McCoy begs him with a cracking voice and pleads to him by name, Joe, before correcting that to "Judge." This is a moment where it's a drawback that, like many people, I've done all of my Law & Order watching over the years through numerous out-of-order reruns, because it certainly reads like there is some heavy history between these two, but I can't figure out what it is. Regardless, Bell turns him down.
Sam comes back to the office and there's a bit more weirdness when Cutter says he should have gone himself, but McCoy asserts that if Bell said no to him, he'd say no to Cutter, totally shutting down the subject. Cutter decides then that he needs to get the family together.
The morning, Parish and Dean show up at the D.A.'s office and find Ryan waiting. Cutter mentions that Lori is being prepped for "a procedure," and Dean asks what it would be. Cutter ominously refers to David's alibi coming at a price, and when Ryan protests, Cutter just asks Ryan to tell Dean what's going on. There's a lot of jaw-clenching and gaze-avoiding, so Rubirosa lays it all out for Dean. Ryan protests that it's all for Lori, and Dean begs him not to do it; with a little goading from Cutter, Dean realizes that his baby brother is a homophobe who doesn't want a gay child. It's the very thing Dean wanted to stop by killing Hoffman, so Cutter challenges Dean to stop it right now, and Dean confesses all over Ryan's protests. Ryan clenches his jaw some more (dude, you might want to learn a variety of expressions to expand your range a bit) and then his true homophobic colors come out as he yells about how he doesn't want the baby to have a life like Dean's, and finally slams out of the office.
Later that day while they debrief, Cutter tells McCoy and Rubirosa that the abortion has been postponed for two days, though they doubt it will change anything. He then muses about how parents want their children to have perfect lives. Jack grandly says that's where science has been no help: "How to keep well-meaning people from making lousy decisions." Cutter replies, "Maybe one day they'll find a gene for that." And we go to black so that we can all ponder the stupidity of well-meaning people, or something equally heavy like the what-ifs of a gay genetic marker...really, it's the bleak and depressing message of your choice.