Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001) s05e05 Episode Script

In New York City's war on crime, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case Squad.
These are their stories.
I wish I could help you.
- You can hear me out, Sister.
- I have.
You're mistaken.
I'm sorry.
Did you Please.
Not her.
Can't your stuff yet.
I need all three.
Just the Viejas.
1,000 a piece.
I give and they go.
We'll be back.
Get in the car.
Get in the car.
Get in the car! I need you to be quiet.
It's okay.
Come on.
The washrooms are there, okay? There's a bathroom, there's towels.
There's a robe.
He followed us! He followed us! Oh, my god.
Okay, okay.
It's okay, girls.
It's okay.
Stay here.
"Perfect love casteth out fear.
" Mickey I saw him.
But the girls are safe.
You see? Okay.
All right.
Mickey, the girls are scared, okay? You have to go.
That's it then.
I'll just, I'll leave.
- It's too dangerous.
- No, you can't leave, Olivia.
What happens to your girls without you? We're already a dumping ground for eve Sister Olivia.
I was just telling them the community board wants a meeting.
- Can we blame them? - Teresa, these girls have no one else.
Their pimps come looking for them.
It's a menace.
- This is not our mission.
- It's our Christian duty.
Leave us alone! What's going on? Stop! Stop it! Take that hand off.
He was looking in the window.
It's all right.
You all right? They're coming, Sister, the reckoning.
He'll tell Enrique we're here! The only people he talks to are in his head.
Now go with Maria.
Go on.
It's okay.
You okay? Who's there? Mother of God pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Law & Order CI The sexton had the night off.
Sister Dorothy was doing the final check.
- Any problems recently? - Uh, the usual.
Homeless men urinating on our flowerbeds.
Graffiti We'll take photos of the graffiti.
You run a shelter here.
Uh, the Sisters rescue girls from prostitution.
Sister Olivia started the program.
She's the one who found Dorothy.
We'll need to speak with her.
She's downstairs calming her girls.
I'll get her.
So the offender probably hid in here.
Burst out, caught the nun.
Shoved her into that.
You'll see that the wax is not red, so the blood never mixed with it.
The candlestand must have been knocked over after she went down once the blood congealed.
Hi.
I'm Sister Olivia.
- How can I help? - How are your girls? Freaked.
Me too.
Sister Dorothy was my light.
When I found her, she was already gone.
- I said a prayer.
- We're very sorry.
So these rescues, how do they work? We look for men gathered around a van.
There's usually one or two girls inside, servicing 20 or 30 men a night.
There's no time to call the police, so we buy the girls from their pimps with donations.
That's very dangerous work.
So when was the last rescue? Wednesday night.
You don't think that Somebody might have wanted their girls back.
- It's not our fault.
- They know.
They wanna find the guys who were selling you.
- We need you to be brave.
- They already are.
They keep us in a house with bars on the windows.
Every night, Enrique, the one with the scar, and Mateo drive us to a different corner.
You remember anything about the house or the neighbors? - Maybe you heard something? - No.
Enrique always plays his music loud.
Before I found Dorothy I remember hearing hip-hop music, uh, from outside.
From a car in Spanish.
Could you see out the windows? Just these big buildings on top of the highway.
I never seen that before.
Maybe those apartments above the cross-Bronx? Desiree, you look very nice today.
I was wondering if you always pencil in your eyebrows.
No, not until my real ones go away.
They fell out.
Do you use a face cream? Something maybe Enrique gave you? He get it for us from a Botanica.
"Crema blanqueadora.
" Skin lightener.
He can charge more for girls with lighter skin.
There's mercury in this.
Mercury, that's why your eyebrows fell out.
Because of this.
You see where Enrique bought this? That's him! Enrique with the scars.
Police! Put your hands behind your head.
Put them behind your head! Hey! Show me your hands.
Show them! You stay put.
Okay, everything's okay.
Come on.
Burnt matches.
Did you do this? No.
Enrique.
Those girls look pretty young.
Those are Matteo's friends.
He's 15.
He could play with them.
Where were you last night? - Were you going to church? - I don't go to no churches.
You weren't in a church? - A wooden church full of candles? - Nah.
Those churches, they burn fast, you know? You ever see a church burn? Yeah.
He's a full-on pyro.
He would have burned that church down if he'd had a chance.
Didn't someone knock over a candlestand? The floor's stone.
Knocking over some candles wouldn't do anything.
You know, the stand, it was dragged ten feet.
Toward the body.
It's the way that the wax splattered and ran along the floor.
The fluid mechanics are all wrong.
The floor tilts.
Somebody steered the wax toward the body.
You're the lapsed altar boy.
What's the religious significance of wax? Well, the candle is a symbol for Christ and wax being his pure flesh.
But, somehow, I think that the purpose for this was more practical.
There was the same graffiti outside.
Everybody knows Saturn protects the innocents.
That's why not one of those girls got hurt.
If all you wanted was to protect them, Mickey, why'd they attack you? They said that you were spying on them.
That's a confusion of perception.
Well, we're confused about these.
We found them next to Sister Dorothy.
Those aren't mine.
Look, Saturn has five ring systems.
Not seven.
- And what's all this crud on them? - It's wax.
Wax? Wax is mutable.
You can't protect nothing with a mutable.
Do you have the other half of this? Did you rip this, Mickey? - No.
- Maybe you earned it somehow? You know, they paid you one half up front and the other half later? My employer wanted me to see where Sister Dorothy's office was.
That's why the girls thought you were spying on them.
Who paid you? White man, black shirt.
No, other way.
Black man, white shirt.
Black shirt, white shirt.
Saturn boy's got a few loose rings floating around his head.
He's right about the markings on the floor.
There's nothing in his notebook that matches.
His employer tried to frame him for the Sister's murder.
The killer drew those on the floor, then covered them up with wax? Somebody in that church is playing games.
You were the first one to find her body.
Now, Sister, before you start lying, the markings on the floor were not Mickey's.
- Oh, thank god.
- Somebody tried to frame him.
And we think you tried to protect him by covering them up with wax.
Dorothy wouldn't have wanted Mickey to go to prison.
You don't know, but schizophrenics have it very hard.
Oh, I do know, Sister.
I thought I was doing what she wanted me to do.
Forgive me.
Well, thanks for clearing it up.
Olivia's right.
Dorothy spent her whole life sacrificing for others.
Was her office open on Thursday? Uh, closed, but not locked.
You have a key for this? What about a computer? Dorothy spent the tech boom cloistered in a convent upstate.
She still used carbon paper.
I'll be upstairs if you need anything.
The cabinet's been jimmied.
There's wite-out used to cover up the marks.
- Personal correspondence.
- Her rolodex.
Somebody grabbed all the cards under D and M.
I have a letter here from the mother superior of the convent upstate from two weeks ago.
"I enclose a note a gentleman left with Sister Edwina to pass on to you.
" There's no note.
It's missing.
How far upstate? Convent Cloisters Broome County, New York Thursday, September 29 When Dorothy had her Irish up, she was a force.
She opened a refuge here for battered women and um, then two years ago, she went into the city to help Sister Olivia.
Sister Edwina, the detectives have been waiting.
Come.
They won't bite.
We'd like to talk to you about the man who left a note for Sister Dorothy.
- Is that all right? - Yes.
He was in Binghamton on business.
He said Sister Dorothy had helped him when she taught Catholic school in the city years ago.
He wanted to thank her.
You get his name? Just Eddie.
Mine's Edwina.
He joked about it, so I laughed.
Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, Sister.
Just, sorry.
Is there anything else that you can tell us about the way he looked? I try not to judge people's insides by their outsides.
So there's something about him that you're trying not to judge.
He's different in some way.
He was a foreigner or he was Was he big like me? Not so big.
And not so caucasian.
Okay, African-American.
All right, anything else? Did he have a car? Gray? It was gray.
I saw it when he went for his bag to get his notepad.
What kind of bag? I wasn't being nosy, but he put it on my desk.
It had syringes.
And one of those things that take blood pressure.
- And vials with rubber stoppers.
- Okay, for blood samples.
- He was a doctor.
- With that old car? Oh, gosh, that sounded very judgmental.
No, no, it's fine, Sister.
I guess that's all.
All right, thanks.
It's a long way to come just to say thank you.
If Eddie was a doctor, he would have said so.
Maybe he's just someone who takes blood samples, a phlebotomist.
A phlebotomist of color named Eddie.
How many can there be in this city? Sign in, please.
This do? It's about Sister Dorothy, isn't it? I read what happened.
I guess you know that I was in touch with her.
Right, you were in touch.
She was your teacher in Catholic school? No.
Sister Edwina misunderstood.
I just played in their schoolyard.
But Sister Dorothy helped you.
Or did we misunderstand that? I was 12.
Some older boys were beating me up.
She stepped in, gave them a what for.
I ran home.
She saved my life, I never thanked her.
She saved your life.
You never thanked her.
That must have been quite a beating.
Yes, I never forgot it.
Oh, sorry.
I like this.
Sorry.
I'm thinking that you must have built up a lot of gratitude in the last 20 years to go all the way upstate.
My company sent me there to lead a tutorial.
You hear from Sister Dorothy after she got your note? She called my cell.
I mentioned in the note I wanted to make a donation.
- We spoke briefly.
- You speak to anyone else? A homeless man named Mickey? He said he got a $20 donation.
I never went to the church.
May I go? Uh, yeah.
Sure.
Last thing.
We're asking everybody where they were Thursday night.
I was home studying electro-cardiography.
Home, studying by yourself? Yes.
Eddie Roberts is happily single.
It's the only way to get things done.
Alex Eames says he's a big phony.
He didn't flinch when I crowded him.
That's not the way a beating victim would react.
- Excuse me, please don't touch that.
- Hey, you're the supervisor? The guy who sent him upstate? Uh, for the tutorial? No, Eddie volunteered for some reason.
For some reason.
Please, there's confidential information on there.
Eddie seems to spend a lot of time searching HMO databases.
We don't have access to those.
Eddie Roberts does.
He started screening patient histories last year.
All women.
A back door way to find Sister Dorothy? Your phlebotomist scanned 4,000 databases for women with O-negative blood, thyroid condition, hepatitis, and thalassemia.
He must have thought your Sister Dorothy fit the bill.
Thalas, from the Greek goddess of the sea.
It's a blood disease found mainly in mediterranean, African, and southeast Asian women.
Sister Dorothy was Irish.
And she didn't have hepatitis or a thyroid condition.
It's another woman he's trying to find.
He had to think that Sister Dorothy could lead him to her.
That's why he searched her office.
He confronted her, and she wouldn't help.
So he killed her.
This woman Sister Dorothy died protecting, I hope she's worth it.
I didn't mean to scare the girls.
I know.
Oh, uh here, take this.
I'll call you regularly.
You'll be happy there, I promise.
Pray for me, okay? I was conducting a statistical study of anemia.
Why, you know somebody with anemia? Thyroid? Hepatitis? No, why would you ask me such a thing? Maybe your girlfriend, or Sister Dorothy had a shelter upstate for battered women.
Maybe that's why you went to see her, to find one of your old battered girlfriends.
Maybe you wanted to go another couple rounds with her, huh? But Sister Dorothy, she got in the way.
You keep going, and I'll sue the NYPD for slander.
I already told you, Eddie Roberts was home Thursday night, as I was every night last week.
Studying and bettering myself.
And now I'd like to invoke my right to an attorney.
Soon as his lawyer gets here, put Roberts in a lineup.
Hope saturn boy can pick him out.
Assuming we find saturn boy.
He's been missing for three days.
What else against Mr.
Roberts besides minor inconsistencies in his story? Everything about him is off.
He can't look me in the eye.
He talks about himself in the third person.
Another eccentric New Yorker.
He's indignant too.
He's got a deep-seated sense of injustice.
Had to be something powerful.
Drive him to spend the last year and a half searching for medical databases.
I'll rely on your own obsessiveness to find out what that thing is, detective.
In the meantime, we'll have Mr.
Roberts arraigned on the computer charges.
Apartment of Eddie Roberts Brooklyn, New York Wednesday, October 5 Eddie stay home most nights.
I know.
Because he take up two spaces with his car.
When he goes, I move in.
You see his car outside last week? Only one night he go out, Tuesday.
Sorry, I got to go.
He went out Tuesday.
After making a point of telling us he stayed in all week.
Another minor inconsistency.
There's enough hats here for every Sunday of the year.
She must have just passed away.
All right, we got a family bible.
It's a picture of his mother, Eddie, and his older brother.
Eddie's fascinated with baking.
Bakers trade magazines, food service newsletters, and the bakery section from the phone directory with bakeries checked off.
For a guy whose oven's never been turned on.
I wonder who does the baking at the church.
Well, one of the Sisters taught me at the convent, and now I teach the girls here.
They need skills or they go back to what they know.
- Why're you asking? - We've identified a suspect.
I don't recognize him.
He's looking for somebody.
He wanted Sister Dorothy to help him find her.
Her.
A woman.
About your age.
Maybe employed as a baker.
You think it's me.
But I'm employed as a nun.
Your blouse.
It's discolored.
The cotton is worn.
That's from the rubbing that I've seen you do.
My stomach hurts when I get stressed.
It's your spleen, isn't it? It's swollen? From the type of anemia you have? It's thala / Thalassemia.
You have O-negative blood, right? Well, the woman that our suspect is looking for has O-negative blood and has thalassemia.
Well, that's, that's weird.
It's Look, I wish I could be more helpful, but Were you diagnosed with your anemia before you were a nun? Uh-huh, when I was a kid.
Just trying to figure out how Eddie Roberts found out.
Maybe maybe he met your parents.
No, they're gone.
Maybe somebody else from your past.
It's not something I talked about when I was growing up.
You didn't want the other kids knowing you were weak.
The girls trust you so much because they sense that you share something in common.
Don't pretend you know me, detective.
I help these girls because it's my Christian duty.
They're victims, powerless.
Something I never was.
I made choices.
Even in surrendering to God's will, I made a choice.
There's just one last thing.
We thought that maybe if you if we brought you and Eddie together, Eddie might tell you why he's looking for you.
If you think it would help.
Sure.
She called our bluff.
She knew Eddie couldn't talk without implicating himself in the murder.
She and Eddie might be sharing the same secret.
The same secret that Sister Dorothy died protecting.
/ Oh, great.
The church gets another black eye, I'll never hear the end of it.
Eddie wrote a check to a drugstore on the Tuesday night his super said he went out.
When he said he was home studying.
The receipt's here.
Stamped just before 7.
Then he wrote a check for 250 bucks to a James Jones.
There's a Jimmy Jones in the family bible.
Here, James "Jimmy" Jones.
Born five years before Eddie.
Eddie's older half-brother.
Eddie tried to hide the fact he was with him Tuesday night.
Maybe something about this brother he's ashamed of.
But he didn't always feel that way.
"1988 fillmore high MVP.
" What's not to be proud of? Apartment of James Jones Brooklyn, New York Tuesday, October 11 He's in here watching his cartoons.
- He's like that most of the time.
- What happened to him? I just started two months ago.
I feed him, change him.
He don't talk much.
Jimmy's brother Eddie, he arrange for all this care? Yes, he fills out the medicaid forms, writes the checks.
Nice young man.
- He does all that paperwork right here? - Yes.
Was he here last week? Tuesday evening and Friday afternoon, same as every week.
He talks to Jimmy for hours.
About sports, their late mother.
But not a lot of it gets through to Jimmy.
Spasms, I better go.
Any other murder suspect would rub our noses in this.
Show what a good samaritan he is.
But not Eddie.
Maybe this is what he was hiding.
Victim still in coma.
They never caught the guy.
There was only one eyewitness.
And the eyewitness was a woman, Angie Delmarco.
The cards missing from Sister Dorothy's rolodex, the letters D and M.
That's who Eddie's looking for.
The speculation is that she maybe died from an overdose.
I don't know about died, but maybe gone to heaven? Sister Dorothy was called home by god.
We can't prevent his plan from unfolding.
But that's what I fear.
The unfolding.
God's voice seems so far away.
Sometimes I wish I were back in the cloisters.
But you belong in this world with your girls.
That's what god chose for you.
He'll find you here, and he'll give you the strength to face what comes.
I hope so, Father.
I pray for it.
Poor kid was on the white side of the tracks at night.
They caught him on the ballfield on Stillwell avenue.
- He's lucky he survived.
- We saw him.
He's not lucky.
- You had two suspects.
- Al Nero, Tony Zavaglia.
Jimmy Jones was dating Al's ex-girlfriend.
A white girl, I presume and you couldn't make a case? No forensics.
Gravesend, back in those days, nobody said anything.
This eyewitness, Angie Delmarco? She was Al's new girlfriend at the time.
But your file on her is pretty thin.
You just have one photo of her.
She worked off the books at a bakery to pay for a crack habit.
But before we get her story, the papers leaked her name, - she went AWOL.
- Thank you, detective.
The department should hire phlebotomists.
They do better finding witnesses.
If Sister Olivia is in fact Angie Delmarco, why hasn't she said so? What, admit that she was the crackhead girlfriend of a violent racist? She lives in Harlem, she needs the community to support her program.
If she came forward, the community would forgive her past associations.
No, we're talking about what she fears.
In order to prosecute Eddie Roberts, we need to force her hand.
Sister Olivia was a novitiate at the convent upstate, wasn't she? Maybe a subpoena for their files would help.
Yes, 1988.
Sister Olivia said she ran away from an abusive relationship.
She had the bruises to prove it.
We gave her a bed in our refuge.
Sister Dorothy, did she do the initial interview with Olivia? Yes.
/ Can I see that? Louise Collina.
New Jersey state ID.
Looks fake.
Picture could be Delmarco.
You know, I read that novitiates, they have mentors.
They tell Olivia's mentor was Sister Dorothy? Yes, she shepherded Olivia through every step.
She was so proud when Olivia took the vow.
Can I get a copy of this? - I'll have to charge you a nickel.
- No problem.
Nothing in here matches up with Angie Delmarco.
Not even the birthdays.
Maybe her family will recognize her.
Home of Dominic Fratti Newark, New Jersey Wednesday, October 19 By the time I started going with Rosie, Angie's mom, she'd already thrown Angie out of the house for being a tramp.
Angie and her mother never made up? All those years and that putana never called.
Not on Easter, not mother's day.
Not even when Rosie was dying.
- The younger one, could it be Angie? - Yes.
Rosie got a card from a Sister Dorothy upstate.
All it said was that Angie was safe and doing good.
- That's it.
- You tell anybody? Rosie made me promise not to.
She was worried those animals that turned that black kid into a vegetable would go after Angie to shut her up.
So then after Rosie died, you weren't gonna let her get away with that.
You told somebody.
You didn't tell the police.
They didn't seem too interested in helping that black kid the first time around.
So then you told the kid's family.
You tipped them off about Angie.
After Rosie died, I sent his family a copy of Sister Dorothy's note.
Let them call Angie to account.
She's caused a lot of hurt.
She needs to get herself right.
The tip proves Eddie Roberts was aware of a relationship between Sister Dorothy and the woman who witnessed his brother's beating.
It's the connective tissue the grand jury will need.
And you'll call Sister Olivia to testify.
You mean Angie Delmarco.
Yes, her testimony goes to Mr.
Roberts' motive.
All right, so if we go to Eddie Roberts, and show him what we have, and offer him a plea Sister Olivia's past acts, they don't have to be made public, right? If Mr.
Roberts takes a plea about why he was in that church, his motive would be immaterial.
But, detective, I want the truth to come out.
All of it.
Even with her testimony about the hate crime, the statue of limitations ran out.
We can't touch Al Nero or Tony Zavaglia.
The only people it'll affect are Sister Olivia's girls.
And Sister Olivia.
Like her stepfather said, she needs to be called to account for All these years that she's been living a life of sacrifice, of service for others.
- She's paid her debt.
- In your judgment.
I'm sorry you find the truth so inconvenient.
It's not just my judgment.
Sister Dorothy, she also thought that Sister Olivia's works were worth defending.
Come on, counselor.
How much truth do you need for justice here? Even if you could prove Angie Delmarco's stepfather sent this tip, there's no evidence my client ever got it.
Until we find the homeless man he paid to spy on Sister Dorothy.
I ask myself, where was this zeal 17 years ago when my brother's skull was cracked open? It must gall you to know that these men are walking free, you know? You know what galls me? Those trials of old white men who killed civil rights workers.
Bombed churches 40 years ago.
Their convictions hailed as victories of American justice.
But for 40 years, these old men sat down to dinner with their families.
Slept in their own beds.
Woke up free men.
And now that they're old and dying, when they have nothing left to lose, now they go to jail.
Mr.
Roberts, as I told your lawyer, we recognize Sister Dorothy's death was not premeditated.
That there were mitigating circumstances.
I'm not interested in a plea bargain.
You want to convict me, you give me one of those trials.
All this medication your brother takes.
His health is deteriorating.
He can't fight off infections.
In time he'll succumb to his injuries.
Then his assault will become a homicide.
The statute of limitations won't apply.
We can charge the men who beat him with murder.
You have no evidence against them.
If we get Angie Delmarco on the record about the beating to use when circumstances permit, would you consider a plea for Sister Dorothy's death? I'm sorry about what happened to her.
She didn't deserve it.
First, you get Delmarco on the record, then we'll talk.
You take good care of him.
He always liked looking sharp.
Even on that last night.
He spent two hours getting ready before he went out.
He was going on a date? Dancing.
With that white girl.
Didn't matter anyway.
Those boys got to him first.
We can tell Ms.
Delmarco her statement will be kept under seal until it's needed.
When Jimmy dies.
It could be months or years.
Jimmy's girlfriend the night of the beating.
She was waitressing in Manhattan.
Her shift ended at 1 A.
M.
She was working while he was getting a beat-down in Brooklyn at 9:30.
And she told the police they only had plans to see his brother that he had a date with her that night.
- Someone set a trap for him.
- If he took the bait, it wasn't from Al Nero or Tony Zavaglia.
Okay, thank you for the donation.
Great, bye-bye.
Uh, Sister? The detectives are back.
They need to talk to you.
We're sorry to take you away from your girls, Sister, but there's been a break in the case.
A break? Eddie Roberts is ready to confess.
In return, we promised him to look into the racial attack on his brother in Gravesend 17 years ago.
I don't know.
I'm sorry? Sister Dorothy, she knew a witness to the attack.
Angie Delmarco.
I don't know any Angie.
Sorry.
That's how Eddie found Sister Dorothy.
Somebody sent him a copy of the note she sent to Angie's mother.
Your mother.
I never knew she wrote them.
Your stepfather said that she died in peace knowing that her daughter was safe and doing good works.
Thank you.
Angie Look, it's time.
This is Mr.
Carver from the prosecutor's office.
You need to tell him what happened on that ballfield.
- No, Angie Delmarco's gone away.
- But you know what she saw.
I, um I um, Jimmy ran and tripped.
Al, Al beat him with a bat and and Tony, Tony just kept slamming his head down with a a brick.
Okay? Why was he dressed like that? Like he was going dancing that night? I don't Angie, you want deliverance? This is how.
Why was he in the ballpark? Because I told him to be.
I told him.
I knew that Al was angry with his old girlfriend, Lisa, for seeing Jimmy and, so I called Jimmy and I told him that I had a message from Lisa that, uh she wanted to she was gonna get off early and she wanted to hook up with him.
And he showed up.
He had flowers.
Tulips.
He started running as soon as he saw us.
I liked Al.
I liked him.
I just wanted Al to like me, you know? I wanted so much for him to like me.
You know? You were standing there, Angie.
While he was beating Jimmy.
Did you really think that was enough to make him like you? It wasn't.
I didn't think that.
I was a wicked, wicked, evil person.
I Jimmy looked at me and he begged me.
And I stared at him right in the face and I said, "what are you looking at, nigger?" And then I kicked him.
I kicked him in the face.
And I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry, will you forgive me? I'm sorry, will you forgive me? Please forgive me.
Please forgive me.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
I'm sorry.
Dorothy you should have let them find me.
You just should let them find me, because it was me.
It was it should have been me.
Not you.
Not you.
I'm sorry, Father.
I have let everyone down.
I am sorry.
That's for another day.
What happens to her now? We'll need her to make a statement in writing and on videotape.
Yes.
Yes.
I wanna do that.
Everything will be kept under seal until Jimmy Jones dies.
If it's determined his death is as a result of his injuries, I'll be filing murder charges against you as well as the others.
You understand that, don't you, Sister? I do.
I do.
And I'll be here this time.
If you'll excuse me.
I have to get my girls ready for the day.
Depending on Mr.
Jones' health, she should have enough time to make other provisions for her girls.
You were right.
There's never enough truth.
Or enough justice.