The Ledger

10.9 Sundown

In this episode (10.9), a woman is killed while awaiting minor surgery at a hospital. An early suspect is a clever con-man who preys on older women he meets at support groups for conditions he doesn't suffer from. Because he is so good at his cons, it takes Green and Briscoe quite a while to track him down. When they finally do, McCoy and Carmichael realize he is guilty of a crime, but not the crime. This leads to another suspect (the victim's daughter), and then another. The final suspect is Mr Hallenbeck, the victim's husband, who suffers from the intermediate stages of Alzheimer's.

The episode begins with the discovery of the victim by her daughter and her husband. She is bludgeoned and bleeding in the solarium of the hospital where she was awaiting minor surgery. Logan and Green respond and give the security chief a hard time for not noticing the body for several hours. They find a receipt from the gift shop, which becomes a good clue later on. They talk to the family, but the daughter says the dad is in shock (it turns out he actually has Alzheimer's). They say there is some jewelry missing: a cross and a valuable watch. The daughter mentions this, which doesn't make sense given later events in the ep.

In a scene practically written for comedy, the detectives talk to ME Rodgers and learn the vic died from the beating, which ruptured her spleen. They receive a phone call. Green goes to pick up the phone, and sees something on it.

Green: What's that on your phone? Brains?
Rodgers: It's egg salad, maybe.
Green: You got another phone?

Seconds later...

Rodgers: Right now, I gotta get a javelin outta somebody's chest.
Briscoe: What made you go into this line of work?
Rodgers: Free javelins.

[mp3 of this exchange]

They learn from the phone call of an orderly named Fazzioli who has a criminal record and who was working that night. They visit him at his apartment. When they enter, they see that he has stolen countless cans of hospital food. He denies he has the jewelry or that he attacked the victim. He says he saw a good looking tall guy leaving the vic's room at 8.30 that night.

The dets talk things over back at the precinct. AVB is fiddling with her kid's laptop, frustrated because the "company from hell" sent it back to her without repairing it. At her suggestion, the dets try to nail down the timeline and visit the hospital gift shop, where they learn that the receipt they found involved a transaction with a person named Phillip Greitz.

Greitz matches the sketch given by the orderly. They ask the vic's son, daughter, and husband if they know Greitz. They say no, and the son reveals the dad's disease. They say that the vic went to a support group for spouses of victim's of Alzheimer's. They talk to the support group leader, and he says Greitz was in that group, and that he and the victim stopped coming several weeks ago. The address he had registered with the group is fake.

They go through Mrs Hallenbeck's financial records, and see she was spending an awful lot of money on romantic outings and so forth. It's apparent she was having an affair. They talk to a travel agent who leads them to Greitz's mailbox store, which leads them to another old rich pretty lady, Ms Wynnick. She knows Greitz by another name. She says he's very nice. He gave her Mrs Hallenbeck's watch, but said it was his mother's. They still can't find Greitz, so they canvas tons of support groups, and find another old lady he was conning. She tells them he's flying to Europe. They track him down at JFK right before he flies to St Kitts, where he couldn't be extradited from. He's canoodling with yet another old lady. They arrest him and he has Hallenbeck's jewels on him. (21')

At his arraignment, he refuses to give his real name. The judge picks a public defender to represent him, but then the high-profile attorney Mrs Wiess shows up to represent him. He's being paid for by a wealthy old lady, who is in the gallery.

Carmichael goes to the hospital to find out when the jewelry disappeared from Mrs Hallenbeck. This is important to their case. She also talks to the vic's family again, and begins to suspect that the daughter killed her mom because she didn't like her and because her mom's $750K life insurance policy would help pay off their dad's medical expenses.

They bring the daughter in for questioning, and under pressure, she confesses, saying she punched her mom to death because she gave the jewel's to her boyfriend, Mr Greitz. She's charged with Manslaughter 1. (33') However, the vic's injuries indicate that she was hit something with a large square in the center. This leads to a ring on Mr Hallenbeck's finger. As he's arrested in his home, he attacks Green and is subdued. (39')

At his arraignment at Bellevue, his lawyer, recurring character Anne Paulsen, represents him. AC, Van Buren, Skoda, and ME Rodgers all get together for a meeting (very unusual!) and review the evidence. Skoda talks to Hallenbeck and determines he was sane at the time of the murder, but that he has a lot of rage directed toward his wife (which he also revealed to Skoda). No deal for Man I...McCoy won't allow it. So Paulsen argues that putting him in jail would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Carmichael visits a state prison to determine the conditions under which Hallenbeck would be incarcerated, and is horrified by what she sees, a horror that is apparent as she reports her findings to McCoy and Skoda. She likens it to a "fourth circle of hell." McCoy at first is unmoved, and has to defend the possibility of sending Hallenbeck to prison at a motion hearing. Once the judge decides that putting Hallenbeck in prison does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, McCoy re-offers 6-12 years in a halfway house, and they accept it. He allocutes, during which he has a bit of a spell as well. It is difficult for McCoy and the viewer, as well, to determine whether justice has been served.

The title of the episode refers to the term for the later part of a day for an Alzheimer's patient, when he starts losing clarity. It seems symbolic, too, of the status of Mr Hellenbeck's life.

Posted by adm at January 18, 2004 01:14 AM

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