The Ledger

13.5 The Ring

Unconventional episode (13.5) in which the body of a woman supposedly killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11 turns up in Hell's Kitchen. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with an unusually long sequence in which two boys shoplift from a bodega, and flee after he spots them. They run into a vacant lot, where they come across a skeleton with a missing left hand. The ME tells them that a stain on a finger bone on another finger indicates that a ring had been on the finger for a long time, post mortem. The detectives realize that the boys probably took the ring. The boys fess up and turn the ring over to them. They trace it. It's Harry Winston from a few years ago and it's worth $45,000. They get a list of people who have bought that ring, and they visit everyone, asking to see the ring. One of the people they interview is the son of the wealthy and prominent Hagen family. While they talk to him, he's eating a desser which he refers to as "killer chocolate." Sense some foreshadowing here? They visit his wife, too, and she shows them the ring. One of the other purchasers of the ring is a young woman named Kelly Summers. When they visit Summers' apartment, her neighbor tells them she died on 9/11. Genetic tests show that the skeleton belongs to her, but her dismembered hand and purse were found at Ground Zero, which leads the detectives to believe that she was killed before 9/11, and her body parts were planted at the WTC. But by whom?

Her sister isn't particularly happy to to learn that Kelly didn't die on 9/11. Briscoe forces himself to suggest to her that her family may have fraudulently claimed that she was killed in the collapse so they could collect on reparations. That doesn't go over very well, and the sister asks the detectives to leave. She tells them that she gave the reparations ($40,000) to Kelly's fiancee, who gave it to the NYPD/FDNY widow's fund.

While investigating motive, the detectives look through her financial records and discover that she had some unusual bank activity shortly before her death. It turns out that she had 4 deposits of $10,000 each, and this is how she paid for the ring. Looks like someone else paid for it. They also see that she had dinner on 9/10. They head to the restaurant where she ate, and guess what kind of dessert they serve there? Yep, the rich guy is now a suspect. (Why she would have charged the meal on her credit card when she's a secretary and her date just gave her a $40,000 ring is beyond me, but, like I always say, whatever.) The detectives check the victim's and the rich guy's LUDs to see if they phoned each other, but they didn't. Van Burken is skeptical. "We're basing all this on a ring?" she asks. Briscoe replies, "It's a hell of a ring." Van Buren suggests they check the people's email for evidence of an affair. The annoying red-haired computer forensics girl hacks into the guys email (whatever!) and finds all these hot and heavy messages, so they go question the rich guy again. Hagen denies everything.

Southerlyn talks to the victim's fiancee to see if he knew about the affair. He says he didn't, that she would never do such a thing, but he tells her to check out a storage place where he keeps all her stuff. They find a picture of Summers and her neighbor there, indicating they are friends, so Southerlyn questions her, and she confirms the affair. She also says she saw Hagen and Summers drive off together the evening of 9/11.

Even with this mounting evidence, Branch is reluctant to prosecute with this disturbing lack of evidence. Indeed, they have no physical evidence whatsoever. Based on this nonsense, they bring Hagen to trial, but then Southerlyn comes up with the brilliant observation that the handbag found at the WTC was an evening handbag, not the sort of handbag a girl takes to work with her, so then everyone becomes sure she was killed on 9/10. For some reason, this leads them to believe that Summers fiance, not Hagen, is responsible for her death. They get a warrant to search his email, and Annoying Red-Haired Forensic Girl hacks into his email, too, spitting out all sorts of annoying utterances like "Ooh, this guy is good," and "this firewall blah blah blah." She finally breaks in when Briscoe tells her to try the password "booboo," since that was Summers nickname for him. Surprise -- it works! He confesses.

Posted by adm at March 18, 2004 11:05 PM

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