The Ledger

14.1 Bodies

In this episode (14.1), a creepy cab driver turns out to be a serial killer, but after he's caught, he won't reveal where all his victims' bodies are. McCoy must decide how much to give up to find out where they are, and the killer's defense attorney gets too deeply involved in his client's affairs.

The episode begins with two guys peeing in an alley, getting their stories straight so their wives don't find out why they've been out so late. One of the guys looks down and sees a dead girl. The crime scene techs tells Briscoe and Green the girl has been dead a few hours, beaten and strangled to death.

Briscoe is in some ways distressed to find that the girl is carrying identification: this means he has to notify the parents right away, a process he dreads. The victim is 17 years old and named Sally. When the detectives give her parents the news, her mother is in complete denial and acts erratically, but her father straightens her out. The parents say Sally was out with her friend Katie. They talk to Katie who says that she was out with her much older boyfriend, a mechanic named Curt. They talk to Curt, who says he was indeed with Sally at a local bar, but they had a fight and parted. They confirm his alibi at the bar, in a rather poorly scripted scene (a barmaid refers to another busty girl as "silicon city." Groan.)

They check in with the ME for a more detailed report on the girl's condition. They learn that she had unusual cut marks on her body which matched a case in Brooklyn from 5 years ago when a girl named Holly was killed. They talk to the Brooklyn detective who worked the case. Det Goldstein meets them in Brooklyn (looks like Grand Army Plaza). The sketch of the suspect from that case matches the description the barmaid gave them of a guy seen lurking around Sally.) Looks like they have a suspect.

Beginning to suspect they have a serial offender, they place pins on a map representing each of the girls who have disappeared in NYC. There's tons of pins, but somehow they are able to discern some kind of pattern, as if enough of the missing girls disappeared because of the same person. Anyway, they check in with the families of the other missing girls, and show the sketch to them. One of the victim's brothers recognizes the guy in the sketch. They also realize that each of the girls disappeared across town from where they lived, leading them to believe that a cab driver might be involved. They just need to find white cabbies of a certain age and go from there.

They show the sketch to a manager at a cab company, and he IDs the person in the sketch as a driver named Bruner. They show up at his dingy, dark apartment, and question him cautiously. He's creepy as hell -- talking real slow, and making weird little movements. As he's talking, he reaches into his refrigerator and pulls out some cheese. He then grabs a big knife from his drying rack, ostensibly to slice his cheese, but Green isn't taking any chances, and -- in a very exciting split-second -- immediately pulls his gun and commands him to drop the knife. They take him into custody.

Green interrogates Bruner, and Bruner does his best "Kevin Spacey in Seven" impersonation. At a line-up, the barmaid identifies him, and he's arrested (off camera, 23 mins).

His brassy court-appointed defense attorney, Jessica Sheets, meets with McCoy, and tries to get the death penalty off the table. It's clear she's nervous however, and McCoy eventually discerns what the problem is: Bruner threatened her in some sadistic fashion. She wants to make a motion to be relieved of the case, and McCoy doesn't object.

Bruner gets a new lawyer, Jim Schwimmer from the Legal Aid Society. Schwimmer's a colorful guy and aggressively defends his client. Schwimmer is able to get the barmaid's ID thrown out on a technicality, but he does not dismiss the charges. McCoy and Southerlyn just need to find some more evidence.

Schwimmer meets with Southerlyn and gives her his whole biography. It's clear he's looking for a big case to launch him out of Legal Aid and into a high-profile corporate position. The prosecutors, Schwimmer, and Bruner meet at Rikers, and as Bruner is talking about the location of all the bodies in exchange for getting the death penalty taken off the table, McCoy asks for confirmation, and Bruner gestures to Schwimmer and says, "Why don't you ask him? He's seen them." Whoops. Apparently Schwimmer crossed an ethical boundary by going to see the bodies (since there can now be no doubt in his mind that his client is guilty, I guess). McCoy immediately recognizes the significance of this, and can't believe Schwimmer's idiocy.

This information becomes public (apparently because McCoy leaked it to pressure Schwimmer into revealing the bodies' location), and there is public outrage at Schwimmer, including a headline in the Daily News thta reads "Killer's Counsel Keeps Quiet." Schwimmer talks to McCoy outside (as McCoy dismounts his motorcycle, which I don't think we've ever seen before). Schwimmer says he won't reveal the location of the bodies until Bruner waives privilege, which he's not likely to do. They try to get Bruner to waive privilege, but he just gives Serena Southerlyn the old predatory eye that all female ADAs get from sex offenders on this show, and keep silent on the matter.

At this point, you may wonder, given all the unlikely investigations that have yielded fruit before on this show, why are the detectives and prosecutors making absolutely no effort to find the storage locker where Bruner says he put the bodies? It is a glaring hole in the plot that undermines the whole premise. Anyway, Bruner says that the bodies are safely under "lock and key," a phrase which leads McCoy to assert that Schwimmer is complicit in a cover up of the crime, because by unlocking and locking the facility, he is contributing to the crime. McCoy tries to get Bruner to crack, but Bruner gives McCoy a creepy monologue which ends with the best line of dialogue in the whole episode: "I'm the un-you."

McCoy decides to charge Schwimmer with aiding and abetting the cover-up, and he hopes this pressure will get Schwimmer to reveal the location of the bodies. It doesn't work. Southerlyn objects to this method, but Branch and McCoy agree: "Ethics be damned."

Schwimmer refuses to give up the location of the bodies, and the Schwimmer case goes to trial (48 mins). The parents of the missing children are very angry with Schwimmer, and one of them, while testifying, stands up and yells at Schwimmer, "You bastard!"

Then, during the trial, McCoy reveals something which makes the entire second half of the episode seem like a colossal waste of time: Bruner has been sentenced (off-camera) to die by lethal injection. SO WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS? By focusing on the trial of the barely complicit and not morally culpable lawyer instead of the magnetically villainous killer, the script renders itself devoid of emotional impact. WHO CARES if the lawyer is found guilty or not? It's only dramatically interesting if he eventually breaks down and reveals the location of the bodies SO THAT BRUNER CAN BE CONVICTED. We don't know anything about the girls in the locker, so it emotionally irrelevant to us whether they are found or not. We do, however, know Bruner and we want to see him be punished for what he did. Instead, the episode leaves Bruner behind, and follows the overly technical trial of Schwimmer, who you feel is not an evil person, just a misguided one.

Nonetheless, the trial goes on and Schwimmer refuses to budge. He's convicted on aiding and abetting. Big deal.

The episode is notable because of the performance of Ritchie Coster as Bruner. The first half of it is pretty interesting, and he certainly livens things up, but the episode's fatal flaw is its concentration on Schwimmer instead of Bruner in the last 20 minutes. If not for this, it might have been one of the better episodes in some time.

Posted by adm at May 28, 2004 07:24 PM

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