The Ledger

13.18 Maritime

In this episode (13.18), a dead woman is found floating in the East River. Investigation indicates she died along with two men, and that the brother of one of the men is responsible. Briscoe and Green lead the investigation, and McCoy and Southerlyn prosecute, twice.

The episode begins with two men (also brothers) discussing the marital difficulties of one of them. He's become involved with a yoga instructor, apparently. His brother cautions him to stick with his wife. As they discuss this, one notices a body floating in the river.

Green and Briscoe arrive and learn the body has been in the water for some time, and has a gunshot wound to the head. She has no ID, but ME Rodgers shows them a toe ring from the victim inscribed with the letters of Psi Kappa Gamma, a sorority. A sorority sister IDs the victim as Julie, who graduated several years earlier.

They talk to her parents, who put them in touch with her job, where they learn her boyfriend was a sports agent named Adam. They visit Adam's job and learn he's gone missing, too, and that Adam's big client is a famous recently-retired football player named Daryl. Daryl apparently decided to give up football to pursue other interests, and he is said to be intellectually curious. Daryl is missing, too. No one's seen him since a boat trip to the Hamptons. They also learn there was a break-up looming between Adam and Julie.

They talk to Daryl's family. His dad is a little too calm, and says all kinds of "Not my son!" things in response to questions about Daryl's possible drug use. Daryl's brother, Sean, is also present. He is in the background, acting shifty. He was on the boat during the trip, during which there was a party.

They get a call: the Coast Guard has found the boat, docked in Pt Washington. Know-it-all forensic technician Beck is already on the scene, and eventually established that the blood of three individuals is on the boat, and that judging from the splatter pattern, one of them was prone when shot.

They talk to a female rare book dealer who was friends with Daryl. For some reason, it comes out that she's a lesbian. She points the dets to Daryl's girlfriend. She was at the party but got off the boat before everything went wrong. She says she saw Daryl and Sean arguing about money.

They talk to the parents again. The dad dislikes Sean and plays them a voice message he left for his mom, saying he didn't do it but he isn't coming back anytime soon. Sean has a prior arrest record, so they track him down via his drug dealer, whom he was once arrested with. Green shakes down the dealer and he points them to the Battery Hotel on 23rd and Lex. Why it's called the Battery Hotel is beyond me, since the Battery is much further downtown than that. Anyway, they get there and find that Sean has OD'd on heroin, but he's still alive. (19')

He wakes up (off camera) and they arraign him on murder charges. McCoy and SS visit him and his lawyer, Matt Wolchesky, at Rikers. He asserts his innocence and won't take a deal. Blah blah blah the trial starts (29'). It's suspiciously early in the ep for a trial to start, so you know that the future holds either (a) further twists or (b) and extremely tedious trial.

Beck testifies about the DNA evidence, and is addressed as "Dr. Beck." The girlfriend testifies about the fight. It's obvious things are going poorly for Sean, and his lawyer seeks a deal with McCoy. He takes the deal (Murder 2, maximum sentence) and allocutes. But we're only 34 minutes into the episode!

So Sean's lawyer, Matt, approaches McCoy in a bar and tells him that Sean's family's check to him bounced. Somehow he knows that $4 million was moved out of the account a couple days earlier, a fact which he said surprised the family. It looks like Daryl staged his own death, and then transferred his money somewhere.

So why did Sean confess if his brother is still alive? Matt gives McCoy some BS about how Sean is extremely "susceptible to pressure." Skoda examines him and gets a big sob story about fatherly abuse and broken dreams and so on, and agrees. Skoda says he's stuck in this family role where he has to be the scapegoat all the time. The judge (off camera) throws out the plea bargain she had already approved. What a load of crap.

So then they have to go prove everything all over again. They determine that Daryl didn't transfer the funds. It was his mother, trying to make it look like he was alive so she could cover for Sean. This is established with the aid of that annoying red-haired forensic computer lady who runs a traceroute program and says stupid anthropomorphic things to her computer like, "Come to mama..." Oh she drives me crazy. Anyway, they trace the transfer to a computer with the IP address of 392.163.1.104. Digits in IP addresses only go up to 255, but who cares at this point. She says that IP address belongs to a computer in Short Hills, NJ, the town where Sean/Daryl's parents live.

They have a big Family Conference and McCoy threatens to prosecute the mom for obstruction because of her deception with the money. To protect her from this, or something, Sean decides to stand trial again, after a big fight with his angry father.

He goes to trial (54'), where he tells a wide-eyed, rambling story about the party on the boat and how maybe Adam was mad at Daryl because Daryl was flirting with Julie, but Sean got off before anything happened. On cross, McCoy questions him about his earlier record for assault, and Sean admits that in that case his defense was also that someone else did it. Apparently, this undermines his credibility, because the jury finds him guilty of Murder 1 in all three murders.

This episode, like many from the 13th season, is pretty tedious and unbelievable at times, and not very pleasant to watch, despite a decent performance from the guy who plays Sean.

Character background: Briscoe mentions his daughters both left home shortly after high school, but always asked him for money. Branch says his nephew Andy played football with Daryl on "the Gators," presumably a reference to the University of Florida football team. Also, ME Rodgers says she never wore lipstick when she was older, to which Briscoe responds that it looks like she has the hang of it now. She acts flustered by his flirtiness, which is unusual for that character.

Casting notes: Lawyer Matt Wolchesky is played by Tom Mason, who has appeared on the show tons of times, but never as the same character.

Posted by adm at September 16, 2004 06:37 AM

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