Missing (Season 20, Episode 17)
Premise: A six-year-old found in the trunk of a stolen car leads SVU to her kidnapper and to a boy who vanished from a Queens park in 2002.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 20, Episode 17
- Starring
- Lt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), ADA Peter Stone (Philip Winchester)
- Guest stars
- Chloe Webb as Rowan Mauer, Jim Schubin as Emerson Mauer, Violet McGraw as Bailey Shaw, Alison McCartan as Diane Brown, Amanda Leigh Cobb as Paige Black
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Michael Chernuchin & Matt Klypka
Summary
“Missing” opens with a scuffle over a parking spot. One driver runs off, and when officers check his car they find six-year-old Bailey Shaw in the trunk. At the hospital Bailey tells Benson and Rollins that a man in a yellow scarf, “Big Bird,” lured her from Central Park with a candy apple, drove her to his house, and that they undressed and napped together. Her pants were on inside out, but doctors find no sign of penetration. Her fathers, Griffin Shaw and Jamie Johnston, had her through a surrogate, Paige Black, whose phone holds photos of Bailey taken in the park the day she vanished; Paige is arrested for stalking. The car’s driver, Soren West, takes a bodega owner hostage when cornered and is disarmed. He is a car thief who never knew a child was in the trunk.
One of Paige’s photos shows the man in the yellow scarf near Bailey. A parking stub found in the Saturn leads to a puppet theater where he applied for a job, and the application names Emerson Mauer, who lives with his mother, Rowan, and never reported his car stolen. He bolts when Fin and Carisi visit and is arrested. Bailey picks him out of a photo array, but her fathers refuse to let her testify. Benson’s sworn account of the identification gets a search warrant, and the squad finds a small boy’s T-shirt in Emerson’s bureau and, under a patch of mismatched grass behind the house, a child’s skeleton. DNA on the shirt belongs to Kevin Brown, who disappeared from Forest Park in 2002 at age six while his ten-year-old sister, Diane, was looking after him.
Granted immunity, Rowan tells a grand jury that she found Emerson in bed with Bailey and had him put the girl in the trunk. Rollins notices that Rowan and her husband, Zach, have brown eyes while Emerson’s are blue, and DNA shows the skeleton is Rowan’s son: the real Emerson died 17 years earlier. Offered a 20-year deal, Rowan says Zach shoved her into the boy at the top of the stairs, that they buried him, and that she took Kevin to replace him. Faced with Diane, she insists she gave Kevin a better life.
Spoiler, the ending: Told who he really is, the man raised as Emerson insists he has no sister and that Rowan is his mother, and he is told he may have taken Bailey because part of him missed the sister who cared for him. Benson assures Diane that the DA will offer him a deal and that counseling may bring his memories back, but Diane says her brother was lost 17 years ago and leaves.
Why it stands out
- Co-written by showrunner Michael Chernuchin, who left the series after this season.
- Chloe Webb guest stars as Rowan Mauer, with Jim Schubin as the man raised as her son.