Play with Fire Part 2 (Season 26, Episode 19)
Premise: In the second half of a crossover with Law & Order, Benson comes to suspect that the decorated lieutenant who supervised a murdered undercover officer raped and killed her and two women from the shelter where she worked.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 26, Episode 19
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Sgt. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano), Det. Terry Bruno (Kevin Kane), Det. Kate Silva (Juliana Aidén Martinez), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn), Judge Karyn Blake (Ami Brabson), Defense Attorney Rita Calhoun (Elizabeth Marvel)
- Guest stars
- Reinaldo Faberlle as Lt. Paul Gomez, Maura Tierney as Lt. Jessica Brady, Hugh Dancy as Executive ADA Nolan Price, Sara Gutierrez as Cassie Reyes, Britnie Narcisse as Charisse Johnson
- Director
- Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Story: Gabriel Vallejo & Nicholas Evangelista; Written by: David Graziano & Julie Martin
Summary
“Play with Fire Part 2” continues the hunt for whoever burned the body of Maria Recinos, a young officer posing as a resident of a church-run shelter, a killing tied to the unsolved murder of Rosa Ortega and the recent strangling of Ana Machado. Miguel Pinto’s DNA was found on Ana, but his alibi holds, and Benson and Lt. Jessica Brady suspect he was framed. Benson, who recommended Maria for the assignment, goes with Maria’s supervisor, Lt. Paul Gomez, to question Father Alberto, who runs the shelter, but the church has been torn apart and the priest flees into the catacombs, and Benson finds the two men struggling over Gomez’s gun; told to drop it, the priest says he can’t. Gomez is shot in the shoulder and kills Alberto with a backup pistol.
Benson tells investigators both men gripped the gun but tells Brady Gomez’s hand was over the priest’s when it fired, and over Brady’s objections she has ME Libby Wagner compare Gomez’s blood, taken from her jacket, with semen recovered from Maria’s body by a new technique. It matches. Miguel tells Fin and Velasco that a sex worker, supposedly sent by his cousin, left with his used condom; the cousin denies hiring her. Benson visits Gomez in the hospital and mentions new DNA evidence. Outside Noah’s school, a man tries to get Noah into his car and speeds off when Benson confronts him. Executive ADA Nolan Price suggests she step aside, but the DA assures her of his support.
A warrant for Gomez’s phone shows he called defense attorney Rita Calhoun from the hospital and called Charisse Johnson, a sex worker, the night before Ana died; she admits handing him Miguel’s condom. A deported shelter resident, Beatriz Soto, supplies a photo of Rosa’s friend Cassie Reyes, now sober and engaged to Sean O’Brien. Cassie says Gomez raped her and Rosa by threatening arrest and that Rosa was about to report him when she vanished, but she refuses to take the stand. Gomez’s DNA also turns up in Rosa’s exhumed body, and Gomez is arrested as his sister picks him up from the hospital.
Spoiler, the ending: At trial Calhoun gets Benson to admit she witnessed none of the crimes and suggests grief biased her. Charisse identifies Gomez, but shelter resident Grace Brionés, who saw him follow Maria into the warehouse, wavers after Calhoun raises perjury and deportation. Facing a possible mistrial, Benson and Brady persuade Cassie to testify rather than be subpoenaed, and Stabler corners ex-cop Mueller Hayes, the man who approached Noah, and warns him off. Questioned by Carisi, Cassie tells the jury what Gomez did, and he is convicted of the rape and murder of Rosa, Ana and Maria.
Why it stands out
- Concludes a crossover that begins in Law & Order Season 24’s “Play with Fire Part 1,” with Maura Tierney, Hugh Dancy and Tony Goldwyn crossing over from that series.
- Maria Recinos is the girl Benson kept on the phone through the night in Season 7’s “911”; Benson reconnected with her, by then a police officer, in Season 25’s “Probability of Doom.”
- Christopher Meloni appears as Elliot Stabler in a single scene, warning off the ex-cop who approached Benson’s son.