Night (Season 6, Episode 20)
Premise: A rapist who pays off undocumented cleaning women leaves one dead, and the trail leads to the son of a wealthy, protective mother.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 20
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Alfred Molina as Gabriel Duvall, Angela Lansbury as Eleanor Duvall, Bradley Cooper as Jason Whitaker, Anya Migdal as Nina Zergin, Rita Moreno as Mildred Quintana
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney & Juan J. Campanella
- Writers
- Story: Chris Levinson; Story & teleplay: Amanda Green
Summary
“Night” begins when skateboarders find a dead woman with hundred-dollar bills in her mouth and around her, $5,000 in all. She has been raped, and the medical examiner believes terror brought on heart failure. A police dog follows a bloody shoe print to a woman who robbed the body. A condom wrapper stuck to one bill leads to the Box, a nearby club where women act out sexual fantasies, and to a chef thrown out for whipping a member, who is alive. The victim proves to be the club’s restroom attendant, Margariette Beauclaire, who also cleaned offices at night and had a weak heart. Mildred Quintana, who runs an immigrant advocacy center, says one man has raped 16 undocumented cleaning women in three years and paid each of them, and that none will come forward for fear of deportation.
Benson persuades one of them, Nina Zergin, a Bosnian Muslim hiding the attack from her traditional brother, Milan, to talk, and Nina hands over the cash she never spent. Prints on those bills belong to Jason Whitaker, a lawyer at Lionel Granger’s firm who manages the fortune of Eleanor Duvall. Stabler lures her son, Gabriel, an eccentric computer researcher fixated on his meal schedule, to the squad room over unpaid parking tickets. Nina then vanishes: an anonymous tip claiming terrorist ties has put her in immigration detention. Whitaker lets slip a slur about the victims’ status, hinting at a leak. Novak uses a provision of the Violence Against Women Act to win Nina temporary legal status, and Nina picks Gabriel out of a lineup, but Eleanor takes him home. A tissue he discards at the precinct goes to the lab.
That night Novak is beaten unconscious in her office after a flower delivery and wakes with no memory of the attack. Stabler bursts into Gabriel’s home, but security video identifies Milan, who blames Novak for making his sister’s rape public and shaming the family. Eleanor complains to Cragen, who keeps Stabler away from her son and has him apologize. Novak still talks Nina into facing a grand jury, but Whitaker tries to have her removed by calling her as a defense witness, saying Nina invented the rape to hide lost virginity from a violent brother. Her boss takes her off the case as too close to it and hands it to homicide prosecutor Tracey Kibre.
Spoiler, the ending: Warner finds the dead woman’s makeup on Gabriel’s tissue, then DNA from her tears. Stabler finds Gabriel eating at his diner and arrests him for raping Nina and for the rape and murder of Margariette Beauclaire. The prosecution continues in the Law & Order: Trial by Jury episode “Day”; its outcome is not shown here.
Why it stands out
- “Night” is the first half of a two-part crossover whose story ends in “Day,” an episode of Law & Order: Trial by Jury; Bebe Neuwirth appears as ADA Tracey Kibre.
- Angela Lansbury’s turn as Eleanor Duvall brought her a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series, her eighteenth and final Emmy nomination.
- Diane Neal did her own stunts for Novak’s beating and later said she passed out because of an error in how the scene was played.