Storm (Season 7, Episode 10)
Premise: Three Katrina orphans taken to New York by a pedophile lead the squad to a vial of stolen anthrax and a fight with federal agents over the public’s right to know.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 10
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), Dr. George Huang (BD Wong), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), TARU Ruben Morales (Joel de la Fuente), Chief of Detectives Muldrew (John Schuck)
- Guest stars
- Keke Palmer as Tasha Wright, Matthew Settle as Jackson Zane, Russell Hornsby as Alvin Dutch, Leo Marks as Michael Delpit, Birdie M. Hale as Goldie Prioleaux
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Neal Baer & Amanda Green
Summary
“Storm” begins at a park carousel, where 12-year-old Tasha Wright and her baby sister, Lola, are hit by a taxi while running from the man who brought them, and he flees with their sister Nicki, 8. Tasha says their father, a soldier, died in Iraq and their mother and grandmother drowned in Hurricane Katrina. A man rescued them by boat, called himself their new daddy and kept them in a New York basement; the night before, he made Nicki sleep in his bed. With TARU’s Ruben Morales feeding questions, Benson draws out clues pointing to Harlem, but hours of driving Tasha past churches turn up nothing.
Cragen stages a news conference about an unidentified girl in a coma to gather photos from the carousel, and a home video shows the man. Jackson Zane, a reporter for the Ledger, sees through the ruse and threatens to expose it until Benson promises him an exclusive. A Katrina relief worker recognizes the man as “Clark Corman” and lures him back with a job offer, but Zane blows the detectives’ tail and Corman is arrested without Nicki. Prints identify him as Alvin Dutch, a Louisiana child rapist freed six months earlier who slipped away in the flood. Dutch falls gravely ill in custody. Through Zane, Benson reaches Dutch’s former cellmate, Clayton Miles, who for $1,000 names a great-aunt, Goldie Prioleaux, in Harlem. In her basement the detectives find Nicki, feverish.
Dutch dies of inhaled anthrax; Nicki, infected through a cut, recovers. She explains that a glass tube of “fairy dust” she tied to her teddy bear broke and Dutch swept it up, and Warner’s tests show military-grade spores. Federal agents posing as a decontamination team seize the squad’s files, the body, the vial and the girls, and order Cragen, Warner and Benson off the now-classified case. Warner traces the anthrax to Louisiana Biochem Defense, a lab outside New Orleans. Benson leaks the story to Zane, and after the Ledger runs it, the chief of detectives threatens Cragen’s command and Cragen warns Benson she could lose her freedom. The girls are returned, and Nicki says the dust came from the van of “Mr. Michael.”
Spoiler, the ending: The detectives arrest lab technician Michael Delpit in New Jersey. He looted the lab during the storm, picked up Dutch and the girls as cover and sold the spores to a buyer who cannot be traced. Benson lets Zane hear a secret recording of the interrogation before federal agents arrive. Zane publishes, refuses to reveal his source and is jailed for contempt; when Benson visits under an alias and urges him to name her, he refuses. An aunt takes the girls in, and the anthrax is still missing.
Why it stands out
- The story is set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, following three sisters taken from New Orleans after the storm.
- Keke Palmer guest-stars as Tasha Wright, and Matthew Settle plays reporter Jackson Zane.
- The episode was co-written by showrunner Neal Baer, with Amanda Green.