Cold (Season 9, Episode 19)
Premise: In the season finale, Lake’s fatal shootout with a fellow officer exposes a decade-old rape and murder by police, and the case costs Novak and Lake dearly.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 19
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Sgt. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Det. Chester Lake (Adam Beach), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), Judge Lena Petrovsky (Joanna Merlin), Judge Elizabeth Donnelly (Judith Light)
- Guest stars
- Deirdre Lovejoy as Penelope Fielding, Victoria Cartagena as Cecelia Cruz, Jack Gwaltney as Tom Crane, Viola Davis as Donna Emmett, Robert Turano as Wesley Meadows
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Judith McCreary
Summary
“Cold” opens at a meeting of a cold-case group, where Lake presses a contact, Penelope Fielding, to look at an old Brooklyn murder. Soon after, he is wounded in a gunfight in a vacant lot that leaves Det. Edward Kralik dead. Lake invokes the rule that shields an officer from questioning for 48 hours and tells no one, even Fin, what happened. Warner finds three of Kralik’s wounds came from behind. In Lake’s desk the squad finds the file on Alisa Hernandez, 14, an undocumented girl raped and strangled in 1997, and Kralik was among the first officers at that scene. Fielding explains that she and Lake belong to the Vidocq Society, a Philadelphia group that reviews unsolved killings.
Lake slips out of the hospital after Fin warns him, Stabler has Fin’s phone records pulled, and the fugitive team takes over the hunt. Alisa’s rape kit was damaged in a flooded warehouse, and both Lake and Kralik had asked about it. Lake’s former partner, Wesley Meadows, suspects Alisa’s friend Cecelia Cruz was raped too, and Alisa’s father points the detectives to Cecelia’s workplace, which a bleeding Lake has left with her. A reconstruction shows Kralik was not shot in the back and that a third gunman fired at Lake and gathered his shell casings. Kralik’s blood is found under Alisa’s nails, along with a degraded, partial semen profile from someone else.
When ESU corners Lake and Cecelia in an empty building, Fin goes in alone. Lake says a man calling himself Bill Jensen lured him to the lot, and Cecelia says the man who shot him also raped her. That man is Tom Crane of the fugitive team, Kralik’s academy friend, and Benson and Stabler stop him as he takes aim at Lake. At Crane’s trial Cecelia describes how two officers raped both girls and Kralik choked Alisa. The defense attacks her immigration status, accuses Novak of hiding lab reports, and calls Fielding, who says the partial profile cannot be matched. The jury deadlocks, and immigration agents take Cecelia away.
Spoiler, the ending: Stabler apologizes to Fin, who rejects it and puts in for a transfer. Judge Elizabeth Donnelly tells Novak the district attorney will not retry Crane, and that for lying to Judge Petrovsky about lab reports that were already finished she faces censure and possibly a suspension of a year or more. Novak takes a message and leaves. That night Lake shoots Crane dead and is arrested, and his stunned colleagues watch him driven away.
Why it stands out
- This is Adam Beach’s final episode as Det. Chester Lake, who joined the cast full-time this season after two guest appearances in season 8.
- It is also Diane Neal’s last episode as a series regular after five seasons as Casey Novak; she returns at the end of season 12 and recurs in season 13.
- Viola Davis guest stars as defense lawyer Donna Emmett.