Merger (Season 10, Episode 4)
Premise: A teenage heiress is found dead behind her neighbors’ townhouse as her sister’s wedding approaches, and the investigation exposes secrets in two wealthy families.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 10, Episode 4
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Anne Twomey as Pepper Garrison, Francie Swift as Mercedes Garrison, Walter Bobbie as Michael Garrison, Stephen Barker Turner as Nick Vance, Eddie Kaye Thomas as Ethan Vance, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Director
- Stephen Wertimer
- Writers
- Lynn Mamet
Summary
The Investigation
“Merger” opens with a murder in a gated service alley: 15-year-old Christy Garrison, daughter of newly rich investor Michael Garrison, is found dead behind the home of the old-money Vance family, whose son Nick is about to marry her sister Mercedes. Her head struck a wall, and she was full of drugs. The Vances’ chauffeur, Sammy Morris, has vanished with the limousine, but he was helping his girlfriend rescue her sister from an abusive husband, and his blood does not match semen found in the car.
A note on Christy’s handheld organizer leads to a club, and pharmacy security video shows her with Nick’s younger brother, Ethan, shortly before 1 a.m. The Vances’ lawyers block a blood sample, but Ethan had donated at a school blood drive, and a judge releases that blood. Ethan’s DNA matches semen in Christy’s body, and the limousine sample comes from a close relative; with their father ruled out, that points to Nick. Both brothers are arrested for rape.
The Trial
Nick’s mistress says Mercedes knows about her, and a friend of Mercedes recalls a fight between the sisters at a wedding-dress fitting. The gown, sent back for repairs, bears blood and Christy’s bite marks on one sleeve. The Garrisons’ lawyer, Peter Behrens, proposes a manslaughter plea for Mercedes with treatment at a private clinic, citing years of psychiatric medications. Mercedes says she did something terrible, but the prosecution’s psychiatrist finds her memory too confused to tell what she actually did.
Elyssa Fuegos, Mercedes’s longtime nanny, who was sent to the family’s new villa in Mexico days after the killing, is brought back and says she sat up all night with Mercedes after she fell ill from her pills. A 2:57 a.m. call to poison control supports her. Confronted, Mercedes turns on her mother, Pepper, and reveals that Christy was really her own daughter, born when she was 14. Police find Pepper’s trousers from that night, but the jacket is missing.
Spoiler, the ending: Mark and Marianna Vance then come forward to say they saw Christy attack Pepper, who struck back in self-defense. The prosecutors conclude a murder charge could never win, and no one is charged with Christy’s death. Nick and Mercedes marry anyway, and the society pages announce a large investment by the Garrisons’ firm in the Vance family business.
Why it stands out
- Police get a suspect’s DNA from blood he donated at a school drive, after a judge rules he gave up any privacy claim to it.
- Mercedes reveals that the murdered girl she was raised to see as her sister was in fact her daughter.
- The killer is never charged after two neighbors with a stake in the families’ business deal back her self-defense claim.