The Fire This Time (Season 12, Episode 8)
Premise: A fire in a new apartment building put up over a community garden kills a schoolteacher, and the case leads to three young eco-radicals and the activist whose website seems to steer them to targets.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 8
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Serena Southerlyn (Elisabeth Röhm), DA Nora Lewin (Dianne Wiest)
- Guest stars
- Andrea Anders as Emily Hoyt, Jeff Edgerton as Kent Quigley, Erin Gann as Paul Rochet, Tom Bower as defense attorney Whitten, Michael Leydon Campbell as Eric Shollar
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- David Black
Summary
The Investigation
“The Fire This Time” begins with an arson at a nearly finished apartment building, where firefighters find a woman’s naked, badly burned body in a back bedroom with barred windows. A fire investigator traces the blaze to gasoline splashed in a ground-floor hallway, and the alarms had been switched off. Developer Mark Kellner, short of cash and fought by neighbors for building on a community garden, says his insurance was too thin to make arson pay.
A missing-persons report identifies the victim as teacher Melanie Fried, 24, and a colleague points to Eric Shollar, a married drywaller on the project whose son attends her school. Shollar admits he brought her into the building for a tryst and went out to buy condoms, returning to find the hallway in flames. He describes a blonde woman in a ski hat at a nearby pay phone, and phone records show a call from it to food co-op worker Kent Quigley.
Quigley was arrested at a protest against the garden’s sale, and his credit card bought gasoline in the Bronx on the day of the fire; a station tape shows two young men and the ponytailed woman. His apartment holds press clippings and a disassembled alarm system. Facial recognition identifies the woman as Emily Hoyt, 18, a college dropout from Washington State. Facing murder charges, Quigley takes a manslaughter deal and admits he met Hoyt online and housed her and two friends, who are traced as Clark Mohr and Noah Stadler and caught boarding a bus to Chicago.
The Trial
McCoy questions Paul Rochet, an upstate organic farmer who runs the website of the loose radical network Coyote and spoke at a conference the three attended; he admits nothing. Their lawyer, longtime radical attorney Whitten, keeps them from naming Rochet. At trial Quigley recounts their panic over the death but, on cross, praises the lost garden, and a fire expert describes how Fried had no way out.
Hoyt decides to plead guilty and testify, and Whitten withdraws as her lawyer. McCoy offers Rochet lighter sentencing recommendations for Mohr and Stadler if he tells his readers to stop the violence; Rochet refuses. Hoyt testifies that the three set the fire as a protest and never knew anyone was inside.
Spoiler, the ending: Mohr and Stadler are convicted on the top count. Hoyt receives five years, the same as Quigley, and McCoy notes that the other two had every chance to make a deal.
Why it stands out
- An FBI agent explains that Coyote has no leadership structure, so the man posting its targets online stays beyond the reach of the law.
- The detectives identify Hoyt with face-recognition software that a technician says is already used at airports and the Super Bowl.
- McCoy tries to trade leniency for the young arsonists for a public renunciation of violence, and Rochet turns him down.