House Calls (Season 13, Episode 21)
Premise: A Russian immigrant model who supports her family dies in a store dressing room, and the trail leads to a self-styled “Doctor to the Stars” who sees patients in a restaurant and pays house calls.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 21
- 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 Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Jonathan Hogan as Dr. Ellis Heinz, Alexis Dziena as Lena Parkova, Michael Boatman as defense attorney Dave Seaver, Rosalie Tenseth as Dr. Deana Abrams, Jeffrey Ware as Randall Amsterdam
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- Janis Diamond
Summary
The Investigation
“House Calls” begins with the death of model Nadia Parkova, found by store staff in a dressing room with a syringe under her body. The medical examiner finds the painkiller Deverol in her blood, old fractures in her ribs and collarbone, and a coronary arrest that killed her before she fell. Her younger sister, Lena, who translates for their Russian-speaking parents, blames a fall down the stairs. Her ex-boyfriend, Anthony Matteo, says her father kept her working.
Pressed about her father, Lena sends the detectives to Nadia’s asthma doctor, Deana Abrams, who believes Nadia hurt herself to escape supporting the family. She prescribed only breathing drugs, including Bronchitrol, which can stop the heart if mixed with Deverol. A pharmacist reveals that a Dr. Ellis Heinz also phoned in prescriptions for Nadia. Heinz, who lacks board certification, was evicted for unpaid rent but still visits patients such as Doug Barsky at home.
Posing as a patient, Briscoe meets Heinz at the restaurant he uses as an office. Heinz says he gave Nadia Deverol after removing a mole, and her signed intake form lists no other medication, so he goes free. DA Arthur Branch demands a charge. Southerlyn follows Heinz’s fliers through a gym and a hotel to Randall Amsterdam, whose former psychiatrist says Heinz got him dependent on Deverol, took more than $250,000 in a year and auctioned two of his African carvings. Heinz is arrested for larceny and fraud.
The Trial
Defense attorney Dave Seaver (called Marion in the episode) cries vendetta. The judge bars the psychiatrist’s account as hearsay, and the press coverage draws only Heinz’s admirers. Revisiting the family, McCoy and Southerlyn learn Heinz treated Nadia without charge and promised Lena a modeling career. Lena then produces his written warning that Nadia must wait 24 hours after Bronchitrol before injecting Deverol, proving he knew about the asthma drug, and McCoy re-indicts him for depraved indifference murder.
Abrams testifies that 24 hours is the bare minimum and that she would require 48, though Seaver gets her to call Nadia self-destructive. Lena admits Nadia left her asthma drug off the form, fearing Heinz would refuse to treat her, and says he learned of it on a later house call. Asked to read his note in court, she reads the interval as “two to four” hours and breaks down, unsure what she told her sister.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Heinz not guilty on the sole count of second-degree murder. The prosecutors agree that his conduct ought to be a crime but that state lawmakers have yet to make it one, and note that Lena may now get the fuller lips Heinz promised her.
Why it stands out
- The first charges, larceny and fraud, collapse when the judge rules that a psychiatrist cannot repeat what a patient told him about the defendant.
- A handwritten dosing warning becomes the key evidence, and its meaning blurs when the victim’s sister reads “24” as “two to four.”
- Lt. Van Buren sets up a meeting with Heinz as a would-be patient so the detectives can arrest him.