LAW & ORDERS16, E2
Flaw
Window washers discover a dead body in an empty office, and the number on his cell phone is that of Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) from the Special Victims Unit. Detectives Green (Jesse L. Martin), Fontana (Dennis Farina) and Benson go to the scene and discover the victim is a con artist named Patrick Sullivan who had been defrauding Social Security and was also involved in several other schemes. A fellow con man (and rap impresario) named David Glass (Daniel Eric Gold) claims he witnessed the murder, except when he was at the scene of the crime, there was all kinds of furniture and activity in the office. He ID's Lorraine Dillon (Lynda Carter) and her daughter, April Troost (Estella Warren), whom Benson has dealt with before, and they are the initial suspects until April’s lawyer delivers a security tape from a bar that shows Sullivan alive two hours after Glass says Sullivan was shot. They search Sullivan's hotel room and realize that the murder Glass saw was a scam (they find fake blood on his shirt). Shortly thereafter Glass is found hanging in his office, an apparent suicide. Borgia (Annie Parisse) gets Benson a warrant to search Dillon's apartment and they find what appears to be the murder weapon. Dillon claims she killed Sullivan in self-defense after finding out he raped April when she was 14. McCoy's (Sam Waterston) not buying it, and he wants to prove that Dillon murdered Sullivan for his share of money in the con job. Dillon gives emotional testimony explaining her side of the story, but McCoy fights back that Dillon, her daughter, and Sullivan, had conspired to extort five hundred thousand dollars from Glass. McCoy asks Borgia to take the lead and she questions April - who turns her mother's story upside down. She says she and Sullivan were consensual lovers and that her mother went berserk when she found out, killed Sullivan and made her lie to cover it up. They question Lorraine again privately and she changes her story again - April killed Sullivan because he molested her, and Lorraine was trying to cover for her daughter. Now they don't know whom to believe, and whoever gets off has a lot of money socked away. They talk to Lorraine's former husband, who says April got pregnant and disappeared, and when they question the cook at the Ashram where she went to have the baby, he tells them that he took her to the hospital, but she had the baby in the car, freaked out and buried it in the woods. When they go back to the area, it is changed and there's no chance of finding the baby. Benson tries to call April's bluff by telling her they discovered the baby's remains with her fingerprints and they would charge her with murder. She suddenly tries for a deal, offering to give up information on her mother. Lorraine will serve time for Sullivan's murder, and April also agrees to jail time, as long as it's shorter than her mother's stay. The detectives, McCoy and Borgia realize they've finally conned the cons.
