Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – Rorschach

By: Kaylyn Bell

Ellie (Jen Parker Davis) is vlogging her cross-country road trip with her boyfriend, Chris (Graham Patrick Martin). A hiker (Brooke Brazer) comes across the couple’s current campsite and finds a bloody rock. She then notices Ellie in a towel with a head wound, unconscious on the ground. She hears Chris call out for Ellie and sees him on the ground with a knife in his chest.

Benson (Mariska Hargitay) enters the precinct and is greeted by Agent Harrison Clay (Josh Cooke). He informs her about the campground case and that the female victim was found naked. Benson asks if she’s unconscious because after 48 hours there still hasn’t been a rape kit. He tells her that until the girl is awake and can help with the investigation, the county is only pursuing the attempted murder part of the case, so he wants her help. Benson tells him that she is already overloaded with cases and asks why the FBI isn’t on the case. He says other people aren’t as equipped to handle sexual assault cases and without her help, Ellie’s case might not be solved at all. Benson agrees to take the case.

Benson and Harrison share the details of the case with the rest of her squad. She shares that Ellie was found naked with a head wound that’s put her in a coma, and Chris was stabbed twice with his own pocketknife. Benson instructs Bruno (Kevin Kane) and Silva (Juliana Aidén Martinez) to visit the campground while Velasco (Octavio Pisano) and Fin (Ice-T) investigate the couple’s social media.

Benson and Harrison arrive at the hospital where the doctor (Carey Van Driest) informs them that Ellie is on life support and her mom has flown in from California. They speak with Chris, and he says that he was in the car when Ellie went to shower. He continues that he heard a noise, so he went out with his knife and saw a man standing over Ellie. He describes the man as white with long hair and a beard. Benson asks why Ellie was showering so late in the day, and he says it’s because they just had sex.

At the campsite Bruno introduces himself and Silva to Chief Jordan Wells (Joe Cassidy), who shows them around the crime scene. Silva notices that it’s odd the rock was tossed so far from where Ellie was struck because the man could have just kept the rock to fend off Chris. Bruno tells her she’s assuming too much about the timeframe, but she is still skeptical. Next, they visit the spot where Chris was found and Silva notices his placement is also strange because he was found so far from Ellie but claims he was trying to defend her. She identifies strange divots in the nearby tree, but Bruno continues defusing her suspicions, saying it’s probably from an animal. She asks if he’s this contrarian when he’s partnered with Fin and he says no. Silva continues inspecting the divots and says she wants to see the knife.

As Benson and Harrison are leaving the hospital, the doctor asks for them to come back because Ellie’s mother, Laura (Jama Williamson), wants to speak with them. Laura tells them that the doctors want to take Ellie off life support even though she’s been talking with her; she claims she asked Ellie to squeeze her hand earlier and she did. Benson asks her to show them, but Ellie is unresponsive. Laura is still convinced that Ellie can hear them. Benson speaks with the neurosurgeon (Mike Shapiro), who explains that Ellie’s gone 72 hours without any brain activity. She asks if he thinks there’s any possibility that Laura is right, and he says this isn’t the first time he’s seen a parent of a braindead child think they’re receiving signs. He confirms that it’s a reflex and that keeping people on life support for longer durations is more about the family not wanting to let go rather than what’s best for the patient. Before he heads to surgery Benson asks for a rape kit to be done.

Silva asks the lab to see the knife but only receives a photo of it. She’s informed that the knife was sent to Quantico. As they’re leaving, she tells Bruno she needs to see it and he says she won’t get it without good reason. She believes she has one; they’re missing something.

The team reconvenes at the station, and Velasco and Fin say there’s nothing to report from their internet deep dive. Silva asks if there’s anyone in the couple’s comments that was overly nice, explaining that everyone has an online and offline persona and you can tell a lot about someone based on how different the two are. Velasco says there was only one person that commented nice things on all their posts and that was Ellie’s college roommate, Kayla (Emma Ladji). Fin says the last time they spoke was the night Ellie was assaulted. Benson is notified of the rape kit results and the semen is a match for Chris as expected, but they also found saliva on her from a third person, suggesting someone spat on her. Benson asks Fin and Silva to bring Ellie’s roommate in and see if there’s anything she didn’t tell them before.

Kayla tells them that the night she was assaulted she was bickering with Chris because they almost got a ticket the day before. Silva asks if Ellie said what her plans were and Kayla informs them that later that night Ellie uncharacteristically went to a bar by herself. She says Ellie told her there was a redhead bartender that was giving her free drinks. 

Velasco and Fin arrive at the bar to speak with the bartender. He says he didn’t do anything and he was home with his girlfriend after work. After further prying he admits to hitting on Ellie and says that when she left he was angry so he spat on her, so they arrest him.

Benson and Silva inform Chris at the hospital that they arrested someone for spitting on Ellie. They ask if he knew she was going to the bar and he said that she told him she was going to do laundry; a detail which Benson notes he neglected to tell them before. He adds that it does explain something – why the guy who stabbed him smelled like whiskey. Chris’ mom (Gina Costigan) arrives and is very defensive, getting the detectives to leave. Benson tells Silva to investigate their traffic stop and try and figure out why Ellie went to the bar.

Benson arrives at the station and her squad informs her that the bartender’s girlfriend alibied him out of custody already. Silva enters with information on the couple being pulled over, but because they didn’t get a ticket there was no official report. Benson orders Fin and Velasco to talk with the officers who pulled them over to get details. They meet with one of the officers (Justin James Boykin) over video call and he tells them they were cooperative, but something was off. He says he noticed a bruise on Ellie’s arm, but she claims she got it from hiking. He adds that every time he asked Ellie a question, she would look over at her boyfriend before answering, as if she didn’t want to say something wrong. They ask him to send over his bodycam footage and the squad reviews it. Benson notes she’s seen that look on a woman’s face before; Ellie is definitely afraid of Chris. Benson instructs Silva and Bruno to review the unposted footage from their vlogs that was edited out. After looking through a lot of footage, Silva finds a clip from the day before the traffic stop of Chris yelling at Ellie from behind the camera. It shows him putting the camera down and walking over to hit Ellie while telling her she’s stupid. Bruno tells Silva she was right and that they need to get that knife because it seems as though Chris attacked her and then stabbed himself.

Benon shows Chris the footage they found, and he explains he just lost his temper. Chris defensively asks if they think he tried to kill Ellie, and Benson confirms they do think that because the man with a beard and whiskey on his breath that he described does not exist. Chris’ mom tells them they’re not talking to him anymore without a lawyer.

At the crime scene Bruno and Silva sign off on the knife delivery from the FBI. Silva puts the handle of the knife into the divots in the tree and it’s a perfect fit. To confirm her theory, she asks Bruno to hold the knife to himself in the places Chris was stabbed, and they perfectly line up with the divots. She is now certain that Chris ran straight at the tree with the knife pointed at himself.

Benson updates Laura that they know Chris did it and they’re working on gathering proof. Laura tells her to try asking Ellie and that she can confirm their theory by squeezing her hand. Benson asks Ellie if Chris was the one who attacked her, and Ellie squeezes her hand.

Benson returns to Chris’ hospital room to arrest him to discover he was checked out by his mother. They arrive at her house where she’s loading her truck with groceries and she says she hasn’t seen her son. Velasco opens the trunk where they find Chris hiding, and both Chris and his mom are arrested and brought to the station. They ask if she wants a lawyer, and she says no because she didn’t do anything wrong – she was just being a good mother. She tells them there’s no way Chris did this and that she wholeheartedly believes they’ve got the wrong guy because he loves Ellie.

Chris and his lawyer are brought into interrogation with Benson and Harrison. His lawyer says he is here to cooperate, but Chris says he already told them everything. Benson tells him that’s not true because he never explained what went wrong between him and Ellie. She shows videos of them being happy together and asks if they ever actually were. He claims they were happy and starts getting emotional. Benson furthers that Ellie had all that joy and life ahead of her and now the doctors are taking her off life support. She shows him a picture of Ellie in the hospital, which he turns away from, and she keeps pushing for him to tell her what went wrong. Chris refuses to look at the picture and she yells at him to look at what he did to her, and he breaks. He says they got into a fight, and when he woke up she was gone. He continues that when she came back smelling like alcohol, he assumed that she cheated on him and got angry, so he hit her with the rock. Benson fills in for him that their sex wasn’t consensual, he raped Ellie to show her who’s in control and then he killed her. He says he wasn’t trying to kill her and that he stabbed himself not to cover anything up but because he couldn’t live without Ellie. He says he wishes he could take it back, and Benson tells him that it’s too late for that.

Silva tells Bruno that Benson went back to the hospital to see Ellie. Bruno says the one thing he hasn’t figured out about her [Silva] is why she’d switch from homicide to sex crimes; he tells her she must be a masochist. Silva explains that when she was a kid, she was having a sleepover at a friend’s house where outside the window she saw a woman being attacked. There was an old woman in the window across the street who she assumed would call the cops, but she didn’t; she just watched. She explains that she woke up to the whole street being a crime scene because a woman was raped and murdered. Bruno states, “So, you’ve paid off the penance for the murder part, and now you’re paying off the rape.” She replies, “Something like that.”

Benson sits with Ellie and thanks her for being so strong and for helping them find the truth. She tells her that they got Chris, and he’ll never hurt anyone again because of her and she just wants her to know that.