law & order
sheltered (22/24)

The veteran crime drama continues its 13th season. In tonight’s episode, a series of seemingly random sniper killings sends the city into panic, with the detectives homing in on a disenchanted office worker and his aloof teenage son.

Manhattan is rocked by four murders, all of which seem to have been committed by the same sniper. A woman is felled as she is out walking her baby in a pram in Chinatown, then an accountant is also killed in the same neighbourhood. The third victim is a construction manager, Charles Rodriguez, who was shot from a distant rooftop. There is a note on the roof that says “Someone stop the voices”. “This guy took out each of his victims with a single shot,” says Briscoe. “That means he knows what he’s doing.”

The police monitor all the rooftops in the tenblock radius where the murders occurred. However, the precaution fails to prevent a fourth shooting, this time with teenager Hayley Sanders the victim. A note on the roof from which Hayley was shot reads “Me 4, Police 0”. Now the city is on high alert, and Van Buren has to take control of a situation that threatens to send the city into a panic. Police psychologist Dr Olivet believes that the notes are “psychologically incongruous”, and if the first note seems like the work of a schizophrenic, the second is a very sane taunt. “Well if he isn’t crazy, why would he want us to think he was?” questions Green.

Van Buren sends the cops off to search for any patterns in the killings. They talk to Anna, the widow of Charles Rodriguez, who says that Charles had a problem with one of his employees, Herman Capshaw, who was not pulling his weight. Briscoe and Green visit Capshaw as he arrives at his apartment with his teenage son, Justin. Capshaw is surly and reluctant to talk to the detectives. They later learn that Capshaw is a former Marine and a sureshot with a rifle –the very weapon that killed all four victims. Detectives also discover Capshaw owns a cabin upstate, where they find the murder weapon. Capshaw is arrested but claims he is innocent.

ADA Southerlyn discovers that the notes were written on paper that was only available in schools, so suspicion falls upon Capshaw’s son, Justin. Under interrogation, he fiercely defends his father. “He didn’t kill those people,” he says. “I did.” A study of the murder weapon suggests the short-sighted Justin had adjusted the lens himself –supporting his confession.

McCoy then discovers that Justin is not Capshaw’s son –his own wife and child died in a car crash in 1993. So who is Justin? The emotional teenager insists Capshaw is his father, and that his name is Justin Capshaw, but McCoy knows he is lying –or deluded. Southerlyn discovers that Capshaw kidnapped Justin from his own family when he was an infant, telling him that his real parents had been killed. He has since isolated Justin from the real world, ensuring that he was completely dependent on him. “That’s why I killed those people,” says Justin. “Rodriguez was going to fire [my father]. For once, I got to help him.” It seems Justin killed the others to make the shootings appear random.

McCoy is forced to prosecute Justin for the murders –although he believes that the ordeal Capshaw put him through effectively groomed Justin to defend his father in such an extreme manner. His feelings are backed by Olivet, who thinks Justin is suffering from a form of “battered child syndrome” –except the only abuse Justin received was emotional. When Justin is reunited with his real mother and sister, who believed him dead, Justin refuses to believe they are who they say they are. It is clear Capshaw’s influence over him has been far-reaching. “I want the bastard who did this to my son dead,” says Justin’s mother. But how can McCoy prosecute Capshaw when it was Justin who pulled the trigger?