law & order
house calls (21/24)

The veteran crime drama continues its 13th season. In tonight’s episode, a young model diesfrom an overdose, leading the detectives to charge a morally dubious doctor with her murder, A young Russian model, Nadia Parkova, is spotted shoplifting on a clothes shop’s security cameras, before going to the changing rooms. When store clerks challenge her, they find her lifeless body on the floor. Detectives Briscoe and Green are soon on the scene, and spot a used syringe by the body. “I’ve heard about this, but I never knew it could actually happen,” says Briscoe. “She shopped till she dropped.”

The autopsy concludes that Nadia died from a cardiac arrest. She had a number of painkilling drugs in her system, as well as two broken ribs and numerous other internal injuries. However, these were sustained long before her overdose. What actually killed her was a lethal concoction of strong painkiller Deverol and asthma medicine.

Nadia lived with her parents and younger sister Lena. Her sibling is the only family member with good English, and she tells the cops that Lena is accident-prone and sustained her injuries after falling down some stairs. The doctor who checked Nadia out confirms this was the story he was given, but adds that he was concerned and reported it to the police at the time. However, they closed the case, declaring it a “false alarm”. If it was a lie, no family member wanted the truth to emerge, including Nadia herself.

The detectives wonder if someone –her father, or her boyfriend, perhaps –was beating her. However, both her boyfriend and sister deny this. It transpires that Nadia was permanently exhausted from working, as she had to provide the family’s meagre income all by herself. Dr Deana Abrams prescribed Nadia with the asthma medicine but not the Deverol. “Add Deverol to that and you’ll end up with cardiac arrest for sure,” she says. She also refutes the theory that Nadia’s father was violent towards her: “No way –she was his meal ticket”. It seems that Nadia deliberately caused these ‘accidents’ so she could escape the gruelling schedule of work she was forced to do.

So who prescribed Nadia with Deverol? The detectives track down an elusive doctor named Ellis Heinz, so called ‘doctor to the stars’, whose ethics appear less than immaculate. He does not have an office and instead makes ‘house calls’. His clients seem to be wealthy yet troubled people who he gets hooked on Deverol. “Nobody complains because they’re dependent on him,” says ADA Southerlyn. Although Lena denies that Nadia was Heinz’s patient, detectives find evidence suggesting otherwise. It seems he prescribed Deverol to Nadia even though the concoction of Deverol and asthma medicine was a fatal one. Can McCoy and Southerlyn prove that the doctor knew this? DA Branch is not sure they can, but is eager to send this medical charlatan down for something. “I want this stopped before he kills someone else. Now find something to charge him with... anything!”