LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME Recap: Stabler Experiences a Painful Loss

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, February 22 episode of LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME.]

Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) may have been suspended, but he didn’t exactly get time off on the Thursday, February 22 episode of LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME.

After visiting Bell (Danielle Moné Truitt) in the hospital, Elliot is approached by Heidi (Lauren LaVera), a friend of Rita Lasku’s. She tells him Rita left instructions that if anything happens to her, Heidi should find Elliot to help.

At Rita’s apartment, Heidi explains that she didn’t want to go to London—which is where Elliot told her she should go to reunite with her son—”until she got her act together.” She was working, found her own clients, and was going to work for a few more months before leaving to be with Gabriel.

Heidi and Rita regularly checked in with each other, but she hadn’t heard from her for days…instead, she got a text claiming to be okay. But that in itself was a red flag: The women had a code, where if you’re okay, you never actually say you’re okay.

Elliot initially tries to limit OCCB’s involvement given IAB is questioning them about the circumstances around Bell’s shooting, as he goes to Long Island to track down Noah Cahill (Reed Diamond), who was featured on Rita’s digital camera.

While there, he also finds out another woman is missing—a young lady named Christine. He visits her family and meets her brother…who leads Elliot to a burner phone. Elliot tries to call the number connected to the cell, but only gets breathing. And then…he gets a video of a tied-up Rita.

But Elliot can’t keep his colleagues away for long: They show up at his hotel room, ready to help.

“We’re the cavalry,” Jet says. “And that’s the end of it.”

And they were helpful: They were able to locate a bunker, near Cahill’s property…which seemed to match a video of a terrified Rita.

Elliot goes to investigate, but warns his colleagues to stay back: “Sarge is not going to have a team to go back to,” he says as he exits. They start to put on their coats to follow him anyway until he comes back with the warning: “Don’t follow me.”

Elliot finds an underground bunker—but the woman he finds isn’t Rita. He asks her where Rita is, and she gestures to a shovel. Elliot gets back up to the surface and sees a lump of sand; he frantically tries to dig her out, only to find Rita has died.

Later, Reyes reveals the coroner said Rita had been dead for over 48 hours…well before the video, which even gave them a hint of her location, was sent.

“This isn’t on you,” a still-hospitalized Bell says to Elliot over the phone. “There’s nothing more you could have done. Look, Rita isn’t our case.”

“She was,” Elliot insists. “And she still is.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Bell says.

Later, Elliot goes to visit Christine. She acknowledges Cahill hosted the party, but she doesn’t know if he was the person who grabbed her. She did say, however, she’d be able to ID him by his voice, because he’d say to her before he left, “Don’t wash away with the sea, sweetheart.”

Unfortunately for the cops, Rita wasn’t the only victim…they found three other victims near her burial spot. “We got ourselves a serial killer,” Reyes tells Elliot.

LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME, Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC

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