C.O.D. (Law & Order)

"C.O.D." is the 325th episode of NBC's legal drama Law & Order and the 24th (and final) episode of the fourteenth season. The episode marks the final appearance of Jerry Orbach as Detective Lennie Briscoe after twelve years on the series.

Plot

A courier named John Byrne is shot to death while on his regular delivery route. Briscoe and Green suspect the victim was set up as the package Byrne was delivering was empty. Byrne's wife, Adele, describes her husband as a loving, faithful man with no enemies she can recall, who worked hard with plenty of overtime. Mrs. Byrne works for the Parks Department and clarifies she was at work at the time of the murder. The detectives quickly learn that John Byrne carried on affairs with several women and believe Adele Byrne was involved in her husband's death, as she lied to them regarding her knowledge of her husband's affairs. The detectives learn Adele traveled to Vermont to illegally purchase a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. Though a search of her apartment proves fruitless, the detectives eventually recover the gun in the waters near Riverside Park, where Adele regularly worked. The detectives find Adele at Gardner's Cafe, where she regularly visits, and arrest her.

During the investigation, Briscoe reveals that he's retiring from the police department. "I'm gonna lay in the sun, play golf, maybe do the odd bit of work for the DA's office," says Briscoe, which foreshadows his role on the soon-to-be spin-off Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Green is stunned, but is unable to talk about it, interrupted during the search for the revolver.

Southerlyn informs McCoy that once ballistic tests match the recovered gun to the bullets from John Byrne's body, the case against Adele Byrne is a "slam dunk." However, ballistic tests do not confirm the gun as the murder weapon; although a Smith & Wesson .38 was used to kill John Byrne, it was not Adele Byrne's. The ballistics expert says the gun has only been in the water for a couple of weeks so Van Buren suggests Mrs. Byrne's gun was used in another recent shooting in the same area. Green and Southerlyn soon establish Mrs. Byrne's gun was used in the unsolved murder of Frank Gardner, shot while jogging in Riverside Park and whose wife, Belinda, owns Gardner's Cafe adjacent to the park. According to Frank Gardner's sister, Belinda married her husband for his money, and resented losing access to it when he placed her in charge of the coffee shop. Southerlyn also discovers Belinda Gardner stood to gain millions of dollars through her deceased husband's will.

McCoy theorizes that Adele Byrne and Belinda Gardner arranged to murder each other's husbands, which Branch notes, "sounds like something out of Hitchcock." However, each woman continues to deny knowing the other and McCoy is unable to try the two murders as a single case. The two women are prosecuted in simultaneous trials, with Southerlyn handling the Byrne case while McCoy tries Gardner. As the trials progress, the case against Byrne proceeds well enough, but McCoy struggles with Gardner. It is revealed during the Gardner trial that a gun was recovered in the lobby of the Kent building, where one of John Byrne's lovers worked, the day after he was killed. The gun is eventually proven to be the one used to kill Byrne; its serial number had been filed off, preventing its identification, and no one recalls seeing Belinda Gardner in the lobby on the dates in question or seeing anyone place the gun in the public-access area. With considerable reasonable doubt on her side, Belinda Gardner is acquitted of murdering John Byrne. Meanwhile, the jury finds Adele Byrne guilty of the second-degree murder of Frank Gardner. Southerlyn commiserates with McCoy over the outcome, but McCoy responds he has "one turn at bat left".

McCoy visits a sullen Adele Byrne and her lawyer and offers to give leniency in sentencing in exchange for evidence against Belinda Gardner, pointing out that the gun discarded at Kent was placed to aid the person charged with John Byrne's murder; Adele gives in, asking McCoy what he wants to know. McCoy then brings first-degree murder charges against Gardner for her husband's murder, since she engaged in a murder-for-hire arrangement with Adele Byrne.

The final scene is set in the detectives' office at the 27th Precinct after Gardner is convicted, where Lennie Briscoe is cleaning out his desk. "Nice to go out on a win," he says, before gathering his cardboard box of effects, pausing for a final look back into the office and his colleagues, sighing and leaving.

Notes

This storyline for this episode was based upon the Patricia Highsmith novel Strangers On A Train, later adapted into a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In addition, one of the characters remarks that the murder plot in the episode sounds like something out of Hitchcock.

Law & Order executive producer René Balcer was quoted in the Wall Street Journal on May 21, 2010: "I always think about the show as before Jerry and after Jerry...You saw the weariness of 25 years of crime-fighting in New York written on his face."

Author Kurt Vonnegut was a fan of Orbach, and during an Australian radio interview in 2005, he said, "People have asked me, you know, 'Who would you rather be, than yourself?', and he replied "Jerry Orbach, without a question...I talked to him one time, and he's adorable."

External links

• "Law & Order" C.O.D. at imdb.com