Elain R. Graham

When a 6-year-old boy with a troubled past is shot and abandoned in an emergency room by his frantic mother (guest star Elpidia Carrillo), Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) attempt to track down the child's missing family in hope of finding the shooter. However, when the boy is the victim of another attack, the desperate search for the mother intensifies before she too falls prey to a dangerous man close to her shattered family.

Police patrolling Momma Sue's restaurant stumble upon an attack in progress. A woman is being assaulted and there is threatening graffiti on the walls. The victim is Jennifer Fulton (Josie Bissett), owner of the restaurant. After going to the hospital to get checked, she's in a rush to leave. Her husband, Craig (Ricky Aiello) is concerned, which leaves Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni) to believe the suspect was not her husband, but could have been an underage drinker she busted earlier. The young man is Leon Ardilles (Victor Rasuk) and it turns out he was in the restaurant that night, and the paint on his fingernails matches the paint from the walls. He admits he was there and tagged the place, but Jennifer was already injured.

When a demure female graduate student is found strangled and stuffed inside a car trunk, Detectives Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Green (Jesse L. Martin) first suspect local gang members until they discover that the married victim, who also worked as a teacher's assistant, was having an affair with one of her college students (guest star Dustin James). However, the detectives are even more curious about her husband (guest star Richard Joseph Paul) - a preppy psychologist - when they learn that the woman first met him as one of his patients. Sam Waterston, Angie Harmon, Steven Hill and S. Epatha Merkerson also star.