Chat Room
Updated 2000-04-13 17:00:00
Props to the usual suspects; also to LunaVudu for coming up with "PervCon 2000."
Night in the city: a teenage girl in a fake fur coat is yelling into a pay phone, "I know it's late, and I'm sorry you've been worried -- I need a ride!" She's probably hoping someone can get her the hell out of this Law & Order: Special Victims Unit opening sequence and give her a lift over to The WB Network. Faint noises of motherly disapproval squawk through the receiver. "Mom! I was -- I was attacked!" the girl shouts. "I was raped! No, I'm not okay," she says, and hangs up the phone. Good answer, kid.
Next, Teen In Trouble is in the hospital waiting room, telling Stabler and Benson that her attacker threatened her with a gun, drove her to a vacant lot, and then assaulted her. "Why'd you get into his car?" asks Benson. Teen In Trouble turns away. "I just did," she mutters, and finally admits, "I sort of knew him." She goes on to tell them that she met the man in a chat room, and was just meeting him in person for the first time. She says she only knows his screen name -- "The Yachtsman." "I thought that with a name like that he'd be a gentleman," she said. "Shows you how wrong you can be." "The Yachtsman," huh? Great -- now I can't look through a Land's End catalog without getting the chills.
Roll the opening credit sequence. Let's see those missing-kid photos. Let's see the knocked-over baby carriage. Because we don't want that creepy feeling to go away!
At the station house, Benson hands out flyers with a police sketch of "The Yachtsman" drawn from Teen In Trouble's descriptions. "Shouldn't we be working with the Coast Guard on this one?" quips Munch. From the sketch we can see that "The Yachtsman," apparently, is a guy in a yachtsman's cap. Maybe he's with the Village People? Cragen explains that "The Yachtsman" is an Internet screen name. Munch's next pithy line is, "I love the Information Superhighway -- you can meet creepazoids from all over the world without leaving the comfort of your own home." And this is different from watching this show . . . how? Cragen once again reminds everyone that "we've got to move on this case! Now!" You know, Cragen, you could just crack a REAL whip. This IS Sex Crimes, after all. Jeffries points out that, duh, they should try looking in Karen Raye's computer, and Cragen orders her and Munch to go to her home in Brooklyn and pick it up. "Seventy million people on the Internet, and every one a suspect," says Munch. Um, okay, everyone reading this page? You've all got alibis, right? Just checking.
Benson and Stabler interview Karen Raye, who tells them that she'd been corresponding with the Yachtsman via email for three or four months. "Why'd you pick last night to meet this guy?" asks Benson. Karen admits that she thought she could get out of the house, because "Tuesday night is Mom's big night -- choir practice." Stabler points out that the three or four hours between when she first met him and when she checked into the hospital seems like a long time to be just driving around. Karen hems and haws a little. Stabler suggests to Benson that they get a car and retrace the route so that maybe Karen will remember more. "You mean go to all the places all over again? Do we have to?" says Karen, rolling her eyes and looking annoyed, as if the Yachtsman took her to some totally lame places, like maybe a video arcade, or a Chuck E. Cheese, or -- I mean, God!!! -- Payless Shoes.