Written By Michele Fazekas
Directed By David Platt
The skeletal remains of a child found in a sand quarry are connected to an unsolved missing persons case from 1978, where four middle school boys disappeared. But when Stabler goes to retrieve the file on the case, he finds that a lab tech, Millie Vizcarrondo (Paula Garces), has already checked it out. At Stabler's prodding, she admits her reasoning; her father spent decades of his life obsessed with another cold case from eight years earlier, in which the body of an unidentified boy was dumped in an alley in a box, and now that he's dead, she's picked up the torch. She had been looking through cases from the same time period with victims fitting the same parameters in hopes of finding a lead.
Initially, they focus in solely on the 1978 case, but then Stabler unexpectedly notices a connection: the box from the Boy in the Box case was from a water heater, and the primary suspect in the 1978 case was a plumber. The suspect, Robert Sawyer, had an alibi, but Stabler is skeptical because the alibi witness, Carlos Guzman, was employed by Sawyer at the time. Sawyer himself went underground in 1980 and nobody has heard from him since, but Carlos is still on the grid, so Stabler goes to talk to Carlos while Millie goes over the Boy in the Box evidence. Carlos sticks to his story, but Stabler is pretty sure he's lying.
Millie confirms that she's found more evidence to suggest a link, but very little to help them towards a solution. Just then, they get a new lead: a woman has come forward claiming to be a witness to a murder that matches the Boy in the Box case. They find the woman, Anna Gable, in a park and bring her in, but it's an uphill battle, as she is a long-time drug user who has suffered severe brain damage as a result. Anna claims that her father murdered her brother and dumped his body in a box, but Stabler is skeptical, not least because Anna's father died a good decade before the Boy in the Box case. Millie, however, is more interested in the timing; why, she asks, would Anna just happen to come forward at the exact same time as they're reopening the case? The answer comes when they learn that a local paper had printed an obituary for the boy from the 1978 case whose body was found. Since the only reason the 1978 case would make Anna think of the Boy in the Box case is if she already knew they were connected, which the police are just beginning to piece together, Stabler realizes Anna may know something the police don't after all.
Huang and Stabler question Anna again, this time presenting her with a photo of Sawyer. She initially identifies him as "Dad", but then clarifies that he "lived at my house while I was away". Stabler realizes that Sawyer might have been involved with Anna's mother and stuck around after her mother died, leading to Anna misidentifying him as her father. They then determine that Anna was in a mental hospital when the boys were abducted, leaving Sawyer alone in the house which is "in the middle of nowhere", giving him plenty of privacy to do whatever he had in mind. They rush to the house and find what appear to be the bodies of the other three boys.
"Only took 30 years to do it."
Armed with the new evidence, Stabler goes back to Carlos. After a few questions, he breaks down and reveals the truth: he was not only Sawyer's employee, but was also in love with Anna. Carlos knows that Sawyer killed the Boy in the Box, because Sawyer forced him to help him dump the body, but he couldn't come forward because Sawyer threatened to kill Anna if he talked. Then, eight years later, Sawyer forced Carlos to give him an alibi for the other abductions. Carlos tells Stabler and Millie that when that happened, he called Anna and confessed the whole story to her, but Sawyer found out and killed Anna. Stabler then informs a stunned Carlos that Sawyer couldn't have killed Anna because Anna is still alive, and Carlos and Anna are reunited at the hospital. Anna is still only somewhat coherent, but she nonetheless reveals a critical detail: "Robert Sawyer" is not their suspect's real name.
Back in the squad room, the detectives run down this new lead. Robert Sawyer was a real person, but after cross-checking the activity on his Social Security number, Stabler deduces that the real Sawyer likely died in 1968 and their suspect stole his identity at that time. They had run Sawyer's prints, but those belonged to the real Sawyer and not their suspect. However, their suspect was fingerprinted when he was first interviewed in the 1978 case, so Millie runs those prints. Cut to a scene of Stabler and an ESU team raiding the home of one Sheldon Kerrick, who is clearly the same man as "Robert Sawyer". They appear to have found him just in time, finding him on his bed, hooked up to a respirator, and clearly having difficulty breathing.
In interrogation, Novak offers the terminally ill Kerrick a deal: she'll go easy on him if he tells them the name of the Boy in the Box, or anything else he knows that might help them identify him. But Kerrick claims he doesn't remember the boy and refuses to budge from that claim, even with an extremely lenient offer on the table. The episode ends with Millie and Stabler standing at the grave of the still-nameless Boy in the Box. Millie admits to Stabler that she resented the boy because her father seemed to pay more attention to the case than to her. Stabler tells her it's understandable.
The camera pans to show the headstone, inscribed with the words "Heavenly Father, Bless This Unknown Boy". Millie and Stabler stand in silence as we fade to black.
This episode provides examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: Millie.
- Abusive Parents: Sawyer isn't technically Anna's parent, but used his pseudo-parental role as Anna's mother's boyfriend to abuse her. Anna's mother was also around until 1977 but never stopped Sawyer from hurting her (and what Carlos describes should not be something that another person living in the house would miss), making her a Useless Bystander Parent at best.
- And I Must Scream: Anna is severely brain-damaged due to extended drug use, to the point where she struggles to communicate and can't focus on anything for an extended period of time. Huang says that it's "hard work for her to maintain a simple conversation". Making it worse, even though it's drug-related, it's not entirely her fault; she became an addict because the episode's antagonist, her mother's boyfriend, forced her to take drugs when she lived with him.
- Bittersweet Ending: The killer is found and arrested, but he refuses to provide any information about the Boy in the Box, so while they've solved the boy's murder, they're no closer to identifying him. What's more, the killer is already virtually on his deathbed, so he'll likely serve only a few months of his sentence before he dies. The only true bright spot is that Anna and Carlos are finally reunited after they each thought that Sawyer had killed the other — and even then, the severity of Anna's brain damage is likely to significantly limit the extent of a relationship they'll be able to have.
- Cassandra Truth: Stabler doesn't believe Anna when she claims that her father murdered her brother and disposed of him in a box. As it turns out, she's a little fuzzy on the relationships (it was her mother's boyfriend, and the boy's relationship to her is unclear), but she's got the broad strokes right.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Anna Gable and Carlos Guzman fell in love as teenagers, until Sawyer ruined it by telling each of them he had killed the other.
- Continuity Nod: Stabler has his arm in a sling after being shot in the elbow in the previous episode. Warner also alludes to it when she references him being "back already", presumably from medical leave.
- Dark Secret: Carlos has lived for three decades with the secret of Sawyer's crimes, because the one time he told, Sawyer found out and claimed to have killed Anna in retaliation.
- Dead Person Impersonation: "Robert Sawyer" is a stolen identity. It's never confirmed what happened to the real Robert Sawyer, but given that there's been no activity on his SSN in 25 years and only the identity thief's activity for 12 years before that, it's probably safe to say he's dead; detectives conclude that he was likely dead by the time the fake Sawyer began using his identity.
- Finally Found the Body: Of the four missing boys. The discovery of the first kicks off the case, and the other three are found in the course of the investigation.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: One scene references a black-market baby operation, where a nurse was kidnapping babies from a hospital to sell for adoption. She was caught, but not all the babies were able to be recovered and returned to their parents.
- Karma Houdini: Sawyer killed at least five children, not to mention his severe abuse of Anna and emotionally torturing Carlos, and got to live out his life completely unencumbered by those crimes. By the time he's finally caught, he's already terminally ill and will probably die before they could even get through a trial, so there's no way to truly make him pay for his actions. One can only hope that his being in the system means he at least got caught for something else and didn't get to live all of that time as a free man.
- Lack of Empathy: Sawyer/Kerrick. In addition to the murders, he also ruined Anna's life for his own amusement; he forced her to take random prescriptions because he thought it was funny and so that he could more easily abuse her in other ways, leading to Anna's addiction and eventual brain damage.
- My Greatest Failure: Anna's alleged death is this for Carlos, because he told Anna about the murders and Sawyer found out. Stabler has to break it to him that Sawyer lied to him and Anna is still alive.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The four boys who disappeared in 1978 were probably killed within a few days of their abduction. When the case is reopened in 2005, all four mothers and two of the fathers are there to identify the personal effects.
- Parental Neglect: A minor case; Millie's father was so busy with the Boy in the Box case, even in his off hours, that his own child (Millie) got pushed to the side.
- Rape as Backstory: Carlos implies that Sawyer abused Anna sexually.
- That One Case: The boy in the box case was this for Millie's father; Stabler refers to it as his "bottom drawer case". She took over after he died, hoping she could finally bring some closure to this case that consumed her father's life.
