The following contains spoilers for Law & Order: Organized Crime Season 3, Episode 2, "Catch Me If You Can," which debuted Thursday, Oct. 6 on NBC. This article also contains descriptions of assault and violence.
Fresh off the events of the season's first standalone Law & Order: Organized Crime, Teddy Silas is annoyed Detective Elliot Stabler closed his club for the night and denies knowing Kenny, the man tied to Henry Cole's murder who fled the scene of the crime. New Detective Bobby Reyes, comes in clutch, providing Stabler with $20K he found -- Kenny's payoff. Out in the woods, Kenny attempts to bury his gun but he's interrupted by cops. Naturally, he shoots them and drives off.
Following the shooting, Stabler, Sgt. Ayanna Bell and new Detective Jamie Whelan convene. It's a bountiful season of new detectives, from Organized Crime to Amanda Rollins' not-so-subtle replacement on SVU and Jalen Shaw on Law & Order. Stabler and Whelan get to work, with the former advising the latter to not blame himself because Whelan's ashamed that he froze up. Elsewhere, a scary-looking lady hops in a waiting car with Teddy's wife Pearl, who hands her a large stack of cash. Sounds like she's going to be investigating Teddy for Henry Cole's murder on behalf of Pearl who, admittedly, seems to think very little of her husband's intelligence. Love that for her. She also wants dark secrets about Teddy she can use as collateral against her own secrets.
Bell brings in Investigator Goldfarb to help expedite Kenny's arrest and charges, but it's early stages here. Jet Slootmaekers is reviewing footage and Kenny seems to have ditched his phone -- he's a career criminal who can disappear with ease. The exotic rat dealer calls, saying Kenny roughed him up after finding out the dealer had no antidote for his rat bites. Rat Guy confirms Kenny will be suffering pretty badly now and is likely as good as dead. On the bright side, though, Kenny stole Rat Guy's car so the team has a license plate to track. Jet also has a name for Elliot: Dede Hayes, who has bailed Kenny out a lot in the past. Wherever Kenny is now, he limps along before hailing a cab and all but collapsing in the back.
Bell's soon-to-be ex-wife Denise calls. She's at Ayanna's house to drop off their baby but Bell isn't there. Denise wonders why Bell is fighting her for custody when she can't even make visitation? Harsh but fair. Meanwhile, Stabler and Whelan speak to Dede -- who walks them through her past connections with Kenny and his baby sister Emily, whom Kenny tried to protect from their abusive dad. She says that Emily was adopted and taken to another state. Giving her up was the hardest thing Kenny ever did, she said, but he was proud she got out. Dede says she and Kenny were like brother and sister until she turned her life around and got straight. She swears they aren't in contact like that anymore. There's one part Whelan doesn't buy, though: "There's no way people are that close for that long and don't sleep together." Elliot raises an eyebrow. "You sure about that?" he asks. These are SVU-adjacent Bensler crumbs, but they keep us fed.
As Reyes works undercover on the Silas construction site, Bell swings by. There's something going on behind the walls. The two of them can hear muffled groaning and they break through a wall to find a man suffering from rat bits on the other side. Silas, though, definitely knew he was in there and would have had no problem with the demolition team killing the squatter. At the hospital, the man IDs Silas's henchman to Bell and Reyes as "the ghost" who would threaten Henry Cole at night and who was there with a sack of rats on the night of Cole's death.
Meanwhile, Kenny breaks into a house and grabs some pills before calling Dede. Dede tells him the cops are looking for him but that she lied and told them she doesn't talk to them anymore. He thanks her and tells her it's time. She says she's got everything ready at the house and she'll make sure she's not followed -- but Stabler and Reyes know better. They track her phone and drive after her car, following her to the wrong house. They knock on the door of some random woman just as Kenny arrives at the right house. It turns out Dede also dumped her phone, but Jet's data leads Stabler and Whelan to Yonkers and they hurry off once more.
Dede is worried about Kenny but he wants to make sure she's good to go through with the plan: driving him to the Canadian border with a fake passport for him to have a new life. He asks her to run away with him, too, and she says she just needs to pack. But as she walks out of the room, her tears make more sense as viewers see two of Silas's goons waiting for Kenny with guns. She'd had no choice but to set him up; they'd threatened to kill her grandmother. As she hides in the other room, she hears gunshots and breaks down crying. Then the door opens and -- surprise! It's Kenny. He overpowered them both and is in disbelief that Dede would betray him like that.
Whelan and Stabler arrive and enter the house. They see a dead body and make their way through the rooms to the back bedroom where they find Dede deceased. Kenny didn't take the betrayal well and killed her, strangled her in fact; a crime of passion. It looks like not only Kenny escaped, but one of the hitmen did, too. Bell calls and says that a man fitting Kenny's description just hijacked a van. He's heading towards Canada -- and there's an infant in the backseat.
Luckily, the mother and car owner's phone was still in the car when Kenny took it, so Jet gets to work on tracking it. Not so luckily, the baby in the van has a medical condition. They call Kenny on the mother's phone and tell him that Zoe needs ear drops that are in the backseat of the car. Mom asks him to pull over so she can give the baby the drops. But Kenny's delusional now and says that not only will he not hurt the baby, he won't give her back because she's not hers. He's under the delusion that the baby is his sister Emily. Then Kenny drops the phone out of the window. However, the van never got fueled and it was almost on empty when he stole it, so Kenny will need to stop soon.
Bell and Reyes see the van on the side of the road and soon find Kenny holding the baby. He's loving and gives the baby her ear drops (but not correctly). Bell comes to talk to him and smartly plays into his delusion that he's protecting Emily. She puts down her gun and cuffs herself to the table to gain his trust. She gets him to let her hold the baby as Reyes swoops in and tackles him. Kenny screams for Emily from the ground as Bell Mirandizes him.
Kenny glares at Stabler as he's led away in handcuffs while the baby is reunited with her mother. Bell says she wants Kenny alive, as Stabler and Whelan confirm he'll be under double security on his way to and at the hospital. Bell gives a press statement remarking on Kenny's arrest while also saying that Kyle, Teddy's henchman, is a suspect in Henry Cole's murder. Investigator Goldfarb's not pleased.
Meanwhile, the private investigator calls Pearl and says she has evidence Teddy is involved with murder and is cheating. Holy allegations Batman. Teddy comes home to Pearl with a special surprise: he knows every PI in the city, he says, and they're all loyal to him. He knows exactly what Pearl has been looking for on him and he promises the investigator a large payment for her loyalty. He assures Pearl that he's not having an affair -- yet all but admits to murdering Henry Cole. Pearl is shaken, to say the least.
Bell and Stabler bond at a bar over their good policing and crappy spousal skills. As they watch the news, they learn that one of the cops Kenny assaulted died from his injuries. Stabler, in typical Stabler fashion, deals with his emotions the healthy way: by punching a bathroom mirror and being broody about his feelings. The latest spinoff of the long-running Law & Order franchise is just getting started -- and we're still in for a bumpy ride.
New episodes of Law & Order: Organized Crime air Thursdays at 10:00 p.m. on NBC.