Old Home Week
It was supposed to be a simple job. Munch and Bolander had gotten the arrest warrant, then went to get Kay Howard and Beau Felton. Along the way, John had had a little fun with Stanley, who was still coming off a hangover from the previous night's grand opening of the Waterfront.
"I got a pair of your boxer shorts pinned up over the bar in commemoration of your debut as Stanley the Dancing Bear."
They met up with Howard and Felton, suited up in their white bullet proof vests, and crossed the street to serve the warrant and arrest a pedophile and murderer who had two strikes already and was on his third one. Munch had commented about him being preemo for the death penalty. Kay and Beau had gone on ahead and were already up on the next floor, positioned outside the room numbered 201. Munch and Stan quickly joined them, along with a couple of uniforms close by. They went over to the door and were about to go in when they heard a floorboard creak over their heads. They all turned around, and with her gun drawn, Kay called out, "Police, freeze!"
Then the shooting started, the shooter was using two handguns simultaneously. Several rounds went off before John saw Kay sink back against the wall, moaning as she'd been shot in the chest. Then Beau's leg exploded as another bullet made contact with it and blood was pouring out of his mouth. Stanley fell back and his blood spattered on the wall behind him before he fell on the floor. John tripped over the uniform and Stanley and as he hit the floor along his fallen comrades, he yelled into his radio, "10-13! 10-13!"
John heard his phone ringing, and he woke up.
The room was dark, Munch reached over and turned on the light and immediately regretted being plunged into the brightness. He was hot and breathing heavily; another dream, only it hadn't been a dream, it was a memory. One of the many memories that haunted him throughout the years; and one that made him wonder, had it not been for that shooting, how different would things have been? Maybe he would've stayed on at Homicide instead of transferring out of state and into New York's sex crimes, maybe Beau Felton would've stayed at Homicide and would still be alive, maybe Bolander wouldn't have left, and Kay...oh Kay. Munch remembered too well when the sniper attacks were going on in Baltimore and he remembered grabbing Kay, pushing her into the car and driving out of there like a bat out of hell; he told her if he'd get shot in the head, that would be it, but he wasn't going to let her get shot again.
"Damn you, Gordon Pratt," he said as he put on his glasses and picked up his cell phone, "Munch."
The relief of being awake was short lived as he only got bad news from the caller on the other end.
"What?" he couldn't believe what he'd heard, "How? When?" he got the basic details, "I'll be right over, don't move!" He disconnected the call, threw back the covers and jumped out of bed to get dressed. Why was bad luck always following him around? Why couldn't it go bother some politician?
As Munch got into his clothes, it was then that he thought to find out what time it was. He picked up the clock by the bed and saw that it was 1:20 in the morning. Why, he also thought, did everything bad in the world have to happen at night, preferably right after he had gone to bed? Why couldn't catastrophe work on Daylight Savings time?
John couldn't remember how he'd even gotten to the hospital, let alone without crashing his car. He had to have been driving like a bat out of hell in order to get there as quickly as he did. He just remembered leaving his apartment and the next thing he knew he was going through the automatic doors at the hospital's entrance and he had his badge out and was immediately talking to the first nurse he saw.
"Detective John Munch, I'm here to see a patient of yours who was brought in tonight, Toni Keller."
"Oh yeah," the nurse replied, "She's in room 201, I'll show you."
"No thank you," he said as he walked right past her, "I'll find it myself, thank you very much."
201? Was that what the nurse had said? He swore, if it turned out to be 210 instead, he was going to kill somebody.
He got in the elevator and went up to the next floor and quickly found the room number. Opening the door, he saw that unfortunately it was the right room. The lights were on and he saw Toni Keller, a young woman barely 21, was sitting in the bed holding an icepack on the side of her head and she was crying.
"Toni," he rushed over to her and saw one improvement over the last times she was hospitalized, she was still wearing her own T-shirt instead of one of the hospital's regulated paper gowns.
She opened her eyes and saw him, and she said in a weak voice, "Hi John…I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called you."
"It's alright," he told her, "You did the right thing calling me, what happened? Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine," she answered as she lowered the icepack, "Just a few bangs and bruises this time, nothing serious."
Her hands were still shaking; Munch and his partners from SVU knew Toni well enough to know that she wasn't upset easily, even when she had been in the hospital in previous years with the crap beaten out of her, she had held herself together pretty well, so whatever happened now must've really been serious.
"Where's your father?" he asked her. Usually whenever Toni was a guest for the night in Mercy General, her father, Tony Keller, was right alongside her to make sure nothing happened.
"He's out of town for the week," Toni answered.
"What's he doing?" Munch asked.
"Well we had a discussion a while back and decided we were seeing too much of each other, so he's gone off and for all I know he's shacked up in some two star motel room in Jersey with a cheap floozy he met on the Boardwalk."
"We can hope, right?" he said, trying to lighten the mood, "But what happened to you?"
She seemed to calm down as she answered, "I hate driving, especially at night, but I had to go out, and the streets were pretty empty tonight, so I figured I wouldn't have much to worry about. And then out of nowhere comes this other car, just swerves clear across the road to my side, I swear the driver wasn't even watching what the hell he was doing. I try and swerve out of the way but there was no time, he crashed into me."
"How did you get here?" John asked.
"I don't know," Toni replied, "I guess somebody must've seen the accident and called it in…I don't remember the fire department cutting me out with the Jaws of Life, so it must not have been that bad. I vaguely remember waking up in the ambulance with the paramedics flashing lights into my eyes and asking me a hundred times what my name is, where I live, what state this is...but the car was still totaled and when my father gets back, he is going to kill me."
Munch couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Toni, the accident wasn't your fault."
"That doesn't matter, he still shelled out $17,000 for that car," Toni said.
Munch shook his head, "Toni, he's not going to care about the car, believe me, all that's going to matter to him is that you're alright. You are alright, aren't you?"
"I will be," she replied, "As soon as I can stop shaking. I want to go home, John."
"I'll go talk to the nurse," he told her.
"John, don't tell Elliot about this," Toni said, "You know how much he worries, and that's the last thing I need him coming around here being concerned for my welfare."
"Which is why you called me at one o' clock in the morning, right?" he asked, "I'll be back in a minute."
Munch left the room and found a nurse who had been on duty when Toni came in and he started giving her the third degree.
"When was Toni Keller brought in tonight?" he asked.
"A couple hours ago," she answered, "She got the hell banged out of her in the car crash but in a few days she should be back to normal."
"You're sure there's nothing broken, no internal bleeding or anything like that?" Munch asked.
"The doctors didn't find anything."
"What about the driver of the other car, how is he?" John asked, "Did he live?"
"He's alive, the doctors just finished examining him, he was put in the room next door," the nurse told him, "For the most part, he didn't turn out much worse than she did."
"Can I see him?" Munch asked.
"No, he's sedated right now," the nurse told him, "I will let you know when he's able to receive visitors."
"Is he in there alone?" Munch asked.
"Yes, he was given a private room."
That was all Munch needed to know. He went back to Toni's room and she had fallen asleep in the bed. Munch went over to her and yelled in her ear, "Toni, wake up!"
Toni screamed and jerked up in bed and said, "That's what I hate about hospitals, nobody ever lets you sleep, always some nurse sticking her head in the door at all hours of the night asking if you're asleep yet. I'd like to get a tranquilizer with a six foot needle and put her to sleep for the rest of the month."
Munch tried to talk to her but she cut him off and added, "I hate hospitals, I've been to so many of them now over the years, I spend more time in them than Elizabeth Taylor has."
"Toni," Munch said, "I found out that the guy who hit you is in the room next door."
"Still alive?" Toni asked.
Munch nodded, "And, I'm going to do you a favor."
"What's that?" Toni asked.
Munch pulled back the sheets and said, "The nurse told me that he's only about as injured as you are, so I'm going to look the other way and not see you beating the crap out of him."
Toni started to laugh but it hurt her too much. "What?"
"Look, I know the legal system enough to know if this goes to trial, you are not going to see much retribution, so I'm giving you your chance to even the score now. The law's the law, but tonight the law's going on vacation," Munch told her.
"Be careful, John," Toni told him as she started to sit up, "They said that same thing when they barbecued Freddy Krueger and you saw what happened there."
Munch helped her out of the bed and saw that while Toni still had her shirt on, somebody took her jeans; so he pulled the top sheet off the bed and helped her into a makeshift sarong. Then, Munch went to the door and checked out in the hall to make sure nobody was looking, and he and Toni went into the room next door and John closed the door behind them. The room was dark but they could see the outline of a man laying in the hospital bed.
"Yo bitch!" Toni called out as she headed over to the bed, "It's payback time."
Munch hit the lights so Toni could see who she was beating the hell out of and he went and joined her by the bed. The man in the bed looked to be somewhere between his 30s and 40s, his hair was short and a light reddish blonde with a little brown as well, under the mess of bruises and swollen eyelids was a youthful looking face. The sight of this man meant nothing to Toni where recognition was concerned, but Munch's eyes opened wide in shock and horror at what he saw.
"Oh my God," he said as he took a step back from the bed, "It's Mike Kellerman."
Toni turned to look at Munch and she asked him, "Who?"
"Mike Kellerman, he was my homicide partner back in Baltimore!" Munch said, "What the hell is he doing here?"
The door opened and a woman doctor who was somewhere in her 30s or 40s came in and demanded to know what they were doing in there. John showed her his badge, "I'm Detective Munch, Manhattan SVU, this is Mike Kellerman, he was my partner back in homicide."
"And I'm the patient next door," Toni added, "Mr. Kellerman smashed into me on the turnpike tonight."
The doctor looked at Munch, "You said you're with Special Victims?"
"Yes," he nodded, "Why?"
"Well it'll save me making a phone call," the doctor said, "Can I talk to you outside?"
John followed the doctor out, she closed the door behind them and said to Munch in a low voice, "We just finished running tests on Mr. Kellerman to find out the extent of his injuries and also if he was intoxicated at the time of the crash. Most of his injuries can be attributed to the car crash, but we found something else that can't. When we checked his blood alcohol level, it was 0.04."
"A little impaired but not enough to drive across four lanes and smash into another car," Munch said.
"However," she continued, "We also checked for drugs and found Gamma hydroxybutyrate in his system."
"A date rape drug?" Munch asked, "You mean that Mike was raped?"
Either the doctor hadn't been at this kind of work long or she just never got used to it, she fidgeted as she told Munch, "We found evidence that he's been sodomized recently, we ran a kit but didn't find any hairs, no traces of spermicide either."
"Oh my God," was all he could think to say in response.