Benson sat on the floor of her hollowed out apartment, rather, the hollow shell where her apartment usd to be. Char, soot, and ash was now what everything else used to be: Her tables, chairs, blankets, pillows. She picked up a blackened brittle spring that had been part of her bed. She threw it back onto the pile of carbonized material where her bed had been. Then she cupped her forehead and face with that hand, not taking care enough to notice that she smudged her face everwhere her hand touched.
Huang wanted me to get out of the house... maybe I can start with my new neighbors. I have to find a place first... By a feat of will, her mind focused on things, everything that was not what had been lost in the fire. The one thing in the apartment that she cared about. She knew that if she managed not to think of it, that she could get through this burned apartment thing without crying. She got up, went to her lock box that though now greasy and black, used to be a glat grey-green. She opened it and remembered that she had opened it the night before too. No, she couldn't think of that, she'd taken it out of the box last night and left it out just hours before she went to Stabler's house.
She got out her renter's insurance paperwork, snapped the box shut and woke up. She sat up and looked around, her head had been on her desk in the SVU squadroom, and she had fallen to sleep. She sorted through the papers on her desk and found the very item she had been avoiding thinking about before. It was there under a report about the Kelley investivagation, in a plain white envelope. She remembered then that she had stopped by the office the night before and left it there. It had her name on it, in her handwriting.
Tears sprang to her eyes, feeling the thick paper inside with its crenellated edges. She couldn't remember why she brought it there for the life of her. Munch walked in, and she quickly dropped her head, opened her desk drawer, shoved it inside, and willed her eyes to dry. They did.
"I'm heading home, John, good luck getting a bead on Kelley." She walked out the door.
John hadn't wanted to say anything because she looked like she had been in tears when he walked in, when she spoke, he lifted his head just a little. "Yeah, Olivia, we'll get that slick bastard one way or another. You have a good day." I thought Elliott said she was supposed to be off today.