A more angsty story than my last one.... I hope you enjoy. Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to SVU.
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When New York's police force becomes the target of the complex traps set up by a madman, it is the duty of the special victims unit to solve the case… Before one of them gets hurt.
Ramona Valdez stretched, suppressing a yawn. A glance at her watch told her that it was merely 7.30 in the morning. A long day was beginning, and she hadn't even had the time to go home and take a shower since the afternoon before. Just as she was about to grab her mug to go fill it in, her desk phone rang.
"Valdez" she answered with a cold voice.
"Hey Ramona, I thought you might be at work so early…"
"You lucky one, I was not off duty last night and I got called by Cragen before I could even think of going home!" She teased her partner of three years, Dick Richardson.
"So you stayed all night? Is something up?"
Ramona closed her eyes a moment, to gather her thoughts and make her report.
"Um… No, nothing that I couldn't solve. A girl called 911, saying her mom left her alone at home and did not come back for two days. I went to check but it was only a sick joke. It turned out the little girl was in fact 13 and a little rebellious…" Ramona smiled when she heard laughing at the other end of the line.
"You really are lucky…" Dick managed to utter between two laughters.
"As you say."
"And what did come out of it?"
"I'll tell about it later. You're coming today, right?"
Ramona put the receiver to her other ear, moving her neck which was going stiff from the night at work. However, she did not hear what her partner answered, as Don Cragen stuck his head out of his office at the same time, calling in her direction.
"Valdez, is your partner somewhere to be found?"
The brunette whispered to her caller to hold on, and she covered the phone with her hand.
"I'm on the phone with him, actually, Captain."
"Tell him to get moving and make his way down here, you've caught a case."
After having decided Dick would come with the work car and wait for her across the street, the detective gathered her things and went for Cragen's office to take the appropriate file. Jogging towards the elevator, she met John Munch on the way, who was looking as friendly and easy going as ever…
When the elevator doors opened, Ramona greeted the detectives waiting on the other side and made her way to the street.
"Morning, Ramona." She smiled towards Olivia Benson, who was walking up the stairs towards the precinct with two coffees in her hand and the morning paper.
"Night shift?"
"Night and day shift!" Ramona exclaimed, raising her eyes to exaggerate her comment. "Say hello to your partner."
"I will, and you, get some sleep!" Olivia teased, turning around and taking out her cell to call Elliot and check where he was.
Ramona looked on both sides, trying to guess where her partner could have stopped the car. He was probably not there yet. She was interrupted in her reflection by her phone ringing.
"Yes, Dick?"
"I did not find a parking lot and stopped across the street, near the coffee shop at the corner."
Olivia was still on the phone with her partner when she heard tyres screeching just behind her. The noise was so unexpected that she almost let her phone fall down. The brunette turned around just in time to witness her colleague Valdez colliding with a white car. The body flew and fell back like a doll, staying limp and still on the ground.
"Call a bus!" Olivia was the first to react, jumping down the flight of stairs towards the streetand rambling two bystanders on her way. She could hear Elliot shouting on the other end of the line but her mind was only thinking of going to Ramona's bloody form. A crowd was slowly forming around the body and Olivia had to push two or three people to get through to her colleague.
"Ramona, do you hear me?" she called out loud, tapping the woman's cheek to make her wake up. Ignoring Elliot's voice, she ended the call and handed her cell to an officer who was leaning over both women.
"Call a bus now!"
Without moving the detective lying on the ground, Olivia talked to her and slapped her a little stronger to get a reaction. When the brunette's eyes fluttered open, Olivia kept talking to her until she felt a hand on her shoulder and saw Fin standing over her.
"Did you see what happened?"
"She was hit by a car. A white Ford. I did not see the license plate, it drove away too quickly."
Fin nodded, taking out his cell.
"I am going to start a search on the car. The bus is coming…" Fin's voice trailed away as he heard the sirens approach. Taking out his badge, he began dispersing the crowd so that the medical staff could get through.
"Ramona, hold on. The doctors are almost here."
Dick Richardson was pacing back and forth in the corridor. He had arrived at the precinct just as the ambulance was driving off with his partner, although he didn't know yet that Ramona was the reason for this gathering. He was now waiting for the surgeon to come and announce his verdict to him, along with six other colleagues from the 1-6. Among them was Olivia Benson, standing at the far end of the waiting room, from where she could have a general view of the situation. The policemen were mostly silent or whispering to one another, no one daring to bother Dick. Most of the policemen Olivia Benson knew were single or divorced. The unit had grown to become their family, and the partner their best friend and soul mate. Merely looking at the way Dick walked circles, rubbed his face and checked the time every two minutes made Olivia feel sick. She could remember doing that too many times in the past.
"Hey…" She had not even seen Elliot arrive from the other door and almost run towards her.
"Are you alright?"
Seeing that Elliot was staring with a blank expression on the blood that had come onto her blouse from Ramona, Olivia shook her head.
"It's not mine. Did someone explain to you what happened?"
"Yes, Fin did. He's still going through the security tapes of the coffee shop across the street and a few other places, and Munch is taking a million statements from all the officers and pedestrians who witnessed the incident."
"The car did not even try to stop, El. I heard the tyres… He was accelerating!"
Elliot looked compassionately towards his partner, his hand still resting on her arm as though he wanted to keep her from falling. He generally became overprotective when it came to Olivia, and had to restrain himself from taking her in his embrace. When she had begun shouting over the phone, ignoring his questions, Elliot had truly thought that she was involved in some shooting or other, and had driven as quickly as possible through the city.
"People sometimes press the accelerator instead of the break by mistake. But he or she will at least be charged with hit-and-run. Do you have any news from the doctor yet?"
"No… She is in surgery and no one's come out yet. Dick is going to turn crazy in a minute."
Elliot cleared his throat, turning around to look at their colleagues, greeting some of them on the way.
"You and I could go back to the precinct and see if Fin or Munch found anything, what do you say? Cragen wants us back on the Evans case anyway."
Olivia nodded, letting Elliot gently pull her away from the wall against which she was leaning.
"How is she?" Fin called out as he spotted his two colleagues walk to their desks. Olivia's shirt was still bloody from earlier, he noticed. His comment made everyone in the room freeze, except for two suspects who were fighting in their cell. A little surprised by the general silence, Olivia glanced over to Elliot before shaking her head.
"She was still in surgery when we left." Saying that, she could read the frustration in everyone's eyes as the detectives turned back to their paperload. Don Cragen, who was talking loudly over the phone, raised his hand to signify Elliot and Olivia to join him in his office.
Once his detectives had closed the door behind them, he ended the call and turned to them.
"So, how is she?"
"Still in surgery. I'll call to see if there's been any news." Olivia began standing up to leave but was stopped by her captain's voice.
"Wait, Olivia. I'll call to get more information. You and Elliot, go back to work. Michelle Evans won't wait another day for her rapist to be found."
"You want a coffee?" Elliot offered as his partner slumped down in her chair, rubbing her forehead.
"Yes, I would love one." She turned on her computer and sorted through her files, fighting to get her mind back to Michelle Evans and her parents. As Elliot brushed past her, he leaned forward and whispered to her ear "You should go and change."
Seeing the blood stains on her white blouse, Olivia nodded and went without a word to the locker room. When she came back, Elliot was already on the phone, telling Melinda Warner that they were coming down for the Evans' case.
"Hello Melinda" called Elliot as he entered the morgue with his partner. Melinda Warner was performing an autopsy on a young man with a huge bash on the right side of his head.
"Hello you two. I heard what happened to Detective Valdez. Do you have any news?"
"Not yet. She is still in Mercy General but they will call us as soon as they know something." Repeated Olivia for what she thought was the thousandth time.
"Was it an accident?"
"Probably. But the driver ran and is being looked for as we speak."
Melinda smiled compassionately and took off her gloves, walking towards her desk.
"So… About your girl. Jennifer Dickson..."
Jennifer Dickson had been killed a week before in Central Park, by broad daylight. The case had taken an unexpected turn when Michelle Evans was assaulted three days after that and survived. Both had been cut on the right palm in the same manner : the perp had engraved a cross, which had brought the detective on the tracks of a serial killer.
"As you already know, the poor girl died from multiple wounds on her chest and in the stomach area, from a sharp blade."
"Any chance of a more precise identification of the weapon?" Elliot asked while Olivia was scribbling the info the legist was delivering at an impressive rate.
"From the different mouldings I made, I would say a thin kitchen knife with notches on one side."
"… Like the one that was used on Michelle Evans." Finished Olivia, looking at her partner and back at Melinda.
"Did you do a toxic exam? Michelle Evans had traces of sedatives in her blood, but she does not remember when she could have been drugged."
Melinda flipped through her file to look at the multiple results' pages.
"Yes, she had indeed been drugged. The strange thing is that it must have happened at least two hours before the murder. The particular sedatives only kick in 60 to 80 minutes after contact."
"Was it ingested or injected?" Elliot asked. He could not keep his eyes off the young man lying on the autopsy table. He looked peaceful, that is except for the bloodstains on the head.
"Probably ingested. You are looking for someone she drank or ate with just before being murdered."
"Olivia, Elliot!" Cragen from his office door when they came back to the bull-pen. Intrigued, the detectives looked at each other and made their way towards their superior.
"Ramona Valdez is out of surgery. She had two broken ribs and a bad fracture on her right arm. The surgery took longer because they wanted to be sure to save her arm, but apart from that, she is okay… She will stay at the hospital for a couple of days."
Olivia needed two minutes to digest what she had just heard. Ramona was okay. How miraculous, after having seen her fly through the air and fall like a lifeless doll onto the concrete. The detective exhaled, feeling the knot in her throat diminish. She felt her partner's hand on her lower back. He was always there to support, as though he had a sixth sense when it came to Olivia and her well-being.
"What about the driver?" He asked mechanically, not even looking at his superior.
"Listen… I transferred the case to the relevant authority in Manhattan. We have a huge workload, and hit-and-runs are not under our jurisdiction. So go back to your case, and I will keep everyone informed if the driver is found."
When both detectives marched out of the office, Olivia was shaking her head in denial. Swearing between her teeth, she did not make eye contact with her partner until he interrupted her in her thoughts.
"What's wrong?"
Olivia smiled sarcastically, stopping in her tracks to look at her partner.
"I can't believe he's letting another squad solve this case. She is one of us." She said, almost whispering so that their colleagues would not notice her anger.
"Liv, let the traffic unit deal with that… I know you feel implicated because you witnessed the accident, but…"
"It's not that. I just feel there is something wrong."
Elliot looked at his partner and friend in silence, finally giving up in convincing her. When Olivia Benson had made up her mind, no one could make her change it.