"How old were they?" Olivia questions softly, referring to the three skeletons laid out on the tables underneath blue sheets.
"Best I can tell, they were all about six or seven," Warner answers, just as quietly. This is something that could make even the hardest detective sick to his stomach. "They were all killed around the same time, too. Five years ago."
"That would place their deaths sometime in 2001. I'll call Fin, get him to look up missing persons." I want out, so I turn my back and walk away, letting Olivia gather the details. When I come back, Warner is listing their injuries and pointing them out.
"These girls suffered." Shaking her head, she continues, "I hope you catch this one. Bastard deserves the needle. I'd like to give it to him myself."
"We'll pass along your sentiments when we find him," I say. "Thanks." Olivia and I leave and I notice she doesn't look so good. "You want to get something to drink?"
"Yeah, maybe. Just no food."
-----------------------------------
"Feel better now?" I ask after we've finished. I know I don't feel better. The sight of those three little skeletons coupled with guilt over letting Olivia talk to Warner about all their injuries is more than a cup of tea can fix.
"About as good as I'm gonna feel after seeing that."
It's the children. It's always the children. That's what gets us all. "You wanna go for a walk?"
Glancing at her watch, she says, "Cragen'll be wondering where we are."
"I'll call Fin, tell him. He'll cover for us. C'mon, we both could use it."
-----------------------------------
I spent the car ride trying to convince her that the CIA had plotted JFK's assassination and that Lee Harvey Oswald was merely a scapegoat. The grassy knoll wasn't just some joke, there really was a guy there and that was who had shot Kennedy. She let me ramble, offering up what she called "evidence" against my case every now and then, enough to get me more excited over the whole ordeal, so much that I started waving my hands in emphasis. Luckily, she was driving. When we finally reached the park though, I had settled down, resigned to the fact that she would never be swayed.
Now, we're walking down the path, and every running, crying, laughing, sleeping child grabs her attention, and mine, too. We hope that we'll never have to solve their case, never find them in a wall, nothing but bones left. Well, bones and the broken hearts of their parents. I look over at Olivia more than necessary, to see if she's indeed thinking what I am and hoping she's not. If she ever wanted to be a mother before, this would either make her more determined, or scared out of her mind of raising children in this world we police. Of course, she knew that all before, but it always gets brought up with every case involving children. If it didn't come up, then it would be time to retire because it would mean you'd finally lost all feeling, and your heart was a rock, incapable of feeling anything, something we both wished for and feared.
I realize she's stopped walking when I'm about twenty feet ahead of her, so I turn and look back at her. She's watching a tee-ball game. I walk over to her and put my hand on her arm. She starts and looks at me.
"Sorry."
She looks back at the game, the parents watching, some more excited than the kids. "Why do we do this?"
It's meant to be rhetorical, but I answer anyway. "Because we've been through things long ago that other people haven't been through yet. We have to protect them."
"But we don't. Look what happens under our watch. Children are taken, tortured and shoved in a wall. Some protectors we are."
"Think of all those children who haven't. And we do a hell of a lot of protecting. All these children," I make a sweeping motion with my hand, "are happy. They're having fun being kids. This many and more aren't going through shit at home. This many and more will stay this way forever. They'll pass it on to their kids." She still isn't convinced as she watches an ankle-biter run for home plate. "Look, Liv, I learned a long time ago that you can't think about what we don't do, and you can't think about we do do. You gotta look at everything that isn't touched by our job. Everything that is normal. Happy. Living. You can't dwell on all the kids we didn't save, all the women who never came forward, all the cold cases. Think about the happy, normal, living people. Doesn't always work, doesn't come with a lifetime guarantee or anything, but it works most of the time. Keeps you living, if you know what I mean."