Five things that haven't happened to Casey Novak (yet). I own nothing.
Darker Than Cold
I know a cold as cold as it gets
I know a darkness that's darker than cold
ONE
Strange how we all just got used to the blood
Looking at Chester Lake through the window of the blue-and-white, Casey will not be able to read the expression on his face. Guilt? Regret? Resignation?
She will turn and walk away, leaving the others behind. She will know, though they will not, not yet, that she has already stopped being one of them. The glare of crime-scene spots and the pulsing wash of police flashers will fade behind her and she will be in the dark.
Nausea will bend her double and she will vomit, retching so hard she can't stand. On her hands and knees on the sidewalk she will heave and gasp and choke, as if everything inside her has to come up, come up now, as if she is bringing up her stomach, her guts, her heart. It will seem to her for a moment that what she is expelling from her body is every image of a dead baby, a raped child, every conversation with a tear-stained victim begging her for justice, every not-guilty verdict, every repeat offender.
When she can breathe again, and sit back on her heels and wipe her mouth on her sleeve, she will feel absence inside her, a deep cold hollowness, but she will realize that all the dead and maimed and terrified are still there, inside her, lodged there in the dark. Whatever it will be, that will be gone and will have left her so empty, it will not be those memories. It will be something else, something she will no longer be able to name.
She will get up slowly and clumsily from the sidewalk, and she will walk the remaining half block to her car. Her hands will be steady as she unlocks the door. She will sit in the car in the dark with her hands on the steering wheel for a long time.
She will not even notice the tears steaming down her face.
TWO
I dream in my sleep, I dream in my days
She will not be able to get a job in any law firm in the city. Censured, suspended – they will see her as a liability. Eventually, she will find a job in a bookstore near the university that caters to law students. By then her savings will be almost gone.
The DA's Office never paid much, but the bookstore will pay less. She will have to move, sell her car, cut back on expenses, scrimp and save. She will do all that.
Once a month she will take the train to Philadelphia.
At the first meeting, she will introduce herself. "I'm Casey," she will say. "Chester's friend. Chester couldn't come."
It's a first-name kind of meeting. She will think that it's a lot like AA, except with only one step. Seek justice.
No amends.
No forgiveness.
THREE
I fight a war I may never see won
It will be her fourth meeting before anyone trusts Casey enough to give her a file. She will read it through, make a few perhaps-helpful comments based on her years of experience, and return it.
This will happen several times.
The fifth file she read will bother her in a way the others didn't, with more than just revulsion and depression at the inadequacies of the criminal justice system. The fifth file will be a case where there is no doubt in anybody's mind just exactly who raped and killed a seven year old girl. There will be no mystery in this cold case. The only outstanding question will be if there is any legal way, any legal way at all, to get the evidence needed to prove what everyone already knows to be true.
That will be a question that no-one, from the investigating officers to the local prosecutors to any of the people who meet once a month in Philadelphia, will have been able to answer in the affirmative.
That fifth file will lodge in the corner of Casey's mind like a splinter. For weeks she will try and try and try again to think of a way to make the law serve justice, to justify the search warrant that will compel DNA evidence from the killer.
Eventually she will realize that it's a dead end. Even Jack McCoy couldn't swing this one.
On visitors' day, Casey will take the bus to Sing-Sing. She will be shocked, though not surprised, at Chester's bruises. It will be no surprise to her that cops do not fare well in prison.
She and Chester will talk for a while, awkwardly. They never did have much in common except work, and now they will not even have that.
Eventually Casey will stop beating around the bush, will lean forward.
"Chester," she'll say. "I need to know some things."
FOUR
To the end of the earth, I'll search for your face
Chester will refuse her, at first. Will try to talk her out of it. But he won't be able to, because under the bruises Casey will see that he has the same expression on his face as on that night they put him in the squad car, and now she will be able to recognize it.
Peace.
And looking at her, Chester will see the opposite.
Chester will give her a list of names.
It will take her a little while to gather together enough money. The expiration of her suspension will help: although the doors of the criminal law fraternity are closed to her now, wills and probate pays better than the bookstore.
Eventually she will have everything she needs: fake IDs in four different names, lock picks and the skill to use them, wigs in three different colors, clothes she has never worn.
She will rent a car in the name of 'Katherine Milton' and drive three hundred miles to a medium size town in Pennsylvania. She will be careful not to exceed the speed limit. She will check into a motel – not too small, not too big – in the same false name.
For three days she will watch her target. On the fourth day, when she knows for certain he will be out at work, she will check out of her motel and drive to his house, pulling into the driveway just exactly as if she has every right to be there. She will be wearing one of her wigs, a set of clothes she has never worn before and surgical gloves. She will walk briskly to his front door and open it easily with her lock picks – the long hours of practice will have paid off.
Inside, she will go quickly to the bathroom. Hairs from his comb will go into a plastic evidence bag. She will walk out again, locking the door behind her, get back in her car and drive home. After returning the rental car, she will walk four blocks to the Port Authority and change into her own clothes in the restroom. The clothes and wig she wore as 'Katherine Milton' – even the shoes and panties – will go into five separate plastic bags, which she will discard into trash bins as she walks twenty blocks before getting the subway home. On the train, she will try to think of what she might have overlooked, will come up blank.
She will be spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing a DNA lab, the proliferation of paternity testing working to her advantage. It will take longer than she expects for the results to come back to the mailbox she has rented in the name of 'Emma Harris'.
Perfect match.
FIVE
I live only to see you live to regret everything that you've done
Casey will seriously consider giving the evidence to the police. To the officer who gave her the file, that night in Philadelphia. To Olivia Benson.
In the end, she will decide that it is too easy to imagine a good defense lawyer arguing that she was acting as an agent of the police when she broke into the house. Her ties to the cops were strong and long-standing. She will know that it won't impress a judge that she hasn't had so much as a cup of coffee with Elliot Stabler or Olivia Benson since the night they all watched Chester Lake being put into a squad car. She will know that if her search is ruled illegal, it will poison the evidence she gathered, and anything that stems from it.
The police, she will decide, are not the answer.
She will rent another car, from a different rental agency, this time in the name of 'Michelle Wilson'. She will be wearing a brand-new wig and brand-new clothes and stylish winter gloves, wearing nothing that has ever seen the inside of her apartment, nothing that can have the slightest forensic connection to Casey Novak.
She will drive the same three hundred miles to the same medium-sized town, arriving late at night. Parking a little way down the street, she will pull off her gloves, revealing a pair of thin surgical gloves underneath. From the trunk, she will take a small locked case. From the case, she will take something else.
She will walk up to the front door of the house she visited last time. Her knock will be answered by a man she will recognize from the case file.
He will have time to widen his eyes in shock as he sees her raise the gun with the soda bottle taped to the barrel, but that will be all.
She will shoot him once in the heart, the bottom of the bottle almost touching his chest as she fires. The shot will be louder than she expected, but not loud enough to attract the attention of the neighbors.
He will be dead before he hits the ground. Casey will think that all those hours spent standing next to Melinda Warner's stainless steel tables and trying not to throw up or pass out have really paid off now.
She will reach into the house with her gloved hand and pull the door shut, then turn and walk back to her car, gun unobtrusively down by her side, not hurrying. She will know this is the most dangerous part, and her heart will be pounding, but she will remain calm and controlled.
She will put the gun back in the case in the trunk and then drive just below the speed limit out of town by a different road to the one she took arriving. After about a hundred miles, she will pull up by the side of the road and get the case out of the trunk. She will not bother to wipe the pistol over: she has never, not once, handled either the pistol or the bottle or the tape or even the case with her bare hands, has cleaned every inch of all of them anyway, including disassembling the gun and polishing every surface that could possibly carry a fingerprint from a previous owner.
She will take the bottle off the gun and break the gun down to the smallest possible part. For the next fifty miles, she will stop periodically and throw one more part of the gun away until eventually all that is left is the case, and she will throw that away too. She will sigh a little with relief, knowing that although she still has to deal with gunshot residue, blowback, and the possibility of trace evidence, the most dangerous part is over.
Back in the car, checking for oncoming traffic as she puts her blinker on, she will catch sight of her reflection in the rearview mirror.
For a moment, she won't recognize herself.
Then she will.
fin
A/N: Title and headings are taken from the Patty Griffin song "Cold As it Gets".