Law and Order: SVU is the intellectual property of Dick Wolf. The use of the characters, settings, and plotlines is not malicious. This is a work of fiction.
Squad Room of the Special Victims Unit, Sixteenth Precinct, Manhattan
"You two! My office! Now!"
Olivia shot her partner a perplexed look, slowly rising out of her seat. These were words they heard at least twice a week, and usually they were prepared with a defensive excuse for their actions, but this time, they had no idea what sort of trouble they'd caused. Elliot moved in front of her, his way of shielding her and being the first to take the proverbial fall. Olivia didn't mind. Her eyes landed on his perfect ass, a small smirk gracing her lips as she followed him through Cragen's open door. She cleared her throat and her expression changed to one of worry and discourse when she heard the door slam behind her.
"Do you two think I'm an idiot?" Cragen asked, stepping boldly back behind his desk and folding his arms. He looked at the pair expectantly.
Elliot shot Olivia a look, ran his tongue over his teeth, and turned back toward Cragen. "What the hell did we do?" he asked, squinting slightly.
Cragen pointed to each one of them, his eyes wide and fiery. "This! You! When did it start, and when's it gonna stop?"
"Excuse me?" Olivia uttered, offended. Her eyes were narrow and her lips were formed into a flat smile. "Captain, if you're accusing us of having an..."
"Someone saw you!" Cragen yelled. "If you two are gonna stand there and deny this..."
"He's married!" Olivia yelled. "I don't care how close we are, how hot he is, or how I fucking feel about him, I have more goddamn self-respect than that! You really think I would jeopardize my job, destroy his family..."
Cragen cut her off, the rage in his eyes replaced by confusion and disbelief. "So you're not...why would...she lied?"
"Who?" Elliot asked, his jaw tight and his entire body rigid. "Who the hell would even fucking dare..."
"Don't...don't worry about it," Cragen sighed, his hand rubbing against the grain of his forehead. "Shit, I...I'm sorry, I just...I know there's something there...it was easy to believe..." he stammered. He took a deep breath and forced himself to look up at them. "You're on each other's personnel files in places that...well, this just made so much sense in my head."
"How about, net time you think you know what's going on in our lives, you fucking ask before dragging us in here, yelling about nothing, and making me feel like shit!" She shook her head at him. "You really think I would do that? Be his affair?"
Cragen looked into her eyes, and with serious firmness, he said, "Yeah, Olivia. I do. But I know...the reasons behind it would be...more honorable than the usual..."
"Save it," she snapped at him, she glared at him for a moment, and her nostrils flared. "Are we done?"
With his lip caught between her teeth, she nodded, turned on her heels, and bolted from the room.
Elliot narrowed his eyes a bit more as he stepped forward, finally letting his arms drop back down to his sides. "For the record," he said, his voice low and filled with venom, "I would never make her the other woman. If anything ever did happen between me and Liv, I'd make damn sure I was single, and in a position where I could be the kinda guy she fucking deserves. So she may fell like shit because you think so little of her, but, for fuck's sake, how could you think that little of me?" He shook his head in disgust, and then followed the same path that Olivia had taken, closing the door behind him. He stepped out into the squad room and looked around for a moment, spotting Olivia near the coffee pot. He walked over, his eyes focusing on her shaking hands. He grabbed her cup and the pot, and he finished pouring for her. "What the hell was that?"
"Shit," she seethed, "You know I didn't mean..."
"No, I know why you said...what you said," he told her, catching her eyes as he tore open two packets of yellow sweetener. He shook them into her cup and reached for the creamer, still looking at her. "I just...who the fuck told him we were..."
"I have no fucking idea," she spat. She looked down, seeing him holding out her fixed cup of coffee. She smiled slightly at him, loving how he never had to be asked, he always just did things like this for her. She took the cup from him, nodding gratefully at him, and she let out a slow breath. "I really don't know."
He grinned at her. "What amazes me...is that he said he knows that we're listed on forms and shit...which, I mean, we have been since day one, but he couldn't have read those records recently." He began making himself a cup of coffee, licking his lips as he watched her take a sip from her cup.
Swallowing, she hummed. "What makes you say that?"
"Well, for one thing," he said to her with a small shrug. "If he'd had his hands on our files, at all, within the last six months, he'd know about the..."
"Benson, Stabler," Cragen's voice interrupted their conversation. "Here," he said, holding out a small, pink sheet of paper. "Body on Riverside Avenue. Warner's on her way, meet her there. And, uh, I'm sorry. Really."
Elliot chugged his coffee, he grimaced as he threw the empty cup in the trash can next to the table, and he nodded curtly at Cragen as he took the paper from him. He looked over his shoulder, at Olivia, scraping his teeth along his bottom lip. "Ready?"
She took the last, long gulp of her coffee, threw her cup in the trash on top of his, and nodded. She grabbed her coat off of the back of her chair and the keys off of Elliot's desk, ignoring Cragen's apologetic face as she walked in step with Elliot, out of the room, and into the hallway.
Outside the West End Apartments, Riverside Drive, NY
"What's up, Doc?" Elliot quipped, stepping under a strip of yellow crime-scene tape. He stopped, turned, and held it up as he watched Olivia bend and walk under it.
Melinda Warner curled her neck up and looked over her shoulder. "That's getting old, Stabler," she retorted.
Elliot shrugged and grinned. "So are you," he said, and then took three steps over to her. He gave her a small pat on her navy blue windbreaker. "Just kidding."
With narrow, unamused eyes, she placed her hands on her bent knees and shook her head at him before turning her attention toward Olivia. "You deal with this all day?"
"And all night," she said, feigning annoyance. "What have we got?"
"Middle-aged woman, left out here completely naked, covered in cuts and bruises," Warner rattled. "Obvious signs of sexual assault." She looked back down at the sheet-covered body before her, and she took hold of the plastic with two fingers. Lifting it, she shifted to one side, allowing the detectives a clear view of the corpse. "She's in full rigor, so I'm putting TOD somewhere between two-thirty and four-in-the-morning, yesterday. Cleaning lady who called it in said she wasn't hear last night, so this is..."
"Body dump," Elliot said, nodding once. "You got a cause of..."
"Her throat's been sliced, ear-to-ear, pretty deep," Warner said, cutting him off. "She's got severe wounds, around her wrists and ankles, and band-shaped marks spreading across her chest. Blood pooling on her back tells me wherever she was killed, she wasn't moved. Not until they took her here."
Olivia cringed. "She was restrained," she almost whispered. "We got an ID?"
Melinda pursed her lips, lowered her eyelids a bit, and tilted her head. "The bastard didn't leave her wallet next to her body," she said with a bit more sass than necessary. "I'll send her prints back to you when I get her back to my lab."
Elliot rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Doc," he said. "Let us know what else you get, as soon as you get it." He watched Melinda drop the plastic back over the body, and then guided Olivia into the building. "We should start with the front desk, ask if they saw anything, ask for security tapes..."
"Yeah," Olivia said, a harsh whisper.
"You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost." He gripped her shoulder and squeezed, concern in his eyes and a faster thumping in his chest. "What happened?"
She dragged her teeth over her lower lip slowly, capturing the edge of it in a tighter bite. "You saw that woman, El," she said. "She looked like..."
"Oh, Liv," he breathed, running his hand down her arm. "You gonna be able to handle this?"
She nodded, swallowing hard, and she looked up into his eyes. The blue of them seemed to calm her, soothe her. She offered him a smile and a small laugh. "How do you do that?"
"What?" he asked her, the question mark clear on his face.
"You have this way of just...making all my problems go away," she told him. With a chuckle, she added, "Which in itself could be a pretty big problem."
His grin turned into a sly smirk and he leaned closer to her. "Not a problem," he whispered with a wink. "You do the same for me, you know that." He held her gaze for a moment, and then, as if suddenly remembering where they were, he cleared his throat and backed up a bit. "It's, uh, you know...what we do."
She smiled, brushing the hair out of her eyes, and moved with him toward the lobby's front desk. She pulled her badge out of the clip on her hip, raised it up a bit, and spoke to a young man behind the counter, who was typing something into a computer. "Excuse me," she said, hoping to get his attention.
The man ignored her, continuing his quick-clicking of keys.
"Hey!" she shouted, slapping a hand on the desk.
The man finally lifted his head, and with a roll of his eyes, he said, "Obviously, Ma'am, I'm busy." He froze, though, when he saw her badge, and he shrunk down a bit, looking at her sheepishly. "Busy...helping you, Officer."
She scoffed. "Detective," she corrected. "Benson, NYPD," she pointed to Elliot. "My partner, Detective Stabler."
"Detectives?" the clerk queried. "What, uh, how...how can help you?"
Elliot rested an arm on the counter and leaned in, a rather severe look on his face. "What can you tell us about what happened outside." He raised one eyebrow. "A cleaning lady called it in, but, I'm assuming, you've been here for a while? You see anything?"
The young man went white. "No," he choked out. "I clocked in a few hours ago, the cops were already here, and I..." he swallowed and closed his eyes. trying not to be sick. "That poor woman."
Elliot saw his face take on a green-tinge, and he held back a chuckle as he said, "So, you saw her?"
"Well, yeah," the young man nodded. "She was just laying there, in front of the building, I didn't...I mean, it wasn't like I stood there staring, but I couldn't really miss her."
"Do you know who she is?" Olivia asked. "Does she live in the building?"
"No, Detective," the clerk said, shaking his head, making his shaggy blonde hair fall into his eyes. "No...I've never seen her before, and that...that was a really shitty way to meet her.
"You have security cameras out front, right?" Elliot asked, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, pointing toward the door.
"Yes, sir," the clerk told him. "Two. One facing the door, one facing the street."
"We're going to need the tapes," Olivia said, clipping her badge back where it belonged.
The young man bit his lip. "Um...what tapes?"
Elliot looked at Olivia, and then back at the clerk. "The tapes. The recordings...from the cameras?"
"We don't have tapes. It's a digital program. It's a live-feed, but we store a week's worth on the server." He returned to his computer, typed quickly again for a moment, and then handed Olivia a small UBS drive. "This is everything from the last forty-eight hours."
"Wow," Olivia said, surprised. "Thank you."
"Yeah, sure," the clerk said. "I just...I know this is going to sound weird, but, uh, when you find out who she is, would you...come tell me?" He scratched the back of his with his long, skinny fingers. "I want to send the family a card, or flowers, or something. That's somebody's mother out there, and...no one deserves to go out like that."
Elliot nodded. "Sure, kid," he said, leaning over to look at his name tag. "Brian. Brian what?"
"Danielson," the clerk said. "I'm...I'm always here..." he looked up toward the ceiling. "I live on the fifth floor."
"We'll be in touch," Olivia said, handing him one of her cards. "If you can think of anything else you can tell us, give me a call."
Brian Danielson nodded, and then watched the two detectives head over to a couple of uniformed cops in the corner. He put Olivia's card in his pocket, let out a slow breath, and went back to his computer. He smirked. The video he posted already had over a thousand views, and the count was climbing. He chuckled as he mumbled to himself, "This is gonna make me famous."
Peace and Love
Jo
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