Disclaimer: I wish they were mine, and yet, they are not...
In the middle of the night, my cell phone rang.
"Ahh!" I yelled, as I fell out of bed. When I got up, I looked at the clock--it was 1:34.
"Benson," I mumbled into the phone, not bothering to check the caller ID. Most likely, it was Elliot or Cragen.
"Olivia?" a female voice said, barely a whisper. I was shocked at the identity of the person calling me, but more by the tone of voice--scared.
"Casey? What's wrong?" I responded.
"I...I need help, Olivia. Please, help me..."
"Are you at home?" I asked.
"Yeah," Casey's voice confirmed. What had happened to her? Why was her voice so scratchy?
"Stay there, I'm coming over," I told her. "It's alright."
"..No it's not," Casey said, and hung up.
I sped over, wondering what could make the hard-nose ADA so helpless, that she had to call me. Why didn't she just call one of her friends from work, Elliot even? She had always had a kind of touch-and-go relationship with me, the lone girl. I could only remember Casey crying one time, sounding completely vulnerable. I had seen her beaten and unconscious, and she still didn't seem like the kind of person to be tearing up over nothing. She had only come close when she had to ask if she was raped, like the other victims.
Knocking on her door, I recieved no response, so I hunted around for a spare key. It was hidden over the door frame.
Damn it, Casey! You're an ADA! What could make you, of all people, so messed up that you couldn't even think to hide a key?
Unlocking the door and walking in, I noticed that the room was totally dark. Flipping on the lights, only one door was closed. Taking that as a hint, I tried to open it. It was locked too. I gently tapped the wood with my knuckles.
Casey, what are you trying to hide? What's going on?
"Casey?" I whispered. "It's Olivia. Can you open the door?"
"Liv?" Her voice was barely loud enought to hear. "Liv, is that you?"
"It's me. Are you okay?"
Casey didn't answer, but she opened the door, and I found myself in a dark bedroom. I didn't want to use the lamp, in case it scared her, but squinting, I coule see that all the blankets were on the ground. Casey lay on the ground in a softball uniform, curled up in a ball. Her blonde hair was splayed all over, covering most of her face. Gently, I pushed it away so that I could speak to her, but she flinched, and I decided that it would be best not to touch her.
"Sorry," she said. "I just thought...I didn't..."
"I'm here, Case. It's okay." Why was she possessing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder? Was she...no. No, she couldn't have been...could she? I didn't want to think it, but I knew the truth. She had been hurt, and now she was scared.
"He...he..." She shook her head, unable to finish.
"Where were you last night?" I decided to shy away from any questions that might directly bring up what had freaked her out so severely.
"One of those softball machines," she said. "You know, the ones that pitch balls at you. I was doing really well, because I brought my lucky bat with me, and this man was watching me. He, uh, kept saying that he liked the way I was batting. And eventually, he started to kind of scare me a little, you know, perv me out. So I packed it in, and he didn't follow me, thank God." She stopped here, and looked down, like she was hiding something.
"Case? What happened next?" I asked gently.
"I was walking home, and these guys stepped out and demanded my money. I gave it to them, and they left." Her face told the real story...she was lying and she knew it. She almost looked like she felt guilty, like she needed to tell, but wasn't sure how to.
"Is that the truth, Casey?"
She shook her head, looking away.
"What happened? Did the man from the batting machine come back?"
She nodded. "Well, I was about halfway home, and the he appeared next to me. Saying how much he liked me, and would I like to go out sometime? I don't know, I guess I just got a bad vibe from him, so I said no thanks, but he kept bothering me, getting in my face. He looked really pissed, and eventually he grabbed my arm and pulled me into an alley and threw me down. I got up and punched him, but he, uh, he grabbed my bat and whacked me in the leg." She straightened her left leg slowly and rolled up the cuff of her pants, revealing a large purple-black bruise. She winced as she returned her leg to it's original position, curled up against her chest. "Then, uh, he..." The tears started to well up again.
"You can tell me, Casey," I said.
"There won't be any evidence," she said, started to think like an ADA. "He used a condom." And suddenly, the lawyer was gone, and all I could see was a woman who had been hurt, violated. "He-he raped me. And when he finished, he said 'Yeah? Did you enjoy that? I know that you did.' And he ran off, leaving me there. After a few minutes, I got up and walked home. It was about eleven when I left the machine, and probably eleven-thirty when he caught up with me. Then he left at about midnight, and by the time I got home, it was one. It didn't occur to me to call for help until one-thirty, and I couldn't call any of the guys, obviously, so I called you."
"Oh, Casey," I said, hugging her. "It's alright. Now you know you need to go to the hospital now, get a rape kit."
"I can't!" she told me.
"Why not?" I couldn't understand. You're an ADA, you know the importance of getting examined immediately.
"There's no case."
"What are you talking about, Casey?"
"It was my fault!"
"No, it isn't!" I was astounded that she could even think that. You spend your days telling victims that it wasn't, under any circumstances, any fault of theirs.
"It is," Casey said tearfully.
"How can you say that?" I asked.
"Because, I could have stopped him," she told me. "I could have hit him, or kicked him, or yelled louder. How can I get raped if I didn't let him? I was concious the whole time. I could have prevented all of this. That's why I didn't call the police, or any of the guys. They just wouldn't get it like you--you're a girl."
"Casey, you know rape victims are in shock," I said. "Very few people could have fended him off in your position."
"Well, I could've!"
"You were in shock," I reminded her. "You, of all people, know that--your work deals in this."
"But I thought I would be stronger than him! He wasn't very tall. This is the second time I''ve been too weak to keep a man off of me."
"I know you," I told her. "You probably fought him tooth and nail, didn't you?"
She nodded. "But--"
"You tried your best to keep him away, right?"
"Well, I guess my best wasn't good enough! It didn't work--eventually I gave up and just let him!"
"Casey, don't say that!" I said. "You didn't let him! He had no right to rape you! Now, please, just come with me to the hospital, report it, get a rape kit. If it makes you more comfortable, I can interview you myself, girl to girl."
"Fine," Casey agreed reluctantly. "But I tell you right now, I'm going to lose the case."
"It's okay," I reminded her. She was shaking on the examination table, her feet in stirrups, the most vulnerable position possible, especially after a woman is sexually assaulted. The doctor wasn't even in the room yet, and she was already nervous.
"Ma'am?" a female voice sounded through the door. "May I come in?"
"Yeah," Casey said hoarsely. She must have screamed her lungs out.
"Hello, I'm Dr. Sandoval," the woman informed us. "I'll be examining you, Ms. Novak. Are you all ready?"
Casey looked at me for a minute before answering. "I'm ready."
"Okay, there is some vaginal trauma, obviously proving rape." Dr. Sandoval began.
"Because that's what happened," Casey said, now sitting on the bed.
Casey, don't be on the defensive, you know we all believe you. Just because you spend your days dealing with scum defense lawyers trying to poke holes in women's stories doesn't mean that no one will listen to you. We know you are telling the truth, no matter how shaky it gets. We've all got your back.
"We found some semen and pubic hair, and it's been sent to CSU for analysis. You might have some pain for a little while, but it will all fade with time."The physical scars aren't the problem with this case. The mental ones are. "Your leg is, however, fractured, and we'll have to set it in a cast, and you'll be in a wheelchair for about six to eight weeks, " Dr. Sandoval finished. "After we finish there, the next step for you is to go with Detective Benson to the precinct and be interviewed, give a statement."
"Okay, I finished the statement," Casey said, pushing the notebook towards me across the table. Looking through it, I saw that multiple pages were filled, some even had diagrams.
"You want to work on IDing him?" I asked. She nodded. "Let's start with his voice, then. Was it deep, high, did he have an accent?"
"A bit of a lisp, deep," the ADA told me. "Not easy to notice, very slight. He also had a slight accent, something maybe Mid-west, like Chicago."
"What did he look like?"
"Short, about 5'7. He was a little overweight, that's how he overpowered me."
Casey, for God's sake, you're only 30; you're so light. How could you possibly feel guilty about this? He was so much bigger than you, you barely stood a chance.
"Can you work with a sketch artist?" I hoped she would be able to get enough detail to catch the perp, to help any of his other victims.
"Yeah, I think."
Suddenly, my phone rang. It was Melinda Warner, the Medical Examiner.
"Olivia? It's Melinda."
"You find anything?"
"I matched the DNA in Casey's rape kit."
"You're kidding me. Who was it?"
"Wilson Tellez. Want his address?"
"Mr. Tellez! NYPD! Open the door!" I yelled, slamming my fist into the metal.
"Crap!" a mid-western-sounding voice yelled, and then the slamming of another door in the back of the house.
I kicked the door in and raced through the house, gun drawn. There was a screen door open, and I sprinted through it, seeing a glimpse of a man. As soon as I was in the yard, he jumped out from nowhere and punched me in the face. I fell to the ground, but got back up and chased him. It didn't take long for me to gain on him, he was about my height and heavier enough to be considered overweight. He probably didn't go through the police academy either--that can really whip a girl into shape. I grabbed him by his shirt and jumped, slamming him face-first into the nearest wall, which happened to be the front of his house. It probably hurt, and it was against protocol, but he deserved it, after hurting my one of my best and only friends.
"Wilson Tellez?" I asked, just to confirm. I already knew it was him--it looked exactly like the sketch of the man Casey had described. The Unabomber, minus the scruffy goatee. Dark hair, black sweatshirt. He must not have changed his clothes.
"Yeah?" he responded, like he didn't know he was about to be arrested.
"You're under arrest for the crime of rape. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can not afford an attorney, one will be provided for you by the state of New York. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?" I have never felt so glad to hear someone arrested in my entire life.
"Yes."
"Okay, let's just make a bargain and get out of here," Adrian O'Connor, Tellez's defense attorney began.
"What do you suggest?" ADA Tracy Kibre, standing in for Casey, asked.
"Mr. Tellez pleads guilty to sexual assault, five years in prison."
"No way," Tracy said. "He cops to first-degree rape, does the full fifteen, and we don't add assault of an officer."
O'Connor hesitated.
"I walk out this door, the offer goes with me," Tracy warned.
"Fine," the defense lawyer said. "We'll take it."
"Are both sides satisfied that the conditioins of the plea bargain have been met?" Judge Lena Petrovski asked.
"Yes, Your Honor," the two lawyers confirmed.
"Good. Mr. Tellez, I hereby sentence you to fifteen years in a maximum security prison."
"Casey, we got him. Full sentence for rape," I told her.
"I know," she said, but she didn't seem as satisfied as she should.
"Something wrong?"
"I just wish that all of this never happened," Casey said, looking at me, and I could see the pain in her eyes.
"I know. We all do. But you're going to get over this. I know you. You'll bounce back," I told her.
"Yeah. You're right," she said. "I will heal. This won't take over my life. I will beat it!" And I knew, with those words, that she would.