The following is not directly related to any past or present plotlines on SVU, but is a self-contained story.
Olivia held the rapt attention of her coworkers with her story of an attempt to rescue a kitten she had found lurking behind a vent in her apartment.
"How did it get in the ventilation?" Elliot asked.
"How should I know? Anyway…"
"Wasn't it feral or something? It could have had rabies, you know." Munch interrupted.
"It didn't have rabies. And I couldn't just leave it in there." Olivia leaned back in her chair, recalling the memory.
"I couldn't reach it, but I had some old turkey in the refrigerator I was about to throw out, and I figured..."
The snickering drew Olivia upright in her seat again.
"Don't laugh. It made sense at the time. It wouldn't let me grab it. It was beyond my reach, so I wanted to coax it where I could get it."
"Okay, so after the cat tore off your hand, what did you do with it then?" Elliot asked.
"It absolutely did not bite or scratch me. It was just scared so, you know, I thought I would leave the turkey near the opening, and I could grab it when it got close." Olivia shook her head, embarrassed.
Elliot suddenly felt the presence of someone approaching him, and he looked up to see a large, apple-cheeked woman upon him. She was holding a badly wrapped, padded envelope held together by materials that looked as though they had been used once or twice before.
"Are you Detective Stabler?"
Elliot nodded and the woman handed him the package without giving him anything to sign for it. He was so intrigued by the childlike assembly of shoddy paper and tape, he didn't think of asking the woman who sent her until after she was halfway to the door. He decided it wasn't worth running after her to find out.
"And? So then what?" Elliot prodded, continuing to listen as he fingered the ends of the envelope. It tore open easily and revealed a battered cassette tape. Like the package it came in, the cassette appeared old and used. Elliot fumbled around the back of a drawer to find a cassette player, a nearly obsolete device for a nearly obsolete media.
"I could see it salivating, it was so hungry. So I waited, and it came and got the turkey, but then it turned around and ran off when I lunged for it. I guess I must have scared it, though, because it dropped a big chunk of the meat- about ten feet from my vent opening.
"That's going to smell nice in a day or two." Munch said. "Are you sure it wasn't salivating because it had rabies?"
"For the last time, it didn't have rabies, Munch." Olivia said.
Elliot pushed the cassette tape down into the player with a snap, then held one earphone to the side of his head so that he could simultaneously listen to Olivia and whatever was on the tape. As he waited for the recording to begin, he idly scratched at the interior of the paper package, prying loose something stuck to a piece of the haphazardly placed tape.
"Yeah, so I couldn't leave that meat in there. It took me an hour to find something to tape to the end of my broom, and then to reach back in there and drag it out. I don't know whatever happened to the kitten. Poor thing." Olivia said.
Finn and Munch chuckled appreciatively, but Elliot was now immersed in the recording and didn't notice that Olivia had finished her description of what she had done with her evening.
"All right, what's so fascinating there that you missed the end of my kitten story?" Olivia asked.
Elliot didn't respond or otherwise give any indication that he could hear anything beyond the cassette recording.
Finally, Olivia leaned to him and touched his shoulder.
"Elliot."
He jumped, tearing the earphones away from himself so violently that he nearly pulled the wire all the way out of the audio jack, and started to shakily reaffix it before he gave up and threw the tangle of wires back onto his desk.
"Are you okay? What is it?" Olivia asked.
"Fine. Nothing." Elliot scooped the remnants of the package paper and tape, as well as the tape player and the tape inside it, into a drawer before decisively slamming the drawer shut.
"What was on that tape?" Olivia pressed.
"Just some old music or something. I don't know. It must be a prank. Listen, I'm going to take half a day. I've been meaning to get a few things taken care of. I'll see you guys tomorrow." Elliot spoke quickly and otherwise didn't allow time for any more questions, as he strode out of the shouting range of his co-workers.