Olivia hadn't gotten much of a chance to get to know Hank Voight the last time he came to New York, but she was quickly finding out that the man clearly didn't believe in doing anything the simple way. After they had a chance to warm up a bit in his car, he decided they should forego the coffee, and instead found an upscale bar and grill to stop at; inside it was a strangely immaculate looking place, they got a booth near the back and ordered a couple of barbecue sandwiches with sides of onion rings and fried pickles and some suiting beer for the meal.
"When'd you get in?" Olivia asked as they waited for their order.
"Tonight," Voight answered as he put a thin black case on the table and opened it up, "I came straight from the airport."
"But SVU isn't Missing Persons," Olivia said.
"I know that," he told her with a smug look on his face.
"I'm afraid I don't understand then," Olivia said.
"Know what I don't understand?" Voight reached over and moved back her bangs, "Why you don't get your hair cut, you've got a nice face, it's a shame to let it get concealed by all this."
Olivia drew back and giggled, "Come on, Voight, be serious."
"I am, if you wanted to see me in a joking mood you should've been on the plane with me. I don't like flying, so to pass the time I decided to have some fun at the other passengers' expense with a few remarks of losing pressure."
"You're not serious!" Olivia said.
All Voight said in response was, "If I have to keep getting sent over here on assignment, pretty soon I'm going to be banned from all airlines. Now I mean it, you'd look better with shorter hair, it would definitely take some years off of you."
"Oh, thanks," Olivia cynically remarked.
"You wear the job, kid, I hate to break it to you," Voight told her, "Look at me for a prime example, I've looked like this since I was 30."
"Voight…"
"Hank."
"Hank," Olivia repeated, "What's going on exactly? What's this all about?"
"There's a reason why I'm not taking this case to the proper authorities," Voight told her, "I need somebody I know I can trust helping me work it. This is not an official case, I'm doing this as a favor to a friend. Here, take a look at this."
Voight took a photograph out of the case and put it on the table for Olivia to see. In the photo was a teenage girl with a strong build and a head full of short tan and light red hair.
"This is Jackie Lynch, 19 years old, between you and me, I think she mentally checked out a few years before, but overall she's very put together. She's too old to be classified a runaway, but I don't believe she was kidnapped either," Voight explained, "She grew up in the city, I've known her for most of her life, I've known her grandfather longer than that. She's missing and I'm doing this as a favor to him."
"How long's she been missing?" Olivia asked as she studied the photo.
"About two weeks, nobody has any clue where she went," Hank answered, "All she left behind were a set of frantic parents, and a boyfriend, one Roger Murdock, nice kid, not too bright, she was the brains of that particular outfit."
"What was going on at the time she disappeared?" Olivia wanted to know.
Hank adjusted in his seat as their order was brought to them and placed on the table, "Not a whole lot, in the time leading up to that time, it's a long story. But in short, I think she tried to kill her boyfriend's father."
"What?" Olivia asked.
Hank waved it off, "We'll get to that later, I don't believe it has any vital part of what's going on. She's a good girl, for the most part, she got lucky, she never got into drugs, or alcohol, or boys…well, not sex anyway, hell, as far as I and her grandfather know, she's still a virgin."
"What's he got to do with anything?" Olivia asked.
"Well she was staying with him over the summer when her parents went on vacation, he caught Roger in her bedroom one morning. Now this guy caught his own daughter in bed with a boy about 25 years earlier, so he's past getting excited, but as it turned out, she was in the bed, and he was on the floor in a corner."
"That's unusual," Olivia said.
"She's an unusual girl," Voight told her, "There's always been some kind of a brick wall between her and the rest of the world, nobody's ever been able to get any full answers out of her."
"Not even you?" Olivia asked teasingly.
"Not even Granddad, and he's about the most important person in her life," Hank explained.
"Voight, what happened?" Olivia asked.
"Well, mind you we never got any solid answers out of anybody," Hank told her, "But a few days before she disappeared, Grandpa goes out for the night, Roger comes over for the night, Jackie sends Roger away to run an errand for half an hour, and half an hour later somebody's calling 911 because somebody went over to Roger's house and about beat his father to death and left him bleeding on the living room floor and the door wide open. Now Grandpa still has all his marbles, he does the math, he does the psychology, and the equation he comes up with is that Jackie sent Roger away to give her enough time to go over and beat the crap out of the father. It's no secret that that boy's whole household is the living definition of dysfunctional, but nobody wants to get involved, nobody wants to file any charges."
"Right."
"Now I'm the first guy to step in and do something, but you know how futile it is trying to help somebody who doesn't want to be helped, won't accept help, and is not willing to take that first step."
"Right," Olivia replied, that was a sensation that every cop only knew too well, and too many times it resulted in the wrong people winding up dead.
"Story of the mother's life," Voight said, "I try to help but she doesn't want any part of it. And her boy is too scared to speak up either, even now that he's grown; he's been well trained in the art of 'don't make waves', no matter where you turn somebody's gonna be mad at you for something you do."
Olivia nodded in understanding.
"So anyway, from what we could piece together, she goes over, helps herself in, knocks Daddy Dearest in the head with the living room's card table, knocks him on the floor, then jumps on and off the couch and lands on his ribs, and to throw people off, she did it in a pair of the guy's own boots, which are six sizes larger than her own feet, leaving size 13 tracks all over the house, which mysteriously disappear past the sidewalk right outside the house and by the curb."
"What did Jackie have to say about it?" Olivia asked.
"Nothing, because at the same time the dad's body is being taken out on a stretcher, Grandpa comes home, finds Roger there and not Jackie, in fact she is nowhere to be seen. Next morning, Grandpa gets a call. A friend of his at the hospital reports that Jackie has been brought in, beaten to a pulp and only semi-conscious, which quickly escalates to full consciousness when the doctors try examining her, and she flies into a rage and tries to kill everyone in the room, especially when they try to perform a rape kit on her."
"But you said…"
"She insisted nothing happened, nobody has anything to go on that can suggest otherwise," Voight answered, "So we have to take her at her word."
"And then she just disappears? Just like that?"
"There one night, gone by the next morning, and not a sign of her since."
"So what makes you think she's here?" Olivia asked.
"Well, after she disappeared, I sat Roger down and had a long talk with him," Voight shook his head, "He doesn't know anything, I leave no stone unturned, I scared the hell out of that boy and he still doesn't know anything, he's got too much sense to lie to me. But I keep tabs on him, and one day he gets a postcard from Jackie, no return address, no mention of where she is or what she's doing, just letting him know she's still alive and she'll see him again someday."
"If there was no return address, how do you know it came from New York?" Olivia asked.
Hank dug into the case again and took out the card in question and told her, "Because the postmark on the postcard is clearly marked Manhattan, so if she's not here, you tell me where she is and then we'll all know."
Olivia looked the card over and asked Hank, "Does she know anybody here?"
"Not a soul that anybody back home can think about," Voight shook his head, "Which makes this all the more puzzling. She has no family out here, and she never had a lot of friends, certainly none that moved out this way."
"Did Jackie run away because she was going to be charged for assaulting that man?" Olivia asked him.
Voight took a swig of his beer and said, "Nobody's pressing charges, whatever happened to Dear Old Dad that night, he's decided to claim amnesia, and he's still in the hospital which might lend some credibility to that. He'll be there for a while, but not that long, and I can't see if she was going to hightail it out of Dodge, that she'd leave Roger behind knowing his dad was going to be coming back home."
"How seriously involved are they?" Olivia asked.
"I think boyfriend is a loose term," Voight said, "I think there's more intimacy between the two of us than there is between the two of them."
Olivia choked on a startled laugh at his comment. She sobered up and said, "She's his protector."
"Seems to be," Voight said, "That's why this doesn't make any sense."
"How old is he?"
"Same age she is. He's not retarded you understand, but the family he comes from, it just kind of makes sense he's not…all there, you know? Him being not quite all there is quite different from her mind checking out a few years in the past, she's got it together more than he has, maybe too much if she was able to orchestrate this whole thing."
"How long has she known him?"
"A few months, not very long, long enough to know she doesn't like his father."
"Will she be charged if she comes home?"
"I doubt it," Voight said, "All the same I would like to get a definitive answer out of her on what happened."
"So…" Olivia said, "Where do you think she's hiding out here?"
"Well the detective in me's saying she doesn't know anybody, it's late, it's cold, she can't have much money with her, so I'd suggest the first place we start looking is all the cheap motels in the area. She's not dumb enough to try roughing it for the night in a place like this."
"I still think I should bring the others in on this," Olivia said, "We could cover more ground and…"
Hank shook his head and cut her off, "No, no outsiders. This kid grew up around cops, she knows how to make them, if she smells one within 10 feet, she'll bolt and we'll never catch her. Now she used to trust me, I'm hoping she still does."
"But she doesn't know me," Olivia said, "She won't trust me."
"Yeah, but I do," Voight told her, as if that was all that mattered.
Olivia took a small drink of her beer and asked him, "What'd you have in mind?"
