"'Roger Moll' is John Clancy, he's one of our employees," Evan Beck, a man in his late 40s and wearing it as well as the black designer suit he currently had on, the president of SafeTCorp, told the detectives. "Why are you trying to identify him?"
"How about you go first and explain what exactly it is your company does?" Elliot returned.
"In short, bodyguards," he answered.
"That's it?" Munch asked as he looked around the lobby of the building and noticed it was barren except for a front desk, two chairs, two potted plants in the corners and some questionable artwork on the walls.
"Follow me." Beck led the detectives through one door, down a hall, through another door, down another hall, and led them to a room full of computers and people working at them.
"As the world progresses, so does the bodyguard business, it's not like the old days where you just hired some thug bigger than you to jump in front of a gun or knife," Beck explained. "We subject our employees to 10 months of intense training for this job, to go anywhere in the world in a moment's notice, whole new identity, face any one of a hundred potential threats."
"For who?" Olivia asked.
"Anybody who can afford the $100,000 retainer."
Olivia did a combination whistle and pained exhale.
"Excuse me if I'm cynical," Munch said.
"Why should today be any different?" Fin replied.
"If somebody really believes their life is in enough danger, they generally find a way to come up with the retainer," Beck told them. "We're not just talking politicians and rock stars and athletes, our services are open to anybody who needs our services and can afford our services, lawyers, doctors, judges…"
"And all the poorer class working saps can just call 911 and hope and pray that we get there quicker than the 30 minutes it's going to take for their attacker to rape, murder and dismember them and be long gone in the wind before we show up to take pictures of their bloody corpses, because the politicians in this state decided it was a bad idea for everyday people to have lenient access to firearms for their own personal safety, right?" Munch asked.
"You'd be surprised the people who can afford our rates," Beck said, "and we're well worth it. If Kennedy had one of our men assigned to his protection, he would still be alive."
"Assuming they were on the right payroll," Munch responded.
"Ignore him, he's always like this," Fin said.
"So what is all this?" Olivia asked.
"The memory bank of our clientele. We keep a record of everything, the client's whole family, their life history, their associates, any trips they take, where they go, what threats they receive, what red flags pop up, everything is updated regularly."
"How regularly?" Elliot asked.
"If things are uneventful, our bodyguards check in once a week to update, if anything noteworthy occurs, they report in every day," Beck said.
"When was the last time you got an update about Dr. Steven Moll?" Elliot asked.
"I can't answer that."
"Sir, all due respect, he was murdered this morning, your employee is missing, so is Moll's son, and besides there's no such thing as bodyguard/client privilege," Elliot said.
That announcement stopped the company president dead in his tracks.
"My God," he said in shock.
"So let's try this again, when was the last time Clancy checked in?" Olivia asked.
"Five days ago, when he did there was nothing to report," Beck told them as he motioned for them to follow him to his office. "What happened?"
"That's what we're trying to find out," Elliot said, "so just to be clear, it was your idea that John pass himself off as Steven's brother?"
"Yes, that's how we work, we slide our bodyguards into our client's everyday life as a family member, housekeeper, somebody whose sudden appearance is reasonably explained without drawing particular attention. Our clients are already a target, an obvious bodyguard would stick out like a sore thumb, but this way the people threatening our clients either don't pay attention to an extended family member or just think they have another unsuspecting sitting duck to contend with, it works."
"Why was John assigned to the Moll family for so long?" Olivia asked.
"It's standard protocol that a bodyguard is assigned to each case up to five years if necessary."
"Why so long?" Elliot asked as they reached Beck's office and saw it was furnished better than the D.A.'s office.
"For every stalker that our men help get locked up, there're 20 more where they came from, depending on the person there's no shortage of sociopaths targeting them," Beck answered as he shut the door behind them and motioned for the detectives to sit down. "Steven Moll stressed his concerns for his son's safety, asked if we could make arrangements to have somebody assigned to them until David was 18."
"How credible were the threats?" Olivia asked.
"In the four years John lived with Steven and his son, he personally apprehended nine, three of them chucked bricks through the front window, one of them was two inches from David's head. The last one before we assigned John to the case, sent emails to Steven's home computer threatening to rape and mutilate David, and he was only 8 years old."
"Catch that one?"
"Yeah, got a sympathetic judge, he's doing 10 years," Beck answered.
"Did David know Clancy wasn't his dad's brother?"
"No, you know how it is, one slip and the whole cover's blown, it's just easier for an 8 year old to believe the guy who's moving in is his real uncle," Beck said.
"All of this because some experimental cancer drugs didn't work?" Elliot asked.
"It doesn't matter why somebody's targeted," Beck told the detectives. "The way these bastards' minds operate, all somebody has to do is smile at some of them, suddenly they're going to spend the rest of their life looking over their shoulder. Sometimes not even that much, you remember that woman shot by an obsessed fan who watched her on TV every day, she never even met him."
"How common are those in your business?" Olivia asked.
"More than you think," he answered. "People don't need protection from weapons, they need protection from every other son of a bitch walking the streets. In the hands of the right psycho, anything can be a deadly weapon."
"Guns are still a favorite for many though," Elliot commented.
"So is anything sharp and pointy," Beck responded. "We've lost a few men in this line of work, the last one got his carotid artery severed when he threw himself in front of a client who was face to face with a stalker who pulled out a broken shard from a vodka bottle."
Olivia sat still in her seat but still slightly cringed at that comment.
"But you…you don't think John's responsible for Steven's death," Beck looked like he couldn't even comprehend such an idea.
"What we know is that Steven was killed this morning, after that happened, John packed up all his stuff, went to the school, picked up David, and nobody has seen either of them since," Elliot said. "Your bodyguards carry guns?"
"Of course."
"Gun's missing, so's the shell casing," Elliot said.
"If something happened and somebody else came in and killed Steven, where would John take David?" Olivia asked.
"Here," Beck answered. "That was always the plan, if anything happened to the doctor, his son would be brought here until we could assess the situation."
"Well it took us 20 minutes to get here," Elliot told Beck, "and John's been in the wind for over 2 hours. Something tells me he's not coming in."
"My God…I just can't believe this," Beck said.
"Well we need to find him so we can clear up what did happen," Olivia said.
Beck stood up and said, "I'll see what our techs can find out."
"About what?" Elliot asked, "That car you issued him is so old it doesn't have GPS, you can't track it."
"We don't need it, we put our own tracking devices on the cars, that way nobody else can hack the information," Beck explained.
"Does Steven have a cell phone?" Olivia asked.
"Of course."
"See if you can pick up where it is," Elliot said, "though if this guy's as smart as he's supposed to be, he probably ditched it somewhere along with the gun."
"And if you want to save yourself the trouble of a subpoena and a personal visit from the ADA, we'll be needing all the files you have on Clancy for our own investigation," Munch added.
"SafeTCorp can't get a hit on Clancy's cell phone activity, he deactivated the tracking device on the car, there is no telling where this guy is," Elliot explained to Cragen.
"I honestly don't know if we're supposed to be relieved these two weren't sleeping together or not," Olivia said.
"Do we know that for fact?" Munch asked.
"Where the DNA on the sheets was concerned anyway," Fin said.
"But why would a bodyguard kill the man he's being paid to protect?" Cragen asked.
"Maybe somebody got to him, offered him more money to whack the doc," Elliot guessed.
"And take the kid?" Cragen asked.
"David was targeted in several of the threats made to the doctor," Olivia held up a stack of paper, "these are all records of the threats made against both of them while Clancy was assigned to them."
"Anything that matches with what happened?" Don asked her.
"A lot of 'I'm going to slice you up', a lot of 'I'm going to destroy your child and force you to watch', nothing about 'I'm going to shoot you in the back of the head', yet," she replied.
"Where're the headshrinkers that are supposed to be helping us get a line on this guy's psyche?" Munch asked.
"Here they come now," Fin said.
The detectives looked and saw Skoda and Huang coming their way.
"Thanks for coming, guys," Cragen said, "you wouldn't believe how crazy things are right now."
"You weren't very clear on the phone, what exactly is going on?" Skoda asked.
Cragen gestured to two large stacks of folders on a vacant table and told the two psychiatrists, "I need you to get a reading on the guy in these reports. We think he executed the man he was assigned to be a bodyguard for, and kidnapped his 12 year old son, and we are scrambling to figure out where he could've taken the kid and what he plans to do with him."
"When did this happen?" George asked.
"Dad was shot this morning, the kid was taken from his school when everybody got out," Elliot answered.
"We'll do what we can," he said.
"This guy's been trained to move under the radar, he's not going to risk being picked up on a security camera in an airport, a train station, you name it," Elliot said, "so wherever he's taking the kid it has to be within driving range."
"That's not saying much," Fin said, "that guy Beck said they' guards are ordered to keep their gas tanks full every day incase they have to move out ASAP."
"Still, sooner or later he has to pop up on some toll booth cam, red light cam, somewhere," Cragen said, "everybody from here to New Jersey has been put on alert and issued pictures of John Clancy and David Moll. He's been trained to kill so everybody is being advised not to approach him."
"Won't stop a bunch of idiots who want to be a damn hero," Munch spoke up.
"We're not going to the press with it though," Cragen said.
"Why not?" Skoda asked.
"Too much of a security risk, this guy's been trained in a dozen different ways to kill somebody, if David is still alive, we don't need this guy feeling the heat and deciding to kill him anyway for the hell of it," Cragen explained. "If he was already in the process of kidnapping the kid, that makes the dad's death Murder 1, he's already facing the needle, they can't kill him anymore for 2 victims than 1."
Cragen left his office to stretch his legs and get another cup of coffee, and on the way saw Emil and George still at the table, each looking through different files, and they seemed to be disagreeing on something, persistently.
"Something the matter?" he asked as he approached them.
The two psychiatrists looked at the captain and George took the diplomatic approach and said, "Just some professional differences."
"Not enough that I'd worry about it compromising our analysis though," Skoda added.
"Got anything that we can use?" Cragen asked.
Huang shook his head and closed a folder. "I'm not seeing anything that could answer why he'd kill Steven Moll, but if he did take David, in his own mind there has to be a good reason for it."
"Don't criminals always think so?"
"Captain, the background checks potential employees are subjected to at this company go beyond anything I've seen short of joining the FBI. They spend nearly a year being prepped for this job, they're subjected to mental evaluation every month, drug tests, they take a brain scan of everybody who signs up, and they do additional scans every year these people are on the job." George picked up a copy of an MRI and showed Cragen. "If John Clancy did foster any pedophiliac tendencies, there would be some inclination visible in this scan, but as you can see, his brain looks just like every other normal person's."
"Actually I don't see a lot of people's brains, but I'll take your word for it," Cragen replied. "Emil, you agree with this?"
Skoda nodded, "This isn't what you'd call a 'bad' brain, it's atypical of any murderer or rapist I've ever seen get scanned, there's no damage, no concussions, no tumors, so there's nothing here that could be impairing his ability to appreciate his actions or his impulse control. If he did do what you say he did, he knew full well what he was doing and what more why he did it."
"All of which doesn't do us any good unless we can figure out where they are and if the kid's alright," Don told him.
"Did you know he was adopted?" Skoda asked.
"What?" Cragen wasn't sure what that had to do with anything.
"It's in his file, his birth mother was an unwed teenager, he was adopted at 1 year old, his adopted mother was a cop, adopted father was a repairman."
"Anything in there about his birth mother's history?" Cragen asked, "Any chance this is one of those nature/nurture disputes gone wrong?"
"No record of family mental illness, no record of anybody in the family being arrested, and last I checked it wasn't mental disease or a felony to be a pregnant 16 year old," Skoda said. "Everywhere you look he comes up clean."
"He's divorced," Huang said.
"What?" Cragen wasn't sure why, but that one struck him as a possible angle.
"The agency keeps track of everybody involved with their employees…did you know it's actually SafeTCorp's protocol none of their bodyguards can be married at the time of their employment?"
"Isn't that illegal?" Cragen asked.
"There're no regulations against the people doing clerical work and updating the compute records, it's only the bodyguards themselves that can't be involved with spouses. Independent companies write their own policies, it may bend the laws of discrimination but who's going to stop it?" Huang asked, "Especially if it proves effective."
"Remember that movie 'The Andromeda Strain'?" Skoda asked Cragen, "Think back, the hypothesis that unmarried men are better candidates to make crucial choices in times of crisis. And here's a company where you could spend 5 years posing as the member of some other family, maybe it's not justifiable but it's definitely understandable."
"What about his wife?" Cragen asked Huang.
"Ex-wife…they divorced 3 years before he signed up with the company, no children."
"Does it say why they divorced?"
"No."
"How long were they married?" Skoda asked.
"8 years," Huang answered.
"8 years and no kids?" Skoda said. "Either they had some medical help there…"
"Or his little swimmers just weren't up to snuff, maybe that's why they divorced," Cragen said, and added cynically, "maybe that's why he went nuts and kidnapped the kid he was assigned to protect, he was a surrogate for the kid Clancy could never have, is that what you're trying to say?"
"Not exactly but it is one theory," Skoda replied.
"Oh that's just great, that's beautiful," Cragen dryly commented. "So what do we do, find the address for his ex and stake out the house and see if he comes in the door saying 'It's a boy, let's get back together'?"
Emil slowly moved his chair back and stood up and looked across the table and stared Cragen dead in the eye.
"I understand you're under a lot of pressure to find this boy and solve this case, and I understand how critical it is to find a missing child in the first 48 hours, and I can also appreciate how maddening this is for you, but you called us here as a professional courtesy to help you find this guy, and to do that we have to work every angle possible in our field, and if you don't like it, then shut up and let us do our job."
George remained seated at the table, not saying a word, his eyes widened in surprise at the scene before him, and despite his attempt to maintain a straight face as he went back to his work, anybody passing by would've noticed the lines around his mouth as an unmistakable yet futile attempt to suppress an amused smile. Don just stood there for a minute with a dumbstruck look on his face, not able to think of a single word to say in response.
Casey Novak just happened to be dropping by the SVU squad room to deliver a search warrant on an unrelated case when she got caught up in the ongoing conversation about the case.
"Wait, wait," she said after getting three earfuls of it and still trying to make some sense of it all, "let me get this straight, you're saying the government bodyguard killed Dr. Quest and kidnapped Jonny?"
"And here I thought I was the only one old enough to remember that cartoon," Munch said, "yes, Counselor, that's the long and short of it."
"Okay, anybody got a motive we can go on?" she asked.
"Greed's always a favorite, maybe Dr. Zin put in the highest bid for the boy's head," Munch commented.
"We've been combing through all the reported threats the doctor accumulated over the years," Olivia said, "at least half of them are directly aimed at David."
"The ratio we've got so far is 25% threats against the doctor's life and limb, 25% against the boy's, and the other half against both of them at once," Munch pointed out.
"What do the bodyguard's finances look like?" Casey asked.
"Well there's a reason this job is more demanding than the army, it pays a better salary and pension," Elliot held up a report, "John Clancy has a five figure paycheck directly deposited into his bank account every month."
"How is that possible?" Casey asked.
"Well it's $100,000 just to get in the door, then you're charged based on how many days, weeks or years the bodyguard works for you," Elliot said, "it's a racket, the only people who could afford this protection are people who can afford to move into Fort Knox."
"Yet they're doing very well," Olivia said, "so well that they're threatening legal action against us if we go public with the story of Moll's death or Clancy and David's disappearance."
"Yeah, not that we would anyway because we don't want to push this guy's button and risk him killing the kid, but all the same if word gets out a bodyguard killed his client, the whole company's gonna fold," Elliot added.
"Even if you're raking in over 100K a year, somebody offers you that in one lump sum, it's going to be one hell of a temptation," Fin said.
"These guys are prepped to head anywhere in the world in a moment's notice with fake IDs and passports out the wazoo, he gets a payoff like that, he's out of the country and it's ta-ta John Clancy, hello who the hell ever," Munch pointed out.
"What do we know about this guy?" Casey asked.
"Everything and nothing," Munch answered. "The Captain called in the Dynamic Duo, Skoda and Huang have been reading over everything in Clancy's file for three hours now."
"There's that much on him?"
"Liability, they can't afford to leave any stone unturned," Elliot said.
"So what do they have to say about it?" Casey asked.
"Unfortunately not a whole lot," Huang said as he wandered into the conversation.
"How's it going?" Olivia asked.
Huang managed a small smile that wasn't genuine and told the detectives, "Let's just say that Emil and I don't see things eye to eye on this case."
"Got anything we can work with?" Elliot asked.
"I have a theory as to why he may have taken David," Huang explained.
"Let's hear it," Casey said.
"You're familiar with the phrase 'tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth'? John Clancy was abandoned by his birth mother, adopted, the mother he grew up knowing was a cop, cop parents often beget cop children."
"I know that's right," Elliot commented.
Huang continued, "So I questioned why Clancy chose work as a bodyguard instead of an officer."
"Good question, he would've joined the academy long before now," Olivia said.
"Which it turns out he did, he joined the police academy when he was 21 but he didn't finish training. It's in his report, though no reason was listed as to why he failed to complete training. After that he took on a series of miscellaneous jobs: firearms instructor, 911 dispatcher, truck driver…"
"All of which would've helped prep him for this job in some way," Fin said.
"He got married in his late 20s, after 8 years he and his wife divorced with no children, 3 years later he joins SafeTCorp."
"And spends the next four years pretending to be one of the family," Fin added.
"Playing an uncle, but it sounds like over time he gradually stepped into the role of a father figure instead," Huang said.
"So playing family for so long he started to actually believe it?" Elliot asked.
"It's possible," Huang answered. "With no kids of his own and no siblings when he grew up, this would've been new, uncharted territory for him. SafeTCorp stresses the importance of their guards not becoming personally attached to the people they protect but," he shook his head, "you know how asinine that protocol is."
"Just like when CPS tells foster parents not to get attached to the kids they get, since they'll just be moved to another home eventually," Olivia said.
"And for four years, John Clancy ceased to exist except on paper," Huang said. "He was Roger Moll. I think over time reality started to drift away from him, like that Royal Canadian Mountie who threw his wife off the balcony in the 80s. Everyone who knew him said he got so used to playing undercover roles that he lost touch with reality and believed he was his character."
"Clancy's role was a protective uncle," Olivia replied, "what would prompt him to murder the guy who's supposed to be his brother?"
"Maybe reality started to interfere," Huang suggested. "Or maybe as he took on more paternal responsibilities he felt a transference of roles, suddenly he was the dad, and Steven Moll was in the way."
"So you think he killed Moll and took David to continue playing one big happy family somewhere?" Casey asked. "I thought you said there was no sign of criminal tendencies in his MRI."
"We could be talking about an unspecified delusional disorder, they're very rare, under-studied, often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia," Huang explained, "they're not caused by any underlying physical conditions or substance abuse. Of the psychiatrists who are familiar with it, many believe that the delusion is how the patient copes with trauma or stress."
"'My own mother didn't want me, I failed the police exam, I failed my marriage, I have no children, my identity hasn't been my own for four years, I'm putting my life on the line for a guy who never has time to be with his own kid'," Olivia said, "that would give anybody stress through the roof."
"If he does have this disorder, he will know that anybody else will find his behavior and belief erratic, but it makes sense to him, in a fit of irony the delusion is what he believes is keeping him grounded to reality," Huang told them.
"And Skoda doesn't see it this way?" Casey asked.
Huang rolled his eyes to look towards the ceiling for a few seconds as he chose his words carefully, "He believes that that's too romanticized of a motive here, he thinks the motive for the kidnapping is something that actually is grounded in reality."
"In either case, would he hurt the boy?" Casey asked him.
"I can't answer that," Huang told her, "we both know many times abusers don't believe that what they do is harmful to children."
"Pedophiles don't think they hurt their victims, they think what they're doing is love," Elliot said.
"And that delusion isn't limited to just sexual abuse, how many times have we seen parents who beat their children because they honestly believed it was in their best interest?"
"So now what do we do?" Elliot asked.
"You know," Olivia mentioned, "Evan Beck was only too happy to hand over his employee's file, but not the one on Dr. Moll himself."
"I guess I'll have to pay SafeTCorp a visit," Casey said. "Maybe I want to see about hiring a bodyguard."