They stopped at their own assigned room first, Voight unlocked the door, they went in, looked around, listened for any commotion from the neighboring room, then headed back out and went over to room #5.
"Think she's in?" Olivia asked.
The door was locked, of course. Not that Voight was going to let that slow him down. He took a set of lock picks out of his pocket and went to work on the deadbolt.
"I imagine working for you's never boring," Olivia commented.
"You might be right on that," he replied as he got the knob to turn, "Pay dirt."
Olivia took out her gun just incase, as did Hank, he threw the door open and they jumped in with their guns drawn. But there was nobody there.
"Check the bathroom," Hank said as he pocketed his gun, and went over to the bed and went to work in tearing it apart, pulling the mattress off the box springs.
Olivia turned on the light in the bathroom and gave it the once over, "Nobody here."
"Anything that can tell us something?" Voight asked as he got done searching through the bed and started putting it back the way it was.
"What're you doing?" Olivia called from the doorway.
"Just checking," he answered, "You have any idea how many dead bodies turn up in the middle of a motel bed or under it?"
"I try not to think about it too much," she replied as she ducked back into the bathroom.
"You have that luxury?" Hank asked.
"Voight," Olivia came back into the bedroom, "Voight."
"What?"
"Bag," Olivia pointed towards a tote bag on the floor. She knelt down and unzipped it and pulled out a couple changes of clothes and took a whiff of them. She drew back choking and said, "None of these have been washed since she got out here, I'd stake my pension on it."
"That's not so unusual, not for her anyway," Hank told her, "That was one of her parents' pet peeves, she couldn't see any point in getting her clothes washed all the time so she'd wear the same thing for about a week."
"Well it's disgusting," Olivia said as she dropped the clothes back in the bag and re-zipped it.
"You know it and I know it," Hank said, "But they could never get her to accept it. I told you she's a weird one. Course that doesn't make her wrong. You hear that guy wore the same jeans for months and found they weren't anymore germ-ridden than ones worn for two weeks?"
Olivia moved on and over to the wastebasket, which had about two dozen cracker packets in it. "Looks like she's living on these things," she said. Beside the dresser rested half a gallon of purified water and a box of crackers. "Trying to eat cheap it looks like."
"No wonder with how much everything costs out here," Voight said.
"Couple packs of gum on the dresser," Olivia said, "She smoke?"
"I caught her trying to boost a pack of cigarettes from my jacket when she was 10, far as I know she never touched another one after I got done with her," Voight explained, "She chews gum all the time because when she doesn't eat she gets some kind of choking heartburn, been like that for years, nobody ever knew why."
Olivia got to her feet and looked over the contents on the dresser asked him, "Does Jackie have some kind of medical condition?"
"Not when I knew her."
"Well it looks like she's got something she's treating herself for," Olivia pointed out a wide variety of health and hygiene products on top of the dresser, "Q-tips, cotton balls, peroxide, rubbing alcohol, witch hazel, Campho-Phenique, anti-biotic cream, medicated body powder, baby powder, baby…oil…" she stopped and looked at the items on the dresser and said, "Voight," she pointed to the middle of the dresser where a jar of petroleum jelly, a bottle of baby oil, and a container of baby powder were lined up together, "These are things you use on babies."
"Yeah well uh…" Voight made a small sound of embarrassment as he picked up a half empty package of women's pads that had been stuffed under the bed, "She wasn't pregnant, we know that much."
Olivia inhaled and exhaled slowly and sharply, like it had suddenly gotten hard to breathe. She turned around to face him and said to him, "Hank, I don't want to worry you…"
"Then as a cop you should know better than to open a sentence with those words," he told her, "What is it?"
"Uh…you really came out here at a bad time. We've got an open case, the past few weeks half a dozen women have been attacked by the same guy…" Olivia sat down on the edge of the bed before she fell to the floor, going into the details on this was making her feel sick, "He uh…the papers gave him what they thought was a very fitting name given the nature of his crimes."
"Go on," Hank told her, remaining standing and intending to stay that way, regardless of what she told him.
"The papers dubbed him the Baby Rapist, he's got some kind of sick fetish…" she pointed to the jars and tubes on the dresser and explained, "The women he attacks, he follows them home, slips in, restrains them so they can't escape or fight back, he gets off on their fear, he hits them, berates them, reduces them to complete hysteria until all they can do is cry, continuously, like a baby, he uses the petroleum jelly to forcibly lubricate them, the baby oil to smear over their bodies and give them a further sense of being desecrated and when he's finished he coats their lower bodies with the baby powder and gropes them through it."
"And I thought Chicago had all the weirdoes," Voight suddenly felt a sinking sensation to sit down alongside her, "Tell me you've got something to go on."
Olivia shook her head, "We've investigated half a dozen suspects, nothing's turned up."
"Uh huh, so tell me, is that…" Hank pointed towards the objects on the dresser.
"We figure he has to be bringing his own because at every crime scene, the women did have these things on their vanities or in the medicine cabinet, but none of them ever turned up with any foreign prints."
"So the big question is how does this guy operate? How does he think in terms of what he does? What triggers him?"
Olivia shook her head, "I don't know…but one of the women was attacked in her motel room, that's where she'd been living for 3 weeks."
When Voight heard this, the expression on his face changed to one that even scared the hell out of Olivia, for she knew exactly what he was thinking.
The minutes passed by slowly, each one might as well have been an hour. They'd turned out the lights so when Jackie came back she wouldn't know anyone was there. Olivia sat in a chair by the door, even in the dark she could see Voight seated on the bed, rocking his weight back and forth continuously without disturbing the springs one bit. If the situation weren't so serious, she would've thought he looked amusing right now.
"Where do you think she is?" Olivia asked in a low whisper.
Voight shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
"Well wherever she is," Olivia read her watch by the streetlight coming in the window, "I wonder how long she can stay gone?"
Even in the dark she could see that Voight was staring straight at the door, not looking at the door, trying to see past the door, almost boring holes through it to see out into the world outside, as if trying to spot where Jackie was at this very moment.
Through the windows they saw a pair of car headlights flash and they heard a car pull up outside. Olivia turned to see Voight and he had already sprung to his feet and went to the window. He pulled back the curtain and looked out.
"See her?" Olivia asked as she got out of the chair.
"Well, I see somebody getting out of a car," Voight said.
"Think it's Jackie?" Olivia asked as she got up beside him.
"Can't tell," he said as he let go of the curtain, "If it is, that doesn't mean she's necessarily going to come back here right away."
Olivia grabbed him by the arm and said, "What if the manager stops her? And mentions us?"
"Come on," Voight nodded towards the door.
He turned the knob quietly and opened the door and they saw that a couple people were out by the street but weren't looking their way, so they quietly slipped out of the room and let the door relock behind them, and they stepped over towards their own room and waited to see what happened.
"You head over and see what happens," Voight told Olivia, "If it is her she'll try and run, and I'll get her on the retreat."
"How do you know which way she'll go?" Olivia asked.
"Don't worry about that, just do it," he said, "Trust me."
"I hope you're right," she said as she headed out towards the road.
Trying to remain inconspicuous, Olivia headed out towards the couple, and they passed her by entirely and headed up to the motel, and over to room #1. False alarm. Olivia turned to head back when she spotted someone else walking up the road; between the dark and the neon lights it was hard to tell, but the closer she got, Olivia realized it had to be Jackie. She turned and signaled to Voight and saw him disappear somewhere in the darkness. She supposed this was her cue. She nonchalantly walked over to the young woman approaching the motel, and up close and personal she could see it was the girl from the photograph. Jackie Lynch, all of 19 years old, dressed in a pair of men's jeans and a purple muscle shirt and a beat up pair of white sneakers. Not what any sane person would be wearing out in this cold weather in the middle of the night.
"Excuse me," Olivia started to say.
Jackie bolted and ran from her.
"Jackie!"
Olivia ran after her, but neither of them got very far because once Jackie cleared that block, Voight came out of the shadows and grabbed her and restrained her. She struggled until it occurred to her who it was, and then she calmed down enough he could let go of her.
"Hank Voight?" she said, "You scared the hell out of me."
"Believe me, that's completely mutual," Voight told her in a less than amused tone, "Jackie, you've got a lot of explaining to do."
Jackie heard Olivia coming and she tried to get away. Voight grabbed her by the wrist and told her, "It's alright, it's a friend of mine." He forced her to turn around and look at Olivia and he told her, "This is Olivia Benson, she's a cop too."
The young woman looked at Olivia suspiciously and asked, "Can I see a badge?"
"Uh, sure," Olivia took it out for Jackie to see.
"Special Victims, that's sex crimes," Jackie said, "What're you doing here?"
"That's exactly what I want to ask you," Voight told her, "What the hell are you doing out here?"
She tried to play it coy and replied, "I'm 19, I don't need anybody's permission to leave home and go where I want."
"Maybe not, but you've got a lot of people back home worried sick about what the hell happened to you, me included," Hank told her, "And I'm going to get some answers out of you if it's the last thing I do. Now come on," he jerked her by the arm and told her, "We've got a nice little room right next to yours."
"Voight," Olivia could appreciate what Hank had been put through by this girl's sudden disappearance, but all the same, she couldn't help a sudden concern for what he was going to do to her.
He clearly didn't share her concerns and he told her, "Trust me, Olivia, I know what I'm doing."
That's what she was suddenly afraid of.
