After quickly bringing Munch up to speed, they decided that Munch and Finn would do some background investigation into Janine and Bishop Ramey and their strange crusade, while Elliot and Olivia started their own campaign to find people who would argue against Janine's transfer to a mental health facility.
The task immediately became more difficult than expected. More than half of Janine's victims and their families had moved out of state and obviously did not want to be found. Janine's first victim, the most broken of them all, was confined in a mental health facility himself, still recovering even now and unable to help. Another of her victims had killed himself shortly before the rescue.
They finally narrowed the list of potential witnesses to just a couple of the victims, and of those, only one had a current, local address, a young man named Crawford Brown. While Elliot was aware of who he was, they had never spoken to each other and didn't have any contact with each other. Crawford had been the second college student kidnapped by Janine, and had been missing for months before being rescued. Not knowing anything else about him, however, Elliot could nevertheless be fairly sure that Crawford would help them keep Janine in prison. They caught up with him during a break from his job at an unkempt video store that looked like it was on the precipice of going out of business.
Crawford himself seemed like a personification of the store where he worked. He appeared hastily assembled, and with his long hair, bent posture and too-thin frame, he bore little resemblance to the confident, clean-cut college picture that had been distributed when he first went missing.
Crawford lit a cigarette before he was all the way out of the store and, after taking a long drag, looked up at Elliot expectantly.
"So, what do you want, detective?"
"You know who I am?" Elliot asked.
Crawford took another lengthy pull off his cigarette and exhaled luxuriously before answering.
"Yeah, man. I know who you are. What do you want from me?"
"Did you know there's a chance that Janine may be transferred out of prison and sent to a psych hospital?"
"Yeah. Some old fat guy came to see me a couple of days ago. Asked me to support the transfer. I told him to suck it."
Elliot and Olivia exchanged a bemused glance.
"That 'old fat guy' was a Catholic Bishop."
"So what? That don't mean anything to me. I don't believe in God. Not anymore. So what do I care?"
Crawford pulled out another cigarette and lit it from the one he had almost used up.
"The reason you ought to care is because he has a lot of powerful friends, and he may very well succeed in getting that woman transferred out of prison." Olivia said.
"What am I supposed to do about it?"
"You could go with us to the hearing they're going to have and tell them about what she did. You can convince the board that she is exactly where she needs to be." Elliot leaned in to emphasize the importance of what he was saying.
Crawford shifted his eyes away from Elliot's intense stare, and as he answered, the cigarette smoke leaked out with every word.
"You think you know. You don't. You were there, what, a week? You look like you're all better now. Good for you. I was there for months, and I'm never going to be right again. My letter designation was "B" and so I can't even read a sentence now without being reminded. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing that crosses my mind when I go to bed. I can't even have peace when I sleep, because I still have nightmares. I was a sophomore majoring in Political Science. That's all over, too. My nerves are shot; I can't handle school or exams. And after the things they did to me, I'm all messed up, you know? I can't…" Crawford's eyes teared up for the first time and his cheeks reddened from the shame, "I can't even go to the bathroom like a normal person. Jesus."
Crawford massaged his forehead, pushed the water out of his eyes, and the hard exterior reasserted itself around him like a thick, dark cloak as he found a third cigarette and used the second one to light it.
"You're right. What you went through was a million times worse than what I did." Elliot said. "That's why it's so important that you be there. You need to tell these people what you just told us. Tell them what she's capable of, so she never sees the light of day for the rest of her life."
"The one thing that's always comforted me since then is this one thought: I will never have to see her or be in the same room with her ever again. That's my one last piece of comfort I have, and you're asking me to throw that away. I'm sorry. I know you're trying to do the right thing, but I just can't."
Crawford threw his half-finished cigarette down and turned to retreat back into his building.
"I just can't." He repeated once more before he disappeared through the doorway.
Both Elliot and Olivia desperately wanted to say something, but neither could think of anything that wouldn't sound awful. And so they could only watch their witness slip away.
"I hate this." Olivia said, after Crawford had disappeared into the store. "I hate how someone can continue inflicting pain even after they've been put away. You think it's over, and it isn't. It's never over."
"I know." Elliot said.
He paused, continuing to stare at the closed door, deep in thought.
"What is it?" Olivia asked.
Elliot took a long time to answer, and when he did, his voice was flat and detached.
"If you hadn't found me when you did; if I had been trapped there for months, like this poor kid… I don't know. I might have ended up like that. Unable to work at any real job, probably living off disability for the rest of my life." Elliot shuddered at the way his situation could have turned out and the cruel randomness of it all.
"But that didn't happen. We did find you. You're okay now. Try not to think about what could have happened."
Elliot nodded. He didn't want to become too reflective about the situation, not yet. He preferred to take action now and put off having to think about it until later.
