The door was kicked open and Munch stepped in ahead of Olivia and Elliot and was barking at the people inside, "Out of my way, I'm a sergeant, what the hell is going on around here?"
Toni stood in the middle of three unis and had her arms folded tightly against her chest and she rushed over to John as she said, "Thank God you're here!"
"What the hell is going on here?" Munch asked her.
Toni pointed back to the uniformed men and said, "They're trying to rape me. They told me to take my clothes off!"
"What?" Elliot said in disbelief.
"Ask them where their warrant is because they sure as hell wouldn't show it to me!" Toni said, "Talking about a strip search, looking for something!"
"Oh ho ho," Munch started laughing as he got in the unis' faces, "The press is going to love this one…now as the Sergeant of Manhattan SVU I have to ask, you gentlemen wouldn't be holding a Special Victim under false arrest for the sole purpose of sexually harassing, exploiting and assaulting her, now would you?"
"No sir," one of the cops replied, "We picked her up in connection to a rape that occurred last night."
"What?" Olivia asked.
"Who?" Elliot asked.
"Yeah they 'picked me up' alright," Toni said, "Practically come busting into my house and hauling me out telling me I'm under arrest for raping some guy I never even heard of!" To Munch she added, "First they think I shot Jack McCoy, now they think I raped Mike and three other guys, exactly what does the NYPD have against me? What did I ever do to them?"
"I'm getting another headache," Cragen told Casey.
"Try Alka-Seltzer," she replied, "I hear it works wonders."
"A fourth male victim is raped and we're out of the loop on this one?" Cragen asked Elliot and Olivia.
"If the victims don't report to SVU, how can we be expected to investigate?" Elliot wanted to know, "Instead these three unis straight out of the academy get the call."
"How?" Fin asked.
"Why?" Olivia added.
"I don't know, but nobody in the D.A.'s office had any search warrant signed compelling Toni Keller to submit to a strip search," Casey told them.
"That would explain why they wouldn't show it to Toni," Munch said, "But then the question is where did these knuckleheads come from?"
"And who is this victim?" Olivia asked.
"Whoever he is, I don't know him," Toni said, "And even if I did, they can't pin this on me, I was home last night."
"All night?" Elliot asked.
"Yes," Toni told him, "My car's still smashed to hell."
"There's always a cab," he said.
"I hate taxis," she replied.
"Nobody's accusing you," Munch said.
"The cops did," she said, "And a defense attorney will."
"We'll get to the bottom of that, don't worry," he told her.
"Easy for you to say," she said, "John, my father is coming home today, for God's sake! What am I going to tell him?"
Something hit Olivia and she asked, "Toni, where's Mike?"
"He's…oh God," Toni looked like she'd been hit with a bucket of ice, "I don't know, he was at the house earlier…I don't, I don't know!"
"Alright, calm down," Munch told her, "I'll take you back to the house, you stay there, we'll figure out what the hell's going on."
"I hope so," Toni said, "I don't mind my name being dragged through the mud but it's getting tired." She turned to Elliot and said, "Although I did enjoy that little scene you caused when you threatened to kick that one cop's butt up to his teeth."
"They had no right forcing you to submit to that strip search," he told her.
"Why?" she asked, "Because I'm a woman or because you know me? If it had been a male suspect would you say the same thing?"
"Now is not the time for the lecture on equality of the sexes," John told her, "Come on."
Toni looked back to Elliot and the others and commented, "Gordon Liddy said no judge is going to sign off on a warrant based on an anonymous tip without interrogating the unknown informant first. If there's no warrant to be found, these guys came in without one and are doing this just for the hell of it because they think they can get away with it. You guys better prove them wrong on that one."
"We will," Munch assured her, "Come on."
They pulled up at the Keller house just in time to see Toni's father, Tony Keller, walking up the street with a travel bag in his hand. Toni broke away from Munch and ran over to her father.
"Oh Daddy am I glad to see you," she said as she threw her arms around him, "Something's wrong."
"What is it?" he asked, "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," she said, "But…the car's been totaled."
"What?" he asked, not getting it.
"Come on in, it's a long story," she said to him as the three of them headed up to the front door.
The door opened and the three stepped in and immediately were met with the sight of Mike, who looked very confused at what was going on.
"Mike, are you alright?" Toni asked as she went over to him.
"Who's this?" Tony wanted to know.
Toni looked back to her father, with one hand squeezing Mike's assuredly she said, "This is Mike Kellerman, he was John's old partner in homicide. He…he's been staying here while John works on his case."
"What case?" Tony asked.
Toni looked back to Mike as if trying to figure out what to do, Mike only nodded and told her, "It's alright."
"What happened," Munch stepped in, "Was a few nights ago, somebody attacked Mike, they drugged him and in his compromised state, he crashed his car into yours and knocked both himself and your daughter into the hospital for the night."
Already Munch could see he had Tony's full attention. "Who did it?" he wanted to know.
"That's what we're all trying to find out," Munch said, "We have reason to believe Mike's case is tied to several others, we seem to have a serial rapist in the area targeting redheaded men. Our psychiatrist believes it's a woman."
"And the cops picked me up for it," Toni added, "They thought I did it."
"What!" Tony looked ready to shoot through the roof.
"Nobody in our unit, Mr. Keller," Munch assured him, "Three rookies just in uniform…though I have my suspicions about them."
"Why's that?"
"Well for one thing, when they tried to submit Toni to a strip search, they failed to show a warrant, and nobody in the D.A.'s office has had any such warrant signed."
"Which means they made it up," Toni said.
"Agreed," Munch told her, "But I don't think these guys have a whole brain cell between them, they're not smart enough to come up with a story like this by themselves, they had help."
"Who?" Tony wanted to know.
"That's what I'm going to find out," Munch replied, "But, for the time being, I need my victim in a place I know he's safe, and I need Toni out of sight and trouble as well."
"John," Toni said, "What did I ever do to the police department?"
"Toni, we all know you're not responsible for what's going on," Munch said, "And I'm going to find out who is and nail his ass to the wall."
"Or hers," Toni suggested.
"Hers?" the men asked.
"The rapist is a woman, who's to say the brains behind my arrest wasn't also? Take the focus off one woman with another, who's the wiser? After all," she added bitterly, "I'm sure if you ask the right people they'll agree that we all just kind of look alike."
"We checked out officers Ramirez, Harris, and Bronson," Elliot said in the squad room as he pinned the pictures of the three unis up on the board, "They're all legitimate at the 1-9 precinct, just out of the academy. So far their records are clean, no complaints, charges, or lawsuits against them, which of course doesn't mean anything."
"Of course not," Olivia scoffed, "We know how that game goes, they cover each other's asses all the way."
"Now, since you're the one with the elbow grease," Elliot said to Cragen, "Did you manage to get a word in with their superior?"
"Don't be a smartass, Elliot," he warned him, "Yes I talked to their captain, he doesn't know anything about the case, not about Toni, or this unknown victim, none of it."
"They really are rookies," Fin commented, "They don't know how to lie right."
"But that means Toni's right," Munch said, "And that means somebody put them up to it, so let's think about this, who has enough muscle to coerce cops into something? And up front we can exclude the Mafia because I doubt they have any interest in our victims."
"What's all this about a strip search?" Cragen wanted to know.
"Harris claims that their vic was able to identify Toni due to a mark on her body," Elliot explained.
"Well she doesn't have any tattoos, and no birthmarks," Munch said, "So what's left to look for?"
"If that's the case, then they have the wrong woman, which we already know," Elliot said.
"We're going in circles here," Cragen said, "What the hell is going on?"
"I don't know," Fin replied, "But here's what I know, if Toni's not our perp then that means new vic or no new vic, we still have a serial rapist on the loose who is at this time sizing up her next guy. How do you warn against something like this? It's not like we can broadcast 'all guys with red hair take caution'."
"Is there a connection to where the first two vics were dumped?" Cragen asked.
"Only that they were done within a 2 mile radius of each other, that's not much to go on," Munch said.
"They're all young," Olivia said, "Maybe our perp picks guys who frequent the night clubs, or bars."
Fin looked to Cragen and said, "This is turning into a witch hunt."
"Go back over the victims' statements, see what they had spent the nights of their attacks doing," Cragen told them.
"Have you found anything in the case yet?" Toni asked John and Fin when she saw them the next day. They were off duty and once again looking over the bar that John apparently had his heart set on.
"We're going over every microscopic detail with a magnifying glass, I still stand by my belief that Mike's case is separate from these other two," Munch told her.
"I still say it's a mistake to buy this place," Fin told him as he picked up a dirty dust rag from the counter, the same way that he would pick up a rat by the tip of its tail so he didn't have to touch it much.
"I don't know," Mike said as he came up to the counter beside Toni, "I kind of like it."
Toni turned to Mike and said, "I heard that the reason this place shut down in the first place was due to bad publicity because several years ago, a pimp who came in here got his brains knocked out with a bowling pin!"
Fin tossed the dust rag over his shoulder and said, "That's it, I'm out of here."
Munch grabbed him by the back of his jacket, "Come on, Fin, this could be the best thing we've done yet as far as our careers go."
"Speak for yourself," Fin said.
"Of course there are a lot of bars in New York so yours has to have a specific reason why people would want to come here," Toni told them, "What's your selling point?"
Munch seemed to already have an answer to that. "This is not a sports bar, people are not going to be coming here to watch basketball games on flat screen TVs suspended from the ceiling. There's not going to be a hundred drunken idiots screaming over the latest game score; this is a bar to come and relax, to find yourself, so to speak, a nice, quiet bar where people can get a drink and be let alone."
"Tell me you didn't use that slogan to sell the Waterfront," Fin said.
"Shut up," Munch replied.
"Well you sold me on it," Toni said, "When do we start building?"
Fin smirked and, looking over at Mike asked him, "So Mike, how're you taking staying with the Kellers?"
"We get along just fine," Toni answered for him, "My dad really likes having him around."
"Yeah I was surprised," Mike said, "Ordinarily I don't think a father would take so kindly to finding a 40 year old man staying with his daughter."
"Well Tony Keller is an exception to most things," Munch told him, "In time you'll probably find that out."
"Mike," Toni turned to him, "Do you remember anything about who attacked you? The cops who busted me said their victim got a good enough look at his attacker's body to see an identifying mark on her, but nobody's telling us what it is. That's why they're trying to get me to do a burlesque number."
Mike shook his head, "I'm sorry, I just can't remember."
"Don't worry about it," Munch told him, "We're going to get to the bottom of this whole thing, I don't know who these Keystone Kops are but they're not going to get away with this. This alleged case of theirs is nonexistent and we're going to prove it."
"What the hell do you mean you're considering their case?" Toni asked Cragen the next night when they were called into his office.
"Elliot and Olivia got to speak with this new 'victim', one Richard Bierce, aged 25, another redhead who said he was raped by a woman," Cragen said, "There are certain details in his account that match with Mike's case and the other two victims. Details that were not released to the public when the news stories broke."
"What kind of details?" Toni asked.
Cragen didn't answer her and only said, "Elliot."
Elliot took out folded legal pad sheets and read from it, "Bierce: 'I was coming home from work and decided to stop in a bar and have a drink first. When I left I started to feel sick and I must've blacked out. I woke up in a dimly lit room and saw her on top of me. She looked about 20, maybe older, average height, average size, short brown, reddish hair, I tried to get up but she pushed me back against the bed. My clothes were gone, she started to take hers off. She had a mark on her right breast, I blacked out again after that. I came to and she was gone, I was on the floor in the room. My whole body hurt, I knew that I'd been penetrated. I got my clothes on and got the hell out. I found out I was in a motel room a couple of blocks from the hospital'. He didn't go to the hospital because he was too embarrassed so we can't be sure that like the other cases there was no trace evidence left that is long gone by now."
"But he's the only guy who claims to have woken up to see his attacker," Olivia said, "That's the part that doesn't make any sense."
"Regardless," Cragen added, "Bierce picked Toni's picture out of a dozen similar looking women, he seems convinced it's you. And this time a judge has signed off on a warrant to conduct a strip search, and they are going to take photographs."
"How the hell can you let them do this?" Toni asked, "I never raped anybody and all the time that's wasted looking at me is going to give the real attacker plenty of time to either get away, or find her new victim."
"Toni, I'm sorry, but my hands are tied on this," Cragen said.
"Bierce said that the woman who raped him had a mark on her breast," Elliot said, "But he couldn't determine what it was, a birthmark, a mole, a scar…but whatever it is, if you go through with this, once they see you don't have a mark, their case is going to fall apart."
Toni laughed bitterly and replied, "Well it's just that simple is it? And suppose I do, then that makes me look guilty, doesn't it?"
Olivia glanced over at Elliot and it was obvious they hadn't thought about that.
"Do you?" Olivia asked.
"It's nobody's damn business," she said, and looking at Cragen she shook her head and said only, "You…kiss me."
"What?" Cragen asked.
"I said kiss me, when I'm being fucked over I like to be kissed," she said.
"Toni," Elliot started to say, but she cut him off.
"You believe these fruit bats but you won't believe me, when did we cross over into the Twilight Zone?" she asked.
"We have to check it out," Cragen said, "If Bierce was raped, and it's the same person who's responsible for the other attacks, we have to know. I'm just giving you a heads up."
Toni's lips drew back in a sneer and she started to show her teeth.
"We don't like it either, Toni, but at Special Victims we have a motto: we don't pick the vic."
Toni snarled as she replied, "The hell you don't!" and she stormed out of his office and slammed the door behind her. Olivia immediately took off after her and disappeared out of the office.
"You don't seriously believe Toni is responsible, do you?" Munch asked, the first thing he'd said since they entered Cragen's office.
"John, she has to be eliminated before we can look elsewhere," Cragen said.
"We're already gone back and re-interviewed every woman that the other victims knew; in their families, their friends, their coworkers, we can't find any connection. So that means they really are random and they're picked from a distance by their attacker," Elliot said.
Olivia came back into the office and said, "Toni's gone, I couldn't catch her."
"Well she's not driving anywhere, that's a relief," Cragen said.
"So now what do we do?" Olivia asked.
"It's late," Cragen told them, "Everybody go home, get some sleep, we'll start again tomorrow."
"Yeah," Munch murmured as he headed for the door, "If there is a tomorrow."
"What, John?" Cragen asked.
"Nothing."
