7. Therefore as a Stranger
At the same time that Elliot was waiting anxiously in a hotel lobby across town, Munch was strolling up to a much more familiar building, smiling genially at a doe eyed 20-something who held the door open for him. The elevator in Brian and Olivia's apartment building was almost comically slow, but for once John Munch didn't mind. He needed the extra time. To think, and to worry.
It wasn't surprising that Elliot would have his suspicions about Cassidy - he'd always been leery of any man Olivia deigned to date, and three years apart had apparently changed nothing. No, Elliot's reaction wasn't too far out of the norm. It was the fact that Munch himself was starting to have doubts that was worrisome.
The idea that Cassidy might have something to do with Olivia's death shouldn't have seemed so impossible. After years as a detective, he'd seen too much strangeness to dismiss anything out of hand. Munch believed in a great many things that others deemed implausible, from aliens to government conspiracies to Roswell. He'd see mothers kill their children, children kill their playmates, men sobbing over the corpses of their wives that they'd butchered only moments before. No, there were few things in heaven and earth not dreamt of in his philosophy nowadays. But somehow the idea that Cassidy, the rookie detective with the good natured smile and the sympathetic gaze could ever do something truly terrible - well, the craziest conspiracy theory was downright probable in comparison.
But no, he corrected himself. Cassidy was no rookie anymore, he hadn't been for over a decade. His sunny innocence had become a honed wariness, his choirboy good looks fading into something hardened and more weathered. It had been fourteen years now since they'd worked together, long enough for each cell in the human body to replace itself twice, but first impressions were somehow hard to shake. It was easy to go day after day seeing only what you expected to see, until one day you blinked and found you were staring at a stranger.
He felt an odd pang of guilt that he hadn't done a better job of keeping in touch. He'd been closer to a mentor than a partner during Cassidy's time at SVU, and Cassidy was the kind of guy who'd needed a mentor back then, all too inclined to throw himself wholeheartedly into everything he did, especially his mistakes. They'd had lunch every couple weeks for a while after he left, but that had stopped soon enough. And that only made sense. It was human nature for even the closest of people to drift apart - Elliot and Olivia were prime examples of that.
He finally found himself at Cassidy's front door, and he knocked with only the barest hint of hesitation. There was a clattering noise from inside, followed by the sound of footsteps, and the light disappeared from the peephole.
Munch sighed and crossed his arms as the door opened.
"Hey." Cassidy stared out at him, his hair rumpled, hands covered in dust. "What are you doing here?"
"What, a guy can't come by to check how you're doing?" Without waiting for an invitation, he wandered into the apartment, which bore unmistakable signs of packing, cardboard boxes scattered about, nails jutting emptily from the walls where pictures once hung. Munch frowned. "Going somewhere?"
"Moving. Can't stay here after what happened."
"You could have mentioned it to someone," he said gently. "You didn't have to do this on your own."
Cassidy threw another shirt into the suitcase with a little more force than necessary. "Yeah, I did."
Munch watched him toss DVDs haphazardly into boxes for a moment, neither of them speaking. Finally, Cassidy paused and looked up.
"Is that all you came here for? I'm fine. I'm dealing with it. And thanks for stopping by, but I can't say I'm much fun to be around right now."
"Like I said, if you need anything..."
"Got it."
Munch paused for a moment before continuing. "I also had a couple questions for you. Just hoping you could clear some things up."
"Okay, shoot."
"When you were undercover with Andre LaRouche, did you ever have to throw anyone out for getting too rough with the girls?"
It could have been nothing, but Cassidy seemed to tense a little at the question, hesitate a fraction of a second too long.
"Sure, lots of times. Guys who visit prostitutes aren't usually the cream of the crop."
"Any of them stand out in particular?"
"Not really. Why?"
And as a friend, that should have been enough. A plausible denial, Cassidy looking back at him with exactly the right mix of annoyance and curiosity. But as a detective...
"I talked to your old supervisor at the courthouse," he lied abruptly. "He told me you volunteered for an extra shift, but your message to Olivia made it sound like it wasn't your choice."
The answer came immediately. "My asshole supervisor doesn't know what 'volunteer' even means. You don't step up to cover shifts when he needs it, he'll give you shit for weeks. Look, if I knew what was going to happen, I would have told him no. But it was just lunch. Olivia used to cancel all the time. I'm sorry for what happened, believe me. If I'd had any idea... but I didn't. So why don't you tell me what you're really here for?"
"It's just that Lewis has good timing, doesn't he? Each time he strikes, he hits at a time where there's no one to miss Olivia when she disappears."
"What, and you're blaming me? Why not Cragen too? Didn't he give her two days off right after the trial? You really think I would hurt her?"
There was a pause. "My gut says you'd be the last person to ever hurt her," Munch said slowly. "You were always crazy for her, right from the start. I still remember how you used to rush through your paperwork just to finish early and watch her do hers. The whole squad thought you were hopeless."
Cassidy finally looked away then, his mask of impassivity slipping for a fraction of a second. But what lay beneath was not grief or anger but self-loathing, deep and cutting. And suddenly, Munch knew.
"But, of course, working at SVU teaches you over and over again how quickly love turns to hate. You want her, but she barely gives you a second glance and it still hurts, years later. Or you get into a relationship and regret it when find out it's not what you expected. People hurt the ones they love for the worst of reasons."
Cassidy let out a bark of incredulous laughter. "What, you think I sold her out to Lewis because she blew me off fifteen years ago or I don't know how to say we're breaking up? You've lost it."
"No. No, you wouldn't. Not for that. So why, then? Why did you do it?"
"I - do what? I was gone all weekend. You already checked my alibi."
"I defended you when Elliot came in with his accusations. I told him the man I knew would never dream of doing anything to hurt Olivia. But you were involved with this, you helped Lewis somehow. And then you had the gall to stay in her life, betray her twice."
Cassidy stood up, his eyes cold. "Get out," he said flatly. "I had nothing to do with what happened and I can't believe you'd think I would.
Munch didn't move. "When I leave here, I'm going straight back to the squad room. I'm going to open an official investigation, tell the squad I found proof that you knew Lewis and were holding back -"
"I didn't -"
"-and how well do you think your stories, your alibis are going to hold when the NYPD starts digging through every second of your life, every moment you've left unmentioned for the last couple years? Do you really think you'll get away with it?"
Cassidy was silent.
Munch continued, more gently this time. "Look, Brian, maybe it's not as bad as it seems. But you're holding something back and your silence isn't doing you any favors. Come on. Come down to the station with me. There's still time to make things right."
The other man seemed to waver for a moment, his shoulders slackened, his face very young and very old all at once. Finally, he looked up, his expression not quite neutral, his eyes filled with a distinctly cornered look.
"You're forgetting I'm a cop too," he said, walking forward slowly. "And so I know that saying you can make things right is the biggest lie we tell."
He lunged towards him, quicker than Munch could have believed. He had just enough time to see the box cutter clenched in Cassidy's fist before it buried itself deep into his throat. He staggered back, clutching at his neck, falling to the ground. He tried to take a breath, to talk, to scream, but liquid was filling up his lungs, trickling from his mouth, pattering on the hardwood floor.
Cassidy had stumbled back against the wall, looking stunned at his own audacity, his hands clenching on empty air.
"It had to be you, didn't it?" he said numbly. "You had to be the one to come here, to - I'm sorry. God, I didn't mean - I didn't want any of this. For you, for Liv. I'm sorry. You deserved better."
Cassidy bent down and pulled out the knife, sending out a fresh gout of blood against Munch's fingers, though the flow seemed slower now, in whatever case. He reached out with his free hand, clutching weakly at Cassidy's arm, leaving dark red streaks on his shirtsleeve. He tried to speak again but only a bloody froth emerged. Cassidy jerked away quickly, as though he'd been burned.
"I'm sorry," he repeated, and his voice seemed to come from a great distance, filtered through a haze of white noise. The room seemed to be retreating, increasingly obscured by static waves of gray. The pain in his throat seemed to be fading as well. He tried once more to take a breath but the muscles in his chest refused to respond.
It was just as well, perhaps. For the first and last time in his life, John Munch was lost for words.
Full darkness came before he even closed his eyes.
Throughout the course of his long and occasionally odd career, Detective John Munch served under perhaps nine different supervisors, none of whom had ever managed to cure his staunch belief in the benefits of fashionable lateness. But an hour past the start of his shift, he was still failing to answer his phone, and the atmosphere in the squad room grew charged with palpable fear. Fin and Amanda dispatched to his home, while Amaro was told to stay on his own case, a date rape in Queens.
"It's just a precaution, anyway," Cragen said with forced lightheartedness. "He probably got sidetracked arguing with some subway bum about Area 51, and you can bet he'll get an ass reaming when he shows up."
Out loud, Amaro agreed, but privately he couldn't shake the sinking feeling they had walked this road before, shielding the knowledge of disaster deep beneath a layer of denial. Halfway through the drive to interview the bartender, he made a sharp right turn, speeding down a side street towards Olivia's apartment, a half-formed hunch floating in his mind.
The last visit from Olivia's old partner had weighed heavily on his mind the last couple days, and much as Munch denied it, it had clearly been on his as well. Four months ago, finding someone else immune to Cassidy's inexplicable ability to make people like him would have been worth a couple drinks. But he and Amaro had made an uneasy sort of peace in the past couple months, mostly to please Olivia. Once you'd stayed in a guy's home, you owed him at least the appearance of respect, no matter how you felt. The fact that he had ruthlessly upended Amaro's life without warning to score some minor points with a jury was water under the bridge, right? Sure.
But it was a quantum leap from thinking a guy was an asshole to thinking he was a criminal. Maybe Olivia's former partner could make that jump, maybe Elliot Stabler, with the grief in his eyes edging up on madness, could believe Cassidy could betray them this way. But not Amaro. Maybe he had his issues with Cassidy, but he trusted the judgment of the rest of the squad when they told him Cassidy was fundamentally good.
Then again, Barba couldn't stand the guy, and while Rollins had been friendly enough, she'd never liked Cassidy as much as the others. And she was the only other one on the squad who had never known the man before - even Fin had met him a decade ago through Munch. She was the only one not over the moon at the return of SVU's prodigal son, whose vision was unclouded by a the specter of a man fifteen years gone. No, she still watched him with caution, and her instincts were good. If she and Amaro had talked, if they'd bothered discussing Cassidy, what would she have said?
But she'd been distracted by her own problems lately, and beyond that, they'd never had the kind of casual intimacy required to gossip about a colleague's love life, always hot or cold, hostile or concerned. So they'd ignored it, minded their own business. And maybe, just maybe, that had been a mistake.
Cassidy's apartment building was almost eerily quiet as he walked through the halls, no murmur of voices or buzz of appliances to accompany the echoes of his footsteps on the floor. It occurred to him that his presence here was the result of an unspeakably poor decision. At best, he was wasting his time, shirking a case that deserved his time and attention. At worst, Munch could have run into trouble doing this exact thing, and now here was Amaro, no backup, no one in the world with a clue where he was. But before he could think better of it, he reached the apartment door.
He paused there, memory hitting him like a physical blow. He'd stood before this door for the first time only months ago, holding a bottle of champagne for Olivia's housewarming party. She'd been happy then, happy as anyone could have expected under the circumstances, anyway. And maybe his instincts had told him from that something was off about Cassidy, maybe he'd mistrusted him from the very start, but he'd tried let it go because Cassidy had made her happy, and Amaro had loved seeing Olivia come into work with light in her eyes instead of just tired determination.
It was easy to believe that if he waited here long enough, Olivia herself would open the door, greet him with her patient half smile. That she would laugh and tell him this was all a misunderstanding, that someone like her could never die, could never slip into the darkness with no one the wiser, leave an emptiness behind that wouldn't seem to fade.
He was tempted to just stand and wait. Instead, he knocked against the door with an open palm, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence. The other hand rested lightly on his gun.
"Hey, Cassidy. It's Amaro. I need to talk to you."
No reply. Not even a shifting from inside indicating someone had heard. And why would there be? It was 10 AM on a Wednesday. Cassidy would be at work, just like everyone else in this place. Just like Amaro should be.
He let out a frustrated breath, almost turning to go. But as he did, there seemed to be a smell in the air, a faint whiff of metal and decay, and another wave of foreboding washed over him, hard enough to rock him on his feet.
He tried the doorknob and was not quite surprised when it turned easily, the door swinging open on its own accord. He went inside.
For a moment, he thought he'd stepped back in time, walked into the crime scene at Olivia's old place again, possessions thrown about haphazardly, smears of blood on the rug. But boxes lay scattered about, a sign of hurried packing rather than meaningless destruction. And in the center of the room a crumpled form lay on the floor, framed in a pool of congealing red.
Amaro drew his gun in a single smooth motion, calling Munch's name, scanning the apartment. But even as he did, even as he bent down to check for a pulse, he knew he was once again far too late.
