Disclaimer: I don't own Law & Order SVU
Title: Desperate
Author: ReadingRed
Chapter Ten: Disbarred
"Elliot this case is going nowhere." Benson moaned.
"Have you tried talking to Tommy again?" Stabler asked leaning back in his desk chair.
"I did yesterday. He hasn't spoken since."
"Oh, sorry 'Liv."
"It's okay, I'm dealing with it. He's come quite a ways I think. He's not that boy we met in the hospital a month ago." Olivia said with a smile.
"What about his drawing? Has he drawn anything else about the case?" Stabler asked.
"No, not since that first…" Benson's sentence broke off in the middle as a memory sprung to the forefront of her mind.
"Where's my cell? El, where's my cell?" Olivia said as she franticly searched her desk. Paper's went sliding to the floor and a picture of Tommy and Elliot's children was knocked over.
"Check your pocket Liv. What's wrong?" Elliot asked, looking slightly stunned at Benson's odd behavior.
"He punched in a number. That first time when he drew a picture of the attack, he took my phone and first he entered 911 and then after I asked him to enter a number that he would call in an emergency he entered a different one. I was going to call it then, but with the picture he drew and then you and the kids coming over and Huang, I totally forgot about it until now." Benson said. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, right where Elliot said it would be. "I saved it" Benson said going through the contacts on her phone. "It's still here. Thank God."
Benson pushed call, and held the phone to her ear. She couldn't breathe, this might be the break they were waiting for and she'd had it all along.
"It's a domestic violence hotline." Benson said.
"Get the address, we'll do now. They might know something about Jill and Tommy" Stabler said.
The ride to the domestic violence hotline's office took much too long in Olivia's opinion.
They entered the building and found the director.
"Do you recognize this woman, or this boy?" Olivia said holding out a picture of Jill, from her and Tommy's apartment, and a picture of Tommy that she had taken the day before.
"Oh God, it's Jill Hoffman. That bastard finally did it" the woman said with tears in her eyes.
"Her husband?" Benson asked, following the woman to a filing cabinet.
"Dan Hoffman. Violent son of a bitch" the woman said handing Jill's file to Benson. "Jill wanted to leave but she had nowhere to go. He isolated her completely, drove all her friends away."
"You place her in a DV shelter?" Benson asked, glancing through the file. It was filled with pictures documenting Jill's abuse. When she got to the ones of Tommy she shut the file.
"Jill stayed in one of our safe houses for three weeks, then she left."
"When she found an apartment in Hell's Kitchen?" Stabler asked.
"No, she went back to her husband in Rye. She couldn't bear to leave her son behind." The woman said with a shake of her head.
"Tommy" Benson said.
"She loved that child more than anything else in this world. Called him her miracle."
"Well, then why didn't Jill take Tommy with her to the safe house?" Stabler asked.
"She wanted to but we couldn't allow it. Jill and Dan were never legally married, she said they'd had a wedding, but he never got a marriage license. When Tommy was born Dan made her sign away her rights. My guess is Dan knew eventually Jill wound leave him and he wanted to make sure Jill had no legal right to take Tommy away from him. It worked; we couldn't let her do it. If she'd brought him here, we'd be accessories to kidnapping."
"So that's it? You couldn't do anything?" Benson asked biting back the anger she felt on behalf of Jill and Tommy.
The woman seemed to since Benson's ill feelings. "Our hands were tied. We told her to fight for legal custody. We even found Jill and pro bono attorney."
"We'll need the name of the attorney, please" Stabler said.
The woman nodded and rushed off leaving Stabler to calm Benson down.
He placed a hand on her back and turned her to face him. There were unshed tears in her eyes.
"That woman could've stopped all this. If she'd only let Jill bring Tommy to the shelter, Jill would still be alive and Tommy wouldn't have to live with the memory of his father beating a raping his mother."
"Liv, we don't know that" Stabler said, pulling Benson into a hug. "Don't blame her. Dan Hoffman tracked Jill and Tommy to New York, they'd changed their names, done everything they could to get away from him, and he still found them. I'm not sure if anywhere would've been safe from Dan Hoffman. Let's just get justice for them now. The only one to blame is Dan Hoffman."
Benson nodded and stepped away from Elliot. He watched Olivia collect herself and by the time the woman came back with the number to the attorney it was as if nothing had ever happened.
"Here's the attorney's name, number, and address" the woman said handing a slip of paper to Benson. Before letting go the woman had one last thing to say. "Please, make sure Dan Hoffman pays for what he did." The woman let go of the paper and Benson nodded.
The Attorney's office wasn't far from the domestic violence hotline center so Benson and Stabler left the car parked there and walked. Three blocks and a coffee later they entered the Law Office of Lane and Mancillas.
Paige Mancillas was a pleasant looking woman with blonde hair and dark brown eyes.
"Mrs. Mancillas, I'm Detective Stabler, and this is my partner Detective Benson. What can you tell us about Jill Hoffman?"
"I'll confirm Jill was my client, but anything else is privileged." Paige said, going behind her desk and taking a seat. The woman motioned for Benson and Stabler to do the same.
"She hired you to help her protect Tommy. We're trying to do the same thing." Stabler said.
"Where's Tommy now?"
"He's with a foster family, too traumatized to speak" Benson answered before Stabler could. "Tommy saw the attack, he spent the night trying to help Jill as she died."
"You sending him back to his father?" the attorney asked folding her arms across her chest.
"Unless you give us good reasons why we shouldn't" Stabler said trying to sound nonchalant while the voice inside his head was yelling 'no way in hell'.
"Jill married Dan Hoffman six years ago, well he told her they were married. They had a service, but he never got a marriage license, so it wasn't official. The abuse started soon after."
"Did Hoffman ever abuse Tommy" Benson asked. There had been picture of bruises in the file at the Domestic Violence Hotline Center, but most of them looked like normal childhood bumps and scrapes.
"Not that we could prove. Jill said it happened and I believe her, but the evidence she was able to collect was flimsy at best. He terrorized him psychologically. Jill knew it was only a matter of time before Hoffman turned his rage against his son, and beat him the way he would beat her."
"Any official complaints of abuse?" Stabler asked.
"Against Dan Hoffman? Respected member of the community? She thought no one would believe her." The attorney said with a scoff.
"You did" Benson argued.
"I know the signs. Jill and Tommy Hoffman were defiantly abused."
"So what was your plan?" Stabler asked.
"File for emergency custody. It was a long shot even with a good judge." Paige said with a shake of her head.
"You knew she'd lose." Benson voiced her realization out loud. "You told Jill to take Tommy didn't you?"
"I'm an officer of the court. If I abetted my client in the commission of a felony, I'd be disbarred." The attorney said in all seriousness. Benson and Stabler both knew she was lying though there was no way to prove it. What good would it do anyway? Putting the one person who really tried to help Jill Hoffman in jail would be wrong. Benson and Stabler left the office wishing only that Paige and Jill's plan would've worked.