Chapter 10
Elliot woke slowly, dragging himself to consciousness because he knew he absolutely needed to be awake. Something had gone terribly wrong, that he was certain of, although his thoughts were otherwise kind of blurred. The floor was hard underneath him, and his arms felt strange. He was alive at least. The girl must have bashed him on the head, he realized. It throbbed painfully as he struggled to wake enough to open his eyes.
His thoughts grew less muddy. Lynn knew that he knew that she had killed Bartell. She knew he'd have to arrest her for it. She'd gotten the jump on him because he'd let his guard down… Because he'd invited a murderer into his apartment. He could have just arrested her. But he didn't. Why? He asked himself. Because he wanted to chat? Because he was so focused on getting into her head that he'd forgotten to do his job?
But she hadn't killed him. He was hurt, but alive. She'd had the opportunity, and she hadn't killed him. She wasn't really a killer – sure, she'd killed Bartell, but that bastard had tortured her, raped her... By definition she was a killer, but she hadn't killed him – a police detective who had a duty to arrest her, and who was rendered defenseless and at her mercy.
He was sure he'd find himself alone when he finally was able to open his eyes. The girl would have run. She had no reason to hang around. He'd just pick up the phone and call Olivia and everything would be OK.
With an effort, he finally wrenched his eyelids open through sheer will. The light of the overhead fixture dazzled him briefly. He forced his eyes to focus. A dark shape suddenly blocked out the glare. Lynn stood over him, looking down, holding his gun in her hand. Damn.
He tried to roll over so he could stand, but his hands were fixed behind him tightly, cuffed. Damn it, he thought, his own cuffs. With effort, he sat up shakily.
"Lynn -" His voice came out hoarse and he wondered how long he'd been out.
The girl stepped back from him.
"Lynn, what are you doing?"
She didn't reply. He could see fear and confusion in her face. He was confused as well. Why hadn't she run? Why was she still here? If she was going to kill him, why hadn't she already done it?
"Lynn, please. Let me go. This has gone far enough."
She backed up another couple of steps.
"Please, Lynn. None of this is going to help things. But I can help you. Uncuff me."
She sat down on the chair. The gun was in her hand, but not pointed at him. She held it loosely, as if she hadn't ever held a gun before, which, Stabler thought, was quite probably the case. An emotionally disturbed girl, inexperienced with firearms, had him cuffed and at her mercy. It was a scenario where the slightest mistake on either of their parts could become deadly real fast.
He watched her closely, wondering if he'd have an opportunity to take out the girl physically. It would be difficult to launch himself at the girl from his position on the floor, and with his hands bound, it would be nearly impossible to get a hold of the gun. She'd have time to aim and fire in the time it might take for him to reach her. If she was inexperienced with firearms, she might miss, but it was still a tremendous risk. He weighed his options. She had killed before, he reminded himself. He shouldn't take her lightly. Brute force was probably not the way to go in this situation, he decided. Talking was the only way to go. If he could just reach her…
"Lynn?"
She looked down at him.
"We caught the guy who raped you." His voice was soft and quiet.
She blinked. He could see definite surprise in her eyes.
"What?"
"The guy from the diner. We got him. He confessed. He's going to go to prison for what he did to you."
Her surprised look turned to suspicion. "You're lying to me."
He shook his head. "The guy who raped you, his name was Jake McCrady. The other guy was Tommy Cowper. They hit a diner in Brooklyn two nights ago and got caught. They're gonna go away for a long time."
"That other place, did they…" she paused, looking away, "hurt… anybody?"
"No. It was a lucky break - someone got in a call to the police right away and they got there right away - before anyone could get hurt."
"Good. That's good." She fiddled with the gun, her voice low. "Yeah. That's real good."
"Yeah, it is. Sometimes things turn out. I'm sorry about what happened to you. But I'm very glad we could get the guy who did it."
She shrugged.
"I know you care, Lynn" he said.
"Why should I?" she asked, her voice sarcastic.
"Jake McCrady brutalized you."
"So what?"
He blinked. That girl he met in the diner was back – she was cold and hard. "You didn't deserve what he did to you, Lynn."
"So if I'm really this poor little Terri Connor who's been raped and tortured all her life you think one more fuck is really gonna hurt her?"
He swallowed, unsure how to proceed. This was as close as she'd gotten to admitting she was Terri Connor, and that Bartell had been her abuser. "I think," he said carefully, "that you won your freedom from Bartell, and that meant an end to all that shit, Lynn. No more being the slave to someone's sadistic perversions and abuse. Then some lowlife robbing a diner is going to take you back to that place? Yeah, I think it hurt you plenty."
She sat silently for a while, and he watched. Her expression wasn't quite that hard cold one he'd seen in the diner.
"Can you take these cuffs off me, please?" he asked politely.
"I can't do that."
"Come on. You've got the gun. I'm not going anywhere. It's a little bit uncomfortable like this." He wiggled himself even more upright and slid back against the wall for support. He wasn't as young as he used to be, and his back wasn't pleased with the arrangement.
She was silent for a while. He waited, wondering how to best extract himself from this situation. Olivia and the rest of the unit would be sleeping and nobody miss him until the morning. Had any of his neighbors been woken by the scuffle? It was possible. Maybe the police were on the way right now. He wasn't sure if that would be a good thing or not. It might make an already dicey situation worse. It would be best if he could talk her down right here right now. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure where to go next.
"Where's Julia Connor?" she demanded, suddenly, staring hard at him. "Where's my mother?"
Elliot was surprised. There it was – the admission that she was Theresa. It was an opening, and he was going to take it. "I can arrange for you to see her, Terri."
"Where is she?" she repeated, louder.
"She's waiting for you. Let me take you to her. She's wanted to find you for a long time."
She was watching him closely, looking into his eyes, into his soul.
"You're a fucking liar."
"I'm not lying to you, Terri."
"Yeah, you are. I saw the paper - the sob story. Poor child ripped from her mother's arms. Poor mother finally found her kid. You're a liar." She paced back and forth. "You know how I know it?" She leaned over him, glaring down, her eyes staring into the depths of him.
He could see from her eyes that she had him. He shook his head.
"There were no photos of her. No photos of Julia Connor. If you had really found her, there'd have been pictures. She'd have been interviewed on TV. It's all been a trick to get me. I knew it."
"Then why are you here?" Elliot countered. If she'd known it was a lie and had still come, well, that meant something. It meant she wanted help… she wanted to be caught. Or maybe, she just didn't trust herself to believe it was a lie if there was any chance at all that her mother was found.
"Because I'm stupid."
"You're not stupid, Terri. You want to find your mother. That's not stupid, that's normal."
"It's stupid. She's long gone." She lifted the gun and leveled it at him, her eyes hard and cold. "And you're a liar."
"Please calm down, Terri, you don't want to do this."
"I wanted to see my mother, damn it, but you lied – tried to trick me. I never should have come here!"
The gun wavered a bit, but remained pointed in his direction.
"Bastard! " She put her other hand on the gun to steady her grip.
Damn, Elliot thought. He was in the shit now. Huang had warned him about trying to trick the girl. She'd killed before, and she was already on the run for murder. She didn't have much to lose by killing him. But she hadn't killed him before, and she hadn't run when she'd had the chance. She'd stayed. Why? He was thinking frantically.
"Admit it!" she screamed.
"Yes. Yes, I did trick you. I'm sorry, Terri." He looked past the barrel of the gun pointed directly at him, to the scared teenager holding it. She looked enraged, but she also had a strange resigned look. Like someone reconciled to all the shit the world had thrown at them. "We did find your mother, Terri, we did, I swear it to you. But she'd died a few years ago. I'm so sorry. She loved you, Terri. And she never lost hope that you were out there somewhere."
"You're fucking with me."
"No, I swear. She missed you every single day until she died. She just couldn't live with the loss anymore. She died loving you."
The girl lowered the gun, and Elliot breathed a sigh of relief.
She got up and paced some more. Then she grabbed the bottle of whiskey and drank a swig. Her back was turned for a moment, and Elliot wiggled himself over a few inches along the wall toward the telephone. He stopped just as she turned back toward him, slumping against the wall trying to look defeated.
A tear traced down her face. "Why?" she asked. "Why would you do that? Why would you say she was alive? That she was here?"
"I'm sorry. I had to find you."
She swallowed audibly and sat back down. He watched her. She played with the gun idly again.
"Because of what happened to Bartell?"
He nodded. "He was found. We know you did it, Terri." He paused. "And if you ask me, Bartell had it coming. I'm sure you'll get off, but it's my job to bring you in so we can sort things out. Let me go now. Everything's going to be OK. I've got friends in the DA's office. And I know some good defense attorneys who will be chomping at the bit to take your case."
He watched her. She looked like she was thinking hard. That was a good sign. He just wished she'd stop fiddling with the gun.
"Terri, who helped you?"
"Huh?"
"Someone helped you do away with Bartell. Who was it?"
She seemed confused.
He pressed. "Did you have a boyfriend, Terri? Was that who helped you dispose of Bartell?"
She shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Bartell was a big guy, Terri. The grave was pretty deep. That ground was rock hard. It would have been really difficult for you to dig that grave. And I can't believe that you could drag or coerce Bartell that far out into the woods."
She didn't respond.
"I don't believe you forced him out there, killed him and dug the grave by yourself. That's a big job. Someone had to help you. Who dug the grave?"
She stalked back over to the whiskey bottle. He edged closer to the phone, but in a second she was back, fortified by alcohol and adrenalin. In her eyes was something that Elliot read as loathing.
"I can't believe how you tricked me and yet you can still be so stupid," she spat.
It was his turn to be confused. "Huh?"
"You want to know who dug the grave? You really want to know?" She threw the whiskey bottle against the wall where it smashed with a loud noise. Glass shards flew across the room, and the little spirit that had been left in the bottle made a dark wet stain on the carpet that reminded him eerily of blood. Stabler wondered if his neighbors were dialing in a noise complaint if they hadn't already.
"Yeah," he answered her. "I want to know."
She leaned down over him, her face inches from him. Her voice was quiet and measured, almost as if she dared him to not believe her. "Frank dug the grave."
"Bartell? You made him dig his own grave?"
"No, you idiot, he dug my grave." She stepped back and sat down in the chair, weariness on her features.
"Your grave?" Elliot thought about it. It made sense. They'd not found anyone likely to be an accomplice. It was unlikely that Lynn could have arranged the grave and done the killing herself.
"My grave."
She was a victim - had been a victim for a decade. He wondered why he hadn't considered this possibility. It made sense. Had Bartell brought her out there to kill her? Had she saved her own life in those final moments by somehow getting the jump on Bartell? It could happen. She'd gotten the jump on him, an armed police detective, right here in his own apartment.
"He was going to kill you?" he asked.
"He was tired of me. Didn't want me anymore. Couldn't get it up with me anymore." She paced back and forth in front of him, gun swinging. "He had my replacement all lined up - a blond seven-year-old down the street – pretty little Chelsea. He'd put out the word we were going back to the Midwest so it wouldn't look suspicious when he left town. We packed up. Left. He was going to lay low for a week or two out of town and then come back and grab the kid."
Her face showed a strange combination of sadness and anger. The bastard deserves to rot in hell, Elliot thought.
"On the way out, he told me we were going for a hike. To enjoy the scenery before we left the Northeast." She sneered.
"You knew he was going to kill you?"
"I'd felt it. The planning. The way he was looking at me. Like I was some burden to be dealt with. Like he could hardly stand to look at me anymore."
She paced more. "That's why I got the knife. I knew what was coming. I kept it with me, hidden all the time. Waiting."
"So he took you out to the woods. Then what happened?"
"We got close and I saw it - the hole in the ground. Deep and fresh. I knew it was for me. He thought I was stupid. Said something like, 'I wonder what's going on over there.' Like I'm an idiot."
"Do you know how he was going to kill you?"
"He had a knife, too. He thought I'd stand there and let him kill me. Like I let him fuck me and beat me all those years. He liked his little knife; it was the one he used on me back when I was six, so that he could fit his dick inside me. Yeah, he liked his knife, but he sure didn't like mine very much." Her voice choked off.
"I'm sorry." Elliot said simply, horrified at the use of a knife in the rape of a six year old.
"This time I had the knife. And it was a big one. He never expected it. He looked so surprised." She smiled a little. "He didn't think I had the nerve. I wish he hadn't died so fast. I wanted to make it hurt more. Yeah." she added after a pause. "Yeah, I killed him. Do you want to send me to jail now Mister Police Detective?"
"No, I don't. I never wanted you to go to jail, Terri."
"Sure. That's why you couldn't let things go. Why you had to follow me and get in my face and never leave me the hell alone!"
"I was trying to help."
"I told you I didn't want your help! Why couldn't you just fucking listen to me?" Her voice was loud and accusatory.
"That guy in the diner raped you."
"After everything Bartell did to me, you still think that I fucking care?"
"I know you care. It doesn't matter that maybe it wasn't as awful as you experienced with Bartell. Now, Terri, I need you to let me go now. Put down the gun. Unlock me."
She stood up, gun in hand, looking at it with a strange expression.
"Terri, please. Everything is going to be OK. I'll help you. You killed Bartell in self-defense. You've been victimized all your life. No jury in the world is going to convict you even if they try to prosecute, which I think is unlikely. You'll get help. Counseling. Maybe we'll be able to find some of your Mom's family. You won't be alone anymore."
"So you're just going to forget that I hit you and tied you up?"
"Yeah. Sure. Only the two of us will know about that. End this now, Terri."
"I don't believe you. You're a liar. You lied about my mother."
He nodded. "Yeah, and I'm sorry about that. But I'm not lying now, Terri. I swear. Terri, please. It's all out in the open now. You're tired. I'm tired. We'll get this all sorted out, I promise. Just please… let me go now. It's over."
She nodded, resignedly. "You know, you're right."
Somehow he wasn't comforted, seeing the expression on her face.
"It's over." She held the gun up and moved the barrel to point under her own chin.
"Terri, don't."
"I want it to be over. Like you said." She shook her head slowly.
Damn it, he thought, panicked. "I didn't mean it like that. I meant the abuse is over. Having to be on the run is over. You can get a fresh start once we get things cleared up. Terri, please put the gun down."
"Things would have been better if he had killed me."
"You don't mean that, Terri. Please. You don't mean that. You're so strong. You got through all those years of torture. You survived. You deserve to get your life back."
Tears were running down her face, but she was silent – her face grim and resolute.
"And if you hadn't killed him, Terri, if you hadn't done what you did, that little girl in Wildwood - Chelsea - that little girl would be going through all the things you went through. He'd have raped her too, just like he raped you. He'd use the knife on her just like he did with you. You saved her. You did that, Terri! She's alive and well and it's because of you."
Her hands were shaking. The gun was shaking. He hoped to God she didn't pull that trigger.
"You saved her, Terri. You're a hero."
Her eyes were shut and she was shaking her head, crying without releasing the sound from her throat.
"You chose to live once, Terri. If you'd wanted to die, you could have let Bartell kill you in the woods and put you in that grave that he dug for you. But you didn't. You wanted to live. Don't throw that away… Don't let him kill you now."
She opened her eyes and looked at him for a long moment, and then the hand with the gun fell to her side. She stepped backward and sat down heavily on the sofa.
At least she didn't have the gun to her head anymore, he saw, gladly. Instead she held it loosely in her lap. Good. He waited and watched quietly, giving her time to process everything. It was a hell of a load, especially for such a young woman. No wonder her eyes had seemed a lot older than her seventeen years. He only hoped that she'd come to realize that she needed help, and that she'd trust him enough to take it.
His side cramped up suddenly from his awkward position against the wall. He groaned at the unexpected pain, and leaned over to ease the muscle.
At his motion, she got up from the sofa and walked toward him. He couldn't see the gun, didn't know what she had done with it. He froze.
She fished in her pocket and pulled out a key - the handcuff key. She leaned over him so she could reach his wrists and unlock them.
He was free. His muscles protested from the confinement, but he forced himself to stand slowly, leaning on the wall for support, not making any sudden movements. He didn't think she still had the gun on her, but he wasn't taking any chances. Looking around, he finally spotted the gun, left behind on the sofa. Police procedure dictated that he should take her down now - fast and hard. But he didn't care all that much about procedure at this moment.
He rubbed his wrists and adjusted his shoulders, which were stiff from his time in the cuffs. She backed away, watching him. When she reached the far wall, she slid down it to sit on the floor, her knees against her chin, arms wrapped around her legs, watching him. Elliot went over to the sofa, picked up the gun and holstered it safely. Then he picked up the phone. As he dialed, he told her, "It's going to be OK, Terri. Everything is going to be OK." And for the first time this whole case, he believed it.
-Fin-