Author's Note: Don't own Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Wish I did. The residuals alone would pay off all my college loans. They're property of Dick Wolf and NBC, all I'm doing is playing with their characters...
Warnings: AU, zomg AU. Adult subjects, child abuse, angst, and unpopular pairings ahoy.
Two days later they find Lizabetta Hauser living in a suburb outside of Buffalo. The house is a typical cookie cutter ranch home; looking at it you'd never guess that the woman living inside shot her husband pointblank in the head as he lay sleeping on the couch …
"Lizabetta Hauser!?" Logan knocks on the door. "NYPD."
The door jerks open swiftly and a woman with over-bleached hair glares out at them. Lizabetta probably was an attractive woman, before prison carved grim lines around her mouth and eyes.
"Come in. I don't want the neighbors to see," She snaps, walking back inside and not even bothering to check to see if they're following her. She looks at Logan, who shrugs, and they follow her into an outdated kitchen with matching harvest gold appliances.
"Now, what do you want?" She looks at them skeptically, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She looks disinclined to offer them any.
"Have you been in contact with Robert Goren?"
"Goren? Agent Goren that freak that put me away," She snorts sourly, pulling out a cigarette and lighting up, blowing the smoke in their faces. "No. Saw him on the news though… his kid's been stolen right? Which is why you're here."
"So it's safe to say you don't like Mr. Goren," Logan asks with a cheeky grin. A grin that Lizabetta looks eager to slap off his face.
"That bastard sent me to prison for fifteen years, told everyone that I was a faggot -- you'll excuse me if I'm not exactly his number one fan," She snarls, turning and storming off into a different room. She returns quickly with her purse, which she slams on the counter top before digging into it. She pulls out a receipt, a business card, and a debit card from her wallet. "Before you even ask, I wasn't in the city that day. Here's a receipt from the gas station in town that I was at the morning Goren's kid disappeared, here's the debit card I used, I'm the only who knows the pin. And here's the card for the place where I work, where I punched in and stayed all day and my boss will vouch for me." She shoves the evidence towards them.
It's pretty good, Alex admits, although someone else could've used the card and the pin number… Lizabetta, however, doesn't match the description of their kidnapper, too tall, wrong race…
"Agent Goren's notes -- there's something about an accomplice…," she asks delicately… knowing Logan he probably would've just asked 'Where's your girlfriend', which would've got their asses booted out the door.
"You mean my 'lover'," Lizabetta says with sour amusement. "Figures the perv would put that in his notes, you should really be looking at him -- he probably kidnapped his own kid…"
"So you've not be in contact with 'High-yoon'," She asks, deliberately mispronouncing the name.
"Hee-yoon," Lizabetta corrects angrily, before looking away sharply. Alex is beginning to think the lady doth protest too much. "We were friends. Just friends, and I haven't seen or heard from her since Goren arrested me. I live alone, ask my neighbors. Now, if you're done, you can let yourselves out."
/
"Well," Ross asks as soon as they enter the squad room.
"Solid alibi," Logan grumbles. "And she says there wasn't any girlfriend, Goren got it wrong. Neighbor says she keeps to herself."
"So we're back to square one?"
"Yes, Captain," Alex sighs, running her fingers through her hair.
"I think it's time you two put this on the back burner; if a new lead pops up, then you can investigate it, but there are other-- cases," The unspoken solvable is understood by all of them, "That need your attention."
He keeps a copy of Matilda Goren's photo in his desk drawer as a reminder… His luck that he pulls a case his first day at Major Case that is pretty much unsolvable. Those cop shows always made it look so easy, everything tied up in a neat package at the end of the hour. Rarely, rarely, were actual cases solved in a day, let alone in an hour.
Not that he's forgotten about the victim in this case: a sweet, innocent little girl who just wanted to go feed the ducks in the park. What must she be thinking now, if she was even capable, which was doubtful. She had to wonder where her parents were, if they'd forgotten about her, if she was ever going to be found… or perhaps she'd adapted. Kids were resilient, doing what was necessary to ensure their survival… There were stories of kids found years later who'd completely blocked out their life pre-kidnapping…
And what of the person behind the abduction? His gut told him that this woman wasn't acting alone, but maybe it was because he couldn't seriously think of a woman doing something so cruel to another woman. Not that it didn't happen, he knew that all to well, but his gut hesitated all the same.
God knew what they were doing to her, what they had done to her… He shivered as he got a pretty good idea.
He hoped she was dead, if they were doing what he thought they were doing…
"Logan, meet your new partner," Ross barks, leading a young, boyish looking woman towards him. "Detective Logan, this is Megan Wheeler. Wheeler this is Mike Logan,"
"Nice to meet you," She smiles shaking his hand. "I heard you caught the Goren kidnapping." She looks at him with sympathy.
"Yeah…," Looking her over he thinks she's way too young to have made detective second grade.
Or maybe he's just too old. Too old for green detectives and missing kids who'll haunt his dreams at night until they're found.
Three weeks after his daughter's kidnapping he returns to work; the world hasn't stopped turning with Matilda's disappearance, there are bills that still need to be paid, a mortgage to pay down, food to be bought. Elizabeth is still too upset to return to work, so someone has to bring the money in-- and to be honest he's grateful for the excuse to the tomb their home has become.
His co-workers tip toe around him, looking at him sympathetically. His students are on their best behavior, looking at him like he's a bomb just waiting to go off. All of this just reinforces how much his life his changed, the gaping hole Matilda left growing wider every minute.
Elizabeth has begun to pull away from him too… wrapped in her own grief and a guilt that he understand but not soothe. For the child she carried for nine months to be stolen right before her eyes… unimaginable. She goes out for walks frequently now, roaming the neighborhood and Central Park, perhaps in the vain hope that Matilda will materialize just as she disappeared…
A lot of couples don't survive this sort of trauma, he knows. They don't have any other children to keep them together, it was just the three of them, and now one of them is gone and they can't even look at each other without remembering what they're missing.
Why are the women in his life always taken from him? His mother by disease, Elizabeth by this tragedy, and Matilda by an abductor for who knows what--
He forces himself not to think about what the monsters could be doing to his daughter now… his imagination alone has a knack for creating the most gruesome outcomes possible, and then there was that case which had provided more than enough nightmare fodder…
Those poor little girls… oh god, please, please, if she's dead please let her have gone quick…
The police would be putting Matilda's case on the back burner soon, if they hadn't already… not that Bobby could blame them. Criminals didn't stop committing crimes just because a little girl went missing…
Cases that back burned eventually became cold cased, though… he didn't want to be still wondering where Matilda was, twenty years from now… he wouldn't be able to stand it…
Perhaps it was time he went back to his first profession… He knew some of his friends from CID had gone FBI, and Declan might help him create a profile--
First, he'd need information… the police won't just give it to him so he'll have to find his own; go through the sex offender registry in their neighborhood and around Central Park, look for any similar disappearances in the tri-state area, perhaps the kidnapper has a type or a pattern--
"Liz! Oh Liz, thank god you're here! She's been a complete nightmare--"
"Did you give her the medication like I told you, darling?"
"Of course. She been throwing tantrums and trying to escape all week--"
"She's a child and she misses her family, she'll get over it…"
"She better, she's bitten me twice today…"
"Oh, you poor thing… here, let Mommy kiss it better…"
"… I missed you so much, Liz…"
"I missed you too, darling…"
"Oh! Right there… are we finally free of him?"
"Free of whom?"
"Your husband, Liz -- you're not going back are you? He doesn't love you like I do --"
"Bobby loves me very much, Ella."
"What! I can't believe you'd say that after what he's done -- Liz, Liz what are you doing?! LIZ!!"
She knows Bobby loves her. She knows he would love her less if she hadn't done what she's done. She also knows that he would stop loving her if he knew what she's done. It was an impossible situation, really. She thought, though, that she'd handled it the best way possible.
She's developed a habit of taking long walks to 'get out of the house', officially, but it also means he won't notice if she's gone for a few hours taking care of important business.
She can sense his fear that eventually she'll decide to not come back every time she walks out the door -- She's not going to bother correcting him, not when it's working in her favor currently.
Right now, he's hurting too much, but in a few months, as the grief passes, they'll be able to go back to the way things were before everything got complicated. If he asks for more children, she can always say she could never think of the child as anything but a replacement for their lost little girl, and was that really fair to the new child? It was pathetically easy to play upon Bobby's sense of guilt…
Funny, how squeamish she's gotten -- Theirry would be so disappointed -- but it comes back easily enough…