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Chapter 11

A week after their beer-induced make-up session, Olivia and Elliot were returning from interviewing their newest victim in the hospital. Exiting the stairs and turning into the bullpen, Olivia stopped short and turned aside.

"Uh oh, there's trouble," she said under her breath. Following her gaze, Elliot took in the back of a head that Olivia clearly thought was too familiar. Looking at her questioningly, Elliot shrugged his shoulders as if to say 'I have no idea what you're talking about.'

Olivia gestured with her chin towards the man in the trench coat. "That's Dean Porter. Nothing good ever happens when he's around."

"Ah," Elliot replied. "So what're you going to do?"

She tilted her head. "Don't have much choice now, do I?" She strode into the room as if she meant to take it over.

Tossing her coat onto the back of her chair, "Agent Porter, to what do we owe this fine visit? More meddling in our cases? Perhaps a vacation offer? Lovely trailer for rent in rural Oregon?" She tried not to let the bitter note come out in her voice, but she couldn't help it. She'd made sure there was no one else in earshot besides Porter and Elliot.

"Ah, no. Detectives Benson, Stabler. Good to see you both again," he said quite formally.

"What do you want, Porter?" Olivia asked again.

He couldn't help but grin. "I see you have found your winning charm again, Detective. I'm glad your stint with us didn't cause any lasting harm."

She flinched at his words, a barely perceptible movement caught only by her partner.

Her eyebrows raised at him, she took a breath and opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind when a gentle voice saying "Olivia" brought her back to earth. "There is some tofu left over from lunch, would you like some?" she asked in an accusatory fashion.

Not really understanding what had just happened, but realized something had shifted in the air, Dean took a large manila envelope from underneath his arm. "I wanted to drop this off for you, Detective," he said, handing it to Olivia. "I thought you might be interested. Take care, Olivia," he said, and turned and left the room without further explanation.

"That is one weird guy," Elliot said watching him go. He turned back to his partner, who had opened the envelope and taken out a stack of documents with several photographs on top. She stood open mouthed, looking at each of the photos and then reading the memo on the top of the stack of papers. She had tears in her eyes.

Elliot wondered what was in the package. He would have been crazy to interrupt his partner now. Unfortunately, there were other crazy people in the department.

Fin and Munch barged into the room. "Hey, Liv, was that your spook we just saw in the hallway? What's he doing here, causing more trouble?" Both detectives stopped as they saw the look on Olivia's face. She pulled herself away from the photos and looked at them. Then she turned on her heal and ran upstairs to the crib.

"What the hell was that about?" Fin asked. "Way to go, Munch."

"Hey, how was I supposed to know she was going to look like she saw a ghost. It was just Porter, he's pretty harmless as far as spooks go. At least he never shot Elliot. Twice."

Elliot glared at Munch and rubbed his shoulder, remembering how Dana Lewis had gotten him shot. Twice. He looked up to the second floor loft where he knew Olivia was sitting. He shook his head. "Honestly, I have no idea what just happened. Porter was here, he gave Benson a packet of papers. She opened it up and went all space cadet on us." You saw what I saw.

Upstairs, Olivia could hear part of the conversation, but she was only listening with half an ear. She sat down on the couch tucked in the corner of the loft. She stayed away from the privacy of the cribs, that much privacy was just asking for a meltdown. She read the memo on the front of the packet again. It explained that a fund had been set up by the FBI in the name of Agent Michael Emerson, deceased on September 11, 2001. The fund was designed to help pay for burial costs for family members of servicemen unable to pay for their own services, and, when possible and desired, to bury family members in a neighboring plot. The next 20 pages or so were detailed explanations of cost and oversight that she didn't really care about. The last page was an explanation of the location of the grave of Michael Emerson, his brother Lt John Linus Emerson, and of their mother, Virginia Jenkins, all buried in adjacent plots in Arlington Cemetery, Virginia. The photographs were of the completed headstones and finished burial site, photos of each of her sons, a photo of Ginny and her oldest son, dated July 2001. The last photo she came about was a grainy, tinted photo, with an FBI time stamp on it, dated December 1 of this year. It showed Ginny and Olivia, standing around a table making protest signs. It looked like Ginny had just said something outrageous and Olivia was laughing out loud. There were others in the background of the photo, also smiling or laughing, but the foreground was just Ginny and Olivia. It was the first photo she had seen of her time in Oregon, and the first time she had seen a photo of her friend. She suspected this was an unauthorized copy of a file photograph. She put the rest of the papers and photos back in the envelope and started back downstairs. The photo of her and Ginny, she held in her hand, not quite wanting to part with it yet. Back at her desk, avoiding the concerned looks of her colleagues, she set the photo up against her computer screen, then moved it to lean against an old photo of Elliot, her and Alex, then she picked it up again, thought carefully, and placed it in the top drawer. She wasn't ready to look at Ginny every day. Not yet. The wound was still too fresh.

As she closed the desk drawer, Cragen hollered from his office doorway, "Benson, Stabler, get down to the M.E.'s office, she's got something for us."

Grabbing their coats, the two detectives complied. As they headed downtown in a still chilly sedan, Elliot glanced over at his partner who still seemed slightly distracted by the visitor from earlier. He was eager to get her to share, to satisfy his own curiosity as much as to keep his partner from the dangerous self-analysis spiral he knew she was close to. "So what did our favorite FBI agent bring to you today?"

She stiffened immediately, then consciously forced herself to relax one muscle at a time. "Just some information, some follow-up information on people that I lost, I left, in Oregon." Inwardly she cringed at her slip of words, praying silently that Elliot didn't pick up on it.

He had. He didn't know what she had meant, but he doubted it was a simple linguistic error. "Errahgh," he made a sound that was distinctly Elliot and distinctly Queens and Olivia smiled to herself, she had missed that incomprehensible sound. "What kind of information?" he dug a little deeper, hoping this wouldn't backfire.

"Uh," she started, then stopped. Elliot glanced over at her through the corner of his eye. She didn't look mad, that was a start. She looked like she was deciding what to say. "Just letting me know what had happened to some of the people I had gotten to know there, I learned to like a few of them." She paused, "but only the good ones, Scouts honor," she said with a smile.

He smiled back at her. That was a start. "What happened to them?" he asked. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Um, well, this was about one person in particular, a woman I got to know. She died." Olivia said bluntly. She tugged at her seatbelt and looked out the window, effectively ending any sort of follow-up Elliot had wanted to ask.

A few seconds later they pulled up outside the M.E.s office. Olivia still wasn't making eye contact as she got out of the car. "Olivia," Elliot said, forcing her back to the present, "I'm sorry about your friend." He looked at her in the eye, her brown eyes looked back at him, with sadness, but dry, without tears.

"Thanks," she said simply, and walked into the building.