Chapter 54: Going to Miramar

For long moments after Clayton stopped talking Johnson was silent, tying to absorb the sheer mass of information Hawk had just given him. Finally he spoke, and his voce wasn't quite steady either. "Jesus, Clayton."

"Cam didn't want to tell us about the fire, about her Aunt and Uncle's death. Despite what they'd done to her, the way they tortured and brutalized her and trapped her until she literally could see no other way out but death, she still feels guilty that she killed them. She doesn't know about the journals Allie found, that detail their plans to eventually kill her by selling her to someone who makes snuff films." Johnson flinched in distaste. "She called herself a murderer, that she murdered them."

"She didn't murder them. She survived the only way she could. She reacted in self-defense. If she hadn't killed them they would have killed her, and she never thought about running away, she intended to die in that fire. That she didn't was a miracle—or God's way of saying she didn't deserve to die, that she deserved a shot at a life she'd been locked away from for three years." Johnson's voice was tired. "So that explains the 'yes' to the suicide question. I'll call the Brig Warden and explain later. Now, about the violence to confining authority?"

"Detective Olivia Benson was at Sealview interviewing an inmate when she saw Cam walk by in the hallway. She managed to wrangle an interview with Cam, and during the course of that interview they hugged. One of the guards stepped in, tried to hit Cam with a baton; Olivia protested. He tried to hit Liv. Cam protested. They were in the middle of this altercation when another guard walked in with a taser and hit Liv with it."

"They hit a cop with a taser?"

"Some years back Olivia was part of an undercover operation at Sealview investigating allegations that guards were abusing inmates—apparently one of the inmates' daughters who came to visit was raped, that's how Liv got involved. Anyway, the guard came in and tased Liv—Cam took exception to that, yanked the leads out of Liv before Liv got hurt too badly, and then the first guard hit her with another taser. And at that point Liv's partner came in, saw what happened, and got Liv out as they dragged Cam off to solitary for assaulting a guard."

"I hope Liv's okay. I didn't see much of her during Operation White Queen but she struck me as being a tough individual."

"Yeah, she's tough. She spent the night at the hospital for observation, they wanted to make sure she and the baby didn't suffer any ill effects, but she's okay."

"The—wait. Detective Benson is pregnant? Did the guards know this before they tased her?"

"It would have been hard to miss, she's in her second trimester."

Johnson's face broke into a broad smile. "Why Clayton, you old dog, you've been holding out on me!"

And that was when Clayton realized he'd walked right into the verbal trap. "Um…"

"The baby's yours, right?"

"Uh. Yeah."

"Congratulations. I'll make sure to send her a gift. When's she due?"

"Um, December sometime. I'm planning on taking my accrued leave time starting the second week of December to help her with the baby after it comes." Something needed clarifying here. "You're not upset?"

Johnson looked puzzled. "Why?"

"Well…civilians on base, and we're not planning on getting married…"

"You couldn't help the civilians on base thing during Operation White Queen. Both she and Alex had to be kept safe while we dealt with the conspiracy, and they both signed—and have so far kept—the nondisclosure agreements so it doesn't matter. As to not getting married—" His voice changed; he sounded now like an old man, his voice querulous and whining. "I'm an old man and I like the tradition of getting married before the baby-in-the-baby-carriage step, but you young people have new ideas and new ways of doing things, and I'm just an old fogey, so what do I know?"

Clayton tried hard to fight the laugh, and failed. Johnson grinned. "Okay. Well, congratulations on the incipient arrival—do you know yet if you're having a boy or a girl?"

"It's going to be a boy." The thought still sent a warm fuzzy glow around his heart.

"Well, then congratulations. Let me go now, I want to call Miramar back and explain some of Corporal Arlington's answers. They'll probably relax the Level 3 confinement now that they understand the attack and the suicide attempt was provoked. I think we can discount the spying, too; she wasn't spying for them, she was being held captive—Christ."Johnson shuddered. "I can't imagine what that must have been like. Now, as to clearing her of the charges of being 'illegal'—"

"She's not illegal. She's just undocumented." Clayton said sharply. "There's a difference."

"—undocumented, thank you, I like that word better. Yes. Undocumented. Do you have any idea how to get her out of that hole?"

"My Staff Sergeant has been trying to get the Air Force to release Cam's father's service record. She's also been calling every Air Force Base to try and track down the family Cam and her father lived with, Art and Annie Hammond, and a son, Jack Hammond, who would be about twenty-three right now. Annie Hammond took care of Cam while her father was on duty, and all five of them shared house space. The Hammonds tried to write Cam once she got back to New York, but in order to isolate Cam so they could make her disappear they never gave her the letters, and they never mailed the ones she wanted to send the Hammonds. So to them, she went MIA—they simply never knew what happened to her. Finding them is as much to resolve the current situation as it is to bring some closure to the question of what happened to her."

"Clayton, why didn't you bring this to me? I can take this to the Secretary of Defense, and he can order the Air Force to release the records—particularly as it involves clearing an active service member of unfounded charges. You don't have to do everything yourself."

Clayton's mind stumbled over the concept. "Uh, I never…we've always handled all our issues ourselves—Clancy couldn't be bothered—"

"Ah. Clancy. Less said on that subject the better. Participating in the conspiracy to torture and murder an unarmed civilian at the behest of an unscrupulous druglord—never mind." Johnson's tone indicated he didn't mourn the other General at all; Clancy had been taken out by a sniper on his way from the Pentagon to Leavenworth for his part in the conspiracy that left Alex Cabot comatose and near death in Clayton's infirmary. "Let me get off the phone and go call Miramar, then I'll give the Secretary of Defense a call and see what he can do to foster some interagency cooperation. In the meantime, Clayton, get some things together and get down to Miramar. Your soldier needs a full set of general issue items and she is allowed to have a few personal items."

It was going to sound like an odd question, but Clayton had to ask. "Is Cam going to have any free time?"

Johnson looked thoughtful. "She will. Not a lot, maybe an hour or two in the evenings, but yes."

"Is there a gym?"

"Yes, there is."

Now the odd question. "Can I bring her dancing sneakers?"

"Huh?"

"She's an extraordinary dancer, and I know she has to have missed dancing while at Sealview and at the New Mexico deportation camp. Once she's recovered a bit and has her strength back, perhaps she might be allowed to dance in the gym on her free time—for her it's therapeutic, it's the only way she hung onto her sanity during those three years as her aunt and Uncle's captive cash cow."

Johnson winced at Clayton's choice of words. "All right, all right, I'll see what I can do. I'll talk to you later, Clayton."

His next step was to send an email off to Alex. Cam's safe at Miramar. She's in pretty bad shape—passed out during the intake interview. Stitches infected and the medical staff at Miramar are taking steps to correct that now; she's in medical getting vitamins and painkillers and antibiotics and she's on triple rations because she lost too much weight. I'm going to ask Johnson what we can do to press charges against ICE for their treatment of an active-duty US soldier. In the meantime, Johnson's working on a permanent solution—he's going to talk to the Secretary of Defense and see if the Secretary can foster some interagency cooperation by releasing Cam's Dad's service record and giving us the Hammonds' last known address as a place to start. I'm giving you a choice; you can either sit tight or you can get to Miramar—she is going to be allowed to have visitors, and I'll be there in a few days to bring a full set of general issue items like her uniform and boots and she can also have a few personal items—I'm bringing her dancing sneakers so she can dance again. I'd love to bring her swords but somehow I don't think they'd like that much.

Alex sent a response email that evening. Clayton; Charlie and I both agreed we'd rather go to Miramar and wait there for Cam to be freed. Call me paranoid, but I still feel like ICE might possibly find a way to get her away from the military and if that happens we'll follow her.

We do have a bit of a confession to make; I know you said to wait here where we were, but Charlie and I packed our things up after Johnson took Cam to Holloman and we went to the northern half of the state, to Charlie's people. I've barely seen him all day today; he's been talking to several members of the tribe and I'm assuming it has a little something to do with the harassment Charlie's experiencing down here. Every time he's not in uniform we get, if not stopped, people give him sidelong glances, hostile looks, outright rudeness. It's unreal, Clayton, it's like Nazi Germany down here for everyone whose skin isn't white or black or who have a different accent. I don't even want to think about what happens to those who don't have tribal registration like Charlie. Charlie might as well pin his tribal registration to his jacket like the Stars of David used to identify Jews in Germany in the late thirties; it would save people looking at us.

I hate it down here and I want to come home, and Charlie feels it too, but we both determined we're not going to leave until we have Cam. So we'll head for California early tomorrow morning.

Clayton turned off his computer, stretched. Good. Cam was safe, Lieutenant General Johnson was working on the problem of finding the Hammonds, Alex and Charlie were in the way to Miramar, and he would meet them there tomorrow.

He closed and locked his office door feeling decidedly more cheerful, strolled down the hallway, and changed to regular clothes in his quarters before heading out to the garage and the Hummer. He wanted to see Liv, give her the good news, and let her know that he would be gone for a couple days but he'd be back, and hopefully it wouldn't take that long to get this worked out and be able to bring Cam home.

"Hi sweetheart," he greeted her when she opened the door to her apartment, and she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and gave him a big sloppy kiss that intensified and turned deeper as she felt his lips soften in response to her eager greeting. "Whoa," he said finally when they both came up for air. "What was that all about?"

"What, I can't be happy to see you?" she asked him, grinning impishly; he, happy to see her smiling, felt himself grinning back. "I've been stuck in here all day sending my paperwork to Cragen from home and I'm bored."

"Well, in that case, want to go out?"

She grinned. "Sure. Where?"

"Mmm. Our usual. I don't think you want to go anywhere strenuous or busy with that much weight on your feet."

She laughed. "You got that right. Okay. Knickerbocker's. Let me just get changed."

"You look fine," he said, eyeing her up and down. "You don't need to change."

She giggled again. "Trust a man to say that. Just give me a minute." He followed her down the hall to her bedroom, watched as she tossed her closet for some maternity jeans and a loose blouse. "Now I know you didn't come here just to take me out."

He was feeling good, so he couldn't resist teasing her a little. "What, I can't come over just to take my favorite little expectant mother out?"

She turned to look at him, amusement gone. "Clayton, we haven't had a chance to discuss this with all the stuff that's going on right now, but I want to know now where we stand on this."

"Sweetheart. The baby is yours, but he's also mine too. And…seeing how much trouble Cam is in now because her father wasn't listed on the birth certificate—I would like my name on his birth certificate if it's okay with you." He had to try very hard not to look pleading.

"Got it." She said without hesitating, confirming Hawk's suspicion that Cragen had been correct and his hands-off policy had not indeed been okay with her after all.

He took a deep breath. "I have some leave time coming up—actually a lot of leave time accruing—so I decided to make Lieutenant General Johnson happy and take it all at once. I have a month coming up, starting the second week of December through the first week of the new year, and as soon as this thing with Cam wraps up, I want to take you up to Martha's Vineyard with me to meet my parents. I think they should know they're about to have a grandkid—they'd just about given up on having any from me."

"Y-your parents?" she stood there, looking suddenly vulnerable and uncertain. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. They're going to love you," He said it with certainty; his mother was going to love fussing over Liv and the baby. "My father will welcome you with open arms—anyone who could tame his 'wild son' is welcome in his eyes."

"Wild son?" she crossed the room and put her arms around him, hugging him as best she could over the lump sticking out her middle. "You, wild?"

"Um. Less said about that the better." But he knew she'd find out about it anyway, his mother would no doubt trot out every embarrassing story from his childhood for Liv. "Okay. Are you dressed? We'll have dinner, come back, and then I have to get back to base—Johnson got Cam out of ICE detention and she's at Miramar Brig now."

"I know. Alex emailed me."

"So I'm going to lean on my 'command prerogative' and make what's known as a 'command visit'. She needs a set of basic issue fatigues and basic necessities kit, and she's allowed to have a few personal items, so since Johnson told me she's likely going to have an hour or so of free time in the evenings, I wanted to take her dancing sneakers. For her, dancing is therapeutic—I remember the first time I saw her dance was after she'd been locked in her footlocker for almost a full day—so maybe being able to dance will help her regain her emotional equilibrium."

"If she's allowed to have some personal items can you make sure she gets this?" Olivia crossed her bedroom, pulled out a small box from her upper drawer, and tossed it to him. He caught it in midair, stared at it. "What—"

"Doc called Fort Hamilton. They read him off the numbers from the insides of her ballet shoes and I took them to a dance store that caters to Juilliard students. They were able to figure out what make and model those shoes were and give me the same ones. And one of the new detectives at the unit, Amanda Rollins, used to take dance when she was younger and she sewed the ribbons and elastic on."

Clayton opened it, awed. Inside, nestled in white tissue, was a pair of pale pink ballet shoes, ribbons and elastic attached. "Oh. Liv." He got all warm and fuzzy at her thoughtfulness.

"I was going to give them to her in the car on the way back from the hospital. ICE kinda derailed that plan. Oh, and don't forget to ask Shana for Cam's flute. For her, the music is therapeutic too."