-28-
Olivia had kept in touch, as promised, and though the conversations they'd had were brief, more notable for what wasn't said, Alex was determined to keep her promise, and not lose hope. Liv had texted on Friday morning to let Alex know she was back in the city, and planning to meet with Kate that afternoon at 3. With the detective finally back home, Alex hoped they could spend some time together, and close at least some of the space between them. She knew Liv, knew she'd have to tread lightly. If toes were stepped on now, she'd bolt.
Alex had texted her back, asking if Olivia wanted her to come along to see Kate. The reply was a polite, but definite, no. She wanted to keep her out of this, determined to protect Alex, even though Alex hadn't been able to protect her. Letting her arrange things with Kate had been as much involvement as she'd accept.
And Alex knew Kate would never share anything Olivia told her—shouldn't, of course, but wouldn't violate the detective's confidence even if she were allowed—so she'd have to trust Kate to get this right. She'd owe her big, but would gladly pay any price to extricate Olivia from the nightmare she'd thrown her into.
She made one last stab at contact just before Liv met Kate. Call me when you're done?
Olivia simply replied OK
Alex fidgeted and fussed her way thorough the rest of the afternoon, trying to absorb the minutiae of Chinese pharma, and the more mundane details of Jeff Grant and Tim Harper's stateside get-rich-quick scheme. Crime, after all, was crime, and however outlandish the framework, the bones of it were always the same. Greed, or lust, or any combination of the seven deadlies, writ large. Even if you subscribed to the myth that the Inuit had 400 words for snow, it still all had to be shoveled off the walk. And Alex was from upstate, knew snow. Whatever the word, this was a blizzard.
The further she got into it, between what the DA had told her and what she could find out on her own, the more she was dying to get into the office, powwow with him, and get rolling. But he'd told her to sit tight, and for the first time in a long time, she'd done exactly as she was told.
Olivia, meanwhile, was with Kate at a restaurant near Kate's office.
"Kate, I don't know how to thank you for this. I'm sure your going rate is more than I can afford, but I do want to figure out some way to pay you, eventually."
"My going rate is actually zero," she replied. "Bailey, Baker & Harris pay me to do pro bono work so they can kid themselves that they're not complete mercenaries."
"I know, Alex told me, but..."
"Did she also tell you that it's the only thing that lets me sleep at night?"
Olivia laughed. "Well, come to think of it, she might have said something about it being the only thing between your soul and eternal damnation."
"Damn prosecutors," Kate laughed. "Always grandstanding. How do you live with that showboat?"
Olivia got quiet, and Kate reminded herself, as she'd had to on the phone with Alex, that these two were an emotional minefield right now.
"Does defending a cop from IAB fit in with your firm's idea of worthy pro bono work?"
"I have a great deal of autonomy here, Olivia, and I do consider clearing a decorated, dedicated cop of the bogus charges leveled against her to be a very worthy use of my time."
Olivia was grateful, and could already tell that Alex's earlier testimonial had been correct: Kate was a damn good attorney. Alex had given Kate an outline of the situation, and Olivia filled in what little she could add. The attorney took copious notes, nodded frequently, asked lots of questions.
When Olivia was finished, Kate looked at her. "This, Olivia, is a fucking mess, if you don't mind my saying so."
"I was afraid of that," Olivia said.
"Not for you, though," Kate went on. "For them."
"What?"
"Yeah, it's a clusterfuck, really. Patel has gone to them with nothing more than rumor and innuendo, and they've jumped on it. They forced your old partner out through repeated harassment and intimidation, and now they're trying to do the same to you."
Olivia wasn't connecting the dots yet, couldn't see what Kate was seeing very clearly. "But Patel couldn't have known all of that, or what's in my jacket. Or even the Stabler thing."
"He could have, actually, given the company he's apparently keeping. He's a small fish who doesn't realize that the predators he's swimming with will turn on him as soon as he's no longer useful to them. But whether he knew anything about you, or not, is irrelevant to me."
"How so?"
"What's going on here is a perfect storm—two people with two wholly separate motives, whose paths have crossed, and who have the same target in their sights. Patel wants to hurt you in order to politically marginalize, or even neutralize, Alex. Meanwhile, IAB—or, more specifically, Tucker—sees this as an opportunity to get rid of you, just like they did with..." She looked down at her notes.
"Stabler," Olivia supplied.
"Right. You guys must have really done something to piss that guy off, huh?"
Benson laughed, just a bit, and could feel the clouds part ever so slightly. Kate's confidence was contagious. "We've had more than our share of run-ins with him, yeah, and made him look like a dog chasing his tail a few times."
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, some routine something-or-other brought you into his orbit years ago, I'd assume, but you—your entire squad, really—have now become his White Whale, it seems. So, I have to ask, is he out to get you because of something you've done, or is everything you've done an excuse for him to come after you?"
Olivia didn't know the answer Tucker just...was. You didn't think about why IAB rode your ass for the slightest little thing, just like you didn't wonder why defense attorneys were always full of shit—present company excluded, of course—or why DA's always thought there wasn't enough evidence. He'd been there, on the periphery of her existence, as long as she could recall, and would probably be the last of them left standing, having sold his soul to the devil long ago in exchange for an eternity spent hounding the SVU detectives.
"I never thought about it," Olivia said.
"Well, think about it now," Kate said. "Have you ever had repeated dealings—any dealings, really—with anyone else in Internal Affairs?"
Olivia shook her head. No.
"That's what I thought," Kate said. "I think Patel's not the only one with a hatchet he wants to bury in someone's back. Right after the New Year, when the wheels of government resume their slow rotations, I'm going to get some files that might answer a few questions."
"Okay," Olivia said. "When will we sit down with Tucker for my interview?"
"We won't," Kate said firmly, and began sliding her notes into her messenger bag.
"We won't? At all?"
"Never," Kate confirmed. "Nothing to gain from it. We're going to do our legwork, and then we're going to request an administrative hearing as soon as possible.
"Really?" Olivia asked. Kate just nodded. "But what about Patel?
"What about him?" the lawyer shrugged. "As far as I can tell, he's like one of those extra screws they put in those cheap do-it-yourself furniture kits: looks important, scares you for a minute because you think you missed something, but in the end, it's just some shit that rattles around and makes noise when you throw away the box."
Olivia laughed. "I hate those damn things."
"Me, too. Look, Olivia, Patel's just a bother, a bug smeared on my windshield," Kate said. "And I know you're not supposed to kill the messenger, or whatever the saying is, but if I can manage to take him down during this whole thing, I'll gladly do it. I just don't think he's our main focus here."
"So, if we don't agree to an interview, and assuming it'll take a while to get the information we'll need, I just sit around my house until when?"
"Sit around, my ass," Kate laughed. "You're going back to work."
"But, the letter..." Olivia protested, gesturing now at Kate's bag, where the attorney had stashed the suspension document along with all of her notes.
"Don't worry about that. I'll get that lifted, no problem. I'll file the appeal right after New Year's, throw in a few threats for good measure. You should be back at work by Monday the 7th at the latest, though knowing NYPD they'll punish you by making you come back in and work that whole weekend instead. You'll probably have to do some desk duty while this all plays out, but I figured you could live with that."
"At SVU?" Olivia asked. She was having trouble believing this could be so easy.
"Hell, yes, at SVU," Kate said. "I can do a lot of things, Olivia, but getting you transferred to something cushier will have to wait."
Olivia just looked at her, wanted to laugh but couldn't wrap her head around any of this. It was like her synapses had been reconnected into some new pattern. Kate was telling her that everything she'd been worried about—everything about this that seemed important—wasn't really any concern. And things she'd taken for granted—Tucker was an asshole, just like the sun rose in the east—might be much more important than they seemed. Kate could tell that Olivia was trying to take in all this information, put it in some order that made sense to her.
"Trust me, Olivia, I know what I'm doing."
"I know you do, it's just..."
"Your recent history of trusting attorneys hasn't really panned out for you?" Kate smiled at her.
"It's not that," Olivia said. "I know that Alex wasn't trying to do anything to hurt me."
"She wasn't," Kate said. "You're right about that. But, she managed to do it anyway, didn't she?"
Olivia just looked at her, not sure how to answer. This was Alex's best friend, baiting her into saying something disparaging about the ADA.
"It's okay, Olivia, I love her, but she has her flaws. And I've already said this to her, so don't think I'm speaking out of school," Kate said. "But, she does love you. Losing you over this—losing you at all, really—would be devastating to her."
"Kate, I appreciate what you're saying, and I know you love Alex. I do, too, but I can't just run back there and act like nothing happened."
"Oh, I know. You can't, and you shouldn't. But can I ask you to just keep one thing in the back of your head while you're working through this?"
"What is it?"
"Her downfall has always been that she wants so badly to do the right thing, and to be the best, and to be loved," Kate said. "Unfortunately, she has a talent for sometimes getting herself into spots where those three things are mutually exclusive."
