Narrow Windows
Squad room
SVU
16th Precinct.
8 am Thursday 9th November 2006
"So we have a wide-open field of suspects – again," Elliot Stabler said.
"That's right," Cragen said. "But McCoy said Carmichael had another suggestion that might narrow things down. If her idea is right – and it might not be – that Mary's attacker got the idea to copy Walters after Mary told him about the case – there's one piece of evidence we haven't considered. Mary's briefcase was full of files she'd taken home to work on. I know we logged them all as evidence and the DA's Office had to make copies for the cases to go forward. Olivia, get the briefcase out of evidence and see if the Edward Walters file is in it. If it is, get it over to forensics and get it fingerprinted – every page, the paperclips, you got it?"
"Got it," Olivia said, reaching for her coat.
" Elliot, you and Munch work on the timeline. Mary ran into this guy sometime during her day. We have a breakdown of where she was when she was there. Put everybody she knew on that breakdown. If we can run down everybody she crossed paths with that day, one of them is the 'friend' she met."
"We've got a jump on that from the previous canvas," Elliot said. "We'll sharpen it up."
"What about me, Cap'n?" Finn asked.
"Re-assess and if necessary re-canvass Mary's building. If Mary went inside her apartment with this guy and then was taken back out again, the timeframe we're looking at is different. See who might have seen something later than we covered in the original canvas. Call up some extra manpower if you need it – there's still a list of possible volunteers on Elliot's desk."
"Okay," Finn said. As Olivia headed for the door, he was opening the file box full of witness statements stacked on the worktable while Elliot tacked more paper on the incident board, Munch looking on.
When she shuffled the files in Mary's briefcase out on the table in the evidence room Olivia found the file on Edward Walters tucked in the middle of them. Carefully, she slipped the file into a separate evidence folder and marked the tag to maintain the chain of custody. Then she returned the other files to Mary's briefcase and resealed the bag around it, pulled off her gloves and tossed them in the bin.
A quick call to the squad room to tell Cragen what she'd found and Olivia was on her way to the fingerprint lab at One Police Plaza.
She left the file with the techs, taking an extra minute to reinforce the importance of the file and of fingerprinting every single surface in it. On her way out, she stuck her head into Julian Beck's lab.
"You might have broken the case," she told him.
Beck looked up, his eyes huge behind his magnifying glasses. "Really?" he said, sounding half pleased and half disbelieving.
"Really," Olivia said. "With the TiVo thing."
"Oh, well, that's good. That's good," Beck said, bobbing his head a little nervously. "Because – you know, Miss Firienze came down here sometimes. When she had a case. She's really nice, Detective Benson. So I'm glad I helped."
"We're going to get this guy," Olivia told him.
"I hope so," Beck said. For a moment, and despite the fun-house glasses, the geeky lab-technician looked grimly heroic. "I really do."
On the way back to the one-six, Olivia thought about Julian Beck turned for a moment into determined avenger of Mary Firienze; about police and ADAs volunteering hours and hours of time to take statements and interview witnesses; about Abbie Carmichael going out on a limb to manufacture a federal warrant against Edward Walters; about the hours Casey Novak and Jack McCoy had been working.
If Mary had any idea how many people cared, and how much they cared … Olivia thought. She would have laughed it off if someone had told her.
If she knew, she'd be overwhelmed.
But Mary didn't know.
Mary didn't wake up.
Hurrying through the doors of the sixteenth precinct Olivia found her eyes filling with tears at the memory of Mary, bruises fading to yellow, cuts healing, but still lying so still. So very very still. She wiped her eyes angrily. Crying doesn't help. Catch the bastard. Close the case. Cry when it's over. Cry when it's done.
Elliot only needed one look at her when she came into the squad room to tell the mood she was in. It was one of the advantages of having a long term partner. They can tell when you're not handling it.
Elliot didn't try to speak to her, or coax her into feeling better, like he might have done in the first days of their partnership. He poured her a cup of coffee from the squad room urn and put it on her desk, squeezed her shoulder wordlessly, and let her be.
They can tell when you're not handling it. And they know what to do.
Olivia sat and drank her coffee and pulled herself together.
After a while, she got up and went to the incident board to look over Munch's shoulder. The timeline of Mary's movements the day she was attacked was a lot more detailed than the last time Olivia had seen it, especially in the first part of the day.
"What do you think?" Olivia asked Munch.
"Well, if she met anybody, it looks like she met them in the courthouse," Munch said. "After she went back to Hogan Place she hardly left the office all day."
"So maybe she ran into someone in the courthouse and arranged to meet them later?" Olivia said.
"After ten o'clock," Elliot said. "That's when I left her."
"None of the witnesses saw her with anyone in the courthouse," Olivia said.
"We know we haven't spoken to every single person in the courthouse that day," Munch said. "We came close. But you know, you have perps moving in and out for arraignment, their lawyers, maybe their families … witnesses with families there to support them, you know the drill."
"We'll never run them all down," Olivia said.
"Maybe we don't need to," Elliot said. "Look. We know the time Mary left case conference – she looked at her watch and told one of the other ADAs that she had to hustle, she had a witness deposition at eleven and it was seventeen minutes to eleven. We have a witness who rode down with her in the lift – another one saw her passing Trial part 61 at ten to eleven."
"Trial part 61?" Olivia said, frowning. "That's not on the way to the door. Have you got – "
"A courthouse floor plan?" Munch said, shaking out a large piece of paper. "Voila, as they say in gay Paree."
" Mary wouldn't have passed part 61 on her way to the front door," Elliot said, using his pen to point to the map. "But she was late and hurrying. If she thought it would be quicker to cut out through the side entrance."
"And she'd pass part 61 at ten to eleven," Olivia said. "And be at the door a couple of minutes later."
"So we can work out which cases she passed at what time," Elliot said.
"What Elliot means is we have already worked out which cases she passed and at what time," Munch said smugly. "And we should have copies of the court reporters transcripts for the relevant period by the end of the day."
"That gives us a better chance," Olivia said. "Those are the kind of numbers we can deal with."
"A lot of people, but a ten minute window," Elliot said. "We've got a chance. Want to see the list of witnesses I've drawn up for you?"
"I can hardly wait," Olivia said.