Part Thirty-Six
They had been at Louise Billings' former residence for the better part of three hours. Crime Scene had come in shortly after them, photographing everything for posterity, although Olivia knew she'd never have to rely on their documentation to remember the details of what she'd seen. Just like every detail of the first case where she'd encountered Richard White, she knew that every single nuance of the house of horrors was forever filed in her brain. She would never be able to scour away the memories, the experience, and so her only recourse was to promise herself that they would find White before he hurt anyone else, that they would put him away for good.
Even though the bodies and some of the evidence had already been carted away, the stench lingered. She doubted anything would clear it out, short of burning the building to the ground. Finally, after she'd toiled for a solid two hours without quite being able to breathe, she retreated outside for a break. Fin had done so a few minutes earlier and she found him leaning against the hood of the cruiser. She stepped up next to him, sliding herself onto the hood to relieve her aching legs, the product of having squatted for two hours while sifting through all manner of crap in the apartment. Mercifully someone had sent the unhappy residents away and most of the cops had been called to other locations. The handful that was left weren't paying undue attention to her.
Fin offered her the half empty bottle of water he'd been drinking. "Want some?"
She nodded, taking the bottle and greedily swallowing most of what was left before she even noticed it was lukewarm. With a grimace, she pulled it from her mouth and glared at it. A cold drink of water would have been so very welcome. Warm water just made her nauseous. Still, it had been hours since she'd had anything at all and she wasn't going to complain. "Thanks."
He nodded vaguely off in the distance towards some of the RMPs parked in front of the house. "I sent a couple of uniforms to notify Rosalyn Phillips."
With everything that had happened, Olivia had completely forgotten about the poor woman who had horrible news to receive. "It's probably better than one of us. We know too much about White and what he did to her." A hysterical mother begging for details on the murder of her daughter might have been able to drag far too much information out of the exhausted detectives.
"She'll find out anyway. The brass is apparently putting a statement together for the media about White."
Olivia grimaced again, wishing no one had to find out something so awful. "And she's sure to realize he's the same White as from White Phillips Realty." She passed the water bottle back and forth between her hands. "Damn." Additional guilt sank her shoulders even lower.
"It's not your fault, Liv. She turned the bastard in and busted his alibi wide open. He had it in for her too." He tried to offer her a smile, but she wasn't looking.
She shook her head, not hearing a word of the attempt to comfort her. "We made her talk. We threatened her with the IRS. Who the fuck would have kept lying facing a damn audit that was damn sure to break them? If we hadn't forced her hand, she never would have given him up. She was too scared of him."
"And one day she would have wanted away from the creep, even with the tax-free income. Or she wouldn't have laughed at one of his jokes. Or she would have looked at him the wrong way. He's a nut, Liv, something would have set him off. She was doomed from the moment she crossed paths with him and you didn't have a damn thing to do with that." Taking the bottle from her hands, Fin finished what was left and nodded toward the house. "Back to cataloging body-building supplements. Already counted six cases worth of empty cans." Body-building supplements weren't the only strange thing that White had collected. They'd also found three different brands of blue contact lenses, which Olivia realized had been collected in White's search for the right color with which to fool her into thinking her partner was trying to rape her.
Olivia didn't reply as Fin walked away, instead staring at her hands and wondering if she was every bit as doomed as Kimberly had been, wondering if maybe the dominos had been set in motion for her and Kimberly at the same time, wondering if all Elliot had succeeded in doing was postponing the inevitable. Thinking of his name sent a sharp pain shooting through her, adding another brick of guilt to the tower she was building on her shoulders. She'd been there for hours, hours, and she hadn't thought about him. She glanced at her watch, knowing that at almost two in the morning Elliot had already been transferred to lock up, trapped with the scum of the Earth, suffering just because he'd tried to protect her, a task that she was really starting to believe had been futile.
She shoved the thought aside, pushing herself off the car and to her feet, determined to go back inside, find something that would lead her to White, and spare her anymore self pity. She didn't have time for self pity. And she knew, sure as shit, that Elliot wasn't sitting there wallowing and feeling bad for himself. No, he was probably pacing one end of the cell to the other, chomping at the bit to get out of there, undoubtedly because he wanted to protect her himself. She wasn't going to sit there and feel helpless. She owed Elliot that much.
A car pulled up to the house, the occupant showing something to the officer who tried to move them along. Curiosity got the best of her and Olivia stopped short, waiting to see who was both so late to the party and had the identification to get past the officer.
She barely knew the woman, but Olivia was still able to instantly identify the blonde who emerged from the car, sporting uncharacteristic jeans under her coat, yet still with her hair pulled back tightly in a bun. For a brief, vengeful moment, Olivia thought it might be fair for White to claim just one more victim, if only because she really had brought it on herself.
But by the time Greyleck had picked her way through the dirty snow to Olivia's side, she was already feeling bad for thinking such a thing. No one, not even someone as infuriating as Greyleck, deserved to fall victim to Richard White. Still, the woman had some questions to answer and Olivia held a harsh glare at Greyleck's smile.
In keeping with her normal behavior, Greyleck ignored the less than welcoming glare. "Sorry I'm late. I was busy working through all the paperwork to get Elliot out first thing." Her eyes narrowed the slightest bit, a smug grin tugging at her lips. "I figured you'd rather I took care of that first."
It was all Greyleck's fault Elliot was in prison, Olivia decided, it had nothing at all to do with her turning him in to Cragen. Gathering all of her strength, she told herself that pummeling Greyleck into a coma would not help and would likely only delay Elliot's release. Not killing her, however, didn't mean she had to be nice. "What the fuck are you doing here?" It wasn't often that they needed an ADA at a crime scene, even rarer did they actually like having one there.
If Greyleck noticed how very unhappy Olivia was with her, she didn't show it. She smiled and stepped ahead of her on the path to the basement door. "I'm a hands-on type. You should know that by now."
Olivia rolled her eyes at the back of the woman's head. "Wow, a hands-on crusader. Can you walk on water too?" Using her long legs to her advantage, she surged ahead of Greyleck and descended the steps to the door. The few minutes she'd spent outside had been enough to let her forget how truly awful the smell was, but she'd barely gotten to the door when it assailed her again, seeming to reach into her lungs and squeeze them closed. Determined not to miss a beat in front of Greyleck, she tried to fight the urge to gag.
Greyleck didn't try. One step into the basement and she clapped her hands over her nose and mouth. "Oh my god, what is that?"
"White's a murderer, you know, or did that somehow slip your attention when you were letting him go free?"
Rather than being chastised as Olivia expected, Greyleck put her hands on her hips and squared off with her. "He wasn't convicted of murder and he had good information on other crimes. Ten years inside and he didn't break a single rule. And when you take into consideration that the file made almost no mention of him stalking you, how the hell was I supposed to know he was any more dangerous than anyone else I make deals with? Besides, he was out almost three months before he went after you. How should I have known they were related?"
"He brutally raped and murdered the ADA who'd prosecuted him for date rape. Didn't that stand out as a bit crazier than the run of the mill rapist?" Olivia didn't want to consider that clamming up about the phone calls and the flowers in the official report had come back to bite her. At the time, Elliot had warned her it was a bad idea to leave it out, but she hadn't wanted to hear it. And now that it had come back to bite her in the ass, she didn't want to hear it anymore than she had before. No more than Greyleck wanted to hear that her deal had come back to bite her.
"Fine, you want to blame it all on me, go ahead, but please, tell me this: how the hell did you get White and Elliot mixed up? Seriously, White's so fucking scrawny I couldn't believe he survived ten years in prison. In fact, he lost so much weight in the last couple of months the prison doctors thought he was sick." The look on Greyleck's face clearly indicated victory, as though Olivia's confusion regarding her attacker was a far worse mistake.
The mention of her attack brought the memory immediately to the surface. She remembered all too easily how overwhelmingly strong the bastard had been, how wide his shoulders were, how strong his arms were. "The man who crawled on top of me was not scrawny. If he hadn't been the size of Elliot, I would have had a much easier time fighting him off!"
Greyleck snorted as she stepped around Olivia. "White weighed maybe one-fifty. He was skinny as a damn rail when I met with him. Maybe you're just not as strong as you think."
"That's not fucking possible." Her mind was reeling as she trailed behind Greyleck up the stairs and into the kitchen. The man who'd been on top of her had been anything but thin. He'd been strong and heavy and bulky and thick. Could she have been wrong? Could she have been so scared that she thought he was so much bigger than she was? Could it possibly have been someone other than White who came after her?
Her eyes fell on the open cabinet above the counter, revealing the collection of protein supplements Fin had mentioned. The labels boasted ridiculous claims of how strong they would make a person, the proof of which was a picture of a man, every muscle visible and chiseled. She grabbed one of the jars and thrust it at Greyleck. "No wonder he waited three months. He needed to gain enough weight to impersonate Elliot."
Greyleck looked at the evidence Olivia offered, then shrugged. "Then why the cancer-stricken diet before he got out if he was just going to gain it all back?"
"He planned it all along." Olivia shoved the can back in the cabinet, leading the way toward the hideous collage White had created. She searched the wall by the door, finding an old picture of Elliot and pointing at it. "Elliot was a lot thinner ten years ago."
Greyleck studied the picture, as though she couldn't quite believe the difference. "That's Elliot?" Olivia nodded. "I guess it's better than a convertible."
Olivia stared. "What?"
"Mid-life crisis." Greyleck's eyes shifted to a more recent picture of Elliot, a smile lighting her face. "Much better than a convertible."
An unexpected flare of jealousy rose up at Greyleck's appreciative stare, leaving Olivia to fight back the urge to declare that Elliot belonged to her.
Then Greyleck's eyes met Olivia's, a conspiratorial laugh filling the air as she lowered her voice to a whisper. "And he'd getting divorced. Put in a good word for me, would you?" Greyleck left the room then, having seen all she needed to, going off instead to search for Cragen.
Olivia could only stare after her with an angry glare, too busy hating the other woman to care that there was at least one person in the city that hadn't gotten the memo about what she and Elliot had been doing at the cabin.