Voight and everybody at SVU were gathered around the computer and watched as Mouse and Antonio Dawson came on the screen from the bullpen at the 21st District.
"Okay, for the record," Mouse told Voight, "I haven't slept in like 3 days, there was a lot of stuff to look through."
"What'd you find?" Elliot asked.
"First," Mouse held up an index finger to get their attention, "I went all the way back to when Matt Casey got his email account just to make sure what was recent contact with somebody new and who the regulars are. He's had this account for 11 years, and the first few years there was regular contact with a few people, the most common contacts were Kelly Severide, Hallie Thomas, and Andy Darden."
"Darden was a fireman on Casey's company, he died in a house fire a couple years back," Voight explained to the SVU detectives, "Go on."
"Most contact dropped after the first few years, the only regular contact after that was Kelly Severide, the two exchanged emails almost daily, up until 2007."
"That's about the time when text messaging first started to really pick up speed," Elliot commented.
"Right, and since it's quick and easy, it replaced emails by and large for daily communication," Mouse said. "After that, contact with anybody in general has been bare minimum, most emails are work related or for online shopping accounts, a few from members of his family, his sister Christie, his niece Violet, a few from his mom, Nancy."
"She just got out of prison not too long ago, it was probably a new experience for her," Olivia noted.
"We also had him go over Casey's entire internet search history just to see if he'd gotten into anything unethical," Antonio broke in.
"And?" Voight asked.
"No dark web activity, no questionable searches, a few softcore porn pictures, but all from legal, adult age websites."
"Sounds like a whole lot of nothing," Munch noted, "but I'm guessing you didn't want to video chat if that's all it was."
Mouse explained, "Casey's email activity hit a spike about 3 months back, there were messages exchanged every two days when he would've been off-shift, the grand total was about 600 emails back and forth."
"With who?" Voight wanted to know.
"A woman." On the screen they saw Mouse turning another computer around, he hit some keys and a picture came up of a beautiful dark haired woman in her late 20s or early 30s posing in a thin white T-shirt and blue capris. "According to her profile, her name is Dahlia Meehan, 31 years old, lives in Manhattan."
"Casey's dirty secret is a woman?" Elliot asked. "That doesn't make sense."
"She doesn't look like an escort," Olivia noted, and asked Mouse, "What was it, one of those sugar baby websites?"
"No, actually we poured over Casey's finances," Antonio answered, "There has been no withdrawal of cash from his bank account in the last 3 months, and no major hits on his credit card until he bought his plane ticket."
"So why's he hiding this?" Elliot asked, "There has to be a catch somewhere."
"That's what we thought too, we went over everything," Antonio told them.
"They've exchanged a few pictures but nothing X rated," Mouse explained, "in fact...this is about the raunchiest thing we found." He hit some other keys and another picture came up of the same woman in yoga pants and a hot pink workout bra with her hair tied back in a braid. "We spent one whole day just going over everything Casey ever deleted off his computer, a lot of junk emails, still nothing suspicious."
"So what's the catch?" Munch wanted to know.
"That's the thing," Mouse said, "As far as I can tell, there is no catch. It's all legitimate, Casey met this woman on a dating site."
Voight's eyebrows raised, "That's it?"
"The site's legitimate, we checked it out too," Antonio told them, "it's been in service for 5 years, to date they've had no legal troubles."
"Something's missing here," Fin said, "if that's all it is, Casey should've offered that up no problem."
"Unless there's something he's embarrassed about," Olivia said, and asked Mouse, "Did she ever ask him for money, gifts, anything? Anything that suggests she was using him for something?"
"No," he shook his head, "That's the thing, we've gone over every email, he's offered nothing, she's asked for nothing, it all reads like a legitimate online hookup and they decided to meet in real life."
"And that's why Casey came to New York," Elliot said, feeling like a major piece of the puzzle was still missing.
"So where is this woman?" Olivia asked. "Casey didn't bring anybody back to his motel room, and none of the restaurants in the vicinity ever saw him, so they had to have made contact."
"He went home with her...still doesn't sound like something worth going to this much trouble to hide," Elliot noted.
"We got the ISP for her email address," Mouse told the cops, "And I'm sending you her contact information."
"We're also going to be sending the emails on over to you guys so you can see if there's anything we missed," Antonio added. "I gotta tell you, we went over everything twice, and if there's anything here that can explain everything, we ain't seeing it."
"I hope our printer's got a new ink cartridge," Munch commented.
"Alright, thanks," Voight told them.
"I gotta tell you," Elliot said as he looked up from the pile of papers he was reading through, "If Kathy left me and I decided to try internet dating, I'd be embarrassed to admit this stuff too."
Olivia shook her head, "I don't get it, I'm not seeing anything here that would warrant Casey's reluctance to talk to us. This looks like a straight forward online relationship."
"Far be it for me to interject my own personal knowledge on the subject," Munch said as he walked by with a new cup of coffee.
Elliot did a double take, "What do you know about online dating, Munch?"
"Hey, a guy's gotta do something with his free nights, right?" John asked. "We pulled up Dahlia Meehan's dating profile from the site, there are a lot of telltale red flags that are worth the online equivalent of running for the hills, which is to ignore those people completely...old photos, particularly alluring photos that are way too confident for just trying to find someone, photos at, on or around expensive or flashy backgrounds with nobody else in them, who list more details of what they're not looking for than are, who can't stop talking about themselves, and none of that pops up on her page. Hell if I was 10 years younger I'd probably initiate contact with her."
"Munch, you wouldn't have any luck if you were 20 years younger," Elliot replied.
"Ha ha ha," John dryly responded.
"Another red flag is they generally want to meet as quickly as possible," Olivia said, and when she caught the look Elliot shot towards her she told him, "Shut up." Staring back down at the printed out emails, she pointed out, "Casey talks to this woman every day for 3 months and they just now decide to meet? If he was sending her money or gifts or something like that and she was milking him for all he was worth, it would make sense, but she was getting nothing out of this, that sounds like it was legit."
Something occurred to Olivia and she flipped through the pages she'd read and she called over to the next desk, "Elliot, can I see your papers for a minute?"
"Yeah, why? You find something?" he asked as he swapped with her.
"No, I'm not," Olivia answered aloofly, "And that's what's so strange." She skimmed through his sheets and didn't find what she was looking for either. She hopped up from her chair and asked the others, "Has anybody seen a single mention of Casey being a firefighter in the emails they're reading?"
Fin and Munch went back over theirs briefly and both shook their heads. Voight came up and offered the ones he'd been looking over to Olivia and asked her, "What's your point?"
"I don't know, but it's odd he wouldn't mention that," she answered as she flipped through his and threw them down in frustration, "These two talked about everything in three months, likes, dislikes, movies, restaurants, where they grew up, their families, where they went to school, and Casey doesn't tell her what he does for a living?"
"That's virtually unheard of on a dating site," Munch commented. "People lie about their jobs all the time, but flat out omit it? No way."
"Something else that might be worth noting," Elliot said, "The picture on Casey's dating profile...what would be easier than him to upload a pic in his uniform for it? But there is nothing in the picture that indicates he's a fireman."
Olivia looked at the screenshot and realized, "We've seen this picture before, it was the one on his phone when we found it."
"The one of him and Kelly Severide," Elliot caught on, "He cuts Kelly out of the picture and boom, instant profile pic."
"Sounds like he went to a lot of trouble to keep his work out of the conversation," Fin thought. "But why?"
"Okay, everybody take back your own sections and look over them again," Olivia said, "we must be missing something. Hank, will you make sure we've got all the copies?"
"Sure," Voight answered.
"I found something!" Olivia told the others as she earmarked a page.
"What is it?" Fin asked as he went over to her desk.
Olivia read the email transcripts, "Dahlia: I work part time at a hair salon and also teach yoga classes at the gym, what about you?" Casey: "I am self employed with a small construction company." That's all he says," Olivia looked up, "Why wouldn't he say he was a firefighter?"
"Yeah, that's usually a good line to draw the women in," Fin said, "Those calendars usually go like hotcakes and a lot of women expect reality to live up to the fantasy on those pages."
"It's also a lot of work related details that could scare off a good thing," Elliot commented, "Same reason my marriage has been about to fall off a cliff 10 times in as many years."
"That's because you don't tell Kathy what goes on on the job," Olivia pointed out.
"That's because I really don't think she could handle hearing about what we see the scum of the earth doing to innocent victims every single day," Elliot remarked.
"And who wants to hear about burnt bodies and dead kids when you're trying to spark a romance with somebody and they ask you about your day?" Munch added, "I can see why he'd leave it out, it keeps that whole can of worms closed. He was probably waiting to see if this actually went anywhere in person before dropping that bombshell on her."
"Speaking of, where's Dahlia's address?" Olivia asked as she looked through the papers.
"I got it," Voight answered, "I also got your guys going over all her information, see if she's got a record, what her finances look like, anything that'll give us something to work with."
"How'd you do that?" Olivia asked.
"I lit a fire under them," he answered with a small defiant smirk. "Let's go."
"Hold it," Cragen came into the room, "You're not going anywhere."
"Excuse me?" Voight asked.
"No offense, Sergeant Voight, but if somebody did lure Casey out here for some reason, it's possible they'd recognize you. Benson and Stabler will go check it out, you stay put until we get some more answers."
Voight looked at the captain, and everybody else looked at him, after a brief pause Hank responded, "Okay, captain."
Elliot rapped on the door for the second time, but neither he nor Liv were expecting an answer now anymore than the first time when nobody opened the door.
"No car in the driveway," Olivia noted.
Elliot leaned over and looked in the big front window, "I don't see anyone in there, don't hear anything either."
Olivia turned and saw the woman next door out on her porch getting the mail, "El."
They cut across the front yard and flashed their badges.
"Excuse me, Miss," Olivia said, "do you know the woman who lives next door?"
"Well I've seen her, I don't really know her," she answered.
"When was the last time you saw her?" Elliot asked.
"A few nights ago when she cleared out, her and those two men," the woman said.
"Two men?" Olivia asked.
Elliot pulled up the picture of Casey on his phone and asked, "Is this one of the men?"
"I'm not sure, it was late and I didn't get a good look," the woman said, "I just heard the voices when they left...I couldn't really make out anything they said."
"Do the men come here often?" Elliot asked.
"I don't know, I've seen the cars a few times but, I try to mind my own business," the woman answered. "What's this about?"
"Miss Meehan might've been the witness to an accident a couple nights ago, we need to ask her some questions," Elliot said. "Thank you, have a nice day."
"Come on, let's get back," Olivia said as they walked down the sidewalk, "I've got an idea."
"What's that?" Elliot asked.
"I'm going to put my time in computer crimes to good use," Olivia told him.
