"Okay, change of plans," Olivia said when she, Elliot and Voight returned to the squad room, "we need to find anything we can to charge these three with that doesn't require a victim's testimony."
Elliot saw Huang was still there and asked him, "What's the diagnosis?"
"Do you want the clinical term for it or the layman's term?" George asked.
"Let's go with the one a bunch of tired, borderline burnt out cops can easily comprehend," Munch suggested.
"Okay," Huang cut to the chase, "basically...Dahlia Meehan is emotionally dead, and Derrick and Damon both are borderline."
"Borderline what?" Elliot asked.
"My guess is they both have an IQ somewhere around 80, they're able to function but they are very easy to deceive, to manipulate, they don't possess the critical thinking skills to know when they're being taken advantage of, so it doesn't occur to them to question anything Dahlia says."
"How'd they get hooked up with her in the first place?" Fin asked.
"She's a true sociopath in every sense of the word, she's very charming, very charismatic, and she can convince almost anybody of anything she wants. She knows how to read people and she knows who she can string along and she seeks them out, both online and in real life."
"Sounds like a cult," Fin said.
"With a little tweaking, that's exactly what we'd be looking at," Huang explained, "Back in the late 80s, two women who worked at a nursing home in Michigan were arrested for murdering five elderly patients. The woman who masterminded the killings blamed her lesbian lover, and she was so convincing, the girlfriend got five life sentences, while she only got 40 years and was eligible for parole. She could make anybody believe anything she wanted, and she had the entire staff of the nursing home wrapped around her finger, they would do anything she wanted them to, even dance naked in the street. She would turn the women against each other and get a whole pack to gang up on another one and beat her to a pulp, and they firmly believed the victim deserved it because," he shrugged, "She said so, and anything she said must be true."
"But what does Dahlia gain from this?" Olivia wanted to know.
"Satisfaction, proof she can get anyone to do what she wants, that she has that power, and she can make anybody suffer she chooses to, because nobody but her matters," Huang said, "Even Derrick and Damon don't matter, they're just a means to an end, she probably had others before them, and when she finally gets bored with them there will no doubt be others."
"Okay but so," Olivia asked, "Are these guys competent?"
"Yes," Huang answered simply, "they know what they did is wrong, but in their mind it doesn't matter because it's what Dahlia wanted."
"And what Dahlia wants, she gets," Elliot said, "So how do we crack these three nuts?"
"Start with the guys," Huang told them, "They're eager to please, they'd do anything Dahlia wanted...use that to your advantage."
"You know you have the right to a lawyer, and if you get one, that means we can't talk to you anymore, but that also means we can't help you, or Dahlia, if that happens," Olivia told Damon as she and Elliot sat across from the young man.
He looked at them shiftily and asked, "What about Dahlia?"
"She's not getting a lawyer either, she's telling us everything," Elliot answered, "And the only way you can really help her out, is if you and Derrick also tell us everything too...because if we get different stories from the three of you, then that means trouble."
"And trouble for Dahlia," Olivia added, "you don't want her to get in trouble, do you?"
"No," he shook his head, "So what do I do?"
"We just need you to tell us everything that you guys did to Matt Casey."
"Who?"
"The man you raped and left in a vacant lot and then tossed his clothes and phone into a dumpster," Olivia answered.
Damon looked confused. "Which one was that?"
Elliot raised his eyebrows, "There was more than one?"
"Yeah, do I need to tell about all of them?"
"Actually, yeah, that would be great," Olivia said, "that would really help. Have there been a lot?"
"Some," Damon shrugged as he took the pad and pen from Elliot and started to write.
"Damon, there's just one thing I don't understand," Olivia told him, "why did you and Derrick do this?"
He looked at them and answered simply, "Because Dahlia asked us to."
"Did she ask you to, or did she tell you to?" Elliot asked.
He shrugged again, "She said 'If you love me, you'll do this'."
"Did she say why?" Olivia asked him.
He shook his head, "Nah, she just said 'If you love me, you'll do this'."
"And you love her?" Elliot asked.
"Yeah."
"Does Derrick love her too?"
"I guess so."
"Does she love Derrick?" Olivia asked.
"I guess so."
"Does she love you?" she added.
"Yeah."
"How do you know?" Elliot asked.
Damon looked the cop in the eyes and answered without missing a beat, "She says she does."
The two cops exchanged a small look. Then Olivia saw he'd stopped writing.
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
"Do I just tell about the guys on the computer, or the others too?" Damon asked.
It took every ounce of self restraint both detectives had not to spring up in their seats at that.
"What others?" Elliot asked.
"The guys Dahlia met before the ones on the computer."
"When was that?" Olivia asked.
"I don't know, a year ago maybe," Damon answered.
"Why'd she start meeting them online instead?" Elliot asked.
"She said it was safer that way. After the last one died..."
"Wait, what happened?" Olivia asked him.
He looked at them and said with no emotion in his voice whatsoever, "The last time Dahlia brought a guy back, she went out to a bar to find him."
"How'd he die?" Elliot asked, pretending it wasn't killing him to get the answer.
"When we got done with him, Derrick picked up a brick and hit him in the head...he made a gurgling noise, then he dropped, and he didn't get back up," Damon answered.
"What happened after that?" Olivia forced herself to maintain a calm tone.
"Dahlia said get rid of him, so we dumped him in an alley by some garbage cans...she said it'd be safer to find the next one on the computer, get somebody to come from another state, so if he died, there wouldn't be anybody looking for him who could find out about us," Damon answered.
"How'd you do?" Olivia asked as Fin and Munch came out of the other interrogation room.
"Almost word for word what your guy said, except Derrick cops to beating the guy's head in," Fin answered.
"This would have to be an open homicide, how did we not draw a comparison to this case when we were looking for similar M.O.?" Munch wanted to know.
"I don't know but we've got a full confession," Olivia said. "All we have to do now is find out who the dead vic is and we've got them."
"Yeah, but there's still one member of this gang to deal with," Elliot pointed to the two-way mirror in the interrogation room Dahlia was seated in, looking bored out of her mind.
"The game's up, Dahlia," Olivia said as she and Elliot entered the room.
The woman at the table folded her arms and looked annoyed, "What's this about?"
"You don't know?" Elliot asked. "That's surprising, seeing as how you're the one who orchestrated this whole thing."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, sounding put off by the whole thing.
"Dahlia, it's over," Olivia said, "We know about all the men you set up to be raped and beaten."
The woman actually smirked, "Oh please, none of them are going to testify against me, and you can't make a case without a complaining witness."
Elliot looked to Olivia and commented, "She's good."
"I'm not stupid," Dahlia told them, "I know what I'm doing."
"Yeah, we see that, you got those guys out there trained like a couple of lapdogs," Elliot noted, "They'd do anything for you."
"Why not? I'm hot," she said bluntly.
"Sure couldn't tell it by these photos though," Olivia said as she dumped Dahlia's profile pictures on the table in front of her. "To the unsuspecting eye you almost look innocent. It's really odd that you'd go to all this trouble to meet all these men, and never once ask them for any money, or anything. Hell, you never even took money out of the wallets when you tossed them."
"What would be the point of that?" Dahlia asked. "I don't need money."
"But it'd sure be easier to hook onto a sugar daddy or ten instead of spending months pretending you're actually a wholesome girl looking for romance," Elliot commented. "Seems like a waste of time to me."
"That's what you think," she replied. She leaned back in the chair and kicked her heels up onto the table and laughed as she looked at the detectives one by one, and added, "They were all so thrilled to meet a woman who didn't want money, or gifts, who didn't outright ask what they did for a living or how much money they made, who wasn't just looking for quick sex, they were all so relieved to find a real person and not just some gold digger...it was too damn easy."
"What was?" Olivia asked.
"How pathetic they all were," Dahlia answered, "Every single last one of them, they were dumb enough to believe somebody actually loved them...so stupid they thought somebody actually wanted to hear about their life and get to know them as people...it was like shooting fish in a barrel." She was openly laughing now as she continued, "The looks on their faces when they realized what was going on...and all of them...every last one, it never failed, they all just looked at me with this...hurt dog look, like...how could I?" Her smile tightened and pushed its way higher on her face as she giggled, "It's no wonder they'll never testify, have everybody know how stupid they were that they actually believed anyone wanted them? And instead they just walked straight ahead into the trap. It's hilarious."
"What happened with Matt Casey?" Elliot asked as he slammed a copy of Casey's profile picture on the table.
Dahlia picked it up in one hand and gazed at it with an amused look on her face, "Matt...Matt-Matt-Matt..." she giggled again, "He called when his plane landed...he took a cab to my house...we spent an hour talking...had dinner...had a few drinks, talked some more...he'd gotten some condoms 'just in case' but the poor son of a bitch fell asleep before it got that far...he'd told me about his dead fiancee and how he hadn't been with a woman since then, he was especially pathetic."
"How so?" Olivia asked.
Dahlia snorted, "All he did that night was talk, oh, he'd come ready for anything, but he forgot the condoms, he was too embarrassed to have that come up in the airport x-ray, we stopped at a drugstore so he could pick up a box...then the dumbass never even used them, he asked if we could just lay together in bed the first night," she sneered as the words came out, "he was more pathetic than a 16 year old virgin."
"So what happened?" Elliot asked.
Dahlia adjusted in her chair and explained, "He was so love-struck the next morning it was sickening, he wanted to wait until that night to have sex, thought it would be more meaningful if we were together another day before it happened...and that night after dinner, I told him 'let's go for a walk and when we come back it'll be so memorable'."
"And Derrick and Damon were already at the lot waiting," Olivia said.
"I'd told them where to wait for us, when they came out of the shadows he thought he was going to protect me...and when they grabbed him and he saw me, then it all just...clicked," the woman spoke slowly for dramatic effect, and she laughed, "That look on his face was priceless. He screamed but, nobody comes around that block at that time of night, that's where we took most of them, when it was over they had a good chance to work their way back home and have to explain what happened to them, their clothes, their wallets, it's hilarious really."
Elliot grinned cynically at her, and responded in a patronizing tone, "Well the gag's on you...Damon told us about the guy you killed, we identified the body, and there's no statute of limitations on murder."
"And since he was killed in the commission of a rape," Olivia said, "that's murder 1. All three of you are going to rot in prison with no parole."
"The DA gets a murder 1 conviction without a single victim having to testify, sounds like a win to me," Elliot said.
Dahlia tipped her chair to the front and put her feet on the floor, the smile on her face dropped after a second, but the expression that replaced it wasn't one typical of a perp who realized they were caught. Instead it just looked like minor annoyance.
She grunted a sinister laugh before she told the detectives, "You think I care? You're both idiots. You don't get it, do you?" She was beaming from ear to ear as she said proudly, "It doesn't matter what you or the courts or anyone does to me, because there's nothing you can do that can compare to what I did to them. They'll go home and spend the rest of their lives remembering what happened to them, and they'll pretend it didn't ruin their life, or that they weren't the dumbest people who ever lived, they might even be able to convince themselves for a while, but it'll always come flooding back to them, and there won't be a day that goes by that they don't remember me laughing at them as they were raped. I still win."
"Olivia," Voight came up to the detective when she left the interrogation room, "I'm starting to think Severide had the right idea."
"About what?" she asked.
"That woman's right, there's nothing in the conventional means of the justice system that can be done to her that can compare to what she put those men through...so give me two minutes alone in the supply closet with her and I'll be able to make her eat her words, among other things."
"Oh, believe me," Olivia said with a great weight in her voice, "I am sorely tempted. We've seen perps like this before, and it never gets any easier dealing with them when you know there's nothing inside them."
"Not exactly a happy ending," Voight said.
"Even when we win, we never get those," Olivia replied. "At least we've got enough to put all three of them away for the rest of their lives. But I'm not sure how much consolation that'll be for Matt."
"When we get done processing them, let's go give him the news," Voight said. "It can't hurt him any."
"So..." Olivia turned to him and asked, "Now what?"
Hank looked at her and answered, "Tomorrow we'll be going back to Chicago."
Olivia shook her head, "We just never get any time to ourselves."
"That's the price of this job," Voight told her, "but, there's always next time."
She smiled sadly at him and said, "I almost wish there wasn't a next time, it always means somebody's life has been ruined and we have to work the case."
"Well...that's what vacation days are for," Hank said.
She nodded, "I'll have to check into it..."
"Be honest, Olivia," Hank said, "after everything that's gone on the last few days, you wouldn't want to try it now anyway."
She shook her head, knowing any attempt they made at intimacy now would be drowned out by the confession they'd just heard. Even if the two of them were in a seasoned relationship that would be hard to deal with, but just new and starting out and seeing where this was even going to go, she didn't think they could get through the night if they tried.
"I just feel so bad for Matt," she said.
"I know," Voight responded, "I do too, but he's tough, he'll get through this."
"But she's right, he's never going to forget what she did to him," Olivia said. "He's never going to forget what happened because he decided to take a chance on falling in love again."
"I didn't say it would be easy," Hank replied, "but we do have a good psychiatrist on staff at Med who can help him work through this, if he's willing to try it."
By the time Olivia, Elliot and Voight returned to Casey and Severide's hotel room, it was late, and it looked like Casey had been asleep or at least tried to, he sat at the head of one of the double beds with his knees bent and was dressed in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt, his short hair was spiked in parts from laying against the pillows, and though his eyes were fairly wide open, he looked ready to drop from exhaustion as the cops gave the two firemen the news. Kelly was still dressed and sat at the foot of the same bed, listening to the same information.
"The DA can build an entire case against them for murder one without having to bring any of the other attacks into the equation, they'll be convicted without a single victim testifying," Elliot explained, "And she'll push for the highest sentence, they're never going to get out. It's over."
Matt slowly turned his head down and his eyes all but closed, he pressed his hands over his eyes and groaned as if in disbelief of the whole thing. Then suddenly a small sob broke through instead, and once one got out, it opened the floodgate for others as his chest started heaving in time with his frantic breaths. Kelly turned where he sat and moved to put his hand on Casey, but Voight wordlessly intercepted him and stood between the two firemen.
"Severide, you look like you could use a drink, why don't you go down to the bar with the detectives, and I'll stay with Casey till you get back."
Kelly didn't want to leave Matt alone with Voight, but he could sense there was a reason Hank was sending him out of the room. He looked over at the SVU detectives and silently complied. He stood up from the bed, but before he left he put his hand on Casey's shoulder and told the blonde man, "I'll be back in a few minutes, I won't be gone long, I promise."
Reluctantly, he followed Olivia and Elliot out of the room. After the door closed behind them, Hank turned to the Truck lieutenant and told him softly, "Move over."
Casey realized what he was saying and scooted over on the bed so Voight could sit down.
Hank looked at the younger man and said to him, "Matt, I am very sorry about what you were put through, but I know you're strong enough to get through this, you survived me." He'd hoped that that comment would get some small response from the fireman, but there was nothing.
"Matt, look at me. Come on, look at me."
Casey picked his head up and opened his eyes and saw Voight reach into his jacket pocket and he took out a cell phone with a cracked screen on it.
"This is the condition it was in when the cops found it," Hank said as he held it out to Matt, "You should be able to transfer your stuff onto a new one."
Casey took the phone and looked at it almost in awe, then he looked at Voight and asked him, "How'd you get it?"
"I convinced the techs that since there wasn't going to be a trial, officially there was no case, and with no case, this was no longer evidence, and since it's not evidence, there was no point in them holding onto it," Voight explained.
"How'd you do that?" Casey asked.
"I have my ways," he answered.
Casey looked back down at the phone and he asked Voight, "You know, don't you? You read the messages."
"Yeah, I'm sorry, we had to," Hank told him.
Casey nodded his head, "I get it..." his voice was just barely strong enough to hold the words together without sobbing again, but they threatened to spill over with every few breaths he took. "I was an idiot...I really thought I'd found someone..."
Voight shook his head, "No, listen to me, Matt, you didn't do anything wrong, there was no way you could've known what she was really like. We looked through everything, and it took us forever to figure it out, there were no red flags, you didn't rush into anything, you did everything right, there wasn't any way you could've seen this coming."
Casey half closed his eyes, his voice was full of self-disgust, "Something's wrong with me."
"No...Matt, I am sorry about what happened to Hallie...trust me, I know how painful it is to lose the woman you thought you'd spend your whole life with. It's hard, and it's hard knowing when the time's right to try and find someone else. Matt, this is in no way a punishment for trying to move on and find someone new."
Casey looked down at the bedding and quietly said, "It sure feels like it."
"Hallie would never have wanted this to happen to you, you can't think like that," Hank told the younger man hugging his knees to his chest, "You weren't the only one they did this to, Matt, they knew what they were doing, everybody they targeted were upstanding guys who were just tired of being alone with no ulterior motives."
"And we all fell for it," Casey said in a voice slightly shaking, "It doesn't say much for us."
"Recovering from this won't be easy and I'm not going to pretend it is," Hank said, "but you're going to have to talk to somebody about it, Matt, and if you don't want it to be Severide, that's fine, and if you don't want to tell me about it, that's fine, but I've seen a lot of stuff on this job, Matt, I think I'm better qualified than most to hear it...you ever decide you want to talk about it, or not," Voight took a card out of his pocket and handed it to Casey, who saw it had Voight's name and phone number on it, "You know where to find me."
Casey looked at the card, his vision was blurry from new tears building up, he blinked and he felt them rolling down his face. He looked at the cop and quietly said, "Thanks, Hank."
A newfound look of horror formed on his face as he realized, "What am I going to do now? What do I tell everyone? How do I explain this?"
"You don't have to," Hank answered. "I took care of that."
"I just don't get it," Kelly said as he and Liv and Elliot sat in the hotel bar. The detectives were officially off duty but both had refrained from joining Kelly in a beer. He looked at the two cops and said, "I get why Casey wouldn't say anything about the attack...but why didn't he tell us he was coming out here? Why would he keep it a secret he was meeting someone? All this time, I thought he must've gotten into something illegal he couldn't talk about."
"We had our own theories that didn't exactly pan out," Elliot said.
"Was it true that Casey hasn't been with a woman since Hallie died?" Olivia asked.
"He's had a couple dates since then, but nothing ever came of them, they were over pretty quickly," Kelly answered. "This just doesn't make sense, he was talking to this woman every day, and he never told us, never told anybody, why?"
"Kelly," Olivia glanced down at the counter before looking the fireman in the eyes as she said simply, "Not everything done in the dark is shameful. We went through all their chats, he was really excited about meeting Dahlia...I think he was scared to get his hopes up incase it didn't work out."
Kelly squinted uncomfortably, "You read all that?"
"Part of the job, unfortunately when we get involved, people don't have secrets anymore," Elliot said. "If a victim for any reason conceals any details about anything from their attack, the defense can use it against them as 'proof' they're lying."
He nodded, equally uncomfortably, "No wonder he didn't want to report what happened." He took a swig of his beer and swallowed it hard and asked them, "So now what? What do I do?"
"You got him through the worst of it," Elliot said. "As long as you got his back, he'll be fine."
"What do I tell everybody at 51 when we get back?" Kelly asked.
"What have you told them already?" Olivia asked.
"Not much, I can't tell them about this, after I got here I called our battalion chief and told him that Casey was in the hospital, and since the cops were investigating I couldn't say much because we didn't know if it was a direct target on 51 and the investigation could be compromised if word got out."
"That was fast on your feet," Elliot noted.
"Yeah, but now that it's all over, they're going to want to know what's been going on, what do I tell them?" Kelly asked helplessly.
"You could try the truth," Olivia said.
Kelly shook his head, "That would not work."
"Well it doesn't have to be the whole truth," Elliot pointed out, "For example, you tell them that Casey got catfished and came to New York to meet who he thought was a single woman looking for a relationship, and instead it turned out to be two guys who beat and robbed him."
"They didn't rob Casey," Kelly said.
"They took his wallet, they took his phone, what they actually did with them is irrelevant, they forcefully took them from Casey after they beat him up, that still counts as robbery."
Kelly thought about it and nodded hesitantly, "I guess that could work." He looked back and forth at the two detectives and asked, "You two've been doing this a long time...is Casey gonna be okay?"
"Well, life never goes back to normal for any victim," Elliot said, "but...yeah, I think he will. A big question, had this gone to trial, and Casey had to come back here and testify, and the defense and DA both draw out every gory detail about what happened, and the defense tries to say Casey knew what he was getting into and asks some very leading questions that could even make it start to look that way...would you still be here supporting him?"
"What kind of question is that?" Kelly asked. "He's my best friend, of course I would."
"There you go," Elliot replied.
"You know, Kelly," Olivia said, "I've sat with a lot of victims in court, and a lot of times their families and their friends think they can take what comes out during the trial...and a lot of times they can't, by the end of the trial I'm the only one there for the victim because everything drudged up is worse than they could've imagined."
Kelly shook his head, "Not me, we've been through everything together, there's no way in hell I'd abandon him during this."
"That's why Matt's going to be alright," Olivia told the lieutenant, "because he has you."
