Author's Note: Some answers, but not all of them. And with every answer comes more questions...
Being stuck behind seemingly every driver in the city who was either a tourist from somewhere that didn't believe in cars or had car trouble that day was not settling Olivia's nerves as she inched along the highway toward the Queens SVU precinct. At the nearest exit, she was getting off and finding her way by the back streets. At least traffic jams tended to massage themselves out, this creeping traffic was going to rattle her.
And she needed to be the most composed version of herself for the Stablers.
Elliot knew her in every one of her possible moods, more or less, but his kids saw her as some sort of a guardian angel, sent to watch them on their worst days and guide them through. And hell if she thought she knew what Kathy saw her as – an intruder into their sacred marriage? Her husband's best friend and work partner? The other woman?
As she sped down the back streets of Queens, she prayed. Prayer hadn't ever been an effective tool in her own life, but she knew how much Elliot's faith meant to him and his family, and as they said, "there's no atheists in a foxhole." Dear God, or whoever's out there – please let Eli be safe. Please let all of the Stabler family be safe, but especially Eli. He's one of your most innocents and hasn't done a thing to deserve any of this. Please also watch over his father, Elliot, so that I know he's alright. Amen.
It wasn't the best prayer, or the most poetic, but she remembered from one of the few times a childhood friend had dragged her to Sunday morning services, the priest telling the congregants, "It isn't so much what you say, it's that you say it at all. God listens to your prayers."
For every one of them, she hoped someone was listening.
"Captain Cerreta, Queens SVU," a tall, middle-aged man said, greeting her as she walked into the precinct. She would have recognized the squad room even if she'd been dropped off there blindfolded – there was a distinct smell that lingered below the surface. "And you must be Detective Benson, from our Manhattan unit."
"I am, Sir," she said, shaking his hand. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"I only wish we were meeting under better circumstances. Would you come into my office, please?"
Cerreta's office was lighter and airier than Cragen's, but still had the same foreboding atmosphere. He pulled out a chair for her, and she took a seat; he positioned himself behind his desk and tried to smile at her. "I don't know how much your Captain Cragen has told you," he said. "I can brief you on whatever you need to know, but so you know, you're not here as a detective, so much as you are a liaison with the victim's family."
"He mentioned something about a preschool and that something had happened to Eli – that's Elliot Stabler, Jr. – my former partner's son. He would have started preschool a few weeks ago."
"Former partner?"
"I haven't seen Detective Stabler since the shooting at our precinct back in May." She drummed her fingers against her knee and tried not to think too hard about that day – the terror, the blood, and the unknowing that had followed her since.
"Ah, yes, I do recall hearing about that now. Horrible. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere." He spun around in his chair and put his hands on the desk in front of him. "On the emergency contact list, under father's employer, it listed Manhattan SVU, and someone had appended a note saying, 'if unavailable, ask for Detective Olivia Benson.'"
She could quibble about the list being out of date, or she could find out why she'd been dragged all the way out to Queens this morning. "All due respect, Captain Cerreta, but what happened? Why am I here?"
"We have detectives down at Cross Island Day School right now talking to the witnesses. From the best of our knowledge, at student drop-off this morning, Mrs. Kathy Stabler dropped off her son Eli, and as she turned to leave the parking lot, an unknown assailant grabbed Eli and began to run down the sidewalk with him."
Her blood ran cold. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere – or to anyone.
"Did anyone catch him? Is Eli okay? Have you issued an AMBER Alert?"
"Detective Benson, in all fairness, in order to issue an AMBER Alert, we'd need a make, model and license plate for a possible getaway car. You know this. And in this case, we simply don't have that information. I have all my best detectives out there on the streets looking for him as we speak."
"Captain Cerreta, in all fairness, this a police officer's child we're talking about. Eli isn't just any kid."
"Every parent says that about their own child, ma'am. Now, we have Kathy Stabler in interrogation room three, and she's been a little shaken, understandably so. She might be a little more receptive to talking if she recognized a friendly face."
"I'll see what I can do."
She wanted to be out there pounding the sidewalks of Queens until her ankles burst through the bottoms of her shoes. She wanted to shake down every less-than-savory-looking perp and get them to spill all the details about where Eli Stabler could even possibly be.
Instead, she made her way to interrogation room three, where she saw Kathy sitting at the table inside with her head buried in her hands, the loose beads of a rosary looped around her fingers. It was a thoroughly discomforting image.
"Hey, Kathy," Olivia said, as she opened the door and quietly walked to the other side of the table herself. "It's Olivia, remember me?"
"Oh, thank God, Olivia," Kathy said, looking up at Olivia; everything about her appearance suggested Kathy had been crying quite a bit that morning. The two women embraced and sat back down, and Olivia handed Kathy a Kleenex to wipe her face. "There's been all these strange detectives coming in and out and it's so overwhelming, and it's so good to see a friendly face."
"Captain Cragen told me they wanted me specifically out here. Something about me being Eli's emergency contact."
"I would have asked for you even if you hadn't been on there, which, of course you would have been, you're on all the kids' emergency forms. You're the one person who can help us, Olivia, you're our only hope." A fresh wave of sobs coursed through her, and Olivia patted her back.
"Can you tell me what happened this morning, Kathy?"
"Sure, uh, Eli was a little slow getting up, and Rich nearly had to pour a bucket of water on his head to get him moving. He had the bucket half-filled when I heard Eli finally get out of bed," she said, and she laughed despite herself at her sons' antics. "He couldn't have his scrambled eggs, or he was going to be late, so I gave him a granola bar and a yogurt pouch and told him to eat in the car."
"This all sounds fairly routine."
"Yeah, so we grabbed his lunchbox and backpack – both Angry Birds, he loves to borrow my phone to play that game - and we were out the door."
Olivia nodded. So far, it sounded like any other number of families starting their mornings across the five boroughs – across the country, really. "And then?"
"We made good time getting over to Cross Island Day. He was really excited about showing off some rock he found in the park yesterday to his classmates for show and tell, and I was excited for him. Each of my children has been so," she paused for a moment to catch her breath and collect herself, "so incredibly different, but I love them all, and Elliot does too. They're his reason for living."
"Where was Elliot during all this?" The mention of Kathy's husband – her former partner – was a shock to the system, but she tried to keep her composure and not show that his name could have that kind of effect on her.
Kathy's eyes went dark and she bowed her head. "Olivia, he's – he never wanted to hurt you. He thought he was protecting you."
"That's one way to look at it. Where was Elliot this morning?"
"He was in the guest bedroom at home, fast asleep. At least, I hope he was asleep, because he's been running himself so ragged lately that if he doesn't get some rest soon, he's going to fall apart," Kathy said, barely above a choked whisper. "I worry about him, especially now that you're not there."
Olivia bit down on the inside of her lip so hard, she almost drew blood. She had to change topics back to the main one at hand, or she couldn't guarantee they wouldn't both be crying in interrogation this morning. "Okay, so Elliot was at home, and you were taking Eli to school."
"Right, and Rich and Lizzie's friends swung by to pick them up for school. I called their school a little bit ago. They made it safely. Thank God."
"That is good news. What happened when you got to Cross Island Day School?" The less Stablers she had to worry about, the better, and knowing that the twins were safe and sound and surrounded by their teachers and friends gave her some measure of relief.
"Oh, there was a long line at drop-off, but I made sure to get as close to the door as I could. He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, grabbed his things, and before I could say, 'love you, Eli, have a great day,' he'd bounded out the door." She gently rubbed the area over the curve of her right cheek, as if she was trying to memorize her son's touch. "He was halfway up to the door, and I began to pull out of the line – there was dry cleaning to pick up, and a few things at Duane Reade, and I was going to stop by the store and get some hamburger and try to convince Elliot to have hamburgers on the grill for dinner tonight." She inhaled sharply and stared at Olivia – her eyes were blue, like Elliot's, but where his were a sharper, icier, blue, hers were the soft blue of long summer days spent idling by the ocean. "I was mentally putting together my to-do list when I heard Eli shrieking and people screaming. Olivia, I only turned away for a moment."
"You didn't do anything wrong, Kathy."
"I could have walked him to the door like I did the first week, but he'd told me last week that he wanted to walk in on his own, since he was a big boy now. My baby boy is growing up before my eyes." Tears welled up in her eyes, and Olivia mutely gave her the entire pack of Kleenex from her pocket.
The entire Stabler family meant more to Olivia than was easily definable, and she reached across the table to awkwardly hug Kathy. "You've got me," Olivia whispered, "and with me comes the entire force of the NYPD."
A knock sounded at the door to the interrogation room. Two men stood at the entrance; one held a small, child-size backpack and the other had his head bowed, not making eye contact with anyone as he fidgeted with his hands. "Detective?" the first man asked, motioning to Olivia. "One of our patrol units found this backpack on the sidewalk about three blocks from Eli's school."
"Oh." The sound Kathy made upon seeing the backpack was almost inhuman. "That's Eli's," Kathy said, her voice breaking as she traced the cartoonish outlines of the birds. "Yeah, there's the E he drew on it," she said, pointing to a backward E drawn on one of the yellow birds positioned near the top of the bag. "He said one of the other boys in the class had a very similar bag and so he wanted to mark it."
"We also managed to get ahold of Detective Stabler at home, and brought him in," the detective said, and motioned for him to step forward.
Olivia saw Elliot for the first time in over four months, and she could tell their time apart had ravaged some part of his soul. Their eyes met, and he said, in a voice barely above a hoarse rasp, "Kathy – Liv – what are you doing here?"
-to be continued-
Author's Note: All in due time, I promise.