"Law and Order: SVU" belongs to Dick Wolf and Universal Television. No profit is being made from this story.
August 2012
When they had said they intended to keep him alive long enough to regret infiltrating their operation, they hadn't been kidding.
Elliot was kept tied up in the basement with the children for the next four months. Jorge Hernandez came down three times a day to empty the buckets that the children used and to slide a bowl underneath of him.
It was humiliating and disgusting and he hated doing it, but he had no choice. They had already proven that if he refused it, they would let him sit in his own waste.
Jorge also used each time he came as an opportunity to give Elliot another substance that would ensure he was kept pliable and wouldn't cause them any trouble.
PCP, Methamphetamines, Cocaine, even Ecstasy...nothing seemed too difficult for any of them to obtain from somewhere. Powder and pills became as routine as eliminating and cold tv dinners shared with the children for him.
They kept him gagged in between "doses" until they were sure of what kind of reaction he would have to whatever he was given. Extreme terror-induced paranoia was common in the beginning and he spent two entire weeks with his mouth taped shut because he couldn't stop screaming, only removing it once a day for ten minutes to give him bits of food and water.
They threatened the children with beatings if any of them thought about trying to hobble close to him or remove his gag. None of them dared even move from their beds, so it wasn't necessary.
And so it began, the horrifying, torturous ritual of laying half-crazed and immobilized while all around him, depraved, vicious men took turns brutalizing, prostituting, and abusing the children. Most of the time, the kids were taken out of the basement.
But not always.
Those times were the worst. He could still hear and understand their cries and screams through the haze of semi-consciousness but could do nothing to help. That seemed to be the point of pride for the Hernandez brothers, because as time went on, they got more brazen solely for his benefit.
The first time they held a little girl down and raped her on the bed he was on, they deliberately kept him sober while they did it. He had to watch, gagged but fully aware, as they laid her in a position perpendicular to him so that all she could see while they assaulted her was his face.
That was also the first time he broke down into sobs during the whole ordeal. But if wouldn't be the last.
In the rare moments when the drugs wore off before they gave him more, Elliot wondered why no one was coming to help. Surely they knew where he was. They had to. Why was nobody coming?
He received his answer the very next day, but he didn't have all of his faculties available to realize it at that point. They drugged him more heavily than usual and then began barking at the children to get up. They were quickly herded up the stairs, momentarily leaving him alone.
A few moments later, two of the men came back. They made sure the tape was secure over his mouth before cutting the ties securing him to the bed, leaving his hands and feet bound. They lifted him, one at each end of his body, and carried him out of the house. He was semi-coherent and limp with disorientation from the drugs by then.
The children remained handcuffed as they were loaded into a windowless van and Elliot was put in the trunk of a car parked behind it. The vehicles moved out fast, carrying the four brothers and all of their prisoners.
When the U.S. Marshals arrived at the townhouse an hour later, all they found was an empty basement. Around that time, the Hernandez brothers were busily securing their captives in a new location over 70 miles away.
December 2019
Fin sat at his desk and uneasily watched for Olivia to arrive.
He felt like a rat.
He knew, he knew, that she would have gone down the stairs in a split second if she had been there and known that Elliot Stabler was outside asking to see her. Eight years apart couldn't erase the ones she'd spent with him as her partner. Fin didn't even have to question that.
Not that she wouldn't be furious at seeing him. No doubt she would. She would yell at him, scream at him, tell him she hated him and he would take it. She would probably even slug him and Elliot would let her. He would have to ease back into her life, going to whatever lengths she asked of him, and he would do it without hesitating.
Fin didn't have to question that either.
There was no way that Benson and Stabler could stay away from each other once they were put back into each other's orbits. They were like magnets. Inevitably, the two of them would become attached again at some point.
He couldn't keep this from her. It wasn't fair to her.
Or, he reluctantly thought from deep down inside, to Elliot. The man he had encountered outside was not the same. He looked like he needed serious help.
And, Fin thought guiltily, probably a friend.
November 2011
She was pacing around their bed, watching him pack. He could feel the nervousness coming off of her in waves. She was obviously having second thoughts.
To be honest...he kind of was, too. But he was also exhilarated like he hadn't been in a long, long time.
She was happy to see him...alive again after so long. But this wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind.
"Baby..." she said nervously.
Kathy stopped walking, folding her arms tightly against herself.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" she finally asked.
Elliot looked over at her. She looked close to tears.
He dropped the shirt he had been folding and went to her. When he enveloped her into his arms, she started to cry.
"Do you want me to tell them I changed my mind?" he said quietly against her hair. "Tell me what you want, Kat. If you don't want me to go, I won't go. "
She sniffled and shook her head into his chest.
"No," she said, clearing her throat tearfully. She looked up at him and he cupped her face with his hands, brushing up into her hair. "I know how much this means to you, El. I can't ask you not to go." She bit her lip. "I'm just worried."
He nodded.
"I know," he said seriously. "But I'm telling you, for an undercover job, Cragen assures me that this will be easier than anything I ever did with SVU. The U.S. Marshals already have the suspects nailed. They want to be able to rescue all of the children that they've been trafficking for the last year and a half first. "
He squeezed her hands reassuringly.
"All I'll be doing is making friends with these guys until they tell me where they're keeping the kids," he told her. "Then the marshals take it from there. Hell, I'm betting I'll be spending more time bored in the hotel they're putting me up in instead of actually working. Think of it like a deployment."
His eyebrows jumped playfully.
"Last time I deployed, you sent me pictures of you in racy lingerie. If you wanted to recreate some of them for me to take along, I wouldn't say no. Just putting that out there."
He was grinning as he finished, trying to put her mind at ease. She shook her head, but had never been able to resist that smile since the moment she'd met him as a teenage girl.
"That was boot camp," she said, grinning back. "And I'm pretty sure the pictures wouldn't look quite the same...we're a long way from 17, you know."
He grinned, kissed her forehead and then left the room.
She considered a moment and then grabbed her phone. She disappeared with it into the bathroom.
Elliot quietly pushed open the door to the room next to theirs and padded in softly. He approached the toddler bed that his youngest son had just recently become big enough for and stared down at the boy sacked out against the blankets.
He had met with his older children for lunch earlier that day to let them know that he was leaving the next day. Now adults, they could handle being told that he would be going undercover, but they definitely weren't happy about it.
Especially Maureen. She had always been a "Daddy's Girl" more than any of her sisters and she was a natural worrier. She had hugged him hard and cried, begging him to be careful and to come back ok. He had assured all of them that they had nothing to worry about.
He considered kissing Eli without disturbing him. But he couldn't help himself.
He bent down and lifted his 2-year old son up into his arms, embracing him tightly. Eli whined a bit at being rused and then snuggled against his father's shoulder like it was his favorite place to be.
A lump swelled up in Elliot's throat. Even though he was excited about the job, he hated leaving them. He always had.
"I've got to go away for while, Little Man," he whispered.
He stroked his son's wispy baby hair. Kathy refused to cut it, insisting that their son didn't need a haircut until he was at least 3 years old. He knew that, though she refused to admit it, she was trying to hold onto the "baby" stage of their last baby for as long as she could.
"I know it's going to be tough on everyone for awhile," he went on. "But can I tell you a secret?" He breathed in the small of his baby shampoo and hugged him again. "It's even tougher on me. I miss you guys so much when I'm away from you that it hurts."
He swallowed hard.
"I love you, Eli," he whispered. "Take care of your mom for me. I'll see you soon, buddy. "
He gently lowered Eli back into the bed and then went back to the master bedroom.
He found Kathy sitting on the bed, sobbing. She had heard him talking to Eli through the baby monitor. He took her into his arms and held her.
The next morning, he woke before dawn and gathered his things in preparation to catch a 6 am flight to Sacramento, California. When he went to his nightstand to gather his keys, phone, wallet, and plane ticket, he saw that Kathy had laid a few items on top of them.
He paused and reached for them, a smile forming on his face.
They were photographs. One recent one of Eli dressed in a policeman Halloween costume, one of Maureen in her wedding dress, two senior portraits of Kathleen and Elizabeth, and one of he and Dick at his son's graduation from Parris Island, following in his father's proud footsteps.
She had known without asking which moments in their kids lives held the most value for him and had deliberately given him those memories to look at while he was away from them. His gaze traveled over to where his wife lay sleeping.
God bless that woman.
He continued through the photos, seeing two more at the bottom of the pile. He was a bit confused at first when he saw a picture of he and Olivia in formal attire, wondering where his wife had gotten it, and then remembered that Maureen had invited his partner to her wedding the year prior.
He smiled at the memory. Olivia had been genuinely shocked at receiving the invitation and he had teasingly chided her. Of course she had been invited to the wedding, and to all of the festivities before hand. She was expected to sit in the front row with all of them, too. She was family.
He hadn't expected his words to make her cry, but they had.
He smiled again and then flipped to the last one. There was Kathy, apparently during the previous night, smiling impishly and wearing a wine-purple set of lacy lingerie.
He had to stifle his laugh so as not to wake her as he carefully put all of the photos into his pocket.
He picked up his suitcase and travel bag, kissed his wife one more time, and then left.
He had no idea that he wouldn't be coming back.
December 2019
Officer Kevin McLaughlin fired up his computer and glanced around a minute to be sure that nobody was nearby to see what he was doing.
Then he typed in the web address for the USACOPS online law enforcement directory.
He wasn't as naive as many of the cops at the 61 thought he was. He had seen homeless people and junkies before. He knew how they tended to act, even though he was still practically a police academy "boot," as they all liked to keep reminding him.
But he couldn't stop thinking about the guy he had released back on the street the day before.
He'd thought he would get a reprimand once the sergeant found out, but Sergeant Jensen had only rolled his eyes and told him to get himself laid before his bleeding heart made him too unbearable to handle.
He wasn't sure what he was doing. The guy had probably been high, mental, or both. But, in his own crass way, the sergeant had been right.
Mclaughlin had never heard anyone in the lockup ever claim to have been a cop before.
Once the page loaded, he typed in the two names that the homeless guy had mentioned and pressed SEARCH.
Fin had to go out in the field before the captain arrived and Rollins was still at the hospital with Melissa Miller collecting evidence from the rape kit when Kat received the DNA result from what was found on the girl's shirt. She printed out the report and stared at it uneasily for a few minutes.
Then she went and knocked on the open door of Captain Benson's office.
Olivia was up to her ass in case files needing to be signed off and barely looked up when Kat knocked.
"What do you need, Tamin?" she asked, signing her name on a file and opening another.
The detective didn't reply. When she looked up, Olivia saw Kat looking a little perplexed, holding a printout in her hand.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry to bother you," Kat said guiltily. " But Fin and Rollins aren't here and I'm not exactly sure what to do."
Olivia swallowed a sigh of aggravation.
The newest addition to their squad was a fine detective, but Kat wasn't very assertive about taking charge without someone senior directing her. It was annoying and Olivia hoped it wouldn't last long. Tamin wouldn't make it long in her career, let alone at SVU, if it did.
"About what?" Olivia asked. She saw the paper Tamin held and gestured to it. "What's that?"
Kat hesitated.
"It's the DNA results from the shirt our child victim was wearing at the hospital two days ago," she said. "There was a paternal match in the database to someone who was charged with petty larceny 10 years ago."
She stopped again.
Olivia was about to snap at her.
"So you found a match in the criminal database to a previous offender," she said in annoyance. "Go find someone who is available to assist and bring them in, then. What's the problem? "
Kat shook her head.
"The match wasn't in the criminal database," she said. She handed Olivia the paper. "It was in the employee one. He's a cop."
Olivia stared at the printout and felt the room spinning. She suddenly thought she might be sick.
Staring up at her from the page was the name and photo of Elliot Stabler.