Revelations
I hadn't even had my morning coffee before Cragen was all up in my face about this latest case. I'd been here in the office until midnight and had barely slept the night before; I'd been so worried. Still a little groggy, then, I tried to describe what I'd been up all night thinking about.
"Miss Jones' roommate alibi'd her boyfriend, Brian McInis, so that leaves us with one lead, a Matthew Bukowski, age twenty-three. Architectural engineer. Friend of her roommate's boyfriend. The victim says he wasn't too pleased at being dismissed after their date that night." It felt so wrong to call her that, the victim, and to talk about her dating, but I just put on my best poker face and trudged along. "I like him for this so far, Cap."
"Great. One lead." he said. "We still have to examine the crime scene. Who wants that?" Cragen said, like it was just another day on the job.
"Fin and I would -"
"Stabler, Olivia: check out the place." He took my notes out of my hands and passed them on to Olivia, who gave me a sideways glance before leaving with Elliott. As if he could read my very thoughts, he turned to Fin and me. "You know her, John. I want you here when she comes in."
While he had a good point, it didn't make up for the fact that I was now either on desk duty for the morning or stuck with the suspect himself. I rolled my eyes and went to find that coffee.
Fin and I had to pick the kid up from his office. As it turned out, nine in the morning is just about when he was arriving, so it was a smooth collection. We had pulled up all the background we could on this guy, since he was our only lead, but he had no priors, no arrests - not even a juvenile record I could find, and if I can't find it, it doesn't exist.
Matthew Bukowski, it turns out, was a good-looking young man, well dressed and well spoken. I hated him immediately. "What's this about?" he asked quickly, seeming genuinely surprised at the sight of our badges.
"We just need to ask you a few questions down town," Fin said, ushering him to the car.
"Should I call my lawyer?"
"Do you need your lawyer?" I retorted. He was silent on the ride there, except for a call to the office to let them know why he wasn't there. I was just sorry we didn't have enough to arrest him.
We put him in an interview room and got him a cup of coffee. "What's going on?" he repeated. "Am I in trouble?"
"You're in a world of trouble pretty soon."
"No, this is just questioning." Fin said, giving me a look and sitting down across the table from the kid, resting his elbows on the table. He'd taken off his suitcoat and looked settled in for a long conversation.
I, on the other hand, remained leaning against the doorframe, just over my partner's shoulder. "You know Cara Jones."
He paused. "Yeah, we went out on Saturday night. Is everything - is she okay?"
"She's fine now, but she was attacked around two Sunday morning," Fin said. "What do you know about that?"
""Oh my God. Nothing! You can't honestly think I would do that."
"She said you were pretty upset when she didn't invite you up," I said, somehow keeping myself from calling him a creep - or worse - as I made my way around the room, circling him like a hungry cat.
"Well, yeah. I thought she was nice. I thought we were having fun. But she said she just got out of a relationship and didn't want to go too fast. So I went home." Neither Fin nor I said a word, letting our disbelief settle in on him. "I went home! I didn't do anything to her."
I leaned in close to him ear, and whispered: "Don't lie to us, Matt."
"Can anyone confirm that you went straight home? A roommate, doorman?" Fin asked.
"The taxi driver?" he offered. He looked like he was about to be sick.
"Yeah, like there aren't a couple thousand of those in New York. I bet he was smarmy and gruff, too," I snapped. "If you want to get out of here, I'm afraid you'll need to do better than that."
Panic-stricken, he ran his hands down the front of his suit and drew a PDA from his breast pocket. He poked it a few times with the stylus, sighed frustratedly, and poked it again. "Um . check my cable records. I ordered a movie."
"What kind of movie?" Fin asked, letting that accusatory drawl of his take over.
Matthew pocketed the PDA and rubbed his widow's peak, nervously. "The adult kind."
I excused myself to go check on that: I was making myself sick in there anyway.
"How's it looking?" Cragen asked me, on my way to my desk.
"His alibi is a dirty movie he ordered the night of the attack." Much as I hated to admit it, it looked less and less likely to have been him.
"He admitted to a secret like that, I think he's telling the truth that he didn't do it."
"Unless that's what he wants us to believe," I said, still having hope. His was the only name Cara had been able to give us, and my mind just kept scrolling through the few friends she had here in New York.
"One way to tell," he said, starting to walk away. DNA.
In the end, we had to let the kid go. He willingly gave a blood sample, which is never a good sign, and we were back to square one. After a while, Cragen came out into the main room with an announcement: one set of fingerprints, not the victim's, had come up more than any other. "On her dresser, the door to her room, the kitchen counter," he said.
I stood up, frustrated beyond words. "On her dresser? That's not consistent with her story - he never touched her dresser. They're probably mine," I said, in that instant not giving a damn who heard me. "Do we need to reprint me? Take a blood sample to prove I didn't do it?" I pulled up my sleeve, nearly tearing the buttons of the cuff. "All the bureaucracy in the world and you don't even put that much together."
That was the first time I had really exploded over this, and, even though I knew I was asking to get taken off the case, deep down it felt really good just to yell.
"Come on, Cap: John's got a point," Fin said. At least I still had some friends in the unit. "Just compare them to his before you go off on this."
"Yeah, all right. When's the girl due in?"
"One," I said, from my desk. I was sitting back down now, behind my computer. I was both looking forward to and dreading seeing her again, because though I wanted to know how she was, I hated the thought of telling her we were back to nothing. She'd have to tell us exactly where she'd been all that day, and possibly all that week. "Maybe she's got some other suggestions."
"Have her talk to Dr Huang while she's here, come up with a profile of this guy." Cragen looked overworked: he often looked that way, but today it seemed to stand out - perhaps because I could identify. "You two go get some lunch before you deal with this. And bring me back a chicken sandwich."
*~*~*~
"How you holding up?" Fin asked me as we waited in line at a bagel shop. I hadn't discussed Cara much before this, and I hadn't discussed her much since. It was awkward, and he seemed to get that, but it is part of a partner's duty to keep an eye on the other.
"I'm all right."
"Where we gonna go after this?" he continued, as if he didn't know I had just lied to him. "I mean, the Bukowski kid's pretty much out of the running. So who now?"
"Maybe she can tell us," I said, trying to sound hopeful. I didn't feel it. "And maybe Huang will help. All in all, I don't know what to say until Elliott and Olivia report back with a little more than just my own fingerprints."
"Pretty incredible. Stabler's still on your case."
"I know. To be expected, though. His oldest is getting up there." I ordered two chicken sandwiches and a double espresso. "Still, it is indeed incredible. I think he'd throw me in Riker's if he thought he could make the case. As my mother would say, oi vey."
Fin laughed. "You have a mother?"
"You can't prove anything," I said, and I smiled for the first time in a day.
*~*~*~
Stabler called in to tell us they had found the bloody twine beside her bed, and that it matched a roll in the kitchen drawer. Other than mine, there were only a few sets of fingerprints in the apartment, and all the ones in her room matched others found throughout the apartment. None were only in the places she thought he must have touched.
When Cara arrived, Fin greeted her with a smile, and she responded in kind, while I loomed in the shadows behind him. "Detective," she said to me, formally. Detective? When had she ever called me that?
"We're doing our best to catch this guy," I said, trying to ignore that little sting by hiding behind my badge. "But we have some more questions to ask you."
"It wasn't Matt?" she asked Fin.
He shook his head. "His alibi held up, and his DNA doesn't look good."
"Jesus," she swore.
"We'd like you to talk to our psychologist to help him put together a profile of the man who did do this to you." I was still hoping to get her to look at me for more than a moment.
"If you insist," she said. I gestured for the good doctor, and ushered them into an interrogation room. I wanted to listen in. She took off her coat and hung it on the hook behind the door, taking a seat across from Huang. I wondered if she were uncomfortable being alone in a room with a man she didn't know: if she was, she didn't show it.
I hadn't even had my morning coffee before Cragen was all up in my face about this latest case. I'd been here in the office until midnight and had barely slept the night before; I'd been so worried. Still a little groggy, then, I tried to describe what I'd been up all night thinking about.
"Miss Jones' roommate alibi'd her boyfriend, Brian McInis, so that leaves us with one lead, a Matthew Bukowski, age twenty-three. Architectural engineer. Friend of her roommate's boyfriend. The victim says he wasn't too pleased at being dismissed after their date that night." It felt so wrong to call her that, the victim, and to talk about her dating, but I just put on my best poker face and trudged along. "I like him for this so far, Cap."
"Great. One lead." he said. "We still have to examine the crime scene. Who wants that?" Cragen said, like it was just another day on the job.
"Fin and I would -"
"Stabler, Olivia: check out the place." He took my notes out of my hands and passed them on to Olivia, who gave me a sideways glance before leaving with Elliott. As if he could read my very thoughts, he turned to Fin and me. "You know her, John. I want you here when she comes in."
While he had a good point, it didn't make up for the fact that I was now either on desk duty for the morning or stuck with the suspect himself. I rolled my eyes and went to find that coffee.
Fin and I had to pick the kid up from his office. As it turned out, nine in the morning is just about when he was arriving, so it was a smooth collection. We had pulled up all the background we could on this guy, since he was our only lead, but he had no priors, no arrests - not even a juvenile record I could find, and if I can't find it, it doesn't exist.
Matthew Bukowski, it turns out, was a good-looking young man, well dressed and well spoken. I hated him immediately. "What's this about?" he asked quickly, seeming genuinely surprised at the sight of our badges.
"We just need to ask you a few questions down town," Fin said, ushering him to the car.
"Should I call my lawyer?"
"Do you need your lawyer?" I retorted. He was silent on the ride there, except for a call to the office to let them know why he wasn't there. I was just sorry we didn't have enough to arrest him.
We put him in an interview room and got him a cup of coffee. "What's going on?" he repeated. "Am I in trouble?"
"You're in a world of trouble pretty soon."
"No, this is just questioning." Fin said, giving me a look and sitting down across the table from the kid, resting his elbows on the table. He'd taken off his suitcoat and looked settled in for a long conversation.
I, on the other hand, remained leaning against the doorframe, just over my partner's shoulder. "You know Cara Jones."
He paused. "Yeah, we went out on Saturday night. Is everything - is she okay?"
"She's fine now, but she was attacked around two Sunday morning," Fin said. "What do you know about that?"
""Oh my God. Nothing! You can't honestly think I would do that."
"She said you were pretty upset when she didn't invite you up," I said, somehow keeping myself from calling him a creep - or worse - as I made my way around the room, circling him like a hungry cat.
"Well, yeah. I thought she was nice. I thought we were having fun. But she said she just got out of a relationship and didn't want to go too fast. So I went home." Neither Fin nor I said a word, letting our disbelief settle in on him. "I went home! I didn't do anything to her."
I leaned in close to him ear, and whispered: "Don't lie to us, Matt."
"Can anyone confirm that you went straight home? A roommate, doorman?" Fin asked.
"The taxi driver?" he offered. He looked like he was about to be sick.
"Yeah, like there aren't a couple thousand of those in New York. I bet he was smarmy and gruff, too," I snapped. "If you want to get out of here, I'm afraid you'll need to do better than that."
Panic-stricken, he ran his hands down the front of his suit and drew a PDA from his breast pocket. He poked it a few times with the stylus, sighed frustratedly, and poked it again. "Um . check my cable records. I ordered a movie."
"What kind of movie?" Fin asked, letting that accusatory drawl of his take over.
Matthew pocketed the PDA and rubbed his widow's peak, nervously. "The adult kind."
I excused myself to go check on that: I was making myself sick in there anyway.
"How's it looking?" Cragen asked me, on my way to my desk.
"His alibi is a dirty movie he ordered the night of the attack." Much as I hated to admit it, it looked less and less likely to have been him.
"He admitted to a secret like that, I think he's telling the truth that he didn't do it."
"Unless that's what he wants us to believe," I said, still having hope. His was the only name Cara had been able to give us, and my mind just kept scrolling through the few friends she had here in New York.
"One way to tell," he said, starting to walk away. DNA.
In the end, we had to let the kid go. He willingly gave a blood sample, which is never a good sign, and we were back to square one. After a while, Cragen came out into the main room with an announcement: one set of fingerprints, not the victim's, had come up more than any other. "On her dresser, the door to her room, the kitchen counter," he said.
I stood up, frustrated beyond words. "On her dresser? That's not consistent with her story - he never touched her dresser. They're probably mine," I said, in that instant not giving a damn who heard me. "Do we need to reprint me? Take a blood sample to prove I didn't do it?" I pulled up my sleeve, nearly tearing the buttons of the cuff. "All the bureaucracy in the world and you don't even put that much together."
That was the first time I had really exploded over this, and, even though I knew I was asking to get taken off the case, deep down it felt really good just to yell.
"Come on, Cap: John's got a point," Fin said. At least I still had some friends in the unit. "Just compare them to his before you go off on this."
"Yeah, all right. When's the girl due in?"
"One," I said, from my desk. I was sitting back down now, behind my computer. I was both looking forward to and dreading seeing her again, because though I wanted to know how she was, I hated the thought of telling her we were back to nothing. She'd have to tell us exactly where she'd been all that day, and possibly all that week. "Maybe she's got some other suggestions."
"Have her talk to Dr Huang while she's here, come up with a profile of this guy." Cragen looked overworked: he often looked that way, but today it seemed to stand out - perhaps because I could identify. "You two go get some lunch before you deal with this. And bring me back a chicken sandwich."
*~*~*~
"How you holding up?" Fin asked me as we waited in line at a bagel shop. I hadn't discussed Cara much before this, and I hadn't discussed her much since. It was awkward, and he seemed to get that, but it is part of a partner's duty to keep an eye on the other.
"I'm all right."
"Where we gonna go after this?" he continued, as if he didn't know I had just lied to him. "I mean, the Bukowski kid's pretty much out of the running. So who now?"
"Maybe she can tell us," I said, trying to sound hopeful. I didn't feel it. "And maybe Huang will help. All in all, I don't know what to say until Elliott and Olivia report back with a little more than just my own fingerprints."
"Pretty incredible. Stabler's still on your case."
"I know. To be expected, though. His oldest is getting up there." I ordered two chicken sandwiches and a double espresso. "Still, it is indeed incredible. I think he'd throw me in Riker's if he thought he could make the case. As my mother would say, oi vey."
Fin laughed. "You have a mother?"
"You can't prove anything," I said, and I smiled for the first time in a day.
*~*~*~
Stabler called in to tell us they had found the bloody twine beside her bed, and that it matched a roll in the kitchen drawer. Other than mine, there were only a few sets of fingerprints in the apartment, and all the ones in her room matched others found throughout the apartment. None were only in the places she thought he must have touched.
When Cara arrived, Fin greeted her with a smile, and she responded in kind, while I loomed in the shadows behind him. "Detective," she said to me, formally. Detective? When had she ever called me that?
"We're doing our best to catch this guy," I said, trying to ignore that little sting by hiding behind my badge. "But we have some more questions to ask you."
"It wasn't Matt?" she asked Fin.
He shook his head. "His alibi held up, and his DNA doesn't look good."
"Jesus," she swore.
"We'd like you to talk to our psychologist to help him put together a profile of the man who did do this to you." I was still hoping to get her to look at me for more than a moment.
"If you insist," she said. I gestured for the good doctor, and ushered them into an interrogation room. I wanted to listen in. She took off her coat and hung it on the hook behind the door, taking a seat across from Huang. I wondered if she were uncomfortable being alone in a room with a man she didn't know: if she was, she didn't show it.