Back in the squad room, Olivia paced restlessly. "Olivia, this wasn't your fault!" Elliot said as she brushed past him.
"Oh no?" Olivia laughed mirthlessly. "Elliot, if I hadn't left those business cards, none of this would have happened! I'm responsible!"
Elliot wasn't sure how to refute that statement. He tried a different tactic. "You were just doing your job," he consoled her. "I would have done the same thing," he added, hoping that she wouldn't read five pages back in the script and find out that he had, in fact, advised her against leaving the cards in the first place.
"No, Elliot," Olivia said, "I got too involved. I lost my judgment. You know," she paused dramatically, her voice dropping to a whisper, "my mother was a college student when she got raped."
"I know, Liv, and...Hey!" Elliot exclaimed. "Maureen's a college student!" He sprang out of his chair, full of righteous indignation. "I'll kill the bastard who vandalized her campus!"
Cragen poked his head out of his office door, "You screwed up. Get over it. Get back to work," he yelled brusquely in Olivia's general direction.
Elliot and Olivia looked at him quizzically. "She didn't try to quit this time, Cap'n." Elliot offered.
"Oh," said Cragen. "In that case, take a few days off."
Casey chose that moment to bound energetically into the precinct, a tennis racquet in one hand and tap shoes in the other. "Hi guys, guess what? I just won a motion! I was going to go out to celebrate, and..." she paused, noticing for the first time the officers' grim expressions. "Wow, you look upset. Is that because you're a closeted lesbian who hasn't had a date in four years?" she asked Olivia. Turning to Stabler, she added, "And are you upset because you're trapped in a passion-free marriage to the dullest woman in the five boroughs? And Captain, is your long face because..."
Casey trailed off again, noticing the aghast looks on her colleagues' faces. "I'm sorry, were my questions too personal?"
Before the detectives had a chance to throttle Casey with her own hair, ME Warner burst into the room. "I had some findings from the crime scene that couldn't wait!" She announced breathlessly. She launched into a ten-minute description of her techniques, which included taking laser measurements of the angles of the broken blades of grass, examining soil samples under black-light, and re-enacting the crime on a one-eighth scale model. No one bothered to inquire why she was even working this case, given the lack of a dead body. "Based on my findings," she concluded, "I'd say you're looking for a college kid."
"Could you explain that to me?" Casey asked.