Manner of Cruelty
author: bebe (bebe0216[at]hotmail.com)
rating: pg-13
summary: A raped Manhattan teen disappears in Albany, and Elliot must unravel her family's web of deception as he searches for his own peace of mind--with Olivia's help, of course. E/O building UST
spoilers: none
warnings: SVU contains adult themes; so does this story.
disclaimer: I don't own L&O: SVU. This story is fictional: the setting is based on reality, and a lot of the places are real, but none of the people are--except bus stop people, because you can't make up someone that colorful. How I love the bus, and the Capital District...
acknowledgments: thanks to my great beta, Kristen. major props to her!
Chapter 1
This is Manhattan in the summer: smoggy, hot, and glorious. In the early morning, the sun still low in the sky, the buildings' shadows kept a few street lights on. It was nearing the end of June, and while the stock traders were still yawning over their Starbucks cups, work crews everywhere were hanging red, white, and blue banners on the light poles. A heat wave was coming: the air was humid and heavy, but the pavement was still cool, and all along the wealthy West Side it felt like the city that never sleeps somehow was just waking up.
Out on the fire escape behind her apartment, a woman sat, cell phone between her ear and shoulder. The cops were crawling all over her apartment and her soon-to-be-ex-husband kept calling, relentlessly. She shifted, and tipped over her coffee. It spilled through the red grating to rain on the street.
The woman grunted in annoyance. Her "hubby" was becoming belligerent.
"Dammit, Tara! How could you have sent her to be near him?"
"No, damn you, Aaron. Damn you to hell."
Tara flipped her cell phone shut. She reached back to fling it over the escape railing. Their daughter was gone and all Aaron could do was start a witch hunt.
"Ma'am, I think we're through here," called a uniformed officer from within the bedroom.
She snapped back into reality.
"Great," she said. Her cell phone rang. "Goddammit! Would you excuse me--"
The uniform on duty gave her a funny look. Normal women whose daughters were raped become distraught, frantic, scared--this one just looked angry.
"Yeah, you damn well better pass this on, I don't want you poking around--no, you didn't--you goddamn--oh, to hell with you!"
She turned her back on the cops in her bedroom. CSU was packing up its equipment, techs slinking out the door. The uniform looked at his watch and tapped his foot.
"You're kidding. That woman? ... No, I suppose there isn't. ... No, I guess I can't. You just stay out of my way." Her face was scarlet as she snapped the phone shut and whirled on the uni. "Are you still here? Because if you don't mind, I need to go find my daughter."
-----
"Another day, another eight hours behind a desk," Detective Benson announced, striding in through the unit's double doors and sliding the blazer off her shoulders. She tossed it over the back of her chair, looked up, and froze in place.
"What in the--"
Across Elliot's and her desk was arranged a pile of pastries: bagels, crullers, donuts, éclairs. It was the Medusa of confectionary arrays: one look, and your arteries turned to stone.
"Hadn't you heard? Atkins put Krispy Kreme out of buisness, and I offered to liquidate their inventory," a voice across from her deadpanned.
"You brought these, Munch?" she asked, pulling her eyes away from the tempting tower.
"Guy downstairs is celebrating his retirement," offered Fin, before his partner could take the credit. "Bought enough to add an inch to the waistline of every cop in the precinct."
"Nice," said Olivia, returning her gaze to the pastries. Free breakfast took the sting off desk duty, and the éclairs looked sumptuous. So did the croissants--they were so buttery, they were almost shining. And the donuts looked soft and sugary...
"Have one," offered Munch. "I can recommend the Boston creme."
"Yeah, he's had three already," Fin jabbed.
"Two!" Munch corrected.
"What's that in your hand, then?"
Munch turned around and offered a glare. "It's a Bismarck."
Olivia laughed. "I really don't know what to choose," she said, raising her hands in defeat.
"This one." A man's hand reached from behind her and selected a fat, raspberry-filled croissant with toasted almonds.
Olivia closed her eyes and smiled. "How do you do that, Elliot?"
"How do I do what?" he asked innocently.
Munch coughed and looked away.
She took the croissant from his hand. "You always know exactly what I want." She cast a glare around the room and Munch and Fin, along with a few uniforms, went back to their buisness.
Elliot shrugged and walked around to his side of the desk, looking into the filing cabinet there and digging around through the years of mess.
"Yeah, I guess I do. Can't explain it. Maybe after all these years, I've just picked up on your quirks and--" he paused, surveying a folder out of alphabetical order "--idiosyncracies." He had a smile in the corner of his mouth that carried over to his voice. As he found the file he was after, he turned around and reached for the pile--only to see that the maple-frosted donut was missing.
"All right, who took the donut I wanted?" he asked, smile gone.
Without a word, Olivia set it down in front of him. He looked at her and chuckled silently, eating the greasy pastry over his case file.
-----
"Elliot, Olivia, my office," called Captain Cragen.
It was nine-fifteen; one hour and fifteen minutes into paperwork. The two detectives relievedly filed in, and the Cap closed the door behind them. Elliot looked down at the woman seated in front of Cragen's desk. She had a dark blue, narrow document in her hand, and was fanning herself with it.
"What can we do for you, Miss Novak?" Olivia asked, before her partner could ask about the document--it could only be a warrant.
Casey stopped fanning herself and smiled sideways.
"I just got a call from the Kings County DA's office," she explained. "We have a rape of a 15-year-old girl, and a warrant for the suspect."
"Hold on," said Olivia. "First of all, if the call came from Brooklyn, why isn't Brooklyn SVU handling it?"
"The girl's from Manhattan. She lives with her mother on the Upper West Side, and apparently that's where the rape took place."
The detectives angrily furrowed their eyebrows. While the real world beat desk work any day, this wasn't even a case--it was playing taxi service for someone else's criminal. Elliot swooped around behind the ADA, took a pen from his pocket, and began to chew the end. Olivia folded her arms and leaned on the side of the cap's desk.
"So, what, some other squad took this case, solved it, and now we have to pick up the perp?" Elliot grumbled.
Casey sighed. "It's not that simple--" she began.
"The call came from Aaron van Hoek," Cragen interrupted. He'd rather get down to business than watch this uncomfortable exchange. "Former Kings County DA. The girl is his daughter; lives with the ex-wife, a politician named Tara Shiler. Turns out that Mommy Dearest witnessed the girl having sex with her 23-year-old boyfriend and did nothing about it."
"Statutory rape," muttered Elliot behind the mutilated pen cap.
"It gets better," Cragen added in an even tone. "This went on up until a few weeks ago, at Easter time--that's when Mr. van Hoek found out about the boyfriend."
"Let me guess--he kicked him to the curb, but the guy was still hanging around." Olivia's tone revealed how many times they'd heard that one before.
"Exactly," affirmed Casey.
"Last night the girl's aunt calls her sister in a panic--girl's gone, and the boyfriend's sweatshirt is in her bedroom along with a note. The aunt thinks she ran off with him somewhere and tried to call in the girl as missing, but, she hasn't been gone long enough."
"Thought she lived with the mother," said Elliot.
"She does. She was visiting the aunt up near Albany, which, incidentally, is where the boyfriend resides," Casey responded.
"Wait," said Olivia, who was fidgeting uneasily. "What you've said doesn't make a case for arresting anybody on rape. You have hearsay, a shirt, and a piece of paper. How did anyone get a warrant with that?" Her tone was incredulous.
"It's for a DNA sample," Casey said, looking up with a smug expression. "Turns out the mother wasn't such a pushover after all--she fished the condom they used out of the trash. You find the guy, we can put him away."
Before anyone could protest, Casey continued. "Since the girl left last night, and it takes twenty four hours to call someone in missing, you have the jump on Albany Missing Persons if you get up there quickly."
Elliot snorted. "We have to go to Albany?" he asked, incredulous.
"Well, Colonie. Close enough."
"Cap," Olivia protested.
"The problem is, Olivia, a rapist is a rapist. And bringing in this guy may help alleviate some very big headaches."
The captain pushed a fat manila folder toward them. The detectives exchanged glances and opened it. There was a long pause before either one of them spoke.
"We're on it," said Elliot quietly.
-----
"I don't believe it. Tara Shiler? The Tara Shiler, as in former State Representative Tara Shiler, R, Manhattan?" Munch stood, hands on his desk, leaning over and looking at Casey Novak with a puppy's enthusiasm.
She grinned at him, and bit into an éclair. Munch looked like his greatest dream had come true. Fin rolled his eyes, as his partner was clearly enjoying himself too much.
"The same former State Representative Shiler that compared the Supreme Court to the 9/11 hijackers when they struck down the Texas sodomy laws? The one who once said prayer would keep a person from getting AIDS, and called sex education 'the liberals' attempt to destroy America'? The one who claimed that abstinence is the only right choice for any woman, and to even think otherwise makes a woman a whore?" Munch paused, grinning at the line he just devised. "The one who makes Ann Coulter look like a flower child?"
Casey nodded eagerly, taking another bite. "This éclair is just...mm..." she managed, her mouth full.
"And you're telling me that this woman--this self-righteous, overbearing, bible-beating woman--has a sexually active teenage daughter." Munch sounded almost giddy. "The irony is just delicious!"
"So're these." Casey popped the last bite of éclair into her mouth. "Seriously, I'm telling you the truth. Remember, though, it's technically rape. You should feel sorry for the woman, especially since the girl's gone missing."
"She ran off with her boyfriend," Munch corrected. "I'm more interested in what's going on at that church--what is it--The Gospel of Unifying Divinity Ministry." He snickered, though he knew he shouldn't. Three girls missing in as many years...at least it appeared the case wasn't cold just yet.
"As am I," said Casey. "But I do enjoy taking a swing at Ms. Shiler every now and then."
"Oh?" Munch raised an eyebrow and sat down on the corner of the desk.
The ADA shrugged. "Aaron and I go back and, as for Tara--she hates my guts, since I stumped for the guy who beat her in '02."
Munch let out a happy sigh. "Miss Novak, have as many éclairs as you want."
-----
It was ten-thirty in the morning at Penn Station, and the Amtrak train to Albany was boarding, set to leave in fifteen minutes. Train ridership was down, again--Amtrak seemed to always be losing riders--and the station was only somewhat crowded. The morning rush was over, and vendors were transitioning to lunch fare. The conductor beckoned the two detectives aboard the train. Olivia chose a seat by a window; Elliot took the aisle and stretched out his legs.
They'd just had time to pack a bag with the clothes they kept in the bottom drawers of their desks. Change of underwear, socks, a toothbrush: what more would they need, even if the interview really did lead them somewhere? Olivia had the fat manila folder on her lap. Scrawled on the front were the letters "G.O.U.D." and on the tabs, filing jargon. She didn't want to look at the contents anymore; she'd had enough on the ride over.
Where did these people come from? What was it that possessed them into thinking--into abandoning all reason and believing--that demons roamed the earth, and the only way to defeat them was through the complete subjugation of women to their "warrior" husbands? How do these cults fill their pews, not to mention their bank accounts--who believes this stuff? Olivia saw the risk involved with this train of thought; it would drive her mad if she let it long enough, and if she didn't drop it now, it would definitely make her mad. Neither would help much for this investigation.
SVU had encountered these people before. The group began in Harlem with a small congregation and as the area gentrified they grew. They were elitist--they liked their members rich and white and well-connected. Shortly before 9/11, Tara Shiler had signed on, and in the weeks between then and the attack, a sixteen-year-old member vanished. When word reached Missing Persons that the girl was pregnant, SVU got the call. But then-- well, it was obvious why the case took a back burner, and with no leads-- just a lot of glowing endorsements of "the Lord's call to unity through domestic perfection"--it went cold. The group moved up the river, and no one heard a peep from them until a few days before Alex Cabot got herself into the mess that landed her in Federal Witness Protection. A distracted Elliot passed their data on to Albany; under the circumstances no one thought twice about it.
Now, evidently, there had been another disappearance after that. If Jessi Shiler, the fifteen-year-old whose photograph was paper clipped to the folder's top flap, had run away for a summer fling with her boyfriend, that was one thing. If she was victim number four, that was another. Olivia felt a growing unease with this mess. There was sure to be a cover-up of something. She looked to her partner as the train lurched itself out on its way.
He was sitting back in the seat, looking up at the cabin roof with a contented smile on his face.
"You seem unusually chipper today," Olivia remarked, adjusting herself in the train's lightly padded seat. Of course, it was the kind of seat that made a sweaty body itch. The air was irritating, too--it had that feeling to it, sticky and multiply recycled, leaving a film over her body. How could Elliot be smiling? It was so hot and she realized, at that very moment, that she could smell the train's bathroom. Lovely.
"I do?" Elliot replied. He was still grinning toothily.
"Yeah, and what's with the big grin, huh?"
Elliot rolled his neck in a circle, then looked at her. "Eh...I was just thinking how nice it is to get out of the city." He shrugged. "You know, spend my who-knows-how-long in the middle of nowhere getting a swab and a sob story from some scumbag punk kid."
Now he looked sullen. He exhaled sharply through his nose and fidgeted with his watch.
"Sorry to ruin the mood," Olivia offered.
Elliot chuckled once, and gave her a did-you-just-say-what-I-think- you-said look. Olivia rolled her eyes--she needed to turn the conversation back on him.
"So your mind's in the gutter, but what's on it?" At Elliot's laugh she continued. "I mean, you've been even more emotionally aloof than usual the last few days. So spill it, Stabler."
"Nothing," he admitted. "There's nothing. Just maybe," he paused, "maybe I called home before we left the station and nobody answered."
"It's summer vacation, Elliot, Kathy probably took the twins out to enjoy the nice day."
Elliot shook his head. A half-smile had crept back on to his face. "Nah. Kathleen is doing some volunteer work and the twins have some day camp they go to. Kathy's probably out seeing her therapist."
It was funny. Ever since Elliot had come home and found a day planner on the kitchen table with the name Richard penciled into blocks for every day from mid-March onwards--Kathy's explanation was that he was a marriage counselor--he had let a wall build around his feelings toward his wife and her obvious fabrication. He took that transparent lie and instead of admitting the truth to himself, he held it up and focused on his reflection, because if he wanted to enough he knew he could believe her. He stuffed his pride down, took an extra hour at the gym now and then, worked harder on the cases if that was possible, and lately had been just enjoying life. It was as if he had just shut off that part of him that made him worry and feel guilty for spending so much time with his partner and not his family. Guilt? What guilt? Problem? There was none. A cloud of apathy in place and he was good to go, even "chipper," as Olivia called it.
And as it was, at that moment, on board the train, the reality of his deteriorating family life was so separated from his conscious that he could grin at his partner and wink and tell her things were looking up without feeling the pain that came from that lie.
The 10:45 Amtrak rolled on for the Rensselaer station.