My phone rang at 6:30 jolting me out of a fog of deep sleep. I grabbed the phone knowing who it was, and what they wanted. It was Cragan, telling me I needed to get my ass into the office. His voice sounded urgent. A rape-murder case. I drove in drinking coffee in one hand and trying to mentally get myself ready for another case. Putting on my shell. I had been working in Special Victims for three years and I still wasn't used to it. I still had nightmares of ravaged bodies, I could remember every detail. Everyday I was called in for a new case, a thought would go through my head, wishing to be back in Narcotics. Where there was rarely victims, just dead crackheads. I could at least wager that they had brought it upon themselves. These people didn't. Sleeping in their own beds, jogging in a park, walking to work, were not reasons to warrant death sentences. But in this fucked up world I live in, it was.

Munch was sitting at his desk, pouring over stacks of paperwork, from a case six months ago that he was testifying at. He was muttering under his breath about due process of criminals and his own bad handwriting. Captain Cragan was waiting for me, leaning next to an empty board that would soon be tacked with pictures and reports.

"Any news in the case?" My heart was secretly sinking, but I could never tell anyone that.

"Elliot and Olivia are at the scene now. Not to much is known yet. They called from the crime scene, they would like you down there."

I got the address and drove there. It was Washington Square park, a little park with the chirping of birds, and large trees. I could see the yellow tape from the street as I parked. Olivia walked over to me, and brought me to the crime scene, as we ducked under the tape, I could tell it wasn't good. A ten year old African American girl. Who was held down, brutally raped, had her head bashed up against the wall, and finally strangled. She had been dead less than three hours. As I looked down on this innocent little girl, her blood still dripping off the wall of a tiny maintence shed, I felt sick. Forensics was already there dusting for prints, and DNA left by a heartless man. The girl had yet to be identified.

Ten years old, I mused. Disgusting. I never got over cases like these. It made me wonder about monsters. They were suppose to disappear when you were a child, but I knew that monsters still existed. I paired up with Olivia to canvass the area, while Elliot headed back with the ME. The park was isolated from housing, the nearest apartment building being more than 500 yards away. We questioned drunk and homeless men, more upset that we had woken them than that a ten year old girl had been murdered. They had seen nothing, heard nothing, as the slumbered in the coma like sleep. Olivia got the call, Elliot had received some information from the forensics team. We gathered around the board that now featured a picture of the girls face, her bruised wrists, the blood spatter on the wall of the maintance shed. Elliot relinquished his news, twenty eight sets of prints had been found at the scene, one of them the was the victim's. Two had come up in the system, one a forty one year old man, who had done a two year stretch at sing-sing for fraud, who was also one of the maintence men. The other set of prints come off of the narcotics database, who had gotten the prints off a crime scene but never officially arrested the man. Therefore there was no name, no address, only his profile. The man was a drug dealer, Elliot described, in his late teens, or early twenties, who resided in the Colin Brown projects in Brooklyn, with a street name of "King". I felt myself step back, Elliot's mouth continued to move, he pointed to the picture of the girl. Ten years old, I suddenly felt bile on my throat. I felt dizzy and weak, there were no other Kings, in that area. Cragan was saying something to me, Benson and Stabler were looking at me with quizzical looks. "Are you alright Fin?"

I breathed in deeply, and realized I hadn't been breathing. I tried to put on my old bravado. "I'm cool." I was always cool, I never let anyone see that anything rattled me. "Can I see you in your office." I was already walking there before I heard his reply. He looked concerned as he walked in. "Are you sick?"

"Close the door." He did. "I need off this case." His features changed.

"Why?"

"This King, they are talking about, is Dorian Tutuola, my son."

His mouth fell open. "I didn't even know you had kids." He stumbled, his eyes were wide. Olivia and Elliot were discreetly casting looks at us through the blinded windows.

"Just the one." I couldn't think of anything else to say. My hands were shaking as I starred down at them.

"Are you sure its him?" I wished that I could tell him no, that there were five Kings in that area. I wished I could tell him that my son was gentle and would never hurt a soul, but I couldn't. I knew what Heroin and crack did to a person, he could do the unthinkable. He could rape and kill a ten year old girl. My own son, it made me wonder about me. All the things I might have done in a haze.

"Yes."

The second I said that to him, something changed. He was a detective not a friend, and I was just another Father who could lie to protect his son. I could see the change in his face. I wanted to tell him, that I wouldn't lie for him, that I knew that if he was arrested and brought to court, it would be a capital crime. For a fleeting second, I was glad. If he did rape that girl, he deserved to die, he wasn't my son, he was just another predatory monster.

"When was the last time you spoke to him?"

"A week maybe, he called me wanting money. I didn't give it to him."

"Do you know where he is?" I did know. The same place I had known to look for him when he was fifteen and would run away. He would run to the place I had run away from. I tried to give him a better life and he ran back to the projects.

"My nephew, Quentin Tutuola. Has an apartment on Goran Avenue in Colin Brown. He's with him."

"Are you sure?" I wanted to laugh bitterly in his face, of course I was sure. Despite the fact that Quentin was a year younger than Dorian, he had introduced him to the life of fast money, easy women and drugs. On one of the many nights I had left him with my mother when I was working on a case. I had picked him up one morning when he fourteen and knew that I had lost him. He pretended to be normal, asking how I was, and telling me about Grandma. I could smell it on him. It was a smell I knew better than anything, it was the smell of a haze, I had spent many years in. I had taken him home and sat him down, and he lied to me, looking me straight in the eye. I kicked him out when he was seventeen, a year after I really should have. I could have sent him to prison to teach him a lesson. The amount I found in his room was worth at least six months in Rikers. I was worried it would make him worse. He was still my kid and I still loved him, so I sent him out, hoping he would learn his lesson on his own.

"Pretty sure. He's lived with Q for two years. They moved into that apartment two months ago." He came to my apartment during the day when he thought I wouldn't be home. Probably to steal something, he nearly ran when he saw me. I barley even recognized him. We had drinks and for a moment he was my son again, and he told me about him. He was ashamed of himself, and I hoped that meant something, but I guess in hindsight it didn't mean a damn thing.

"Alright, we'll do pick him up, why don't you go home." It wasn't posed as a question, it was a demand.

"No, I want to stay Captain. In case he isn't there."

He nodded, okay. He walked out and closed the door behind him. I buried my face in my hands, wondering how I let this happen. That picture of that little girl was all I could see.