Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews! Keep 'em coming!
Allegiance
Chapter Five: Revelation
When they pulled up to the brownstone, Olivia saw the SWAT team had already arrived. She stripped off her leather jacket and went around to the trunk of the car to retrieve her bulletproof vest when Elliot called to her. She glanced over and saw Cragen walking up to them. "SWAT already cleared the building," he told them. "No need for the vests."
"Anyone home?" she asked, as she put her jacket back on.
Cragen shook his head. "Nobody in the house, and no sign of Verges."
Anthony Verges was the sole occupant of office suite 3015, the same office where the AR-15 had been delivered. He ran a small accounting business out of that office for the last eight years. His clientele were mostly affluent New Yorkers who enjoyed having a CPA who utilized a personal touch with their accounts. Verges had no priors; in fact he was such a law-abiding citizen that he did not even get so much as a parking ticket. Olivia and Elliot still couldn't figure out what made a man like this snap, and why he took his rage out on Casey, a woman whom he apparently had no connection with whatsoever.
'And how did Jeanne Lu fit into all of this?' Olivia wondered, as she bounded up the steps of the brownstone with Elliot at her side. 'Why would Mr. Mild-Mannered Accountant terrorize Lu in her home before shooting her? Unless there was a nasty side to Verges that nobody knew about.'
They entered the foyer, which had a staircase leading to the second floor. Black-clad SWAT team members who toted automatic weapons passed them by, on their way out the door. Olivia smiled a greeting at several of the SWAT team members whom she recognized. Cragen's cell phone started to ring, and he excused himself to answer it.
Captain Judith Siper of the Crime Scene Unit gave them a nod in greeting as she strode past with two of her CSU people in tow. "Detectives. Please bear with us, we're just getting started."
"No problem. We just got here ourselves," Olivia told her. She dug into her jacket pocket for a pair of latex crime scene gloves, only to find it empty. "Dammit! El, you got extra gloves?"
Elliot handed her a pair as he stared in disapproval at the wallpaper, which was done up in a garish red style with a gold trim pattern. "This place looks like the waiting room for a Turkish whorehouse."
Olivia shot him a startled look as she slipped on the gloves. She was about to ask Elliot how he knew what the inside of a Turkish whorehouse looked like, until she thought the better of it. She really didn't need to listen to another of his gung-ho Marine stories right now.
Cragen ended his call and walked over to them. "That was Munch. Warner's done the autopsy on Jeanne Lu. She had been tranquilized by a dart shot from a gun. The tranquilizer is the same type that's used on animals in zoos."
Elliot nodded. "So we're also looking for a dart gun here, among other things."
"Exactly," Cragen replied. "I'll inform Judith to tell her people what to look for, as well."
Olivia began searching through the living room, while Elliot tossed the adjoining dining room. Olivia spotted several pictures on top of the mantelpiece above the fireplace. She recognized Verges in several of the pictures. He was in his sixties with short, graying hair. He appeared to be quite the ladies' man, judging from the photos of the various women he posed with.
'This doesn't make any sense,' she thought. 'If Verges was truly the dashing lover that these pictures depicted, then what made him go after Casey like he did? Did he meet Casey on the street and she rejected him? And Verges couldn't stand the rejection so much that he had to kill her?'
Olivia shook her head. It just didn't add up for her. The photos showed a well-adjusted man who enjoyed a tremendous social life. But then again, most psychopaths appeared to be normal on the surface, anyway.
Yet there was something else that Olivia noted was odd. In the photos, Anthony Verges appeared to be well over six feet tall. When they viewed the surveillance footage that showed him coming and going from his office, he appeared shorter, around six feet in height.
'But then, we never actually saw Verges' face on the video,' Olivia realized. 'He always wore either a cap or a hat, and kept his head down as he passed the camera, as if deliberately trying to hide his face. Maybe that was why Verges looked shorter in the video, because he was always hunched down.'
Cragen stepped into the living room just then. "Olivia, Elliot, they've found a body downstairs."
The three of them quickly descended the steps. The cellar was typical for most homes; it was mostly unfinished, with bare brick walls, and was used mainly as a storage space. Siper led them over to the washer and dryer, where she pointed out a horizontal freezer unit by the wall. The body was inside the freezer. One of her CSU techs was taking detailed pictures of the remains inside.
"We've already called the M.E.'s office," Siper said. "Warner's on the way."
Olivia waited until the CSU tech was finished with his photos before she stepped closer for a better look at the body in the freezer. It was a man, and Olivia's eyes grew wide when she saw whom it was. She had just seen that same face in the photos upstairs.
"It's Anthony Verges," she told Elliot and Cragen.
SVU Squad Room. 16 Precinct. Friday April 24.
"Yes, yes, look!" Goren got up from his seat and pointed at the TV set. "See? He's deliberately slumping his shoulders, trying to make himself look weaker, smaller, than he actually is."
Cragen leaned in with everyone else who was gathered around the TV and stared at the surveillance footage of the hallway outside of Anthony Verges' office. They watched as a man stepped out of the elevator and strolled down the hallway with his head down. TARU had cut the footage down so that it only showed the occupant of office 3015 coming and leaving his office over the course of several days. It turned out that whoever killed Verges had done so about a week ago. The killer had switched Verges' answering machine on with a pre-recorded message from Verges that stated he was away on vacation.
"He never looked up at the camera," Fin noted. "Not once. And he's always wearing some kind of hat."
"So we still don't know what he looks like," Eames said dejectedly. "Meaning we're still back to square one."
Munch gestured at the man on the TV. "He's also always wearing gloves. How much you wanna bet he never takes them off when he's in Verges' office."
Goren nodded in agreement. "He's a professional. This is somebody who knows what he's doing. He knows how to work clean. CSU won't find any of his prints in Verges' office."
"Ok," Cragen said with a weary sigh. "What do we have so far?"
The assembled group of detectives in the SVU squad room—Munch and Fin, along with the two detectives from the MCS, Goren and Eames—all stared awkwardly at him for a second, until Munch leaned forward in his seat and said, "Pretty much zilch, Captain."
'It's gonna be one of those days,' Cragen though with a curt nod. "All right, let me rephrase the question: what do we know so far?"
"It doesn't look like the drug lords put a hit on Casey," Fin offered. "I've checked with my contacts back in narcotics, and they basically say that all's quiet on that front."
"But they have a motive," Cragen said. "After all, Casey did put away one of their top assassins." That had been a particularly sweet victory for everyone in the SVU, because that very same assassin, an Irish national nicknamedThe Ghost, was also responsible for the attempted murder of the SVU's former ADA Alex Cabot.
"What happened to The Ghost wouldn't stick in the cartel's craw," Fin said with a shake of his head. "They see that as simply the cost of doing business, Cap. Besides, The Ghost was an outside contractor, so he was considered expendable by the cartel, anyway."
"We've been going over Ms. Novak's prior cases," Eames spoke up. "And while we've found some people who might still hold a grudge, none of them have the resources to hire an assassin the caliber of the one we're dealing with."
Elliot and Olivia entered the squad room just then. When Olivia saw Goren she initially gave him a hard look, then caught herself, her flash of anger quickly vanishing as she coolly put her jacket away.
"Elliot, Olivia, pull up some chairs," Cragen said. "Join the discussion. You know Detectives Goren and Eames of the Major Case Squad?"
"Yeah, we've met," Elliot said, as he took a seat. "Just wish the circumstances were better."
"Same here," Eames agreed. "How's Ms. Novak doing?"
"Good. She's in protective custody." Glancing at Cragen, he added, "We just got back from the M.E.'s Office. Warner found a mark from a tranquilizer dart on Anthony Verges' neck."
"Just like on Jeanne Lu?" Munch asked.
Elliot nodded. "The problem is after being in that freezer for a few days, Verges is basically a Popsicle, so Warner has to wait until he thaws out before she can open him up. But the marks are exactly the same."
"Verges' handshad been tied at one point," Olivia said. "There are ligature marks on his wrists.We're thinking Verges had been kept alive long enough to record that vacation message for his answering machine.Then he shot Verges in the backof the head, and then dumped him in the freezer, fully clothed."
"When you say 'he', who do you mean?" Cragen asked.
"The sniper," Olivia said. "Our thinking is that the sniper wanted the use of Verges' office. So he could stake out Casey before the hit."
"Yeah, that's the theory we've been working with, as well," Cragen said. "Verges' office had a great view of Casey's office. It would have been the perfect place for him to find out when she would be in, and learn her routine."
"So after choosing Verges' office, the sniper tracks him down and kills him," Olivia said. "Then he assumes Verges' identity to stake out Casey's office. Once he gets a handle on when he can get her, he has his gun delivered to the office from Jeanne Lu's apartment. Then he brings the gun up to the roof and attempts the hit."
"I'm surprised he didn't just shoot right from the office," said Eames.
Goren shook his head thoughtfully. "No, this guy would want to shoot from the roof."
"The rooftop has several escape routes," Elliot pointed out. "Whereas the office just has that one doorway leading out."
"Yeah," Goren concurred. "It's much better for him to shoot from the roof. The best assassins always leave themselves as many avenues of escape as possible."
"This guy is calm, methodical and plans way in advance," said Munch, rattled. "He certainly sounds like a major league assassin, Captain. We're basically looking for another Carlos The Jackal here."
"Yeah, but..." Elliot started to say, then stopped.
"Yeah, but…what, Elliot?" Cragen asked.
"It's just that the bastard had us right in his sights, Captain," Elliot said softly. "I mean, I'm listening to how he meticulously sets all of this up, and yet at the end, he fouls the shot—not that I'm complaining, of course, but how much of a super sniper can this guy be?"
"Even assassins have bad days, fortunately," Cragen told him.
"We still don't know what's the connection between him and Jeanne Lu was," Olivia added. "Was she more than just a one night stand? We now know that he used her apartment to mail the gun to himself."
"Maybe things suddenly got hot for him at Verges' place," Fin suggested. "So he quickly left there and set up shop someplace else. He could have just picked up Lu for both a roll in the hay, as well as for using her place to send the gun to himself."
"If something scared him away from Verges' place, I want to know what it was," Cragen said. He gestured at Elliot, Olivia, Munch and Fin. "I want the four of you to go back to Verges' neighborhood and canvass the area, see if anybody saw anything suspicious in the past few days."
Goren abruptly stared at Elliot as if he had just noticed him for the first time. He then stood up and glanced around the SVU squad room. "Detective Stabler, which one is your desk?"
"That one," Elliot pointed.
Everyone watched as Goren strode over to Elliot's desk, and then he walked over to the windows on the far side of the squad room. He mumbled under his breath as he stared outside, and then turned around to stare thoughtfully back at Elliot's desk.
Eames had a broad grin as she sheepishly shrugged her shoulders at the SVU detectives, as if to say, 'what can you do?'
Munch and Fin exchanged a wide-eyed glance as Olivia slowly shook her head in disgust. Elliot watched Goren's antics with a baffled look on his face.
Cragen allowed Goren to walk around, muttering to himself, for a bit longer before he said, "Is there something we can help you with, Detective Goren?"
Goren glanced up suddenly, as if catching himself. "My apologies, Captain," he said, as he came back over to the group. "But something just occurred to me. There's another angle to this shooting that none of us has even considered yet."
"And what's that?" Cragen asked.
"That Casey Novak wasn't the intended target," Goren said. "I believe that the sniper actually may have been gunning for Detective Stabler."
To Be Continued...