.mostly harmless.

Special Victims Unit
Squad Room
Saturday, July 24th

Elliot watched with his jaw set in anger as Abdullah and David walked out of the squad room with their lawyer. "Hey." He turned and saw Olivia standing beside him and she touched his arm. "There's nothing we could've done to keep them here any longer. We had to let them go. The twenty-four hours was up."

"We just wasted a whole day interrogating them and we learned next to nothing. One of them did it, Liv," Elliot said, shaking his head in frustration. "And we just let them go. Someone else is gonna die now."

"We just have to find more evidence, then we can put the bastard away and no one else will get hurt," Olivia reminded him.

"Can we get it before midnight though?"

"Speaking of gathering evidence," Cragen piped up from where he had been standing nearby, "do you two want to take a trip down to the neighborhood where those two grew up? Maybe you can find out what's in that sealed record of Abdullah's."

"Sure," Elliot answered with a nod, grateful to do anything that made him feel like they were making progress.

"Good," Cragen turned to the remaining detective as Fin was present in court, testifying on their case from earlier in the week. "Munch, you wanna make a call to the labs and see if they've got the results back for the LSD?" Munch nodded and picked up the phone as Olivia and Elliot walked out of the room, all of them prepared to do their best to figure out the identity of the killer before he struck again.

…

The door of the apartment opened up and a middle-aged black woman peered out at Olivia and Elliot, asking in a strained voice, "What do you want?"

"Faith Gabrion?" The woman didn't answer but didn't shut the door in his face either, so Elliot continued, showing her his badge. "We're here to talk to you about one of your former students, Abdullah Ali."

"Oh. Has he gotten into trouble?" Her tone was neutral as she said the words, as though she didn't much care either way.

"We're investigating a crime that he was possible involved in and were wondering if you would tell us about him."

"Well… I don't have anything better to do. Come on in," she turned around and walked away, leaving the door open so the detectives could enter her apartment. "What's he done now?" she called out from the back of the apartment as Elliot shut the door behind him and Olivia.

"We're investigating two homicides that he might have had some involvement in."

Ms. Gabrion entered the room, having pulled on a pink hooded sweatshirt, and she asked them, "What do you want to know then?"

"What was your impression of him?"

She shrugged. "He was an okay student, pretty nice to the other teachers and I, didn't give us a lot of crap. After his parents died though, things changed."

"What happened to his parents?" Olivia asked.

"You don't know about it?" She looked at them with something akin to suspicion in her eyes.

"No, I'm afraid we don't. Would you mind filling us in?" Elliot said in his most agreeable tone.

"Tea?" She turned and walked out of the room and into her kitchen. Olivia and Elliot followed and found her pouring them cups of the steaming liquid although they had not accepted her offer.

"What happened to his parents?" Olivia repeated after she accepted the cup of tea from the woman.

"They died when he was about fifteen years old." The woman shook her head as an air of sadness drifted around her words. "Murdered. Horribly too, from what I understand. They were good people. Did their best with that boy but after they passed away, things got a little strange. He was the one who found their bodies and it messed with his head some."

"Did they ever catch the perpetrator?" Elliot asked while Olivia sipped politely at her tea. When the detective noticed his partner grimace at him, indicating the quality of the tea, he made a mental note to himself to not drink it.

"They had a suspect, from what I heard. Even went so far as to try him in court but they had to drop the case. Not enough evidence or some such nonsense like that." She waved her hand in the air dismissively.

"Do you know the man they charged?"

She shook her head. "It was a tight case. No press allowed in the courtroom or anywhere near it. Their suspect was probably some bigwig's kid or something like, I guess, from the way they acted. No one really knows who they charged, only that nobody ever got convicted."

"You said he changed after his parents' death," Olivia reminded her gently. "How so?"

"He had no family and was going to get taken by Children's Services and placed with a foster family but his friend's father adopted him. David was a good Christian boy but you put two teenage boys together and you're bound to get trouble."

"David Waters?" Elliot asked.

"Yup, that's the boy. They were inseparable when they were younger. Abdullah went everywhere with David, even to church." Noting the blank look that this comment got from the detectives, Ms. Gabrion explained further. "Abdullah's parents were Muslim as was Abdullah until David converted him. This was a bit of a sore spot for the family and Abdullah felt terrible when his parents died, partly because he thought they were going to Hell because they believed in the wrong religion.

"Anyway, after he was adopted by Mr. Waters, David and Abdullah went a little nuts. It started pretty harmlessly. They took up the art of graffiti and completely dominated the graffiti wall nearby the school. But that wasn't enough and they soon began to paint all over the place. After that, they began to steal people's things and hide them. One afternoon, they switched every single license plate of the cars in the faculty parking lot at the school. It took the police a whole day to get things straightened out." She smiled at the memory.

"Were they ever charged with anything?"

She thought for a moment. "I think they got into some trouble over a couple fires they set. Some girl was unintentionally hurt by one of them, I think. Other than that though, they managed to get away with everything else without things getting official." Ms Gabrion glanced at a nearby clock. "Is that all? The evening news is coming on in a bit."

"Yeah, that's it." Elliot stood up and Olivia followed suit.

The female detective smiled at Ms. Gabrion pleasantly. "Thank you."

"Sure." The woman nodded in acknowledgement before showing them the door.

…

"Well?" Cragen asked as Olivia and Elliot walked into the squad room.

"They all said the same thing," Elliot answered, his voice reflecting his exhaustion, "We talked to five different people and each one said Abdullah and David were nice kids, although trouble seemed to follow them around. Other than that though, mostly harmless."

"The juvie record?"

"Apparently the two of them set a fire that ended up burning a girl. Abdullah got charged but he got off pretty light, from what we heard. Ended up just doing some community service," Olivia said.

"And it seems as though he made some kind of deal with the judge so David wouldn't get the charges on his record," Elliot added, "The judge liked the fact that he was a devout Christian."

"Test results come in?" Elliot asked, looking up from where he was pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"That stuff's been sitting there for the last five hours," Munch warned him before answering his question. "It's a match. Same stuff."

At the questioning look Cragen got from Olivia, the captain shook his head. "We still need a little more before we can get a warrant. It's all circumstantial."

"If it keeps building up though, circumstantial evidence will get a warrant, right?" she asked.

Cragen nodded. "I talked to Novak and she said although she'd rather not, she could get us one on circumstantial evidence alone. But, and I quote her on this, 'you'd better have a hell of a lot of it first.'"

"Well, since all we have is circumstantial, I'd say we're getting close to 'a hell of a lot,'" Munch said, offering up a weary smile.

"So how about we get cracking on finding something more substantial?" Cragen suggested. He pointed at Elliot. "You though; go sleep for a couple hours. You need it." The detective started to protest but then, as a yawn split his face wide, he resigned to following Cragen's order and retreated from the room.

"Where's Fin?" Olivia asked Munch.

"Captain had him stakeout the boys' apartment in case one, or both of them, decided to go out for some extracurricular activities this morning."