Chapter 8 - Tutuola
Katydidit, Lady Padfoot II, Anna, qt-angel, LivElRocks a lot, christopher-meloni-freak, nem, and finalfan17, thanks for the reviews! Here are two more chapters to thank you, Tutuola and a short Stabler. And this is the big statement scene, so I hope you enjoy!
And I couldn't help her
Her feelings she hides
Her dreams she can't find
She's losing her mind
She's falling behind
She can't find her place
She's losing her faith
She's fallen from grace
She all over the place, yeah
She wants to go home
But nobody's home
That's where she lies
Broken inside
With no place to go
No place to go
To dry her eyes
Broken inside
She's lost inside, lost inside
She's lost inside, lost inside
"Hey, Tutuola!"
"Un…" I groaned as I heard someone shouting at me, waking me up. After bringing in Elliot to the station, I had crashed up in the crib. "What?" I sat up and glared at whoever had so rudely disturbed my peaceful slumber. It was Cragen. He didn't look very happy.
"Olivia's here. She's going to give her statement." He was standing at the foot of the bed I was in, his hands in his pocket.
"We gotta be in there?" I stood up, ready to go.
"No. John's going to be in there with her. I think we should stand behind the one way so that you can question Elliot afterwards."
"Because you don't want John to do it?" I tried to get him to smile, but it wasn't working.
"I'd like to have a living person to question," he sighed.
"Good point." I followed the Captain back to the Unit.
"So where is she?" I glanced around.
"Over there." He pointed to one room. "And he's over there." He motioned to another room across from the first.
"Let's go," I shrugged, walking over to where Olivia and Munch were. I was not looking forward to this at all.
Olivia was standing across the table from my partner. Her hair fell limp and wet around her face, as if she'd just taken a shower. She was wearing a man's dress shirt that came down way below her waist. The sleeves went over her hands. Every now and then she'd push the light blue material up to her elbows, only to have it fall back down right after. She also had a pair of gray sweat pants on that were about ten sizes too big. They were partially held up by a string tie. I wasn't sure what happened to the two after they left the hospital, but I was sure that the clothes she was wearing belonged to John.
John was sitting in front of a tape recorder and a tablet of paper and pen.
"Okay Liv." He clicked the record button on. "Take your time. You can start whenever."
Olivia took a deep breath before starting. "I was asleep in my bed when a noise woke me up." She shrugged. "I didn't think anything of it though. I just went to go back to sleep."
"Do you know what time this was?" Munch quietly interrupted her. We'd have to know the time frame in which she was attacked to see if Elliot had an alibi.
"Mid-night. Then I saw a shadow in the doorway of my bedroom. It was pitch black, so I couldn't see anything but his outline. I went for my gun, but I realized I had left it in another room." She stopped and turned around, putting her back to the mirror and to Munch. Even though I couldn't see her face, I knew she was starting to cry. "So then I yelled out. I asked him what he wanted, but he didn't say anything. I got out of my bed and tried to run into the bathroom, where my gun was. But he ran after me and grabbed me. Then he threw me onto my bed. I tried to fight back, tried to get away from him, but he held me down anyway. I started screaming and kicking him, and he started punching and kicking me. Then he managed to hold me down while he pulled his pants off, and then mine." Her voice caught in her throat and she paused awhile.
I turned to look at Cragen, to see how he was taking this. He wasn't even facing the two way anymore. His back was against the wall; his face still set in stone, revealing no emotion that I could detect. It was like he was disassociating himself, trying not to hear this. Hearing Olivia's voice again, I turned back.
"Then he was inside of me."
I watched in sympathetic pain as a sob shook her. I wasn't sure how much longer I could listen to this. Then again, I thought, Olivia had to live through this. So I think the least I can do is listen to her.
"He didn't say anything the entire time. He just held me down and hit me if I tried to fight back. Then a car drove by my window. I saw his face."
"Who was it Liv?" John's voice softly egged her on, trying to keep her talking so that she wouldn't get to the point where she was too hysterical to do so.
"It was Elliot…" Her voice faded into another sob.
"Then what happened?"
"Then he finally got off of me and he left the same way he came in."
"When did he leave?" I heard John's voice shaking, almost as if he was seconds away from tears himself.
"About one-thirty." As soon as she had finished, John quickly flipped the tape recorder off and went over to Olivia.
I shifted my gaze towards Cragen. This time, emotion flooded his face. He was almost in tears, something that caught me off guard. I've never seen Don on the brink of crying, about anything.
I wanted to cry, I did. I wanted to feel the pain for Olivia that everyone else was. But I knew I couldn't allow myself to be over-taken by it. I still had to go and question Elliot. Had it been any other situation, I'd have asked Cragen to get someone else. But, I was the only someone who could. So for that, I had to stay composed.
"I'm going to talk to him," I quietly informed the Captain. He just nodded in response, barely signaling he heard me.
