Chapter 24 - Cragen

Thanks for the reviews nem, Lady Padfoot II, qt-angel, christopher-meloni-freak, LawandorderSVUfan, volleylover, SVUchik18, viol8dbyalizzard, dadsgirl4ever, and TeacherTam.
nem, thanks for reviewing! I totally get what you mean about the picture inside the TV Guide. I loved it so much I put it on my computer background!
TeacherTam, thanks for the reviews! And I'm glad I made your day with the 'til thing. ;) Bad grammar is my pet peeve! I can't stand people who don't respect their work enough to at least attempt to use spell check.
LawandorderSVUfan, thanks so much for the reviews. Now, about the pairings, there aren't any. I know everyone would love to see Olivia get together with someone, but I still haven't decided if I'm going to take this story there. If I do, it'll be a long way off, just to give Olivia time to cope and deal with her attack.
And because everyone wants to know when Olivia is going to find out aboutBrent, I'll finally post that chapter today. So here are three more, Cragen, Elliot, andMunch.

Lyrics by Doug Stone – Why Didn't I Think of That

I did my best
Thought of everything else
Why didn't I think of that?

Cragen

"Hey John," I nodded to my detective as he entered the squad room. I was leaning over a heap of papers piled on someone's desk, searching for anything that might give us the slightest lead to Brent's location. "Where's Fin?"

"He's at home sleeping." John slid his trench coat off of his shoulders and flung it around a coat rack.

"What? Why?" I already had people working double time and over time, I needed everyone I could get working.

"He's exhausted Don." He grabbed a folder from his desk. "He's basically been working this alone for the past three days." John opened the manila folder but didn't start flipping through it until I gave him a look of understanding.

"So did you find anything useful?"

He shook his head. "Absolutely nothing. He pays all his bills on time, probably with all the money he scrounges from his mother, and he's never held a job long enough to get past a first name basis with anyone."

"I want to know how in the hell a guy can be in New York and yet be impossible to find!" I growled at no one in particular.

"Did you get a search warrant for his apartment yet?" John seemed unshaken by my outburst. Lately, it seemed as if there was a virus spreading around, taking turns making everyone incredibly irritable. I sighed and threw down a pile of papers, not even answering John's question. I could blame some bug or bacteria, but I, and everyone else, knew the real reason. No one could sleep knowing that Olivia's attacker was still out there, doing God-knows-what.

After a mere minute or so of exercising my last bit of patience on Brent's financial history, I decided to go to Novak's office and see if she could get that search warrant, or at the very least give us some idea of what to do. We'd been watching Brent's money trail like a hungry hawk watching the ground for its next prey. So far, we hadn't found a single bite. The night he attacked Olivia, he took his credit cards and cleaned out his accounts and he took Molly's and cleaned out hers. He had almost a thousand dollars in cash and now would leave no paper trail for us to latch onto.

As I knocked on her door, it suddenly occurred to me that she wouldn't know of the events that had taken place over the past few days. Great, now I have to go through this all again.

"Novak?" I knocked on the open door and leaned my head in, making sure she was there.

"Come in." She was standing in front of a bookcase, scanning through the pages of an unmarked hardback book. She flipped through one last page before shutting it and looking at me. "Is this about Elliot?" There was a look on her face that I couldn't really place. She was sort of downhearted, sort of scared, nothing I could put my finger on. Before I could answer her, she spoke again. "Was it him?"

I just stared at her for a moment, completely unsure what she was talking about. I opened my mouth to ask, but again she beat me to it.

"But how could he do that to Olivia?" She shook her head in a dazed fashion, taking a seat behind her desk.

Suddenly, I knew what she was talking about. "You heard about Olivia?"

That question seemed to pull her out of her own little world. "What? I mean, uh… yeah. I talked to John a couple days ago. He told me what happened. It wasn't Elliot, was it?"

"No." I shook my head.

"Thank God…" She sighed, relief over-coming her. "Wait, but if it wasn't Elliot, then who was it?"

I shrugged. "We have a suspect, we just can't find him."

"You can't find him?" She rolled her chair forward and rested her elbows on her desk. Then she motioned for me to take a seat.

"No," I informed her, lowering myself into one of the two chairs that were placed in front of her desk.

"What are you looking for?" She quickly realized why I was there.

"Search warrant for his apartment."

"What do you have on him so far?"

"An hour before Olivia was attacked, he assaulted his girlfriend, who happened to be the super of Olivia's building and lived on the same floor as her. When his girlfriend woke up, her master keys were missing. The perp broke into Olivia's apartment through the front door, but there were no signs of forced entry. And, he looks exactly like Elliot, explaining the mistaken identity."

Casey just nodded and thought for a moment before speaking again. "Has she IDed the guy yet?"

"I don't know if you heard me the first time, but we can't find him." I didn't mean to snap at her, but I was working on a minimal amount of sleep and nerves.

"So pull up his driver's license and put it in a photo array."

I stared at her with a dear-in-the-headlights expression for a minute. I couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to me before.

"Come back with a positive ID, and I'll do whatever I can." She straightened some papers on her desk as I stood to leave. "And Don?" I turned back around to face her. "Get some sleep," she ordered. "You look close to collapsing."