Disclaimer: Everything Law & Order related belongs to Dick Wolf and company, as in the show idea and known characters. But I do own the abstract created characters and plot line.
Wolfwood11: I'm sorry you didn't get the feel, but I wanted that scene to feel rushed because I wanted it to feel like frantic and hectic situation where Olivia reacted as a cop, do or die situation. Now or never. But yeah, it was rushed, no doubt. The other combat scenes to come will hopefully be to your liking. I strive to please. Thanks for the constructive criticism.
And the whole not recognizing Andrew thing, the guards were 'uniforms' and on completely different shifts then that of Andrew, so their paths would have never crossed when Andrew wasn't incognito. So yeah…anyway, do enjoy and rock on!
Shakeahand55: 3:30 a.m.! Good lord, well I'm glad you enjoyed it. And no, you don't sound pissed. Hope you enjoy this one.
SVU Lover4ever: Thanks! I know my muse will come back, most likely over the Holiday Break he will return and I'll mange to crank some more stories out.
A/N: Cheyenne, Wyoming is real…but I made up Waterville, a little sub town. More graphic stuff, you've been warned.
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"I suppose you've heard."
"Yes, I have." Lengsfield Philips said aloud, without fear of anyone hearing him in the small and practically deserted movie theater.
"My earlier request about having the opportunity to make her suffer…scratch that. Just shoot her in the head and be done with it." Lengsfield munched on butter drenched and over charged popcorn.
"Right…after her and the cop, I'm done." Andrew ventured and felt his testicles draw up into his abdomen out of fear and reflex.
Lengsfield paused for a moment then turned around in the dimly lit theater seat to face Andrew.
"You're done?"
Andrew nodded, "I don't want to do this anymore."
"You're done!" Lengsfield erupted into laughter, "You just don't quit."
"Dale has."
"She also was stupid enough to get knocked up and doesn't have enough sense to get an abortion. She's a killer, always has been, always will be. That baby doesn't have a chance. Same with you, you're a killer. That will never change." More crunches of popcorn.
"I mean it, Lengsfield. I'm done, make me a gopher or shylock, I don't care. I don't want hits anymore." Andrew was standing up to his superior, he felt so alive doing it and terrified at the same time.
Lengsfield eyed him for a few moments, sharply, "Fine."
Fine? This is too easy…
"Take care of Cate and the cop and you're done. I still have Curie, Thompson, Sort, Ore or even Anita, the queen of hearts…In my deck. One of them will replace you or I'll take a trade from one else. There's always something in my syndicate you can do." He turned back to screen; watching a food advertisement, compete with annoying music.
"Have a nice evening Jon, oh and give Elettra Acardi a call. Looks like you could use an anti-depressant right now." Lengsfield sneered as the lights went down and the feature started.
Andrew nodded taking his cue and getting up to leave.
Fucking was the last thing on his mind right now, where as the exodus of no longer being a hitman was bursting in his psyche.
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The Twenty-Seventh Day
September 4, 2005 Sunday
What is that smell?
"Freeze! NYPD!"
Blood?
"Cate, just back away."
Gun smoke?
"Penn, call a bus!"
Oh, its bleach.
Cate Monty slowly opened her eyes to a darkened hospital room, the only light coming from a dimmed florescent above her.
Rain pattered and ran in long streams down the slick pane of the hospital window; Cate stared at the window slowly realizing where she was.
The sterile smell of the hospital room filled her nostrils as she tried to reach her face. She jerked her wrists felling a twinge of pain, she hissed quietly, allowing the pain to subside, and then leered down to see her now pale and pasty wrists restrained to the bedrails, the same with her ankles
An IV protruded from her inner elbow; a faint purple ring encircled the needle and she could feel a catheter in place.
How long have I been here?
Cate surveyed her surroundings.
I have to get out of here.
Her mind began to clear and she started to focus and formulate a plan of escape.
I could dislocate my left in order to stretch…
Cate had fallen out of a tree when she was nine; she and her two sisters were building a tree house. She lost her footing on a piece of bark and plummeted to the orange and rouge colored leaves on the fading St. Augustine grass growing in their backyard.
Her left shoulder was dislocated and ever since then she had been able to pop or pull it out when ever she wanted, then relocate it just as easily, but it hurt like a bitch.
Cate steadied her breathing, focused on the task, leaning forward, the back of the thin gown opening slightly, she felt a chill run a across her back, raising a rash of gooseflesh causing her to hiss. Pausing slightly, biting her lip then wrenched her shoulder, wreathing in pain from the searing pop.
So far so good.
Pushing her dislocated shoulder awkwardly to her backside while she pulled her back as low as she could toward her waist.
Yoga…Ain't it great.
Cate tongued for the strap wound about her left wrist, latching her teeth to the leather flap and pulled it slowly, hissing and spiting as she did.
The leather absorbed her salvia and was changing color, once it was out of its loop; she pulled flap trying to force the pin out. She tugged changing the flush of her skin until the steel pin fell out of its hole.
Yes.
Cate jerked at the loose restraint pulling her wrist free, flexing her fingers freely, then with what coordination she had from the dislocated shoulder, she went to work on her other wrist, then her ankles and relied her Army medical education, to remove the catheter herself.
After tossing the coarse bed sheet aside, with her moveable fingers she pinched the clear tubing, only able to use one hand, stanching the light yellow flow, then lowered her mouth to the now drained side of the tubing and gnawed at it with her teeth, popping her back in the process.
The hosing finally severed, in uneven cuts by her front teeth, she spit out the rubber bits, tainted with her own foul, salty and acidic tasting urine.
She released her pinch on the other side of the hosing and watched the pale urine drain from her body, coloring the sheet, like a growing and unfolding blossom, compete with scent.
Not all blooms smell pleasant.
Once all her urine had expelled from her body, she gently pulled at the tubing, easing it from her body. After a few tense moments she felt the last of the tubing exit her urinary track.
Now she had to focus on getting out of this bed…
…can I walk even?
Cate flexed and wriggled her toes, confidently…
…I can do anything I want.
Before she moved her legs over the cold, steel rails, she pulled the IV from her inner elbow with her right hand. Deep red blood beaded and pursed from the needles' hole, she didn't bother stopping the flow and instead ignored it, moving her legs over the railing and touching her bare toes to the clean, infertile and cold floor.
The chill surged up her toes causing the synapses in her knees to jerk back from the cool tiles.
At least I can feel that.
With her flexible arm she forced the rest of her body over the rail, her left shoulder hanging numbly at her side. Cate found her footing, disoriented and awkward, still grasping the steel rail as she eyed the small windowed door.
My goal.
Now standing partially erect, she choose to try and walk on her own, steadily she released her grip on the now warm steel, balancing.
First step is the hardest.
Cate numbingly tried to walk, her steps where pathetic and uncoordinated. She nearly fell, her ankles where so sore.
I can't run…I can't fight…
She wondered what time it was, by the dark window she guessed it was night, but it was raining, it could just be the overcast of the storm.
…but I can creep.
Cate side stepped and shuffled with little coordination to the opposite side of the room giving her a better view of what lay outside that door. A large cart obstructed her view in the hall, various boxes of medical supplies sat virginal on the steel shelves.
But she didn't see or hear anyone. With a shift hiss she pressed her shoulder against the wall, forcing her arm back into its socket, it popped sickly.
Feeling stronger then she did a few minutes ago, Cate chose to take a few warm-up steps in the small recovery room. Starting a stronger blood flow and building her confidence…
How much muscle mass did I lose?
More steps.
How long was I out?
More steps.
Cate reached for the waistline of her lose gown lifting it up high, observing the bandages; remnants of the gunshots and the knife wound. She peeled one back, viewing the knife wound in her inner thigh; the stitching was partially dissolved into the flesh.
Over a week. Why so long?
After she pasted the tape back down and smoothed it she crept up to the window in the door, Cate carefully observed both ways, avoiding any attention that she might draw.
Nothing.
No one.
Not a nurse or guard or even a janitor.
Cate shrugged at the odd circumstances, but she wasn't complaining either.
It must be three in the morning or something for it to be this dead.
She wrapped her hand hesitantly around the doorknob and opened it, peering out into the hall, crouched slightly.
Steady breathing.
And it wasn't hers.
Cate froze, seeking the throat that emitted the soft breaths.
They came from a petite male NYPD officer, whose arms where crossed over his chest and snoozed deeply in the short back chair on the opposite side of the door, just out of her line of vision when she scouted from the window doorway.
No need to wake you…
Cate crept by quietly, knowing she would have to find a disguise to get out to here. The corridor was long and as equally dead…
…where is everyone?
The nurses station was empty as she approached, she eyed the ticking cat clock on the wall; 4:07.
Must be morning…Has to be.
Her steps where becoming stronger as she whipped around the nurses station searching for some garments, anything to change into and blend into the hospital backdrop.
This is a hospital isn't it? Or it's a pych-ward.
She shuttered at the disturbing thought and continued to rummage though duffels stuffed beneath desks and unlocked drawers for anything. Cate scavenged a stained sweater hanging on the back of one of the swiveling chairs and a pair of rolled socks in duffel.
A start.
The soft cotton hugged her toes and immediately gave her a cozy feeling. Still wearing the gown she pulled the stained tan sweater tight around her thin body, she had lost a lot of weight.
Cate didn't realize how much until the sweater nearly overlapped halfway around her back.
"McMercury!"
Cate jerked at the obnoxious shout and ducked beneath the desk.
"Mother-fucker, why are you sleeping?"
A gargled moan came from the petite officer posted outside Cate's door.
"Davit, you're going wake them."
"What? Come on, their all a bunch of vegetables."
Vegetables? I'm in a comatose ward!
Cate thought back to her injures sustained from the fight with Kim Ong.
I was shot twice and stabbed…That was it…Wasn't it?
"Some will wake-up someday. Hopefully her."
"Yeah, speaking of which," a door knobbed turned, hers…
…shit…
"She's gone!"
Shit.
"What?"
"She's gone! Are you deaf? This is Davit to security, Monty is gone. Repeat Monty is gone. Lock down now!"
"Affirmative. Over and out."
"Damnit, McMercury! Cragen's going to have your balls in a vice."
"I—I,"
I have to get out of here.
"What is all the shouting about?" Demanded a new, rich and maternal voice.
"Monty, she's gone!"
Cate pressed harder against the desk, this was getting very hairy.
"No. That's not possible." The woman said in a rush taking quick fevered steps, pausing at the nursing station picking up the cord phone and alerting security, yet in the new found chaos she still managed to be as vigil as ever.
Nothing ever escaped her eyes.
She noticed the missing stained sweater from the back of the chair.
Her missing stained sweater.
That how Cate concluded about how she was found.
That's why she was now having several volts of electricity pass through her body.
Jerking like a fish in its own personal hell.
Cate wound up turning the large nursing station over while she violently convulsed, but before she was turned into a modern day light socket, she managed to get a few hits off.
McMercury took a shot to his crotch, Davit a well placed foot in the kneecap. They both recovered slowly, Davit quicker then McMercury who reached for the stun gun hanging on his belt and shoved several volts though her body.
Cate lost consciousness, again.
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The Twenty-Eighth Day
September 5, 2005 Monday
"She what?"
"Attempted to escape. Long story, she didn't but she's awake and can be released. I suppose I'll be seeing you soon." Sara Heffner reported over the phone line in Cragen's office.
"Yes, thank you, Doctor." Cragen hung up without saying another word, whipped on his raincoat, snagged the un-expired arrest warrant and stormed out of his office.
The sudden movement from his office door drew the attention from various officers and detectives in the squad room.
"You two," he pointed to Olivia and Elliot, the only two lead squad officers in the room, "she's wake lets go." He didn't even wait for them to respond and instead walked pass them to the elevator.
The trip to St. Marks Hospital was full of questions and adrenaline bursts, they where finally going to be able to talk to Cate Monty, this time safely, on their turf and under their rules.
Sara Heffner met them in the lobby walking with them to the appropriate floor, talking rapidly about what happened.
How Cate managed to dislocate her shoulder, relocate it, undo the leather restraints with her mouth, remove the catheter with one hand and managed to slip out of her room undetected, but only for a brief time.
Sara left them to their own vexes as she opened the door to Cate Monty's new room, the four entered slowly to see Cate, restrained and looking out her window watching the rain pour and lighting scorch the sky outside.
Cate turned to them, recognizing Olivia and Elliot immediately from her other apartment, "I suppose you have that warrant this time."
She didn't mean it hostility, just in a factual manner. But it didn't stop the death stares she received from Elliot and Olivia.
Before either could retaliate, Cragen stepped in moving to her side producing the folded and official blue arrest warrant.
"Cate Monty, this is your arrest warrant for multiple murders committed in the city of New York."
Cate nodded at the warrant, "When does it go into effect?"
"As soon as you can be released." Cragen answered, noticing she wasn't faltering at his words or acting at all hostile.
It was like she was taking it in stride, another unforeseen complication that she would some how surpass.
As she did when Elliot and Olivia came for her that day, then again when Kim Ong nearly pumped her stomach full of lead.
Just another obstacle, she was so used to those now, jaded to them even.
"So an hour, then." Cate concluded her eyes fluttering to Sara Hefner who nodded in accordance.
Sara had gone over her injuries with Cate when she woke up again, the gunshot wounds, the stab wound, the broken rib, damage to her hand joints and the anemia which Cate had suspected having for sometime now.
Then the more disturbing news, what caused her to slip into the temporary coma, the near fatal injection of Mojave Rattlesnake venom.
Cate didn't falter at the news and she wasn't surprised at the attempt on her life. She knew who was behind the attempt too, but didn't relay that information to Sara when she asked.
Instead she simply replied it could have been anyone.
Sara also inquired about the crude female circumcision, Cate's eyes glazed over recalling that horrid event, Cate told her gently, not wanting to seem hostile, that she didn't want to talk about it, but that it was done to her, against her will. Nothing else was said about it.
Sara told her she was well enough to leave, she would continue to monitor Cate and that she would see to it that her diet would consist of mainly iron products during her imprisonment at the SVU station, in order to battle the anemia.
"A little more observation then you'll be released into their custody." Sara answered still standing near the doorway.
Cate nodded, "I want to thank you and your staff for everything."
Sara smiled thinly.
The hour passed quickly and Cate soon found herself being watched by Olivia and a female orderly, as she dressed in the now feminized room. Olivia stood intently, her hand rested on the butt of her .three fifty-seven, just in case.
I won't screw-up this time.
The misfire still weighed heavily on her mind.
Cate had no intention of trying to escape, yet. There was a time and place for everything, and this wasn't the time or place. The opportunity to fade away into the city's background would present itself again and she would take full advantage of it.
Cate pulled on a thin undershirt while leaning against the bed; her eyes would dart over to Olivia then she would advert them when Olivia noticed her. Cate felt remorseful for darting her now while she watched Olivia, Cate knew the paralyzing agent wouldn't have caused any permanent damage, but she wondered how much worry she put Olivia through.
Wondering about the possible repercussions or the total loss.
"For darting you…" she pulled a cotton sock on, "and your partner, I am sorry about that." Olivia watched her quietly, her eyes locked with hers darkly, "I had no other choice. I wouldn't have done it had I know about you…Or had I noticed it then. It was a very chaotic situation."
"What are you talking about?" Olivia hissed hostility, trying to ignore the sincerity she could hear in her voice and see in her eyes.
Cate paused hesitantly; averting her eyes to the young orderly and then chose to speak anyway.
"Your pregnancy."
Olivia froze, she hadn't told anyone yet, she still had trouble excepting it herself.
Nearly two weeks ago she had been in the laundry room of her apartment building, minding her own business several days into this whole Cate Monty fiasco.
Olivia had just removed her delicates from the wash when Milena Orlov, the elderly first generation Russian woman who lived a floor above her asked when she was due.
It caught her completely off guard, but then suddenly everything made sense, the vomiting at odd times, the moods swings, her sense of smell suddenly becoming very sensitive and the cravings.
Olivia merely smiled at Milena and didn't answer her question, instead rushed out of the washing room to her own apartment, leaving her delicates to sop on top of the washing machine, forgotten.
Stormed into her bedroom wrenching the top drawer out of her nightstand and grasp the small calendar used to mark her menstrual cycle.
I've been late before. Stress does that. Shit, SVU does that!
It wasn't odd for her to be late; she had never been very regular to begin with, only when she was on the pill did she have some order.
Shouldn't have gone off it.
Stress caused it; the heinous acts she had seen and hoped she would never become jaded too would sometimes throw her cycle out of order. Nothing big, she would always start a few days late or a few days early.
Eventually.
She flipped the calendar opened and started to count back.
I'm just late.
Olivia counted, Eight days. I'm eight days late.
It would always be two or four never eight days.
Could I be?
The timeline fit with the last time she engaged in intercourse.
It was enough to make her rush out of her apartment, snagging her pocketbook and locking the door, storming down to the lobby, out to the busy 4:06 afternoon street on a Saturday to hail a cab.
Went to the nearest drugstore, walked with an adrenaline rush to the various birth control items and pregnancy tests aisle.
She noted the many different pregnancy test boxes, she hadn't had to do something like this in years, the last time was during her first year at the police academy. As it turned out she wasn't pregnant then, but was just as equally nervous, apprehensive and scared.
In a flush of impulse she grabbed five different boxes and quickly moved up to the checkout, dodging eyes, terrified that someone from the Squad would see her.
After the quick checkout and swift cab ride back to her apartment, she slipped into her bathroom not bothering to shut the door, seated herself on top of the dark maroon toilet cover and ripped open the first box.
Read the instructions, then moved on to the next box, and the next and so on.
Pissing on a stick…Things haven't changed since the 'eighties.
Somehow she managed to produce enough urine for all five pregnancy tests, fumbled for the alarm clock set in her cell phone and waited.
She started pacing in her living room, hundreds of visions and 'what could be's' started searing though her mind. And then the questions that followed.
Can I do this…Alone?
Do I want this?
What about my career?
Why did I have to get so drunk?
Hell, why did we both get so drunk and fuck like dogs?
The alarm chimed before she knew it, causing her to stop abruptly in the living room.
She stared at the opened doorway to her bathroom while standing in the living room still, viewing her partial reflection in the mirror; suddenly she was petrified to go in there.
Her life could change forever in an instant just by stepping over that threshold, sealing confirmation.
Summoning up all the courage she had left on that Saturday afternoon she moved into the bathroom, her feet felt like concrete blocks and she silenced the annoying chime on her phone.
This is it.
She turned to the five used tests seated like trophies on the toilet tank.
Blue.
All five had turned a varying shade of blue, blue meant positive.
I, Olivia Benson am pregnant.
She stood there for so long, unsure of what course of action to take next.
Abortion was out of the question, always had been for her.
The next few days she was very distracted and the Squad noticed it, Elliot eventually asked about it, and she lied. Again she lied to her partner.
Then the incident at Cate Monty's apartment and the aftermath spent at the hospital with the various tests, and the private confirmation with the doctor away from Elliot's presence.
It was real now, confirmed; thankfully there was no damage to the fetus.
Fetus!
The word seemed so alien and scary to her.
Over the next few days she made the decision to keep it, she'd figure something out with the Squad and Cragen. She expected full support from them when she would come clean about it.
But the fact remained she hadn't told anyone.
How does she know?
Not her captain, not her part—
"What's the hold up?" Elliot called knocking then opened the door abruptly, jarring Olivia out of her haze, Cate didn't blush or fluster as Elliot looked upon her while she pulled on the used and faded denim jeans.
Elliot looked away quickly apologizing; Olivia didn't reply her mind still reeling from the now naked and flayed revelation that someone else knew.
Cate brushed it off, waving her hand at Elliot as the orderly helped her into the wheelchair, St. Marks didn't want to be liable if Cate lost balance and fell in the hospital after her official release.
She could sue and they knew that.
But what was she going to take them to court with?
Cate Monty was damned to begin with, she already considered herself dead.
After she was situated in the chair she held her hands out to Elliot, waiting for him to cuff her.
He produced the steel cuffs from beneath his jacket and latched one to her left wrist and clicked the other one to the handrail of the chair. She didn't fight or resist him, merely took it all in stride.
The orderly pushed her out of the room when Elliot waved her on, out to the escort of NYPD officers and Cragen.
Olivia remained still in her dumbstruck haze, Elliot was about to leave when he noticed her looking on and out to an oblivion in the room that he couldn't see.
"'Liv?" He touched her shoulder timidly causing her to jerk at his touch.
"Did she say something to you?" He asked in concern at her sudden distant and autistic-like haze.
Olivia looked at her partner like she didn't recognize him, then covered her eyes distraughtly, "No, no she didn't. I'm fine, just tired."
She lied again, You know if you keep telling yourself that you'll start to believe it.
The depressingly antagonistic voice in her mind purred.
Shut-up. Olivia hissed at the voice moving out into the hallway after the escort of officers.
Just shut-the fuck-up.
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The ride back to the station was uneventful; Cate didn't say anything while she sat in the back of the police cruiser, this time with both hands cuffed behind her back and Elliot seated beside her if in case she somehow managed to get out of the cuffs and figure out how to unlock the backdoor of the cruiser from the inside.
He doubted that, but they weren't going to take any chances now, she had proven how resourceful and elusive she could be.
Thankfully the press didn't know about her being released, yet. He wondered how long it would take for the leak to reach them.
Cate didn't fight when they arrived at the station; she stood with the help of Elliot out of the backseat, still shackled.
Entered the nearly deserted station quietly, the few in the station did double-takes as she walked by with two officers on each side of her, and the multiple escorts in tow as she was herded to an interrogation room.
She was seated in the steel chair and left to her own vexes in the quiet interrogation room, she eyed the double mirror, shifting uncomfortably in the handcuffs. Cate wondered who was on the opposite side of that mirror, she stared hard at her reflection wishing she could see pass her own deformities into that room.
Cate looked at her scarred face, the burn tissue at her lower chin and cheek and her consumed throat. Her hair now partially that bleach blonde and the tell-tell brown roots had exposed on beyond her scalp about half an inch and the scabbing at her temple nearly dissipated.
Her nose had an itch and she couldn't reach it.
The door to the interrogation room opened harshly, Cate didn't jump or shake at the sudden noise. It was a tactic and she knew that, Elliot seated himself in front of her with a manila folder, white notepad and pen in hand.
He had removed his jacket, rolled his selves and tucked his tie into the second and third gap in his button shirt.
"Could you remove these cuffs, please?"
"There a precaution." Elliot answered not looking at her, readying his area.
"Detective, I am in your custody. In a police station with several officers…Do you really think I could walk out of here? Do you really think you're in any danger of me?" Cate droned.
"No, this is how it's going to work—"
"No, Detective, that's not how it going to work." Cate cut him off.
"I asked you nicely to remove these cuffs, I'm not going to attack you, I'm not going to try and escape from this room. You want answers, you want information and you want a confession. I'd be more cooperative if you would remove my cuffs. I want to talk with you and help you in your investigation really do, but you have to help me first." She said sternly, locking eyes with him hard.
A tap on the mirror drew Elliot's eyes to the side and he stood leaving the room, only to return several minutes later.
He was obviously annoyed as he forcefully removed her cuffs and clipped them to the back of his belt.
"Thank you," she murmured to him not reacting to his forcefulness, "Thank you." She called to the double mirror.
Elliot had taken his seat again; Cate stretched her wrists, scratched her nose and ran a few digits in her short hair, tossing it about casually.
"Six years, Cate. You've been legally dead for six years. That's a lot of time, where have you been and why did you come back now?" Elliot asked starting out slow.
Cate leaned back in the steel chair, taking in his words slowly.
Then leaned forward, "You want to hear my story?"
He nodded, Elliot had been intrigued by this case from the very being, consumed by curiosity and had so many questions. This entire case seemed so surreal to him, he wanted to know the truth.
What brought this woman back from the dead?
What sent her on
this path of destruction?
Who was really responsible?
Or was she just insane and she did kill her own children, mutilate her body and set their home on fire?
It seemed like a huge conspiracy.
Something was there though.
Why else would some try to kill her in the hospital and tamper with several files?
What if they are the same person?
What if their not?
"Will you listen to it without prejudice, at least until I'm finished." She pointed her finger to emphasize the liberal tag at the end of her sentence.
"Until you're finished." He nodded.
"How much do you…What do you know already?"
"That you were found guilty of the murders of your two children. Sentence to life imprisonment and escaped on transport jumping off the East River Bridge. Presumed dead, speaking of which…how did you survive the fall?" Elliot questioned.
"That's a good place to start then…" Cate trailed off averting her eyes slightly to a corner of the room, then back to Elliot.
"I made the decision after the guilty verdict was read, that I wasn't going to prison," she leaned back in the chair.
"No, I was going to escape as soon as possible and find the bastards responsible for the murders of my children and the mutilation of my body."
"I contemplated how while they hand and ankle shackled me in my orange jumpsuit. As we went over the bridge I felt it was a good as time as any." Cate interlaced her fingers on the cool steel table.
"I managed to subdue, not kill, the officer in back with me, then throttled the guard in the front seat and driver until he swerved and flipped on the bridge."
"I lay on the ceiling of the van for a few minutes until I realized what happened, then forced the van door and ran out on the hot pavement. Other police officers had been alerted and I saw them storming down the bridge, full tilt with sirens and lights just blaring." She waved her hand at the chaos she witness coming for her on the bridge that day.
"Seeing no other option other then taking a hostage on the bridge, which…that is not something I could do. Put another life in danger like that." She could almost sense Elliot's thoughts, he was naming her a hypocrite, she knew it but continued anyway.
"So I jumped. I didn't think I'd live, it was more on impulse. A reaction." She recalled the fall, how terrifying and liberating it felt at the same time.
"I fell for what seemed like hours. The impact popped my left shoulder out of joint, shredded the jumpsuit, knocked one of my shoes off, it turned skin my raw around the shackles and then I lost consciousness, briefly. I woke up a few minutes later because I could still hear the sirens above me."
"I knew I had only a few minutes before they would find me, I swam, well sort of swam over to one of the bridge's pillars and used it to force my shoulder back into place."
"I kept to the pillars beneath the bridge making my way to land. I found myself crawling exhaustively out of East River onto the crumbling concrete retaining wall of the abandoned warehouse district. Still shackled."
"The sirens became louder as I stumbled around the abandoned buildings, partially barefoot, walking on broken glass and steel shards. Cutting myself up pretty bad."
"I finally bunkered down in a decaying building basement and went to work on getting out of my shackles. I waited three days before I set out to find food, water and items to change my appearance."
Elliot made small notes on the white notepad and continued to listen.
"I cut my hair with a piece of glass and dyed it white with a bottle of peroxide I stole from a store's back stockroom. Found some clothing, cleaned up and walked around the city like a ghost. It was confirmed I was a ghost when I read in the Times that I'd been declared dead. 'What to do now?' That's was I wondered."
"Later I noticed in the obituaries that my children's funeral was going to be held that day. I had watch from an overpass that was as close as I could get. I sobbed and cried as I watched them being lowered down into the side by side graves, and I couldn't mourn for them publicly. I was denied that right as mother." Cate felt the heat of sorrow behind her eyes as she thought about that scene, forever seared in her mind.
"That night after everyone had left the cemetery, I risked walking out to the fresh plots and cried for them. I gave up on that idea I had of revenge right then and there. I had no way of finding the people responsible, I had no names… but I had their faces, that was it." Cate looked up at the mirror again.
"So, I didn't go out and buy myself a Saturday Night Special, like I was going to. No, walked away from the city, I was dead and didn't care about anything. I walked and walked, hitched hiked and tried it forget what happen. Let God deal with it." She looked back to Elliot, the devout Catholic.
"I moved from city to city and state to state, adopted new names and worked piss jobs I didn't need a past for; waiting tables, janitorial work, bartending, cleaning kitchens, things like that. Then two years ago, after I started a new life in Waterville, Wyoming, this little town a few miles east of Cheyenne. It happened again, injustice, a case swept under the rug, facts ignored and handled sourly because money talks." She looked at Elliot hard, not quite accusing but wearily with piercing eyes.
"You should write that town down so you can confirm it later." Cate felt a flashback to a time when she was a teacher and would purposely drop hints to her students about what would and wouldn't be on their exams.
For the shear hell of it he did, "Waterville, Wyoming east of Cheyenne." Elliot confirmed etching on the pad.
Cate nodded and continued, "A young girl, well eighteen," she surged at the age. "Was raped by three men. They had DNA and witnesses that confirmed and proved it, yet they found the three men innocent. Because two of them where the brothers of the local sheriff and the other was the cousin of the mayor, the jury was bought. They accused the young girl of crying wolf, that she was blowing it way out of proportion and that she was promiscuous to begin with. I knew her, she was a mouse." Cate emphasized with her eyes.
"The small town trial brought New York back to me. Accusations that I killed my children, which I didn't. Justice would have been severed had the judge and jury not been bribed and restricted to certain evidence. Evidence that was always just being misplaced." She hissed at the statement, turned away to recomposed herself.
"So, after the trial, as I watched jury members around me bask in their tainted wealth, some bought ridiculous sports cars, other new homes entirely. I wondered how the lived with themselves? How they slept at night? I realized I couldn't just let them get away with it, because it happened again. Two weeks later the same three men where accused of raping another girl."
"I made my decision, I discarded my life there as Kate Washburn, local math tutor and waitress. Loaded up what I needed to return back to my dead life and took my sawed off twelve gage and murdered those three men."
Elliot was dumbstruck, she was confessing to another murder, multiple murders even.
"I left that night, and never looked back. I sharpened my skills, learned what I could about picking locks, reading building blueprints and homing my martial arts. Then started sketching. I spent hours reliving that night in my home, recalling their faces and drawing them over and over. I returned to the city a few months ago and started searching for them. I found names, aliases, then photos and then the name of the person that would tie everything together, Lengsfield Philips. The man who ordered the hit on my family and I."
"Then I found out why he ordered the hit, this was a man I had never heard of or had any dealings with, he knew nothing about me or my twins. It was because of Frankie, my widower. It all because of a—" she had stop nearly laughing at how ridiculous the reason was behind the hit.
"A court blackmail! My husband took the bribe under faulty intentions and ruled wrong. So, Lengsfield felt it was necessary in punishing him by killing my children and me. He knows you didn't have to kill a person, to kill them. But I lived, that was never part of the plan, but it was integrated into it, rigging my trial was the perfect way in laying the blame on me. Focusing it on someone other then him."
Cate stopped, "That's where I've been and why I've comeback."
Elliot watched her in shock as someone tapped harshly on the mirror again, jarring him back to reality.
"Excuse me." He said quickly leaving the room; Elliot shut the door and held his face catching his breath while leaning up against wall.
"You all right?" Olivia asked touching his arm when he didn't step into the opposite side of the interrogation room.
Elliot nodded, "She's insane, has to be." He whispered to her.
"Have you checked out Wyoming?" Elliot called to Cragen who walked up behind Olivia.
"Fin's on it right now. We have her for six murders and she confesses to three we didn't even know about."
Elliot nodded moving into the double mirror room, seeing John and Doctor George Huang, watching Cate Monty, she hadn't moved from her chair.
"What do you think?" Elliot questioned in George direction.
He leered some to the side, "I'll need more information, ask her about what happened in the house that night. As far text book insanity, I don't see it."
Elliot grasped a bottle of water, cracking the lid and drinking deeply, "Anything else?"
"We assume that her family was killed and that's why she went on this rampage…Ask if she feels that's she a hero to the city. There's a reason why she's not acting hostilely toward you, she doesn't perceive you a threat and she's very open, like she doesn't care if she lives or dies. She's not afraid of prison or the consequences she faces. She thinks the worst thing that could has already happened to her."
Elliot nodded recapping the bottle and returning back to the interrogation room, seating himself.
"What did they tell you to ask me this time?" Cate questioned quietly laying her hands in her lap.
"You know there's something that has been bothering me since the beginning all of this," Elliot baited.
"What?" Cate tilted her head to the side some.
"What do you think you are? A hero? A vigilante? A—"
She cut him off. "Don't you know the difference between a hero and a vigilante?"
"No. Enlighten me."
"A hero is named. By a heroic deed, they are everyday, ordinary, average people. When others fled from those instantly created pressures; car wrecks, fires, surfacing assailant or whatever shear terror of whatever leviathan stood daunting before them, he or she stepped in fearless…" she breathed passionately.
"Where as a vigilante is a bastard, a product of bitter-scorn, of uncontrollable hatred, of heinous trauma and is consumed by an insatiable lust for revenge."
"So you're a vigilante?" Elliot concluded.
"No, I just a dead mother. That didn't claim her right to mourn, but will claim her right to vengeance."
"That killed her children."
Cate knew what he was doing and refused to react with scorn, "I didn't kill my children. I could never hurt a child, let alone my own. No parent in their right mind could ever cause intentional harm to their own blood. You're a father, you know that." She gestured her chin in his direction.
Elliot hid his surprise, "What makes you think I'm a father?"
"You walk like a father, move and talk like one. As does you're Captain." Her eyes fluttered toward the window knowing Cragen stood on other side.
She thought about mentioning Olivia, then chose not to.
Elliot decided to move the conversation back a few sentences, "If you didn't mutilate, murder and then burn your children, who did? What happened that night in your home?"
Cate's face shifted quickly as she saw a glimmer of blistering flames in her minds eye, resurrected by Elliot's inquiry.
She brought her hand to her face and bit her thumb nail briefly, trying to decide how to start the tale of that dreaded night.
How it all started on a Tuesday evening in June, the eighth of 1999, six years ago.
"Frankie wasn't home that night, no he probably out fucking one his sectaries, I knew about the affairs, but I couldn't bring myself to confront him about it. I had my school work and two twins to keep up with, so I put him on the backburner."
"I had just put the twins to bed, finished taking my shower and started grading summer school papers. I didn't hear anyone, but it just happened so fast."
"One minute I was grading Lafayette Sorrento's struggling algebra homework, and then next I was clocked across the face with a baton and tied to my bed. 'Make it good,' I heard a voice say, I later found out it was Jack Kershaw who said it. He raped and sodomized me, then he took my daughter, little Michelle…" Cate trailed off lowering her eyes some, reliving and hearing her daughters' screams.
"They each had their ways, cutting and burning. Bale Braddock sodomized my son, Michael." Cate held her breath.
"I've had insomnia ever since that night…I can hear him sometimes at night, crying for me as Braddock took him. And I could do nothing." She felt the tears burn her eyes and streak her face before she wiped them away.
"So much pain…And I could do nothing. They are sadists, both living and dead. Then she had her way…That sadistic bitch," Cate looked away, the tears drying and rage started to fill her eyes.
"She? Who's she?" Elliot inquired bringing her back from the haze of hatred.
Cate smiled tiredly, "Doesn't matter, she's already dead." Cate wouldn't reveal her name.
"You've killed her, then?"
"No, but she's walking dead."
"You won't tell me her name, will you?"
"No."
Elliot nodded coarsely making a few more notes, "What happened next?"
"I'll give you this name, because I can't even find him, but I will, eventually. Jon Rice, he leaned into my mutilated and circumcised body and whispered, 'It's nothing personal. Its just business.' As if that made everything all right, like it justified the killings."
Elliot did his best to hide the surprised at the mention of Jon Rice.
How does he fit into all of this?
Other than Cate, he was the most elusive and mysterious individual in this case, Elliot didn't need to, but wrote the name down anyway.
He looked back up at her beckoning her with a look to continue.
"Christopher Harris and Kim Ong killed both my children, snapping their necks. Then they started pouring gasoline all around the house, on my dead children, on me…It burned in my opened wounds, then he torched the place. Used an authentic Zippo too, flipped the hood and dropped it in the room."
"Does he have a name too?"
Cate nodded, "You won't have it, but he's walking dead too."
"Ok, the house is on fire, how did you survive?"
"The fire consumed most of my lower body, then moved up to my torso, arms and part of my face," she moved her neck some to give him a better view of the brunt flesh at her chin and throat, he had already seen it though.
"It burned though ropes at my ankles and singed the tether at my left wrist. I managed to escape, reaching for my dead children and taking them with me. I stumbled out to my front lawn, a mass of burnt flesh and dead to world, cradling my dead children and screaming for help…I don't remember much else about that night."
Cate pressed her hands to her face, wanting to hide from the life changing memories and felt the up and coming drenching sobs. There was tightness in her throat and the agony of showing just how human she really was.
"I woke up in the burn ward at St. Jude's Hospital. My body was wrapped in burn gauze and soon they would start the scar treatment, peeling the brunt flesh off my body with power washers and brushes. It would have worked if the NYPD hadn't cut my treatments short. Imagine my horror when I was the number one suspect in their murders." She interlaced her fingers on the table.
"No one believed me. Frankie abandoned me, leaving me to fend for myself. My trial started and then things started to disappear, medical reports and various items of evidence. What was worst was watching doctors, fellow doctors who had taken the Hippocratic Oath, lying on the witness stand about my injuries. They even said my mutilations where self inflicted. The circumcision, the permanent destruction of my sex, wasn't even mentioned. It didn't apparently, have merit. And those doctors knew about it, they had seen it." She brought her fist to her mouth and looked away cringing at the memory.
"I was later evaluated in a psychiatric examination and deemed sane. Then the guilty verdict came about…well, that pretty much brings us up to date." Cate said looking at him, Elliot nodded and finally picking up the manila folder he brought in with him the first time and started laying out the contents.
Photos.
8x10 color glossies of the six men she killed, each image more gruesome and graphic then the next.
Elliot laid them out chronologically, giving Cate time to absorb the images; she didn't falter or feel any remorse.
He pointed to the first, the hanging flayed body of Jack Kershaw.
"Why did you kill him?"
Cate looked up at him like he hadn't heard anything she said to him only minutes ago, but chose to respond, calmly.
"Jack Kershaw, raped and sodomized me, then forced my daughter."
Elliot nodded moving to the next image, the awkwardly spiraled body with the basined head; Mark Garston.
"He wasn't apart of your plan of vengeance was he?"
Cate shook her head, "I went to the Moore Hotel because that was the last place Christopher Harris was listed at. He wasn't there, but I heard the boy, across the room. Whimpering and crying. I killed him. Do you really miss him?" She played with his conscience.
Elliot didn't reply and instead moved on to the next image, the bloated and grayed corpse of Christopher Harris.
"Christopher Harris, he took his fare share of pleasure from my body. He liked to hit, a lot. Then he snapped Michael's neck."
Elliot made a few more notes then moved to the next photo the lacerated body and broken neck of Bensyn Connors.
"Bensyn Connors, he didn't reap my body or that of my children, but he was the one responsible for subduing my body. He turned away when I was raped, he acted like he didn't want to be there. If he was so human and remorseful he would have stopped it. He was just as guilty."
The next image was of the boiled with plastic like skin, the water electrocuted Bale Braddock.
"Bale Braddock, he sodomized my son. Need I say more?"
Then the last image, Kim Ong, the knife protruded immortality in his throat, it would live on forever in the photo.
"Kim Ong, he took pleasure in my suffering to…he like the sight of a razor deepened in my flesh, the red tear like streak it left behind. He killed Michelle too."
Elliot nodded, "One more thing,"
Cate looked at him, wiping the redness from her eyes.
"Do you know what Jon Rice looks like?"
"Yes."
"But you're not going to render for us, are you?"
"No. I'm not."
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"She's not insane." George stated as the watched Elliot finish with her and two uniforms entered the room, cuffing her and escorted her down to a private cell in lock-up.
Fin slipped into the room with a folder in hand, "Wyoming came through," he started, "Jasper Davis, Peter Davis and Jeremiah Winslow, all murdered the same night with the same weapon. It was a cold case. They never found Kate Washburn, but some of her hair follicles where found. The link." Fin handed Cragen a photo of Kate Washburn, an image of a slightly younger Cate Monty looked back at him.
They where a match, though her hair and make-up was different the burn tissue and piercing eyes remained the same.
"I just got off the phone with Sheriff Oscar Davis, apparently he wants her trialed for the three murders. And he wants you to call him back, Cap." Fin concluded and Cragen groaned.
"Do you think it's true? What she said, I mean?" Olivia asked in George's direction.
"About what happened to her family?"
Olivia nodded.
"She believes it," George started staring back into the now empty interrogation room. "But we don't have the evidence to prove it. But she mentioned Jon Rice, 'because I can't even find him, but I will, eventually'." He now was brainstorming, replaying her words aloud; "He's the precursor to all of this."
"And we still don't even know what he looks like." Olivia murmured depressingly.
"She also seemed to resent being called a hero.. .er, vigilante too." John coincided.
George nodded, "She doesn't want to be named, or remembered, it's like she's in it for self-redemption and vengeance for her children. She's not done either, she confessed to that. If she was she would have attempted some sort of suicide by now. It's the vengeance that keeps her alive and if she does somehow complete her vengeance, she'll lose that drive to live…but it's also obvious to me that she doesn't want to live…beyond this. She just doesn't care, that's why she's not acting hostile toward Elliot or the officers." George concluded his eyes moving from one face to another.
"She has a pre-death wish." Fin clarified after George's ramble.
George nodded.
"Doesn't matter, she's going to prison, the evidence is so stacked against her. She even confessed to nine different murders. You may not think she's insane, but I do. Not disrespect to your opinion, Doctor. I've seen serial psychopaths and homicidal sociopaths avoid all obvious evidence and lie constantly that their innocent…She didn't even try." Cragen voiced.
"They where insane, she's not, she just doesn't care. Because she thinks she's is already dead." George rebutted, respectfully.
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"Sheriff Oscar Davis, please," Cragen pressed over the terrible connection.
"One moment,"
Silence reigned for several minutes, along with odd clicks, he briefly considered just hanging up and letting this sheriff call him back.
"Sheriff Davis. Captain Cragen is it?" Sheriff Oscar Davis's voice cracked over the bitter connection, "I heard that you nailed the bitch that killed my brothers."
Oh, you're colorful; Cragen observed with stringency, "We have apprehended the woman, Cate Monty—"
"Cate Monty! That's her name now? That little conniving, burnt cunt."
"Sir, are you going to insult her or is this conversation going anywhere?" Cragen pressed abrasively while rubbing his eyes.
Oscar huffed rudely over the connection, "I want to try her here."
"Excuse me? In Wyoming?"
"Yes."
"That's out of the question. I know you want to charge her with the deaths of those three men, then you need to come up here and bring what evidence you have." Cragen replied sitting hard in his swiveling chair.
"We know she did it. She did leave behind fibers. We just could never find her. She's the biggest scandal to ever hit Waterville. I want to bring closure to those whose lives she ruined. And yes I want her trialed for the murders. I'll see you in a day or so." The line went dead.
Cragen rolled his eyes and fingered the phone's neck as he sat it back down, Bring everyone and we'll just have a party. Yeah, let's fry her.
With a heavy sigh he picked the phone back up and started dialing, knowing he's have to update the Chief of Detectives about this.
(End Chapter Eleven)
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