Chapter 3

"A torture chamber?" Captain Cragen asked. The SVU captain had been given the case, and with that came Detectives Goren and Eames to manage.

"The lab reports came back half an hour ago. Warner says they were definitely beaten to death." The Captain fell back in his chair and began to rub his neck as he always did when he was stressed.

"Great, the media's gonna have a field-day with this one. Okay, I want one major case detective with each of mine so Elliot, you're with Detective Goren, and Munch is with Detective Eames. Elliot, I'm sending you guys after the 9-1-1 caller, Munch, you're canvassing the neighborhood to see if anyone saw or heard anything." The newly made teams nodded and headed out the door.

Sometime later, Goren and Stabler pulled over near the payphone where the call had been made. It was surrounded by yellow tape and had two uniforms on guard duty. Not bothering to duck under the tape and investigate the phone, which had likely been used again and again by the people following the caller, rendering it useless, they looked around for bloody footprints.

"There's nothing here, I don't think the caller was in the room when it happened." Stabler said, stretching his back, it had begun to ache from bending over to see the clean sidewalk.

"Maybe not…" Goren added.

"Sirs, here's the electronic printout of the phone call." Goren took the folder and walked over to read aloud.

"It starts off with a lot of inaudible noises, the operator asks 'who's there', 'this is 9-1-1 emergency'…'what's your emergency' 'hello?'…Here.

"They're dead."

'Who's dead ma'am, where are you?'

She shushed her, whispered, "Listen, I can't talk long, he'll know I've left, two people are dead… they, they were innocent-it was my fault, I never should have tried to… but they're on 16th street, in the big white house, number-" She gasped and the operator heard a crash, she probably dropped the phone, she says something inaudible, and then starts whispering…the computer loses it from there." Goren finished gravely.

"Damn it." Stabler added. The crime scene investigator shook his head and turned the page.

"The operator made this notation later. "After I heard the crashing sound, the girl was whispering so low I could barely hear her, that's when she told me that the bodies were under the stairs, then I heard slapping footsteps, like someone running barefoot on-" Goren was gone before he had gotten to the word 'cement'.

"Goren!" Stabler yelled, running after him. But Goren was long gone in a world of his own, wondering why he hadn't seen it before. It had been only a single street away, barely two minutes after the 9-1-1 call that a barefoot teenage girl had crashed into him, and now he thought he knew why -- the cement would tell the story.

"Goren! Where are we going?" He didn't answer. "Talk to me!" He said, grabbing his new partner by the shoulder.

"I was eating lunch on 15th street yesterday at 3pm." He said simply, rocking back and forth on his heels as he waited impatiently for the light to turn red. When it did, it was all Elliot could do to keep up.

"Okay…and what does that have to do with anything?" Stabler asked hesitantly, quite sure his partner had gone mad.

"Everything! I almost inhaled my hot dog when a teenage girl ran into me."

"The 9-1-1 caller?" Stabler said, catching the train of thought

"I think she was in…" Goren stopped short; he had found something not quite what he was looking for. Three imprints, long slender stripes of dried blood decorated the ground where the girl had fallen after hitting Goren's chest the day before, not the footprints of blood he had expected. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. Elliot was already paging the crime scene unit to block off the area around the prints.

"I was wrong." Goren said through his hand.

"About what?" Stabler asked, even though he already knew.

"The caller was in that room, but she wasn't one of the observers, she was being observed."