Chapter 6

Detective Goren stood staring through the back side of the mirror of the empty interrogation room at the SVU precinct building. Shelley had just been released from the hospital into the protective custody of the NYPD, but she was no better for it. Though it frustrated the hell out of him, Goren had not yet been able to speak to the girl; and the voice that had caused that particular delay suddenly erupted from the hall behind him.

"Absolutely not! Not without the child's legal guardian present! Protective custody means you get to protect her, not badger her into telling you what you want to hear!" Goren turned around and edged out of the partially open door, (in whatever way someone as large as himself could 'edge'), next to Detective Stabler, who was trying to calm the woman from Children's Services to no avail.

"Ma'am, we don't even know this girl's last name, let alone who her legal guardian is. She's a material witness to two murders and the victim of an assault-"

"You're gonna be the victims of a lawsuit if you question her without them!" She interrupted her.

"Then You allow us to question her as her acting guardian." Goren put forth.

"What?" the woman asked, becoming aware of his presence.

"The hospital admitted her as a minor over twenty-four hours ago, and no one has come to claim her. Since we have her in protective custody, we can sign her over to DCS and you can observe from the other side of the mirror. If you think it's too much, then you can tell us to stop." The woman considered this for a moment, then gave him a silent nod.

"It'll take forever to do the paperwork before we start, but those are the rules. Okay, but the minute I say stop, we stop."

"Absolutely." Stabler gave Goren an oddly awed look.

"He's memorized the rule-book." Eames said with a smile.

"Which one?" Eames just laughed.

"Probably all of them, I don't think we'll ever know."

"What are you looking for?" Stabler asked sometime later. The Child Services woman had been right when she said the paperwork would take 'forever'. The pair had gone back to the 16th street house to search for more clues while she did so, and Goren was scratching paint off the wall of an upstairs bedroom in the flat.

"We already found one secret staircase in this place, maybe we'll get lucky twice." He said, bringing the paint close to his nose and taking a whiff. The room was large, with twelve-foot ceilings, a brick fireplace and great bay windows with bench seats. Detective Stabler walked over to sit on one of these seats. He reached out to wipe the dust off, but Goren grabbed his hand.

"What?"

"Look at this." He pointed at the dust near the edge of the seat. "Somebody nailed this shut. Call one of the CSI kids, we could have fingerprints here."

"Hey guys! Get up here, we've got prints!" Stabler yelled through the open doorway.

"Where are they?" The two investigators asked, excited.

"Right…there. We're gonna need a hammer." Stabler said; another CSI brought him one. They had the prints and several pictures in a matter of minutes and Goren began to tear out the nails one-by-one.

"It looks like this was done in a hurry, half of these nails aren't even hammered through all the way." With one final grunt, Goren lifted the seat. In the well of the window-seat, there was a large pile of objects including-

"Our smoking gun, this whip is covered in blood, looks like our murder weapon!" Stabler said, dropping it into an evidence bag.

"We've got more chains here, a pillow, we should check that for hair, and…" Goren stopped.

"What is it?"

"They're fuzzy handcuffs." Goren said, handing them to Stabler. "And this binder, it's full of names, first and last with seven-digit numbers, letters, maybe acronyms, another set of first names and two digit numbers after those with colored dots next to them. Like this one, it says 'Peter Willis, 7004589, AN, Kyle, 14'. There's got to be 100 names-." Goren stopped suddenly, handing the binder off to Elliot and reaching in for the last piece of evidence in the bottom of the seat.

"Do you still have the picture of the victims?" Goren asked.

"Yeah it's right here. Why?"

"Because I found the other half."