Tarnished

Chapter Five

1-6 Precinct

SVU Squad Room

12:45 PM

Elliot handed Olivia her sandwich that he retrieved for her from the vending machine.

"Thanks," she said, tearing it open and taking it out.

"Want some coffee?" He asked.

"Nah, some tea," she said as she took a big bite out of her sandwich. "No more caffeine. You of all people sure as hell don't need caffeine."

Elliot turned and looked at her pensively, and she reflected his look, and he turned around and got her tea. Munch and Fin trailed into the squad room after them and they sat down at their desk.

"So, I hear that Judge Sadler's got a real bastard for a husband," Munch said as he went over to Olivia's desk to see what she had on her sandwich.

When she noticed what he was doing, she furrowed her eyebrows and pulled it away like a little girl would do. She hated when people stared at her while she was eating. Her mother used to do that, and it irked her down to the core of her nerves, and Munch was getting on the last of them.

Fin stood up and went over to the donated fridge and pulled out a soda.

"My dad used to beat up on my mother," he said. "One day, I came home from school, and I found my mama kicking my old man's ass. Didn't see that man again 'til we had to bury him."

Elliot came back over to Olivia, setting her steaming cup of tea in front of her.

"How can anyone treat their wife, the person that they're supposed to love, so badly?" He asked. "I couldn't hit a woman if I tried."

"Some men are just pure bastards," Olivia sighed as she finished off her sandwich, and it was enough to fill her up until dinner eight or nine hours from now.

Cragen came out of his office.

"I just got a call from the police chief," he said, rather annoyed. "Apparently, Christian Sadler, Judge Sadler's husband claims that you two verbally threatened him and his wife at the hospital."

"Now that is the biggest load of shit I've ever heard," Elliot said, leaning back in his chair. "We didn't threaten either one of them."

"No, we just let him know that he's not fooling anyone," Olivia broke in, crossing her arms over her chest. "He delights in intimidating and abusing his wife and we called him on it. I'm guessing that he rubs elbows with the chief very often."

Cragen sighed and put his hands in his pockets.

"Yeah, so often that the chief regularly accepts Mr. Sadler's checks to fund the academy," he explained. "Figures the guy with all the money is a wife beater."

"Yeah and a fucking asshole," Olivia huffed. "Judge Sadler had fresh bruises on her wrist, and only God knows what he's saying and doing to her now. I want his ass Captain. I have a feeling that the both of them know more about Marissa than they're letting on."

"Liv, you know how spousal abuse cases go," Fin said, trying to offset her obvious anger. "Her word against his, and most women drop the charges before their husbands can be arrested. She's partly to blame if she puts up with it."

"How can you say that?" Olivia asked, now irritated. "You know-"

"People," Cragen interrupted. "Minds back on the murder. Liv, Elliot. The chief is going to be all over our asses like a bloodhound, so I suggest you two stay away from both Judge Sadler and her husband until the radar is ducked."

They both nodded.

"I want you to go to Marissa Barlow's place of work," he instructed Elliot and Olivia.

Optimal Securities and Insurance Associates

Financial District

Office of Head of Human Resources

2:00 PM

"Of course Marissa was a little off," Ms. Lynn Whitmore said of Marissa Barlow. "I mean, as a woman, wouldn't you be a little nuts if the guy you're sleeping with keeps breaking promises?"

The question was addressed to Olivia, and she didn't feel inclined to answer. Been there, done that, she thought to herself.

"Office gossip ever reveal with whom she was with?" Elliot asked.

Lynn Whitmore was a tall, lean, athletic type African-American woman in her early thirties who had a no nonsense disposition and she wasn't too excited about being asked about the employees she was supposed to protect. Privacy in the company was a big issue, but now that Marissa was dead, it was moot.

"The question should be who hasn't she been with," Lynn corrected more out of the purpose of information rather than spite because she didn't know Marissa personally, just through the grapevine. "But yes. She was sleeping with our vice president, Christian Sadler. It was an open secret around here. I'm just sorry his poor wife couldn't see it. You know, for her being a judge, how can she not see that her husband's chasing ass around here?"

"We need to see all of Miss Barlow's employee files, and financial records within the company," Olivia requested.

Lynn nodded and got up and went into the huge file room.

Olivia looked at Elliot, a question formed in her mind.

"Ms. Whitmore, what do you think of Mr. Sadler?" She asked.

"I think he's a chauvinistic, overbearing, controlling bastard," she said, walking back over to her desk and handing Olivia Marissa's files. "He's never tried any of that crap with me 'cause he knows I'll kick his ass up and down this island. But the mousy little bimbos? He treats them like they're seven and they bend over and take it…literally."

"What about his wife?" Elliot asked.

"I know he's got her whipped," Lynn divulged. "I think he hits her, but that's just my opinion."

Olivia sat and looked through Marissa's file as did Elliot. They skimmed over her referrals and references. She worked at several other security and insurance companies, and she was never fired from any of them nor did she have any incident reports.

"She has an impeccable record," Olivia commented. "I wonder how her financials look."

They flipped through her paychecks, which were cashed, and her company bank statements. A company credit card, the cost to have it deducted from her paychecks, and all business: conferences, hotel rooms, office materials, computer software for the company network. No impropriety on Marissa's part. As far as her mental status, the detectives didn't know.

"Ms. Whitmore, do you know of Marissa's close friends here at work?" Elliot asked. "Anyone she talked to most?"

"Um, the secretary to Archie Kahill, department manager," Lynn said, snapping her fingers to jog her memory. "Bianca Lewis, second floor, third office to the right."

"Thanks," Elliot said as he and Olivia walked out of the office.

They caught the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor.

"Marissa's clean as a fucking whistle," Elliot sighed. "I guess that blew a few holes through Mr. Sadler's story."

"Abusive men always think that women are beneath them," Olivia huffed. "I'm just glad I have enough fight in me courtesy of my mother if a man ever hit me."

Elliot looked at her and she arched her eyebrows.

"What?" She asked, irritated. Neither of them knew where her sudden bloom of anger came from. It snuck up on her like a lion would it's prey, and the intrusive thought that she looked completely beautiful when she showed tense, gritty emotion crept into his mind.

"Was it that bad?" He asked. "When you were growing up?"

The elevator came to a slow stop and then the door grunted open mechanically, and Olivia avoided the question, but the crimson burn in her cheeks was obvious.

They stepped off the elevator together and headed down the hallway to the department manager's office. The door was already open, and when they walked in, Kahill was stepping out, and there wasn't a secretary in sight.

Archie Kahill was a young, blonde haired, fairly muscled fellow who just started his job as department manager. His starting salary was two hundred fifty thousand a year, and he lived very comfortably. He noticed the woman who walked in first, and he was captivated. He loved women, and he liked to think that they loved him too, except that he could never get them into bed with him.

But the man next to the woman looked slightly tense and he seemed to be protective of her, almost possessive, and he looked like he'd rip his balls off if he even looked at the woman in the wrong way.

Damn, why do I have to be such a damn wimp? Archie asked himself as he approached the two strangers.

"Hi, how may I help you folks?" He asked politely as possible.

"I'm Detective Benson, this is my partner Detective Stabler," Olivia introduced. "Are you Archie Kahill?"

"Yes ma'am," he said politely.

"Is Bianca Lewis here today?" Olivia asked.

"Uh, yeah, she's on break," he said. "The break room is down the hallway to the left."

Olivia and Elliot walked down to the break room and they found a rather heavyset woman in her early thirties maybe, smoking a cigarette and working on a big bag of potato chips. She had sandy blonde hair, and her skin was smooth and porcelain like. She had on a bit too much makeup, but not garishly so, and she didn't seem to notice the two detectives.

"Bianca Lewis?" Elliot inquired, and she looked up.

"Yeah?" She asked, tipping the ash from her cigarette.

"Hi, I'm Detective Stabler, my partner, Detective Benson," he introduced. "We need to ask you a few questions."

Bianca put out her cigarette in the plastic ashtray in the center of the Formica table.

"What about?" She asked, a little bit nervous.

"Were you friends with Marissa Barlow?" Olivia asked, taking a seat when Bianca gestured.

"Um, yeah," she nodded. "I know she's dead. I saw it on the news."

"Were you good friends?" Olivia asked, taking a seat next to the woman.

"Good enough for her to tell me she had an abortion," Bianca said. "She and Mr. Sadler have been sleeping together for five months now, and a couple months ago, she found out that she was pregnant. After that, she took a week off from work, and when she returned, no more baby. I think Mr. Sadler paid her. She only told me once she got so broken up over it."

"How has her behavior been over the last few days?" Elliot asked.

"Oh, well, that depends on her mood," Bianca sighed. "She's up and down constantly. On a good day, she would leave her snot on Mr. Sadler's paperwork, and on a bad day she would threaten to cut off his balls while she put his tie into the paper shredder."

"Was she on any medication?" Olivia asked.

"I don't know," Bianca sighed. "Listen, I don't feed into all the bullshit that goes on here. I just come here to work, get paid and take care of my two kids."

"So, if Marissa was such a problem, then why didn't Mr. Sadler fire her?" Elliot asked. "Why not file incident reports?"

"You think I know the answer to that?" Bianca asked, getting up. "Excuse me, I have to get back to work."

The woman walked out.

"Somebody's lying big time," Olivia said as she and Elliot made their way back to the elevator. "Marissa finding out she's pregnant had to piss Sadler off, not to mention that he has a wife and two sons already. News that he was sleeping with his secretary and got her pregnant is enough to shake up the cozy family unit."

"So, he pays her off to get an abortion and keep quiet," Elliot surmised. "Unless she didn't get an abortion at all. That's plenty of motive for murder."

Olivia looked at him.

"Let's talk to Warner again," she said.

Dr. Warner's Office

Morgue

One Police Plaza

4:30 PM

"Ah, just in time," Melinda said by way of greeting. "I was about to call you. It's standard procedure when we test fluids on females to run pregnancy tests, and guess what?"

Olivia and Elliot looked at each other before they looked back at Melinda.

"Marissa was pregnant after all," Olivia sighed.

"Fifteen weeks, to be exact," Melinda explained. "She was just barely showing."

"Bianca Lewis had to have known," Elliot said to Olivia.

"Yeah, especially when she's had two kids of her own," she said. "Women know these things, especially when she all of a sudden started getting a little chunky in the midsection. The pregnancy also explains her erratic behavior."

"I took DNA samples from the baby and sent them to the lab and have them compared to the fluids I found," Melinda explained. "The results should come in by Monday evening."

"Thanks doc," Elliot said as he and Olivia headed back to the precinct.

1-6 Precinct

SVU Squad Room

5:15 PM

Cragen pinned up Judge Josephine Sadler's picture onto the information board under the heading SUSPECTS. Casey sighed and rubbed her forehead, looking at the couple.

"I guess this kind of shakes up the 'happy' family," Cragen sighed. "So now, Judge Sadler has moved from possible victim to suspect."

Olivia sipped at her tea as she examined the board.

"Judge Sadler couldn't have done this," Casey sighed, shaking her head. "She doesn't have a violent bone in her body."

"Case, you never know what people would do when they're angry," Olivia said. "If Judge Sadler found out that her husband was cheating with her best friend, and got her pregnant, that's enough to make any woman mad. Marissa being pregnant was adding insult to injury."

"I don't buy it," Casey said, getting up and pacing.

"Whether you buy it or not, it could have happened that way Case," Olivia said. "It's enough to bring them both in and compel Christian Sadler to give a DNA sample to test against the baby."

"DNA will only prove that he might have had sex with her and that he's the father of the baby," Casey sighed. "What I need is a murder weapon. Otherwise, everything else we have is circumstantial."