I own nothing.

NOTIFICATION OF RELEASE FROM COMMITMENT

DATE: February 4, 2006

VICTIM/FAMILY MEMBER/OFFICIAL (SPECIFY): Det. Elliot Stabler, NYPD, Precinct 16

RE: Lionel Sachet

Dear Det. Stabler:

The person named above was committed to the Manhattan Department of Corrections for an offense in which you were the arresting officer.

Among the rights the State of New York confers upon victims of crime is the right to be notified when an offender is about to be released from custody. This right also applies to immediate families of offenders and those directly involved in the offenders' arrest/prosecution.

The person named above is scheduled for release from Sing Sing Prison on 10 Feb 2006, 8:00 am.

If you have questions regarding this case please contact the Probation Officer Supervisor at 212-555-2460.

Sincerely,

MDC

Maureen Stabler lay on top of the blankets, head hanging upside-down off the end of her bed. Her roommate Janey, a morning person, always turned the TV on at low volume around eight am, and today The Princess Bride, one of Maureen's favorites, was playing. Her eyes were only half open, but she mouthed along with the Impressive Clergyman while Janey grinned at her across the room.

"Mawage…Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...Wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva..."

"You want breakfast?" Janey asked. "Peanut butter and Pepsi, fresh from the…well, the peanut butter's been lying out all night with the lid off. But the Pepsi can will be freshly opened just for you."

She wasn't kidding; after their first semester at Columbia both the girls had fallen with zeal into the vicious cycle of collegiate sloth-hood. Their diet consisted nearly exclusively of caffeine, sugar, and grease, and their room was a catastrophe. Janey was eating her peanut butter by dipping the back of a pen in the jar, then licking it. Some of the reddish bangs framing her face had little spots of peanut butter in them.

"Muh. Too early for food." Maureen attempted, and failed, to roll over. Eight o' clock was unholy. It ought to be outlawed. "What are you even doing?"

Janey tilted her computer screen slightly to show her. "Essay for my rhetoric of argument class. Eight to ten pages, due Monday."

"Ten pages! It's not even midterms yet!"

"Yeah, our midterm is in three weeks, and it's fifteen pages. Final is twenty." Janey was an English major.

"Screw that. If I saw that syllabus on the first day of class I'd have walked right out and told the teacher to go to hell."

"Shh! Jesus is listening!" When the girls had first moved in together, Janey, who was Presbyterian but much more into her religion than Maureen was into her own Catholicism, had put a picture of Jesus' face over her desk. When the debris in the dorm room got more than a foot deep Maureen had joked that it looked like Jesus, from Janey's desk, had smote the room with a tornado for their sinful ways. So Janey hung Jesus right over the door, and ever since it had been a running joke that Jesus was watching their every move, and if their room was plunged further into filth, it was because they cursed too much or watched too much Southpark and He was displeased.

Inigo Montoya was standing off with Count Rugen when there was a knock at the door.

"Who but me is up on a Saturday?" Janey asked, tipping down her chair.

"If it's for me I'm asleep," Maureen mumbled.

The slog across the room took several seconds, and whoever it was knocked again, loudly. Janey opened the door to reveal a tall delivery man with wide pale eyes and a small box.

"I have a package here for Maureen Stabler," he said in an oddly clipped voice, while peering into the room. "I need a signature." Maureen lifted her head a little bit, but didn't rise.

"I thought we weren't supposed to get packages in the dorms," said Janey.

"This is urgent delivery. We go to the residence halls if the package has to be received in under twenty-four hours." He indicated the large orange label. "The sender is Elliot Stabler."

"I'll sign," said Janey.

"The signature has to be the name on the label. Are you Maureen?"

Maureen groaned inwardly and prepared to rise, but Janey quickly answered, "Yes, I am. Elliot Stabler's my dad."

Delivery guy handed Janey a pen and a clipboard. Relieved, Maureen dropped her head back down.

Two seconds later, the bullet entered under her ribcage. It went through her in a straight line, tearing a hole in her diaphragm and disintegrating the bottom of her right lung before blowing a chunk of the mattress into the floor.

Long before she was able to crawl to her phone and call 911, trying to speak to the operator while sobbing and vomiting up blood, Janey and the delivery man were gone.