Chapter 11

Detective Olivia Benson sat at her desk pouring over the contents of the trophy box. The call from David last night and the hearing this morning, along with some other pressing work, had kept her from finishing this project sooner and she wanted to get it done before leaving that night. All of the items had been sorted chronologically by the date handwritten on them and she was busily inputting the list into a spreadsheet to make it easier to cross reference the items against the dates of the trips referenced in the scrapbook and journal.

"Hand me the scrapbook for a minute, Elliot. I want to check something."

Her partner grabbed the book off his desk and leaned over to hand it to her. She started to take it from him, but lost her grip, causing the book to fall to the floor with a loud thud and sending a few loose pictures and clippings scattering.

"Whoops," Stabler said with a sheepish grin.

"My fault. I've got a bad case of the dropsies today," she replied with a grimace as she leaned over to gather up the book and scattered papers. As she lifted the book, she noticed a gap had opened in the binding of the cushioned cover and something was sticking out of it. Curious, she used her fingernail to nudge the object out further.

"Come look at this, Elliot. I think it's a polaroid."

Stabler immediately got up and stood by her shoulder, watching her carefully work the picture out of the binding. Finally it came loose. Benson let out a shocked gasp when she was able to see the complete picture, while Stabler muttered, "Holy shit," as he stared at it in stunned silence.

In the foreground were two naked boys. Although they had been posed to give a mirror image effect -- laying on their sides facing opposite directions with their heads side by side in the center of the frame, one arm bracing the head while the other lay casually on the ground in front of him -- the boys themselves couldn't be more different. The one on the right was older, with a mop of medium length light brown hair crowning an angelic face set with sapphire blue eyes and a body that was long and lean, athletic without being muscular. The one on the left was small and slight, with tousled red hair highlighting a rather ordinary face liberally sprinkled with freckles and eyes of green flecked with gold.

A naked man crouched on one knee behind each boy, his other leg bent and that foot braced on the floor directly behind the boy's knees, leaving the man's genitals fully exposed. One hand was resting on the bent knee, the other was frozen in a caressing motion along the boy's hip. The triumphant looks on the men's faces and the possessive gesture of the caress gave the impression of hunters who had captured their prey and were preparing to feast on it.

Stabler couldn't take his eyes off the older boy, who was probably 11 or 12 judging by his size. The sapphire eyes were dark and empty, shadowed with incredible pain. Finally, he forced himself to look at the other child -- at least half a foot smaller and achingly thin, he appeared to be 8 or 9, but the familiar bright red hair and freckled face let the detectives know that in this case appearances really were deceiving.

"They knew each other," Benson said in a voice shaking with horror. "They knew each other before. Why didn't David tell us? How could he keep something like that from us?"

Stabler took the picture from her trembling hand to take a closer look at the men in it as he responded absently, "He didn't tell us because he doesn't remember. He's locked that part of his life so deep in his subconscious, he doesn't even recognize when a piece of it surfaces. We should talk to Huang to confirm it, but I'll bet this is why David's been having so many nightmares and disassociative events recently. Being in contact with Justin is bringing all this crap to the surface again. Making him remember whether he wants to or not.

"And that's probably what Justin wanted all along. That's why he kept saying they belonged together. His obsession with David started whenever this picture was taken."

"Is there a date on it?" Benson asked. "I'll check it against my list to see if there are any trophies in the box."

Stabler examined the photo carefully. "None that I can see. Let's see if there are any others hidden in there."

He pulled a letter opener out of his desk, using it to carefully separate the binding on two sides before pulling back the padded cover.

Benson reached in and her searching fingers pried out three more polaroids. Ignoring the pictures for the time being, she scanned the white section at the bottom of each for a date before handing them to her partner. "Take a close look, Elliot. The second one has a notation that looks like 11/2/96."

"That's what it looks like to me," Stabler responded absently, as she turned to her list and began reviewing it. "Does this guy look familiar to you?" he interrupted suddenly, passing her a photo of the man who had been positioned behind Justin in the first picture, but was now sitting alone with the little redhead in his lap.

Benson winced as she looked at the picture. The boy wasn't smiling as widely in this one but the man had a rapturous look on his face. The position of the boy on his lap made it obvious why. "He does look familiar, but I can't place him. I have an item on the list that's dated 10/28-11/2/96," she added as she turned to the neatly bagged and tagged items spread out on her desk and began searching for it.

Barely listening, Stabler kept staring at the picture for a moment, then reached over and grabbed David Gallagher's file off his desk and quickly began rooting through the pages. Finally, he found what he was looking for and held the picture up for his partner to see.

"I don't understand. If that's David's kidnapper holding Justin, who is the other man?"

Stabler opened the scrapbook and began turning the pages rapidly til he came to the beginning of the first section written with the childish scrawl. He held up the book and pointed.

"Okay," she said slowly. "That's Justin's father. Then why is he with . . . . Oh my God! They traded. They traded the boys."

"David said in his statement to the police that his kidnapper, Mike Delaney, lost interest in him around the time he turned 11 and started selling or trading him to other people. He looks to be 11 or 12 in these pictures."

"No wonder Justin feels such an attachment to David." Benson said softly. "They shared a lot more than just being sexually assaulted by their own abusers, they were assaulted by each other's abuser too, so they experienced exactly the same type of abuse by the same men."

"And that may partly explain why Justin did what he did with the frat party. He wanted to bring it full circle. He'd been done by all the guys at his initiation, I'll bet making David go through the same thing was his way of reestablishing the same kind of bond between them."

"It's too horrible to even imagine."

"We need to get Huang's input on this. If we're right, then Justin may be even more dangerously unbalanced than we thought. This puts David's rejection of him on an entirely different level."

As Stabler reached for his cellphone to make the call, Benson's began to ring.

"Benson," she said automatically as she finally located the item she'd been looking for and closed her hand around it.

"Detective Benson? This is Jessica, Jessica Langford. Am I interrupting anything important?"

"I am in the middle of something, Jessica, but I can give you a few minutes. What can I do for you?"

"Do you know when Detective Stabler is going to be finished with David? He's been gone for hours now and I haven't heard anything from him. I'm starting to get worried. Have they caught Justin yet? Is that why it's taking so long?"

Benson let the object she'd been holding fall out of her hand as she raised it and began signaling frantically to her partner to listen. Stabler quickly finished his call and clicked off, looking at her quizzically.

"Jessica," she said as calmly as she could while she stared at Stabler. "What makes you think David's with Elliot?"

Stabler's eyes widened in shock and he moved closer to try to hear both sides of the conversation.

"He got a call on that cellphone you gave him around 2:00. We were on campus talking when it came in. When he hung up he said he had to meet Detective Stabler at 3:00. That there was something going on with Justin."

"Do you know who it was who called him?"

"No," the girl said nervously. "I don't think it was Detective Stabler himself because I heard David say 'tell him I'll be there'. Why did you ask that? What's going on?"

"Jessica, Elliot's with me. He's been with me all day. He never called David or went to meet him anywhere."

"Oh, God! Oh my God! It was Justin, wasn't it? He tricked him. He tricked him into meeting him."

"Jessica, you have to stay calm. I need you to help me. What exactly did you hear when they were on the phone. Did you hear anything the other person said?"

"No. I'm sorry, I didn't. It wasn't a very long conversation."

Benson shook her head at her partner and watched his face tighten into frustration and suppressed rage. Her concern that he'd lose control and start hitting something turned to relief as she watched his cop instincts kick in. He quickly picked up his phone and ordered a dump on David's cellphone, then raced into the Captain's office to advise him of the situation.

"Jessica, we're going to find him, I promise. But if you think of anything that might be helpful in the meantime, give me a call back, okay."

"Okay, but please have somebody call me as soon as he's found."

"I will. Goodbye." Benson hung up the phone with a heavy heart, her sixth sense telling her the only thing they were going to find was a body. She moved her hand restlessly over the top of her desk and it instinctively closed over the item from the trophy box -- a hotel keycard. She looked at it carefully for a long moment -- but it was just a plain, ordinary keycard. She turned it over again and noticed a tiny symbol at the bottom of the card. She pulled out a magnifying glass and looked at it closer. It was a tiny crown with a cross over it and a circle of stars orbiting them.

David drifted in the darkness and the pain for a long time before color washed back into the world. When the colors finally resolved themselves and the image appeared before him, he tried desperately to dive back into the darkness. But there was no escape.

He was sitting in the armchair with his book open in his lap watching as Mike -- who was currently going by the name Mark -- rushed to open the hotel room door. A cute redheaded boy with freckles sprinkled liberally over his solemn face -- he couldn't be older than 8 or 9 -- came in, followed by a tall, balding man with a fringe of graying hair around his head.

Even as he saw Mike's face break into a smile of genuine delight when the man got his first good look at the little redhead, he felt his own stomach clench in fear as he looked into the balding man's eyes and saw only blackness. He barely heard the introductions -- the little boy was Jason and the man was Mitch -- because, as the man looked back at him, a slow, predatory smile spread across his face.