Chapter 14

Once the detectives were fairly certain that Kate and Carl had nothing to do with what Stephanie had been through, they ended the interrogation. Kate had wanted to rush in and stop George and Olivia from speaking to her sister, but Carl stopped her. He was able to convince her that speaking to someone like Dr. Huang was best for his sister. In fact, he suggested she watch the discussion while he called his insurance company to see what kind of talk therapy was covered by his health plan.

Munch promised to keep an eye on Kate and Fin offered his desk so that Carl could write things down while he was on the phone. Captain Cragen sent Elliot and Fin off to meet Kenny down at TARU. The Captain stayed with Munch and Kate, hoping that Olivia and George could get something out of Stephanie that would help them find this Doug, the mentally challenged woman brought up.

"I didn't bring my barf bag," Fin said as Elliot pulled the car up to the building that TARU called home.

"Yeah, I really hope that we don't have to tell her sister that we found some pictures that should never see the light of day," Stabler heaved a sigh before he unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out of the car. Fin followed suit and the two walked into the building, flashing their badges to the desk sergeant. They were given directions to find Kenny and TARU Tech Mo Bartlett.

Mo had the ability to hack into just about anything, in fact, the NYPD had recruited him after he'd been caught hacking into his college's servers, attempting to change his grades. His college agreed not to press charges provided that Mo take the NYPD's offer of a career. Had he not taken the offer, he was going to jail, so he took the offer. The fact of the matter was, Mo had cracked a lot more than just his college's servers. He had a juvenile record after getting caught trying to hack into his high school's servers and even the local grocery store's rewards program website. Really the only reason he got caught was that he couldn't help but brag about what he'd been up to.

"Kenny, I hear you and Mo managed to get into Linda's computer," Fin said as they walked into Mo's little corner of the TARU building. The cubicle-like space had all sorts of computer accessories from cords to discs to flash drives in every cubby.

"Yes, Mo's talents are indeed legendary," Kenny smirked slightly as he grabbed a couple of extra chairs for the senior detectives from the nearby empty cubicle. Mo had indeed turned the corner from wayward to straight and narrow. He'd figured out a way to hack into cell phones, laptops, and even a few very highly encrypted desktop computers.

"You may want me to put these files back when you see what we've found here," Mo spoke up. He was a young Asian man who had been adopted from Korea. While his parents had not given him a traditional Korean name, they had encouraged that he learn about his home country and their traditions and culture.

"That bad huh?" Fin asked.

"Well, everyone has their own kinks, but I have to admit, these files… you're the experts in this kind of stuff," Mo said. Elliot looked at Kenny and the younger man blew a breath out through his lips.

"So, some of the files are videos. We didn't have a chance to go through them all but the first couple we opened appear to be Linda enjoying some sort of video on the TV. Some of the toys that we found at their place seem to be her favorite," Kenny explained.

"She taped herself getting off? That's new," Fin shook his head.

"Yeah, I thought that was odd. I would think that she's using the videos that Alan made to watch. I mean she stashed her videos on the same laptop," Kenny said.

"Makes sense. How many videos are there?" Elliot wanted to know.

"We decrypted almost one hundred files. There are about forty videos, forty jpegs, fifteen pdfs, and then there is a spreadsheet," Mo told them.

"A spreadsheet? What's in the pdfs?" Fin asked.

"The pdfs appear to be receipts for some toys. I guess you found those already. The spreadsheet, I can't make heads nor tails of. It's some sort of code or cipher maybe?" Mo explained.

"Fantastic," Elliot frowned.

"Anything you look at yet show Stephanie?" Fin hated to ask the question, but it had to be asked. Kenny's reaction told him everything he needed to know – the younger man blew another breath loudly through his teeth and tried to say something, but he couldn't – he just nodded. Elliot swore under his breath before asking for all of the decrypted files to be transferred off the laptop and onto something they could use back at their precinct. Mo quickly handed him a flash drive and then promised to return the laptop to the evidence room. The three detectives thanked him and then headed back toward Elliot's car.

"Did you see any males in the videos or photos? Stephanie mentioned a guy named Doug," Elliot said once they were all inside the car and buckled in.

"No. We stopped after the third video. The photos appear to be downloaded off the internet, but we didn't get into it much because we were trying to focus on the pdfs and spreadsheet," Kenny said.

"We definitely need to figure that sheet out. It could be a clue to if she sent these files to other people or if maybe some of these files are from other people," Fin told them.

"Come on. We've got work to do," Elliot fired the car up and pulled into traffic.

To Be Continued…