Chapter Seven: Funeral

16th Precinct

Manhattan SVU

9:18 P.M., March 15, 2006

Huang watched as Elliot strolled into the interview room again. He'd managed to get a better grip on his emotions, and this time he was able to enter into a casual conversation almost immediately.

"You know," he said with a chuckle, "these pictures go back nearly twenty years. I could almost make a case for you stalking me."

Veronica closed her sketchbook and asked, "Now, why would I do that?"

Elliot shrugged. "I have no idea. You tell me." He said it as if he didn't really care.

"I don't know," Veronica replied, shaking her head.

"Now, you see," he said. "That's why I believe what you said about just 'seeing' these pictures. You don't know me, and I don't know you. You have no earthly reason to have spent all this time watching my family and me."

He took the slim stack of five drawings and laid them out for her, not even appearing to be fazed by the one of his death. "So, tell me about these drawings. They're the only ones I can't place. Surely, you didn't see them as static images. You're drawing them from some kind of action sequence in your head, aren't you?"

"Not exactly," she said. "It's more like a strip of film from a movie reel. I see a series of pictures, most of them kind of fuzzy. You're in the center focus, but everything around you goes blurry. Then, somehow, one of them just clears up and gets stuck in my head and I draw it."

"I'm not sure I understand the difference," he said. "Explain it to me. Tell me this story."

"Well, I saw you sitting at your desk," she said. "With your pen in your mouth. Just you, the desk, and the pen. Nothing else in the room."

"Uh-huh."

"But that image," she flapped her hands about a bit, searching for a word, "it snapped away, and I saw you with your hand on the telephone receiver."

"And that went away too, did it?"

"Yes, it wasn't really clear. There were no details, nothing to give it context. You reached for your tablet next."

"And then?"

"You were taking your notes. That was the clearest one. I could see everything. It was all there."

"Was it an urgent call?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," she nodded, "someone was in trouble. A child."

"That's why I left right away, isn't it?" He wasn't exactly surprised by her revelation. Considering his job it the call, if it had been real, would more likely than not be about a child in trouble.

"Of course," Veronica said as if he should have realized that for himself.

"Did I find the child in time?"

A frown rumpled her pretty features as she fingered the picture of him standing beside the crate, clearly reluctant to continue the story. "Yes, but you weren't the one to rescue her. You distracted the man, her father."

"So it was a little girl?"

She nodded. "Skinny child, brown hair, wearing overalls. I remember her. She was terrified."

"You didn't draw her," Elliot pointed out.

"I couldn't see enough detail. I couldn't see her father at all. Just his hands, one around her neck and the other holding a gun." She was rocking in her seat, a note of urgency in her voice.

It sounded like quite a lot of detail to him, more than most eyewitnesses would recall. He supposed she was just including it to make her story more compelling, but he didn't call her on it yet. He wanted to keep her talking to see if she would say something to reveal herself.

"It's all right, Veronica," he soothed her. "I can tell you're upset. It upsets me to see children in distress, too."

She smiled, and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue from the box that was still on the table. "Your partner, that beautiful young woman, she saved the girl," she said quietly.

"And the girl's father?" Elliot asked.

Veronica tapped the last picture in the series. "He shot you. That's when your partner shot him."

"Are you sure he killed me, Veronica?" Elliot coaxed. "I might have just been wounded."

She gave him a look of unspeakable, desolate sadness. Opening her portfolio, she took out yet another sheet of paper and slid the drawing, face down, across the table to him.

He took a deep breath, determined not to fall apart this time, and turned the picture over. The detail was such that he could almost smell the fresh earth, feel the warmth of the sun. His mind automatically filled in the colors of the grass and the sky for him.

It was a beautiful spring day, a light breeze barely stirring the new, golden-green leaves of the willows. Kathy sat in the middle of the row of chairs, Maureen to her left and Kathleen to her right. Each of the girls was holding one of the twins; they needed the comfort and security even though they were really too big to climb into anyone's lap anymore. Olivia sat beside Maureen, and his mother-in-law was to Kathleen's right. Behind them, stood the captain flanked by Munch, Fin, and Cassidy on one side, Huang, Jeffries, and Casey Novak on the other. All of the cops were in full dress uniforms. The casket was draped with the American flag, one marine standing at each end of it and another standing along side of it. A fourth stood a little way away, bugle to his lips. Father McKay, his parish priest, was making the Sign of the Cross.

Elliot studied the picture for a long, long time as if he was trying to memorize every detail. Then he sighed, slid the drawing in place to complete the story, looked at Veronica. Tears were streaming down her face as if she had just lost a dear friend.

"I'm done," he said with almost no emotion. "If you're working for somebody you might as well tell him to grow some cojones and come after me himself, because I'm through with this crap."

"Wh-what do you mean?" she sniffled.

"Lady, I don't know who you are, and I don't know why you decided to pick on me, but I'm done playing games," Elliot said, sounding less than interested in the conversation.

"This is real," she gasped. Barely controlling her sobs. "I'm not playing games."

"Not buying it!" He taunted. "You came in here, acting all mysterious, thinking you were going to poke a stick at a hornets' nest and get things all stirred up."

"No . . ." she mouthed. Not able to give the word voice.

"And you thought you were gonna make me lose it, which I did, for a while," he granted her that much.

"But, once you went over the top with this, there was no coming back, and you lost all credibility," he explained.

"Please, Elliot!"

"Veronica, or whatever-the-hell your name is, I'm bored," he told her. "Find somebody else to fuck with."

He stood up and exited the room, pausing in the door to make a show of calling out, "Cap, what's next?"

Veronica slumped over, resting her head on the table, and sobbed.

vvvvvvv

"Give her an hour," Elliot said. "Then we'll see what she has to say."

"If you haven't completely alienated her," Huang said, his voice revealing a rare moment of frustration.

"Look, Doc, she isn't giving me anything," Elliot reasoned. "If she thinks she has lost her captive audience, she might just look for someone else to peddle her fantasies to. Then you can go in there, be your compassionate, sympathetic self, or Liv can sit and cry with her, I don't know, but maybe she'll spill her guts to one of you. Meanwhile, the rest of us are gonna go through the old cases and see if we can find her, or the freak she's working with, or anyone who has anything to do with Price Chopper."

Huang nodded reluctantly, not so much because he agreed with the plan, but because he had been given no other choice.