The Ante
Chapter Six
By: Lizzie B
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Author's Note: Sorry it took so long to update, I caught the worst cold ever! Thank you, modern medicine for keeping me sane and conscious. So it took me a while to have the energy to think, much less think creatively. I present to you the best I can do while hacking up a lung! Please, read and review.
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ADA Casey Novak looked up from the witness report she was reading at a knock on her door, "Its open!" She called, and in stepped Detective Olivia Benson, looking slightly annoyed at being called to the Casey's office at this late hour.
"What's up, Case?" Olivia asked, standing in front of the desk.
"We've got a problem," Casey said, getting up and walking around to the other side of the desk, "Wilson claims your partner assaulted him."
"Elliot never laid a hand on the guy," Olivia defended.
"He never said Elliot actually hit him. He claims he backed him into a corner, crowded him and played on his claustrophobia to get him to confess. The judge is calling for an evidentiary hearing tomorrow."
"Elliot used a common interrogation technique, we crowd suspects all the time."
"Yeah, but they don't have phobias," Casey stared down Olivia, "I need the truth, Liv, did Wilson warn Elliot about his problem?"
"Wilson asked him to leave him alone, but he never said he was claustrophobic," Olivia said with a careless shrug of her shoulders, but her eyes darted away at the last second.
"He did mention it," Casey threw up her hands, "Great! The judge will certainly throw out the confession now. I'm going to have to plead him out."
"He raped a seven year old boy! You can't do that."
"Well I'm not about to let you and Elliot commit perjury," Casey snorted.
"It's not…" Olivia trailed off.
"You can't let your personal feelings for Elliot get in the way of your work," Casey said unexpectedly. Time seemed to stop for a second as Casey and Olivia looked at each other in startled astonishment. For the first time in Special Victims history someone had actually talked about the thing you weren't supposed to talk about with someone who was directly involved in the thing you weren't supposed to talk about.
Shocked to the core, Olivia couldn't even manage an instant denial or some excuse. She could only stare at Casey and try to wrap her mind around what she had denied and ignored for years, people noticed, hell, people knew! And what the hell was she going to do about it now?
"I'm defending my partner's good police work," Olivia finally managed to say, "He did nothing wrong."
So, we're not going to talk about the little slip up, Casey thought, perfectly ready to accept that out, "I'm pleading Wilson out unless you can bring me some other evidence. You've got twenty four hours before the hearing to get me something that I can pass off as inevitable discovery."
"We'll go start knocking on people's doors," Olivia said and walked out of Casey's office, rationalizing what had just happened. Okay, so Casey noticed, that wasn't a disaster. Casey was smart and lawyers were trained to read people, of course she noticed. Detectives are trained to read people too, she thought was a sudden chill. The signs were all there if they just took a moment to look. And maybe they just took it as a sign of really good partners. Olivia mentally groaned, she had to put it away. It had to be ignored, denied and overlooked. It was the only way Elliot and she could stay just partners.
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Author's Note: Ah, denial, isn't it lovely? I think after the CI cross over I'm so gonna enter into the divorce stages. Time to shake things up a bit in this little universe.