Chapter 2 – Shadows' Waiting
Monday
7:16
a.m.
He'd left early in the morning, waking her, kissing her, and explaining that he had to get back to his place for a shower and a change of clothes before work, that he'd see her there. Knowing that she'd have a little time before she had to be up, Olivia lingered in bed. She'd need to wash the sheets, empty the trash, clear away the evidence that Elliot had spent the night. It wasn't a conscious decision, just an awareness that certain things needed to be done. She could smell him on the pillow.
What had they done?
SVU wasn't like other departments. The detectives knew they weren't to get personal. It interfered with the work, skewed reactions on the job, and provided perps with an extra lever against them. Could Elliot even treat her as a partner and not a lover? He'd been maniacally protective of Kathy, and that's not what Olivia needed to deal with on the job.
"Burn that bridge when we get to it," she muttered to herself, pulling a clean top on and looking around for her boots.
The bruises on Elliot's wrist had swollen until he'd gotten out of bed for an ice pack. He hadn't said a word, other than to ask if she had an Ace bandage anywhere. The shower drowned out any thoughts about the complications of a workplace romance in a workplace that rarely dealt with love, only the hateful distortions of it.
For no reason she could think of, on her way out the door, she stopped at the pad of paper she kept by the phone for messages and picked up the pencil.
'Vic: female, mid-late teen, white, hzl eyes, blonde, aprox. 5'6", 110 lbs'
Underneath that line, she drew the symbol she'd seen, automatically drawing it rightside up, though she'd seen it upside down. It was slightly different than yesterday's, more complex, looking a little like a compass rose, but mostly not. Just thinking about it made her cringe. Underneath, she wrote another line.
'Perp: male, late 20s/early 30s, white, eyes, hair brown/black, approx 5'11", 190 lbs.'
She folded up the paper and tucked it into her pocket on the way out the door.
8:13 a.m.
Squad Room
"How we doing?" Benson asked as she shoved her purse into her locker.
"No hits on dentals or fingerprints for Jane Doe," Fin answered, looking up. "No missing persons files from New York or California match her."
"Waiting to hear back on the messages left in California," Stabler said, leafing through a fresh report from the ME. "Looks like our vic was raped post mortem, then her abdominal organs were pulled out and spread around the room."
"How can they-" and she stopped herself. However the ME had figured that one out, she didn't want to know.
"I've got requests into Scotland Yard for more background on Mr. Tea and Crumpets," Munch added, stepping into a silence that was more appalled than awkward. "So far, we've got an Oxford grad with no criminal record in the old country. He was a curator at the British Museum before moving here to take a job as a high school librarian."
They considered that for a moment.
"I don't know about you," Munch said, snapping his file shut, "but I'm having a hard time getting into this guy's head. You want a happy hunting ground, why go to all the trouble of emigrating to the US? You're a serial killer with a taste for the gruesome, and you keep company with a bunch of Generation Angst wannabes who buy mochas and comfort each other after a murder? Manson aside, has there ever been a serial killer who worked with more than one partner?"
"What, you think he's some innocent lamb, wandered onto a murder scene and left his prints all over it?" Stabler asked.
"I'm saying it smells like a setup," Munch replied. "Which I know you're going to disregard completely, but that's okay. Truth will out."
"This is like that time you decided the Amish offed JFK, isn't it?" Fin asked.
"Hey," Munch protested, "that's a completely legitimate theory. Besides, who'd ever suspect them?"
"Benson, Stabler," Cragen yelled from his office. "Mount up. We've got a report of a possible homicide, female victim, five blocks from yesterday's site. Witness said there were three people standing around a body."
When Benson and Stabler arrived, there were already two patrol cars on the scene and a crowd of people gathering behind the police tape.
"Tell me we got someone," Stabler said, holding the tape up for Benson to duck under.
The sergeant on scene looked over from one of his patrol officers, leaning on the building that made one side of the alleyway.
"I've got two men puking their guts up," he told them, "and I'm probably going to have to order psych evals for them, myself, and my other boys. You see this shit in Silence of the Lambs, not real life."
He led them through the alley.
"Witness calls it in, saw it from the third floor," he pointed above him.
They both glanced up, and for one vertiginous second, Olivia had to clench her jaw shut. It was the alley from her dream. The asphalt under her shoes was wet, buckled from heavy trucks passing over too many times. The lintels over the windows were the same, the color of bricks identical.
"We get here," the sergeant continued, "and there's three folks standing out back, talking over the corpse."
"Who?" Stabler asked.
"A guy and two girls. Guy sees us, yells at them, and they take off like rabbits."
They came to the end of the alley and the worn lot behind, complete with weeds, a rusted dumpster, and in the inside corner where two wings of the building met, a body sprawled out, surrounded by pink ropes of intestines and other organs. The walls above the body were smeared with blood, both by hand and from drips that had crawled down the length of the wall. A fence surrounded the lot, ten feet tall. The only way out was the way in. There was nowhere for the girls to go.
"Where are they?" Benson asked.
The sergeant sighed and made a grimace. "The guy we got. Didn't raise a hand until we told him to. Politest suspect I've ever seen. He's waiting in the squad car for you now. The girls…"
"What about the girls?" Stabler asked.
"Weirdest goddamn thing I've seen in eighteen years on the force," the sergeant said. "They took off, like I said. Where are they going to go? Over the fence. In one jump. Both of them. It was like watching a friggin' Olympics gymnastic floor show."
"Did you get them?"
He shook his head. "I radioed ahead, and my boys ran for it from the other side. One of 'em says he say them shinnying up a drainpipe and making for the roof. I dunno. All I know is, no one's seen 'em since."
Neither being one to criticize a sergeant that looked like he'd been on the beat since Jehovah made cops, they traded a glance.
"Corpse or perp?" Stabler asked.
"Perp's not going anywhere," she answered. "Let's take a look."
As they walked over, she fingered the folded note in her pocket. The photographer saw them coming and stepped back, giving them room. Outdoor lights gave harsh, jagged illumination.
It was the girl from her dream, and it wasn't.
In her dream, the girl had been worn, despairing. This girl, as far as she could tell, had the same bone structure, skin color, and height, but that was almost all she could see. Like the first vic, this one resembled nothing so much as a famine victim. She was gaunt, pulled in, dull eyes staring sightlessly from deep sockets. Olivia could see the pattern of veins under her skin.
Blonde hair and hazel eyes. She couldn't be sure, but she thought the vic might be a teenage girl. It was hard to tell, with the ribs standing out like tines of a rake. It had been a hard death. She gripped the note in her hand.
"Elliot," she whispered.
"Yeah," he looked over at her and saw the piece of paper she held out to him.
He took it from her, unfolded it and read. Without a word, he pulled on a pair of gloves, stepped gingerly over to the corpse, and with gentle care, lifted the body by shoulder and hip to look at the girl's back.
When he came back, he was white around the mouth.
Ducking his head to hers, he whispered, "Liv, what the hell is this? You saw this?"
She nodded. "Last night. It's what you woke me up from."
She didn't bother trying to guess his thoughts. She knew how he processed information. She was with him all night. Time of death had been around six hours previously. They were partners, and he was a rational man. The past year, a perp had faked being psychic in order to watch the department track his crimes. Elliot had never been taken in. But things just weren't adding up properly.
As she watched, he divided what was in front of him into two categories: things he had answers to and things he had no answers to. He looked at the note she'd given him and tucked it into his pocket.
"Let's go see our perp."
10:36
a.m.
Squad Room
He looked much as he had in the INS picture. He was, perhaps, a little more careworn, and his hairline had retreated a good inch. There were marks of worry and exhaustion plain on his face. Normally, letting a suspect stew in the observation room for a few minutes gave the detectives a window onto his character. Even when they knew they were being watched, most of them gave something away with their mannerisms; they were nervous, arrogantly sure, guilty, scared, or something. He sat, his hands still cuffed behind him, with a stoic patience, as solid as chunk of granite.
In the first minute, he'd glanced around the room, clearly recognizing the one-way mirror for what it was, noting the filing cabinets that crowded the opposite wall as the squad room was always short on storage space, and checking other mundane details. Then, he'd sighed and settled in for the wait. Behind the glass, all four detectives, their captain, and Dr. Huang watched.
"He's not our guy," Munch insisted.
"You think a guy that left fingerprints all over both crime scenes without calling 911 doesn't have a thing to do with two dead girls?" Benson asked.
"Didn't say that," he shook his head. "But he didn't kill them."
"Right," Stabler answered. "Jeffe?"
"You and Benson, start working him," Cragen nodded.
Stabler closed the door behind him. "You know your rights?"
"I was introduced to that charming notion when I was arrested," Giles replied.
"Rupert Giles, curator, librarian, and lately a resident of Sunnydale, California," Benson recited, reading off the notations on his arrest chart.
"Was," he corrected her. "The town, unfortunately, no longer exists."
"Where you been in the meantime? Moved to New York?" she asked, leaning over. Stabler stood on the other side, adding an intimidating presence. It didn't faze Giles.
"Shortly after the destruction of Sunnydale, I relocated to Cleveland, Ohio."
"Why're you here?" she asked.
"More importantly," Stabler leaned down to his level, "what the hell were you doing on not one, but TWO, killing grounds? Penchant for dead girls?"
Giles gave him a sidelong glance and settled himself a little further in. "Detectives, I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, though I can only predict that my answers will lead to my incarceration either in a mental facility or a prison. However, I'd like to ask the favor of removing my handcuffs. I'm no danger to either of you, and they've grown quite uncomfortable."
Both detectives paused, and Benson let a smile escape. "Gotta love the British. Not a more polite people to be found."
Stabler fished his keys out and unlocked the cuffs, pulling them off Giles' wrists. Giles took a deep breath and rubbed his sore, red wrists, chafing them back to life.
"Thank you," he murmured. "And, if it's not too much trouble, may I have a cup of coffee?"
"Thought you British guys drank tea," Benson raised an eyebrow at him.
"If there were an actual cup of properly brewed tea to be found anywhere on this misbegotten continent, I would claim it in a heartbeat. I've learned to manage with coffee," he answered, looking at her.
For a moment, his eyes narrowed – not in anger, but in puzzlement and curiosity. Just as quickly, he averted his gaze, but not in time to escape notice by either detective.
"Okay," Stabler announced, sitting on the corner of the table. "We're going to play nice. You get your coffee, we get our answers. What the hell were you doing at two different murder scenes?"
Giles made a frown that spoke eloquently of knowing exactly what he was about to get himself into, and doing it anyway.
"First, Detective Stabler, you should be aware that there are more than two murder scenes. My associates and I have located three others, though none as recent as the two you've identified."
Had the soundproofing been any better, none of them would have heard the scuffle of feet or snapping of orders from the other side of the wall in the shocked silence after Giles' comment.
"By the first victim," Giles continued, "I assume you mean the girl whose body was discovered yesterday in the laundry of an apartment building – several hours dead, eviscerated, emaciated, and…" he seemed to struggle for appropriate words, "…brutalized in a manner even few of your calling have ever seen.
"She was a student and colleague of mine who relocated with me and my other associates from Sunnydale to Cleveland. Her name was Kennedy O'Shaunessy, and she was from Boston, originally. Her family is considered to be 'old money', though she had been estranged from them for some time. She left Cleveland of her own free will two weeks ago, and Saturday night, one of our associates received warning that something terrible had befallen her. As she had told us she'd planned to go to New York, I followed with some hope of finding and helping her. It was, however, too late."
And here, he closed his eyes, brows pinching together in delayed grief and shock.
"You didn't call the police," Benson stated.
He took off his glasses and rubbed the spot just above the bridge of his nose.
"Forgive me, Detective," he answered, "but I've found that in my line of work, the police, at best, are ill-equipped to deal with problems, and, at worst, have been an obstacle."
"Yeah, that whole Dewey decimal system must get really tough," Stabler drawled.
"What do you do?" Benson asked.
Giles gave Stabler a dry, measured look before looking over at Benson.
"For the last eight years, I have been the trainer, guardian, and advisor of the senior vampire slayer, Buffy Summers."
He was completely serious.
Benson, Stabler, Cragen, and Huang watched from behind the glass as Giles sipped his coffee, trying not to scald his mouth. Finn and Munch were out, running down everything they could on Kennedy O'Shaunnesy, Elizabeth "Buffy" Summers, something called the Watchers' Council, and any and all disappearances of teenage girls that might fit the MO already noted.
"So…" Cragen began, looking pointedly in Huang's direction.
"He's not your guy," Huang said.
Everyone let their breath out.
"Listen to the way he talked about the victim – an associate, a student, a colleague. There's no anger in his voice; he isn't hostile, bitter, or hateful. The grief he showed appears to be genuine, if somewhat repressed. The rage necessary to kill in that manner, more than once…it's just not there."
"Okay," Cragen nodded, "but…vampire slayer?"
"Oh, he's completely delusional," Huang added. "The architecture is fascinating. Most paranoids are reluctant to share their delusion, because they fear having it called into doubt. Mr. Giles seems completely reconciled to the fact that no one will believe him, and he's still offering it up."
"Yeah, but he knows the victim," Stabler insisted. "He was there!"
"Is there any forensic evidence to tie him to the murder?" Huang asked.
Benson shook her head. "We took a cheek swab, but that'll take days to get a DNA match back on. Other than that, just the fingerprints."
Huang considered the man on the other side of the glass. Giles was staring off into the mid-distance, blinking with impending sleep, wrapping his fingers around his cup of coffee as though it were the middle of winter and he was frozen to the marrow of his bones.
"The only way he might have done it would be if he had completely compartmentalized the murder, if he were a dissociative personality," Huang grudgingly said.
"Right," Stabler nodded. "And that is?"
"What most people think of as multiple personalities. It's extremely rare, even if it does exist."
"Fine," Benson said, "how do we see the other personality?"
"Stress him," Huang shrugged his shoulder. "Push him hard enough that the other personality surfaces in an attempt to protect him or gain vengeance. If you do, be ready for a violent reaction."
They went back in.
"Who's the other girl?" Stabler demanded as they stepped into the room.
Giles sat back, refocusing his eyes. "I don't know. We knew the killer had located her and was hunting her, but we didn't know who she was. We were too late."
"Pretty convenient, I'd say," Stabler barked at him.
Giles' head snapped up, and for the first time, he showed anger. "Convenient, Detective?" he spat out. "Perhaps in your mind, but I take the torture and murder of a teenage girl as deadly serious business, especially when the killer will strike again."
"You know what I think?" Stabler said, shoving Giles' chair back. "I think you're the killer."
Giles stared at him, appalled.
"I think you tortured, killed, and raped that first girl, Kennedy. I think you got a taste for it and did a second girl. I think you think you're smarter than us and that you'll get away with this. Think AGAIN."
Giles was on his feet, hands clenched at his sides, jaw clenched. "If you truly think that, Detective, then you're as addled as your muscle-bound physique implies."
They stood, face to face, with only a few inches between them. Stabler switched to his quieter, more menacing voice.
"How about those students you told us about?" he asked. "We're already getting files back on them. Buffy Summers? You've known her since she was fifteen. What'd you do, librarian? Give her a safe place, encourage her to come to you with problems, tell her no one would believe her if she told what you'd done? Gain her trust and then betray it?"
Giles went white with fury.
"I realize, Detective," he grated, "that you've seen and investigated crimes so dire the penalties available must seem laughable in comparison. That does not excuse you. Buffy is the closest thing I have to a daughter in this world. I will not brook a single threat to her well-being. I would kill to protect her, if I had to, and were I given to such…habits, I would remove myself from the circumstances."
And there it was. Stabler had put thumbscrews to enough perps he could read Giles like one of the librarian's books. He had killed, or he had the capacity to kill.
But only to protect the girl he saw as his responsibility. His patent disgust at the idea of treating her with anything other than paternal affection was clear as starlight.
It wasn't him.
"Have a seat, Mr. Giles," Benson said, putting a hand on Giles' shoulder and pushing him into his chair.
He landed with a grunt and flexed his shoulder, blinking in pain. He looked up at her again with a curious expression of recognition and worry.
"Detective Benson," he asked quietly, "do the shadows bother you?"
She froze for a split second and covered it by picking up his file.
"You said the killer would strike again," she said, flipping through pages without really looking at them. "How do you know?"
Giles considered her for a moment, trying to gauge whether he should repeat his question. Instead, he sat back in his chair while Stabler took a few steps back and leaned against the doorjamb.
"Until the end of Buffy's first year of tenure as Slayer, there had only ever been one single girl who was the Chosen One. Then, through a series of circumstances, another Slayer was called. Kendra Johnson. Kendra was killed by a vampire in battle. After her death, Faith was called. Two Slayers was unheard of at the time. It had simply never occurred. A year ago, shortly before Sunnydale was destroyed, an associate and friend, Willow Rosenberg, cast a spell that activated all potential Slayers. At the time, it was a strategic move made of sheer necessity. We thought we knew where all the potentials were, more or less, and most of them were with us. Kennedy was one of them. What we've learned is that only the girls and young women of the…greatest potential were called immediately after the spell. Since then, the effects of the spell have expanded, rather like a dropping a stone in a pool of water. Younger and older women, outside the normal period when a girl would be called as Slayer, have been called."
Both detectives listened, both of them on the verge of throwing their hands up in the air and walking out of the room. There had to be something useful in the man's delusions or else he wouldn't have walked into two different murder scenes. Giles watched both of them, and it was apparent from his expression that he knew neither of them believed a word he said.
"On becoming a Slayer, Detective Benson," he continued, "most girls realize their physical strength has greatly increased, as does their ability to heal, and all of their senses, if they take the time to notice. Slayers are also given to prophetic dreams of an incredibly vivid nature."
He was looking directly at her when he said this.
"So," Stabler broke in, taking Giles' attention away from his partner. Giles wasn't the only man in the room, after all, who was protective of the women in his life. "About the killer?"
"I apologize," Giles lowered his chin. "Some background is both necessary and pertinent. The killer is attempting to gather power through the deaths of Slayers. Before last year, he was, of necessity, restricted to stalking and killing potentials, and their deaths were thin gruel to him. The death before Kennedy was a nineteen year old Hispanic woman who had been activated by the spell Willow cast. Because she was a true Slayer, her death gave him enormous power – enough to capture, torture, and kill a trained Slayer. The girl he took yesterday and left this morning was easy prey to him. She was a Slayer as well. He's stronger than he's ever been, and he's identified yet another Slayer. Given the chance, he will do to her what he's done to the others."
"What does he want the power for?" Benson asked.
Giles met her eyes, and again, she saw the dead calm and conviction behind his words. "To open a portal into Hell and end the world as we know it."
