Chapter 2

As much as she was fighting internally about where she and Elliot stood, there were other problems she had to currently deal with. A new case had been given to them. Olivia had sent Amanda and Fin to the hospital to talk to the victim, Christine Fleming, while she and the new recruit, Joe Velasco, looked over the crime scene. He wasn't exactly a recruit but the moment that Kat retired, SVU was shorthanded, so she took the help.

Velasco was a decent detective. He was a little rough around the edges for SVU, but he was a fast learner and he soon smoothed out a few of those edges. There was work to be done but Olivia figured she could help him out.

"Cap… this seem weird to you?" Joe's voice broke Olivia's train of thought. He was staring at the blood pool on the floor. They were in a brownstone; the mailman had been the one to call the police upon finding the front door ajar and hearing the victim crying inside. Needless to say, the postal worker had to be taken to the hospital to be checked out. Blood made him woozy and the detectives really couldn't fault him given the amount on the floor.

"Sadly, this is not as weird as you might think. Our perp could have followed her home, pushed her into the house, and then assaulted her," she said.

"Well, I kind of figured that was what had happened. I meant, how is our victim, not dead?" Joe asked. Olivia looked at the blood on the floor and looked at her detective.

"Oh well that you'd have to ask Melinda about," she said before she involuntarily shivered.

"You ok Cap?" He asked.

"It's cold in here, isn't it?" She pointed out.

"It is hotter than heck out, it felt good," Joe admitted. He wasn't wrong. The city had been broiling the last few days, temperatures were in the triple digits with very little relief.

"It did and you'd expect the A/C to be running but…" Olivia trailed off and went to the thermostat on the wall. It was clear across the living room where the victim had been found.

"What does it say?" Joe asked. He hadn't moved from his spot near the blood pool.

"Well unless our victim is a polar bear, I can't imagine why she'd need to keep the house a balmy sixty degrees," she shivered again.

"Her electric bill is going to be insane," he said before carefully moving toward the kitchen.

"Can we get this fingerprinted? Then can we turn it off?" Olivia asked. CSU tech Josh Johnson rushed over from his spot at the front door and quickly attempted to fingerprint the wall mounted panel.

"Lots of smudges. At least that tells us the rapist didn't bother to wipe this down," the tech frowned.

"You find prints on anything else?" She wondered.

"Plenty, but without elimination prints, hard to tell if they mean anything," Josh shrugged.

"Ok Velasco, who breaks into a place, rapes the victim, stabs her multiple times, and then turns down the air conditioning so she bleeds out slowly?" Olivia turned to him.

"The same guy who takes one of the knives out of the knife block?" Joe wondered. Olivia raised an eyebrow and moved over toward him.

"Which one is missing?" She asked.

"Hard to say. There are eight steak knives, a couple of smaller knives, and then a santoku knife. I don't see butcher knife, but there are a couple of empty slots and nothing in the sink or the dishwasher," he shrugged.

"Ok, call up Rollins. See if they have gotten a chance to speak to the doctors or Christine. We need to know if our guy didn't bring his own knife and if they were able to get the rape kit. This… is all over this place. Not careful enough to wipe things down but he takes the knife, which he may or may not have brought with him. The original intention may not have been to kill… but something made him stab her," again the Captain was shaking her head.

"I need to make a phone call," she said before heading outside back into the heat. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she dialed a number.

"Hi George," she said.

"Hi Olivia, it's good to hear from you. Why do I have a suspicion that this isn't a social call?" Doctor George Huang asked. The two had kept in touch once he'd returned from Oklahoma City and had even bumped into each other a few times as he consulted for defense teams.

"I wish it were. I really do," she admitted.

"I can be down to the precinct in a couple of hours," he told her.

"I'll see you then," Olivia said.

To Be Continued…