Ed hoped this visit was going to be a waste of his time.
She'd probably turned her phone off or let it die since Cragen ordered her home for the weekend. Maybe she went to a bar, maybe she picked up another newspaper reporter to invite into her bed. And what an awkward conversation that would be if he came bursting in on them.
It didn't poke at his soul quite the same way it did to think about her with Stabler. That really grated on him for some reason. Not that anything should. They weren't friends, barely even colleagues. But thinking about her with another man left some kind of unsettling feeling in his stomach.
Ed shook his head to get those thoughts out. He shouldn't be thinking about her at all, period. Especially not in bed.
He pulled up to the curb in front of her building and got out. He'd only been here once before, probably 13 years ago, to drop off a condolence card when her mother passed away. Sure, the department had sent something over, but his own mother had raised him better than that. He knew bits and pieces about Benson's mother from her SVU interviews, and he knew they weren't close. But losing a parent was difficult, and he thought it was the right thing to at least try to make a friendly gesture.
She'd been cold about it and wouldn't even buzz him up to hand-deliver it, so he left the card in her mailbox in the lobby. But he did get a nice handwritten letter back in his own mail a few weeks later, thanking him for thinking of her during that time.
This time it should be easier. He'd just buzz up and tell her to plug her phone in and call Stabler back and then he'd be on his way.
"You coming in, hon?" an older woman leaving the building asked. She had her small yippy dog on a leash and was propping the door for him with her foot.
What the hell. Going up and knocking would be all the same as buzzing up.
"Sure, thank you, ma'am," Ed said, grabbing for the door and letting her pass. "Have a nice day."
"Who are you here to see?" the woman asked. "I know everybody in the building. I can point you the right way."
"Olivia Benson," Ed answered.
"Fourth floor, Apartment D," the woman said as her dog started to yank her down the sidewalk after a butterfly. "She's actually my next-door neighbor. Heard some weird noises coming from the other side of the wall earlier today. Some whistling, and she never whistles. You'll make sure she's alright?"
"Of course, ma'am," Ed said, the feeling of dread back and settling itself between his shoulder blades. "Enjoy your walk."
As soon as she was out of sight, Tucker doubled-timed it up the stairs, not bothering to wait for the elevator. He found apartment 4D at the end of the hall and put his hand on the butt of his gun before he knocked.
He heard rustling behind the door and landed three short knocks in the center of the wood. Then nothing.
Ed tried again, three more short wraps.
"Benson," he yelled. "It's Tucker, open the door."
If something was wrong, he didn't want anyone else inside to know he was a cop. Who knows what they'd start doing?
Slowly he heard the locks click and the chain slide open on the door. But it wasn't Benson who greeted him. It was a man leaning out the side of the door with a sick smile on his face.
"Can I help you?" the man asked, overly cheerful. The smile almost hurt Ed's own cheeks.
Then he realized something. Ed had seen this man before. He was trying to wrack his brain as to why this guy was familiar. There wasn't anything particularly special about him. Dark hair, and blue eyes, seemed tall from his stance behind the door.
"Yeah, Is Olivia home?" Ed asked. "I really need to talk to her about something."
"Oh, she's resting right now," the man said. "My girlfriend, she uh wears herself out when I'm around if you know what I mean."
Those words made Ed's skin crawl. Not just for the fact that he was about 99% sure this man wasn't Benson's boyfriend. Stabler and his over-protectiveness wouldn't let a cocky SOB like this guy get within 500 feet of her, no doubt. He also didn't appreciate how any man would allude to something like that about his girlfriend. Especially to someone he didn't know.
"Well if it's all the same to you, this is urgent," Ed said, taking another step toward the door.
When he did, he caught a whiff of something horrible. Burnt metal and burnt flesh.
And when he got closer to the man, he realized where he'd seen him before. His mugshot was on the report file he'd just looked up about Benson's last case. The flasher in the park. This was the perp. What the hell was he doing in her apartment? He'd accused her before during the Vandyne case of dating a perp, but that was just to get her to confess. That smell, his smile.
Something wasn't right.
"I'm afraid she's not up for company," the perp said, but Tucker tried to force his way inside. His hand quickly reached for his gun as he pushed the man back into Benson's entryway. And that's when he saw her, barely conscious, tied to one of her kitchen chairs. Her shirt was ripped, her face was bloody and she had duct tape over her mouth. He could tell she recognized him but her eyes were also glassy, darting between him and the perp like she didn't know if it was real or she was trapped in a nightmare.
Then he noticed Benson's service weapon sitting on the counter and the perp making a beeline for it.
"Touch it and you're dead," Tucker said, his voice coming out like a blast of cold air on a winter morning.
His words didn't seem to phase the perp, who kept walking toward the weapon, leering back at Ed as he reached for the handle.
For all the times he'd tried to talk down killers, all the work he'd done on and off with hostage negotiation, there was something about this man that didn't make him hesitate. His actions may look impulsive to someone on the outside, but every move was very carefully calculated. The perp tugged on the handle of Benson's gun, her ex-partner's service shield glittering on the butt. And when the perp turned around and flashed Ed another toothy grin, he put a bullet right between his eyes.
The tall man fell to the floor in a heap, and Ed strode over to him cautiously, but he knew he didn't miss. He felt the perp's wrist for a pulse, but there wasn't one.
Good riddance.
Slowly, Ed picked his way back over to Benson. She was crying, though he wasn't sure she was aware of that. She was making little noises behind the duct tape covering her mouth.
Ed knelt in front of her and tried as gently as he could to lift the tape from her lips.
"Benson," Ed said, then shook his head. "Olivia, are you alright?"
She clearly wasn't. She looked awful, the place smelled horrible and it'd been trashed.
She shook her head very slowly.
"Is he?" she mumbled, more tears streaming from her eyes. "Did you?"
"Yes," Ed said, untying her wrists as gently as he could and slicing through the duct tape around her ankles. "He's dead. He's gone."
When she was free, Olivia slumped forward into Tucker's arms, as if she was too exhausted to even hold herself upright. He had no choice but to scoot back against her couch and hold her to him.
Her little cries were from pain, no doubt. If she spent 24 hours in that position her limbs had to be stiff and judging by the smell in the room he had to have burns somewhere on her body.
Ed was not an emotional man. He was never one to show too much outward affection, especially these days. But at that moment, he was all Olivia had and she needed some kind of comfort to counteract whatever the hell she'd just been through.
Slowly he pulled his radio from his belt and laid it on the couch cushion. Then he adjusted Olivia in his lap and tilted her head so she was looking at him. He brushed her matted hair from her forehead and thumbed away a few of her tears.
"You're safe Olivia," Ed whispered. "He's not going to hurt you anymore."
Her eyes were still glassy, but she nodded as if she understood.
Slowly he pulled his radio down and called in all the right codes for the incident and requested a bus.
Olivia winced in pain as she readjusted herself in his lap, putting her head on his shoulder. He could feel her breath on his neck. If she hadn't had her mouth so close to his ear, he may have missed the nearly inaudible "thank you" she whispered.
"I'm glad I came," he whispered back, not realizing he was gently rocking her while they waited for backup and a bus to arrive.
As he heard the sounds of sirens approaching outside, he realized that at some point he was going to have to call Stabler and let him know what he found.
That was a conversation he wasn't looking forward to, at all.