"Hello, Detective Benson," Lewis said as she stepped back into the room after a few seconds. She thought maybe she could get him to sweat a bit in there alone. But something about this one… he seemed to be uncrackable.
"Lewis," Olivia said, sitting down across from him at the table with a stack of crime scene photos. A woman was murdered in Central Park, left sexxually assaulted, burned and mutilated near the reservoir.
He wasn't cuffed because he hadn't presented violently since he'd been in custody, and that gave him the freedom to reach across the table and pull for the photos.
"Oh my, quite the slideshow here," he said, laying all the images out in front of him in a neat little row. "I can only imagine how this happened."
"I don't think you really need to imagine it," Olivia said. "I'm willing to bet you were there."
"Oh, now sweetheart," Lewis said, and Olivia curled her toes in her boots to keep from making an outward reaction. "Why would you think I'd be a part of something like this? Didn't you pay attention to my story from before? I haven't been anywhere near the reservoir in weeks."
"Yeah, I'm not really buying that," Olivia said, leaning back in her chair.
"Call my lawyer and she'll explain everything," Lewis said. "I've been spending so much time with her trying to sort out another legal matter."
"You know," Olivia said. "Having a lawyer on speed dial doesn't exactly make you look innocent."
"Okay, okay," Lewis said. "So my lawyer is also my girlfriend and that's why she's on speed dial."
He gave her a little smile and an "aw shucks" shrug.
Something about the way he could so easily feign innocence made Olivia's blood run cold. She'd been around sociopaths before but this guy was next level.
"Alright so you weren't there," Olivia said. "But since you seem to be enjoying the photos so much, maybe you can at least give your best guess. Tell us what you think happened to her."
Lewis picked up each picture one by one, pulled it close to his face to examine.
"It looks like a little love play gone wrong," Lewis said.
"How do you figure?" Olivia asked.
Lewis tilted her head and gave her a grin that made her stomach roil.
"You like it rough, detective?" he asked.
"I don't think that's any of your business," she said.
"I bet you do," he said. "I bet the things you see every day, there's no way you like gentle lovemaking. You need someone with a beastly, erotic energy to take you. Posess you. Make it hurt."
"And you think that's what happened here," Olivia said, using everything she had to maintain her composure. "You think she liked it rough and things got out of hand?"
"I bet you like your hair pulled," Lewis said. "You probably like temperature play too. There's nothing like hot metal on cool skin to really wake up the senses."
"And how do you know that?" she asked.
"I read a lot," he said. "Reading's good for the imagination."
"Yeah, well I don't want to imagine what happened to this victim," Olivia said. "I want to know for sure."
"Oh detective," Lewis said "You'll get the chance someday."
Olivia was usually pretty stoic in the face of a perp, but she felt her expression falter at that one. She'd had perps threaten her before, talk about what they'd do to her if they had the chance. But this was the first time it felt real.
There was a quick rap on the two way mirror.
"Ooh, sounds like Daddy's mad at you," Lewis said. "Better go see what the crazy old man wants."
"He's not the crazy one," Olivia said, kicking her chair back under the table. "You are."
She stalked to the door, pulled it open and let herself into the observation room.
"What?" Olivia asked, annoyed that she'd been pulled out of the interview.
"I want you to switch with Cassidy," Cragen said, leaning against the wall.
"Why?" Olivia asked.
"I don't like this guy, Liv," Cragen said. "I think he needs a male detective in there with him."
"Please tell me you're not pulling that sexist crap with me right now," Olivia said.
Cragen looked at her long and hard.
"Olivia, you are the best detective I have," he said. "But I don't like the way he's looking at you. We all thinks he's good for this and I had Jeffries run the MO through ViCAP. There are other very similar hits all across the country, but a large spike of them in New York City. I don't want you to be next. This guy gets off on mind games and torture with women. He won't be looking at Cassidy that way."
"He's only going to confess to a woman," Olivia said. "When he feels pushed to the brink."
Cragen sighed.
"I wish you had a permanent partner," he said. "Someone to watch your back. But being a volunteer unit, we're so short staffed. I would feel better if you didn't always have to go out to scenes or do interrogations alone."
"I've always been alone," Olivia said. "I'm used to it. You think that makes me odd?"
"Stubborn, maybe. Not odd," Cragen said. "You sure I can't interest you in rotating with Jefferies as Cassidy's partner for a bit?"
"No," Olivia said. "I… um… I kind of went and made that awkward a few months back."
"I see," Cragen said as his cell phone started to ring.
"Yeah?" he said picking up, then immediately rolling his eyes.
"I know," he said. "I'll be there. Give me twenty."
Cragen hung up the phone and shoved it back into his pants pocket.
"What was that about?" Olivia asked.
"Another meeting at 1PP," he said. "I gotta go. Are you sure you're okay with Lewis?"
"Positive," Olivia said. "Good luck at your meeting. I'll debrief when you get back."
Then Olivia slid her way back into the interrogation room.
Cragen always thought rising up through the ranks would be a good thing. He'd have more paperwork and less time out on the street. He thought some more stable hours would give him more time with Marge, opportunities to duck out to attend his kids sporting events or plays. It's why he started a management track early in his career.
But none of those things were meant to be. After Marge found out they couldn't have children, they talked adoption. Then Marge got sick. And all he was left with was a string of promotions and marriage to the job.
Until Olivia Benson joined his squad.
In many ways, he viewed her like the daughter he never had. She was the kind of girl he always expected to raise as his own: smart, funny, intuitive, always looking for justice. He assumed that's why he let her get away with so much, which led him to the position he was in right now.
"What kind of ship are you running over there, Cragen?" Chief McGrath bellowed at him from his seat at the head of the table. "Missuse of government services? A detective going rogue and then helping her long-lost half-brother jump bail? You've got to be kidding me."
Cragen knew everything Olivia did to find her birth father had been wrong. He knew trying to take care of her troubled half-brother wasn't in her best interest. But he spent a lot of time looking the other way about it. Finding him, learning the truth, was helping her heal some of her wounds inside. And he wasn't going to deny her that chance. If he somehow found out Marge was still living somewhere or that they had a long-lost child who got put up for adoption, he would have done the same damn thing.
"Nothing you've done is really a suspendable offense," McGrath said. "Since we can't prove you were actually privy to any of what she did. But it did go down under your watch. So for that, you're getting a reassignment."
"What?" Cragen balked. "To where."
"The 3-7," McGrath said.
The 3-7 was a pit. It had a history of spewing dirty cops and everybody in the department knew about "The Beast" who ran the place now. That precinct was the laughingstock of the NYPD.
"You can't be serious," Cragen said. "Who are you going to get to run SVU? It's volunteer."
"I'll be doing it myself," McGrath said.
"We're understaffed as it is," Cragen said.
"So is the 3-7," McGrath said. "That's why I'm sending you there."
"Isn't there anything…" Cragen started.
"It's not a request," McGrath said. "Effective immediately. Better head over there and meet your new squad."
Walking into the squad room at the 3-7 was drastically different from the 1-6. Where his squad was usually bursting with sound, activity, and life, this place was… dead.
"Hello?" Cragen called, stepping into the bullpen.
"Aw damn," someone muttered from across the room. "We got a lost old guy again."
"Maybe if we hide, he'll go away," another voice said.
"Is somebody there?" Cragen asked.
"Keep your mouth shut, Tutuola," one of the voices said.
"I'm uh, here on reassignment from 1PP," Cragen said.
"Shit," one of the voices muttered. "Not just a lost guy."
"Shush," the other voice said, before yelping in pain.
"Yeah, man," the first voice said. "Welcome to the 3-7."
Two figures appeared from around the bend, a tall lanky beanpole in glasses and a shorter black man with a ponytail.
"Fin Tutuola," the shorter man said, sticking out his hand for a shake. "What did you do to land yourself here. We've all done something dumb."
"Let one of my detectives go off on NYPD time to find her long-lost half-brother," Cragen said.
"That doesn't sound that bad," Fin said.
"She had the ME run her DNA through the system illegally to do it," Cragen said.
"Ouch," Fin said. "Well, welcome to the misfit club. You a detective?"
"Captain, actually," Cragen said. "McGrath said I'd be taking over this house."
"Ooh, the Master isn't going to like that," the tall lanky man said before sticking out his hand. "John Munch."
Cragen was about to open up and ask if "The Master" and the man everyone called "The Beast" in NYPD were the same person when a perky blonde raced in from the other side of the room with a young, tall lanky guy with a mustache trailing right behind her.
"Hey, did I hear we got a transfer?" the blonde asked and extended her hand. "Amanda Rollins. Can I get you a cup of coffee."
"Or maybe a water," the young man said before sticking out his own hand. "Dominick Carisi. Call me Sonny. You like zeppoli? Got some homemade in my lunchbox."
Cragen's head was spinning from all the introductions, and he was about to turn down all the requests when he heard a door slam elsewhere in the squad room.
"Uh oh," Carisi said, skittering back the way he came with Rollins following quick behind.
"What do we got?" a man said, approaching from the back room.
"Hey Lieu," Fin said. "Lemme explain we got a transfer from 1PP."
The man stalked out of what seemed to be his office and approached where Cragen, Fin, and Munch stood.
"So what are you here for?" the man asked with a growl when he got close enough.
Cragen looked into the younger man's face, but he seemed particularly hardened from his time at the 3-7. He actually remembered this man, back when he was a kid, when he would trail his father around at NYPD picnics. His father had been a dirty cop and it wasn't a secret. He remembered when he heard the young man graduated from the academy and worked up to Detective. But one of his first assignments led to him getting shot on the job, and a perp going free. His partner turned him in as a dirty cop. With his father's reputation, IAB had no reason to question it. They decided to make an example out of him and damage his pride.
The man looked different now than he did as a young boy. He was maybe in his 40s, but he was bald, with a goatee, and haunting blue eyes. Most of his appearance was no doubt to cover up the jagged scar that ran from his chin to his eye socket on the left side of his face, another memento of the night of the incident.
"1PP transfered me here, to be your new CO," Cragen said. "Said you're understaffed."
"We're staffed just fine" the man said. "You're not welcome here."
Cragen couldn't help but stare at him. He remembered one time at one of the picnics, a little girl who now reminded him so much of Olivia fell off the swing and scraped her knee. The man in front of him was the only kid to stop what he was doing, playing with trucks in the sandbox, to go over and check on the little girl. He helped pick her up off the ground, dry her tears, and limp over to her mother to get her cuts cleaned. Cragen just couldn't imagine how that sweet boy grew into this beastly man.
"What are you staring at?" the man yelled, and Cragen didn'tt realize he had been. "You've come to stare at and replace 'The Beast' haven't you?"
"No, Lieutenant Stabler," Cragen said. "I'm just here on orders from 1PP."
"Well then, since they've finally decided to take my job completely, I have to show you where your new office is," Stabler said.
He turned quickly on his heel, heading toward the back of a squad. Cragen had no choice but to follow. He looked over his shoulder quickly to see Fin, Munch, Rollins, and Carisi peering out at him from behind various walls and furniture, and that was the last thing he saw before Stabler slammed his office door shut.
