The Son of Man

It's 8:10am in the SVU squad room. Elliot walked in with two coffees. Munch and Fin have already started going over the crime scene from the day before and they're on their way out to speak with the manager of Fantasy Costumes.

Munch walked by Elliot and reached for the coffee. "Aw Elliot, how did you know?"

Elliot grabbed his arm "Hey, put that back. That's not for you."

"Well, excuse me."

Elliot asked, "Have you seen Olivia?"

Fin and Munch answer an affirmative "Nope", as they resumed towards the door.

"Where are you headed?"

Fin answered, "We're checking out a place that sells Halloween supplies. We figure that mask had to come from somewhere."

Elliot nodded, "Let me know what you find."

"Will do"

Captain Cragen walked past Elliot towards his office reading a file, "Stabler, you're alone. What'd I tell you about that?"

Without looking at Cragen, Elliot gave him a wave, "I'm working on it Captain."

Elliot called Olivia and got her answering machine "You've reached Olivia Benson. You know what to do." Beep.

"Liv, it's 8:15 where are you? When I said sleeping was important I didn't realize you'd take it to heart. I brought coffee. Call me when you get this."

Elliot searched his pockets for his cell phone and saw that he had a message. He pressed his password number into the keypad. Olivia's voice billowed in his ear.

"Elliot, you were right, sleep is amazing. I'm going in early. I think I figured out where our women meet."

Elliot looked at the papers on her desk. They were still arranged in the same little piles she left them in last night.

Elliot yelled toward Cragen's office. "Cap, you seen Liv?"

"This morning? No."

Elliot turned towards his office, "How long have you been here?"

The Captain's voice is mumbled from the next room, "oh 7:00am. Why?"

Elliot stood in the doorway thinking, "ah, it's probably nothing, but I can't find her."

The captain spoke with a half of a doughnut in his mouth, "Did you try her cell phone?"

"Yeah. Yeah." He walked over to Olivia's desk to try and figure out where she could have gone, but the papers didn't seem to make any sense to him. He sat back down at his desk and filled out some of the paper work that he had been pushing to the side for weeks. Every 3 minutes he kept looking at the clock. The longer he sat there his mind started to race and he needed to know where she could be. He called her again.

"You've reached Olivia Benson. You know what to do."

Again with the beeping.

"Liv, I'm getting worried. If you're out on a case can you please give me a call, so I can meet you there? "

Elliot poked his head into Cragen's office, "Captain, I'll be back. Some things not right. "

The Captain responded with his usual tone. "Elliot. Where are you going?"

He threw his jacket on and called towards the door, " I'm going to check Liv's apartment and then maybe stop by forensics."

From behind his morning paper he answers to Elliot, "Take Fin or Munch with you."

Elliot yelled behind him, "They're out."

Cragen shoved the last bit of doughnut into his mouth "Wait." Doughnut sprayed all over his desk and his coffee spilled down the side of his pants, "Aw Crap."

Scene

On the car ride to Olivia's apartment Elliot called her cell phone and her home phone three times. It wasn't like her to disappear without checking in. His paranoia even started to make Cragen worry. He and Cragen got to the building and Elliot shot out of the car and ran inside. He fumbled with the keys and pushed open the door "Livia? Are you home?"

Inside he checked all of the rooms in her small apartment. Not a trace of her was to be found. Elliot came crashing into the car breathing heavily.

Cragen looked at him with a shriveled brow, "I placed a radio call to all units asking them if anyone has seen her. So far nobody's answered. Are you ok?"

Elliot's face was red and his hands were shaking. "I knew I should have stayed with her last night."

"What?"

Elliot back pedaled, "We were just going to pull an over nighter at the precinct, but I thought it'd be better to sleep in our own beds."

"Right." Cragen replied with a bit of concern.

All of the sudden Elliot jumped out of the car and started walking down the street. Cragen yelled out of the car window, "What are you doing?"

Elliot walked fast and scanned the ground, "Sometimes she walks to work in the morning. I'm going to see if I can find anything of hers."

Cragen was driving slowly and talking to Elliot from his moving vehicle. "At least let me park the car and I'll look with you."

Elliot moved faster, "We don't have time for that Captain."

Elliot crosses in front of Cragen's car at the crosswalk and yelled, "Meet me at the station. I'll call you if I find anything."

"I can't do that. You have to have a partner."

Angry with Cragen's distrust, Elliot fired back, "When I find her, I will have a partner."

Drivers behind Cragen start to beep their horns and he angrily yelled from the car, "Alright, but get your ass back to home base as soon as you're done." He drove off with a screech of the tires.

Scene

When Elliot returned to the squad room Fin, Munch, and Cragen were hovering over something on Elliot's desk.

Elliot stood behind them, "What's going on?"

He pushed through them to see a letter typed on a slip of crisp computer paper. It was the same letterhead that he had gotten 3 other times before this. At the bottom was a signature written in what appeared to be blood. Elliot took one look at the signature and cried "No. No. Damn it. God Damn it. Where did this come from? Who the hell put this here?" Everyone in the squad room stopped what they were doing. Elliot's voice was rang through the ceilings, "Somebody had to have seen the sick scum that put this here. Somebody better answer me."

Fin grabbed Elliot, "Hey, Calm down. We just found it. Nobody saw anything. We're having security bring us the videotapes and the sign-in sheets right now. You have to settle down."

Elliot helplessly thought out loud, "How did he get in here? " He grabbed the letter from Munch and read the whole thing entirely.

Dear Detective Elliot Stabler,

I know your secret and I have a proposal waiting for you in my office. I don't know how I missed this secret trophy before. You've kept her well hidden. My client and I would like you to join us for the deal of a lifetime. We're thinking about convening somewhere special. I was thinking Paris would be nice, but Olivia suggested an island instead. The usual time. We hope to see you there partner.

Sincerely Yours,

The Son of Man

"The Statue of Liberty. We need to get that island completely guarded with undercover cops. We can't have him suspect anything or he'll back off. I want searches done to everyone going into the statue. I have to go-"

Cragen gently cut him off, "Elliot, I already made the call and we have men scanning the entire area. Listen, we have to keep our heads on, for Olivia's sake. She needs us at our best right now." He could see the pain behind Elliot's eyes. Cragen turned to his team, "Now if he's using his usual timeline we have 6 days to figure out where he's keeping her. People work fast. Let's put our heads together and find an answer. Fin, Munch, show us what you found at the Costume shops."

Munch pulled out his notepad; "Well we may have just gotten lucky with this slime on Elliot's shirt. Forensics says the slime is an eatable children's toy with a mixture of the same contents that make up mace. We found the company that makes the slime and they pointed us to 5 shops that sell their products. The manger of Fantasy Costumes says he remembers a guy like our perp. He's always buying their slime kits by the dozen and he also remembers him buying the apple mask about 3 months back. The problem is he always pays in cash. But he did sign up for the e-mail mailing list. E-mail address is Rene1964. We have the computer labs working on finding our guy right now. Hopefully they can find us a name or a billing address."

Fin added, "We need to work on how he's choices is victim's and where his location may be. I'm going to check about our options. Elliot, you want to come with me?"

Elliot nodded. His eyes were blood shot and his mind was static.

Scene

Olivia woke up to the sound of a jackhammer. She opened her eyes and realized she couldn't move and she had no idea where she was. Panic shifted through her body. She realized she was only wearing her underwear and her body was tied down. She could move her head, but her arms and hips were tied to a medical bed, and her legs were bent and tied to stirrups. The room was empty and had no windows in it. Every wall was covered with drabby orange and brown flowered wallpaper from the seventies. On the ceiling was a picture of a scenic horizon of puffy clouds and a meadow of purple wild flowers. It looked like it had been ripped out of a calendar and taped there for a final happy thought. Her head was throbbing and she racked her brain to remember how she got here. The last thing she could remember was a tall man she had bumped into on her way to work. His face was scarred and he asked her for directions to the statue of liberty. When she was finished explaining the directions she turned around and everything was black until now. The jackhammer outside sounded close. She gave it her all to make him hear her.

"Help. Somebody help me. I'm trapped. Please somebody call the police."

The jackhammer stopped and she screamed even louder.

"Help me. I'm behind the wall. I'm trapped in here. Please help."

As those last words came out of her mouth, the door to the room opened and a tall man in a green apple mask stood in the door way. "Olivia, I see you've awaken."

She knew exactly where this was going and her only hope was that someone besides him could hear her. "Help me. Somebody help me", she screamed over and over again as she tried to wiggle her way out of the bed.

The man pulled a roll of duck tape from his pocket and snapped a piece off of the role. "Now, now, little Olivia, do I have to do this the hard way?"

Olivia whipped her head in the opposite direction and cried "No. Wait. I'll stay quiet. Just please tell me why I'm here."

The man looked Olivia up and down. He paced around the bed and slid his hand down her leg, "That's all in good time."

Olivia cringed from the touch of the rubber glove he wore on his hand. She knew that the only way out of this was to talk her way through it or hope to god somebody came to help her. She immediately went into interrogation mode.

"Why do you wear the mask?"

"Don't we all wear masks? Isn't that what god wanted us to do from the beginning? When Eve took all of Adam's power we no longer got the privilege to be our selves."

"Is that why you took all of my clothes away? So that you could have all of the power?"

His eyes glared at her from behind the mask, "I took your clothes away so that I could humiliate you the way your kind humiliates me."

"How have I humiliated you?"

The man took a knife from his pocket. He slowly ran the blade down Olivia's cheek causing a small cut on the side of her face. She winced in pain. She started breathing heavily and she closed her eyes to try and think of another tactic. The man replied to her "You're shear existence humiliates me".

He then captured her blood in a vile. Getting close to her face he whispered in her ear, "I want you to know what it's like to be me. I'm going to show you things you've never experienced.

His hot breath on her neck made her sick to her stomach. Olivia kept thinking about how Elliot would handle this situation and she started to panic. She opened her eyes and tried to keep control, "I've seen a lot of things in my line of work. I can assure you that by humiliating me you will only cause damage to yourself in the end."

The man started to laugh, "In your line of work? What do you know about the victims in your line of work? You listen and nod. You catch the bad guy. You don't know what it's like to be your victims, do you Olivia? You've never been raped or beaten have you Olivia? How do you know they didn't like it? How do you know they didn't ask for it or deserve it? " He was standing between Olivia's legs and he pulled a second rubber glove from his pocket. Slowly he snapped the glove on his left hand.

Olivia angrily fired back at him, "I don't need to experience their suffering to understand their pain. If it weren't for men like you there would be no suffering victims."

He sliced the inside of her leg with his knife, "Shut up. You're going to feel my pain whether you like it or not."

She cried out loud from the cut of the knife. "Are you a victim, Son of Man? I can help you. We can fight this together. You don't have to do this to make your suffering right."

The man unzipped his pants. "You think you have all the answers don't you detective. I can't wait to see Elliot's face when he sees the trophy I make out of you."

"Elliot's face could never give you the satisfaction you deserve. Let's do this a different way."

The man ripped her underwear, " Oh but you see it has to be this way. It's the only way to seal the deal."

She watched him as he forced himself in her and she winced from the thrust. "Ahhh, Please don't do this. You don't have to do this. New deals are made everyday. Let's negotiate." The man laughed and moved faster.

She had to think of something else to get him to stop, "What's your name?"

The man paused and he moved his face close to hers, "Why do you want to know that?"

Olivia tried to pull herself together, "You know all about me. I know nothing about you. If we're going to be in business together I have to get to know you. Please let me see your face?"

As he pushed hard into her he grunted through his teeth, "Detective Benson, you ask too many questions."

Olivia cried in pain, but her objective remained strong, "If you kill me and I don't know your name the deal will be worthless. How will I know who's responsible for taking every piece of me away?

The man stopped and pulled himself away from her. For a moment he looked into Olivia's brown eyes. He could see her struggling thoughts. It excited him and he pulled the mask from his face. Olivia could see the scars clearly.

"My name is James Preston. I want you to take that to the grave, Benson. Do you see what you did to me?" He pointed to his face and continued, "Everyday that I sat in this room and nobody came to rescue me. I am the result of your faults and now you will pay for it."

In a soft voice Olivia said, "James, I want to help you. Will you let me help you now?"

James stood completely still, and then he started to touch himself.

Olivia ignored it and pressed him with more questions, "Was this your bedroom James?"

James didn't answer her and his hand was moving faster.

Olivia continued hoping that he would give into her. She was treating him as one of the many child victims she's had to deal with in the past, "And did your mother pick out the wallpaper for you?"

The word mother angered James and he thrusts into Olivia while screaming like he was having a hallucination, "Shut up, shut up, you worthless piece of shit. You'll never amount to anything. You're evil. You're an evil bitch."

Olivia started crying and tried to take her mind to a different place. "James, it's ok, I'm not going to hurt you. James, please calm down. Please, I can't help you if you hurt me."

James slapped Olivia on the face hard. He grabbed her by the neck until she passed out, and he finished with a sudden backwards step. Olivia lay lifeless on the bed. His first round of empowerment was complete. He pulled himself together and walked out of the room.