Olivia

Wednesday, December 6th

I hadn't been able to sleep almost the entire night.

I had gotten home, gone for a run, a longer run than I normally go for. I got home, completely exhausted, showered, and had intended to order in Chinese but ended up falling asleep on the couch.

I woke up at one, and it was clear that I wasn't going to sleep anymore. I got up and nearly stepped on the broken wine glass I had somehow managed to forget about. The wine glass that had started everything. The one that had fallen, and shattered, and that had set off the motions of the night before. The wine glass that had changed everything.

I cleaned it up, then braved going into my bedroom. He had made the bed. Something about that gesture shook me to my core. I mean, we were partners, we were best friends, we knew things about each other that no one else probably ever would. We saw things that no one should see, and there was a very intimate relationship that came out of that. But somehow we had transcended the line between best friends and lovers, which shouldn't have happened. There were things about me now that he knew that he wasn't supposed to. He shouldn't have known what my lipstick tasted like, or how my mind went blank when he kissed my neck. I wasn't supposed to know that he tilted his head towards the left when he kissed, or how it felt to have him run his fingers through my hair. These tiny, intimate details that even the closest of partners wouldn't know about each other now were burned in the back of my mind, racing back with an intensity that made head spin.

I knew I needed to change my sheets. I pulled them off, trying to stay detached, but I could smell him. The scent was dizzying.

What had I done?

Needless to say, I was at work early. I was catching up on some paperwork when Elliot walked in with two coffees. I took it from him and watched him hang up his jacket and sit down across from me.

"How did you know I'd be here?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "I figured you wouldn't be able to sleep."

I felt unsettled by the way he knew me. There was something about the way he knew me better than I knew myself that just terrified me. I found myself watching him a little too long, a little too closely. He was doing the same. We both quickly broke it off when we realized it. My heart pounded, like I had been caught doing something that I shouldn't have been doing.

"I've, uh, I've got some files to review. I'll be upstairs if you need anything."

Elliot

Thursday, December 7th

"How did things go at trial yesterday?" Cragen asked.

"Not good," I answered, not looking up from the reports I was reading. "Witness froze on the stand. We'll be lucky to get the rape conviction; the man two's never going to happen. Liv, can you pass me the lab report on the Webber case?"

She passed it to me and Cragen gave me a curious look. "Something to share with the rest of the class?"

"I think so. Listen to this. I ran Rick Thomas's-"

"The friend who brought her in?" he asked.

"Yeah. I ran his financial records, and the guy is drowning in student debt."

"He's a grad student. That's hardly uncommon." Liv pointed out.

"True, but wait. A day before Christine's attack, he had $10 000 deposited into his account by a man named Chris Eaton. Now, I checked this against the fingerprints found at the scene. The lab sent over anyone who was in the system, and guess whose fingerprints were at the scene?"

"Chris Eaton."

"Exactly."

"What was he in for?" Liv asked.

"He had a '96 conviction for involuntary manslaughter and assault. He pled out, was sentenced to 10 years, only served three. There are also two dropped rape charges by girls around Christine's age."

"You're thinking her friend got paid off to get her in place at a certain time so that he could attack her?" Cragen clarified.

"Her friend's hiding something. I guarantee you that."

"I don't know, Elliot. She was pretty adamant that he could have never done anything like that."

"Still, it's your best lead. Munch, Fin, I want you to go find this guy, see if he has an alibi. If he still looks good, I want you to bring both of them in."

Munch

Friday December 8th

"Explain something to me," I told Fin as we stepped onto the elevator in Chris Eaton's apartment building. "How does scum like Eaton live in a nice neighbourhood while us good guys are stuck in cracker jack boxes for shelter?"

Fin just rolled his eyes. After six years with me, he had become indifferent to anything I had to say. We stepped out of the elevator, found his apartment, and knocked. A beautiful brown-haired woman opened the door. Fin turned to me. "That's how."

"Excuse me?" the woman asked.

"We're looking for Chris Eaton."

"And you are?" she asked politely.

"Police," Fin said, holding out his badge.

Her eyes went slightly wide, but stepped aside to let us in and closed the door behind us. "I'll just get him for you."

As soon as she left, I turned to Fin. "Is it just me, or could she pass for a 30-year-old version of Christine Webber?"

"Did you see the pictures of the other two dropped rape complaints? They could all be sisters. He's definitely got a type."

Chris came into the entranceway. He was younger than I had expected, just over thirty maybe. He was clean-cut, well-dressed. "Can I help you?" He turned to look at Fin, and I noticed that he had a fading black eye.

"Detectives Munch, Tutuola. Can you account for your whereabouts between ten and midnight Monday night?"

He barely blinked. "May I ask what this is regarding?"

"Rape," Fin blurted out, louder than necessary. I managed not to smirk.

"I was at work."

"Can anyone verify that?"

"Probably not, I'm self-employed. Who was raped?"

I ignored his question. "Do you know a Rick Thomas?"

He thought for a second, his eyes going wide. "He. . . he did some work for me in the summer."

"And you're still paying him for it?"

He looked us over closely. "Do I need a lawyer here?"

"Nah," Fin said casually. "We're just shooting the breeze. If you don't have anything to hide, we can get this all sorted out right now and leave alone."

He looked us over again. "I think I'd like to talk to my lawyer."

"Tell you what," I said as nicely as I could. "Why don't you and your lawyer come down to SVU tomorrow morning and we can get this all sorted out."

"No, no," he insisted. "Give me two minutes, and I'll come with you." He went back down the hall to his bedroom, and reemerged with his coat and the woman who had answered his door.

"Let's go," he told us icily.

"You're not going to call your lawyer?"

"That would be me," the woman replied.

"I told you, my client's not going to answer anymore questions," Meredith Eaton, Chris's wife and lawyer repeated.

Fin sat down across from her. "You really want to let him get off on this?"

"He's not getting off on anything if he didn't commit any crime to begin with. And I have yet to see any proof that he did."

"Do you know what your husband's done in the past?" he asked her. He opened the file while Chris remained slumped in his chair. "Have you seen his criminal record?"

"Involuntary manslaughter, Detective. I don't condone it, but he served his time."

"I'm not talking about the manslaughter."

"Really? What other crimes has he been convicted of?"

"You're wasting your breath," Chris muttered.

Fin shook his head and opened the file. He pulled out three pictures. "See her? This is Alyssa Johnson. She was the girlfriend of the man your husband killed. They got into a bar fight when he wouldn't leave her alone." He laid a second picture down. "This is Maggie Arnold. Your husband was accused of raping her, when she was threatened by her attacker and dropped the complaint." He lay down the third picture. "This Norah Gibbard. She also accused your husband of rape and also dropped the complaint when she was threatened. Are you starting to see a pattern here?" He pulled one final picture of Christine. "And this is Christine Webber. She was raped Monday night and your husband's fingerprints just happened to show up at the crime scene. Now I'm going to take a guess and say that if we pulled out your law school yearbook we would find your picture similar enough to all three of these girls that you could all be mistaken for one another. So you make a decision now." He was starting to get annoyed, raising his voice. "Are you going to sit here and defend this asshole and hope that he's grown out of this by the time the baby in your belly starts to look like you, or are you going to stop him?"

Her mouth fell open. I glanced up at him, surprised. Chris's eyes went so wide I wondered whether they would close again. I heard a knock at the door, and I knew Cragen was standing there, less than impressed. Fin held Meredith's gaze, ignoring the knocking.

"Don't look so surprised, you haven't taken your hand off of your stomach since you came in here. Of course we could tell."

She stared at him, then at Chris, and then when I expected her to start defending him, her face cracked. "I can't do this now." She stood up and swiftly walked out of the room. Chris looked up and glared at Fin.

"I didn't rape anyone. I love my wife."

"Of course you do. Now just tell us who saw you Monday night and we'll leave you alone."

"I told you. No one. I was at work."

I sat down. "Then we've got a problem, Chris."

Elliot

"We appreciate you coming down here like this," I said to Rick, placing a mug of coffee in front of him. "We just have some more questions we could use your help with."

"Anything I can do." He took a sip of his coffee and looked down. "Have you, uh, have you seen Christine?"

I nodded. "Why?"

"I was just wondering how she's doing."

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" Liv asked, leaning in towards him.

He shook his head. "I don't want to upset her."

I didn't press any further. "You said you left your jacket at the pub on Monday night and went back when she was attacked, right?"

"Yeah."

"You sure about that?"

"Of course."

"Well, we went back to the bar, and we can't find any security footage of you going back or anyone who saw you."

"I. . . don't know what to tell you about that."

"Do you know a man named Chris Eaton?" Liv asked casually?

Rick's jaw tightened. "Yeah. What does he have to do with this?"

"His name just came up in the investigation. How do you know him?"

"I worked for him during the summer."

"Doing what?"

"Construction. It's not exactly helping with my degree but it pays the bills."

"Yeah, we noticed you're having some trouble with that," she said, pulling out his financial records.

He looked at them. "What does this have to do with anything?"

"Chris," she said softly, kindly. Deceptively. "If you worked for him in the summer, why did he pay you ten thousand dollars earlier this week?"

His face went blank. "What?"

"We know you deposited a check from him."

"Yeah, but what does this have to do with anything?"

"Can you answer the question?" I asked him.

"It was back payment for what he owed me from the summer. He went into debt, couldn't pay me on time. What's going on?"

"Do you know what he would be doing at the university?"

"No, why?"

"Well, we found his fingerprints at the crime scene, and you're the only common thread."

"What are you saying?" he asked slowly.

"You're a smart guy Rick. You're in criminology. You know that if you set up for Christine to get raped, you're just as guilty as he is."

"What?!" He went silent for a minute. "No. No way. No. I didn't do anything like that."

"If you tell us now, we can try and go easy on you," Liv said in that same voice. "You're in over your head. I know that can make you do crazy things-"

"No!" he said loudly, banging his fist against the table. He took a couple of deep breaths. "You've got it all wrong."

"Then explain it to us."

He sighed. "Christine doesn't like to depend on people. She doesn't like making attachments. I'm the closest she allows to her. And I know that it wouldn't be fair to her to try and change that."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Look, I fell for her, hard. I didn't mean to, I just kind of looked up and it happened. And I didn't want to act on it, but I had been drinking and I knew that . . . I forgot my jacket on purpose."

"Why?"

"Because I would have walked her home, and if I had done that, I would have walked her in. And if I had walked her in, I would have kissed her. And I didn't want to do it. Okay? God, do you have any idea how sick it makes me to know that this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't done this? Do you have any idea how guilty I feel about this? What happened is my fault, I get that. But I didn't set her up, and I sure as hell didn't attack her."

"Did Eaton give anything up?" I asked Fin.

"Nothing. He offered a DNA sample though. What about Rick?"

I shook my head. "He's not going anywhere."

"You still think he's involved?" Liv asked.

I shrugged. "No." I looked at my watch and sighed. "Look, why don't we call it a night and see if we can get somewhere on Monday."

We all agreed, and started to gather our things for the weekend. I knew what I had to do, no matter how much I didn't want to. I went over to Liv at her locker, with my heart pounding.

"Liv," I said softly.

She looked up at me with those big brown eyes. "What?"

"Can we go somewhere and talk?"

"El-" she began, then faltered. She slammed her door and pursed her lips. "Okay."

Fin

"Remind me again why I offered to drive you home?" I asked, annoyed that after two hours at the bar, Munch announced that he had forgotten his keys and had to go back to the precinct.

"Because it's Friday night and you don't have a date."

"How do you know that?"

He lowered his glasses and smirked. "Because you offered to drive me home."

"Just hurry up. I don't want to get stuck here all night." We were halfway to the door when we ran straight into Cragen.

"Don't you ever leave?" Munch asked.

"Maybe next year. I'd glad you're here thought." I glared at Munch. "I just got a call from Dr. MacDonald at Mercy hospital. He remembered Christine from the other night."

"Okay. What does that have to do with us."

"She's in the ER after supposedly falling on the ice."

"And he doesn't believe her?"

"He thinks she's been attacked again." He handed me a paper with the contact information. "Go."