A/N: Wow. I'm incredibly surprised at the response for this story. To be honest, I wasn't expecting many reviews, but ya'll have completely blown away all my expectations. You're all amazing. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. This wouldn't be what it is without you guys. Hope you guys like this chapter too. I love writing interrogation scenes. I hope it's somewhat realistic. Enjoy!

Chapter 6

Precinct 16
Saturday, April 21

"Shit, shit, shit," Elliot muttered to himself as he watched Adolphus through the one-way. The smug bastard lounged in the hard wooden chair, just staring at his reflection in the mirror. He seemed awfully cool for someone who was about to replicate the Oklahoma City bombing.

He checked his watch. It was a little after three in the morning. They didn't even know how much time they had left, where the bomb was, where it could even possibly be. They would have to break him down. And Elliot could tell that would not be an easy task.

A knock sounded at the door, and he turned to see Cragen, Casey, and Huang file into the observation room. "Liv, Munch, and Fin are retracing his steps and TARU's going through his computer," Cragen updated him, sighing tiredly.

"Any luck on getting a hold of the Argentinean embassy?"

Casey nodded. "There's no record of a Joseph Adolphus from Buenos Aires. The Argentineans believe that he's using an assumed identity."

"We already knew that!" Elliot's voice rose a couple of decibels.

"I had his fingerprints faxed to our embassy in Buenos Aires," she replied calmly. "If he's out there, they'll find him."

"In the meantime, we have to break him," Cragen interjected. "Unless we get a break from his computer or the papers he kept in his office, people are going to die."

Elliot nodded. "Great. So what do I need to know?"

"He's a narcissist," Huang said thoughtfully. "He believes that his race is better than every other race on the planet, particularly the Jews, and he certainly believes that he's smarter than the police. He was raised to hate by some authority figure he admires, and his aim is to please that authority figure. He'll ignore any laws or rules to do just that. You need to play to that."

"Right." Elliot nodded again and moved toward the door. "Got it."

"One more thing. I think Casey should be in there for the interview."

A stunned silence settled over the group. Casey and Elliot stared at Huang, wide-eyed.

"Me?" Casey asked, incredulous.

"No." Elliot shook his head and glared at the diminutive psychiatrist. "Absolutely not."

"Casey fits his ideal of the perfect Aryan woman. Blonde, thin, blue-eyed."

"Well, I'm sure she appreciates the compliment, but she's not going in there with that homicidal Nazi maniac."

"If she's asking him questions, he's more likely to open up."

"It's not gonna happen, Doc!"

"Elliot!" Casey's sudden shout startled both men, and they simultaneously turned their heads to stare at her. Her hands were on her hips and her eyes blazed. "Can I talk to you a minute? In private?"

Elliot shot one more glare in Huang's direction as Huang and Cragen stepped out into the squad room. As soon as the door shut behind them, he trained his patented glare on Casey. "There's no way in hell you're –"

"Will you shut up and listen to me for just one minute?"

His mouth shut with a snap. Elliot knew better than to argue with her when she was like that.

"I appreciate your concern for me, but you don't need to coddle me. I can take care of myself."

"I don't doubt that, but –"

"Let me finish. If me being in that interrogation room is going to help save lives and get justice for those kids, then nothing you say is going to stop me."

Elliot sighed resignedly and reached for her hand, knowing intuitively that there was no way she'd give up on this one. As he brushed against her skin, the fury in her eyes abated just a little. "I just don't trust him."

"I don't either. And that's why you're going to be in there with me. But we can't blow this." She reached up and softly touched his cheek, his early-morning stubble tickling her skin. "You have to control yourself."

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close to him. "I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you."

"Elliot, we're in the station. Nothing's going to happen."

"I know." Elliot leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. It took all his willpower not to deepen the kiss, but they were in the station and they had to be careful. He pulled back after just a couple of seconds and looked at Casey. "Bring 'em back in?"

Casey nodded and smiled. "Sure."

TARU Lab
One Police Plaza
Saturday, April 21

"I finally managed to break the encryption on his computer. Pretty sophisticated stuff." TARU tech Ruben Morales slid his chair across his small lab to the laptop sitting innocently on one of the many desks.

"Find anything?" Fin asked, folding his arms across his chest.

"I've gone through everything, including internet searches. Your guy has a penchant for Italian food."

Munch glared over his dark glasses at Morales. "And that's supposed to help us how?"

"You didn't let me finish. In the past two days, he's done several searches for synagogues in the Brooklyn and Queens boroughs."

Fin sighed. "There's got to be a couple hundred of those. Any way to narrow that down?"

"That is narrowed down."

"Damn."

Munch ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. "Adolphus was gone when we got there. He must've left to plant the bomb."

"BQE at that time of day? No way he got a cabbie during rush hour."

"Which means that whatever synagogue he planted it at was within walking distance from his apartment."

Morales handed Munch a piece of paper. "These are the twenty synagogues within walking distance from Adolphus's apartment."

Fin grinned at his partner. "Your skinny ol' legs gonna hold up for some walkin', partner?"

Interrogation Room
Precinct 16
Saturday, April 21

Adolphus smiled wolfishly as Elliot held the interrogation room door open for Casey. "You're too beautiful to be a cop," he said, leering at her as she pulled out the chair across from him.

"I'm not one."

"This is Assistant District Attorney Novak," Elliot said, leaning against the wall.

The other man's eyebrows went up. "An attorney. Intelligence and beauty."

"And she'll be prosecuting you for two counts of murder." Elliot folded his arms and stared at the dark-haired Argentine. "Ballistics matched your rifle to the murder weapon."

The Argentine never took his eyes off Casey. "Why don't we just send him out of here and get to know each other better? You and I could make some beautiful babies. Blonde hair, blue eyes. The perfect children."

Enraged, Elliot took one menacing step toward Adolphus, but a glare from Casey stopped him dead in his tracks.

Adolphus's gaze flicked back and forth between the attorney and the detective, and a slow smirk spread across his face. "Oh, I see. You're lovers, right?"

Casey paused a moment and took a deep breath. "Mr. Adolphus, or whatever your real name is, I'm going to give you this one-time offer. You tell us where you hid the bomb and your true identity, and I'll give you the possibility of parole in twenty-five years."

"Now where would be the fun in that, Fraulein Novak?"

"So this is a game to you?" Elliot moved off the wall and pulled out the chair at the end of the table, sitting down in it backward. "Killing children is a game?"

"War is a game, Detective. I see that Marine tattoo on your forearm. You know exactly what I talk about. It's all about the thrill of the hunt, lining up that final shot, lightly squeezing the trigger. And then playing with the other side. I have you two running around in circles trying to find out who I really am, trying to figure out how many Jews I will kill with a little ammonium nitrate and fuel oil."

"Maybe we don't know what your real identity is." Elliot opened his manila folder and tossed a picture on the table. It was the picture of the SS officer from his apartment. "But I'll bet my pension it has something to do with that."

The other man's blue eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing.

"You know, I learned a very interesting history lesson working this case," the detective continued. "Apparently, after World War II, several hundred Nazis escaped from Germany to South America with the help of – help me out here, Casey."

"Juan and Eva Peron."

"Right. Some of the worst of these bastards made it over there, too."

Casey nodded. "Josef Mengele, the Butcher of Auschwitz, and Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust." Suddenly, she raised her eyebrows at the silent suspect. "Joseph Adolphus?"

He still said nothing.

"Clever choice of a name," Elliot said with a grin. "Combining the first names of two of the biggest mass murderers in history." He tapped the picture with one thick finger. "I'm guessing this guy is, what, your grandfather? You're too young for him to be your father."

"Trained in hate." Casey shook her head. "You never had a chance, did you? Your grandfather probably told you all kinds of lies, about how the Holocaust never really happened. Probably told you Mengele, Eichmann, Himmler, and Hitler were all great humanitarians. All to cover up his own war crimes and his own blind bigotry."

"No!"

His shout startled both Casey and Elliot, and they stared at the fuming Argentine.

"My grandfather was a great man. He was a patriot, and he would've died defending his race against a bunch of Christ-killers and Jew-supporters!" Adolphus pointed angrily at them, his face livid. "He taught me the truth!"

"Did he teach you how to shoot a rifle like that?" Elliot asked, looking at Casey out of the corner of his eye.

"He taught my father, and my father taught me. My grandfather worked directly for the Fuhrer himself. He was a member of the SS by the time he was eighteen. He was an expert marksman."

"And he taught you how to build a bomb, too."

Adolphus sneered. "I didn't need his help for that. You Americans are so stupid. Allowing plans for bombs to be put on the internet for anyone to see."

"So where is it?" Elliot leaned forward in his chair, praying he would give it up. "We will find it. And we will find out who you really are."

"I'll even drop the hate-crime amplification on your sentence if you tell us where you hid the bomb," Casey added.

"No." Adolphus shook his head and smirked at them. "No way in hell. I am just the beginning. Once others see what I've done, once others understand that what I am doing is best for this world, they too will take up the war. We will wipe them off the face of this world – all those Jews and those that support them. I want my day in court."

Casey suppressed a shudder as the man leaned forward in his chair and stared right into her eyes. His blue orbs were cold, hard, unfeeling. He was pure evil.

"Now get me a lawyer."

Olivia looked up from her paperwork as Elliot and Casey trudged back into the squad room. "Any luck?"

Elliot shook his head and sank into his chair with a sigh. "He lawyered up."

"Good news is I should be able to convict him with no problem on the school shooting." Casey leaned against Munch's desk and ran a hand through her strawberry-blonde hair. "Heard anything from John and Fin?"

The brunette shook her head and sighed. "Nothing. They're checking the twenty or so synagogues within walking distance from Adolphus's apartment."

"Anything from the embassy in Buenos Aires?"

Olivia stood up and grabbed a sheet of paper off her desk. "They faxed me a picture," she said as she handed it to Casey. Elliot moved closer to the attorney to peer over their shoulder at the black-and-white, grainy photograph.

"It was taken in 1947 after a cargo ship from Spain docked in Buenos Aires," Olivia continued. "Only, according to our embassy down there, this ship carried twenty passengers from Europe. Now, somehow the embassy managed to get the old shipping logs from the Argentinean government."

"Probably told them hiding more Nazis wouldn't do much for their reputation in the modern world," Elliot said, glancing up at his partner.

"They already came under fire a couple of years ago for refusing to release their documentation on the Nazi relocation," Casey added, folding her arms across her chest. "They probably figured that it would be best to give it to us and avoid international embarrassment."

"Anyway, everyone that got off that ship was photographed for Argentinean immigration." Olivia grabbed another piece of paper from her desk. "This was attached to that photograph."

Elliot gently took the paper from his partner and silently skimmed it. "Johann Braun."

"That photo look familiar?"

He narrowed his eyes for a moment and studied the picture. The man's hard eyes glared back at him, unsmiling and nearly unfeeling. It looked like… Suddenly Elliot's jaw dropped, and he jerked his head up to stare wide-eyed at Olivia. "The SS officer from Adolphus's apartment."

Olivia nodded. "That was my reaction. The embassy told me that Braun was one of Hitler's rising stars at the end of his reign, a member of Hitler's personal bodyguard detail. He lived in Argentina under an assumed name for a while after the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, but then he went back to his German name when he lived on La Llena. He had one son, Erik, and one grandson, Wilhelm."

"And we have Wilhelm in Interrogation Room One." Casey shook her head and sighed tiredly. "At least I know what name to put on the indictment."

"The embassy will be faxing you the papers and particulars." Just then, Olivia's phone shrilled loudly, and she quickly snatched it off its hook. "Benson." She listened for a moment, and her eyes steadily widened. "We'll be right there." Hastily she replaced the receiver and grabbed her coat from the back of her desk chair.

"What's up?" Elliot asked.

"Munch and Fin found the bomb."

Kane Street Synagogue
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, April 21

The tires on Elliot's unmarked car screeched to a halt outside the Brooklyn synagogue. The bomb squad and several black-and-whites were already there, holding back the throng of curious onlookers that had already gathered there.

Fin and Munch jogged up to the sedan just as Elliot and Olivia stepped out of the car. "What happened?" Olivia asked as a couple of bomb squad officers dashed past them.

"The rabbi forgot something for his Sabbath service down in the basement," Fin answered, leading his colleagues toward the building. "Found the device attached to the water heater."

"Set to go off at nine this morning," Munch continued. "Exactly when the service was scheduled to start."

"Son of a bitch," Elliot muttered.

"These guys should be thanking their lucky stars," the bomb squad sergeant shouted at them as he walked toward the four detectives. The tired officer shrugged off his protective vest and helmet as he stopped in front of them. "There was enough ammonium nitrate in that little sucker to take out the entire block."

"Is it disarmed?"

"Yeah. Not an incredibly complex device. It was wired to a clock timer, which would've lit the fuse and blown the place to smithereens."

"Would it've taken expertise to build?" Munch asked.

"Let me put it this way, Detective. Even you could've put it together." The sergeant flashed a grin at them and walked off.

Olivia sighed and glanced at her partner. "Think we could convince Novak to add a hundred counts of attempted murder to the indictment?"

Elliot didn't answer. Instead, he pulled out his keys and dashed toward the car.

"Elliot?" Olivia called as Fin and Munch stared after him, dumbfounded. "Elliot!"

The car door slammed shut with a bang, and the engine roared to life. Elliot stomped on the accelerator and burned rubber, not even looking back at his stunned colleagues.

Precinct 16 Interrogation Room
Saturday, April 21

Wilhelm Braun, also known as Joseph Adolphus, looked up as the door to the interrogation room flew open. "Detective Stabler," he said with a smile as Elliot stalked into the room. "This is a strange place for you to be. The clock is still ticking."

"The only clock that's still ticking is the one on your life," Elliot growled.

Braun's eyebrows went up. "You found it." He leaned back in his chair and grinned. "Congratulations, Detective. I hope that means I'll be seeing your beautiful attorney again soon. You should call her. We can have a little… fun."

Elliot's thin hold on his self-control snapped. He flung the chair across the room and grabbed the front of Braun's shirt, hauling him up from his seat. "You son of a bitch," he hissed, his face livid. "You go near her, and I swear to God I'll kill you."

"Does she know you're like this, Detective? That you're a ticking time bomb?"

He chuckled mirthlessly and grabbed Braun's chin with his free hand. "You know somethin'? I wish New York still had the death penalty. So I could watch them stick that needle in your arm. I might be a ticking time bomb, but you're a coward."

His grip on Braun's shirt tightened, and his blue eyes blazed with a fury he'd never known. "A coward. You survive on hate for a people you know nothing about. You didn't have the guts to tell your grandfather that he was an irrational, murdering pig. You kill children from a thousand feet away." Elliot moved his face even closer to the smirking killer, so close that his nose was an inch from Braun's. "I'd take a time bomb over a piece of crap like you any day."

"Detective!"

Elliot turned his head to see Rebecca Balthus standing in the doorway, hands on her hips and a furious expression on her face.

"Something wrong here?" she asked in her usual sardonic tone.

"Not at all, Counselor," he replied. He gave Braun one last glare before he released his grip on the shirt.

"Good. If you don't mind, my client's invoked his right to remain silent."

Without so much as a glance back, Elliot walked toward the door and stopped right in front of the still-glaring attorney. "I hope you have something big in that bag of crap you pull, Balthus. Your client's gonna need it."