Grace: Part 3

By the time Munch and Fin arrived back at the House Cragen and Elliot had put everything they knew so far up on the board and Olivia was filing the sixty-one. Munch put a box of sandwiches on Stabler's desk, 'Lunch's up.'

'What did you get from the caller and cab driver?' Elliot asked without preamble, twisting the board marker in his hands. Despite telling Benson that there had been nothing else they could do to help Grace, all the things that had bothered him back then still bothered him: Why hadn't anyone been looking for this girl? Where were her parents? What had happened to her baby?

What had she been through?

She was the same age as Maureen and she'd had no one. Why hadn't he checked in on her every once in a while? And now here she was again. He was almost as pissed at himself as Olivia.

Fin looked to Cragen who in turn looked at the board, where there were half a dozen pictures of their victim. Her almost black hair fell in limp waves to her shoulders, framing a too-pale face where the purpling bruises didn't mottle her complexion. One eye was almost swollen shut while the other was as large and brown as a startled deer's. There was also bruising on her neck, upper arms, thighs and back; grazes on her knees and stomach and bite-marks to her shoulders.

Munch wandered closer to the pictures, concentrating on the face. 'Isn't that-?'

'Grace Harringdon,' said Stabler. 'And, yes, she is the girl they fished out of the river ten years ago.'

'But can we focus on the here and now, please,' said Cragen when Munch opened his mouth to question further.

'Sure thing, captain,' he nodded and Stabler admired his ability to compartmentalise. 'Mrs Waterman, the woman who called it in, heard a woman screaming "sometime after one"; she looks out her window and sees three guys beating up a fourth-'

'Kevin Green,' supplied Olivia.

'-and a girl passed out on the sidewalk - Grace Harringdon. So she calls the cops and while she's waiting for them to arrive she sees two of them pick up the girl and bundle her into the trunk of a white car before heading north on Nth street.'

'Did she get the license plate?' asked Cragen, stepping out of the way as Munch stuck a tack into the map where Grace and Kevin had been attacked.

'No such luck,' said Fin. 'And she was up on the 4th floor so she didn't get a good look at them either.'

'What about the cab-driver?'

'Couldn't tell us much: he was driving down M street when he saw our victim in the middle of the road, here,' said Munch, sticking another pin in the map, seven blocks away from the last, 'coming from this direction.'

'Okay, Grace said they took her to an underpass or something, she remembers seeing lots of concrete - is there anything like that near there?' said Olivia.

'Yeah, looks like she could have been in this area,' said Munch, pointing to an area of crossroads.

'Good,' said Cragen. 'You and Fin go check it out, call in CSU if you find anything,' he ordered. They both grabbed a sandwich to go and left again.

'Captain, I think we should canvas the businesses on this street,' suggested Elliot, pointing to the map. 'With any luck one will have had a camera with at least a partial view of the road. We might be able to get a plate number.'

'Do it,' agreed Cragen, watching them pull on their coats and disappear out the door before picking up Grace's old file from Olivia's desk and taking it back to his office to work on.

Benson and Stabler had gotten lucky at a small convenience store which had put up several cameras after being robbed for a fourth time, including one focussed on the street. They just hoped their perp's car hadn't taken an alternative route to reach the underpass.

Stabler looked across at his partner, who had been unusually pensive since they'd left the station. 'You alright?' he asked.

'I'm fine,' Olivia answered, gazing out of the passenger window. While she didn't sound angry, neither did she sound particularly disposed to speak to him.

'Listen, you were right,' he said, sighing. 'I should have checked up on her.'

'Yeah, you should,' she agreed, looking at him.

He shrugged, 'You know what it's like: you run into a wall and other cases start taking precedent.'

Olivia's demeanor softened. 'I just can't help wondering what happened to her before she got to that bridge. What was a teenage mother doing with tranquilisers in her system?'

'Maybe she used it during labour, to ease the pain,' suggested Elliot, glad that she was talking to him again. 'She didn't have it in hospital, we checked, and if she was living on the streets it wouldn't be hard to get hold of.'

'If she was living on the streets?'

'Well you'd think people would remember seeing a heavily pregnant girl in the shelters, and we had uniforms canvassing all of them, but nothing.'

'You think she was staying with someone? Still at home?'

'Which might explain why she was never reported missing. What if the baby didn't make it and whoever was with her panics, goes out to get rid of the evidence and when he gets back the girl is gone?' he theorised.

'Maybe now Grace will be able to tell us the answers herself,' said Olivia, unbuckling her seatbelt as they pulled up to the station.

'Hopefully we've got something here,' said Elliot, grabbing the security DVDs off the back seat.

Olivia looked at her watch, 'We should have time to go through them before we go back to finish questioning Grace.'

'There!' said Olivia, sitting up excitedly only to slump back again a moment later. Just another yellow cab, difficult to distinguish from the white in the yellow lamplight.

Elliot sat with his chin on his palm, intent on the image as it began to move again.

'Anything yet?' asked Cragen, seeming to materialise out of thin air behind them.

'Not yet. What about Fin and Munch? They got anything?' asked Elliot.

'They think they might have found the crime scene, they found a woman's purse. CSU are there now. See if Miss Harringdon can identify it.'

'We were going to go back to the hospital once we finish here,' nodded Olivia, sitting up again as Elliot paused the video on a white four-door car. 'See the door? Can you get the number plate?'

'Hang on a sec,' said Elliot, jabbing the remote so that the video jumped back a couple of frames. 'What is that? H - W - C …'

'1 - E - F,' finished Olivia, jotting it down triumphantly.

'Gotcha now, you sons of bitches. I'll check it out,' said Elliot, plucking the piece of paper out of Olivia's hand.

'Good work,' said Cragen, as Olivia set the tape in motion again, just in case there was more than one crappy white four-door cruising down Z Street at one-thirty in the morning.

'I hope so,' she said, slowing it down to half speed.

AN: Sorry, I know this is shoddy, shoddy work but I'm having trouble writing at all at the moment. But we must keep endeavouring, mustn't we? Thanks for reading, please review, help me get my mojo back!

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