Back at the precinct, Olivia was trying her hardest to write up her notes. She got to the description and faltered. Elliot, seeing her expression, flipped through his notebook for the right page before handing it over. A mumbled 'thanks' was all he got in return when she gave it back.
"What's the word on the street?" John came up behind Elliot and tapped the notepad in front of him, getting his attention.
"We got a lot out of her, actually. She's not sure where it happened, though. She wasn't familiar with the area but we do have a description. Found out the mystery surrounding the blindfold. The reason for using one is because the perp doesn't want to be seen. Sometimes he'll use violence because he doesn't want to go down for it; he'll do the job and off her. Other times, he'll be more than happy getting his jollies off and scram, just using a blindfold. I'm just talking from my own experience and the cases we've seen. The guy we're dealing with was a little of the last. He got what he wanted.
"The guy pulled out a blindfold, set it on the ground, probably realized he couldn't hold her down and tie it and just did the job. That solves that, at least. Couple more things. I checked out the other files and there wasn't anything tying the rapes to this guy. Also, the girl we spoke to today, she didn't have any signature marks. We're dealing with more than one person. One guy does it from the front. He doesn't care to use a blindfold. Different situation now." He flipped through the pages of his notes and glanced up at Olivia. She had been silent while he'd gone over his notes.
"So more than one person. Didn't tell me earlier she was pregnant? So, the rape happened a few months ago. The so-called signature guy isn't a factor here, but those have yet to be solved. So, I say deal with this one and nail this guy. We got a break on the porn ring. Girlfriend squealed like a little girl when we put the pressure on her. Gave up a list of names. Guy and all his cohorts are going down." He licked his finger and made a tick mark in the air.
"Nice. One more sick bastard off the streets. I think we'll be busy with this one for a while. What ever happened to opened, closed?" He leaned back in his chair and stretched his tired muscles. He winced when he heard his back pop.
"We're finally caught up. Fin and I can take the signature rapist and talk to the victim again and the other two that came forward. If we see it has anything to do with your guy, we'll let you know. You focus on this girl. She seems to have the most information in all this mess." John held up the notepad with a questioning look, and seeing Elliot nod, went to make copies.
"Do you have a map in your drawer, Liv?" He saw her look up before rifling through the contents of her desk. Moments later, she finally pulled out the requested item.
"Thanks. I want to check out the school and get a feel of the neighborhood. Maybe get a phone book of that area and look for a cleaning, slash uniform company. Maybe we can narrow down where it happened." He stopped talking when Munch returned with his notepad.
"Alright, we're out. Fin's still dealing with the power company. Gotta' love it." John walked off, leaving a silent Elliot and Olivia.
"How's your head?" Elliot peered over the map he was holding up.
"Okay. Hurts a little from trying to read your notes, though. Your chicken scratch has little to be desired, Elliot." She shook her head in mock irritation.
"Yeah, well, I keep thinking one day it'll get to be so bad Captain will relieve me of all the paperwork. I should just use a tape recorder and pay someone to transcribe them." He squinted, trying to read a street name, and jotted down the surrounding streets of the college.
"Oh…uh…yeah." Olivia cleared her throat and left Elliot hanging. The joke had fallen short. She didn't miss his frown. She shrugged it off and continued to compare the two notes, filling in the portion of the interview she'd missed. She willed herself to focus, thinking that if she could just keep it together for the time being, it would be okay.
ooo
"You've been staring at your notes for ten minutes, Liv. Where's your mind at?" He cringed at the way the question sounded.
"Huh? I'm working." She shook her head and picked up the pen that had fallen out of her grasp.
"Uh huh. Well, take a break. I've narrowed down a search field." He pushed away from his desk and went to the board, hearing the soft padding of her shoes behind him. She appeared at his side, notepad in hand.
"Was it in Washington Square? Didn't she say she went to NYU?" She scanned her notes for the right page.
"Yeah. She's a junior. I got to thinking, though, if she's a junior and she'd been going there for three years, why wouldn't she know the name of the street? Why wouldn't she know the area?" He picked up a yellow tack and placed it over the street.
"Maybe she was a transfer. A lot of people transfer and take summer classes so they can get familiar with the campus before the fall." She wondered what the significance of the dot was.
"A possibility. Either that, or she's hiding something. Maybe she doesn't go there at all." He didn't like the idea. He'd already spent two hours looking up the neighborhood and cross-checking all of the Laundromats in that area. Not to mention all of his calls to various departments in the school. No one would be available for questioning until the morning.
"Did you pull her records? Why would she lie?" She scanned her notes, trying to find a reason for this latest piece of information.
"That, I don't know. I got the run-around. I'll call first thing in the morning. If she isn't a student there, we'll be back to question her to get some real answers." He placed a red tack on the map and studied it before nodding.
"That's the street? MacDougal? What's the other one?" She pointed to the recently-placed tack.
"Where I think it happened, if it did at all. It's not a uniform place, just your everyday laundry facility. I gave them a call. No one noticed anything out of the ordinary. The truck could have been just parked there. A lot of this is riding on our assumption that she's a student there. It's too late to call the hospital right now and I don't want to spook her into running." He sat down on the edge of the closest desk and stared at the board. Two dots. That's all they had to go with.
"So we call the school, find out if she's a student there. If she is, we check around and see if anyone knows anything. Maybe show her picture around the site of the rape. In the middle of the day, someone could have seen something. Maybe they don't know it. The only thing that bothers me here is we should know more by now. We're acting like she's the perp in all this." She closed her notebook and capped the pen.
"I know. That's why I'm going home to get some sleep before I go up there tomorrow morning. The sooner we find out, the sooner we can move forward. What are you working on?" He pointed to her notebook.
"I used a different form of research. I googled her name. Three pages of hits. Most of them were from local newspapers in the arts section. She was a thespian; had a part in most of the school's plays. I pulled up a blog of hers. It hasn't been updated in months. No sign of a boyfriend. She talked a lot about getting ready for school and leaving her job to concentrate on her studies. Doesn't say what she was studying, though." She sat beside him on the desk and placed her hands in her lap.
"Thespian. Actress. Interesting." He thought for a moment, trying to organize his thoughts.
"Are you saying she faked it? She may not have had many details, but she was there." She felt herself growing more defensive.
"How do we know she was? Maybe this is some way of getting attention. Maybe she got knocked up, guy left, and she wants him to pay." He saw her angry glare.
"She was raped, Elliot, and you're going to tell me she's lying? Did you see her? She was torn up about this. She was a wreck." She shook her head, unable to believe what he was thinking.
"You had to rely on my notes to fill in the gaps of what she said in there. Don't sit there and tell me what to think, because your head wasn't in the game. Mine was, Olivia. What's this all about, anyway?" He got up and crossed his arms.
"It's about finding the truth and not dragging down some poor woman in the process, before we know anything, Elliot!" She threw up her hands and went to her desk.
"I don't like it, either. I don't want to be right, but she's playing us. If you're not going to tell me what's going on, then tomorrow we can do our own thing. You won't listen to reason when you get like this. It's like talking to a damn wall." He followed her, all the while ranting.
"Maybe that's best. I'll look for the real answers. You chase your own theories of what you think went down." She yanked open her drawer and got her purse out. As she turned to leave, Elliot's hand caught her arm.
"Don't you see what's happening? You're dragging yourself into the ground. Look at yourself, damn it! Do you honestly think you're in any kind of condition to be thinking clearly?" He made a sweeping motion with his hand.
"I'm not discussing this with you. Goodbye, Elliot." She tried to pull her arm out of his grasp, but his fingers tightened their grip before letting go.
"Fine. Don't discuss it. Bury it like you always do. Drive it deep down along with the rest of it. We both know what that is. Just say it, Olivia. She reminds you of your mother. You're not being objective. You're lucky you're still on the case." Spit flew with every angry word. He was letting his emotions get the best of him.
"You son of a bitch. Don't you dare tell me how I feel because you have no idea." She wanted to leave, but her feet were lead and she didn't have the energy to pick them up. She dropped her head, sighing. She didn't know where she'd go, anyway.
"No, I don't, because you never tell me anything. You ask me why I don't come to you with my problems, then you turn around and get eaten away by yours. It doesn't work that way. It's give and take, fifty-fifty. Talk to me, Olivia." His words were a whisper now, all the anger having left at the sight of her looking so defeated.
"I just feel like I'm losing at this. I'm trying to keep everything squared away. I'm trying to make sure it's all dealt with so that I can do my job but I don't know how much longer I can do that. I don't know how much more I have to give to these people. I can't remember the last time I slept more than a few hours. I can't even think of a day where I had more than one meal. Real food. I used to be able to handle it. I can't anymore, and I don't know what to do. I hate that I'm failing at this. At everything I've tried to do to not let it affect me." She heard his calm, deep breaths. It was soothing to her ears. The click of his shoes told her he was approaching closer. The hand on her arm returned and pulled her into a hug. A hug she so desperately needed.
"I know it's hard. I've watched you struggle with this. These cases, they're going to affect you. The kids get to me. We don't have to lose, though. What happened to your mother happened to your mother. Olivia, it happens to other people, but sometimes we get so caught up in wanting to see the good in everyone that we don't see what's in front of us. The reality. Come with me tomorrow to check out the school. She's a junior, she's bound to have a lot of classmates. I could use your help." He hoped beyond hope that the victim was a student there, because if she wasn't, he was afraid Olivia would lose that one, remaining spark. The ember that kept her going, that kept her alive. She was wasting away, and he hadn't done a thing to stop it until then.
Ooo
Olivia walked around, staring at the various collegiate propaganda. She studied one in particular. It was of a young woman behind the counter of what appeared to be a Burger King. The scene was changed a bit, but not enough to where the casual observer couldn't tell where the person worked. Next to the young man was a young woman working in an office cubicle, smiling away. If only life was that cut and dry. For some people, the decision to go to college would be an easy one. Some people didn't know the harshness of the world around them. The real world was cold and unforgiving. She knew that firsthand.
"Miss Benson? Right this way." Her high heels clicked on the polished floor at a fast pace, making it clear that she had other things to do than talk to the police.
"Thank you for seeing us. My partner will be here shortly." She looked at the door and saw Elliot jogging to catch up.
"My receptionist told me you were looking for some information on a student. You're aware that I cannot give out personal information without consent." She rattled off the memorized legal procedure as if the two detectives didn't already know.
"We are well aware of that, Miss….Butler. We just want to verify that this person is a student here. We'll take it from there. Here's the name." Olivia slid a piece of paper across the desk. She watched the woman read the name. Something about the way the lady took a second look caught her eye. She made a mental note and shrugged it off.
"Alright, just one second. What's this about, anyway?" She typed in the name and looked over the screen at the detectives while the computer worked.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot give out details about the case." Elliot wiped the smirk off his face after having given the lady her own line. She wasn't amused. She scowled and went back to the screen.
"Right. Well, it looks she attends classes here." She stared at Elliot, eyes stone cold.
"Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot here. This is a very important matter, one which requires us to barge into people's offices at inconvenient times. Give out as much as you can, and we'll be out of your hair. Do me this one favor." Olivia had grown tired waiting for anything to happen.
"I'm sorry. I apologize for my behavior. It's just…I thought I recognized the name. I was thinking of someone else. It threw me off and my boss has been onto me about a lot lately. I didn't mean to take it out on you. I understand this is a serious matter. I don't know I can be of help, but please call me if you need anything. To answer your question, she does attend classes here. She's a Computer Science major." She folded her hands on the desktop and looked back at the detectives.
"Computer Science? Can you tell us where the building is?" She watched the lady take out a map and circle the proper location before handing it over.
"Is she in some sort of trouble?" She never got the division the detectives were from. She was hoping it involved a robbery of some sort.
"I'm sorry, ma'am but we really can't give specifics, other than that we are handling her case. If you come across anything, please call." Olivia got out a business card and handed it over to the woman.
"I will. I'm sorry, detectives. I hope you can forgive me. My husband was a detective. He would be so upset with me if he knew how I treated you." Her eyes grew misty at the thought.
"Why don't we just chalk it up to having a bad day? I've had enough of those to last me a lifetime. This was tame. Usually I'm a bear when I'm cranky." Elliot smiled, letting her know all was well.
"I didn't catch your name, sir." He reminded her of her late husband. He was always so tough on the outside but his heart was in everything he did.
"Stabler. Elliot Stabler. It was nice meeting you." Elliot shook her hand and ushered Olivia out the door.
"So, Lisa Parker is a Computer Science major. Why doesn't that sit right for me?" She recalled the lady's reaction and her statement later on.
"Ah, I don't know. How many thespian, turned computer geeks do you know? I don't know any." Elliot jingled his keys trying to find the right one.
"Not a one. Did you see her face when she saw the name? It was like she knew Lisa Parker, or someone whom she thought was her." Olivia held up the map and righted it so she could find the building.
"Maybe. Could be. You know what? Let's walk." He shoved his keys back in his pocket and jerked his head toward the sidewalk.
"Sure, why not? Did you get everything taken care of this morning?" She didn't want it to come out as an accusation.
"Yeah, thanks. One of the girls needed money for school books. I had drop off a check. I'm so glad they're not the same age. I have a little gap between my older kids. They don't all need the same things at once. I think I'd go broke." Elliot chuckled and slowed his pace when Olivia stopped. He looked behind him in confusion.
"Two of them. Twins. Elliot, Lisa Parker is a twin. Remember what Miss Butler said about how she thought it was someone else? That, along with the reaction…I bet Lisa Parker has a twin. I think this just got a whole lot more interesting." Olivia walked up to meet Elliot and snapped her fingers. Maybe they were onto something.