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Chapter 3

The first thing I do when I walk into the precinct is apologize to Fin. At least the squad room is empty besides the detective I'm looking for. This really doesn't have to be a public thing. The more people who know about it, the more people I have to explain this to.

"Hey, Fin," I say, attracting his attention. "Listen, I'm sorry about earlier. I don't know what came over to me; I really didn't mean to snap at you." I flash him what I hope is a convincing smile and lean heavier on my right leg. "See, I crashed my bike on my way to work. That's where I got the bruise from."

He shrugged. "No problem. Hey, we've got Saks in interrogation. His lawyer should be here any minute, and we're doing the line-up in half an hour. He says he wants to make a deal, but won't talk until his lawyer gets here."

A deal? Why the hell would I give him a deal? My speech echoes my thoughts. "No. No deals. He doesn't deserve one."

Fin looks at me oddly. "Well, none of our perps do, Case. But we don't have much evidence against him, you know that. If he gives us a good deal, then we might have to take it."

And, just like that, I snap again. "You telling me how to do my job, Detective?" I snap. "If you disagree with what I'm doing, perhaps you should have gone to law school."

I turn and storm away, but I don't get far enough away to be out of earshot before he mutters, "Damn, what crawled up your ass, Novak?"

His offhand comment turns my stomach, and I nearly vomit. I stumble, but manage to keep walking away as fast as possible. I head towards the interrogation rooms and enter observation, leaning back against the one-way mirror and closing my eyes.

I'm crying. Again. What's wrong with me? My friends Abbie and Serena have said worse things to me than that before; what he said shouldn't have reduced me to tears. It shouldn't have even made me flinch, and yet, I can hardly breathe. Did he really have to cut right to the heart of the problem?

No. That's not the problem! The problem is that he wants to give a rapist a deal that he doesn't deserve. That is the problem.

I turn around and look impassively at John Saks, sitting alone in the interrogation room. I stare into his dark eyes, and even though I know he can't see me, I feel like he's glaring right at me.

He's raped five women. And I don't want to talk to him- I don't want to be in the same room as him. And what happens when I prosecute him? When I'm questioning him on the stand and he's that close to me and he's telling me all about raping five women?

This is ridiculous. What happened last night should not be interfering in my life.

Once I've regained control of myself, I straighten my jacket and walk outside to see Fin and Cragen talking to… oh, what do you know. Trevor Langan.

I clear my throat. "Trevor."

He looks over at me and flashes me his overpriced smile. "Casey. You're just in time. I hope you're ready to reconsider charging my client?"

If Fin was able to annoy me today, who knows what Trevor Langan was capable of. Today is just getting worse and worse. "Go to hell, Langan."

Everyone looked at me in surprise. My dislike and rivalry with Langan is no secret, but I usually hide it better than this. Well, today I hate him a little more than usual, and I'm too tired to keep up with the usual charade.

"Temper, temper, Casey," he admonished with a small smile. "Well, what do you say? Shall we go see what my client has to say?"

"Whatever it is, I guarantee you it will not be enough for a deal," I snap, but head towards the interrogation room anyway. I don't exactly have a choice.

Trevor, Fin, and I enter the interrogation room, and Trevor immediately sits beside his client. "Detective Tutuola and ADA Novak are here to listen to what you have to say, John. I trust it will be enough to convince even stubborn Casey here to give you a deal."

Stubborn Casey? Oh, I'll show him stubborn. I can fight back like he wouldn't believe.

When I don't say anything, just glare at Trevor, John shrugs and starts talking. "Well, my friends are involved with some drug cartels. They're somewhat high on the food chain. If you arrested them, you could potentially shut a cartel down. In exchange, all I'm asking for is witness protection. My friends won't be too happy that I turn them in," he says with a small smile. He even winks at me.

It almost makes me laugh, really. Something as trivial as a drug dealer, compared to what he did? It's funny, actually. "Here's your deal, Saks. You turn in your drug dealer friends, and I charge you with five rapes."

My offer is posed so seriously and sincerely that I can feel Fin looking at me oddly, while John and Trevor just seem amused. It's the defense attorney who finally says, "Casey, you seem to misunderstand what a deal is. We give you something… you give us something. Quid pro quo!"

"Exere et mori, Trevor. Don't quote Latin to someone who knows it. And you aren't getting any deal. You raped five women."

"You have no evidence."

"I have your DNA!"

He just laughed, like this whole thing was simply a game to him. "Not one of them said no, you know. None of them told me stop. If it was rape, I think they would have said no, don't you?"

My response dies in my mouth, because he's right. I didn't say no. I tried to; I remember that. I tried to say no and to scream as loud as I could- but I hadn't been able to. He'd been sitting on my chest and I had barely been able to breathe; I literally hadn't had enough oxygen to scream.

What if I had said no? Would he have stopped?

No, it's not my fault! I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't ask for this. What he did to me... it was wrong, and unfair, and cruel, and… just… wrong. It's not my fault; he hadn't had the right to do that to me. It doesn't matter that I didn't tell him no. I had been fighting him with everything I had in me. It's not my fault. What he did was wrong.

And it bothers me that I have to keep convincing myself that.

The entire room is waiting for my response. I finally manage to stammer, my voice icy cold despite the fact that it's also shaky, "They couldn't scream. You wouldn't let them. You knew that they didn't want you but you did it anyway. It was wrong and I'm not going to let you get away with it."

All of them look at me strangely again. It's Trevor who speaks up. "Detective, it seems Casey here is a little involved in the case. Perhaps she should step outside and we can continue this discussion without her."

I'm fine. Nothing's wrong with me. I'm not going to let what happened last night affect me at work. "No!" I gasp, my pale hands clenching into fists as I lean forward desperately. "No! …I mean, no, there is no discussion.. I'm the ADA on this case and I say no deal."

I get up and stalk to the door. I know I'm not going to get far. I don't care; my only goal is to get as far away from that man as possible. Predictably, I've only made it a few steps outside the interrogation room before I hear Fin behind me. "Novak, what the hell is wrong with you? You know we don't have a case solid enough to risk this."

I turn around and glare at him. "So what? He doesn't deserve a deal. I'd rather try him as a rapist and lose than let him get off in exchange for a few drug dealers."

I start to turn away, but he grabs me by the elbow and starts, "Casey, listen, I don't know what's gotten in to you today. But if you can't look at this objectively, then maybe you should sit this one out."

I'm not listening. I'm too shocked and frightened. His hand is still on my arm, and, it's odd- I'm not frightened. But my skin burns where his hand is... it burns and prickles and it makes me nervous. It's almost unbearable until I rip my hand away from him and rub my wrist. The sudden movement hurts my shoulder and now, all I want to do is get out of here. "Fin, I'm fine. I'm taking him to court and I'm going to win. I don't care what kind of deal Langan offers you. Now, I have work to do. Call me if you need me."

I leave before he can stop me. I have to get out of here. It hurts- perhaps more physically than mentally, at this point- and I want to be alone.

When I finally stumble into my office- nearly four hours after I first found out I was locked out- I'm exhausted and just want to go to sleep. It takes me a minute to realize that I haven't really slept for almost two days. But I have work to do, so I will wait until tonight to give into to the thoughts of heavenly sleep and sweet dreams that keep working their way into my mind.

A deep sigh escapes my lips as I limp towards my desk, holding my injured arm against my chest. God. It certainly didn't hurt this much this morning. Holding back tears of pain, I grab the duffel bag out from under my desk and sift through it, searching for my scarf. Actually, it was a gift from my father. It wasn't much, just a thin piece of cloth one would wear to a fashion benefit or a gala- not exactly my kind of thing- but I kept it to remind me of home. It seems that today, it will serve two purposes. I wrap it around my wrist and turn it into a sort of a makeshift sling. I tie it tightly before leaning back in my seat and tucking a hand behind my head. My leg still hurts, but I don't really have a way to fix that, do I? Might as well get to work.

Ten minutes later, I've only managed to fill out a few lines because my leg is bothering me so much. I continued shifting my weight uncomfortably for a few more seconds before finally getting to my feet and making my way towards my couch. It takes a bit of maneuvering, but finally, my leg is draped over the arm of the couch, I'm leaning back against several pillows, and about as comfortable as possible. It still hurts, of course, but nowhere near as much as before.

Now, I'm finally settled in and can do some work. It's a little hard to write, as I'm right-handed and that's the shoulder I dislocated, but I manage. And, thankfully, I am undisturbed as I work. Which is good, because I have enough distractions as it is.

I can't stop thinking about what happened. It's not my fault; I know it's not. I tired to scream, I tried to yell, I tried to say no- I just didn't have the oxygen. I remember that.

It is not my fault. But it does bother me that I have to keep reaffirming that. I should know that, shouldn't I? After what I see everyday? I should know that it's not my fault without even having to say it.

Sighing in disgust, I drop my pen and lean my head back. How did this happen? How did I end up on the floor, with Danny in complete and total control?

I can't remember. And that's what's really disturbing.

I walked into my apartment… and he was there. I remember thinking it was strange that my door was unlocked. That I remembered locking it that morning. I'd stepped inside, and Danny was sitting on the couch. I'd been too shocked to scream… something I probably should have done. Too shocked to run, another brilliant idea I hadn't thought of. I'd stepped forward… asked him what he was doing in my apartment, and…

And what? I ended up on the floor. But how? I can't remember.

That's what's bothering me the most.

I have done the unthinkable: I have managed to transform four hours of paperwork into eight. Really, I must have a masochistic streak in me to have accomplished this.

It's half past five… but I'm not hungry, really. I just want to go home. For this day to end. It's been awful, by all accounts, and I can't wait to go to sleep so as to usher on tomorrow.

There's a problem, though- I'm not going home.

Danny knows where I live, yes, but… that's not the problem. Well, it's part of it, I'm not going to lie to myself- but that's not the reason I'm most afraid of tackling.

This morning, I stepped inside, and I saw where I had been raped. The sight alone was enough to give me such a terror I never want to go back there. Hell, I nearly had a panic attack. It truly seems like an unconquerable goal, to enter my apartment and stand where I was raped and not panic. I don't see the point of even trying to return there again- I don't care to try, either.

But where am I going to go? I have court tomorrow- the Saks case was postponed by Trevor while he scrambled to find more evidence against my case- so I really do need to pick up my briefcase from my place. And, on top of that- where am I going to sleep? I could get a hotel room, I suppose.

I need to head back to Olivia's, though. My clothes from earlier are still there and I'm still wearing one of her few suits. I could just head back to my apartment… somehow get my briefcase… then swing by her place, change, and get a hotel room for the night.

I was hoping to spend the entire cab ride over contemplating how to get my briefcase and worrying about it, but I get a phone call when I'm about a mile away. I check the caller ID; it's Cragen. Wonderful. "Hello?"

"Casey, it's the Captain. I called your office, but they said you just left. I just got a message from Olivia; she's not getting back in town until next week. It's a long story; she ended up being a witness to a crime and she's actually being called to testify, so she can't leave town."

"Oh my god, what happened?"

"Long story," he scoffed. "You really don't want to know. But I thought I should let you know, just in case she has to testify in any of your upcoming cases."

"Ah… no, I don't think she does. Thank you, though." We exchange the usual pleasantries before hanging up.

I wonder what happened to Olivia. I hope she's all right.

Well, on the upside, this means there is absolutely no chance of her walking in on me in her apartment. Still though… it nearly makes me cry. Again.

I suppose it makes me selfish that I want my friend here with me. It's not like I would tell her what happened, but I still really could use her company. Well, I guess I'll just have to control myself until she gets back. It's not as if I could call her; I'd have to be able to provide an explanation. And I don't have one.

Not for anything, really. Not anymore.

The latin Casey said to Trevor somewhat translates to, 'burn up and die'. That's the product of four years of latin classes, folks!