A/N: You'll find a few explanations for things in this chapter, among other things...and there you have it.

The holding cell on Staten Island was empty, except for alone kid lying on his back on one of the benches. This in itself wasn't exactly surprising, given the fact that it was Tuesday morning. What was surprising, however, was the complete lack of concern in this kid's face, and in his demeanor.

"You know, you picked the wrong house to go at last night kid," Mike remarked. "Busting windows at the police commissioner's place was a stupid idea. Who put you up to it?"

"Put myself up to it. What's it to you?" came the reply.

"The commissioner happens to be a friend of mine," said Mike. "What's your name, kid?"

"I don't have to tell you that."

"Fine, don't tell us," said Jimmy. "You're already in a world of hurt, kid."

"So you say. I told those uniforms I wanted a lawyer."

"That's nice. Get up; you're coming with us." Mike motioned for a nearby uniform to unlock the cell door and went on. "You can call your lawyer when we get where we're going and tell him to meet us at police headquarters."

The kid got to his feet and walked out of the cell, holding out his wrists with a faint smirk on his face as the door closed. Mike glared and put a set of handcuffs on him.

"I'm going to tell you this once, and I'm not going to repeat myself," he said. "You run, you're not going to get very far. Let's go."

They left the squad room, both Mike and Jimmy walking behind the kid to make sure he didn't go anywhere. He remained directly in front of them.

"You know, I really doubt this fits with your policies," he said. "What game are you trying to run?"

"We can't talk to you without your lawyer," said Jimmy. "You'll have to wait till we get to headquarters."

"And if I tell you that I waive my right to counsel?"

"Then you're smarter than you look. You talk to us now, it might help you in the long run."

There was a brief moment of silence, and then the kid spoke again. "Then I waive the right to counsel," he said. "Why are two guys from Major Case coming all the way out here to Staten Island for broken windows?"

"Give us a name, and we might give you an answer," said Mike. "Keep walking."

"Jake Fannin," said the kid, and then, "So what do you want with me?"

"First off, we want to know what business you had outside the commissioner's house at four in the morning," Mike said dryly. "Mind telling us?"

Jake shrugged. "Heard tell someone was naming names. I got told to warn 'em off."

"To warn who off?" Jimmy asked.

"Whoever was crashing at the house I went to," Jake replied. Mike gave him a look.

"You can't tell me you had no idea who was in that house," he said. "Get in the car."

Jake did, climbing into the backseat and smirking again. "Now I get it," he said. "Daddy's little girls got scared, so now he's pulling favors." He trailed off and laughed. "Figures."

"So you did know who was in the house," said Mike.

"Oh, no, Detective. I'm not going to make it that easy for you. As far as I know, it was one of the commissioner's daughters," said Jake. "Let's just get to your headquarters, and then we'll talk."

"You're not running the show here, kid," Jimmy retorted. "We're going to make a stop somewhere before we go to headquarters, so you might as well talk to us before SVU gets a hold of you."

Jake rolled his eyes. "They really are using you to do their dirty work, aren't they?" he asked. "I can't say I blame them. Detective Stabler wouldn't know a break in a case if it ran naked in front of him."

"You're in no position to be insulting anyone, seeing as you're the one in handcuffs," Mike said flatly. "What's your issue with Detective Stabler?"

"I don't actually have an issue with him; I just find it amusing that it's been two months and while he's found his kids, he hasn't managed to find his wife," said Jake. "What exactly does that tell you about him?"

"Do you have any idea why SVU was even looking for you? You've got about five hours before they give up looking for David Bennett," said Jimmy, glaring at Jake in the rearview mirror. "Then they're coming after you."

"They don't scare me."

"You might want to rethink that. They're not too happy that your friend's been lying to them."

"And this concerns me, how? I haven't spoken to them, therefore, I have no reason to be afraid of them. I know what you're doing, and it's not going to work."

"Have it your way, then. You'd better hope Detective Benson's inclined to keep her partner away from you, though I can't say I'd blame her if she didn't."

No answer came. Whether or not all of this had actually had any effect on Jake whatsoever, neither Mike nor Jimmy could tell, but the silence was enough to tell them that at least some of what they'd said had gotten to him. Even so, the defiant look that had crossed his face earlier remained exactly where it was.

"Even if she doesn't, it's not going to do him any good. All it takes is two words, and I'll have everyone from the two of you to the mayor on your knees trying to make amends," he said finally.

"The old police brutality claim, huh?" said Mike, smirking. "There's one thing you're forgetting, kid."

"And what would that be?"

"That only really works if anyone happens to see something. Nobody sees anything, for all we know, you got beat up sitting in a holding cell 'cause you couldn't keep your mouth shut."

"What makes you so sure that I don't have a way to document everything that happens to me while I'm with you?"

"I'm not." There was a brief pause, and as they came to a stoplight, Mike turned. "Maybe we ought to stop and search you. What d'you think, Captain?"

Jimmy glanced back at Jake in the rearview mirror again and shook his head. "We don't need to do that," he said. "He hasn't got anything."

"Suit yourself," said Jake. "We'll see who's sucking wind when this all comes to an end."

"Odds are, it's most likely to be you," said Mike. "Now might be a good time to lose the sarcasm."

"The last time I looked, the First Amendment guaranteed my right to free speech, Detective," Jake retorted. "If we're not going to headquarters, then where are you taking me?"

"You'll see when we get there. Until then, see if you can find the ability to keep your mouth shut."

The house in Queens was empty, the way it had been for much of the past two months. The material things were still inside, the way they always had been, but the people who lived in the home weren't there, and weren't likely to ever be there again. The car in the driveway was the only sign that someone lived there, even if 'lived' was somewhat of a loose term to describe exactly what Elliot had been doing there since two months ago.

"You can't bring me here," Jake said, upon realizing where they where. "You've got no reason to bring me here."

"So you do know where we are," said Jimmy, ignoring the startled look that had crossed Jake's face. "Good. Maybe that'll keep you from lying to us."

"I've got nothing to say to you. I don't want to be here, and I don't have to be here, either."

"You waived your right to counsel," said Mike. "You might not have anything to say, but there's not going to be any lawyer coming around to take you away."

Jake glared at him. "Prove it," he said.

Mike pulled a tape recorder out of the inside of his coat. "It's all right here, kid. Every word of it. You try bringing anything up in court, and this'll disprove everything you have to say."

"You can't do that," said Jake, but there was enough uncertainty in his voice to tell both cops that he didn't actually know this for sure.

"Actually, we can. See, once you waived the right to counsel and started talking to us, it meant that everything you said to us could be used as evidence," said Jimmy. "What good is evidence if you can't prove that it exists?"

"It'll never hold up in court," Jake started, but Mike cut him off.

"Yeah, I think it will," he said.

"If you recorded me, then you recorded yourself threatening me."

"No, see…after you started talking about police brutality, I clicked this thing off, so it's your word against that of two cops, kid. The odds aren't very good."

Silence. Jake seemed to realize that he'd been played, and it didn't settle well with him. He looked from Jimmy to Mike and then back again, before picking up where he'd left off.

"All right then," he said, "I'll give you that. You two are better at this game than I thought you'd be."

"It's what we're paid for," Mike replied, half-sarcastically. He pushed his door open and got out of the car; going around to the back, he pulled that door open. "Out."

Jake got out of the car, slowly, and pushed the door closed with his foot. "You're not going to tell me who else is here, are you?"

"I think you already know who's inside," said Jimmy. "Did you really think you'd get out of it without ever having to look him in the eye?"

"I fail to see what you think this is going to do. I'm not afraid of him."

"Then you obviously haven't seen him in a bad mood. Watch what you say and you might not get hurt," said Mike. "Walk."

Jake did, turning to glare over his shoulder. "This is coercion," he said. "Anything I tell him isn't going to do you a damn bit of good, not that I was planning on talking to him."

"Then don't," Jimmy retorted, annoyed now. "But you're not leaving this place until you've heard what he has to say."

Jake said nothing in reply to this, and instead continued walking. Mike and Jimmy continued to follow after him, all three of them stopping just short of the front door. Before either cop could reach out to knock, it opened. All of the lights were off, but in the faint morning light coming from outside, they could see Elliot clearly.

"You two didn't have to come all the way out here," he said, ignoring Jake completely. "Did Erin say anything?"

"She's pissed as hell and has no idea what we're up to," Mike replied. "We didn't tell her. Hope you don't mind."

A half-amused look crossed Elliot's face, and he shook his head. "I doubt she'd want to know," he said. "I don't mind. Come inside."

They did. Mike pushed the door closed behind them, and reached out to flip one of the switches on the wall. Light flooded the entryway at once, seeming almost out of place, but allowing everyone to see. Elliot wandered ahead of the other three, upstairs and down the hall, to the second room on the right. They followed after him, all of them wondering what he was doing, but none of them asked.

The room in itself was somewhat of a mess. It wouldn't have been so startling if it had just been the usual teenage clutter, but it was much more than that. The bookshelf had been overturned, and there were books, everywhere. Pictures had been yanked from the walls and thrown to the ground, so hard that the glass inside the frames had shattered. There was blood on the broken mirror and torn clothes at the foot of the bed.

"This is my daughter Elizabeth's room," Elliot said, without turning around. "But you already know that, don't you?"

There was no question as to whom he was speaking. Mike and Jimmy exchanged glances, neither of them saying anything, both of them waiting to see what Jake would do, but no answer came from him, either, and when the silence had lingered to the point of being awkward, Elliot picked up where he'd left off.

"She and her brother turn sixteen in February," he said, still without turning around. "You know, the one birthday besides your 18th or your 21st that you sit around planning for months before it actually happens."

"What's that got to do with me?" Jake started, but the glare on Elliot's face that he could see in the reflection from the window cut him off.

"It's four months away," he said. "The two of them…they usually sit down and start thinking about what they might want to do around this time, because they both usually want something different."

Again, there was no answer, but by this point, all three cops were beyond caring whether or not Jake said anything.

"I can barely get them to sit on the front porch with me anymore," Elliot said finally, still glaring at the window. "The only one who will is my youngest. He's all of eleven months old; he's not going to remember what happened, but the other four…."

He cut himself off. In the reflection from the window, the others could see that his eyes had closed. Another long moment passed before he picked up again.

"They won't come home," he said. "They can't sleep at night, and when they do, they leave the lights on. I've been in SVU too long to not know why that is, so you can stand there and smirk at me all you want, but I know what you've done."

"I haven't done anything, and there's no way for you to prove I did," said Jake. Elliot's eyes opened, and he turned around now, glaring.

"You think I would be talking to you now if there was no way to prove you'd done something?" he asked, angrily. "You think we'd be standing here if you hadn't done this?"

The last word came out as a yell. Elliot moved away from the window and motioned around the room, an expression of unmistakable fury on his face.

"It might not have been you directly, but I don't really give a damn whether it was or not," he said, unable to keep his voice from shaking. "You think you can just walk around this city like nothing's wrong? You'd better take another look at this life you're living, 'cause I've got news for you, kid, it's not going to last long."

"What makes you think any of this scares me?" Jake shot back. "I knew what I was doing, Detective, and your intimidation tactics will get you nowhere."

"This isn't about intimidation," Mike said, finally breaking into the conversation. "It's got nothing to do with intimidation. You see this room here? You and your little friends did this! No matter how much you try to deny it, you did this."

"I had nothing to do with what happened in this room," Jake retorted. "I was downstairs the entire time!"

Dead silence. In the split second that followed this statement, Elliot had crossed the room and grabbed Jake by the collar, shoving him back against the wall.

"You were downstairs the entire time?" he yelled, not caring that one of the windows was wide open. "So, what? You just sat there and listened to what was going on up here?"

Jake glared at him. "Yeah, I did," he said, tauntingly. "I listened to every minute of it…heard her knock over the bookshelf to keep 'em away from her…it didn't work. They slammed her so hard into that mirror that it broke, and when that happened, I came up and they held her down for me."

There was a loud cracking sound. Mike and Jimmy finally moved forward from where they were, but it hadn't been Jake that Elliot had hit. Instead, his hand had gone straight through the wall, just one more thing that would have to be fixed, if anyone could ever bring themselves to come back to the house again after this. A hand on his shoulder made him jump; he swung backwards and would have caught Mike in the face if Mike hadn't caught his hand first.

"Let him go, Elliot," he said, keeping one hand on the younger cop's shoulder. "He's not worth it. What he just told us is enough for Novak to hang him."

It would have to be enough for now, even though all three cops knew that in the long run, it never would be. The glare that Jake had been wearing earlier had turned into a full-on smirk as Elliot let go of him and turned to leave the room.

"You wanna know what she said, Detective?" he asked, still in the same taunting voice. "She cried. Begged for her mother, and then for you, but she got used to it. I think she might've even liked it."

This time the cracking sound wasn't the sound of a fist hitting a wall. Blood flowed from Jake's now-broken nose, but the smirk remained there on his face as obviously as the taunting note remained in his voice.

"That's not going to be easy to explain," he remarked. Mike yanked him roughly from the wall, and shoved him towards the door, hard enough that he went sailing straight into the doorframe.

" You wait until we get to headquarters, you worthless bastard," he said, unable to keep his own rage out of his voice. "Your ass is ours now."

By the time the seventh hour had ended, only seven of the eight who'd originally gone out searching for David Bennett had returned to the four-nine. Olivia was the last one back, and as she passed the sergeant's desk at the front, Mark Lautner reached out and touched her arm before she could start down the hallway.

"They found him," he said. "Allison and Lindsay have him in an interrogation room already."

"Did he ask for a lawyer?" Olivia asked. Mark shook his head.

"Not yet. They'd have come out by now if he had," he replied. "I think they were going to wait for you before they started questioning him, but they might not have wanted to push their luck."

"Which interrogation room are they in?"

"They're in the first one that our SVU uses. Squad room is down this hall, last set of double doors on the left, can't miss it. Interrogation rooms are in the back."

"Thanks." Olivia turned away from the desk and headed back towards the Queens SVU squad room, walking a lot faster than she normally did. Thankfully, the hallway was mostly empty, and there was no need for her to walk past or around anyone to get to where she was going. The squad room, too, was empty, except for Jordan Adair, sitting at a desk on which Allison McKendrie's nameplate was visible. As Olivia walked in, Jordan flipped her cell phone closed.

"That was Mike Logan," she said, by way of greeting. "He says Elliot's going out to Staten Island, and that he's not likely to be back here today. Jake Fannin confessed to being in the house that day."

Something in the other woman's voice told Olivia that this was not the only thing Jake Fannin had confessed to, but it didn't matter, and at the moment, she didn't really want to know.

"Where are they taking him?" she asked.

"Headquarters. The brass aren't going to be happy; Mike says Fannin's threatening a lawsuit."

"On what grounds?"

"Mike broke his nose after he told them what he'd done to Elizabeth. From the way he sounded on the phone, I'll bet he wishes he could have done worse."

"So do I," said Olivia, biting down on her lip so hard that she drew blood. She swore quietly and reached for a tissue out of the box on Allison's desk. "Any news about a lawyer yet?"

"No. Bennett probably thinks he's going to walk, but even if Martin was lying about how smoothly the kidnapping went down, Bennett is going to hang."

"Good to know. The interrogation rooms are in the back?"

"Yeah, right through those doors over there. You'll go into an observation room first; Lieutenant Bowman is in there." Jordan got to her feet and stowed her cell phone back in her pocket. "I'll come with you."

Olivia was already halfway towards the doors that Jordan had mentioned; the younger woman followed after her, and they entered the observation room together. Sure enough, Dave Bowman was there, wearing a look of obvious disgust on his face.

"He hasn't said anything about a lawyer, but the minute he thinks IAD is in on this, he will," he said, without turning. "I hate to tell you this, Jordan, but you're gonna have to stay out of this."

"I don't care if I have to stay out of that, as long as I can watch that bastard hang himself," Jordan replied. "Detective Benson is here."

Dave turned, and glanced over at Olivia. "He hasn't said anything yet. Right now, his only recourse is to keep insulting Allie and Lindy to see if he can't get a response out of them."

"Has it worked yet?" Olivia asked. Dave shook his head, and flipped on the intercom next to the two-way mirror.

"Not yet," he said. "They know better than to rise to the bait, but he's starting to piss them off. He knows they've got something, but they don't know what he has, so he's scared."

"He should be," Jordan muttered. "I'd rather see him hang on this than for taking a bribe."

"He'd serve more time for this, in any case," said Dave, casting a half-amused look at her. "Detective Benson, if you want to go in there, you're welcome to."

Olivia nodded, briefly, and pushed the interrogation room door open. The cold temperature of the room was immediately evident, but she closed the door behind her, anyway, and leaned against it.

"Who the hell are you?" David Bennett looked up at her, and smirked as he continued. "Let me guess. You're from Manhattan…SVU, right?"

Olivia glared at him. "Right in one," she said. "You've really done it this time, Bennett. Your partner's not here to cover your back now."

"What do I care if Kari isn't here? She hasn't been here in over a month; she doesn't mean a damn thing to me now."

"That's good to know." Allison said, from behind where David was sitting. "Because she died two weeks ago, brilliant one."

"You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Lindsay asked, from her position at the far end of the room. "I mean, you did take two weeks off, only reported back to work yesterday…where'd you go, Bennett?"

"That's none of your business," David shot back. "I don't have to tell you where I was. It was a family matter."

"A family matter," said Olivia, skeptically. "Somehow, I doubt that." The manila folders she'd been carrying through the precinct suddenly felt like they were weighing her down; she moved forward and put them down on the table, flipping the top one open.

"You don't have any family," she said. "You were an only child, your parents are both gone, and they were only children, too. There are no aunts, no uncles, no grandparents…you aren't married and you don't have any kids, so how exactly was this a family matter?"

"Family doesn't always mean the people you're blood related to. Who's the detective here, you or me?"

"You're never going to make detective at the rate you're going. Someone in your little operation already gave you up," said Lindsay. "Said you showed up at the Stabler place with Officer Applegate and spent a while talking to Sam Garret."

"Whoever told you that is a damn liar, and he's probably trying to cover his own ass. I don't even know who the hell Sam Garret is."

"If you don't know who he is, then you won't mind telling us who you talked to and what you talked about that day," said Allison.

"How the hell am I supposed to remember that? It was over two months ago! You really expect me to know that off the top of my head?"

"You'd better start knowing something if you want to get out of here," Olivia said flatly. "Right now, you're looking at conspiracy charges, never mind murder."

"You can't charge me with murder," David shot back, annoyed. "I didn't touch Kari. I wasn't anywhere near Baltimore when she was murdered!"

Silence. All three detectives exchanged glances over David's head, but it was Allison who spoke.

"How'd you know that Officer Applegate was murdered in Baltimore?" she asked, coolly. "I don't remember mentioning that. Detective Camden, you say anything?"

"Not me," said Lindsay, a faint smirk crossing her face. "Detective Benson?"

"Not a word," said Olivia. "You mind telling us how you knew your partner was murdered in Baltimore?"

"She has something to do with the case, doesn't she?" David asked, sarcastically. "Heard tell one of your lot ran down there to hide from the Feds. Makes sense, doesn't it? He killed her to keep her mouth shut about whatever it is he did."

"No, see….Sergeant Munch isn't stupid enough to commit a murder in his own hometown," Olivia snapped. "He used to run Homicide down there, so what the hell sense does that really make?"

No answer. Or rather, no verbal answer, because the glare that David shot in her direction was really the only answer that she needed.

"You're in over your head," she told him. "Garret planned it so that you or someone else would end up taking the fall for everything. Do you really think he's going to come back here to New York and save you when he already has what he wants?"

"I told you, I don't know who this Garret person is," David retorted. "And I didn't kill my partner."

"Then where were you two weeks ago when she died?" Allison demanded. "You weren't here in New York; you told your shift commander that you were going out of town."

"Doesn't mean I went to Baltimore," said David. "There are plenty of places between here and there where I might have been."

"But it's most likely that you went to Baltimore," said Lindsay. "You keep giving us the runaround, you're only going to make it harder on yourself."

"You three have nothing on me."

"If you didn't know Garret from Adam, then why the hell would you bother staying behind to talk to the guy standing in the Stabler house when the door was open?" Allison asked, an irritated look crossing her face as she spoke. "That's what doesn't make sense here, Officer. If you didn't know him, you wouldn't have talked to him. Did you or did you not take Mrs. Stabler for her word when she told you nothing was wrong?"

"Yeah, I did. So what if some guy was standing there with her? It doesn't mean anything, and so what if I talked to him? I'm perfectly free to talk to whoever the hell I want to talk to."

"If you know that you haven't done anything wrong, then you wouldn't have any issue admitting that you stood there and talked to this guy, whether or not you knew who he was," said Lindsay. "Did you or did you not talk to him?"

"Yeah, I talked to him. So what?"

"What did you talk to him about, then?" Olivia asked. David turned from where he was glaring at Lindsay to glare at her instead.

"The usual. Sports, weather…that sort of thing. I didn't have any reason to believe that anything was wrong," he said flatly. "I still have no reason to believe that I should have thought anything was wrong."

"Then maybe you shouldn't have become a cop," Allison said, furiously. "If you can't look at someone's face and tell that something's wrong…You're a real idiot, you know that?"

"You're the one who got suckered into this mess in the first place," David said. "Maybe if you knew when to keep your nose out of things, you wouldn't have to deal with all of Detective Stabler's crap, and his kid wouldn't have been dropped off on your doorstep."

Allison glared. "Detective Stabler happens to be one of my closest friends," she said. "And I'll put my nose wherever the hell I feel like putting it when one of my friends is hurting and I can do something about it!"

David smirked at her. "You sound like you're hiding something yourself," he said. "You wanna tell us how long you've been screwing him, or would you rather we figure it out on our own?"

Out in the observation room, an incensed look crossed Jordan's face, and Dave's as well.

"She's going to snap," she said. "There's no way Allison's going to take that one lying down."

But it wasn't Allison who reacted to this; rather, it was Lindsay, and a loud smacking sound echoed through the interrogation room.

"Detective McKendrie's personal relationship with Detective Stabler is none of your damn business," she said angrily. "Neither is mine, and neither is Detective Benson's, but rest assured that he is happily married and none of us are fucking him."

"Which brings us to another point," said Allison, her voice shaking with barely suppressed fury. "How the hell did you know that his son was left on my doorstep?"

Silence. David seemed to know that he'd dug himself into a hole, because the color suddenly drained from his face. The three detectives waited, but when he said nothing, Olivia picked up where Allison had left off.

"How'd you know that, Bennett?" she asked. "There's only one real way you could have known that. You left him there yourself, didn't you?"

"No."

"Now you're lying to us. You know what happens to people who lie to us, Bennett?" Lindsay asked. "They go to prison, and we throw away the key. That's what happens. You don't want that, do you?"

"Maybe he does," said Allison. "You ever hear what happens to cops in prison?"

"You don't scare me," David said, but the fact that his face was still colorless said otherwise. "You can't prove I left that baby there."

"We never released that detail to the press," Olivia said evenly. "The only way you could have known that is if you left my partner's baby on Detective McKendrie's doorstep yourself, so it's no use giving us the runaround anymore."

Allison came forward from where she was standing, and leaned down so that her face was inches away from David's.

"Talk," she said. "Now."