Chapter 1

The morning sun flitted through the broad paneled windows of the precinct, rippling across the mounds of paperwork and setting dust aloft like a sharp wind that stirs spray off ocean waves. The aroma of coffee wafted through the air which seemed crisp due to the sunlight although it was as dry as always. On Olivia Benson's desk sat a neatly arranged distribution of files and paperwork. Her desk was rarely found in such an orderly state, and such a thing could only have one implication, an implication that today was all the more certain because Olivia had not left the office the night before. Sitting atop the proud stack of papers in front of her was a single photograph. A grungy man's face stared out of it with a foul expression, and under it read the name Peter Iscanyth. This was the rewarding pinnacle of Olivia's night of research, and she was now enjoying a brief respite as she waited for her fellow detectives to arrive.

The Sherman Case, as they were calling it, had remained an elusive disaster for the last few weeks. It seemed almost unsolvable and so interest had waned. Besides, SVU was never short of plenty of other pressing cases, cases that John, Fin, Elliot and even Olivia gladly took up almost in spite of the difficulty of the Sherman Case. But in the end Olivia was pushed to one of 'those nights.' It was nights like the previous that had sustained her through the rigors of training when she had to work a side job as well, and even before then in school, when she was also over-burdened with work. Then it had just been grunt work, just a blunt force applied to a malleable will, cattle driven through the furrows. But now it was different, now her work mattered, and likewise now she felt even more awake then if she had slept.

Olivia could almost feel the eager anticipation and energy welling up, and seemed to sense a sort of ripeness about things that let her know that the time was coming, akin to the portending calm that precedes a heavy storm. Then, at a point, she just sat down at her desk, and starting going. Pouring back over every lead and every ounce of evidence, sorting through heaps of mostly useless information and twisting her mind in every way possible until she found one catch, one hint, one contradiction, and almost infallibly she turning up victorious the next morning. That was how her last night had been, and finally she had come across a little inconsistency that sparked her attention and then right there at six in the morning everything fell into place.

The door finally opened and in walked John Munch, he usually was one of the earliest to arrive. He strode in cloaked in one of his thin and worn black jackets, his keen eyes shining with the morning. He soon noticed Olivia sitting there patiently contented and quickly made the connection between the tidy stack of papers on her desk and her smug expression.

"Oh, well good morning Ms. Olivia Benson, star detective of New York City," Munch said in his gently sarcastic manner, bowing lowly. "I take this to mean you've had a break through."

"More than that!" Olivia replied affirmatively, unable to contain her satisfaction with herself. She really didn't care about honors, she just got obsessed with her work sometimes, and liked figuring things out. "Wait till you see what I figured out!"

Munch decided to indulge Olivia, knowing that she would rather not wait for everyone else to arrive. However, Olivia's explanation of her work was so lengthy and so theatrical (she hadn't sleep in over a day) that Fin and Cragen both arrived while she was still talking, and gathered into the growing crowd which now also included a few rookies, some of whom were only there to nourish crushes they had on Olivia.

It was called the Sherman Case in crude honor of the Union Civil War General who forged a path of destruction from from northern Georgia to the sea. Munch quickly coined the villain with this name after a series of violent murders obscured by fire began on Kingsbridge Avenue and traveled in a one-way death track towards the Upper Bay. Oddly enough, to the chagrin of the detectives, the fires had proceeded down to Sherman Avenue after the naming of the case, doubtlessly not a coincidence. These murders, of which there were two so far, seemed to follow in wicked mockery of the detective's investigation, and stood out in stark irrelevance to the first four. This had raised the priority of the case greatly, for it seemed that SVU had somehow been compromised. Olivia was now at the point of explaining how she had come upon Peter Iscanyth, and was brandishing his picture around gleefully, almost too satisfied with herself.

"This guy," Olivia said, holding up the foul face, "hardly even made it into the list of suspects. He turned up outside the crime scene of the second fire on Kingsbridge and insisted that he had seen something. He was brought in with Munch and Fin and rambled on about some pizza man, and then some taxi driver, and then some other figure, almost all of it was incomprehensible, except one thing! It wasn't his words but his actions that gave him away, and he wasn't here to give us any clues. I was reviewing the tapes of his interview- okay I really didn't like the way his face looked so I thought it was worth a shot- and I noticed that he kept his right hand tightly closed the entire time." Olivia hopped off the chair that she had stood on, and waltzed over to Fin's desk, and, facing away from the interrogation room, reached a hand under its edge. She then displayed to them all a small black chip with a little wire poking out of it.

"You're kidding me," said Fin, thunderstruck. "Is that what I think it is?"

"You bet!" Olivia said, "this little sneak has been broadcasting SVU live out of here for the past three weeks. It's a prototype model with a custom Lithium ion battery. It could have remained operable for another year had I not deactivated it."

"Jesus, Liv, that's fantastic!" said Cragen, "but what makes you so sure it was Iscanyth?"

"Other than the interview video and his fingerprints on this guy, woman's intuition, I guess."

"All right, fine, fine!" Cragen responded, throwing his hands up, but Munch quickly interjected.

"But if you've deactivated the transmitter Iscanyth is going to know we're on to him!"

"Maybe, maybe not," Olivia replied. "I only discovered it a few hours ago and simply finding it doesn't necessarily mean we know he put it there, besides, I doubt 'ol Pet's going to be too concerned about it at seven thirty in the morning."

"Fair enough," Cragen said, "go pick his ass up while speed is still on our side! Olivia, you go, and only one of you two," he said, gesturing at Fin and Munch. "Also, where the hell is Elliot?"

No one knew the whereabouts of Elliot, and they couldn't what around wandering. Olivia hurried out with Fin, Munch volunteering to stay behind.

"That was some good work back there Liv," Fin said, "I'm impressed and I think you impressed the Cap too."

"Thanks Fin," Olivia said, blushing. Now that the glory of her divulgence was past she would rather reside out of the limelight, and reluctantly accepted additional praise. The pair continued on outside and into Fin's squad car, which raced away and down the streets of New York, bent on the home of Peter Iscanyth.

SVU SVU SVU

Fin and Olivia pulled up outside Iscanyth'sapartment and leapt out of the squad car. It was 8:15 and Olivia had pulled the plug on his little spy a little before six. There was very little chance he had already learned about that and even then very little he could do about it. Fin led the way up the front stairs. Peter's apartment was on the west wing of the building on the sixth floor. It was a rundown neighborhood and a dilapidated building without any security so the two detectives simply strolled inside deliberately and took to the stairs, finding no elevator to exist. They plodded up flight after flight, past refuse and rotten trash. They even encountered a homeless man sleeping on the third landing, who Fin shooed away. He usually had some tolerance for the homeless and loathed the rent-a-cops who seemed to get high from kicking them out of 'public' places, but this situation was a little different.

They finally reached the fifth landing and threaded down the hallway, coming at last to 509.

"All right this is it," Olivia said.

"Hell yeah," Fin replied, short of breath, "it's about time we caught this Sherman fuck, you ready?"

"Always," Olivia raised her foot and smashed the door clean through near the lock. She led them in gun raised and shouted, "police! Peter Iscanyth come out with your hands up!" but immediately they could tell something was wrong. The apartment was dirty, yes, but it seemed almost trashed, and had a stale reek about it. Heedless, however, Olivia and Fin flanked the inner partition and proceeded to scour the rooms. Finding nothing but filth and stench they moved at last to the bedroom door, which was slightly ajar. Olivia kicked open and gasped, becoming stock still.

In front of her was Elliot Stabler, bent over with his wrists tied behind him to a bedpost. His shirt was in tatters and he was covered in blood. His head hung limply down across his chest and he made no indication that he was aware of their presence.

"Oh my god," Olivia murmured, terrified.

"What the hell?" Fin said rushing forward and hardly even checking the rest of the room for Iscanyth. "Liv! he yelled, "call a bus, he's still alive, but barely by the looks of it!"

Olivia, however, continued to stand there, a few feet inside the room. She was motionless and her gaze had been drawn to the right, where, upon a dark wall there was scrawled in blood this message:

If you don't want the rest of your partners to turn up like this,

then back off Olivia Benson, back off…...

-Sherman