Early the next morning, SVU was graced with a visit by Huang, and he looked like hell and it was noticeable.
"What happened to you?" Munch asked, "You stick your keys in an outlet or something?"
George rubbed one eye and said, "I had a very short night, and a very unusual wakeup call."
"What happened?" Elliot asked.
"Toni called me at 4 o' clock this morning," he answered.
"What?" was the general consensus.
"What the hell has been going on around here?" Huang asked, to nobody in particular.
"What did she say?" Olivia asked.
"That she wanted to kill herself," he answered, "I tried to get her to calm down and tell me where she was so I could find her before she did anything drastic, no luck there. I managed to get part of the call recorded before she hung up."
From his pocket he produced a miniature recorder and pressed the play button on it and they heard amidst a garble of static, Toni, sounding distraught and borderline hysterical.
"I'm sorry I called, George, but I needed to talk to somebody."
"It's alright, Toni, what's happened? Where are you?"
"George, they think I did it, they think I raped Mike and those other guys."
"What?"
"Now they're saying there's a fourth guy who can identify me, you know what that means, George? I've got an order, at 10 tomorrow I go back to SVU and take my clothes off so a bunch of fat old pigs can stand around and look at me and take pictures!"
The sound on the phone became very distant as if Toni had held the phone away from her momentarily as she continued, "I want to die, George, I just want to kill myself, I mean it. Every time there's something going on at Special Victims and I'm in the picture, I turn into the scapegoat, what did I ever do to them?"
"Toni, calm down, where are you?"
Toni's voice had become a high pitched string of gibberish that sounded like she was crying. Munch however, was able to decipher something coherent in it and he hoped the others did not.
"I just want to kill myself, George, I can't go through this," Toni said, and then a click as the call disconnected.
"I had the number traced back to find out where she called from," Huang told the detectives, "It was a disposable cell phone that was left in the street at 6th Avenue."
"My God," Olivia said.
Elliot made a quick call to Toni's house and while he did that, Munch turned around and stared at Cragen, who didn't notice it, instead he checked the clock on the wall and said, "It's 10 now, she's not coming in, we have to find her."
"What identification was she talking about?" Huang wanted to know.
"It's a long story, we'll explain on the way," Elliot said as he put his phone away, "Mike Kellerman stayed at the Keller household all night, he said that Toni never came home and Tony doesn't have any idea where she could be. So I say we check the hospital and morgue first to see if she made good on her threat."
"She's been gone 12 hours since we last saw her," Olivia said, "Why did she wait and call Huang at 4 o' clock?"
"She might've gone somewhere to try and sleep for the night," Elliot guessed, "Either that or she just got on a bus and rode aimlessly around all night before deciding to call. There's no telling with her."
"That's what scares me," Olivia said, "I'll be with you in a minute."
Munch went over to Fin and said quietly into his ear, "We'll let them take the morgues, we're going to assume she's still alive and look for her elsewhere."
"Where?" Fin asked.
"I don't know, but on the phone when she was screaming I could hear her saying that she wanted Mike, so we go pick him up and take him with us, she might be more willing to cooperate with him right now than any of us."
Olivia had gone to the ladies room and when she was sure she was alone, she took her cell phone out and dialed a number.
"Hello?"
"Tony," she said, "I just heard about Toni, I am so sorry. We're going to do everything we can to find her, do you know any place she might go or any friends she has?"
There was a brief pause before Tony replied, "She doesn't have any friends, you guys are her friends."
I wouldn't be too sure about that, Olivia thought, but she told him, "We're going to do everything we can to find her."
"I know you will," he said, "I love you, Olivia."
For a second she froze before she finally recovered and responded, "I love you too, Tony."
Munch and Fin had gone to Tony's house and gotten Mike and explained to him what was going on as they drove back to the precinct to check on the off chance Toni might come in before they looked elsewhere.
"You're sure she never called you last night or dropped in for a minute?" Munch asked.
Mike shook his head, "I would've remembered. You really think she'd kill herself?"
"She tried once before," John said.
"She's got more at stake now," Fin reminded him, "So it's a safe bet she's still alive."
"So where do we look?" Mike asked.
"I've got an idea," Munch said, and he turned to Fin and said, "When you were a kid and cut school, where did you go?"
"I never cut school," Fin told him.
Munch did a double take, "You cannot be serious."
Mike leaned over from the backseat and asked, "What're you thinking, John?"
"Oh right, I guess that would be before both your times. Well, when I was a kid, if you didn't go to school and there was no clearance that you were home sick and about to croak, the schools sent out truant officers to catch the kids and drag them in. They'd go by the homes and the movie theater, the park, any place they thought kids would go when they were ditching school."
"So what'd they do to you when you got caught?" Fin asked.
Munch laughed and told him, "I never got caught."
"Oh yeah, how come?" Mike asked.
"Because I went to the one place they'd never look, and that might be where Toni is now," Munch said.
"Where's that?" Fin asked.
"The library."
Now it was Fin's turn to do a double take as he asked, "Are you serious?"
"It makes sense," Mike commented, "But which one? The New York Public Library?"
"Too obvious," Munch shook his head, "We'll have to search all the secondary ones."
"Are you nuts?" Fin asked, "You know how many libraries there are in this area alone?"
"No but we're going to find out," Munch told him.
Fin rolled his eyes and said, "Man you are nuts."
Munch looked over at him and said, "Yes, but you love me anyway."
After a while all the libraries started to look alike for the men. They had checked out 10 of them already and not found anything, but with three of them working together they were able to determine a lot sooner if Toni was or wasn't around; so once again they took off in different directions and kept their eyes peeled for the young woman.
"Toni," Munch whispered as he rounded one corner, "Toni, are you here?"
"Toni?" Fin likewise whispered. As he turned a corner, he caught sight of a young woman and grabbed her but when she turned around he saw it wasn't Toni. "Sorry," he said, and moved on.
"John!" Mike whispered from another section, and that brought the other two up, "Look!"
They saw Toni at the back of the library in the literature section; her back was to them and she didn't appear to notice their presence. The three acted like a football team in a huddle and decided what the best action to take was; as quietly as possible, they sneaked up on her and grabbed her. Munch threw his arm over her mouth so she couldn't scream and when she saw it was them, she made a muffled noise of discontent though she didn't put up much struggle with them. They held onto her and moved towards the exit when they realized how ridiculous they looked and how easily they were drawing attention to themselves, so Munch told the others to shift direction and head for the ladies room, and he told them that he'd handle this himself and pulled her in behind him. Mike and Fin stood at the entrance and waited for a minute, half expecting to hear some woman scream followed by a loud slap and Munch being shoved out with his hand over his eye.
Inside the ladies room, Toni and Munch had moved away from the door and over towards the sinks, John tried to talk sense into her but she wasn't up for listening to him.
"Look Toni, I know that you didn't have anything to do with what happened to Mike or any of those other men," he told her.
"Yeah but it doesn't matter what you or anybody else knows because as long as this guy says I did it, then everybody's going to believe him. And even if this strip search reveals I don't have a mark on me, I still get the privilege of standing around catching cold in my birthday suit while a bunch of perverts wearing badges get off on seeing me exposed."
"Toni, I am sorry," Munch told her, "But we've run out of options. Now if you don't come back willingly, they're going to take out another warrant to have you forcibly returned for it."
"John, I can't do it!" Toni said, "I've been exploited all my life and I've dealt with it every time up till now, I just can't do it anymore!"
"I know," he said sympathetically, "And I'm going to do everything I can to help you and to make this as quick and painless for you as possible."
"Thanks, John," she said as she looked down to the floor, "But I know your hands are tied just as much as everyone else's are."
Munch tried to think of some way they could get her out of this but he was coming up empty, all he could do was offer her an empty promise of, "It's going to be alright, Toni." Then he thought of something else and added, "If it'll make you feel any better, I'll stay in the room the whole time, and if I so much as hear one wolf call or one note of a burlesque song, I'll beat the son of a bitch's brains out with an ash tray, okay?"
That made her laugh, albeit weakly, and she said, "Okay, John."
They left the restroom and Toni walked straight over to Mike and threw her arms around him and talked to him too quietly to be understood by the detectives. Fin looked at Munch who refused to say anything about it and only shook his head. The four walked out and got in Fin's car, with Toni and Mike riding in the back, and they started driving back to the precinct, when on the way, Fin's cell phone rang.
"I'll get it," Munch said as he took it and put it on speaker, "Hello."
"John," it was Olivia's voice, "Have you guys found Toni yet?"
"Yeah we got her," Munch answered, "We're on our way back now."
"Well don't!" Olivia told him.
"What?" they asked.
"What's going on?" John asked.
"Don't bring her back yet," Olivia said, "We need you guys to stall and keep her away until further notice."
"Why, what's going on?" Fin wanted to know.
"We need you to keep her gone to hold off the strip search, we need time to find something."
"Find what?" Toni asked as she leaned over to the front seat, "What the hell's going on?"
Olivia replied, "We've just latched onto something regarding the three cops who gave the initial report of the last rape victim; it seems that the unis got their orders from a different source but we need time to track it down."
"How long?" Fin asked.
"A day maybe, or more," Olivia said, "You think you can handle that?"
"Consider her the invisible woman," Munch told her, and disconnected the call.
"So now what do we do?" Toni asked.
"Anybody feel like getting a pizza for lunch?" Munch asked.
"That's not going to buy us enough time," Mike said.
"I know, but everybody says Chicago has the best pizza, so I figured we'd go out there and try it to see if it's false advertising or not," Munch replied.
Toni fell back against the seat laughing.
Munch had made the suggestion that since Fin's driving was like 4 hours on a Tilt-A-Whirl anyway, they might as well go to Coney Island to enjoy the real rides. Fin had rolled his eyes at that comment but after driving around for two hours while trying to stay out of sight of any other police, they found themselves heading out there anyway and decided getting lost in the crowds might be a Godsend for them. Munch and Fin stuck close together but Toni had managed to talk Mike into going on the roller coasters with her and off they went. Fin gestured towards them as they disappeared in a crowd and asked Munch, "What's going on with them?"
"What're you talking about?" Munch asked.
"You know damn well what I'm talking about," Fin replied, "Whatever's going on with those two, if the defense finds out about it, it's going to jeopardize the whole case."
"I don't see it that way," Munch replied, "I think it further proves Toni's innocence, why would any man get involved with the woman who raped him?"
"Mike didn't see his attacker," Fin reminded him.
"No but they're going to insinuate she's the same one who attacked all four guys," John told him, "And you know how those cases work, if they fail to prove that one is connected to the others then the whole case goes out the window. Look, I don't know what's going on with them, I don't necessarily like it either but Toni is old enough to do anything she wants and that includes sleeping with my ex-partner if she sees fit. We can't do anything about it."
"Right," Fin said, "Just don't let Elliot catch wind of it."
"Oh absolutely," Munch agreed, "He's not old enough to know about this. But you know it's kind of funny, Toni's last name is Keller, Mike's is Kellerman, if they would get married someday she wouldn't have far to go to change her name."
When night came, they found a motel in a section of New York where they were not likely to be recognized and got four vacant rooms to spend the night. It was an older place that could've easily passed itself off as the Bates motel, 12 rooms all in a ground floor row, no upstairs to the place. Just to make sure they had all their bases covered, Fin took one on one end, Munch took the one on the other end, and Mike and Toni took the rooms in between. Toni had gotten the room between Mike and John and she considered it a very interesting position to be in. She never turned on the TV and she didn't turn on the lights; she just stood in her room in the dark, listening to the wall, trying to hear if anything was going on in Munch's room. All seemed quiet but she decided against trying anything just yet, instead she stayed where she was and waited. It got darker outside and silence surrounded her, apparently everybody had had the same idea of turning in for the night and just going to bed.
How long did she stand there next to the wall, waiting for the right moment to act? Half an hour maybe? Definitely not an hour, she couldn't wait around that long. Finally when she was about to go crazy from the silence, she decided it was a good enough time as any. She unlocked her door and stepped outside, she thought that she'd been quiet enough but apparently not because the door to cabin #4 had opened and she saw Fin take a step out when he realized it was her.
They looked at each other for a few seconds and each waited for the other to move first, finally Toni broke the silence by clearing her throat and asking, "Going somewhere, Columbo?"
One thing about Fin that would've made him a good sociopath, he was never at a loss for words, he always had an answer ready to go, and his answer to that was he thought that he'd heard something. To be sure, Toni thought, but it wasn't what he thought. Fin didn't even bother asking what she was doing out, instead he returned to his room and closed the door again. Toni almost laughed, but once he was gone and she was sure he wasn't looking out the window, she went back to the front desk and got a different room for the night; cabin #12, at the far end of the motel, that had to be more private than the room she already had. With her new key, she returned to the motel and quietly rapped on Mike's door and when he opened; apparently much quieter than she was able to because nobody came looking this time, she had him follow her to her new room where they wouldn't be disturbed for the rest of the night.
Once they were together, and alone, Toni wrestled Mike onto the bed and climbed on top of him.
"Seems to me we tried this move once before," he said, "And it didn't work."
"I know," she told him, "I'm hoping this time we can pick up where we left off."
She groped him a bit and tried to kiss him but she felt his body go stiff under her. "What is it?" she asked.
He looked up at her and said, "I just can't get over how young you are."
She rolled her eyes, "Oh not that again."
"You seem a little young to be so sure of yourself," Mike said.
"You were my age once, do you remember back then?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, "And if memory serves I was probably a lot like you, but I'll tell you my life hasn't been any dream."
"Neither has mine," she told him, "Believe me, I know what a rotten life is when I see one." She nuzzled her face against his and said, "I think we could both use a new start, and each with someone we can rely on."
Mike smiled but not because he agreed necessarily, he took her hand in his and kissed it and said, "I think you'd be better off starting again with someone your own age. I trust you know your math, you get involved with someone so many years older than yourself, and you're bound to wind up alone again prematurely."
"I don't care," Toni said, "I don't care about tomorrow or the next day or the next year, you see, Mike, the future is no good for me, because I don't plan to be here for it."
Mike looked up at her somberly and he could see something in her eyes, something that he could only identify as pain and fear and desperation. She knew that her shield had been cracked through and she rolled off of him and moved to the end of the bed and sat on her knees and looked at him.
"I hate needing anything from anyone," she said, "All my life I've never been able to rely on anybody for help, I looked out for myself because I was the only person that would…and now…" her voice was choked and even in the dark he could see the tears building up in her eyes, but at this very moment she was too angry to be upset, "Sometimes I wish I'd killed myself in Bellevue when I had the chance! Then I wouldn't have to be going through any of this now! I wouldn't have to be stabbed in the back by the people that I called my friends! The people I trusted, and they do this to me! I've always known never to count on anybody for any kind of help, but I can't do that anymore! As much as I hate it, I need something, Mike, I need you, you're the only thing that can take me back from the ledge, because I'm about ready to jump off!"
He had barely moved from where she'd pinned him but before he could get up she had lunged and was on him again, desperate for him to understand. "You're the only person I can tell this to, Mike, because I've got the least at stake with you, I hardly know you, and I know that when this is all over you're going to go back to Baltimore and forget all about me and I'm going to be alone again, I accept that! But you're here now, and I can't accept being alone when I have a choice not to be." She sat back on her heels and tried to breathe, Mike could hear her crying now as she said, "We're alike more than either of us is willing to realize you know." She looked at him and told him, "I've tried the taste of gun metal myself, it's not something I'd care to try again either."
Nothing could've prepared him for that statement, the only thing he could think of when he'd heard it was, "When?"
"It was a while ago," she told him, "My father was out of town and I was going stir crazy in the house, so I went outside at 10 o' clock at night and just started walking, and I realized I'd wound up at Munch's apartment. I'd gotten him up and made up a story about having a fight with my dad and storming out, he let me crash on his couch for the night. He was in the shower and his gun was just lying on the dresser by the bed. I opened it up and saw it was loaded, and I put the muzzle in my mouth. The metal itself didn't taste much different than sticking a fork in your mouth. It had been fired recently, I could taste the gun oil and the powder. You probably weren't aware of it when you tried it with your own gun, but when you stick somebody's gun in your mouth, it's a very personal thing, you can feel their aura surrounding it and before you pull the trigger you're feeding off the essence of their life energy and you feel their life…as weird as it sounds, it was a high privilege to have that experience using his service revolver instead of somebody else's, it's a very intimate experience that…when it's over, it's gone forever, never again, and you realize just how much of a privilege it was."
She was notably calmer now as she settled down on the bed again and added, "I suppose that it's an experience comparable to…if you had one night to join in with a friend and their lover, when dawn comes the next day it's over and you'll never have that experience again so you revel in what you had for that brief period." She tried to smile and told him, "My memory is so corroded, I can't even tell now if I'm speaking from experience on that…I mean I never wanted to be involved with one person most of the time, let alone two, but I really can't say what did and didn't happen with or without my consent. I only have little pieces of memories of waking up in piles of bodies, always somebody different on top of me, men, women, it didn't matter…I never wanted to be there but that was how I survived, some survival. So you see why I couldn't tell this to anyone else, for one thing, John would never get over it, he'd spend the rest of his days wracked with guilt on how I almost killed myself using his gun. And for another, it's never a good idea to tell things like this to anybody who has an FBI shrink on speed dial, I'd never get out of the rubber room if I told any of them what I've just told you."
Mike knew it was the wrong thing to ask and probably the dumbest thing he could ask but he had to know, "Why didn't you pull the trigger?"
She shrugged and said, "I hate the noise. Besides, John already found his father with his brains blown out, of his own doing, I wasn't about to let him find me the same way. And, we Kellers never kill anybody with a gun, we use our hands, and I apply the same logic to suicide, if I was really going to kill myself, I would not use a gun, too messy."
"And a knife's not messy?"
"Not as messy," she said, and laughed, "Elliot…when I tried to kill myself the first time, he couldn't handle it…I told you he's Catholic, and you know what that means. He read me the riot act about where his church stands on suicide…they call it a Cardinal sin…of course you know what my response to that was, don't you? So what, who cares? I don't care, I'm not a Cardinal, I'm not even a bishop, I don't even like to wear red." She tried to laugh but couldn't get it out, "I'm really screwed up, Mike, I know it, and I think it only gets worse as I get older. Sometimes I really wish I had it in me to just end it all."
"Like last night?" he asked.
"George told you?" she asked, "Figures…doctor patient confidentiality my ass."
"Where were you last night?" Mike asked.
"After I left Special Victims?" she asked, "Nowhere in particular, just walked around and tried to think."
"Why'd you wait until 4 in the morning to call him?" he asked.
"Around 3 o' clock, I got tired, and I couldn't think straight, I wanted to go to sleep, didn't know where to go, didn't want to go home, didn't want to find a motel for the night, I wanted to talk to somebody, so I just called Huang, he'd given me his number the last time I saw him incase I ever did need to talk to someone. It made perfect sense at the time; he was the only one who didn't know that I've been hung out to dry by the SVU squad. I don't even know what it was I planned to tell him but everything just came scrambling out as soon as he answered, I didn't know where to start or to stop. I never got to sleep, I just walked around all night and this morning tried to put as much distance between me and everyone else, and tried to hide out where they wouldn't find me."
She felt Mike's arm behind her back and she turned on her side and leaned into him, "I've been able to endure so much crap in my life, but I really don't think I can take much more of this. Everybody has a limit before they just snap."
Early the next morning, Munch got up and realized he was the first one to, and when he found out that neither Toni or Mike were answering their doors, he went to the front desk and found out that Toni had swapped her room for another, and he had a good idea that killed two birds with one stone. He got the spare key for room 12 and went out to the end of the motel. First he put his ear to the door to make sure he wasn't going to be walking in on them at a vulnerable moment, all was quiet inside, so he put the key in the lock and opened the door.
Though the sun was starting to come up, the room was still dark but he could see Mike and Toni asleep in bed, her lying on top of him; they were both wrapped up in the covers but John could see Toni was also wrapped up in a towel from the bathroom but that seemed to be about it. Munch was taken aback by this sight, though he'd had his suspicions, thinking something was true and seeing it for yourself were two different things. And yet, what did he know? He wasn't about to go in and pull back the sheets to find out. He reminded himself that it wasn't any of his business, and yet in some way he knew it was, she was his friend and he was his ex-partner; and he still held some belief in his statement that he was a curse to all his partners. Oh true he hadn't been involved in the Mahoney shooting, he wished he was though, but all the same he couldn't shake the feeling that he was somehow responsible for Mike being thrown to the wolves.
He finally had the presence of mind to know where he wasn't wanted, and it was at that time it also occurred to him that whatever was going on between these two might be the best thing for them. Both had been royally screwed over in life and deserved something better, as well as someone that they could each turn to.
"Mazel tov, you two," he said quietly as he backed out of the room and closed the door behind him.
He went back to room #4 and knocked on Fin's door, he answered it looking half asleep and mad as hell for being awoken.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Checkout time's noon, right?" Munch asked.
"So what?"
"I just checked on Heckle and Jeckle and they're both asleep, I say until we get the heads up from Olivia or Elliot that we stay out of sight, and for the time being I think we could all stay here for a few more hours and finally get some rest."
"Sounds good to me," Fin said, and closed the door almost in John's face.
"Goodnight to you too, you angry mudsucker," Munch murmured under his breath as he headed back to his own room.