One More Day
(Chapter Six: The Things We Do For Love)
Elliot opened his eyes and sat up to stretch out the crick in his neck. He yawned and looked down at the other end of the couch noticing the crumpled blanket where his partner once laid.
"Liv?" he mumbled to himself suddenly feeling an urgency to find and protect her. "Liv?" he called down the hall toward the bathroom before realizing he was alone in the apartment.
He scrambled for his phone and hit number one on his speed dial.
"What's up?" she said in a muffled voice as she answered.
"Where are you?"
"At my apartment changing clothes. I'm heading out the door now."
"I woke up and you were gone," he said without realizing how truly pathetic it had sounded.
"Fin called me about an hour ago and wanted help going over some notes on a case he and I worked together a few months ago. I came by here to grab a quick shower and some clean clothes and I'm climbing into a cab now. I didn't mean to worry you."
"It is supposed to be our day off….your day off."
Olivia smiled picking up on that fact that he'd apparently wanted to spend the day together.
"Do you guys need any help?" Elliot asked looking for a reason to go into work as well just to keep a protective eye on her.
"It is supposed to be your day off," she mocked.
"I know. But if we split the work maybe we can both enjoy half a day off."
"Well, it is New Year's Day in New York City. There are a ton of crazies and people who are still drunk from last night running around, so I am sure there will be plenty for us to do."
"Okay. I'm just gonna grab a shower then head that way. You'll be there, right?"
Olivia paused for a moment. Here he was acting all strange again.
"I'm not going anywhere, I'll probably be stuck behind my desk for at least the next day or so. El, are you alright? You have been acting so strange lately. Is something bothering you?"
"No," he exhaled in a lie.
To tell her the truth now would just scare her, his best chance at protecting her was to just be there with her and do whatever he can to try and prevent the horrible things he had seen before.
"I just don't want to miss out on anything exciting."
"Okay, I'll see you when you get here," she replied paying the cab driver and walking up the steps.
Elliot rushed to get ready, then made one pit stop before arriving at work. He approached his desk sitting down a cardboard drink carrier and Olivia raised her eyes.
"You are a life saver," she replied as he handed her a large Starbucks coffee cup. "Munch made the coffee again," she whispered shaking her head in disapproval.
Elliot smiled.
"Well, I didn't realize you had already made coffee, Munch," he said looking at his friend across the room. "I brought Starbucks for everyone."
Elliot handed a cup to Munch, then to Fin as well.
"Thank you," Fin mouthed. "I am in bad need of caffeine, but I wasn't quite desperate enough to drink whatever he is brewing in that pot," he whispered pointing to the tar-like black liquid on the burner.
"I'll make sure to get a cup just as soon as I finish with this," he assured Munch, who himself had abandon his own concoction for the cup with the fancy name on it.
Elliot took a seat at his desk as she handed him a stack of papers.
"And to think we would have missed all of this by taking a silly day off," he said sarcastically and she smiled.
They worked for a hour or so before Fin had managed to track down an ex-wife of the man they were searching for.
"Her last known address is just across town," he said looking up at Munch from the DMV report he had received on the woman. "You up for a joyride?"
"You ask as if I have a choice."
"Ha ha, Skeletor. Get your bony ass in the car."
"You two sound like you are married," Elliot said with a laugh.
"We don't sound like that, do we?" Olivia asked taking a sip of her coffee.
"I don't think anyone sounds quite like that," Elliot assured her.
Half an hour later Olivia looked from the file folder in her hand.
"El, do you remember that body we found in Riverside park a few months back?"
"Yea, the guy cut her head and hands off so we couldn't identify the victim. It took weeks to get a DNA profile for the girl. I think Cragen said she was a runaway from somewhere in Texas. Poor girl probably didn't count on that. We never did catch the guy."
"Well what if she wasn't his first?"
Elliot smoothed his hands over his face and cleared his throat, then leaned in to focus on what she was trying to say.
"I'm listening."
"Cragen gave me this stack of files. Old cases from before we switched buildings. A few solved, but most of them have long gone cold. I was just supposed to enter them into the new system and I figured I would work on that while waiting on Munch and Fin to get back."
"Yea? You got something there?" he asked as she handed him the file.
"Cold case from nineteen ninety three. Teenaged girl. Head and hands missing. They found her body next to a creek, rolled in plastic and bound with duct tape."
"It says they didn't get any trace off the plastic. And without prints or a way to ID her, it will probably stay cold."
"Don't you get it? Another victim. This guy is a serial. And he now has at least two bodies under his belt. Two girls who will never be coming home to their families."
"A case that old, Liv, chances of getting any of her DNA for a profile are slim. If there is any from the autopsy, it is probably corroded or contaminated by now," he said closing the file and tossing it back to her.
"What is she was your daughter?"
"What?"
"Wouldn't you want to know where she was? What happened to her? Wouldn't you want the chance to lay her to rest in a proper burial? We can't just give up, El. We are this girl's only shot at telling her story. And reuniting her with her family….even if it is in death."
"No parent needs to know things like this were done to their child."
"But wouldn't you want to find her? I would have to know. I would never stop looking for my child. Dead or alive, I think we owe them that peace."
"We don't even have a way to identify the body."
"We do…."she said raising her hand as she stared at photos from the autopsy. "I mean we might."
He watched as she pulled a magnifying glass from her desk drawer and inspected the picture once more.
"There," she said laying it down for him to see. "She has a tattoo on her left ankle."
"What is that?" he said squinting to try and make it out.
"I think it's a butterfly."
Elliot flipped through the file.
"I know the coroner. Or I have heard of him. He is retired now….if not dead. But the office should still have records from the autopsy," Olivia said.
"We have all the pictures here."
"But in 1993 not everything was digital. If there are negatives for these pictures somewhere…..we can blow that up and see if we can get better detail. It could help us identify this girl."
"Good thinking."
An hour later they were standing in the old archive room digging through files containing autopsy information dating all the way back to the early nineteen seventies.
"Talk about a needle in a haystack," this stuff is not even in order.
"At least they have been filed by decade," she replied handing him one of nearly twenty file boxes to dig through. "I am hoping we will get lucky and most of these are from after ninety three."
"Okay, five boxes in I start out at ninety four. Hopefully that means we only have three boxes to search. Hopefully. I don't know how people consider this organized."
Olivia smiled.
"Just let me know if you find anything," she replied handing him the page with the file number on it.
"How on earth did we ever survive without computers? Like, I don't know how this planet even turned. This is insane."
"Eww," she squealed backing up and knocking off a couple of boxes behind her.
"What?"
"Spider," she said pointing as it jumped off the table and ran across the floor.
She watched as Elliot stomped it into a small slimy dot on the floor.
"Oh, you killed it."
"I'm sorry, I thought we didn't like the spider?"
"I didn't. I don't like any bugs. But You didn't have to kill it."
"We could have a memorial if you'd like," he joked.
"Very funny. Great, I made a mess," she replied looking at the boxes spilled on the floor around their feet.
"Just push it all back in whatever box," he suggested. "It isn't like they would ever notice anyway," he joked.
Olivia knelt and began picking up the files and trying to put them back into some sort of order. She sat quietly in the floor and neatly began to replace the spilled contents into the correct folders and put them back into boxes. For a moment she was so quiet Elliot had almost forgotten she was there at all.
"Everything alright over there?"
"Yea," she replied looking up at him from a folder.
"Liv, I don't think we have time to read them all. I know you want to help, but maybe we should just start this out hunting one killer at a time."
"What if it is the same killer?" she asked handing the folder. "Take a look at this. Tell me what you think."
Elliot opened the file and examined the paperwork and photographs inside.
"This could be our guy. It sounds like him, right?" she asked.
"Down to the detail," Elliot agreed. "I think you are right, I think we have a serial killer on our hands. He as now claimed three victims."
"Six," she corrected him sliding three more files onto the table beside him. "And the years are consecutive."
"Shit."
"So, more than likely," she began then paused for a second. "Assuming ninety three was our first, and Ms. Riverside is our most recent….we are looking at twenty victims."
"And there are still fourteen bodies out there somewhere that we haven't found. We have got to get more manpower to help us comb through these boxes. All of these boxes. Whose to say ninety three was his first?"
"Or maybe we got lucky and he stopped after nineteen ninety seven."
"He didn't stop. He won't stop. He has a taste for it now. He needs this, gets off on it. Killing these girls is like a drug to him. He needs that fix. He's never going to give it up. The only way we are going to get lucky is if he possibly did some jail time in here."
"I didn't think I would ever find myself hoping someone had spent time in jail," Olivia replied. "I'm gonna call Cragen and see what if he can get a team together to help us on this. This is big. Bigger than I ever imagined when I found that second file."
"This is huge," Elliot agreed.
Olivia paced the floor anxiously waiting for the truck containing the files to arrive.
"I still think it is stupid he wouldn't just let us bring some of them over with us," she remarked folding her arms in front of her as she leaned against the wall.
"They weren't all going to fit in the squad car. And we marked the boxes with evidence tape, so they should be alright."
"I just feel like we were on a roll. Now we are just standing around here doing nothing….waiting…."
"You don't like waiting, do you?"
"Maybe I am a little impatient. But you said it yourself, this is huge. It is going to take all the time and manpower we have to offer if we are going to crack this thing and catch this monster. Meanwhile we have now wasted," she paused and looked at her watch… "thirty seven and a half minutes, just waiting."
Elliot smiled.
"There were a lot of boxes. It could take them a while. Why don't we make good use of this wasted time and I'll buy you lunch?"
"Lunch?" Olivia repeated as her stomach growled. "You know I have not even stopped to think about food today. I have been running all day on that cup of coffee you brought me this morning."
"You get that way when we get busy. If I wasn't around to remind you to eat, you would likely starve to death."
"I eat. Just sometimes I get wrapped up in stuff and don't realize that it so late, that's all."
"It isn't healthy."
"Neither is living on coffee and donuts," she said with a smirk. "But you have that for breakfast at least three times a week."
"Ahh, the cops diet," Elliot replied with a grin. "Donuts for breakfast and pizza for dinner. All this talk about food…I am starving. What do you feel like eating?"
"Not pizza," she replied with a smile. "Come on, I'll drive."
"You know, it is really a nice out. Why don't we just walk," he insisted.
"Nice out? It is January. It is about twelve degrees and there is snow everywhere."
Elliot laughed.
"But it is a beautiful sunny day. We are going less than two blocks and it is actually thirty two degrees out."
Olivia stared at him and shrugged her shoulders.
"Okay," she agreed as he held the door open for her.
Down the block and around the corner was a little mom and pop diner that served the best burgers in the city. Olivia always ordered the bacon deluxe burger with jalapenos and a salad, then spent the majority of their lunch break stealing fries off Elliot's plate. It didn't bother him. Infact, he didn't mind at all. But this practice had trained him to always order a double order of fries.
"Ooh, they are still hot," Olivia popping a French fry into her mouth.
"McDonalds has nothing on these people," Elliot replied taking a bite of his burger.
"Yea. And I'll bet this place has never been sued for serving kangaroo meat," she replied as he stared at his sandwich frowning at the thought.
"So this is one hell of a break you caught with this case," he said as she smiled.
"I can hardly believe what is beginning to unravel right in front of us. Just think Elliot, if we do this right….if we find enough evidence…..this man has been hunting women for years and we could be the ones who finally put him behind bars. Think of all the families that will bring closure to. All of those women he murdered. Finding him could help us find their remains."
"Think of all the women we could save. If we take this monster off the street and he isn't hunting them anymore."
"This is true," she agreed standing and picking up her purse from the table.
"I've got this," Elliot insisted waving to grab the attention of their waitress. "I told you lunch was on me."
"Alright," she agreed tossing down a five dollar bill for a tip. "I'm gonna step into the ladies room and freshen up a bit. I have jalapeno breath," she whispered and he laughed.
"You carry a tooth brush in your purse?"
"Actually, I do. I keep a travel one just in case, you never know when you might need it. With the amount of coffee we drink and all."
Elliot tossed a few more dollars onto the table and walked up to the counter to pay the check. Moments later he turned to see Olivia applying lip gloss as she walked his way. This wasn't unusual. It was something he was quite used to having worked with a female partner for so long. But it wasn't until recently, that he had taken the time to realize how beautiful she really was. And how all her annoying little girly habits were really actually kind of sexy.
Elliot held the door for her as they walked slowly back toward their destination. It was actually a very beautiful day, the air was fresh and crisp and he honestly didn't care if it took them an hour to make it back. Moments later Olivia's cell phone rang.
"It's Cragen," she said looking at the screen. "He is probably calling to tell me that our files have arrived.
Elliot watched as she paced the sidewalk and talked to their boss. For a second everything seemed fine, then he could hear the tension in her voice.
"What do you mean? But that isn't fair! Elliot and I have done all of the work! There wouldn't even be a case if we hadn't tracked down those files and found the other victims! Captain, they already had their shot at this, please….We have come this far on this case, just let us finish it."
Olivia ended the call and dropped her phone into her coat pocket, refusing to turn to him. Elliot watched her for a moment and could tell she was crying.
"The FBI just stole our case," she whispered.
"Liv, I'm sorry."
"We worked our asses off and they just walked in and took it out from under us."
"That isn't right," he said trying to comfort her.
"No, it isn't," she replied wiping her eyes with her gloved hands to remove the tears. "Cragen said because it is a serial and because of the time span….the FBI want to get this contained as soon as possible. They intersected the delivery of our files and had them sent back to their lab."
"That is some shit. You were the one who discovered the link between the victims and you are the only reason they even know this guy is a serial killer. Now they just step in and take over and take all of the credit for your hard work."
"That's just the way it works, I guess," Olivia replied as they continued walking.
They talked and laughed as Elliot tried his best to cheer her up. And before they knew it snow had begun to fall once more.
"It is so pretty when it is snowing," Olivia replied standing on the steps in front of the precinct.
"Yea," Elliot agreed.
He watched as she closed her eyes and held her arms out spinning in slow circles and feeling the light breeze against her skin. Elliot couldn't help but smile at the rosy pink color of her cheeks and how it really made her dark eyes glow.
"Beautiful," he said without realizing as he watched her.
"It is," she replied, not realizing it was not the snow he was talking about.
Olivia laughed as she stopped, feeling just a bit dizzy.
"Hold still," Elliot replied staring into her eyes as he reached to gently pick up a stray eyelash from her cheek. "Make a wish," he said holding it out for her to see.
"You don't really believe in silly stuff like that, do you?"
"Sure, I do. It's fun to believe in things like magic and wishes on eyelashes and shooting stars," he said with a smile. "It doesn't hurt to believe."
Olivia stared deep into his eyes, then shifted hers down to study the eyelash. Elliot was mesmerized as she leaned forward on the tips of her toes and stared at him as she gently blew it away. This was it, he thought as he raised his hand to cup the side of her face and leaned in kissing her tenderly.
The first kiss was short, only lasting a few seconds. But the next one was deeper and longer and even more incredible. He smiled watching her for a reaction as they finally parted. Olivia's eyes were still closed, there were snowflakes all in her dark hair and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Her eyes fluttered open to stare once more into his and he waited nervously for a reaction as a smile slowly spread across her face. Neither of them sure of that to say, Elliot slipped his fingers between his and raised her hand to his lips.
"You'll have to let me know if that wish comes true," he said and she smiled again.
"It just did," she whispered softly.
Just then sirens screamed as they flew past the precinct.
"I wonder what that is all about," she said rushing back down the steps. "What is going on?" she asked a uniformed officer as he climbed into his squad car.
"Someone spotted the car they were looking for, that guy who killed the girl over in Riverside Park. He is giving chase. But there is a car right on him. They are trying to cut this guy off before he gets away again."
"Come on," Olivia said to Elliot.
"Liv, you heard Cragen. This isn't our case anymore."
"I have seen it this far, he is the only suspect, Elliot. If this guy is our killer….I wanna be there when he is brought in."
"But we both have other cases we are should be working on. And this is supposed to be our day off anyway," he argued.
"Stabler, get your ass in the car!"
Elliot felt a pain in his chest, knowing exactly what would happen if they got into that car. He watched as Olivia opened the passenger's door and turned to look at him. His heart was racing, he had to find some way to stop her. Some way to change the events that were about to take place. He stared into her pretty brown eyes, knowing how real his love for her was and he drew a deep breath.
"Fine," he said as he tossed her the keys. "But you drive," he replied, knowing very well that the passenger's side of the car would sustain most of the damage in their fateful crash.
Offering his life in place of hers as he climbed into the passenger's seat and they drove away.