"I'm on my way to arraignment," Casey said to Elliot the next morning, "Do you have something?"
"Yeah," he answered, "We did some checking and found out that Ryan Cobb left Kansas one day after Marie did, and he moved to New York, a few blocks away from where she did, two days after she got here. He's been stalking her this whole time."
"Did you talk to the police who originally handled the rape case?" Casey asked as she headed to her car.
"Casey, nobody handled the case before now," Elliot said as he stayed behind her, "They blew her off because Ryan Cobb was a respected man in that town and she didn't count for anything; and nobody was going to say a word against this guy."
"She filed a complaint, didn't she?" Casey asked.
"Yeah, they have that jammed in with about 200 other rape complaints that were never looked into, most of which the statute of limitations has run out for," Elliot answered, "I can see why she left. She knew nobody was going to help her."
"She didn't know he would follow her here," Casey said, "You can't say she knew she'd get help here."
"She thought she left him behind when she moved," Elliot told her, "She was pulling her life together, she just found out she was pregnant and then she finds out her rapist has followed her half way over the country."
Casey stopped and turned around to face him, "Makes you wonder then why we're not arraigning Miss Baron on a murder charge pleaded self defense. We've prosecuted thousands of cases where women who were raped or abused, maimed or killed their alleged attackers, all of them claiming self defense, temporary insanity after enduring years of battering…"
"Marie's only two months pregnant, Ryan only raped her once," Elliot said.
"And we've also prosecuted plenty of women who killed their attackers over less," Casey reminded him.
"So what're you saying, that it should be her in jail instead of this guy?" Elliot wanted to know.
"Of course not," Casey answered, "I'm just wondering why when so many women we see in these circumstances kill their attackers, or go back to them and get killed themselves…this one actually knew to come to the police instead."
"People vs. Ryan Cobb," the bailiff read, "One count conspiracy to commit murder."
"How does the defendant plead?" the judge asked.
"Not guilty," Ryan's lawyer answered.
"People on bail?" the judge wanted to know.
"People request remand," Casey stated.
"Your Honor!" the defense attorney started.
"The defendant," Casey bluntly cut him off, "Raped the victim in their hometown in Kansas and then followed the victim over a thousand miles when she moved to get away from him; after which he ran her out into the middle of traffic when she threatened to report him to police. He has no family, no ties to the community."
"Mr. Cobb is not a flight risk, he is a hospital orderly, Your Honor," the defense said.
"Yes," Casey replied, "The same hospital that the victim was taken to after the murder attempt."
"You can't prove that I had anything to do with her smashing her head into that car," Ryan said.
"Save it, Mr. Cobb," the judge said, "Bail is set at $200,000 cash. Next case."
Marie sat up in her hospital bed and saw everything was blurry again. "Munch?" she called out and looked around the room, "Detective Munch?"
"Na, it's me," Fin replied from where he sat next to the bed, "Munch said he'd be back later."
"Oh," she laid back down, "Detective Tutuola?"
"What?"
"Do you have any kids?"
Fin paused before answering, "One, he's grown now."
"What was it like, raising him?" she asked.
"His mother did most of that," he answered, "Seems every time something was going on in his life, I was always at work."
"Well," she replied, "You do what you have to."
"Maybe," Fin said, "Though I wonder, if I'd been around more, would he still have as many problems as he's going through now."
"I had a good relationship with my family," Marie told him, "Look at me now, raped, near death and knocked up, and if Ryan gets out of jail and you know as well as I do it's very likely he will…he's going to come after me again. And this time he probably will kill me."
"He's not getting out of jail," Fin said.
"I like to think not…but the police wouldn't take me seriously back home, and you do here but the judge and the jury, that's going to be another matter. You know, they say 98% of rapists never see one day in jail. I don't condone vigilantism but I sure can understand it in such instances," Marie said as she sat up against the pillows, "I would've liked to have killed him myself expect I couldn't do that. For one thing, this is New York so forget about shooting him. Stabbing him would be another angle but you'd have to be pretty sick to be able to drive a blade past muscle and bone, I think. Breaking his neck would get it over quickly but with his luck he'd probably snap mine first. Forget about the death penalty in itself, the real debate should be over whether to reinstate the electric chair or the guillotine."
"Sounds like you've had a while to think it over," Fin commented.
"Eight weeks pregnant, and how long to get from conception to pregnancy?" Marie asked, "Yes I've had plenty of time to think about it."
The door opened and Munch stepped in, "Alright, Fin, I'm here, you can go now."
"Munch," Marie tried to look across the room and see him, "Is he…is he still in jail?"
"Judge ordered $200,000 bail, he can't make it and nobody around here knows him well enough to post for him. He's not going anywhere except back to the tombs," Munch explained, "Oh by the way, I saw your doctor on the way in and she said you should be able to get out of here by tomorrow."
"Good," Marie replied, "I'm getting bedsores and I didn't know people got those anymore. Munch…when the trial starts, are you going to be there? I mean I know they'll call you as a witness since it was your car I smashed into…but when I'm up on the stand, and when he's on the stand…are you going to be there?"
Almost without missing a beat, Munch promptly answered, "Yes."
"Good," she said, "It'll be nice to have a familiar face in the crowd. Somebody who knows I'm telling the truth, even if nobody else does."
"So far things are looking good for the victim," Casey said, "No arrests, no restraining orders, nothing that would suggest she's been much of a problem at any point in her life…"
"But unfortunately the same things can and do apply to our rapist," Olivia completed the thought.
"Only difference in back west Ryan Cobb was a well known person, which adds to why nobody wanted to believe Marie's side of it; he was Mr. Popularity, she was the girl next door who nobody noticed."
"Well thank God we're not trying this case in Kansas then," Olivia said.
"Unfortunately, in Marie's original statement she said that Cobb sent her harassing emails; but she also said that she got rid of her computer when she moved and doesn't have a new one. So we can't verify that."
"We had a search warrant for Cobb's computer but the one he used to send those messages on is in a landfill somewhere and we can't get anything off his new one," Olivia added.
"There were no witnesses to the rape, even though she claimed it happened in an open place," Casey said.
"Parking lots and alleys are some of the most common places for a rape to occur," Olivia said, "And very few of them ever have any witnesses."
"Cobb's lawyer is going to have some old excuse ready, it was consensual and she just regretted it the next day, they were both drunk and things got a little out of hand…speaking of which," Casey said, "No arrest reports but what did you get from her neighbors?"
"We spoke to several people who knew her," Olivia explained, "They all had pretty much the same story; she was a nice girl, got good grades in school, never drank, never smoked, never acted out against her parents, never shoplifted, always willing to help anybody, always a positive person, very cheery, loved to bake for the people on the block…she is frigging Pollyanna, Casey, this guy's got nothing on her, the defense has nothing on her, nobody does."
"And unfortunately we can't find the emails where she told him to back off and that she wasn't interested in him," Casey replied, "If we had those, we could really have a shot at showing the jury that this guy has no regards to anything except what he sets his mind to getting. Nobody from back in the tumbleweed capital would speak out against this guy, and nobody in Manhattan has known him long enough to talk either way. So all we have is the word of a young woman who the defense is going to make out to be some vindictive bitch who's just looking to hurt an innocent man."
"Not so innocent, first he rapes her and then he tries to kill both she and her unborn child," Olivia told her.
"We can't prove he raped her and we also can't prove that he drove her out in front of Munch's car. Even Munch says he didn't see anybody except her," Casey said.
"Why would she do that?" Olivia asked, "We're having Huang examine her, he's going to say she's not crazy. The defense can have her analyzed, anybody can see she's not crazy. She doesn't drink, she's not taking any medication for mental or physical problems."
"However the defense could argue that she is just so hell bent on framing his client that she would throw herself in front of a moving car and endanger both she and her baby's lives. That's not uncharted territory, Liv, we've dealt with cases like that," Casey reminded her.
"You know what other cases we've dealt with, Case?" Olivia said in return, "Psychotic, obsessed, nut job bastards who rape women and think they can get away with it and a lot of times they do! I don't want to see that happen here."
"You think I do?" Casey replied, "It's a poor case, Olivia. We're just lucky the arraignment judge wasn't a hard boiled one otherwise this guy would already be out in the streets again!"
"So help me out here!" Olivia exclaimed, "What do we need to hurt this guy during the trial?"
"I don't know," she answered.
"Forget it!" Cobb stood up from his place at the table, "I'm not taking any deal, I'm not pleading to anything and I didn't rape that bitch and I sure as hell didn't try and kill her."
"Not that he'll listen," Casey said to the defense attorney, "But you might remind your client if he wants to win any points with the jury, to refrain from calling Marie Baron a bitch when he's called to the stand."
"Casey, I'm not an unreasonable man," the attorney said, "But you know as well as I do if he pleads to rape-1, his name goes on a list that will follow him around the rest of his days. He'll never get his life back after that."
"He should've thought of that before he tried running Marie down with his car and dragging her into an alley," Casey replied.
"There is no confession, no witnesses to put him at the street the night she ran in front of the detective's car, no smoking gun, what do you have?" the lawyer wanted to know.
"What do you have?" Casey wanted to know, "If this is all some big misunderstanding and your client is innocent, why did Miss Baron file a complaint with the police in one jurisdiction and attempt to do the same in another?"
"Come now, Casey," he replied, "This wouldn't be the first time a woman tries to shake a man down because he has something she wants."
"Like what?" Casey wanted to laugh.
"We both know a lot of these rape cases go away after the two parties agree to a reasonable settlement," he said.
"So Marie is doing all this for a few bucks?" Casey asked, "I wasn't born yesterday, counselor."
"She's a young woman, single, unemployed as of currently, pregnant…that's not a pretty picture, here's her easy financial way out."
"Except that she filed a rape report before she was pregnant," Casey said.
"She had consensual sex with my client, it's not his fault she chose instead to not buy a morning-after pill."
"You're going to have to do better than this in front of the jury if you don't expect to be laughed out of court," she replied.
"How bad are things looking for us?" Elliot asked.
"It's the ten millionth case of he said she said," Casey told him, "We could prove the baby's his but that won't get him for rape or him trying to kill her."
It was then that Fin noticed something. "Where's Munch? You'd think he'd be here going on about manipulative women conspiring against their exes through the justice system."
"Maybe he got tired of talking about his ex-wives," Elliot thought.
"If the defense really tries to suggest she's looking for a settlement," Olivia said.
"I told him Marie wanted to see this thing through in court, he didn't sound too phased," Casey told her.
"How much do hospital orderlies make?" Olivia asked, "If he was a neurosurgeon or a famous actor, maybe that would make sense, maybe then he'd have an argument but…"
"It doesn't matter," Casey said, "They're going to make this whole thing to be that Marie had sex with Cobb, regretted it, tried to ruin his life and when she found out she was pregnant and living on a bad income for one person, tried to use the affair to her advantage to get a cash settlement from Ryan."
"No they're not," they heard John answer.
Everybody looked to the door and saw Munch entering the room with Lennie Briscoe at his side.
"Nice getting everybody together at once," Lennie commented as he looked around the room.
"What's going on?" Fin asked.
"A short while ago I got in contact with Lennie to see if he could be of any help in digging up information on either our victim or our perp," Munch answered, "And he did."
"How?" Olivia asked, "The rape was committed back in Kansas."
"Maybe, but this sure wasn't," Lennie pulled out of the inside of his trench coat, a newspaper a couple of months old, "Your victim is the winner of a $10 million jackpot over in New Jersey."
