"Well, this is certainly an interesting turn of events," Huang said as he looked at the picture of Tony Keller.

"Got any ideas about this, Doc?" Munch asked.

"Elliot," Huang said, "Keller didn't look like this when you last saw him, did he?"

"To be honest, I don't really remember seeing Keller, I just remember Keller. That smug son of a bitch, through the trial he was practically laughing when he recalled the murders," Elliot said.

"Well, Tony Keller was 27 when he went to prison," Olivia said, "He'd be 36 by now, that's a long time for somebody's appearance to change…he cuts his hair, his face fills out, he bulks up a bit…"

"Yes but as much as he looks like Elliot now," Huang said, "He had to bear some resemblance to him when they met as well."

"And Toni would remember that?" Elliot asked.

"Most likely…which could also explain why she didn't bother looking you up for so many years. If the only person who I could go to for help looked like my father who was incarcerated, I don't know I'd be too anxious to go to him for anything either. You remind her of her father."

"So that's why she waited so long to find me," Elliot said.

"It could also be why she finally came back," Huang told him, "She wants to see her father, she's obviously trying to move past what's happened, so she knows she has to bite the bullet and come back and face you first."

"So what do I do now?" Elliot asked, "Do you think it's a good idea for her to see him?"

"Unresolved issues almost always damage somebody more in the long run than resolved issues that end on bad terms. She thinks she's up for visiting with him, I think it's worth a try."

"You should probably go on first and see if Keller even wants to see his daughter," Cragen said.

"Captain," Fin came into the room, "Just got a call from the hospital, nurse at the front desk just saw a guy matching Tobias's description come in."

"Let's go get the son of a bitch," Munch said.

Munch, Fin and Elliot entered the hospital with their guns drawn but they didn't see Tobias anywhere. The front nurse told them he'd gone upstairs, so they followed. Halfway up the stairs to the third floor they could hear Toni screaming. Fin and Munch got ahead of Elliot and saw Tobias backing out of the room with his hands up. He was a large man, about six feet tall and looked to be near 200 pounds; what he was primarily made up of they couldn't tell but it was obvious he had some black and Hispanic genes to him. They looked in and Toni had a gun in her hands and was screaming at him to get out or she would shoot him.

"Tobias Wentworth," Fin grabbed him from behind and cuffed him, "You're under arrest for murder, and for aggravated assault." He and Munch hauled him away, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can't afford one, one will be appointed to you by the court. Do you understand these rights as I've read them to you, jackass?"

Elliot stepped into the hospital room and went over to the bed. "It's alright, Toni, he's gone."

"Elliot? Oh thank God," she said, "I'm so glad to see you."

"Are you alright? Did he hurt you?"

"No, he tried to come in but I told him to get out or I would kill him," Toni answered.

Elliot tried to grab the gun away from her, "Put that down before you hurt somebody."

Toni looked down and saw the gun as though she was looking at it for the first time, and she immediately let go.

"Where did," Elliot noticed the handle of the gun was wrapped in Kleenex, "Where did you get this thing?"

Toni pointed behind him and Elliot saw she was pointing at the teddy bear. Elliot picked the animal up and looked it over and found the bottom had Velcro flaps on it. He opened it up and felt around inside and realized there was enough room around the stuffing to fit the gun in it.

"It's looking bad for our case," Casey told them, "We don't have the knife Wentworth used to attack Toni with, so we don't have anything corroborating his prints and her blood, the only DNA we do have the victim admitted to beating out of him…and what more we can't tie him to any murder because all we have to go on for it is Toni's word."

"You saying he might walk?" Elliot asked.

"'Might' is a terrible understatement; he's going to walk unless we can prove any of what Toni claims he did."

"Casey, he found out what hospital she was in and went up to her room, why would he do that?" Olivia asked.

"Why would she have a gun in her room to pull on him? If we can't get this guy to confess to anything, we're screwed."

"Fin and Munch are working him over now," Cragen said, "But it doesn't look like he's going to break."

"What if we told him we have his gun tying him to the murder in Queens?" Olivia asked.

"We don't."

"Don't we?" Olivia asked, "Elliot, you said the gun Toni had was wrapped in Kleenex when she got it out…it sounds like somebody might've wanted to preserve the prints on it."

"Well who would want to do that?" Elliot asked, "And why send it to her of all people?"

"Well we know now that Tobias wasn't the one who sent the bear. Maybe whoever sent it to her like that did it so the police could get a hold of it and test it," Olivia thought, "We called the police in Queens and found out they currently have three open homicides from the last week where the victims were shot but no gun was recovered and they have no suspects. We could have ballistics see if it matches the bullet that killed any of them."

"Except in the time it takes for us to find out," Casey replied, "This guy's going to walk, and with no known ties to the community, no job, no family, he could disappear again."

"I've got an idea," Elliot said.

"This isn't looking good for you, Tobias," Elliot said as he entered the interrogation room, "You just get out of prison a year ago for shooting two people, then we get an eyewitness who saw you shoot another one, and you attack a defenseless young woman, then stalk her at her hospital room. Are you trying for some record or something?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied.

"No? Well let me clear it up for you," Elliot said as he went over to the table and looked across at the suspect, "That girl that you jumped a few days ago and cut her cheek up real good…" Elliot tossed the hospital pictures of Toni onto the table for him to see, "She got your DNA and brought it to us. We have you for her assault, we have you for stalking her…and we're having ballistics check your gun as we speak to connect it to the shooting from last week."

"Do you have a death wish, Mr. Wentworth?" Munch asked, "If so, that's your problem, but there are plenty of ways to go about getting yourself killed that aren't as messy as what's about to happen. Tony Keller was your cellmate for years, you know what he's capable of…you get out of prison and you try and kill his daughter, you don't think he's going to find out and send somebody after you?"

"Somebody," Elliot added before Tobias could respond, "Sent your gun to the girl you assaulted…you think that's coincidence? It was nicely preserved too so the original prints were still on it…"

It was after Elliot had said that that he made the connection. Perhaps Keller already knew what was going on.

"This thing's going to go to trial," Fin told him, "They're going to listen to Toni's testimony and lock you back up, probably with her daddy again."

"That bitch will never testify against me," Tobias replied, "She'll be too scared for her life."

"Sounds good enough to me," Fin said, "Get up you son of a bitch."

"You know, Wentworth," Elliot said as they hauled him out of the room, "I have a good idea what Tony's going to have done to you when he finds out what happened to his daughter, is going to make the death penalty seem very merciful."

"He confessed?" Toni asked as Elliot helped her out of the hospital and out to the car to take her to the hotel.

"Not quite," Elliot replied, "But you could read between the lines. By now it doesn't matter anyway, ballistics matched his gun to three bullets that shot and killed a 19 year old college student in a back alley in Queens last week. He'll be indicted tomorrow and then they'll start on the trial."

"And they'll call me to testify," Toni said, "Everybody's going to know who I am, do you really think anybody's going to believe me?"

Elliot turned to look at her and saw she was holding the teddy bear against her body.

"You better give me that," Elliot said as he grabbed it by the ear and took it away from her, "We're going to have to see if we can find any forensic evidence to confirm who sent that to your room. Now, where do I take you so you can pick up your things?"

Toni opened the door on her side and got in, "I don't have any things, all I have is what I've got on."

Elliot got in on the other side, pulled his door shut, put his key in the ignition but he didn't start the engine yet.

"What is it?" Toni asked.

"Nothing."

"Something's bothering you, what is it?" Toni asked, "Me?"

"Not you," Elliot replied, "I…I don't understand any of this, Toni, I've worked hundreds of cases similar to yours, and I still don't understand it."

"What?" she asked.

"You."

She looked at him, "Are you surprised that my life turned out this way? Did you really think I could aspire to something better than this? You know who my parents were, you know what happened to them, you knew what would happen to me…you should've known this would be as good as it gets for me."

"That's not true, Toni…I know a lot of people who were born into horrible situations, had complete bastards for parents, their home lives were a nightmare…"

"But they turned out alright, didn't they?" Toni asked, "Whereas I've just been a screw up all my life. Go ahead and say it, I've accepted the fact a long time ago."

Elliot looked straight ahead and shook his head, "No, what you are…"

"What? A victim? Do I act like one?" Toni asked.

"It doesn't matter what you do," Elliot said, trying to restrain himself from saying what was really on his mind, "What happened to you was beyond your control and it shouldn't have happened."

"Everybody's life is full of things that shouldn't have happened," Toni said, "But they do, and you go on, in the end, there's not much choice, is there?"

"There are no other witnesses to the murder, and no witnesses to the attack on Toni Keller," Casey said.

"But Toni didn't cut up her cheek herself," Elliot said, "Anybody could see that, she's not crazy, even Huang would say so."

"The homicide division in Queens can't even work in a connection between Tobias Wentworth and the man killed with his gun." As Elliot opened his mouth to reply, Casey added, "We can't even prove it's his gun! We have his prints on it but it's not a legally registered gun, he's been in prison for killing people, by law he can't own one, and we really can't prove that he was the one who pulled the trigger on that boy. And Toni's eyewitness testimony isn't rock solid either."

"So what do we do?" Olivia asked.

"I don't like offering deals up front but I don't think we'll make it at a trial," she replied, "I don't think we have any alternative."

Casey left the room, leaving Elliot and Olivia behind to talk amongst themselves.

"And Wentworth's lawyer is going to know we don't have anything, he won't take the deal, he'll want to push ahead with a trial," Elliot said.

"So what do we do?" Olivia asked.

Elliot bit his lip for a second and replied, "I don't know…I'd hate to think I failed Toni, nine years after I promised to help her…but I don't see any way out of this mess. I'm going to have to tell her...Toni has to know."

"They're letting him go?" Toni asked when Elliot told her the bad news, "What do you mean they're letting him go? Can they do that?"

"Unfortunately, Casey doesn't think we have enough evidence to win at a trial," Elliot said, "Tobias's lawyer knows this so he's going to push for a trial instead of taking any deal Casey might offer him…"

Toni didn't say anything in response.

"Look, Toni, whoever sent you that gun had to have known what Tobias did…can you think of anybody who would've sent it to you?" Elliot asked.

Toni shook her head, "I don't know anybody, and when it was brought in there was no name, the nurse didn't know who had sent it…but it would have to be somebody who has it in for Tobias, but that could be anybody."

"But how did they know what hospital room you were in?" Elliot asked her.

"I don't know."

"And there were no surveillance cameras near where the shooting occurred so we can't say for certain that there were any other witnesses to the murder. No witnesses, just the weapon, which we can't prove he used to kill that guy with, no probable cause, no motive, an admission that doesn't do much to incriminate himself…and one witness."

"Who is the daughter of his old cellmate who would probably love to see him dead, how did you even manage an arrest in the first place, Elliot?"

"I'm starting to wonder."

"What has Tobias been doing all this time?" Toni asked, "He's been out a year, somebody has to know if he's been up to anything crooked. He has to be on parole, he'd have a P.O. he'd have to check with regularly…how long do you stay on parole for manslaughter?"

"That's a good question," Elliot said.

"So what does the Manhattan SVU want with me this early in the morning?" Jack McCoy asked, "You're a bit out of my league here."

"We have a case that doesn't make any sense and nobody we've talked to has any idea what to do about it," Olivia said.

"What case?" Jack asked.

"Tony Keller's daughter came to us because her father's cellmate from Rikers, Tobias Wentworth who just got out for manslaughter when he shot two people to death, hunted her down and viciously assaulted her and mutilated her cheek with a knife…she was going to blow the whistle on him because she witnessed him shooting 19-year-old Danny Beck…of which the Queens homicide division has failed to make any connection between the killer and victim," Elliot explained.

"Tobias's gun comes to Toni in the hospital amidst the stuffing of a large teddy bear which nobody knows who sent it, somebody gave it to a delivery boy who sent it to the front desk where the nurse took it to her room."

"His gun?" Jack asked.

"A gun with his prints on it…the gun matches the bullets that killed the kid. It's an illegal firearm which doesn't matter much since he couldn't legally own it anyway after his prison sentence," Elliot added, "Forensics tested the bear, no prints, no hairs, no fibers."

"So we're dealing with somebody smart who's not coming out of the shadows," Jack said, "They know what happened but why haven't they come forth?"

"Could be Tobias tried to kill somebody else," Casey said, "Or threatened to kill…none of the police in Queens have any idea what he's been up to in the past year since he got out."

"His own parole officer didn't know that anything was amiss until Tobias was arrested," Olivia added.

"What does Arthur say about it?" Jack asked.

The three visitors looked like the cats that hadn't quite swallowed the canaries.

"We haven't really discussed it with him yet," Elliot said, "You know how many headaches he already has what with this being an election year."

"Okay, so, aside from obtaining an illegal handgun," Jack said, "We don't know that this guy has broken any laws since his release up till the point where he assaulted the girl." He shook his head, "Not good…assault and illegal ownership of a weapon, doesn't add up to much jail time, even given his record, and whatever lawyer he can find is going to know this. And…where is Mr. Wentworth currently?"

"Rikers," Casey saw the look on Jack's face and added, "In Queens."

"Ah, and Mr. Keller isn't in that Rikers?"

"No, he's in Manhattan Rikers," Olivia replied, "He's being held in prison in Queens because the murder charge, flimsy though it is, outweighs his attack on a 17 year old girl who has been put through hell."

"And it looks like he could walk on murder since it's not definitively his gun," Casey said, "Meaning somebody else could've had it at the time Danny Beck was murdered. So our best bet is to go ahead with his attacking Toni, but that's shaky as well."

"I thought you said she witnessed the murder," Jack said, "The two crimes are connected then, aren't they?"

"Maybe not, Tobias Wentworth never actually admitted to killing anybody. All he said was that Toni would be too scared to testify against him, which could only incriminate him for the assault."

"Hmm, he wasn't smart enough to keep his mouth shut, but he's not stupid enough to say too much either," Jack said, "He's not a total idiot."

"The only thing I can't understand," Olivia said, "Is why would he knowingly attack the daughter of his cellmate, who outranks him in felony charges?"

"Tony Keller," Jack repeated the name as if trying to remember the man, "He's doing life for murder, correct?"

"Three times over, all brutally, all mercilessly, skulls fractured, necks snapped," Casey said.

Jack was putting something together. "And if he gets convicted in Manhattan for that assault, he risks going back to Rikers there and facing the wrath of her father, whose fury he knows the extent of. Is he suicidal?"

"The problem is while he didn't incriminate himself for the murder charge," Casey said, "He didn't exactly incriminate himself for the assault either. He just said she wouldn't testify, he didn't say he actually did it."

"He also didn't say whether or not he knew Toni Keller," Elliot realized.

All eyes turned to him.

"What?" Olivia asked.

"Tobias didn't say that he knew Toni Keller was Toni Keller…we told him she was the daughter of his cellmate…he didn't act like he knew she was…but he also didn't act surprised when we told him."

"If he said he did know it was Tony's daughter, it looks like a vendetta," Casey said, "If he said he didn't know it was her, then he hangs himself in admitting to attacking her."

"Any boob can pull a trigger which just so happens to kill somebody," Jack said, "It takes real determination to do the damage to the human body that Tony Keller did to those three men. Man two versus murder one…" He pantomimed weighing the two, "Does Mr. Wentworth realize that he may wind up with the same cellmate in Manhattan Rikers if he's convicted?"

Casey scoffed, "He has to know he can walk on this, I don't think we can make it past the Grand Jury, but I don't want to offer any pleas up front either."

"Wait a minute," Elliot said to her, "Maybe Jack's right. We start stressing to Tobias that he could wind up back with Tony, who's going to know what this rat bastard did to his only daughter…he might start to get worried and cop to a plea if it means not answering to Keller. We already told him about that once before but maybe we need to try again to make sure we get the message across."

"This is assuming Tobias knows how dearly Tony Keller is concerned with his daughter's wellbeing," Jack said, "Stabler, you're the only one here who ever met the man. What do you think? Might it be common knowledge in Rikers how important Keller's only remaining family is to him?"

Elliot's head was spinning with the idea. He remembered what he saw in Tony Keller nine years ago at the trial, he remembered what Keller said, he remembered what Huang said, it all blurred together.

"Elliot?" Olivia's voice brought him back to reality.

"Keller…he insisted from the time of his arrest to when they hauled him off to prison, that he didn't sell Toni into any kind of child prostitution…our psychiatrist thinks it's because he didn't…okay, he didn't do that, he's a murderer, but he's not an accessory to the rape of his daughter…she says he took her there saying he had to go somewhere and couldn't take her with him…that can be interpreted as he wanted to make sure she was safe...or safer than she would be with him, which means he didn't know what was going to happen to her."

Jack was about to the point of laughing, "We're just going in circles on this…but it could be very likely that somehow, the man does care about his daughter…and what somebody thinks of his family, isn't much of a secret in lockup."

"We never could figure out who sent the gun to Toni, but it had to be somebody who knew that Tobias had killed somebody and knew that Toni could benefit from having it in her possession when she was near the cops," Olivia said.

"Neatly preserved," Elliot recalled his earlier statement, "Wrapped in tissue so the prints wouldn't be smudged…so we could link it to Tobias…you hear about criminals who still run things on the outside from prison but…I have a hard time thinking Keller could've been the one to have it done."

"Get somebody up to Rikers and talk to him," Jack told them, "See if he's willing to say anything that could help anybody's argument. And get somebody up to Queens and remind Tobias who he'll have to answer to if he's convicted in the brutal assault of this teenaged girl."

Casey and Olivia headed out the door; Elliot started to follow but stopped and looked back at McCoy. For being as early in the morning as it was he already looked about dead with exhaustion.

"You okay?" Elliot asked.

Jack looked up at Elliot and replied, "Somebody leaked some of the hospital pictures of your victim, onto the news this morning…I look at what this guy did to her…and I thank God my own daughter is grown, and out of the state."

"Yeah well I have three daughters, one of them very close to Toni's age," Elliot said, "Every time I think about this whole mess, I want to kill somebody."

"Times like this I'm very glad I didn't decide to follow after my father and be a cop," Jack said, "Otherwise I've little doubt I would've already been before the courts by now, probably already for having killed someone. As a lawyer, every day in court I struggle with myself to not jump over the tables and strangle the life out of somebody. Give me a badge and a gun and put me out there on the front line where this is happening and I would've killed somebody by now, to hell with the consequences. I must be slipping, getting as emotionally involved as I am in this work...and this isn't even my case!"