"Are you sure this is the right address?" Nick asked for the hundredth time.
Olivia sighed loudly, not bothering to hide her irritation. She swore sometimes that it was like training an incompetent baboon. "If you ask me that one more time, you're walking back to the precinct," she informed him coldly. Shutting the engine off, she took the keys out of the ignition and opened the car door. Without checking to see if her new partner was behind her, the detective made her way up the steps of the brownstone in front of her. She raised her right hand and rapped on the door.
"Who is it?" a man's voice called from within the house.
Olivia placed her badge against the door so he could see it. "Police, Mr. Hopkins. Please open the door. We need to speak with you."
The sound of approaching footsteps came, followed by a whiff of strong cologne and a clicking of the lock mechanism on the front door. As it opened, the detectives were greeted by the sight of a disheveled man with a rat's nest of dark brown hair and a moustache that Olivia assumed hadn't been shaved for weeks. "What's this about?" he asked.
"Mr. Hopkins, you don't seem too concerned about anything. Like the fact that your daughter never came home last night," said Nick, who had just taken his place at Olivia's side. Olivia shot him a glare that could have withered the toughest plant. Nick ignored her, and went on talking. "Usually when the police show up on someone's doorstep this early in the morning, it has a less than satisfactory result, particularly when that person's child is missing."
"What are you talking about?" Hopkins demanded. "Where's my daughter?"
Olivia intervened before Nick even had a chance to open his mouth. "She was found murdered outside of the public library, Mr. Hopkins," she stated bluntly. "But you knew that already."
"Dead?" he repeated, appearing surprised. His act failed to impress Olivia, though. "How did she die?"
"You tell me," Olivia responded, meeting his glare with one of her own.
"How would I know?"
Olivia refused to break the stare. Sooner or later, he would fold; she was sure of it. "That's a lovely gash on your forearm, Mr. Hopkins," she observed, pointing to a still crimson wound that had to be a couple of centimeters wide and at least a centimeter deep. "Would you mind telling myself and my partner how you got it?"
Hopkins looked down at his arm. Olivia knew he had forgotten to hide it. "Oh. I uh…burned myself on a frying pan," he replied, choking on the lie.
"Really?" Olivia asked, resisting the urge to slap the prick across the face. When he didn't answer, she went on, taking the pictures of the crime scene out of the folder and handing them to him. "Our medical examiner found a clump of hair in your daughter's hand that matches your color perfectly. She also informed us that your daughter was stabbed so many times that it is a statistical improbability for the perp not to have cut himself. A right handed perp, I might add," she added, gesturing to the gash on Hopkins' right arm.
Hopkins' jaw set and his eyes narrowed. "What are you implying, Detective?" he growled.
"That you killed your daughter, Mr. Hopkins," Olivia responded evenly.
"That's absurd! I loved my daughter!"
Olivia had always loved these parts of the interrogations, when the perp broke down, attempted to proclaim his innocence, followed by a stream of waterworks. Olivia loved all of it. However, she knew it was time to stop, otherwise this would never hold up in court. "Mr. Hopkins, if you're innocent, then you should have no problems letting us into your apartment to prove it." She was holding back the fact that they had a witness for the simple reason that she wanted to get a confession and still have a bartering tool.
"The hell I will," Hopkins snapped.
"Then I suppose we will have to come back with a search warrant, won't we?" Olivia tried to ignore the fact that she knew this entire conversation was extremely improper. She was interrogating a man with little evidence, save a witness statement and facts that were circumstantial at best. And yet, in her gut, she knew the creep was guilty. "Late at night, with many officers tearing your home apart," Olivia continued.
"Do it. There's nothing to find." Hopkins folded his arms across his chest.
Olivia shook her head. "We'll see about that."
"You know what? You're trespassing. I want you off of my property, or I will call my lawyer!"
Knowing she had to get the warrant as soon as possible was the only reason behind Olivia's next words. "Fine. We will leave. But we will be back. And Mr. Hopkins? Try not to destroy any evidence while we're gone. Our techs are the best in the business." With that, Olivia turned around and made her way back to the car, taking three steps to Amaro's one.
"Captain, he did it. He's guilty, I know it!" she found herself protesting a half hour later. Cragen had called her into his office to reprimand her after Hopkins called with a claim that two detectives, Benson and Amaro, had trespassed in his home and accused him of killing his daughter.
"So that makes it okay to interrogate him on his doorstep without his attorney present, with no evidence except your gut?"
Olivia sighed, collapsing into one of the chairs in front of the captain's desk. "The librarian said she saw him fighting with Catherine the night she died. Over what, she didn't say, but she did say that Hopkins stormed off in a huff and she saw his car later that evening."
"It's circumstantial!" Cragen replied. "You woke a man up early in the morning and threatened him because you THINK he might have raped and murdered his own daughter. Guts don't close cases, Detective. Without more evidence, this is nothing more than a hunch."
"Then let me find evidence," Olivia replied, looking into his eyes from across the desk. "I feel it, Don. He's guilty. Trust me."
Cragen sighed. "You have forty eight hours. If you don't have more evidence by then, then you're going to move on to someone else as your prime suspect. Got it?"
Olivia nodded. She stood up and walked over to the door, but paused in front of it. "We need a search warrant. Otherwise the evidence is going to be gone if we wait."
"Hypothetical evidence," Cragen told her. He checked the clock on the wall, which read eight AM. "Go down to the District Attorney's office. Find Novak or Cabot, and have one of them secure a warrant."
"Thank you, Captain." Without anything further being said, Olivia opened Cragen's office door and walked out. She would follow the captain's instructions, except she was headed to the courthouse, not the District Attorney's office. She had no idea if Alex would be at the office this early. She wasn't even sure if Alex had court today, but she knew a certain redhead who did.