Memory 2: When past and present collide

One hour later the squad room was, again, a circus. Stabler, Liv, Munch and Fin were back in the squad room sharing their information on the kid in the hospital.

"How's the kid?" Sam asked, watching Olivia and Elliot as they walked to their desks.

Olivia sighed as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

"He's okay, during the circumstances. His name is Fred Parker. He ran away from the orphanage when he was 15, lived in an abandon building in the Bronx along with other homeless teens. He started during drugs and was picked up on the street by a couple, saying that they knew where he could get a fix, but he never got what he was looking for. Fred says that they took him to a place with 5 other kids, younger than him. He never knew their exact age or their names, but all kids were used as prostitutes…" she said, and Sam felt the voices fading out. She looked at the family portrait at her desk. She just starred at it, feeling the urge to cry, but she couldn't. It was like she was mechanic, not able to cry, just hurting on the inside. She could feel her breathing getting heavier… The flashbacks… The horrible sounds, the pictures in her head… The memories…

She was tossed out of her thoughts when she felt Elliot's hand on her shoulder: "Sam? You alright?"

she looked up at him. And at everybody else. They all looked at her with concerned looks. "Yeah…" she exhaled. "Yeah, I'm fine, sorry. I… What were you asking again?"

Elliot let go of his grip and backed a little off: "Munch asked if you and Lake found anything?"

Sam turned to her computer: "Yeah, we did. Actually, we found quite a lot. Fred Parker is not in the system, but he is in child services system. I have a contact there, who remembered him. He was placed there along with his… sister Alice who's now 29. Their parents died in a robbery-gone-wrong at a supermarket. Both of them took a bullet to the head. Alice was placed in foster care and works at Mercy hospital, but Fred ran away after his parents died. I'm tracking the sisters address now"

Cragen nodded and turned to Munch and Fin. Sam glanced at her new partner, who apparently wasn't listening at all, since his eyes remained on his laptop screen. "Anything from the 911 callers?" Cragen asked Fin.

Fin shook his head: "Dead end. The car drove away so fast, nobody really got a good look at them. They did say, though, that there were two people in the car, they had to slow down in order to open the door and throw him out. Didn't get the license plate either, but did say it was a red pick-up"

"Well, they might didn't get a good look at their faces, but I think we just did" Chester said, and turned his computer for everyone to see.

Everybody gathered around the screen. "Son of a bitch" Cragen mumbled and everybody looked up at him.

"What?" Olivia asked and Cragen frowned his brows a little, looking at the screen as if he was trying to remember something.

"I think I have seen these two people before. 10 years back I got a call from.." he looked at Sam and continued: "from your father, actually. They had a case in Chicago, involving the kidnapping of a 7-year-old girl. A year later, the girl showed up. She was, just like Fred Parker thrown out of car, driving through Chicago. Unfortunately she wasn't as lucky as him. She died when she hit the ground. The police questioned these two because witnesses had seen them near the girls' school a few times, but they had nothing to go on, so they cut them loose and wrote the case off as a cold case"

Sam nodded and looked at the screen: "My dad talked a lot about that case. He was so frustrated because of it. They questioned everyone in the girl's life, everyone had alibies. There was no way to link these two to the kidnapping since there was no way to prove that they were near her school with the purpose to kidnap her, and they found no DNA on the body that matched these twos or anyone in the system. The M.E. did say that she had been raped though"

She looked at Cragen who just stared at the screen: "But now we have a victim here that matches the things the girl in Chicago went through, and my gut tells me that these two were involved" he looked at Sam. "Your father couldn't close this case. So now we're going to do it for him"

6 hours later Sam and Chester was sitting in Sam's car, driving upstate. Sam hadn't said anything, she just kept her eyes on the road. Too many things had happened that day. Fred died at the hospital. His organs shut down and the doctors did everything they could to save him, but it was too late. Sam couldn't say that she was surprised, but it was unfair and it didn't had to happen, if someone had just looked out for the boy in the first place. They had reached his sister. She hadn't talked to him for all those years, but she had started her own individual investigation. She looked for him everyday, handed out flyers in her neighborhood, talked to other homeless people. She was going nuts. She didn't even know that her brother was at the same hospital as she was, during her Monday shift. She had been looking for him for so long, and then all of a sudden they were in the same building, and she was beating herself up because of it. When Chester and Sam was at her place, interviewing her, they got a call from Olivia, who said that Fred had died in the hospital.

Giving Alice that message was the hardest thing Sam had ever experienced during her time as a detective. She nearly started crying herself when Alice broke down after identifying the man on the M.E's table as her brother Fred Parker. Sam kept telling her that it wasn't her fault and that she did everything she could to save her brother. But she knew deep inside that she wasn't just trying to convince Alice. She was trying to convince herself that she herself had done everything she could for her brother.

She saw herself in Alice. And she saw her brother in Fred.

And this case wasn't just her case. It was linked to a case that her father worked on 10 years ago. It was too big of a meeting with her past in just one day, and she wasn't exactly aware of whether she was doing this for the victims or for her father.

The only thing going through Sam's head was that she wanted those pieces of shit that caused Fred's death and Alice so much pain, locked up for life. They had send out their suspects' photos to every news station and paper in the city. It paid off. They got a call from a local trooper, saying he knew the couple. They lived in a cabin by the lake with their 5 children. 2 boys and 3 girls. The trooper identified one of the boys as Fred, but despite that Fred looked a little pale and ill sometimes, he didn't seem to think that nothing was suspicious about the family, they were always nicely dressed and put of a happy-family show for everyone they met around the cabin.

Sam, Chester, Elliot and Olivia drove up there to arrest the couple and save the other kids.

Sam and Chester was the first to arrive. Sam parked the car behind a few bushes, just in case someone would drive by. She turned of the engine and looked at her phone.

"El and Liv are 15 minutes away" she sighed as she put the phone back in her pocket and continued to stare out the window. She sighed as the flashbacks kept coming to her.

She could feel Chester's eyes lingering on her.

She turned her head and looked at him: "What?" she asked in a harsh tone.

He shrugged his shoulders: "Nothing, it's just…" he sighed and shifted a little in the car seat.

There was silence for a second, and Sam raised her eyebrows a little, waiting for an answer: "Are you okay?" he asked and Sam shrugged her shoulders: "Why shouldn't I be?"

He scoffed under his breath as a little smile appeared on his face: "Look, I'm not blind. Your father worked on a case that might be connected to this one, and I saw you in the morgue with Alice, I heard what you said to her, and I saw how you looked at Fred's body. This isn't just a regular case to you, this is personal…"

Sam couldn't look at him. She felt the tears gathering in her eyes. She turned her head to the window.

"You're parents.. You're brother…" he started. "They're dead, aren't they?"

Sam closed her eyes. "They're dead, aren't they?" the words kept ringing in her ears.

She cleared her throat and turned her head again: "Where are you going with this?" she snapped and let out a little laugh. "I mean, really? Where?"

He just looked at her. "I'm a cop. Not stupid"

"Yeah, and I'm a cop too, but you don't see me snooping around in your past, right? So unless you have a subpoena for me talking to you about this, shut the hell up. And don't ask me about my family again" she hissed through her teeth and exited the car, slamming the door behind her and exhaled deeply.

"Man, so much for not giving your new partner a hard time" she mumbled as she saw Elliot and Olivia pull of next to her.

Author's note:

So.. This is chapter 2! I hope you guys like it and will leave some comments and opinions on where this fic is going.

Thank you for reading! :) x