Little Girl Lost
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This story is on an AU track.
Chapter 11: In Pursuit
"I didn't do nothing," the man slurred, "I was looking for my keys and I couldn't find them, so I was moving stuff around. I tripped over something, and I put my elbow through the window."
"And you just decided to fall asleep in the middle of the floor?" Hannah pressed.
"Guess I must've hit my head too. I got dizzy, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in a holding cell."
"No," Olivia replied firmly. "We are so far past that it's not even funny. See, you didn't just pass out, you also puked all over the floor. The lab is running toxicology right now. We're going to find out what you took."
The man let out something between a sigh and a grunt. "Okay, fine. So I was high. Big deal. We good now?"
"No, we are not good now. You did a lot more than get high. Don't bother to deny it," she added as he opened his mouth. "We have a witness. We have that little girl's blood in your apartment, and your semen on her body. It's over for you, do you understand? You're going into a very dark hole for a very long time."
He opened his mouth, and then closed it again, seeming to realize he wasn't going to be able to get out of this as easily as he'd expected. When he spoke again, his voice was shaky, devoid of the earlier cockiness. "I - I know things. I can tell you."
"What kinds of things?"
"I want a deal first. Get me a lawyer."
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The ringing of his phone startled Zach out of a sound sleep, and he immediately grabbed it, answering it without even checking the display so that the ringer wouldn't wake Andrea. "Nichols."
"Zach, honey, it's me."
"Mom." He carefully slid away from Andrea so he could talk without bothering her.
"I'm sorry, were you asleep? You sound like I just woke you up."
"It's okay," he assured her. "What's up?"
"I just wanted to see if you needed anything. Either of you. Not to say anything about you," she added quickly. "I know you're doing the best you possibly can. But I'm a child psychiatrist, and I have years of experience with families in your situation. I know well that normally easy tasks can become difficult when a child has been traumatized, especially for a single parent."
Zach glanced over at Andrea again. She was likely right, he conceded mentally; it would probably take time before the little girl would be comfortable leaving the house, and given that he was the only person she seemed fully comfortable with, that likely meant he wouldn't be leaving anytime soon either. They were okay on groceries, but, "I need a waterproof mattress pad for a double bed," he said finally. "Andrea wet her bed last night, and I doubt it'll be the last time, given what she's been through. I'll pay you back."
"Don't worry about it. I'll be over in two hours, okay? That will give you time to let Andrea know what's going on."
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It was a not-so-guarded secret that, much as she loved her sons and grandsons, a part of Charlotte Nichols had always wished to add a girl to the family. And in her work, she'd met plenty of children whose first reaction to her was fear. But never in her wildest dreams had she expected that these two things might intersect.
When Zach had been a teenager, one of his classmates had run away from home and disappeared for two months. Charlotte remembered it clearly. Though her marriage had been on the rocks then, one thing she and Theodore had fully agreed on was that they were secretly relieved that it had been a stranger and not a member of their own family. They had both taken to their textbooks to assure themselves that these awful thoughts were normal. They had never expected such a thing to happen to their family. Only now, it had. And seeing Andrea with her head buried in Zach's shoulder, too afraid to even look at Charlotte, drove that point home.
"It's okay, baby," Zach was murmuring to her as he pulled the door open. "It's okay. This is my mom, and I love and trust her very much. I'd never let anyone near you if I thought there was a chance they would hurt you."
His eyes met his mother's, and the amount of pain in them made him want to cry. She'd seen it so many times before, in the eyes of parents whose children had been through unspeakable ordeals, but in those cases professionalism had allowed her to keep a necessary distance so she could focus. But this wasn't some client's family, this was her son. She wanted to pull him into her arms, to hold him close and comfort him, but as long as he was holding Andrea, that would only do more harm than good.
She bypassed her son altogether, speaking instead to the little girl. "Zach is right, Andrea. But if you don't want me here, I'll leave. I don't want to do anything to hurt you."
To both of their surprise, Andrea lifted her head, turning it slightly so she could see Charlotte out of the corner of her eye. "It's okay," she said finally. "You can stay."
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"I don't understand why her reaction changed." Zach kept the words to a whisper so as not to disturb Andrea, who had fallen asleep again on the couch with her head in his lap. "I thought she might say you could stay just because she's so afraid to upset anyone. But that was genuine."
"Partly, it's the fact that I was willing to give her the choice," Charlotte whispered back. "But she also trusts you. Scared though she is, she knows you're telling her the truth; you'd never let anyone into this house who would hurt her. Zach, don't underestimate yourself. The bond between the two of you is incredible. Some abuse victims have trouble trusting even biological parents, but Andrea trusts you without reservation."
"Not entirely." He ran his hand gently over her hair. "She still reacts sometimes like she's afraid I'm going to hurt her. She'd finally stopped doing that a few months before this all happened."
"She was doing this before? Was she abused at any time before you met her?"
He nodded sadly, caressing Andrea's hair again. "Why?"
"I'll explain in a minute, but I need to know one more thing. How old was Andrea when the abuse began?"
He shrugged, though grief seemed to weigh him down, making the motion much more labor-intensive than usual. "Nobody's entirely sure. Young enough that she can't remember a time before the abuse. First reprieve she ever got was when ACS got involved."
"That's what I thought," Charlotte said sadly. "That part's got nothing to do with you. It's all conditioning. Her formative memories taught her that pain was the consequence of a mistake. That's a difficult thing to overcome, and frankly, I'm astonished you got to a point where she wasn't reacting that way in just a few months the first time around. But even based on what little you told me, I'm sure those same lessons she learned in early childhood were reinforced by her captors. She trusts you, Zach, that much is obvious. But that's competing with her entire past."
"I don't understand," he whispered brokenly. "I look at her and - and all I want to do is hold her close and protect her from the world. How can a person see the same child and think something so different?"
"That's above my pay grade, Zach," she said gently. "Or your father's, for that matter, and as much as you try to understand criminal behavior, I'm going to guess yours as well. All you can do is try to help in any way you can."
"How? How do you go about just picking up the pieces, day after day for years? Doesn't it ever feel like it's not enough?"
"Of course. The same way I'm sure it does for you when you catch a murderer after someone is already dead."
He nodded, willingly conceding that that much was true. "In those cases, though, at least I can think that I'm saving potential future victims. It's what keeps me going in day after day."
"And what keeps me going is knowing I've made a difference in those children's lives." There was no reproach in her tone, only understanding. "I may never know what drives a person to abuse a child, but if I can help those children get their lives back, that can be enough." She glanced down at where her son's hand rested on Andrea's head. "If anyone can do that for her, Zach, it's you."
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"So what did we get from the dirtbag?" Fin asked.
"He's agreed to give up everything he knows about the people who were supplying him with girls. Unfortunately," Olivia added, "he doesn't know where their base is, but his details might help us find it."
"What did you have to give him?" one of the Major Case detectives asked, grimacing.
"Nothing too lenient. Concurrent sentences on everything we have now, and no additional charges for anything we find in the investigation. He'll still do twenty-five to life for rape and go on the registry if he ever gets out. Still kinder than I'd like," she admitted, "but we need what he has, and I have a feeling there are a lot of people who will fight parole for him when the time comes."
"What about the guy who covered for our kidnapper?" Rollins chimed in.
"He'll plead to obstruction, do a year at Riker's and five years' probation. He's given us everything he has on Linda, and we're working on tracking her down. She could probably give us a lot more, if we can convince her to cooperate."
"From what Munch told us, that's a big 'if'," Amaro pointed out. "And that's even assuming we find her."
"I know," she said grimly. "So for now, we keep working with what we have. We'll continue the phone banks and patrols, but in the meantime, Captain Hannah and I will be working with Lieutenant Morales from TARU to see what we can do with the data we got from our perp."
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"Number comes back to a burner cell," Morales reported.
"So no GPS?" Hannah sighed. "I know, it's never that easy. But just this once, I was hoping it would be."
"Hey, don't give up so easily. Liv?"
"Yeah?"
"How good of an actress are you?"
She smiled, catching on. "I think I can manage."
He waved her over to the phone beside his desk. "We're already set up to trace it. You know what you have to do."
"Keep them on the line."
"Exactly. You ready?"
"Good to go."
"Dialing now." He hurried through the button sequence and then handed the receiver to Olivia.
After a few moments, she waved to Morales just as she began to speak in a high-pitched, bubbly voice. "Hello, this is Mary from Card Services. I'm calling regarding some questionable purchases from your account?"
Hannah pressed a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter as Olivia recited a litany of jewelry and electronics purchases, never once dropping her 'Mary' voice. "Oh, dear, this is so terrible. It looks like someone might have cloned your card!" A pause. "Well, there's a variety of ways it could have happened."
"We got it," Morales whispered.
"Well, we'll get right on it. I'll remove those charges for you, and when you get your bill, if there's anything on it that you didn't buy, you just call us back and we'll take care of it. Have a great day and thank you for banking with us!" She hung up.
Hannah finally burst out laughing out loud. "That was brilliant! I can't believe he bought it."
Olivia smiled at the compliment, but she was already back in professional mode. "What do we have on the trace?" she asked Morales.
"I triangulated it to about a twenty square block area." He pointed to the screen. "Can't get any more specific, but that should narrow your search area down considerably."
"Put that up on the board in the main room for me, please? And send it out to all the patrol units."
"Already done. And I ran off a printed copy in case you need one for reference."
"Thank you, Reuben." She grabbed the paper off the printer on her way out the door, running back into the main room.
"All right, everyone, listen up!" She waved for their attention, at the same time. "We've triangulated a phone signal down to this area here." She tapped the screen which, as promised, was displaying their new search area. "We keep taking tips, but for those of you screening, we're primarily focused on anything in or near this area. Meanwhile, I want the four closest units to begin patrolling the area - keep it low-profile for now, we don't want to spook them. All of the other patrols should start converging on that area, but again, low-profile. Don't enter the area, find a place nearby to wait where you won't be noticed and wait for my order. And get ESU on standby, same orders. Once we're ready to move, we'll need to move fast."
"Copy that, Sergeant!" The call, in near-perfect unison, went up from most of the people in the room and over the radio.
Hannah could see that her eyes had gone wide as she set the radio down and headed back for her office, and he smiled gently at her. "It's kind of a rush, isn't it?"
"Yeah. And incredibly unexpected."
"I'm not surprised," he countered. "You were out there thinking and speaking like a leader. People respond to that."
"Yeah, well, congratulate me when we crack this case," she replied. "Until then, the words are meaningless."
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"Got it!" Olivia all but ripped the faxed search warrant off the printer. "We're good to go, let's move!"
Olivia ran for the elevator, closely followed by Captain Hannah and about a dozen officers pulled from the phone bank. "I'll drive," the Captain offered once they were in the parking lot. "You stay in contact with the scene."
"Right." She threw herself down in the passenger's seat, clicking her radio on almost before she had the door closed. "Fin, what's your status?"
"Everything's still quiet. We're watching the house, but nothing so far. The frosted windows aren't helping much. Hope you've got a plan, or we're going to be going in more or less blind."
"ESU's got an infrared camera," she told him.
"So sit tight?"
"Actually," she amended after a moment, "see if you can discreetly evacuate the houses that border it, okay? Just in case things get out of hand and spill over."
"Copy that. Fin out."
"ESU, we need one camouflaged truck in front of the target house with an infrared camera. Other units, come to two blocks behind the house and hold for my signal. We need to evacuate the neighbors first."
"Understood."
"Central, what's the status of the other officers in the area?"
"You have eleven units parked just outside the perimeter, another seven who will be able to reach the scene within ten minutes."
"Thank you." She finally set the radio down in her lap, and it was only then that she realized the hand holding it was shaking ever so slightly.
"That's normal too."
She jumped, startled by his voice. "What?"
"This your first big case in the driver's seat - so to speak?" he added, seeming to realize how odd that statement sounded in context.
"Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I've run cases, but nothing on this level. I still don't know why they wanted me in charge; I expected to be taken off once I asked for the task force."
"Brass doesn't like to switch out the lead officer if they don't have to," he pointed out. "And it's pretty clear that in this case, they didn't have to. You may be new to command, but you're handling this like a pro. Besides," he added, seeming to sense that the amount of praise was making his colleague uncomfortable, "you have more experience with this kind of case than a lot of more seasoned officers do. 1PP probably wanted someone running things who wouldn't get sick at the situation."
"No, I'll just wait until I'm home," she said with a grimace. "It doesn't matter how long you've been doing this, kid cases still get under your skin. My old partner used to say that when you get used to the really rough cases, it's time to transfer out." She absentmindedly rubbed a finger over her wedding ring as she thought of Elliot. "You never want to stop caring. You just want to be able to do what you have to do without falling apart."
"We're here," Hannah said after a moment, pulling up behind a very convincing delivery truck. After a quick visual scan, they both climbed out of the car and hurried to the truck, the back hatch opening on cue to let them inside.
"Nick," Olivia said as soon as the hatch was closed, her attention drawn immediately to her former partner, "status?"
"Fin and Rollins are finishing up the evacuation. We're sending all the evacuated families to the local precinct; the desk and the CO already have a heads-up to expect them."
"And we've just about got the infrared up and running," a tech reported from where he was kneeling by the piece of equipment in question. "We'd be there already if whoever did maintenance on this last hadn't plugged two of the cables in backwards. Okay, image in five, four, three, two..."
"Got it," the tech standing behind him said triumphantly.
"Got what?" Fin and Rollins had climbed in just in time to hear that last. "Oh, and evacuation is complete."
"The infrared, and nice work. Get suited up, we're close to a go." She turned back to the techs. "What do we have?"
"Okay, here's the basement you told us to look out for," the senior tech said, tapping a section of the screen. "We've got thirteen heat signatures down there. By the size, they all appear to be children."
"Good," Olivia said softly, "so we've got all the girls accounted for. What about the adults?"
"I'm getting there. We have seven adult-size heat signatures throughout the rest of the house."
"All right." She cued up her radio. "All units, this is Sergeant Benson. We're a go. Repeat, we're a go. All units report to my position."
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"Is everyone clear on the plan and their positions?" A series of confirmations answered Olivia's question. "Okay, let's move. Everyone move into entry positions on my go. Three, two -"
She was abruptly cut off by a series of screams coming through her headset, almost deafening. "What the hell?"
"Liv!" That was Nick, shouting to be heard over the cacophony. "You'd better get out here, right now."
She jumped out of the truck without further thought, making a beeline for the younger detective. But what she saw stopped her in her tracks. "My God," she whispered, too shocked and horrified to even scream. There was no longer any need to ask what had happened.
The house they'd been so carefully monitoring for the past hour and a half was on fire.
Yep...cliffhanger. I know, I'm evil. But I won't leave you hanging all that long.
And yes, that's my finally-completed drawing of Andrea in the upper left-hand corner of the page.
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