New Jersey

Hollister residence

Elliot and Fin pulled into the quiet suburbs of New Jersey by three o'clock. They passed the dive bar next to the train station and a minute later Elliot was pulling into Hollister's driveway.

"What's the plan," Fin asked.

"We use the audit as a guise. Tell him we're looking for Caroline's stolen laptop. If we find an opening to ask about his wear abouts the night of the attack we do it, but don't want to spook him."

"And what if he's not here," Fin responded.

"We shift gears. Wait it out."

"You take the lead, I'll look around," Fin checked.

"Sounds good."

Sharon Hollister, opened the door of her simple white two-story home to find Elliot and Fin standing on the other side.

"Mrs. Hollister," Elliot flashed his badge. "NYPD."

"Oh no, is something wrong," she immediately tensed up.

"Nothing alarming. We're here to talk to your husband about a missing laptop. Is he around?"

"He's in the city today. He won't be home until 6? Should I call him? What's this all about," she opened the door.

"One of his co-workers was attacked a few weeks back," Elliot gave Fin a glance and changed gears. "We wanted to see if he'd seen anything. They were working together the night of the attack."

"Oh, that's awful. He hasn't said anything about an attack."

"Could you confirm what time he made it home the evening of April 30th?"

"Oh….ehhh…let's see…I can't recall. He was home…I think. But that could have been the night he stayed at a hotel, because of the audit. I think…that or it was the night before. I'm lost without my calendar."

"Can you get your calendar and check," Elliot pushed.

"Sure…okay…why don't you come in," she opened the door. "Give me a minute."

"Mind if I use your bathroom," Fin asked.

"It's down the hall," she pointed.

Fin immediately walked in and started taking note of everything in the house. There were a bunch of pictures on the wall of Joe and Sharon with their son Simon. Average beige and white everything. Sharon kept the house spotless. The bathroom was a guest bathroom so there was nothing in the medicine cabinet. And in a room off to the side there was a small office where Joe clearly worked. Fin peaked in and looked at the paperwork on the desk. Nothing seemed prominent. And then he noticed a pinball machine in the corner of the room. Fin did a double take at the side of the video game, which read "High Speed" and there was a demon man driving a car on the foreboard.

Elliot followed Sharon into the kitchen. "She had a laptop stolen as well. We haven't been able to get in touch with your husband. He's been out of the office since that night. It's possible he just has the laptop. His coworker said they were both using it. Any chance we could just take a look and clear him from our list?"

"Oh," is all Sharon could say as she sifted through her calendar. "Um…sure…I mean, you can take a peek at the office. If he had a laptop it would be in there." She then pointed to the calendar. "I must not have put his schedule in my calendar this month. But he was in the city a lot at the end of April. Is he in trouble?"

"Just need the computer," Elliot lied.

"Elliot, come here," Fin interrupted them. "Your husband has quite an impressive pinball machine."

As soon as Elliot saw the machine his heart skipped a beat "Wow….High Speed."

"Yes, Joe, loves his pinball. I don't get the appeal. He's always in here playing that game or tinkering on his computer. He even has an online chat group. I guess. I don't pry. It's not my thing. But he meets up with them quite often. His father used to work at a Pinball factory. He worked in the back taking in deliveries and inventory for 40 years. That's where he gets his love for it all. Anyway, I guess you can see if the laptop is in here. I assume it would be on or around the desk if it were here."

A phone rang in the background and Sharon politely ducked out.

"Did you hear that? Father was taking in deliveries at a factory. I had an uncle did something like that," Fin whispered. "Always had a utility knife in his pocket."

Elliot opened the top desk drawer and found nothin of interest. There were a set of small keys and he looked around to see if there was a safe or drawer that the keys went to.

"Find something," Fin asked.

"Not sure. See anything these keys would go to?"

Fin looked at the key and then over to the pinball machine. "Yeah, they open the money slot. Look."

Elliot knelt down by the tiny black door on the front of the machine and opened it. Inside were a stack of Women's ID's.

"Jackpot," Elliot sifted through the ID's. "There's got to be 100 women in here."

"Look there," Fin pointed. "Serena Benson."

"This guy is beyond serial. We need a warrant."

Fin nodded and Elliot pushed the ID's back into the door and closed it just as Sharon was coming back.

Manhattan

Rockefeller Building.

Olivia walked up to Joe Hollister's assistant's desk and smiled.

"Hi, I'm looking for Joe Hollister."

"He just stepped into a meeting. Shouldn't be too long. Would you like to wait on the couch?"

Olivia wasn't expecting for him to be in a meeting. She psyched herself up the entire walk down here and she was ready to shake him down. She licked her lips in thought. Looked at the couch in the lobby area and back at the young girl who was wearing a Bowie t-shirt under her blazer. She was fresh out of college. Her hair had fun colors mixed through it, she chewed on a piece of gum, and she was clearly not at this job because she wanted to be.

Olivia just needed an in.

"Actually, I'm Joe's daughter."

"Oh," she smiled. "I didn't realize he had a daughter. So nice to meet you."

"Yeah, it was a recent discovery for the both of us. David Bowie Concert was incredible did you go?"

"Oh my god, yes. I'm still living for it."

"Best night of my life," Olivia lied trying to catch flies with honey. "Hey…so he's not expecting me and I'd really love to surprise him. Anyway, I can wait in his office?"

"Oh, yes, absolutely. You should even sit in his chair and turn around when he walks. Like "Here's Johnny" style. Ha. He will die."

"Great idea," she played along, and the girl opened his office door and winked.

As soon as she was alone she pulled on her gloves and ripped through his desk. Nothing in the desk was worth writing home about. The usual office supplies. Pinball convention laminated badge, which was the most interesting thing in there. She then clicked on the desktop and tried logging in.

"Password. Simon123…..password123….highspeeddemon….highspeed123…."

She tossed the mouse, and her eyes fell to the ground. His walking shoes were on the floor. She pulled one up, took a sample of soil from the bottom, and took a picture of the soul.

She sifted through some of his books. "Business and Numbers….History of Pinball…Jesus, obsessed much….The Art of Anatomy…" She picked up the book and flipped through it. It was full of tabbed pages. " hemorrhagic shock" There were pictures of main arteries and Capillaries "When a main artery is hit a person can die within 2-5 minutes…... Capallaries can cause slow bleeding and create hemorrhagic shock and death if untreated.

On the next tabbed page was a paragraph about shock. "Shock can happen when the body experiences a sudden drop in blood pressure, causing vital organs to not receive enough blood and oxygen, leading to symptoms like pale skin, rapid weak pulse, confusion, dizziness, rapid breathing, and potential loss of consciousness."

Olivia slammed the book closed. Her heart raced thinking about how her mother was attacked, and the blood around Caroline's neck. There had been a significant pool of blood from the box cutter hitting just next to the main artery of her neck, but also Olivia remembered the doctor saying her scarf had saved her from bleeding out. Had that been an accident or did Hollister purposefully stop the bleeding before he left her. It would explain Caroline's loss of memory and the second semen sample.

Voices could heard coming down the hallway and she jumped out of skin trying to get the book back onto his bookshelf.

The two office mates passed the door without seeing Olivia, and she caught her breath, pulled off her gloves, and ducked back out of the office before Joe could returnn.

"Work emergency," she said to the assistant.

"Bummer."

"I'll catch him later."

"Oh, I never got your name," the assistant tried to ask.

"Ow my phone. Gotta take this," Olivia put her phone to her ear and pretended to answer it.

New Jersey

Hollister Residence.

Elliot and Fin waited in their car outside of the house, and made all the necessary phone calls.

"Alex is working on the warrant as we speak. Do not go back in there without backup, Liv. Wait for Munch and then go arrest the son of a bitch. I mean it. Love you too," Elliot said into his phone and hung up.

"How long you think this warrant is gonna take," Fin looked out the window.

"Rush hour and Alex is swamped. Too long. As long as Sharon doesn't talk to Hollister before Liv and Munch pick him up, I think we can have Joe behind bars by 6:30pm."

"Look at you wishful thinking," Fin cooly jabbed.

Elliot was nervous though. If he weren't sitting in a car he would have paced. Instead, he tapped the steering wheel. He hated waiting. He hated knowing this guy was Liv's father. He hated New Jersey. And he didn't like how many ID's he pulled from that drawer. Hollister wasn't just a guy who raped Olivia's mother. He'd been doing this for decades. He was calculative. He was experienced. And the only thing stopping this guy was a sheet of blue paper and a lifetime sentence.

"We can't fuck this one up. Everything has to be by the book."

"Yeah, and we've done that," Fin responded half offended.

"You missed him the first time round, Fin."

"You did too," Fin snapped.

"No! No, I wasn't on the case. You and Munch took this case over, and you failed to talk to the people Caroline was working with? Joe Hollister was right there under everybody's noses this whole time. He worked with her. He left DNA for Christ sake," Elliot snapped back.

"Calm the fuck down, Stabler. We talked to the people Caroline mentioned. This Hollister guy is good at what he does, and he wasn't even in her office the night she was attacked, so don't go throwing that bullshit in my face. How we supposed to catch a ghost."

"You don't ask enough questions, Fin. You can't do the bare minimum and wait for someone with more experience to do the heavy lifting. You need to start catching this shit. This isn't narcotics. It's life and death."

"And narcotics is what, illegal candy? Tsk!" Fin clicked his teeth. He'd had enough. "You're a real holier-than-thou asshole, Stabler. If you hadn't been playing house with your partner, you could have done the case yourself. I didn't have to work overtime and make myself available to take your caseload."

He then got out of the car, slammed the door, and started walking.

Elliot rolled the window down. "Where you going?!"

"For a walk. You're so good at this job, you can babysit Sharon Hollister."

Manhattan

Rockefeller Building.

"Any phone calls for me," Joe asked his assistant as he passed her desk.

"No, but your daughter was here. Said she'd reach out another time."

"My….," Joe stopped. "When was that?"

"You just missed her. She waited for a few moments in your office, but had to go."

Panic fell over his face and he half limped and jogged to his office. It was empty, but he knew she must have known something to come snooping around. He looked at his desk. He noticed some of his things were skewed and his shoe was slightly moved. He thought quickly, grabbed the shoes, walked over to his bookshelf, and pulled a gun and a utility knife from the back of it.

He walked faster but his limp would only allow him to move so fast. He hopped past his assistant into the kitchen where he shoved the shoes into the kitchen dumpster shoot, and then made large strides back to the elevator. Sweat started to form on his forehead.

"Mr. Hollister is everything okay," the girl at the desk asked.

"I'm out for the day. Take messages."

He got to the lobby and saw her standing outside on the phone.

He carefully made his way behind her and when she put the phone down, he made his move.

"Love you, El."

"Love you, El. Isn't that sweet," he whispered into her ear. "I have a gun pointed directly at your spleen, sweetheart. I don't want to have to punish you, but you've been a really bad girl."

Olivia's face fell. Her heart raced a million miles a minute.

"We're gonna take a walk. Put your phone in that trash can."

"Joe-," she started to say.

He grabbed her arm hard.

"Ah…,"she gasped.

"Respect your father, Olivia. Call me your dad," he ordered and held her next to a trash can.

"I'll never call you that."

He shoved the gun hard into the soft part of her back. "Toss it."

She gasped in pain, swallowed hard, and watched her lifeline to Elliot fall into the black can.

They started to walk east towards the river and away from the direction Munch and Cragen would be coming from. He held her close to his side.

"Saw your mother. She ran right into me. Acted like she didn't know who I was. Followed her for a few blocks for old times sake, and then she started running. Heard she took a bad fall."

"Heard she fell or you pushed her," she tensed up.

"Oh, I didn't have to push her, she did all the hard work for me," he took pleasure in that. "Years of fear will do that to a person. Not like you. My fearless daughter. You're going to be my little problem child. There's always one, they say."

"How many children do you have?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"It's no secret you've raped dozens of women, surely I'm not the only one."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I only have two children. My perfect boy, Simon, and my estranged daughter, Olivia, who wanted nothing to do with me, no matter how hard I tried to create a relationship, and I have plenty of evidence asking for visitation. Bet your mother never told you that, though."

Olivia have to gain control back, she ignored his tactics. "My unit was on their way to arrest you because they have more than enough evidence to put you in jail for the rest of your sick pathetic life. As soon as they find out I'm missing…which will be any minute now…they're going to have every cop in the area looking for us."

They could see some beat cops at the approaching intersection and Hollister pulled her off of the main avenue and down a side street.

"My partner found your stash of trophies. Sharon let him right in. Practically gave him the keys."

She could sense that hit a nerve.

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

"Sure you do. He said maybe 100 women. That's a lot of jail time."

"So I like to collect old ID's. That proves nothing."

Adrenaline must have been wearing off the closer they got to the river the more he started to limp.

"As soon as they get that warrant my partner will find every dirty detail in your house…on your computers…at your office. There will be nowhere to run, Joe. And I don't think you could run even if you wanted to," insinuating she noticed his limp worsening.

"Is this the same partner that gave you that ring," he breathed heavy, and pushed through his leg pain, but he wasn't about to let her win the power.

Olivia looked down at the ring. "It is. And you're lucky he's not here, because he'd rip you in half."

"Sounds like a prince," he spat. "You rely on him for everything? Why don't you take me down yourself."

She pushed back on the gun and he clicked the trigger. "There's my tiger," he laughed. "Rely on nobody, baby."

"Only the broken rely on nobody. I rely on Elliot for love. Since you stole that from my childhood. You won't steal that from me now. "

Joe laughed. "Love. You know what happens when you rely on a man for love? He makes you weak. He'll take everything from you. Your money. Your job. Your youth. Your sanity. You'll end up supporting his needs instead of your own. All women do it. You don't want that for yourself, do you Olivia? You said so yourself. And so accurately. Popping Valium because you're afraid he's cheating on you with his new partner at work. Mixing the sleeping pills with the wine, when he doesn't come home at night."

"Is that what you did to Sharon," she jabbed, and he pushed her onto a wall and slapped her hard.

"Ahh….," she yelled loudly in hopes that someone would see them or hear her. A city of millions and suddenly she found herself on the only empty street. A window above them was open though, and an older woman peeked outside. "Help," she yelped.

He looked around and grabbed her by the neck. "Do that again and I'll snap your neck."

Olivia's eyes flickered up at the woman in the window. "What will Sharon do when she finds out that I exist."

"You leave Sharon out of this. Sharon is the mother of my perfect boy, and she's naive. She couldn't handle knowing you. She needed me after she had Simon. Simon needed me."

And then it hit her. "Did you rape Sharon?"

He pulled the gun up to her face, and she stopped breathing. His eyes were filled with rage. It was like looking into a mirror, and she had to avert her eyes. She looked up at the woman who was now on the phone, and his gun was in plain sight.

"You did," she whispered through his hand which was squeezing her cheeks so tightly. She wasn't ready to give in to him like the other women he tormented. "You raped her….and then when she had Simon…you made her fall in love with you…didn't you."

He smiled and dropped the gun. "Keep walking."

"Sharon doesn't know she married her rapist though, does she," Olivia gasped for air as he pushed her along.

"You were my first mistake, and it's time to make things right."

Olivia looked behind her hoping the sound of sirens could be heard, but there was nothing. As they got closer to the edge of the city, Olivia could smell the river. She started wrecking her brain for things she could drop as they walked. Things that would point her Unit to the right place. She undid her watch and dropped it at the final corner of the street.

He knew exactly where to take her. Across from the last intersection was an abandoned building and he jingled keys in his pocket. She wrestled with the frayed area of her coat and ripped a shred of it off. When he pushed her through the fence she forced the fabric onto the fence.

"What is this place," she asked, too of what he'd do to her once she was inside.

"Used to be a factory. My father worked here. Now it's nothing."

He lifted the gun away for a moment to unlock the door, and she took out his bad leg and elbowed him in the gut.

"Ahhhh," he yelled but didn't drop the gun. "You little bitch."

She started to yell, but he knocked her out with one blow to the head and then dragged her inside.

New Jersey

The Dive Bar

Fin sat at the bar and got a drink. He looked around and noticed the different pinball games in the back. After a minute or two of warming up the bartender, he decided to ask. "You know a Joe Hollister?"

"Doesn't sound familiar," the guy answered.

Fin flipped out a picture and his badge. "Look familiar?"

"Oh, yeah, that guy. He's a creeper."

"How so?"

The bartender back pedaled a bit unsure why Fin was asking. "I mean. I don't really know him. He meets women here all the time. Limps in. Only has one beer. Doesn't talk. Plays that game in the back. Always has a different woman. And the few times he wasn't meeting someone, he just sits back and watches the women that come in. Creeper."

Fin's phone went off and he flipped it open.

"Fin, get back here. I gotta get back to the city. Something bad's happened to Liv. Cragen's on his way with the warrant."

Fin dropped some cash on the counter and walked out.

Elliot was speeding up to him and unrolled his window. "He has Liv. Gun point. I gotta-"

"Go," Fin waved.

"I'm sorry I was a dick."

"It's fine. We say stupid shit when we're in love and under pressure. Go find Liv."