Case Closed

Title: Case Closed (1/?)

Author: Master F&M

Fandom: Law and Order: SVU

Rating: Mature Audience

Summary: Captains Tutuola and Stabler join forces, and departments, to close a case that affects
Fin personally. Runs within the timeline of Infinity.

Disclaimer: Law and Order: SVU and all its characters belong to Dick Wolf. I just get to play
with them.

Author’s Note: Sam is a character that does not exist on the show.

Feedback: Please give some. For entertainment purposes only.

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CHAPTER 1

            Captain Stabler sat at his desk fuming. He hated these kinds of cases. Over the years
he’d seen just about every kind of atrocity one human being could inflict upon another, but it still
angered him whenever he came across a case involving the sexual assault of a young girl. Now
he had three such cases to deal with. Try as he might, he could never stop himself from
imagining his own daughters as the victims. Even now, when his daughters weren’t so young
anymore.

            Elliot closed the case file and leaned back in his chair. It was during times like these that
he almost regretted having taken over SVU nine years ago. At the time it had seemed like a
tremendous career opportunity, particularly given that Cragen had made no secret of the fact that
he thought Elliot would be the best person for the job, and had groomed him accordingly.
Everyone within the squad had agreed with the Captain, and had not wanted to work under
someone new. Elliot, therefore, had almost felt it was his obligation to take the position when it
was offered to him, despite the fact that his decision to do so had nearly cost him his marriage.

            Stabler looked up at the knock on his door, then waved Olivia and her partner into the
room. “What did you find out?”

            “Stacey Mulligan was last seen alive at Club Indigo in the company of someone called
Gemstone.” Olivia took a seat opposite Elliot and glanced at her notes. “We managed to get his
name out of one of the girls working there, but no one seemed to know who he was or anything
else about him.”

            “Nothing they would tell us, anyway. I got the feeling they were all too scared to say
anything.”

            Olivia’s partner, Kenny Briscoe, was frustrated, yet sympathetic. He understood the
reluctance to be a witness against someone you feared. His cousin had done it, and for all her
bravery, she had ended up murdered. Kenny had been furious at the time that he couldn’t do
anything about it, and was now working his way through the departments in the precinct in the
hopes of one day following in his Uncle Lennie’s footsteps and making it up to Homicide.

            “We showed pictures of our other two victims around to people at the club,” he
continued, “and a few of them remember seeing the other girls there, too, but no one would say
with whom.”

            “The place is a regular hangout for high-end call girls and their potential johns.” The
disgust Olivia felt showed on her face. “Apparently, the girls are showcased there, then picked
out by these men like they’re on some kind of menu.”

            Elliot looked at his files again. “Our victims were all underage. How’d they even get
into that club?”

            “The guy working the door swears they had the appropriate I.D.”

            “Yeah, and I’m sure he was really checking.” Elliot thought for a moment.

            “Is there any indication that the girls might’ve been working there as well?”

            “Other than the sexual assault?” Kenny mentally ran through the information they had on
the cases. “Not really. Nothing in their autopsies showed an unusual amount of sexual activity.
And one of the girls had only been reported missing a few days ago.”

            “Then we’re missing something.” Elliot got up and walked around his desk to stand in
front of Briscoe and Benson. Briscoe and Hellerman. It still felt strange to him to not refer to
his former partner as Detective Benson.

            “We have three girls, all age fifteen or sixteen, who were reported missing within the past
two weeks, with no apparent connection between them. Then all three are found raped,
strangled, and dumped by the river after being seen in a club for hookers? There has to be
something we’re not seeing.”

            “They did all have cocaine in their systems.” Kenny thought back. “Actually, the M.E.’s
report listed cocaine metabolites, which means they must have ingested it at least a few days
before their deaths.”

            Elliot thought for a second. “Okay. I’ll get in touch with the captain in Narcotics to see
if they have any information on this Gemstone, or if they’ve had any run-ins with him in the past.
Maybe he’s a dealer who works out of the club.” He sat in his chair again.

            “You go canvass the victims’ neighborhoods again and find out everything you can about
their personal lives: Who their friends were, where they liked to hang out, who their boyfriends
were, whatever. And talk to the parents again. See if these girls belonged to some group or team
where they may have met one another.”

            “We’re on it.”

            Kenny quickly stood and headed out the door. Olivia sighed as she watched him go.
This was her partner’s second turn in SVU, and he was determined to make a better show of it
than his first run, which had lasted only a few months. Since his uncle’s death, he seemed
hellbent on proving he was worthy of being called Briscoe.

            “Is there a problem, Liv?” Elliot gave her a questioning look.

            “No. I was just wondering, though, why you always pair me up with the new guys.
They’re always so . . . gung-ho at first.”

            Elliot smiled. “Who, Kenny? He’s not new. He’s been around the block once before.”

            “Yeah, but for as long as he stayed then, he might as well be. Besides, I’m not just
talking about him. I’m talking about all the new guys.”

            Elliot smiled again. “Who else would be better at breaking them in?” He leaned across
his desk.

            “Listen, you’re the best man I’ve got in this unit. You’ve been with me the longest, and
you’ve seen just about everything there is to see. You know how to deal with the victims and
their families, and more importantly, you’ve learned how to deal personally with all this stuff
without letting it get to you too much. Your experience is invaluable. The best thing I could do
to protect my newbies is to partner them up with you, okay?”

            Olivia grinned back. “Yeah. Okay.” She stood to go.

            “But don’t think all this buttering me up is going to get you out of my dinner party on
Saturday. Pete and I still expect you and Kathy to be there.”

            He groaned. “Great. Me and a room full of lawyers. Can’t wait.”

            Elliot watched Olivia join Briscoe, then head out of the squad room. His glance lingered
over the pictures of his kids and grandkids on his desk before he picked up the phone and
punched in the extension for Narcotics.

            “Hey, Fin. It’s Elliot. You got a few minutes? I want to ask you something about a case
I’m working on.”

...............................................

            Elliot sat in his office with Captain Tutuola waiting for Olivia and Kenny to return.
Nothing Fin had told him about the guy calling himself Gemstone was good. Not only had Fin
heard of him, but he had also been part of an operation that had tried to bring Gemstone down
back when Fin was still a detective in Narcotics. Fin had, in fact, practically jumped through the
phone when Elliot mentioned his name, then had rushed over to fill him in on what he knew.

            Elliot walked to his office door when saw Olivia and Kenny enter the squad room.

“Hellerman, Briscoe. In my office.”

            The partners exchanged looks then followed their captain in. Olivia broke into a smile
when she saw her former squadmate.

            “Hey, Fin. How’s it going? How’s that precious girl of yours?”

            Five months before, Fin had become a father for the sixth time. But unlike the previous
five, this time he was blessed with a daughter. Tiny, with a mass of her mother’s curls, Terry
was the most beautiful thing he thought he’d ever seen. And the scariest. What was he going to
do with a daughter? What did he know about raising a girl? Boys he could handle. Them he
knew: how they thought, what they wanted, how they behaved. But even with having grown up
with two younger sisters, Fin was convinced he still knew nothing about girls. He felt
completely lost as to what to do with her.

            Sam, on the other hand, had been thrilled. After years of being the only female in her
family, she finally had a little girl over whom she could dote and fuss. She spent time every day
carefully dressing her in the cutest outfits she could find, and painstakingly adding little bows to
her hair. Enjoying Terry had come as naturally to Sam as enjoying any of her sons had, so she
found it amusing to see her husband’s usually stalwart self-confidence severely shaken by the
presence of their tiny daughter.

            Fin gave a small grin in response to Olivia’s question before reverting to his customary
scowl. “She’s doing great. But she ain’t who I’m here to talk about.”

            “Fin has some information about Gemstone.” Elliot started to brief his team. “He’s dealt
with him before.”

            “His real name is Antonio Vega, alias Gemstone, alias Jewel, plus several others he’s
gone by over the years.” Fin handed out copies of Vega’s mug shot. “They’re all in the file I
gave Elliot.”

            Briscoe studied Fin’s face as he talked. He’d heard a lot about this captain and his second
in command, Sergeant Sandoval. Apparently, they were making a lot of waves with how their
department was run. Every since Tutuola had taken over command as Captain a year ago, the
department’s arrest record had improved dramatically, while the amount of dope on the streets
had diminished. But not everyone was happy with the turn of events.

            A lot of people on the force, including a few within his own department, felt Captain
Tutuola played too loose with the law in order to bring in his targets. There were rumors that he
allowed a lot more tuning up of his suspects than most other departments permitted, and that he
had small-time thieves and con men on his payroll as informants.

            It also didn’t help his cause that he refused to play politics as usual. Fin had made it clear
when he took the position that he would run the department the way he saw fit, or he didn’t want
it. At the time, City Hall had been anxious to show the Black community that it was concerned
about their plight with the drug war, and had thought it appropriate to promote ‘one of their own’
to the task of fighting it. What the department hadn’t counted on, though, was Tutuola’s
unwillingness to be grateful enough for his position to do what he was told to do. On at least one
occasion, in fact, he had opted to turn in his badge rather than have to handle a situation in a
manner other than the way he thought was best.

            The mayor had been impressed with his integrity (while others around him grumbled that
they would give up their jobs, too, if they had a rich wife) and had asked him to stay at his
command. Fin had taken the request as a vote of confidence, and had gone over his superiors’
heads to the mayor in order to create a specialized unit, handpicked by him, to deal with the
everyday business of dealers on the street. For the most part, these street cops, as they were
called, did things by the book. But sometimes, Fin believed, you had to fight fire with fire. His
unit never went so far as to do anything blatantly illegal, but they were not beyond playing dirty
when it came to making threats and having to wring information out of an unwilling suspect. It
was not uncommon, either, for someone in his unit to deliver a little street justice to a perp that
had physically and intentionally harmed an innocent.

             “I first ran into Vega more than twenty years ago,” Fin continued, “back when I was
working as a detective. Even then, he was a major player in the drug trade.” He settled himself
on the edge of Elliot’s desk.

            “Vega’s a very conceited man. He thinks of himself as something special. Better than
most people. All of his aliases make reference to him being some kind of jewel or stone; a cut
above everybody else. He also likes to think of himself as a ladies’ man.”

            “How old is this guy?” Olivia wondered. “I mean, if you were dealing with him twenty
years ago . . . ”

            “Back then he was in his early thirties. We knew he was heavily involved in the cocaine
and heroin business, with connections in South America, Mexico, and Miami, but we could
never pin anything on him. Every time we started to build a case against him, a key witness
would disappear or turn up dead, or someone else would step forward and take the fall for him.
We even had evidence disappear. There was some talk back then about a dirty cop being
involved because we could never get him and he knew we couldn’t. He practically flaunted his
drugs in front of us.” Fin took a breath, bristling with the memory.

            “The point is, though, he was pretty well protected and very dangerous. He’s been known
to take out his own people just to make sure they didn’t get the chance to talk, and wouldn’t think
twice about taking out a cop.”

            “Okay,” Kenny tried to make a connection between what Fin was telling them and his
own case. “So you’re thinking he was the one who supplied the coke to our victims?”

            “Like I said, Vega thought of himself as a real ladies’ man. Always had himself
surrounded by a couple of pretty girls, and never took no for an answer if he met one who wasn’t
interested. Rumor has it that once one of his business associates took a liking to one of his girls
and offered to pay for her. Vega enjoyed making the transaction so much that he started the
business he was into when we last heard of him.”

            Elliot shrugged. “So he was into prostitution?”

            “More like the slave trade. He didn’t pimp that girl out for a throw. Supposedly, he sold
her straight out. His friend took her back to South America, and no one ever heard from her
again. Vega’s popped up on our radar every now and again, mostly for drugs, but occasionally
we’ll hear about the girl-selling he’s into overseas. Found a big market for it. We haven’t heard
anything about him in quite a while, but odds are if your victim was with him, then she was
supposed to be part of his business. Young American girls go for high prices in the Mideast.”

            “Makes sense,” Olivia thought. “He could be showing his girls at the club, then selling
them off to the highest bidder. It would fit right in with the call girl situation already happening
there.”

            “But, then why kill them?” Elliot asked. “Our girls were found raped and murdered.”

            “Maybe they were leftovers.”

            Everyone turned to stare at Kenny.

            “Let’s just say this Gemstone is kidnaping girls to sell overseas,” he explained. “He
cokes them up to keep them out of it long enough to set up the auction, but not long enough to do
any real damage, right? Well, what if a girl doesn’t sell? What if, for whatever reason, some of
them don’t get picked? Would he keep them around? He’d have to take care of them. Feed
them, keep them looking nice- Can’t sell bad-looking merchandise, can you?- and would
probably have to drug them again or have some of his people keep them contained.” Kenny
shook his head.

            “As vain as he sounds, he’d probably think it would be easier for him to just get rid of
them.” He looked at the rest of the group for affirmation.

            Olivia looked at her partner with pride, while Elliot smiled. As inept as Kenny Briscoe
sometimes appeared to be, there were times when he showed signs of true brilliance. Elliot
patted him on the shoulder.

            “You’re doing your uncle proud.” He quickly moved back behind his desk.

            “Alright. Let’s get rolling with that idea. Olivia, get on the phone to city records and
find out if Vega has any claim to the club. I doubt he’d trust anyone else to own the place where
he’s doing business.”

             “Kenny,” Elliot rewarded him with the more active assignment, “go down to the lab and
talk to Warner. See what she can tell us about where the girls may have been kept. If we can
figure that out, then may we’ll know where to start looking for Vega.”

            Fin waited until Stabler’s office had cleared before approaching him. “I want in on this,
Elliot.”

            “I appreciate you coming down here, Fin, I really do. But this is SVU’s case, not
Narcotics’.”

            “Yeah, but you wouldn’t have jack if it wasn’t for me.”

            Elliot sat back in his seat. The last thing he wanted was to get into a pissing match over a
case with his friend. Fin sighed.

            “Look. You know me. You know I’m gonna go ahead with this anyway. I just think it’ll
be better if we work together on it instead of getting in each other’s way.”

            Elliot rubbed his chin. “Why bother with it? You certainly don’t need to close any old
cases to improve your department’s record.”

            “It ain’t about that.” Fin shook his head before bringing his gaze back around.

            “Vega was the one who put the hit out on me twenty-two years ago. The hit that took out
my partner instead. I need to put Vega down for him. I owe him that.”

            Stabler returned Fin’s gaze. It wasn’t an unreasonable request. Besides, Fin was right.
Elliot did know that Fin would take on the case with or without his consent.

            “Okay,” he relented. “But technically this is still my case. I’m running the show, so we
do things my way.”

            “No problem.”

            “Alright, then.” Elliot stood. “We’ll meet back here again tomorrow morning and share
what we’ve come up with.”

            Fin stood to go. “Thanks, man.”

            Elliot nodded in response. “Go kiss that little girl of yours and tell Sam I said ‘hi’ and
that I’m looking forward to seeing her on Saturday. You guys are going to Liv’s dinner party,
aren’t you?”

            Fin gave a small snort of annoyance. “Yeah, we’re going.” He headed out the door. “I’ll
see you tomorrow.”

            “Hey.”

            Fin turned around again.

            “Don’t worry. We’ll catch this guy. One way or another.”

            It was now Fin’s turn to nod in response as he continued out. Yeah, he thought. One way
or another.