DISCLAIMER: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and all its characters are property of Dick Wolf and NBC. This story was written strictly for entertainment, and no profit is intended. The characters of Dawn Kinsley, her family and friends are mine. Please don't use them without my permission.
AUTHOR NOTES: English is not my native language, so please be patient with me.
I assume from episode 1x02 ("A Single Life"), in which Olivia shops in a corner grocery store near Lexington Avenue & East 82nd Street, that she lives on the Upper East Side. In 1x11 ("Bad Blood") it's mentioned that Serena Benson was raped in 1968, so I'm going to assume that Olivia was born in 1968 or 1969. This story takes place during season 3, which means Olivia would be about 33 years old.
THANKS: A very big thank you goes to my beta readers Lena, Michelle, Winnie, Jonel, and especially Rayne, KC, and Lori for their corrections and valuable input. I couldn't have done this without you!
WARNING: This story deals with the subject of rape and its aftermath. There will be no graphic descriptions, but later recountings of the rape.
SPOILERS: References to episodes from seasons 1-3.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.

Conflict of Interest
By Jae

Part 1

SEMINAR ROOM

1 POLICE PLAZA

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

"Where's your partner?" Olivia asked Fin as she slumped into a seat between him and Elliot. "Terminal back pain again?" If she had to be here, so did everyone else, even hypochondriacs like John Munch, Olivia thought grumpily.

Fin looked up from the paper airplane that had once been his seminar brochure. "Again?"

Elliot leaned across Olivia. "It only seems to act up whenever a continuing ed seminar comes along."

"It acts up whenever I have to sit in one of these unhealthy first grader seats," Munch corrected, gingerly easing himself down onto the uncomfortable chair.

Olivia sighed and glanced at her watch. She didn't want to be here any more than her colleagues did. Not that she didn't believe in the value of further education. It was just that she had a stack of unfinished reports on her desk and thirty open cases, which didn't get any closer to being solved while she sat here. Furthermore, the seminar prevented her from spending her lunch hour in the court room's gallery, watching her favorite A.D.A at work. Today, she lied to herself, she would have worked up the courage to ask Alex to lunch.

Sighing again, she wrestled herself into a standing position and pointed to the back of the conference room. "I'm going for coffee."

"If you want to live long enough to enjoy your hard earned pension, I'd advise against that, my friend." Munch raised his index finger in warning. "In more than 25 years on the job, I've never been to a law enforcement seminar with even halfway decent coffee."

Fin smirked. "In 25 years on the job, you've never been to a law enforcement seminar, period."

Over the top of his sunglasses, Munch directed a brief but withering glance at his partner before he turned back to Olivia. "The lack of drinkable coffee is obviously a nationwide conspiracy from law enforcement brass to make sure nothing distracts their officers from the lectures. For the same reason, you'll never encounter donuts or attractive female lecturers at a law enforcement seminar."

"Or comfortable chairs," Elliot added.

Munch threw up his hands in triumph. "Finally, someone's wising up!"

Olivia smiled half-heartedly and sank back into her chair. Giving up on her caffeine fix, she pulled the now crushed seminar program out from under her. The wrinkled paper announced the title of the next lecture: Special needs and issues of male and GLBT survivors of rape and sexual abuse. Speaker: D. Kinsley, PhD.

"Great," Olivia murmured. They hadn't even hired a cop or someone who knew the reality of handling sex crimes to give the lecture. Instead, some antiquated Freudian in a stiff suit would bore them to tears with his academic, impracticable theories.

A young woman carrying a stack of hand-outs approached the podium – the Freudian's assistant or the poor soul who had the questionable honor of introducing the speaker, Olivia assumed. The woman tapped the microphone to test its volume and nodded. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dawn Kinsley, your lecturer for the first part of the seminar."

Olivia's head jerked up. That's D. Kinsley?

Nothing reminded Olivia of the academic Freudian she had imagined except the glasses on the freckled nose. Instead of a suit and tie, slacks and a tight sleeveless blouse covered a body that was petite, yet not frail, and slender, but not model-thin. The strawberry-blonde hair wasn't pulled back into an old-fashioned, but cascaded in curls down to softly curved hips.

So, she's the PhD, not the assistant, huh? That's my punishment for stereotyping! Of course, looking at her instead of an old man is not exactly a punishment, Olivia thought, eyeing the blonde speaker appreciatively. However boring the lecture might be, at least she would have something captivating to look at.

The lecture began, and to her surprise, Olivia found herself looking away from the pretty speaker and down to her note pad to jot down interesting details about dealing with male rape victims. The lecture turned out to be informative, practice-oriented, and witty. She even caught Munch bending his aching back to take notes. The psychologist spoke with passion and sensitivity, never even glancing down at her notes. Forty-five minutes were over almost too soon.

"Knew I shoulda tried the coffee," Fin mumbled when they began to file out of the room with the last of the seminar registrants. "If there's an attractive female lecturer, there's a chance the rest of your seminar-conspiracy-theory is bull, too."

Munch stretched and shook his head. "I wouldn't bet your meager pay-check on it, partner. Some government employee obviously failed to check the lecturer's picture, but there's no way they would overlook a $40 per pound bill for Blue Hawaiian beans."

A chuckle behind them alerted Olivia to the fact that someone had overheard her colleagues' comments. She turned around and looked directly into the twinkling gray-green eyes of Dawn Kinsley, their lecturer. The faint laugh lines at their corners told her that the psychologist was closer to 30 than to 20 like she had first assumed.

"Sorry," Olivia said, pointing at Munch and Fin, "they're not used to being out and about. Normally, we keep them chained to their desks."

The younger woman didn't seem offended. Full lips curved into an easy smile that dimpled her cheeks and crinkled the skin at the bridge of her slightly upturned nose, which made the freckles dusting the fair skin seem to dance. "Don't worry, Detective, I've been called worse things than 'attractive'."

Olivia studied the gray-green eyes looking steadily at her. "How do you know I'm a detective?" It was disconcerting to think that anyone, even a psychologist, could see through her so easily.

"Oh, I don't know, could it be the fact that we're at a law enforcement conference?" Munch chimed in.

Dawn Kinsley smiled at him, but she spoke to Olivia. "The way you stand, walk, and talk pretty much screams 'COP' in capital letters. And the way you dress suggests you're a detective. Special Victims Unit?"

Liv nodded. "Olivia Benson." She extended her hand.

"Dawn Kinsley, but I guess you already knew that." The psychologist nodded down at her name tag. Her handshake was as genuine and warm as her smile.

"Hey, Liv!" Elliot, already halfway out of the door, waved her over. "We're gonna make a run for the nearest Starbucks before the next lecture starts. You up for it?"

Fourty-five minutes ago, she would have jumped at the chance to leave the seminar room, but now Olivia found herself hesitating. "Um…sure." She glanced down at Dawn Kinsley. "Would you like to come with us?" She surprised herself by asking.

"I don't drink coffee." The psychologist laughed at the look on Olivia's face. "Don't look so shocked, Detective. I'm a tea drinker, and I'd love to accompany four of New York's finest, but regrettably, I've got an appointment."

"Maybe next time, then," Olivia said non-committally, knowing they would likely never see each other again. Suddenly not as eager for a coffee as before, Olivia followed her colleagues out of the conference room.

LIAN'S GROCERY STORE

1224 LEXINGTON AVENUE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

Olivia rapped her knuckles against the shiny surface of a watermelon, testing its ripeness. Then she decided that a whole melon would only spoil in her single-household and reached for a banana instead.

She looked up from the fruit when a young man entered her personal space. As a cop, she was immediately aware of anyone violating a 10-foot zone around her. His gaze met hers, and he backed away. Scowling, Olivia watched him as he neared another shopper, who was busy nestling her apples into a shopping bag.

Hey! That's the psychologist! Buying fruit like the rest of us mere mortals – in my grocery store! Olivia forgot about the strange young man as she studied the psychologist. Wearing faded blue jeans and a white button-down shirt, Dawn Kinsley looked – in Olivia's opinion – at least as good as in the neatly pressed slacks and the blouse from the seminar. Olivia tilted her head and watched as Dawn pushed back stubborn blonde strands that had escaped from her ponytail. Should I say hello? Would she even remember me?

She hadn't made a decision yet when her trained cop eyes noticed a hand reaching into the psychologist's purse. Half a second later, the young man sprinted down the aisle.

Dawn Kinsley seemed to comprehend what had happened almost immediately. She sprinted after him at a speed which would have done any street cop proud and grabbed his shirt, before he could reach the door.

The thief whirled around, towering over the small woman. He raised a threatening fist.

Uh, oh! Olivia sprinted towards them before the situation could escalate further. She grabbed the raised fist, turned the man's arm behind his back, and cuffed him in one smooth movement.

"That was really dumb, Miss Kinsley," she said to the staring woman. "Brave, but dumb. You shouldn't grab a thief who outweighs you by at least 40 pounds without even knowing if he's armed!"

Dawn Kinsley steadily looked back at her. "He outweighs you, too."

Olivia straightened to her full height. "But I am armed and a trained police officer!"

"Oh, shit!" At the mention of her occupation, the captured thief started to struggle in Olivia's grip.

The Asian shop owner hurried down the aisle. "Thank you, thank you, Detective!" He wanted to shake her hands but they were full of struggling thief, so he turned to Dawn. "I'm very sorry, Miss Kinsley. That never happened in my store before! Would you accept some more fruit as a compensation for the scare?"

"No, thank you, what I have is enough, really." Dawn shook her shopping bag with two apples and a pear.

The shop owner sighed. "She's another one of those one-tomato-buyers," he said to Olivia.

She's single, Olivia translated. And probably as straight as they come.

"I might only take one tomato, but I buy two packets of cookies every time I come in here," a smiling Dawn defended.

Olivia waited for two uniformed officers to take the thief off her hands, before she allowed herself to chat with the patiently waiting psychologist. "So, do you buy at Lian's regularly?"

"Regularly enough to get a reputation as a 'one-tomato-buyer', it would seem." Dawn winked.

Olivia had to smile. She liked the psychologist's wit. "Been there, done that."

"I live just a block down the street. You want to come with me and have the cup of coffee I had to decline last week?" Dawn Kinsley tilted her head and looked up at Olivia.

"I thought you didn't drink coffee?"

"I don't, but nevertheless I make a mean cup. Just like you cops like it - strong enough to be considered black paint in every other occupation."

Olivia laughed. "Now, that's an offer I can't resist!" Asking me to come home with her…tempting me with coffee…is she flirting? Olivia pondered as she followed Dawn down the street. Ha! You wish! That's just the natural warmth and friendliness of someone who's comfortable around people.

Side by side, they climbed the stairs to Dawn's first floor apartment. "Make yourself comfortable," Dawn called over her shoulder, already heading for the kitchen.

Olivia lifted a brow. Cop or not, she wouldn't leave a stranger unsupervised in her living room; Nick Gansner had taught her that lesson. Hesitatingly, she stepped across a colorful rug, past overflowing bookcases and shelves full of framed pictures and potted plants.

Orange curtains suffused the living room in a golden light. In the corner was a desk piled high with books, files, and magazines. Above it, a chaotic arrangement of children's drawings and colorful postcards fought for space with a shelf full of sea shells, a piggy bank, and stuffed animals. A recliner, a rocking chair, and two mismatched chairs completed the furnishings.

It was a bit chaotic, in a charming and paradoxically almost soothing way. Olivia thought about her own apartment, which was neat and nearly void of any personal knick-knacks. Dawn's apartment wasn't overly tidy; it had a cozy lived-in feel. It felt like a home, not just a place to eat and sleep.

I like it, Olivia decided as she sank down onto the couch.

Within minutes, she heard the gurgling of the coffee maker. Her hostess returned with a tray and placed coffee, tea, and cookies on the coffee table. "Black, without sugar, right?" She sat in a rocking chair across from her visitor and nodded towards Olivia's mug.

"Right." Olivia didn't ask how Dawn knew her coffee preferences. She seemed to have some sort of sixth sense concerning policemen and -women.

"So, have you recovered from all those attempts to bore you to death?" Dawn looked at her over the rim of her mug, a smile in her eyes.

"Huh?"

Dawn shook a finger at her. "Oh, come on, Detective. I'm well aware how 'eager' most cops are to sit in a chair all day and listen to some theoreticians who want to tell them how to do their jobs."

"Yeah, we just love it," Olivia admitted with a grin. "But actually…your lecture wasn't half bad. You're not just an academic, are you?"

"No. Maybe I'll go into teaching someday, but for now, I'm pretty happy with what I do – which is counseling survivors of rape and sexual abuse," Dawn explained.

Olivia looked down into her mug. "That has to be tough."

Dawn shrugged. "As tough as being a SVU detective, I would imagine. But someone has to do it, and sometimes you feel that you've made a difference, and that makes it worth it."

Yeah. I guess she's someone who would really understand the job. Silence grew between them, but Olivia didn't find it uncomfortable.

"I have to admit that I didn't invite you up without an ulterior motive, Detective," Dawn didn't beat around the bush.

Olivia swallowed. "And what motive might that be?" She regarded the psychologist suspiciously.

"I know we hardly know each other, and I normally wouldn't do this, but…"

Olivia's eyes became wider and wider with every word. It truly sounded like a come-on. She wasn't sure what she would do if it was.

"…I have a favor to ask."

Okay, so it's not a come-on. Olivia laughed at herself. Sleeping with a woman like her couldn't be considered doing her a favor.

"I've searched for someone who could speak to my group, and it seems I found the ideal person for the job."

"Your group?" Olivia repeated.

Dawn nodded. "It's a support group for survivors who've gotten pregnant by rape."

Suddenly, the coffee left a bitter taste in her mouth. For once, she had been relaxed, not thinking about anything job related, and the question caught her unexpectedly. "I'm in no way 'ideal for the job'," she protested, struggling against her rising anger.

"Of course you are!" Dawn rocked forward and touched her hand encouragingly.

Olivia flinched. She didn't know how or from whom, but she was suddenly convinced that Dawn Kinsley knew about the circumstances of her conception. The thought did not sit well with her. "No!" she repeated. "I can't give advice to women in that situation. I…I…I just can't, okay?"

"Okay." Dawn's gray-green eyes didn't hide her disappointment and confusion, but she accepted Olivia's rejection without pressuring her to change her mind.

Olivia shoved back her only half empty cup of coffee. "I have to go."

Dawn rose with her. Her smooth brow furrowed as she followed Olivia to the door. "If I insulted you in any—"

"No," Olivia held up her hand, "you didn't. It's just…you…you haven't insulted me."

"All right." For the first time, it seemed as if the psychologist didn't know what to say.

Olivia slipped past her, forcing herself not to look back. The door closing behind her echoed in her mind for the rest of the day.

APARTMENT OF

OLIVIA BENSON

117 EAST 82ND STREET

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

Olivia fumbled with the key for a few moments, stiff hands and tired eyes refusing to work together, before she finally managed to unlock the door. Everything was dark and silent when she entered her apartment. Only a wave of stale air, a pile of bills and junk mail and two parched potted plants greeted her as the door closed, echoing loudly in the silence.

She had slept in SVU's crib for the last three days. Today, their hard work had finally paid off. New York City's inhabitants had one less child molester to worry about.

Exhausted, but content, she threw the mail down onto the coffee table and pressed the 'play'-button on the answering machine, only to be told that she had "no messages" – not that she had expected any, since she didn't have many friends outside of the squad.

With a glance at the clock, which told her it was 4:10 a.m., Olivia stepped past the coffee machine and headed for the refrigerator instead. She skipped using a glass and drank directly from the orange juice container. One of the many advantages of being single, she told herself, trying not to think about how nice it would be to come home to a set table, a sympathetic ear, and a warm body in her bed.

She kicked off her shoes and yanked her shirt over her head while she headed to the bathroom. Leaning against the sink, she splashed water onto her face and rubbed burning eyes. The mirror above the sink showed disheveled hair and lines of fatigue on her face. Running her tongue over her teeth and tasting three days worth of coffee and Chinese take-out, she decided a shower could wait and grabbed her toothbrush.

She watched absent-mindedly as water dripped from the faucet. The sound of the falling drops accentuated the silence in her apartment. Out of habit, she reached up to the place where other people might store their bath radio and turned on her police scanner. She was so used to listening to the NYPD radio transmissions that it became a soothing background noise while she brushed her teeth. She barely registered a domestic violence call-out and two DUIs.

The scanner crackled. '…at 1228 Lexington Avenue.'

"What?" Olivia mumbled around her toothbrush. Not only was the address in her immediate neighborhood, but it also sounded oddly familiar. Convinced that her tired mind made her imagine things, she returned to her brushing and gargling, when the dispatcher's voice came through the scanner again: 'I repeat: We have a 10-34 at 1228 Lexington Avenue. Unclear if suspect is still at the scene. Respond code three.'

She spat a mouthful of toothpaste across the sink and mirror as she recognized the address: Someone had been assaulted – or possibly raped – in Dawn Kinsley's apartment building. A sudden surge of adrenalin banished her tiredness. She tried to tell herself that there were dozens of other women living at the same address; that it probably wasn't even a rape; that she wasn't on call, but a quivering deep in her gut made her abandon her toothbrush and grab her wrinkled clothes again.

'Dispatch, this is unit one-eighteen. That's 10-4. I'm en route; E.T.A. two minutes,' a patrol unit responded via radio.

Even knowing help was on the way, Olivia didn't stop. She had long ago learned not to question her instincts. She dressed with the automatic movements of someone who had been called out at unholy hours of the night a thousand times. Within minutes, she was on her way back into the night time air.

APARTMENT BUILDING OF

DAWN KINSLEY

1228 LEXINGTON AVENUE

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

Olivia pulled her car into a parking space beside the squad car, whose blue and red lights were coloring the night. A uniformed police officer stopped her before she reached the door to the apartment building. "Sorry, Ma'am." He blocked the entrance. "Do you live here? Do you have any identification?"

She silenced him by shoving her badge into his face. "Detective Benson, Special Victims Unit."

"Wow, you guys are really fast tonight! I'm Officer Trent with the one-nine."

Olivia wasn't in the mood to exchange any chit-chat or to explain her fast arrival at the scene. "You responded to a 10-34. It was a sexual assault?"

"Yeah." The officer nodded. "It—"

"Which apartment?"

"2B. My partner's up there."

Olivia clenched her hands to helpless fists for a second. It was Dawn Kinsley's apartment. She didn't wait for the elevator and took the steps two at a time. She stopped in front of the door to 2B, afraid of what she might find on the other side.

A loud knock brought her face to face with another uniformed officer staring blankly at her.

"Benson, SVU."

"That was fast," the young officer unknowingly echoed his partner and stepped aside to allow her entrance. Olivia could see his relief at not having to deal with the victim himself. She knew that patrol officers had little if any training in dealing with rape survivors. He followed her back in and pointed over his shoulder, while he glanced down at the notebook in his other hand. "The victim's name is—"

"I know her name," Liv interrupted. She took a second to compose herself. Inhaling deeply, she stepped into the apartment.

The half-open bedroom-door showed crumpled sheets, a knocked over lamp and random objects scattered across the floor. The detective in Olivia began to automatically process the crime scene, but then she stepped past the bedroom-door and entered the living room, immediately spying the psychologist.

Dawn Kinsley sat on the same couch where she had shared coffee and tea with Olivia just six days ago.

Olivia almost didn't recognize her: Dawn's gaze, which had always calmly rested on the person she spoke with, now darted around the room. One of her formerly steady hands fluttered across the side of her swollen face, while the other hand clung to the blanket someone had wrapped around her shoulders to hide her torn clothing. Dawn's naturally fair face appeared even paler in contrast to the bruises on her cheek.

The woman on the couch wasn't the competent rape counselor Olivia had met a few days earlier, but a shattered rape victim.

Olivia cleared her throat to announce her presence and sat down on the edge of the couch, close enough to be an available, soothing presence, but far enough away that Dawn didn't feel threatened. "Hey, Miss Kinsley…Dawn." She made her voice as gentle as she could.

Dawn's head shot up. "H-hello. I…I'd say it's nice to meet you again, but under these circumstances…" She looked away, wiping at the tears in her eyes as her body began to tremble.

Olivia swallowed. She had the sudden urge to hold Dawn's hand or lay a protective arm around her, but she kept her distance, knowing that it could do more harm than good at this point. She didn't want to scare Dawn even further. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Someone broke into my apartment….a…a man." Dawn pressed her lips together. "He had a weapon and…he struck me." Her fingers traced the marks on her right cheek.

Olivia nodded encouragingly but didn't interrupt.

"He…threw me down…onto the bed, and then he…" Trembling eyelids closed for a second. "He raped me," Dawn whispered. She looked at Olivia in disbelief. "Detective, he…he…"

"I know," Olivia murmured. She moved a little closer to Dawn, but not yet close enough to touch her. "Did you know him?"

Dawn shook her head.

"Okay. Can you describe him?" Olivia knew she had to maintain a professional distance and ask the standard questions, but it was hard when you knew the person who sat trembling across from you.

"He was tall and muscular and…heavy. Black hair. Angry, blue eyes."

"Good, that'll help us look for him." She touched Dawn's forearm fleetingly. "I'll take you to the hospital in a second, okay? Can I get you anything or do anything for you before we go? Should I call anyone?"

"No, but…I'd like to change." Dawn looked down at her torn T-shirt.

Olivia sighed. "You can't, at least not yet. I'm sorry, but it's evidence. How about taking a new set of clothing with you to the hospital, so you can change after your examination, hmm?"

"I…I can't go in there." Dawn pointed a trembling finger at the bedroom.

"It's all right," Olivia soothed. "I'll do it." She stepped over a fallen chair, shattered ceramic figurines, and books with torn out pages, careful not to touch anything that might be evidence. The glasses Dawn had worn every time Liv had met her lay on the bedroom floor, the frame broken and one glass shattered.

Olivia picked out a comfortable looking sweatshirt, loose fitting pants, and a pair of warm socks. As she added panties, she bitterly shook her head. She had fleetingly dreamed about seeing the charming psychologist's underwear – but these definitely weren't the circumstances she had fantasized about. Even harmless flirting with Dawn Kinsley was no longer a possibility. Everything had changed tonight.

She returned to the living room with the bundle of clothes under her arm. Her heart lurched at the sight of Dawn fumbling with her shoes, her fingers trembling too much to manage the laces.

Olivia wordlessly placed the clothes aside and knelt down in front of Dawn, tying the laces. "Anything else?" she asked.

"Can I brush my teeth?"

Olivia bit her lip, feeling bad that she had to deny Dawn that simple request. "No, sorry. That could destroy evidence. I have to talk to the officer for a minute, okay? It won't take long."

The cop, who had wisely retreated to the kitchen, looked up as she entered. "She give a description?"

"Tall, muscular, black hair, blue eyes. I'll have her work with a sketch artist later, but for now give out a BOLO for a suspect fitting that description to all precincts."

The officer nodded and took a few notes.

"Are there any witnesses or is Miss Kinsley the one who called us?" Olivia asked. She looked back to the couch to make sure Dawn was still okay on her own.

"A neighbor called it in. He saw her lean out of the open window and thought she was suicidal at first. Turns out she wanted to retrieve her cell phone. The perp threw it out the window. It's dangling from the fire escape."

Olivia's brow furrowed. Breaking into the apartment, ripping out the phone line, throwing away the only other means to call for help…that sounded like a planned attack, but the destruction in the bedroom didn't speak for a controlled offender. Time to think about that later; Dawn's the top priority right now, she told herself. "Secure the premises without destroying possible evidence and take the neighbor's statement. I'm taking her to the hospital."

She crossed the room toward Dawn, making some noise as she approached her to avoid startling the wounded woman. "Are you ready?"

Dawn struggled to her feet without answering.

LENOX HILL HOSPITAL

100 EAST 77TH STREET

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

Olivia sat next to Dawn in a small, curtained cubicle in the Lenox Hill emergency room, which was busy even at 5 a.m. The emergency personnel hadn't tried to let them wait in the corridor when they saw the gold shield clipped to Olivia's belt and the grim expression on her face.

"I guess I was really lucky that you were on call tonight," Dawn said, after the nurse had left in search of a doctor. As a rape counselor, she knew that many victims without life-threatening injuries had to wait for their treatment and were often questioned about the rape in the middle of the corridor, while nurses and doctors rushed injured patients past them and worried family members paced nearby.

Olivia tilted her head in a vague nod. She didn't want to discuss the reason why she had caught this case, preferring for the moment to let Dawn believe she had been on call tonight and was here for strictly professional reasons.

"So…I know it's hard to talk about…but…" She found herself uncharacteristically reluctant to question Dawn about something that would be painful for her. "I have to ask you some specific questions about the attack so the doctor will know what kind of evidence he's to look for. Let's start with the easy part…I know you didn't shower, brush your teeth or change your clothes after the attack, right?"

Dawn nodded.

"Did he penetrate you?"

Another nod. "Vaginally, nothing else, but he kept trying to kiss me. I don't think he wore a condom," Dawn answered, already anticipating Olivia's next question.

Olivia's stomach twisted as she heard the clinical response to her question, once again reminded of the fact that Dawn Kinsley normally dealt with rape in a professional capacity, like Olivia did. It seemed like Dawn tried to get through this by acting as if she was speaking about one of her patients and not about herself.

The nurse returned to their curtained off cubicle. She handed Dawn a blue hospital gown. "Please stand on this sheet of paper," she pointed to the floor of the cubicle, "while you undress. Put your clothes in the paper bag on the table; the panties go into the smaller bag."

Dawn looked at Olivia. She seemed almost afraid to let Olivia out of her sight.

"I'll be right here, outside the curtain, waiting for you, okay?" Olivia stepped back, but kept eye contact.

Dawn exhaled and closed the curtain behind her.

Olivia turned her back to the cubicle and bobbed up and down on the balls of her feet in an effort not to pace back and forth. She heard the rustling of paper and then, just for a second, quiet sobs.

After a minute, Dawn reappeared, looking even more fragile in the blue paper gown than she had before.

Olivia gazed down into stormy gray eyes. "You okay?"

Dawn nodded.

The nurse guided Dawn to the examination table.

Silently, Olivia took up position beside her.

A doctor with a clipboard came in and started asking questions while the nurse took photographs of the bruises on Dawn's face and body. "When did you have your last period, Miss Kinsley?" he asked matter-of-factly.

"Uh…I'm not sure…maybe two weeks ago…it could be three. I'm really not sure." Dawn shrugged helplessly.

The doctor raised his brows but didn't comment when he saw Olivia's warning stare. "Have you had recent sexual intercourse?"

Dawn laughed bitterly. "That's why I'm here, isn't it?"

Olivia touched her hand with a single finger. "He means voluntary sexual intercourse."

"No." Dawn bit her lip. "No, I haven't."

The doctor scribbled some notes on his clipboard. "What form of birth control do you normally use?"

Once again, the camera flashed, and Dawn closed her eyes. "I don't use any."

Olivia took Dawn's hand in hers and squeezed it soothingly when she heard Dawn's defensive tone of voice. It seemed like the matter-of-fact question had come across as if the doctor had accused Dawn of not properly 'preparing' for the eventuality of a rape, but it had probably been just Dawn who had read the accusation into the doctor's question, because she'd begun to wonder whether she couldn't have done anything to prevent the rape. Olivia knew that many rape victims blamed themselves for aspects of their rape, feeling like they hadn't been careful enough, hadn't paid enough attention to their surroundings, hadn't fought back hard enough and hadn't found the right words to stop the rapist. It seemed that Dawn Kinsley, professional background aside, wasn't so different from other rape survivors.

The doctor put the clipboard away and opened the rape kit. "We need two oral swabs for a DNA sample," Olivia explained, holding out the swabs to Dawn. "Do you want to do it yourself?" Olivia knew that many victims experienced the rape kit examination almost as a second violation. Once again, they didn't have control over their body; it still didn't belong to them but was a crime scene, a piece of evidence. Being intimately examined by a total stranger while telling him details that you would much rather forget was humiliating. Therefore, Olivia tried to give victims as much control over the examination as she possibly could.

Dawn took the swabs without a word and rubbed them across the inside of her mouth, before she handed them back to Olivia, who sealed them into an envelope.

The doctor took Dawn's hand, and she flinched. Olivia stepped closer to her, both for comfort and to hold a sheet of paper under her hand while the doctor scraped underneath Dawn's fingernails, and then cut them. Her gaze still on Dawn, Olivia put the clippings and scrapings into another envelope and sealed it.

"Okay. Could you lie back and spread your legs a little, please?" The doctor placed a towel under Dawn's buttocks and combed through her pubic hair, searching for foreign hairs. "It will hurt for a second – I need to pull some of your pubic hair as a control sample." Soon, another envelope was sealed and labeled.

The physician took two more swabs and stepped between Dawn's bent legs. Dawn jerked.

Olivia enclosed Dawn's trembling fingers gently in both of her larger hands. She kept her gaze on Dawn's face, not looking down to watch what the doctor did.

Dawn squeezed her eyes shut and moaned. "I can't believe this is happening to me," she whispered. She was used to being the one to help rape victims, not a victim herself.

"Just a little longer," Olivia murmured, "it's almost over." With relief, she watched the doctor step back and make a smear on a glass slide.

The doctor turned off the light. "I need you to open the gown a little bit, please."

Unsteady fingers wrestled with the laces that held the gown closed.

"Need help?" Olivia asked. She didn't move until Dawn nodded. Gently, she untied the laces and stepped back. She didn't look down at the half-naked body, but gazed into Dawn's upset gray eyes. Her thumb rubbed circles over the back of Dawn's hand.

The doctor turned on the UV light and moved it above Dawn's abdomen and thighs, showing bright blue fluorescent spots.

"What's that?" Dawn looked down at her bruised body.

"Seminal fluid," said the physician and rubbed over some of the stains with a cotton pad.

Dawn groaned in disgust.

The doctor turned the light back on and waited for Olivia to help Dawn close her hospital gown. He handed Dawn two white pills and a small plastic cup of water. "That's Plan B, an emergency contraceptive pill. You have to take them in two doses – one pill now and one more in 12 hours. You might have some nausea or dizziness after taking them; if you want I can prescribe you some Dramamine to help with that."

Dawn took the first pill and swallowed it without comment.

"The nurse will be in shortly. She'll give you antibiotics to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and get blood drawn from you to test for STDs and HIV. The test results will be back within 24 hours. You should be re-tested in three and six months just to make sure that everything is all right."

Dawn seemed overwhelmed with the scary effects the rape could have, but she nodded bravely.

"The nurse will also take you to get your hand x-rayed," the doctor continued.

Olivia immediately let go of Dawn's hand. "Her hand is broken?!"

Dawn looked down at her left, then at the right hand as if she hadn't noticed anything wrong with them either.

"Her right index finger might be broken. It's hard to tell with all the swelling, so I'd like to do an x-ray."

The nurse helped Dawn into a wheelchair – standard hospital procedure – and took her to the x-ray department, leaving Olivia alone with the ER doctor. "What does the evidence tell you?" Olivia asked when Dawn was out of earshot.

The doctor locked the envelopes in the rape kit box, sealed it, and handed it to Olivia. "Bruise marks on her arms and thighs, which might be consistent with restraint, and about the pelvic and pubic area. Teeth marks on her breasts. Evidence of penetration and seminal fluids."

Classic signs of rape, Olivia translated. She left the rape kit with one of the uniformed officers, with strict orders to take it directly to the M.E., and went searching for radiology.

Part 2

SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT

SQUAD ROOM

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

WARNING: The next scene contains a graphic recounting of a rape!

"Morning, Liv."

At Elliot's greeting, Olivia looked up from the selection of tea bags. "Morning. Sorry for calling you in on your day off. I hope you're not in the doghouse with Kathy for working on weekends?"

"No, that's okay. She wanted to take the kids shopping anyway. Now, tell me why I had to miss four whining kids begging me for 150-dollar-shoes or a navel piercing." Elliot stepped beside Olivia and poured himself a cup of coffee. "Why did you catch a case when we weren't on call last night?"

"I heard it on the police scanner when I came home."

Elliot lifted a brow. "And because you didn't have anything more important to do…like sleep after three twenty-hours shifts…you thought you'd help our brothers in uniform out or what? Did they start a bonus program for catching two rapists in one night?"

Olivia didn't laugh. "Elliot, it was Dawn."

"Dawn?" Elliot looked at her, clearly not understanding who she was talking about.

For the first time, Olivia noticed that she had thought about the psychologist as 'Dawn' and not 'Miss Kinsley' since she had found her on the couch three hours ago. Three hours, Olivia thought as she stirred sugar into the tea. An eternity. "Dawn Kinsley – the rape counselor who held the first lecture at the seminar last week."

"The vic's one of her patients?" Elliot asked.

Olivia pressed her lips together. "She's the victim. Someone broke into her apartment last night and raped her."

"Oh. I'm sorry." She was sure he didn't know why, but he sensed that this was one of those cases that affected her on more than a professional level. "Did you call Munch and Fin? I'm sure Fin wouldn't mind coming in on a Saturday morning for the woman who proved one of Munch's conspiracy theories wrong."

"They were here, finishing the paperwork on Barclay, when I came in. I told them we'd meet them at Dawn's apartment…the crime scene…once we'd gotten a formal statement," Olivia explained, as she headed toward one of the interview rooms with Elliot in tow.

Dawn Kinsley still sat where Olivia had left her five minutes ago; on the edge of the chair, her hands, with one splinted finger, in her lap.

Elliot kept a respectful distance. "Hello, Miss Kinsley."

"Hello, Detective." Dawn spared Elliot a quick glance, and then her eyes immediately searched for Olivia. She relaxed when she saw her entering the room behind her partner.

Olivia stepped forward and set the cup of tea in front of Dawn. "Tea, not coffee," she explained with a small smile. "I hope you like it with a little sugar."

Dawn nodded, wrapping her uninjured hand around the dark green mug. She inhaled the comforting scent of peppermint, but didn't drink. She just held onto the mug as if it was a lifeline.

Olivia perched onto the corner of the table and studied Dawn. She looked as exhausted as Olivia felt. "We don't have to do this right now. There'd still be time to take your formal statement after you slept for a few hours," she offered.

"No, that's okay. I doubt that I'd be able to sleep, anyway."

Olivia traded a look with her partner, before she sat down. She scooted her chair a little closer to the psychologist while Elliot chose a chair at the end of the table. "I know we've been through some of this before but I need you to tell me what happened from the beginning."

"Okay. I had just fallen asleep…I think it was around three o'clock, when a noise from somewhere in the apartment woke me up. I went to investigate, thinking maybe the cat had knocked something over…"

Olivia nodded encouragingly, but didn't interrupt to ask more questions, while Elliot, sensing that the victim was more at ease with Olivia than him, kept silent and took notes.

"There was a man in my living room. I opened my mouth to scream, but he pressed me against the wall with his forearm across my throat. He held a gun to my head and told me he'd kill me if I called for help or tried to escape." Dawn shivered violently.

"It's okay, you're here now, safe," Olivia said, taking her back to the present. She waited a few moments. "What happened next?"

"He dragged me back into the bedroom. On the way, he ripped the phone cord from the wall and threw my cell phone out of the window. Then, he…he pushed me down onto the bed." Dawn bit her lip. "He was a really tall man, he outweighed me by more than 80 pounds, and he had a weapon – I knew I stood no chance to fight him off."

Olivia swallowed hard. Just a week ago, she had told Dawn how dangerous it could be to pick a fight with someone who outweighed you and might be armed. Had she robbed Dawn of a chance to get away unharmed by telling her that trying to fight was dumb? With suddenly trembling hands, she lifted her paper cup and tried to wash down the ball of emotions in her throat with a mouthful of lukewarm coffee.

"I knew I couldn't hurt him badly enough to stop him…maybe I should have tried…if I…" She stopped herself and rubbed tired eyes. "I can't count how often I told a patient not to blame herself for any aspect of her rape and now I…" She stopped and sighed. "Anyway, I decided struggling was useless and tried to talk my way out of the situation. After all, that's what I do for a living – talk," Dawn continued, smiling bitterly. "I told him he didn't need to do this, because he was handsome, and there should be a lot of women willing to go out with him…to sleep with him without using violence. I offered him money. I said everything I could think of. I even told him I had a contagious disease…" Dawn looked away from Liv and stared down at the table. "His answer was to unzip his pants, force my legs apart and rape me."

For a second, everything was quiet in the room, even Elliot's pen ceased to scratch over the note pad.

"He held me down with one hand, while the other kept pressing the gun against my temple." Dawn tapped her unsplinted index finger against the side of her head. Olivia could hear her teeth grinding. "I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to turn my head so he couldn't kiss me, but he slapped me every time I looked away or closed my eyes – he wanted me to see who was doing this to me. I think that's the reason why he didn't wear a mask. After a while, I had the feeling of leaving my body as if I looked down at a stranger being raped…I dissociated."

It was a strange experience for Olivia to sit across from a victim who used the jargon of a sex crimes expert. Olivia wanted to comfort Dawn, but she didn't dare to use the soothing words that worked with almost every victim, knowing Dawn herself had said them hundreds of times to her patients. This time, she was the victim, and Olivia couldn't think of anything to say.

"What happened then?" Elliot asked covering his partner's silence.

Dawn cleared her throat. "He had problems…finishing. Of course, he blamed it on me 'laying there like a dead fish'. He shoved the gun under my chin and told me to stop acting as if I wasn't enjoying it. He told me to moan and act excited." She closed her eyes, a few silent tears escaping from under her lids. "I know that many rapists who have trouble ejaculating blame their victims and kill them, so I…I did what he told me to do."

Oh, God! Olivia wanted to close her eyes, she wanted to scream or run out of the room but most of all she wanted to shoot the monster who had done this to Dawn. She had heard a lot of awful stories in her four years with SVU, but for some reason this one was affecting her on another level.

It was Dawn who was brave enough to break the silence. She appeared to be on automatic pilot. "Finally, he finished, but even that didn't seem to satisfy him. He slapped me one more time, and then he went berserk on my bedroom furniture. His eyes…as he trampled on my photos and threw my books across the room… He was so full of anger and hate that I thought for sure that he would kill me. But he didn't."

Olivia noticed that she didn't sound relieved about that. Suddenly, tears burned in her own eyes. "What did he do next?" she asked as professionally as she could.

"He kicked a chair out of the way and disappeared through the bedroom door." Dawn exhaled and took the first sip from her tea, which must have been cold by now.

Olivia exchanged a glance with Elliot. "We have to ask you some detailed questions now. Can we get you anything before we start? Something to eat?" she offered.

Dawn shook her head.

Rising from her chair, Olivia reached for the mug she had lent Dawn. "Another tea, then?"

"No, I…" Dawn clung to the handle of the mug. "I don't need anything, really."

Elliot looked from Dawn to Olivia. "I'll go," he offered.

Without further protest, Dawn handed him the mug.

As Olivia watched the door close, she suddenly understood that Dawn simply hadn't wanted her to leave the room.

"Sorry," Dawn whispered. "I don't want your partner to think I mistrust him…it's just that I don't know him, and I feel like I know you, even when I don't…not really…"

"It's okay," Olivia assured with a smile. "Elliot makes much better tea than I do, anyway."

Soon, Elliot returned with tea and coffee, and the interview continued.

"You said he didn't wear a mask…so you did see his face?" Olivia began.

"Yes. I had the feeling he wanted me to. He turned on the lamp on my bedside table. I think he broke my finger when I tried to lay a hand over my eyes. He wanted to confront me with the reality that it was him who…"

Olivia nodded. She trusted the psychologist's assessment. "Could you describe him to a police sketch artist?"

A nod from Dawn.

"And how confident are you that you could identify him in a line-up?"

"I'd know him, anytime, anywhere. I'll never forget that face, those eyes…" Dawn shivered.

"You said he was tall…how tall is that, exactly?" Olivia asked.

For the first time, Dawn looked directly at Elliot. "What are you, 6 feet?"

"And half an inch." Elliot smiled gently.

"I'd say he was a bit taller than that…6'2'' or 6'3''."

"You said he had black hair and blue eyes. Is there anything else you remember about his face? Did he have a beard, for example?"

Dawn shook her head. "No beard, just some stubble. He had a small scar on his chin…right there," she pointed to her own face, "and another one above his right eyebrow. Given his aggressiveness, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a criminal record with assault and battery."

"We'll look into it," Olivia promised. It would make their work easier that their victim was a psychologist who knew how the police worked. "Did he smell of anything in particular? An aftershave or—?"

"He smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke. And I could smell alcohol…beer I think, on his breath." Dawn shivered as if she could smell him right now, right there in the interview room.

Olivia rested one elbow on the table and fiddled with the unused pen in her hand. "What about his clothes? You remember what he wore?"

"I didn't really see that," Dawn admitted, "but it was nothing extravagant. Just a sleeveless T-shirt, showing off his muscled arms." She rolled her eyes. "His pants were black, I think. I know they were dark."

"Did he speak with an accent?" Olivia continued with her endless list of questions.

"No accent. He used a bit of slang. He's street smart, but not a college graduate, I'd say."

Olivia nodded. "What about his age?"

"A little younger than me; mid-twenties, I would guess."

Fairly young, Olivia thought, maybe he's just starting out? "Did he seem insecure…nervous?"

"Not in the least," Dawn vehemently shook her head. "He was cold-blooded, angry, and fully convinced that he had every right to do what he did. There was no room for nervousness or scruples. I wouldn't be surprised if he has raped before."

Olivia glanced at Elliot to make sure he had written down that information. "You said you didn't know him, but did he say or do anything from which one could infer that he knew you or knew who you are?"

Dawn hesitated.

Olivia looked into the cloudy gray eyes. Dawn had answered every other question without a delay. What was it about this particular question that made her think twice? Olivia was sure that Dawn's reaction was not an attempt to hide something from them. She had seen countless victims, witnesses, and suspects squirming in their chairs, reluctant to admit something damaging or embarrassing to them. What Olivia saw now was a woman who wasn't unsure whether or not she wanted to answer, but about whether or not she could give an accurate answer.

"He didn't say anything like that, and I don't know why…but somehow, I got the feeling that he didn't break into my apartment by chance. But that's only a feeling; maybe I'm just paranoid…"

Olivia shook her head. "Never doubt your instincts, doctor. At this point, even a 'paranoid feeling' could turn out to be a valuable lead."

Dawn smiled timidly. "Thanks."

"Did anything unusual happen in the last few days?"

"Unusual?" Another almost-smile from Dawn. "I'm a psychologist, Detective, unusual things happen in my life every day. But if you mean did I notice any strangers lingering around the building or receive any hang-up calls, then no, there wasn't anything unusual."

"You didn't notice anyone who didn't belong in the building? Maintenance personnel, meter readers, the cable guy…?"

"Not that I remember."

"Does your building have a doorman?" Olivia asked.

"Yes, but he leaves at midnight." Dawn grimaced. "– cost-saving measures."

Olivia crushed the empty paper cup in her hand. "You said you had just gone to sleep when you heard him…had you been out or did you stay home the whole evening?"

"I'd been out with some friends. I came in pretty late and just fell into bed." Dawn looked down onto the table as if her decision to go out that night had somehow led to the rape.

"Did anything unusual happen while you were out? A particularly persistent guy hitting on you or anything like that?"

A ghost of a smile flitted across Dawn's face. "No, nothing like that happened. I didn't talk to anyone but my friends the whole night, and I'm sure no one followed me home."

"Did anything look out of place when you came home?" Olivia continued.

"I don't think so, but I'm not sure. I was so tired when I came home that I really didn't look around."

"Okay." Olivia rubbed the back of her neck. "You said something, some kind of noise, woke you up. Any guesses to what it might have been? Was it a door opening or the shattering of glass or…?"

Dawn shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Nothing as loud as the shattering of glass, though."

"Did you lock the door when you came home?"

A determined nod came from Dawn. "I always do."

"What about the windows?"

"God!" Dawn moaned and buried her face in her hands. "I opened the damn window! I let him in! I always leave one window open whenever the cat's not home and I'm going to bed. I practically invited him in!"

"Hey." Very gently, Olivia touched her shoulder. "You didn't 'invite him in'. Unless you gave him a written invitation, he had no business coming into your apartment, even if every door and every window would have been wide open!"

"Still…" A dozen 'what ifs' stood in the room.

Olivia sighed and decided to break the awkward silence with the next question. "Did he take anything with him? A necklace, a bracelet, rings…anything?"

"He wasn't interested in jewelry or money, Detective. This was no burglar who came across a sleeping woman by chance and took the opportunity!"

Olivia raised a calming hand. Like a lot of rape victims, Dawn seemed to shift between blaming herself and being angry with the world and its unfairness. "Most rapists take something with them that belonged to the victim. For the most part, it's not financially motivated, but—"

"…a trophy," Dawn said, a lot calmer now.

"Yes."

Dawn pressed her uninjured fingers against the bridge of her nose and thought about it. "I didn't notice anything missing, but it's hard to say with all the destruction in my bedroom."

"And did he leave anything behind?"

"Like what?" Dawn asked warily.

Olivia shrugged. "A piece of clothing, a tool, a weapon…"

"No. He didn't undress, and he took the gun with him when he left."

The gun… Olivia threw Elliot a quick glance. They both knew how difficult it was to get a reliable, detailed description of weapons from a civilian. "Can you describe the gun? Was it a revolver, did it have a breech?"

"No, it wasn't," Dawn answered without a trace of hesitation. "He had a semi-automatic, a nine millimeter with a grip made of black polymer-plastic – a Glock 17."

Elliot and Olivia exchanged incredulous glances. How come a civilian with a non-violent job can answer a question about weapons with such precision?

Elliot finally voiced their thoughts: "How can you be so sure?"

"I come from a family of cops," Dawn said with a small, but affectionate smile. "My father and my older brother were on the job and some of my friends still are. Most of them had Glocks. I grew up with it."

Were on the job? Olivia noticed her use of the past tense but decided not to ask. Dawn had enough sadness to deal with for the moment.

With a glance at her watch, which read 10 a.m., Olivia asked a few more questions about Dawn's daily routine: which restaurants, gyms, and clubs did she frequent?; where did she buy her groceries and which pharmacy and Laundromat did she use? They would compare her answers to those of other rape victims. If they were lucky, there might be a connection, a common place where the rapist first noticed his victims.

Finally, Olivia stretched and looked down at a yawning Dawn.

Elliot closed his note pad and threw down the pen. "We'll have the written statement for you by this afternoon. You should read it carefully to make sure that everything's accurate, and then sign it."

Dawn nodded.

"Do you live with anyone?" Elliot asked, and when Dawn shook her head, he continued: "Do you have family or friends you could stay with for a few days?"

"I think I'll stay with my mother for a while."

Elliot nodded. "Good. We can have a unit drive you there," he offered.

Olivia stood up and rounded the table. "I'll drive her home, Elliot."

"That's not necessary, Detective. I can take a cab…," Dawn protested bravely, though it was easy to see that she wasn't looking forward to driving anywhere with a male stranger.

"It's no problem, I really don't mind," Olivia assured her.

Her partner studied Liv for a few seconds, before he nodded. "Okay. Meet us at the cr… at Miss Kinsley's apartment as soon as you're finished."

APARTMENT OF

GRACE KINSLEY

470 BROOME STREET

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

Olivia parked the Sedan and turned off the ignition. She got out of the car and waited patiently until Dawn had done the same. "A locksmith is going to change the locks in your apartment," she said, silently wondering how often she had told other rape victims the exact same thing, "and a psychologist will call you to make…" She stopped when she remembered that it was a psychologist she was talking to.

"…an appointment," Dawn finished for her and smiled sadly. "Standard procedure, right?"

Liv shook her head. Nothing about this case was 'standard' – not for her and certainly not for Dawn. When they stopped in front of the apartment building where Dawn's mother lived, Olivia took one of her cards, wrote something on the back, and handed it to Dawn. "Those are the numbers you can reach me at – the precinct, my pager, my cell phone, and my home number. Don't hesitate to call me – anytime, day or night, okay?"

Dawn looked at the card, then at Olivia. "Thank you. For everything." She took a deep breath and turned to look at the house.

Olivia had seen the same hesitation dozens of times before: Dawn was afraid to go in and tell her family what had happened to her. "I could come with you and talk to your family if you want me to," she offered quietly.

"No, thanks, I'll manage."

Before Dawn could reach the door, it swung open. "Dawn!" An older, heavier version of Dawn stood in the doorway. "Where have you been? I've been trying to reach you the whole…" The woman's gray eyes widened when she looked at her daughter and saw the bruises on her face. "Oh, my God! Dawn, what happened?!"

Dawn stared at her with a mixture of emotions – wanting to be left alone so she could pretend nothing had happened and equally longing to be held in motherly arms. A tear rolled down her cheek as she searched for words.

When Dawn didn't answer, her panicked mother turned to Olivia and repeated: "What happened, Detective?!"

Another Kinsley-woman with built-in cop-dar! Olivia thought absent-mindedly. She said nothing, waiting for Dawn to find her voice. She knew how important it was for Dawn, for any rape victim, to say the words on her own. She rested a supporting hand on Dawn's elbow and waited.

"Mom," Dawn said, her voice a rough whisper, "I was raped last night."

Mrs. Kinsley blanched. "What?! Oh dear God!" She reached for her daughter.

Dawn's cool, controlled façade crumbled immediately. Sobbing loudly for the first time, she sank into her mother's embrace.

Suddenly feeling like an intruder, Olivia stepped back. She wanted to turn her head and give them some privacy, but found that she couldn't look away from the comforting caresses and the consoling whispers. Olivia had loved her mother, and she was sure that her mother had loved her in her own way, but she had never known the level of motherly comfort that she witnessed now. It was a healing experience and hard to look at, at the same time.

With one last glance, she turned and walked toward her car.

APARTMENT OF

DAWN KINSLEY

1228 LEXINGTON AVENUE

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

Olivia ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. She looked around the apartment, where a CSU tech and her fellow detectives were already hard at work. It didn't appear to be the same cozy apartment where she had drunk coffee with Dawn just a week ago. The warmth and innocence had been destroyed.

She crossed the living room and tried to slip on both her 'Detective-persona' and her latex gloves. "Any luck with prints?"

The crime tech looked up from his work. "I've lifted a few from the bedroom door, the phone, and the window. Could belong to the victim, though."

"You should check for prints on the cell phone. The perp threw it out of the window, so we know he had it in his hands."

"Will do." The CSU tech continued his dusting.

Olivia entered the bedroom, where Elliot was busy sealing evidence bags. "Hey, El," she greeted him. "Found anything?"

"The usual – semen stains, hairs, and fibers on the bed. Already photographed and bagged it. Doesn't look like he left anything else behind, not even a condom wrapper. No signs of a struggle or forced entry in the living room. Miss Kinsley was right; the window seems to be the point of entry."

They walked through the apartment to reconstruct the sequence of events. "He must have climbed up the fire escape at the back of the building, found the half-open window and climbed in. I think in the darkness, he crashed into the side-table." Elliot pointed to the piece of furniture half in front of the window. "That's probably what woke the victim up."

"Miss Kinsley," corrected Olivia. She didn't really know the psychologist, but she couldn't think of her as just another nameless victim.

Elliot nodded. His nostrils quivered as he suppressed a yawn. "Right. So, I'm thinking he's someone who doesn't have access to the building and who's never been to the apartment before, otherwise he would know the layout of the furniture and not bump into it."

"Hey, boys and girls," Munch greeted as he entered the apartment.

"Neighbors were a complete waste of time – no one's seen anything." Fin shook his head in frustration.

"Except for Mister Bundy, the one who called us," Munch threw in.

Elliot looked up. "His name's really Bundy?!"

Fin shrugged his broad shoulders. "Yeah. Not everyone's entitled to a nice unique name like Tutuola. Some have to share a name with a mass murderer or a shoe seller."

"Did Mister Bundy tell you anything other than his name?" Olivia interrupted their joking.

Munch raised his eyebrows. "Someone is missing her beauty sleep."

"We could all use a few hours of sleep," intervened Elliot before Olivia could answer. "So let's get this over with, okay?"

"Mister Bundy was walking around the block with man's best friend at about four a.m. When Fifi started barking, he looked up and saw Miss Kinsley hanging halfway out of the window. He begged her not to jump." Munch curved his lips into one of his cynical half-smiles. "Little did he know she didn't want to end her life but her phone-less state—"

"…until she called down to him to call 911 'cause she'd been assaulted," Fin said.

Olivia rubbed one of her tense shoulders. "He didn't see our perp?"

Munch shook his head. "Neither hide nor hair."

"Speaking of hairs…" Elliot brushed his hand over the legs of his pants. "There has to be a feline roommate hiding somewhere around here – there are cat hairs everywhere, and I found a litter box in the bathroom."

"Okay, guys, why don't you head on home?" Olivia suggested. "There's nothing we can do until we have some lab results."

While Munch and Fin headed for the door without hesitation, Elliot didn't move. "And what are you gonna do?"

Olivia stripped off her latex gloves with tired movements. "I'm going to catch a few hours too."

"A few hours?" Elliot raised a mocking brow. "You look like you could use a 3-month-hibernation, not just a few hours of tossing and turning."

"I could," Olivia agreed with a sigh. "But seeing as how I'm not going to get three days, much less three months, I'll take a nap, and then head back to the station to let Miss Kinsley sign her statement."

Elliot studied her. "I get the feeling this one's personal for you."

"Yeah. I guess it is." Olivia shrugged and looked around the apartment as if in search of an explanation. "She works with sex crimes too, Elliot. She's almost one of us. She didn't deserve this."

"No one does."

Side by side, they trudged down the stairs.

Part 3

SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

"Detective? Detective Benson!"

Dazed, Olivia rolled around and lifted herself up on one elbow. "Uh?" She blinked at the sudden brightness of the SVU crib and peered through sleep-swollen eyes at the young man standing before her.

"There are two women down in the squad room asking for you," Kenny Briscoe reported.

Olivia rubbed her eyes and swung her legs out off the cot. A quick glance at her wristwatch showed her that she had slept for four hours. Trotting down the stairs to the squad room, she clipped her holster back onto her belt and finger-combed her short strands into some semblance of order.

Dawn Kinsley and an older woman, who Olivia recognized as the psychologist's mother, sat in front of her desk, two paper cups with teabags in front of them.

"D…Miss Kinsley, Ma'am." She nodded at the two women as she eased herself down into her desk chair.

"Dawn's okay, Detective," the psychologist said. "You've helped me through situations that surely warrant a first-name-basis."

Olivia inclined her head and studied the younger woman. The bruises on her face and around her throat were more pronounced now, and she looked like she hadn't slept for even a minute. Sitting with her back to the noisy squad room full of strangers seemed to make her jumpy.

"Here's your written statement," Olivia handed her the document. "Please, read it thoroughly and don't hesitate to tell me if there's something wrong or missing in there, okay?"

While Dawn read, Olivia's glance met Mrs. Kinsley's over the bowed head of her daughter. Her eyes leaned more towards gray than Dawn's, and her hair was a little darker, but the family resemblance couldn't be denied. Neither could the look of sad helplessness in those gray eyes.

Olivia had to look away, and she was glad when Dawn finished reading. "Everything's correct." She took the pen Olivia held out for her and signed the document. "What else?"

"Nothing, for the moment. We have no eye-witnesses, so our hope's on forensics coming up with something that will help us ID and apprehend the perpetrator. If that happens, we'll need you to identify him in a line-up," Olivia explained. She could see that Dawn was fidgeting, unable to sit still and do nothing while her rapist was free to roam the streets. "We'll need your help when the police sketch artist comes in. Is there anything we can do for you until then? Are you okay at your mother's for now?"

"She can stay for as long as she wants to," Mrs. Kinsley said.

"Do you need anything from your apartment?" Olivia looked down at her own, wrinkled clothes. She had decided that it would be a waste of time to drive home just to sleep a few hours and then turn around and drive back to the station, so she had crashed in the crib.

Dawn shook her head. She didn't seem eager to have anything from her apartment with her. "No, thanks, I have several changes of clothes at my mother's."

"There might be something you could do," Grace Kinsley interjected softly. "Her cat is still in the apartment. I offered to go and get it, but Dawn doesn't want me to see…and she can't go back there, not so soon after…"

"I understand." Olivia looked at Dawn, who glanced down, a little embarrassed at her mother's implied request. "If you give me your keys, I could retrieve the cat for you," Olivia offered. At Dawn's doubtful look, she added: "It's no trouble, really, I should go home to change clothes anyway; it's not a detour."

Dawn lifted a single eyebrow. "Do you have any experience with cats?"

Olivia shrugged. "I don't want to marry it; I'm just going to put it into a transport box. How hard can that be?"

Dawn smiled one of her genuine smiles that Olivia hadn't seen all day. "Famous last words, Detective."

"Hey, I'm a police officer!" Olivia grinned cockily. She was glad that Dawn had found a little of her sense of humor and wanted to keep the lighter mood for as long as possible. "If it resists arrest, I'm just going to shoot it!"

The smile disappeared, and Dawn blanched as if Olivia had threatened her with the gun.

Olivia wanted to slap herself. God! You idiot! You don't joke about shooting anyone with a woman who has been threatened by a rapist's gun just a few hours ago! "I'm sorry, that was really thoughtless of me! I should know better." She glanced from Dawn to her uncomfortable looking mother. Nice first impression, you genius!

"No!" Dawn extended her splinted hand pleadingly in Olivia's direction. "No, it's okay, really. I don't want to think about it every second of the day, and I don't want you to think about it every time you see me. I don't want to be just another rape victim, okay?"

"Okay." Olivia inhaled and exhaled deeply. "So, any last minute advice about handling that tiger of yours?"

Dawn visibly relaxed. "She's a tigress, and she's probably hiding under the bed." She sighed as she thought about that particular piece of furniture. "Maybe I should have tried that."

"Hey…" Helplessly, Olivia searched for words. Kenny Briscoe's return interrupted whatever she might have said.

Dawn jumped when the young man stepped up behind her to announce, "Picasso's here now."

Olivia nodded. "That's our sketch artist. He'll work with you to create a sketch of the perp so we can send it out to all precincts."

"If you'd follow me, please." Kenny Briscoe gestured in the direction of a small interview room.

Dawn rose, but looked back at Olivia.

"I'll be there in a minute," Olivia promised. "I just have to shut down my computer and look through the stuff in my inbox real fast."

Reassured, Dawn followed Kenny across the squad room, leaving her mother with Olivia.

"Thank you," Mrs. Kinsley said.

Olivia looked up from her inbox, embarrassed by the gratitude in the gray eyes. "Just doing my job, Ma'am."

"I know, but…she feels safe with you – and that's worth a lot in a time like this, when she doesn't even feel safe in her own home…or in mine."

Olivia tilted her head in acknowledgement, but couldn't think of an appropriate answer. "Okay, let's go and watch an artist at work."

APARTMENT OF

DAWN KINSLEY

1228 LEXINGTON AVENUE

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

Dawn Kinsley's apartment was a crime scene. The yellow 'do not cross'-tape announced it, and the fingerprint powder still lingering on the furniture spoke its own language.

Though she had been here before, Olivia found herself hesitant to enter the bedroom, the place where Dawn had lived through such terror. She didn't have much of a choice, because according to Dawn it was the cat's most likely hiding place.

Cautiously, she stepped over tattered books, kneeled down next to the pieces of glass on the bedroom floor, and peered under the bed. Two yellow-green eyes looked back unblinkingly. "Okay." Olivia rubbed her hands together and remembered that she had forgotten to ask Dawn about the cat's name. "Tiger…hey, kitty-kitty, come here!"

The cat didn't move an inch.

Olivia tried again, this time in her gentlest voice, the one that worked with even the most frightened children.

Now the cat moved – but in the opposite direction, hiding even deeper under the bed.

"Great!" At a loss, Olivia went in search of the cat food. The cat hadn't been fed in almost 24 hours, and she hoped that it might succumb to the smell of food, if not her charming personality.

APARTMENT OF

GRACE KINSLEY

470 BROOME STREET

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6

Olivia shifted her weight from foot to foot, causing the transport box she carried to tilt from side to side, and the captured cat inside it to let out a long hiss. "Shush! Quiet!" Olivia pleaded. "Do you want them to think I'm torturing you?!" She fell silent when the front door opened.

"Oh, Detective. You're bringing the cat already? That'll cheer her up, come in, come in!" Grace Kinsley ushered Olivia and her living cargo into the apartment. It was on the first floor, with large windows and a sliding door leading to the patio. Olivia wondered if Dawn felt safe in her mother's home. Grace Kinsley hadn't seemed to think so earlier.

"Go on in, Detective. Dawn's is the second door on the left."

Olivia knocked softly. "Dawn? It's Detective Benson."

The door inched open, and Dawn's pale face peered out. When she saw Olivia, the transport box with the cat in one hand, a bloody scratch on the other, she swung the door open.

Olivia entered the room Dawn had apparently lived in as a teenager. Posters of movie and pop stars were still plastered to the walls but other than that, it was furnished in the same chaotic-cozy style that dominated Dawn's apartment.

She set the transport box down next to a bright red desk. "Please don't say 'I told you so'," she pleaded with a lopsided grin.

Dawn laughed; a wonderful sound in Olivia's ears. "Didn't cross my mind. I was too worried to be a smart-ass."

Embarrassed, Olivia rubbed her scratched hand. "Ah, don't worry, it's nothing." It burned like hell, but you couldn't have one of New York's finest whining about a tiny little scratch.

"About my cat," Dawn continued with a smile.

Olivia couldn't help but answer the smile with one of her own. Sometimes, it was hard to remember that she was dealing with a rape victim. She sensed an inner strength and a unique sense of humor in Dawn that was a little shaken but basically unbroken.

"Where has she been hiding?" Dawn asked, opening the cage. The two women watched as the cat shook its longhaired coat, stretched its pale body, and strode majestically away from its prison. A bushy, chocolate-colored tail twitched and sapphire eyes glowered at Olivia. The cat let out a complaining "Mrrrow!" and circled Dawn's legs once before disappearing under the small bed.

"She was under the bed, just like you said."

"You didn't try to wrestle her out from under there, did you?" Dawn asked, nodding down at Olivia's hand.

The detective snorted. "Oh, no. Even I know enough about those furry demons not to try that. It all started out pretty promising. We had a nice bonding moment over a tin of cat food, but the harmony was destroyed when I tried to put her into the transport box. That's when I became closely acquainted with those three inch claws!"

Dawn smiled for a moment, before she became serious and pointed to the still lightly bleeding scratch across the back of Olivia's hand. "Did you wash that out?"

"No. Like I said, it's just a scratch."

Dawn shot her an exasperated glare. "A scratch that could become inflamed like any other untreated wound. It's not like Kia sterilized her claws because she knew a police officer would come and try to put her behind bars." She left the room and returned with the first aid kit, taking out a wad of cotton wool and soaking it in iodine.

Olivia grimaced.

"What? Don't tell me you're squeamish, Detective!"

"I'm not!" Olivia protested and let Dawn take her scratched hand. The fingers cradling her own were soft and warm. The touch sent a tingle through Olivia's hand, and she jerked back.

"Sorry," Dawn whispered, obviously thinking her careful treatment of the scratch had caused the twitching.

Olivia shook her head. "It wasn't you. Must be the loss of blood making me weak in the knees." She hid her true feelings behind the joke, something the majority of cops was very adept in.

The comment enticed another smile from Dawn, who looked as though she was ready to say something, but then thought better of it.

A knock at the door interrupted them, and Mrs. Kinsley peered around the doorway. A surprised, but pleased expression appeared on her face when she saw the smile curving her daughter's lips. "Can I interest you in a cup of coffee, Detective?"

Olivia hesitated. Normally, she would politely decline anything a victim's or witness' family offered, preferring to draw a clear line between her professional and her personal life. Come on, girl, she mentally rolled her eyes at herself, it's a cup of coffee, not a marriage proposal! It's well within the bounds of professionalism. Officially, she wasn't even on duty, and the lab results wouldn't be back until the next day, so it wasn't as if she had anything pressing to take care of, so she finally nodded.

"Black, no sugar?"

Olivia nodded again and watched Mrs. Kinsley's retreat. "So, you got it from your mother, then? Correctly guessing people's coffee preferences, I mean."

"Maybe," Dawn gave her a mysterious smile, "or maybe we're both just too stingy to offer our guests sugar and milk."

Olivia grinned, and then studied the younger woman closely. Behind the thin layer of joking and smiles, Olivia could sense constant pain and fear. She knew the rape was ever-present in Dawn's mind, playing itself over and over again. "We'll get him," she said.

Dawn pressed her lips together. "Don't make promises you can't keep, Detective." Her troubled gray eyes gazed directly into Olivia's. "It's not that I don't trust you or the police in general, but I know the statistics. I know that most rapists will never spend even a single day of their lives in prison."

Olivia knew she couldn't argue with that. She looked into the depth of the black coffee that Mrs. Kinsley set down in front of her. "Then I'll simply promise that we'll do the best we can." She could only hope that it would be enough.

SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT

SQUAD ROOM

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8

Olivia looked up from her computer screen and rubbed her burning eyes when Fin strode into the squad room. "Rape kit findings finally in?"

Fin's short ponytail swung back and forth as he shook his head. "Lab's backed up from here to Afghanistan. DNA tech said results won't be in till tomorrow."

"Great!" Olivia grimaced and went back to comparing the police sketch from Dawn's rapist with photos of registered owners of 9mm. Glocks. She knew it was a rather hopeless attempt but was determined to try anyway.

"Hey, Liv, check this out." Elliot pointed to the screen of his own computer. He had accessed the sex offender database to make the same comparisons Olivia did with the weapons permit database. "This one seems like a perfect match: Caucasian, 6'3'', muscular build, black hair, blue eyes. Even the scars on his chin and forehead are mentioned."

Olivia rounded her partner's desk and glanced down at the photograph on Elliot's screen. Cold blue eyes seemed to look right back at her. He resembled the police artist's sketch. Was this the man who had raped Dawn?

"The M.O.'s similar, too," Elliot said. "He broke into apartments at night, but he usually wore a condom."

"He could still be our guy. The smart ones change M.O. just to throw us off stride," Olivia pointed out.

Elliot grinned. "I haven't told you the best thing yet. He's out on probation, so it won't be difficult to bring him in for a line-up."

"Do we have a current address for him?"

Elliot scribbled something on his note pad. "Yeah."

"Let's go." Olivia took her service weapon from a desk drawer and clipped it to her belt.

Fin reached for the phone. "I'll call Cabot and the victim down for a line-up."

APARTMENT OF

ROSS WADE

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8

Elliot and Olivia took positions to the right and left of the apartment door and exchanged a quick glance.

"Mister Wade?" Elliot raised his fist and knocked at the door. "This is the police. Answer the door!"

Every muscle and tendon in Olivia's body tensed as she heard steps nearing the door.

The door opened slightly. A tall man looked down at them. "What do ya want?"

Olivia forced herself to remain polite. She tried not to think about the fact that she might be face to face with Dawn's rapist. "Would you mind telling us where you were Saturday night between three and four a.m.?"

"Why you cops harassing me?" Ross Wade folded his muscular arms across his chest.

"You call it harassment, we call it investigation. There's been a rape in your old hunting grounds. So, where were you Saturday night?" Elliot repeated.

"In bed, asleep! I didn't rape nobody, man!"

Olivia slapped her hand against the door to prevent him from closing it. "Right, you're the picture of innocence. Then I'm sure you won't mind accompanying us to the station for a line-up, would you?"

Ross Wade smirked. "Right after I call my lawyer."

SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT

OBSERVATION ROOM

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8

Olivia stood patiently at Dawn's side, their shoulders almost touching. They were looking through the one-way mirror into a still empty room. "Are you ready?" Olivia asked. She ignored the other people in the small room with them, concentrating only on Dawn.

Dawn tightened her shoulders. "As ready as I'll ever be."

The opening door interrupted their concentration. Olivia looked up, annoyed. She knew how emotionally draining the confrontation with her possible rapist was for Dawn, and she didn't want to drag it out unnecessarily. Her annoyance vanished when she saw Alex Cabot entering. She hadn't seen the A.D.A. all week.

Olivia stepped forward, meeting Alex halfway, and gestured back to Dawn. "Dawn Kinsley, this is Alexandra Cabot, our A.D.A."

She watched as the two women shook hands and couldn't help but compare them to each other. If anyone had wanted proof that Olivia had a particular type she was attracted to, these two would have refuted the theory. Dawn was four or five inches shorter than Alex, and she didn't appear as calm and collected – which wasn't surprising considering it wasn't Alex's rapist waiting in the next room but Dawn's. Under these circumstances you would have expected her to look small and insecure next to the confident A.D.A., but she didn't. In Olivia's eyes, Dawn possessed her own strength; a strength that didn't resemble Alex's cool confidence in the least. Somehow, Dawn appeared more down to earth, more approachable…more real than Alex.

Flanked by Alex and Olivia, Dawn stepped back to the window.

"We'll bring them in now, okay? You just identify him by number."

Dawn nodded. She sucked in a breath when a cop opened the door and six men walked into the adjacent room in a single-file line.

Olivia turned to face her, blocking Dawn from the one-way glass and the men behind it for a moment. "Don't be afraid," she said softly. "They can't see you. Just take your time." She moved back to stand beside Dawn. "Do you recognize anyone?"

"Move away from the witness, Detective!" Wade's defense lawyer demanded.

Olivia held up her hands and took another half-step back.

Visibly irritated by the sudden distance between them, Dawn turned to look at her.

Olivia nodded at the window, gently bringing Dawn's attention back to it. "Do you recognize him?"

Dawn exhaled and stepped forward. She still avoided touching the glass and kept a careful distance. Her gaze flitted from face to face. "He's not in there!" She let out a trembling breath.

"Are you sure?" Olivia asked. Her tired mind wandered back to Harper Anderson, another rape victim. Like Dawn, Harper had been so sure that she would know her rapist anytime and anywhere, but when confronted with a line-up, she hadn't been able to identify him.

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure." Dawn's voice was a little shaky, but she met Olivia's gaze steadily. "He's not here." Relief and disappointment were warring with each other on the pale face. Finally, fear won out. "Which means he's still out there, free to roam the streets of my neighborhood and rape anyone he wants."

Olivia stepped back to her side. "We'll get him when the lab report comes in. He can't get to you again," she said fiercely. Just the thought of someone hurting Dawn made her blood boil and her fists clench. She hid any trace of her anger behind a calm expression, knowing that open displays of violent emotions would not help Dawn but scare her even further.

She followed a triumphant defense attorney out of the room, making sure to stay close to Dawn as they walked across the busy squad room. Olivia searched the room for Mrs. Kinsley's friendly face, but came up empty. "Your mother's not here?"

"No. I have some errands to run after this…buying new glasses," Dawn pointed to the empty place at the bridge of her nose, "going to the hospital for my HIV and STD test results, making an appointment with Victim Services…"

Olivia lifted her brows. "You have to do all this on your own? Can I drive you anywhere?"

"No, thanks. I…my mother and a few close friends have been very supportive, but…" Dawn stepped a little closer to Olivia when two detectives dragged a cuffed and swearing suspect through the squad room. "…to tell you the truth, they're not really helping so much as trying to take over. I know they mean well by trying to spare me from dealing with all this stuff, but by making my decisions, they're taking control away from me, and I can't stand that right now."

Olivia nodded. She admired Dawn for knowing her own needs and feelings so well so soon after the rape. She wondered whether it was her professional background that made Dawn so insightful or whether it was her introspective nature that had made her choose her profession. Then she rolled her eyes at herself. Philosophical thoughts before lunch? You better get back to work, Benson!

"Olivia?" Elliot called from across the room. "Fin and Munch are about to make an arrest in the Perez/Munos case, and they want us for backup. You coming?"

Olivia reached for the leather jacket that hung over the back of her desk chair. Grabbing her keys, she looked back at Dawn, a question in her eyes.

"I'm fine," Dawn said, reading the question as clearly as if she had asked it out loud. "Go on, Detective, serve and protect." She forced a smile onto her lips.

It wasn't Juanita Perez she wanted to serve, and it wasn't Angela Munos she wanted to protect right this moment, but Olivia was a professional. She squared her shoulders and walked out of the door without looking back.

SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT

SQUAD ROOM

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9

"And?" Olivia looked up when Elliot returned from the crime lab.

"Forensics confirmed the presence of fluids. They also found prints that didn't belong to the vic or her family," Elliot reported.

"Who do they belong to?" Olivia stapled her fingers to avoid strangling her partner in her impatience.

Elliot sat down at his desk. "CODIS came up empty. They ran the prints and DNA through every available database, but they don't match anyone in the system. Our perp has no prior criminal record."

Fin wandered over with a cup of coffee. "So he's a first time offender? Someone completely new in the business?"

"Hard to believe, if you ask me. Miss Kinsley got the distinct feeling that he had done it before." Elliot looked down at the notes he had taken during Dawn's formal statement. He had circled some of the words: Has raped before? Criminal record/assault?

Olivia shrugged. "Maybe Dawn's just the first victim willing to press charges. You know how many rapes go unreported."

"Or he changed M.O. and this was the first time he ain't usin' gloves and a condom. Maybe he got overconfident and careless, thinkin' we couldn't get him even with DNA evidence," Fin suggested.

Olivia's teeth grinded against each other. "If that's what he thought, then it seems as if he was right on target. We have nothing on him, not a single lead."

Elliot tapped some words on his note pad. "Dawn said he smelled of smoke and booze – maybe he had himself a little liquid courage in one of the neighborhood bars?"

Fin shook his head. "Nah, already checked. We've shown the police sketch 'round the neighborhood, including bars. No luck so far. No one remembers seein' a guy like him."

"Same with the tapes from security cameras around the neighborhood. They didn't show anything related to the rape," Olivia reported. "Did Munch have any luck with Dawn's CSAATs before he took off for court?"

"Cross-checked every rape victim who used the same hair salon, dry cleaner, grocery story or whatever. Some of 'em had one or two places in common with Dawn Kinsley, but their rapist's either still in prison or had a completely different M.O."

Elliot looked down at the lab reports. "The fibers CSU found on the sheets and Dawn's clothing were white cotton, which tells us a whole lot of nothing. Seems we're totally out of leads."

"Hm." Olivia leaned her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. "Why didn't the bastard use a condom? Why did he leave such a ridiculously large amount of evidence behind? I mean, come on, guys! Every first grader in the country knows to wear gloves and not spread around his DNA like free candy!"

"Good old plain stupidity?" Fin suggested. "Not every perp's a criminal mastermind, Olivia."

Elliot shook his head, agreeing with his partner. "No, there's something more behind it. Dawn said he wasn't exactly Einstein, but he seemed street-smart."

"Why don't you ask our resident shrink if he agrees with the assessment of his esteemed colleague?" Cragen said as he entered the squad room, Dr. George Huang following closely behind him.

The Asian psychiatrist looked down at the file in his hands. "Are you sure that the perpetrator is a stranger who just chose his victim by chance? He literally attacked not only the victim, but also her bedroom furniture, her books, her personal belongings…he seems to harbor some kind of personal anger towards her…"

"Dawn Kinsley, the victim, clearly stated that she didn't know him," Olivia explained. "And he bumped into furniture and didn't seem to be familiar with the layout of the apartment."

"Okay, so we can rule out old boyfriends, but what about a fleeting acquaintance or a neighbor she doesn't remember?" Huang glanced at each detective. "Or he's the rapist of one of her clients…someone she testified against in court. Someone who hates her enough to hurt her and to let her know it was him who did it."

Olivia shrugged. "I'll ask her about it when I call to update her on the investigation."

SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT

SQUAD ROOM

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9

Olivia turned her desk chair for a little privacy, sitting with her back to the rest of the squad room. She pressed the phone to her ear and dialed the number she already knew by heart.

She wasn't surprised when she heard Grace Kinsley's voice at the other end of the line instead of her daughter's. Since the rape, Dawn seemed to avoid answering the phone or opening the door. "Hello, Mrs. Kinsley," she greeted. "It's Detective Benson. Could I speak to your daughter, please?"

"Oh, sorry, you just missed her, Detective," Grace Kinsley answered. "She went out, trying to buy a new bed and find someone willing to take the old one off her hands."

Olivia could feel her brows rising in surprise. It had been three days since the rape, and Dawn was already throwing herself into solving the practical problems the assault had caused. She could understand the need to distract herself from constant thoughts of the rape and try to 'get on with her life', but she knew that it was just a temporary solution.

"Her childhood bed is too small if you have to sleep in it for more than a night, and she said she couldn't even close her eyes in the bed from her apartment anymore." Mrs. Kinsley sighed. "I worry when she leaves the house on her own, and I know she's afraid all the time, but she's too stubborn to accept any help. I think she wants to protect me from the reality of her…attack."

"Most women in her situation feel the need to make their own decisions, to control their own lives," Olivia explained without betraying that Dawn had confided in her about how overwhelmed she felt by her family's attempts to help. "Did she take a car?" she asked, not really knowing why.

"Yes. She hasn't used the subway since the attack."

It seemed, despite her courage and her professional background, Dawn was afraid of some of the same things other rape victims avoided. Nevertheless, she had forced herself to leave the security of her mother's home on her own.

Olivia said goodbye to Mrs. Kinsley with the promise to call back later. A glance at her watch made her decide to clock out and head home. With no new leads, there was no need for overtime.

She turned up the collar of her leather jacket when a light rain began to fall. Settling herself into the driver's seat of her car, she stared out of the windshield. She jingled the key and finally stuck it into the ignition, starting the car but not leaving the parking lot. She knew that she should head home and catch some much needed sleep, but she also knew that she would find no peace until she had looked after Dawn. You're a cop, not a babysitter, she told herself. You're responsible for catching her rapist, not for holding her hand. Nothing good will come of it if you keep crossing that line. As much as she wanted to be Dawn's friend, she was the detective investigating her case, first and foremost.

The rain outside was getting heavier now, drumming against the windshield. Across the street from the station, a lone woman was trying to heave a large TV set out of a moving-van and reach the safety of an open front door.

A picture of Dawn flashed across her retina – a crying Dawn alone in her bedroom; trembling hands trying to take down the bed in which she had been raped and then dragging a blood stained mattress across the yard while rain drenched her clothes and mingled with her tears.

Olivia pressed her lips together and put the car in drive.

Part 4

APARTMENT OF

DAWN KINSLEY

1228 LEXINGTON AVENUE

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9

She hadn't been sure if she would end up in front of Dawn's apartment building or her own until she parked the car. Five minutes, one short look-around to make sure everything's all right, then it's back to your own place, she bargained with herself.

She was halfway across the street when she discovered Dawn sitting in a small car parked in front of the building. The psychologist was staring at the front entrance like it was her mortal enemy.

As Olivia walked on, she could see dark shadows under her eyes; evidence that Dawn probably hadn't slept well in days. Small hands clinging to the steering wheel were shaking. Twice, she saw Dawn reaching for the driver's door as if to open it, but each time she hesitated at the last second.

No considerations of professionalism could hold Olivia back now. She bridged the remaining space between them in two long strides and knocked softly on the driver's side window.

Dawn jumped, almost going through the roof of the car. She shrank back from the window, needing a long minute to discover that it was Olivia and not an attacking rapist standing before her. Visibly shaken up, she rolled down the window but stayed in the safety of the car. "Detective Benson…"

Olivia found herself searching for words. "Sorry for scaring you."

Dawn didn't try to claim Olivia hadn't. "I've been sitting here for almost an hour." She stared back to the apartment building. "Ten minutes ago, I had almost talked myself into going in, when I saw a tall man with black hair walking down the street. I couldn't leave the car." She pinched the bridge of her nose on which a new pair of turquoise-rimmed glasses rested. "Is there anything new in my…case?"

Olivia looked into hopeful gray-green eyes and bit her lip. "Sorry, no good news. DNA didn't match anyone with a prior criminal record, but we're not giving up."

Dawn was silent for a moment. "Thanks for telling me in person." She obviously believed Olivia had only come to tell her the bad news.

Olivia bounced on the balls of her feet in front of the car. So, this is your chance to say 'You're welcome' and leave. You certainly fulfilled your duties as a cop. But, truth be told, she wasn't here as a cop. She saw Dawn stare across the street towards her apartment building, clearly intimidated by it. Olivia had no doubt that she would sit in her car and fight her fears until the sun went down. Only then would she leave, too afraid of the darkness and what it might bring to stay any longer. Could she turn her back and leave the scared woman behind like this, just because she was a police officer? Didn't she have duties beyond that of a cop – the duties of a human being providing simple comfort to a scared soul?

Hesitantly, she cleared her throat. "I'm not trying to take over your life or make your decisions for you, but I heard you were going bed hunting, and I thought you could use a silent, non-deciding companion in your quest for a new bed…"

Dawn stared at her.

"You're free to tell me to go to hell, you know," Olivia pointed out when Dawn remained silent.

That shook Dawn out of her paralysis. "No! No, I don't want that. I'd really like to have some company."

"Okay." Olivia found herself smiling at the younger woman. "How about a trip to a furniture store? I think we should leave removing your old bed for another day." Here you go again, Benson, she reprimanded herself. That was practically an offer to help her again. What happened to 'one short look-around, then back to your own place'? But then she looked down at Dawn's trembling hands. It wasn't safe to let her drive through the City on her own, Olivia told herself. "Why don't I drive?" she suggested. "I've got the bigger car."

With obvious relief, Dawn grabbed the lever to open the car door – only to be met with resistance. She had forgotten that she had locked herself in the car. Blushing, she grabbed her keys and opened the door.

Olivia didn't comment. She could only imagine how frightening even everyday things in her life suddenly were for Dawn. She led Dawn back to her car and opened the passenger side door for her. "So, where to?" She would be careful to let Dawn make all the decisions.

Dawn gave directions to a furniture store, but otherwise remained silent during the short trip.

Half an hour later, they were strolling along rows of beds. Dawn kept her shopping restricted to the part of the store that presented the single beds, obviously not intending to share her bed with anyone in the foreseeable future. Dawn sat down on the edge of a small single bed, carefully testing its mattress. "What do you think?" She looked up at Olivia.

Olivia smiled down at the softly bouncing woman and shrugged. "Shopping advice isn't really my forté," she admitted. "The decision is all yours."

"Really helpful, Detective." Dawn bounced some more in her attempt to test the mattress.

A young furniture salesman approached.

Olivia assessed him with a trained glance. With his confident stride and rakish grin, he was well aware of his effect on women and not afraid to use it. God, I hope he doesn't try to come on to Dawn, she thought. She knew that the young woman would most likely be overwhelmed even with light flirting from this stranger.

"We have some newer models in the back," the sales clerk said. He tried to take Dawn by the elbow to lead her to another part of the store, but she sidestepped his grip and took refuge in Olivia's closeness.

The sales clerk blinked in surprise and directed his glance to Olivia for the first time, now looking her up and down. "Ah."

It took a few seconds until Dawn brought her automatic reaction under control, but then she stepped back from Liv and nodded at the salesman.

"I don't think that's really what you're looking for. If you would follow me, please." The sales clerk kept a respectful distance from the two women as he led them away from the single bed Dawn had tried out. He stopped in front of a comfortable looking king-sized bed. "That," he pointed back to the row of single beds and winked at Dawn, "may be long enough for a small thing like you, but I doubt it would be very comfortable for her." He nodded his head in Olivia's direction, then at the larger bed in front of them. "This is more like it."

Jesus! He thinks we're a couple, buying a bed together! Olivia swallowed her embarrassment and held back a sharp reprimand, waiting for Dawn's reaction instead.

The younger woman, however, seemed blissfully unaware of the clerk's assumption. "Oh, no, no, it's not for her, I'm the one who's buying the bed."

"Oh, sorry!" The sales clerk looked down at his shoes. "I thought…so, the bed's just for you?"

Dawn looked up, sensing that she had missed the undertones of their conversation. Her gaze wandered from the salesman to Olivia. Suddenly, she laughed; a surprised, but not shocked sound. "Yes, I'm the one who will be sleeping in the bed," she confirmed. "The only one. She's just along to do the heavy lifting."

So, whatever Dawn Kinsley is, Olivia thought while Dawn decided for one of the single beds, she's not a homophobe. Not that it matters for the investigation.

None of them commented on the salesclerk's assumption as they left the furniture store.

"Have you eaten yet?" Dawn asked when Olivia started the car.

Olivia busied herself with looking into the rear-view mirror before she pulled out into traffic. She hadn't taken the time to eat, but going to dinner with a victim of one of her cases… No, she decided, this has to stop right now.

"I'd really like it if you would accept an invitation to dinner as a thank-you for all of your help," Dawn continued before Olivia could voice her answer.

Olivia started to shake her head, when she heard the faint rumbling of Dawn's stomach. "Sounds like I'm not the only one who hasn't eaten yet."

"I didn't have much of an appetite lately," Dawn confessed quietly.

God! Olivia groaned inwardly. How can I say no, now? A quick glance to her right showed Dawn's hopeful gaze directed at her. It was obvious that Dawn felt safe in her company and wasn't ready to let go of that safety line and return home alone yet. It would be a business dinner, Olivia told herself. You could ask her about Huang's theory over dinner and determine whether the rapist might be a forgotten acquaintance of hers. "Dinner it is then."

APARTMENT OF

OLIVIA BENSON

117 EAST 82ND STREET

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9

"It's not much," Olivia warned, shifting the pizza boxes into her left hand so that she could open the door to her apartment, "but I'm rarely at home, so it's enough for me." She had sensed that Dawn wouldn't feel at ease in a public place like a restaurant, and she didn't want to question Dawn about her rapist in front of her mother, so she had decided on take-out in her own apartment.

Hastily, she cleared a few files from the coffee table. "Have a seat, please. You want something to drink?" She looked into her almost empty refrigerator. "Orange juice, mineral water, beer…I think we should avoid the milk, though."

"Orange juice, please."

Olivia took the juice container and reached for a bottle of beer before stopping herself. Not a good idea. She said she smelled beer on his breath; you don't want her to have a flashback, do you? And besides…this is business, remember, so no drinking.

"How long have you lived here?" Dawn asked, taking the glass Olivia handed her.

Uncomfortable with what she suspected to be the first of many more personal questions, Olivia busied herself with cutting her pizza into slices. "A while."

Dawn looked up from her veggie pizza. She studied Olivia's face. "Are you uncomfortable with my being here?"

Why did I think dinner with a psychologist was a good idea?! She felt as if Dawn could look right through her and read her like a picture book, a feeling she didn't like. "It's not that."

"But?" Dawn sensed the unspoken part of the sentence.

"This is business." At least, it should be. "There are a few questions I have to ask you."

"Okay," Dawn said cautiously. She pushed back her plate, obviously no longer hungry.

A sharp stab of guilt shot through Olivia. You have to be professional, but do you also have to be an asshole?! In her attempt to draw a clear line between her job and her private life, she had denied the younger woman a rare opportunity to relax and not think about the rape. "I'm sorry." She rubbed her temples, feeling the onset of a headache. This was clearly a catch-22 situation.

"Don't apologize for doing your job." Dawn sounded sincere, but there was an emotional distance between them that hurt.

"I'm not." Olivia had been the one trying to stake out the boundaries of this acquaintance, and now she was the one who couldn't stand them. "It's just—"

"Detective," Dawn interrupted softly, "if anyone can understand the need to separate the job from…friendships, it's a psychologist. In my profession, meeting a patient in a non-therapeutic context is a big no-no."

"I'm not your therapist," Olivia protested.

Dawn tilted her head in agreement. "No, you're not. You're a detective and a good one at that. I grew up surrounded by cops, so I know the requirements of the job. I apologize if I made it difficult for you."

Olivia had a sudden urge to bang her head against the coffee table. She felt like an insensitive bastard trying to reduce a wonderful and complex woman to the role of a rape victim. She couldn't find the words to make Dawn – or herself – feel better. If she tried to speak the comforting words of a friend, this whole conversation would be in vain. Damn, what a mess.

"Hey." For a second, Dawn's hand covered her own. "What was it you wanted to ask me?"

Olivia put the rest of her pizza back into its box. She couldn't help but admire the woman across from her. I should be the one to make her feel better, not the other way around! "We're working with a psychologist on loan from the F.B.I.," she explained, trying hard to hold onto her professional role. "He thinks your attacker might be someone you know, a passing acquaintance or something."

"Because of the way he wrecked my apartment?" Dawn immediately understood her colleague's reasoning.

"Yes. Our psychologist thinks it might be something personal he held against you. Are you sure you don't know him?"

Dawn tugged at her lower lip with her teeth. "I had the feeling he knew me better than the other way around – or at least he thinks he does. If I have seen him before, I'm sure it was as nothing more than a stranger in the street, a cabbie who drove me home once or a cashier who wrapped up my tomatoes for me."

"Tomato," Olivia mumbled before she could stop herself.

There was sadness in Dawn's smile, as if their conversation in the grocery store around the corner had happened in another life, to another person.

And perhaps it had. No rape victim would ever be the same person again, and at the moment Olivia felt like she wouldn't either.

SOMEWHERE ON

RIVERSIDE DRIVE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12

Elliot glanced away from the heavy New York traffic for a moment, looking at Olivia in the passenger seat of the sedan. Something was going on with his partner. Olivia had been silent for the whole drive uptown. Not that she was a regular chatterbox otherwise, but she seemed to be downright moody today. He was sure that every single SVU detective had heaved a sigh of relief when they had left the station to visit Dawn Kinsley's office.

Determined to find out what troubled his partner, Elliot tried to bring her out of her shell with their usual teasing. "You're really slipping in your old age, partner."

"I forgot, okay?!" Olivia snapped, and then stopped and rubbed her neck.

Elliot lifted both hands in a calming gesture before gripping the steering wheel again. "Hey, don't take my head off! It's no big deal. Since we can't find her for the moment, we'll just ask one of her partners if they remember any cases with similar rapes, all right?" It wasn't like Olivia to forget to ask their victim the questions she had promised Huang to find out. He would have simply attributed it to stress and frustration, but then Olivia had balked at calling Dawn for further questions. "Did something happen between you and Dawn?" he asked as casually as possible.

Olivia's head jerked around. "What are you getting at? There's nothing between Dawn and me!"

Ah! Everything became clearer to Elliot now. That's what's tying her cuffs into knots! I knew she liked that little shrink! He abstained from grinning. "I'm not implying that. I just thought…you seemed to have a really good rapport with her. What happened?"

"The job, what else?" Olivia sighed. "She's a victim and the key witness in one of our cases, Elliot."

"And that means you can't interact with her?" Elliot kept his tone neutral. He knew Olivia didn't need him to make her decisions, but she could use his help in trying to clear up her muddled feelings.

Olivia shot him a sharp glance. "Not in anything other than a professional manner. It could hurt the case; you know that as well as I do."

Who's she trying to convince – me or herself? Elliot wondered. He could understand the need not to become too friendly with a victim, but he wasn't sure if that was really what darkened his partner's brown eyes, or if it was Olivia's usual reluctance to let people get close to her. Finding herself becoming friends with a psychologist, a 'head shrinker', had to have her running for cover.

Or is it more than friendship? Elliot eyed his partner. He had known for years that Olivia was gay or at least bisexual, although he had never seen her with a woman. They had never talked about it. He knew and was sure she was aware of that; that was enough. The two of them had their own 'don't ask, don't tell'-policy, not because Elliot was a homophobe or Olivia didn't trust her partner, but because it didn't matter between them. She was his partner, and that was all he needed to know to support her. Hell, it would cause more of a problem between us if she ogled that slime ball Langan's ass in court. Trying to sneak a peek at those long Cabot-legs is something every cop in the precinct would understand, even old, married ones like me.

"Pulling away from her like she has a contagious disease or bad breath could hurt the case, too," Elliot said gently. In fact, seeing as we're hunting for information we should have had three days ago 'cause our victim is nowhere to be found, I think it already has.

"I know, I know!" Olivia rubbed her eyes. "I'm sending her mixed messages, and it's confusing her. Hell, it confuses me!"

Elliot gave her a side-glance. "Mixed messages?"

"Yeah. One minute, I'm telling her she can trust me no matter what, she can call me day and night, and I'll be there for her…and when she takes me up on it, I play the 'it's just the job' card."

"No one says you can't get to know her," Elliot said, allowing himself a grin, "as long as it's not in the biblical sense." He dodged the punch Olivia threw at him. "Okay, okay, just kidding, Liv; I know she's not up to anything like that. You should be okay as long as you keep it on a friendly, supportive basis, at least till the investigation is over. That doesn't mean you have to play the emotionless detective. You're a human being, Liv, not Robocop."

That finally got him a laugh. "Thanks, El."

Elliot waved her away. "Hey, maybe I should ask those shrinks for the usual fee for such great advice…" Not waiting for an answer, he pulled into a parking space in front of Dawn Kinsley's office and got out of the car.

Next to a student union office from the nearby Columbia University, a discrete sign announced the joint practice of A. Barry, PhD, C. Rosenbloom, M.D., and D. Kinsley, PhD.

"Normally, wild horses couldn't make me go in there!" Elliot announced, shuddering dramatically but nevertheless opening the door.

OFFICE OF

DAWN KINSLEY

1203 AMSTERDAM AVENUE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12

The reception area of the psychologist's office looked like any other doctor's office Olivia had ever seen. Tasteful watercolors and photographs showing soothing landscapes were hanging on white walls. An open door led to a waiting room with a pink plastic table and toys in one corner, and a rack with magazines in the other.

On closer inspection, Olivia detected what she believed to be Dawn's touch on the room: a group of crooked Play-Dough animals, made by some of the children she treated, was proudly displayed on the reception desk. Colorful cartoons and psychologist jokes adorned one wall and, instead of a coat rack, patients could hang their jackets on a wooden cactus next to the door. It was exactly the bizarrely creative but cozy jigsaw puzzle style Olivia had come to associate with Dawn.

"Can I help you?" A gray-haired secretary looked up from her computer.

Elliot stepped toward the reception desk. "Are any of the doctors in?"

The secretary nodded. "They're all in today. But I suppose you're the police, wanting to speak to Doc Kinsley and not a couple here for marriage counseling, are you?"

"Are we, darling?" Elliot flashed a grin back at Olivia.

"We're not." Olivia flashed her badge instead of a smile. She wasn't in the mood for jokes, too occupied with staring at the secretary in surprise. Dawn's already back at the office, counseling rape victims, when it hasn't even been a week since she herself had been raped?! Olivia didn't need to have a PhD in psychology to know that Dawn was either punishing herself for any self-perceived contribution to her rape or in deep denial, trying to forget about her own problems by dealing with someone else's. Olivia knew all about that. Firsthand!

"I can't comprehend how someone could do something so terrible to someone as sweet as Doc Kinsley." The secretary leaned across her desk and looked right and left as if to make sure no one could overhear her words. "I work for all three of the doctors, but she's my favorite. Don't tell the others, though…psychologist's egos, you know?"

One of the doors leading to the psychologists' offices opened, and a visibly upset woman stepped out, only stopping at the reception desk to make a new appointment with Dr. Kinsley.

A minute later, the door opened a second time, admitting Dawn Kinsley who looked only marginally better than her patient. Her blonde hair was tousled as if she had run nervous hands through it, and the dark circles under her eyes had become even more pronounced.

Olivia hadn't seen her since their rather abruptly ending dinner three days ago. She couldn't help but wonder if Dawn would have faired as badly as she seemed to have if Olivia hadn't cut her last safety line by trying to distance herself from the situation.

The smile that appeared on Dawn's face when she saw the detectives almost reached her eyes.

Olivia found herself walking towards Dawn without conscious thought. "Hey," she greeted, not knowing what else to say after their less than spectacular last meeting.

"Hi." This time, Dawn didn't help her out by filling the awkward silence.

Olivia shifted her weight. Her fingers played with the pager on her belt. "I tried to call you at home. I didn't know you were already back at the office, treating patients." She was careful to keep any form of judgment from her voice.

Dawn shrugged. "I'm not treating patients per se; I just came in to finish some reports, but a client called for an emergency appointment. Her rapist is up for parole, and she wanted some support before the parole hearing."

Olivia nodded. She respected and admired Dawn for her professionalism and her willingness to help her patients, but that didn't keep her from worrying. Who counsels the counselor? Who's there for her? she wondered. "It's good to have someone who supports you in situations like that," she commented.

"Yes, it is." Dawn studied Olivia, probably wondering whether she was speaking about the patient with the parole hearing or Dawn's own situation.

"Someone who can really be there for you because he or she isn't a close friend, all tangled up in his own emotions." Olivia stepped closer so no one would overhear her. "Did you think about seeing a therapist?"

Dawn smiled sadly. "I am a therapist," she reminded.

"Yes, of course, but you're also human and the victim of a violent crime. When it concerns ourselves, all the experience, all the knowledge about rape becomes meaningless. Even if you know all the symptoms, you can't prevent them. We react like any other victim." Olivia was speaking from experience: She couldn't think about her mother's rape like a detective.

"I'll think about it," Dawn promised. She squared her shoulders. "Now, what brings you to my humble workplace?" She opened the door to her office and beckoned them to follow her.

It didn't resemble the austere doctor's offices Olivia was used to. Behind a desk, where a small toy served as a paperweight for a pile of folders, Dawn's diploma hung side by side with a photograph showing two men in NYPD uniforms.

Olivia circled two yellow bean bags and stepped closer to study the photograph. The older man seemed to look back at her with calm, gray-green eyes. His tanned face held a serious expression, but there were deep laugh lines around his eyes and mouth. The family resemblance to Dawn couldn't be missed. The younger man beside him grinned rakishly, one hand proudly resting next to the gold shield on his belt. A rookie, Olivia assessed, still thinking that nothing could ever hurt him as long as he wears that uniform. But, obviously, something or someone had, since Dawn had spoken of her father and brother only in the past tense.

Olivia turned back around and sank down into one of the chairs when Dawn gestured towards them. She glanced at Elliot who silently took the chair beside her, resting one foot on the edge of a bean bag. He made no move to take over the questioning. "I've forgotten to ask you something concerning Dr. Huang's theory," Olivia finally said.

"That would be the theory about him…the rapist…being someone I've met before?"

The two detectives nodded.

"It's clear that he's not a closer acquaintance but…could he possibly be the rapist of one of your clients? Someone you testified against or someone who saw you holding the hand of a victim at a parole hearing, or something like that?" Olivia asked.

Dawn shook her head. "I don't think so. Most of my patients do one on one and group counseling with me at least once or twice a week, often for some years. I spend a lot of time with these women, and I care about them. I wouldn't forget the face of one of their rapists if I saw it."

The psychologist spoke with such conviction that Olivia believed it without further question. "Then perhaps one of those you never saw? One that never even got caught." If the rapist had not been registered in any of their databases and the victims didn't know him, he would still know them. Perhaps he had followed them after the rape, basking in his power to destroy their lives, and had learned of their weekly appointments with the therapist. "Did any of your patients ever describe a similar rape? A rapist who broke into the apartment at night and…" Olivia stopped and bit her lip. Dawn didn't need to be reminded of the details; she knew them better than anyone else.

Dawn shook her head.

"No? Think about it carefully," Olivia pleaded. Their investigation was at a dead-end, and this was the only possible lead they had.

"Even if I could remember a similar case, I wouldn't tell you." Dawn glanced at the detectives who looked at her with disbelief. "I want to catch the bastard as much as you do," she told them bluntly, "and I'll do anything I possibly can to help you with the case, but I cannot disclose my client's confidences. I can't give you a list of my patients, and I can't disclose anything they might have told me in one of the sessions. I have to protect patient confidentiality, you know that." For the first time the usually gentle woman met them with unshakable determination and an iron will.

So, there's steel under all that velvet, if need be. Olivia wanted to be annoyed with her, but she couldn't. She was frustrated and disappointed, but she had to admire the psychologist's selfless determination to protect her vulnerable patients no matter what the personal costs to herself might be. "We're at a dead-end," Olivia admitted.

"I know."

Dawn seemed to accept it calmly, but Olivia could see the shadows darting across her eyes, making them appear like gray rain clouds. She couldn't leave Dawn like that. Not again. "Do you need a ride home?"

"I have my car." Dawn said it almost regretfully.

Olivia grinned. "That little sardine tin?"

"You know what my colleagues say about people who drive big cars…"

"Please, come in, my fee is $300 an hour?" Olivia joked.

Dawn laughed, her eyes now appearing more green than gray. "That they feel the need to compensate for something," she corrected.

Elliot was still laughing when the two detectives left the building. "You're good for her." He studied her over the roof of their car. "You can make her laugh even when I'm sure she feels like her whole world is crumbling. Don't give that up. At least not totally, okay?"

Olivia looked back at the small car parked in front of the psychologist's office. "I'll try."

TRIAL PART 46

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18

Olivia pushed through the double doors leading to the courtroom. She noticed that she was early. The judge hadn't taken his seat on the bench yet, and the two attorneys were just unpacking their briefcases.

Alex seemed to sense Olivia's gaze on her. She looked up from her pre-trial rituals and smiled at her before putting on her courtroom poker face again.

Olivia swallowed the last bite of the sandwich she had wolfed down on her way to the courtroom. The gallery was still relatively empty so she had her choice of seats. She decided for a seat on the prosecution's side of the courtroom. This way, she could show her support for the People and had a better view of Alex when she sat down at her table.

She leaned back in anticipation of the Alex Cabot-Show. Some popcorn and a Coke and this would be perfect, she thought with a grin.

Someone sat down in the seat next to her, annoying Olivia because there were still a lot of other unoccupied seats. She was here to watch Alex at work, not for small-talk with whoever had just sought out her company.

"Hello, Detective Benson."

Her annoyance vanished and was suddenly replaced with worry when Olivia looked up and recognized the woman next to her. "Dawn! Have you been looking for me?" Her heart started to pound. "Did something happen?"

"No." Dawn calmed her worries with a quick smile. "Nothing happened. I wasn't looking for you, but I'll surely be glad for the company in a few minutes. I'm here for the trial."

The trial… Olivia attempted to remember which case was being tried today. She wasn't particular when it came to her Alex-fix; she wasn't really here for the legal aspects of the cases. Wasn't it that pizza boy raping three women? Or is that tomorrow's case?

Olivia couldn't come up with the right case, so she studied the woman next to her instead. She looks good, Olivia decided. There were still shadows under her eyes, but the bruises on her cheek and throat were fading. Dawn had traded the jeans from the week before in favor of a dark-gray pantsuit, the matching blazer folded over her lap. A silver-colored silk blouse, buttoned to the very last button, made her eyes appear more gray than green.

Olivia suspected that this was not Dawn's usual style. She remembered a vivacious psychologist at the seminar, her charmingly freckled collarbone exposed by three undone buttons. Being raped changes everything, Olivia reminded herself, even the way you dress.

"Are you here supporting a patient?" Olivia asked, suspecting that nothing but her sense of duty could get Dawn to stay in the same room as a rapist.

Dawn nodded. "I promised I'd watch at least the opening statements for her. Was this one of your cases or are you here for another reason?"

Regretfully, it hadn't been her case. Olivia was at a loss, searching for an answer that was a little more appropriate than 'I'm here to ogle a beautiful lawyer without her or anyone else noticing'. "No, but you know how it is…" Olivia gestured to the cuffed defendant sitting behind his table. "Just showing a little police presence to make sure he doesn't try anything stupid."

Dawn's gaze never moved away from the rapist. "Good idea."

They both fell silent when the judge took his place and the trial began.

Alex Cabot rose to give her opening statement, patiently walking the jurors through the timeline of events.

Dawn watched for a while, and then leaned towards Olivia, who had to hold herself back from breathing in the psychologist's enticing scent. "She's good, isn't she?" Dawn whispered.

Olivia nodded proudly. "Yes, she is." Alex was confident without appearing arrogant, cool without being uncaring – and to Olivia's surprise, unable to distract Olivia's attention from the woman next to her. She blinked in disbelief and cleared her throat. "Ahm…you know a lot about law?" She distracted herself by wondering how Dawn could assess Alex's abilities as a lawyer so quickly.

"I know a lot about body language." Dawn leaned towards Olivia again as she spoke, making the detective want to loosen her collar because of the sudden rise in her body temperature.

You wanted to keep your distance, remember? Seems like you managed to do the complete opposite!

Thankfully, Dawn seemed to be unaware of Olivia's internal debate and her bodily reaction to Dawn's nearness. "She makes constant eye contact with the jurors, and she chose the perfect distance to the jury box; close enough to draw them in, but not so close that she would be encroaching on the jury's comfort zone."

"Trials by jury have a lot to do with psychology," Olivia agreed, glad to be in control of herself once again.

Dawn nodded and watched as Alex sat back down and the defense attorney began his opening statement. "See how she isn't even fidgeting when opposing counsel points out the weaknesses of her case?"

"After two years with Special Victims, I'm sure she could listen to the graphic biography of a serial killer without fidgeting," Olivia said, watching Alex lean back as if she didn't have a care in the world, almost bored with the defense attorney's opening statement.

Dawn inclined her head. "She learned it earlier than that. I think she had the kind of mother who had her sit down with the grown-ups at boring dinner parties. I'm sure building paper planes out of a napkin wasn't very popular with Mrs. Cabot. I can practically hear her: 'Stop fidgeting! You are making a nuisance of yourself, young lady!'"

Olivia's eyes widened. She had met Alex's mother only once. Mrs. Cabot was elegant, organized, and cultured. She was pleasant company and Olivia had liked her, but thought she was lacking the passionate fire her daughter possessed. She could hear her say the same thing Dawn had just said. "Do you know Mrs. Cabot?"

"I know body language," Dawn repeated with a smile.

Olivia looked down her body, wondering what her own body language might tell the psychologist. She sat still for a minute, folding her hands on her knees before she noticed that trying not to have any body language was impossible. The stiff posture resulting from her attempt spoke loud and clear. She let her body have its freedom again and leaned towards Dawn so she would understand her against the background of defense counsel's opening statement. "So, what would your mother have said to your building paper airplanes out of napkins?"

Dawn smiled. "There weren't any napkins at our dinner table. My mother was happy if she could get us to keep still long enough to eat dinner while sitting down. My family was never very big on formalities."

"Growing up free and unrestricted, huh?"

"Unrestricted?!" Dawn opened her green-gray eyes comically wide. "Are you kidding? My dad was a cop, we had to play by the rules, believe me."

Olivia thought back to the last Thanksgiving dinner she had spent with Elliot and his family. His kids were free to express their opinion with the adults, but there were unspoken boundaries that mustn't be crossed.

"What about your family? Were you the napkin-at-dinner kind?" Dawn asked.

Defense counsel's opening statement had ended by now, and the courtroom was almost silent for a few moments while he sat down. Judge Ridenour's annoyed glance in the direction of the whispering women saved Olivia from telling Dawn that her family dinners had consisted of Vodka for her mom and Cornflakes for Olivia.

With a quick glance at her wristwatch, Olivia gestured to Dawn that she had to go and slipped out of the courtroom.

Dawn followed silently. "I don't think I'm quite ready to listen to the detailed description of another rape," she said in explanation.

Olivia turned up her jacket's collar when they left the building, gazing critically at Dawn's thin blazer which couldn't protect her from the cool October wind. You're not her mother, nor her lover! she reprimanded herself. It's not your business to make sure she doesn't get cold!

Indecisively, they stood facing each other on the steps of the courthouse.

"So, are you off to serve and protect or is this your day off?" Dawn stopped two steps above Olivia so they could talk face to face.

"It's back to work." Olivia stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat. "And you? Going back home?"

Dawn nodded. "When you get back to the precinct, maybe you could take care of something for me."

Anything. For a moment, Olivia wasn't sure if she had said it out loud. "Yes?"

"My address is going to change soon. You should probably make a note in your records or something."

"You're moving out of your old apartment." It didn't come as a surprise for Olivia. Sooner or later every victim who had been raped in her home had searched for a new place, never again feeling safe in the old apartment.

A curt nod from Dawn. "It doesn't feel like a home anymore, and I don't want to stay at my mother's for much longer. I love her, but I'm 28, and I don't want to live with her for more than a few weeks. I'm looking at some apartments this afternoon."

Another crossroad opened up in front of Olivia. Should she just nod and promise to write down the change of address, or offer to help Dawn find a new home where she could feel safe? Are you out of your damn mind? You want to go apartment hunting with her? What's next, wanting to move in with her?! After a few seconds of hesitation, she allowed herself to compromise. "Listen…I'm not sure if your old apartment has been released yet or if it's still taped off as a crime scene. If you need any help with that…or you want someone to go with you when you go to the old apartment to get some of the furniture…" It would only be for security reasons, she told herself. Sometimes, offenders do come back to the crime scene.

"Detective, I don't expect you to—"

"Please do," Olivia said before she could talk herself out of it. "Please expect me to be there for you when you need me to, okay?" A part of her was glad that she had said it, another part wanted to take it back immediately.

For a long time, Dawn looked at her without saying anything. Perhaps she sensed Olivia's hesitancy, her conflicting emotions, because she appeared to be equally hesitant in accepting the offer. Then she drew her blazer tighter around her small shoulders and nodded. "Thank you."

Part 5

APARTMENT OF

GRACE KINSLEY

470 BROOME STREET

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24

"Hello, please come in, Detective." Grace Kinsley opened the door wider. "Dawn's still on the phone with the electric company."

As Olivia entered, she wondered what Dawn's mother might think about her continuing visits in her home. Did she find it odd that a NYPD detective was helping her daughter move into her new apartment? Did she sense Olivia's attraction to Dawn just like she had immediately known Olivia was a cop?

Without many words, Grace Kinsley led her into the kitchen, handed her a cup of black, unsweetened coffee and leaned against the kitchen counter, studying her.

"How did you immediately recognize me as a cop when you first saw me?" Olivia asked to distract Mrs. Kinsley from her scrutiny and to assess if her powers of observation were restricted to cop-dar or if they included gaydar as well.

"I was married to a cop for almost twenty years; I should know a cop when I see one," Grace Kinsley said, smiling wistfully.

Olivia kept her questioning gaze directed at her.

Grace shrugged. "It's the body language."

"Body language?!" Olivia snorted into her coffee. What is it with those Kinsley women and body language?

"Yes." Dawn's mother stared pensively into her own cup of coffee. "I think my husband used to call it command presence: You walk with a purposeful stride, your head held high, always aware of your surroundings; you speak in a strong voice, and you stand in a wide stance, not afraid to appear unfeminine by commanding the space around you. And you stand to the side of my apartment door when you're knocking to be safe from any bullets that might be fired at you from inside the apartment."

Olivia stared at her. "I do that?"

"You do." Grace Kinsley smiled almost affectionately. She gestured towards Olivia. "You also stand facing the door to get a good view of the dangerous criminals that might inhabit my home."

"Sorry," Olivia said.

Grace shook her head. "Don't apologize. It's what keeps you alive in your job, and after a while, it becomes instinct."

Twenty years of marriage had taught Mrs. Kinsley a lot about police officers and the dangers they faced, and Olivia was sure that she would never want to see her daughter in a relationship with a cop.

"Hey." Dawn entered and lay the cordless phone down onto the kitchen table. She smiled at Olivia. "You're very punctual, Detective."

Olivia almost told Dawn to call her by her given name, but held herself back from crossing that line.

The doorbell rang, making Dawn jerk. She didn't move to open the door but let her mother do it.

Grace came back with a slightly overweight woman in her mid-forties in tow. "Hey, girl." The stranger headed immediately for Dawn and gave her a gentle hug. "How are you?"

"I'm fine…considering the circumstances." Dawn stepped back after allowing the hug for a moment. "I'll be better when this day is over and I never have to see that apartment again." She wasn't afraid to express her feelings, and Olivia admired her for that. "Oh, Ally…this is Detective Benson. Detective, this is Allison Barry, one of the psychologists I'm sharing my office with. She offered to help me move, too."

If Allison Barry wondered whether the NYPD offered moving services now, she never showed it. She nodded and took Olivia's hand in a warm grip. "Offered?" The other psychologist raised a brow and grinned at Dawn. "More like I was being roped into helping by the offer to cook me dinner afterwards. You know I can't resist your cooking, Dawn Kinsley." She turned to Olivia and explained, "She can cook like a goddess!"

"Goddesses don't cook," Dawn objected. "They have their people do it for them."

The ringing doorbell interrupted them once again. A thin man with a receding hairline and laughing blue eyes was led into the apartment by Grace Kinsley. The newcomer didn't try to hug Dawn, earning him Olivia's immediate respect. He gently squeezed Dawn's shoulder and asked the same question Allison Barry had: "How are you?"

Olivia – and any other cop – would have answered with a joke about writing the answer to that question down on a big piece of paper so she wouldn't have to repeat herself, but Dawn answered with the same honest words as before.

"Detective, this is my other colleague, Charles Rosenbloom. Charlie, this is Detective Benson."

Olivia shook his hand with increasing discomfort. God, I'm going to spend the day with three psychologists! I'm doomed!

If Dawn's male colleague wondered about Olivia's presence, he didn't show it either. Olivia really would have liked to know what Dawn might have told them about her.

Grace Kinsley started packing thermoses of coffee and tea, giving out work gloves, and herding helpers out the door.

Everyone seemed enthusiastic and in a good mood during the drive uptown, but when the cars stopped and they walked up to Dawn's apartment building, they all grew quiet and shortened their steps, not knowing who should enter the apartment first as a pale Dawn rummaged in her pocket for the key.

Olivia stepped closer and leaned down so that no one but Dawn could hear. "Do you want to stay outside, maybe drive to the new apartment while we—"

"No," Dawn interrupted. "It's kind of you to offer, but I think this is something I need to do. If I dodge the last opportunity to enter the apartment, I'll never know if I could have done it."

Olivia nodded and wanted to step back, but Dawn's fingers closed around her wrist. "Stay close, please?"

"I'm right beside you," Olivia promised, practically plastering herself against Dawn's back while the psychologist opened the door.

No one spoke while they climbed the stairs. Dawn clenched her jaw as she opened the apartment door and strode inside.

Olivia saw the two psychologists exchange worried glances. Seems like they think Dawn's throwing herself into things a little too fast and not dealing with all the emotional stuff, too, huh?

In the middle of the living room, her resolution seemed to leave Dawn, and her steps faltered. Her glance wandered to the bedroom door.

"Okay." Olivia slapped her work gloves against her thigh. "How about you and your mom pack the dishes and the other household stuff, and we take care of dismantling the furniture?" That way, Dawn didn't need to enter the bedroom if she didn't want to.

A hard, impatient knock at the front door made Dawn jump and take a step back.

"Do you expect anyone else trying to earn one of your home-cooked meals?" Olivia asked.

Dawn shook her head. She nervously eyed the door.

Olivia stepped past her. Her right hand moved to her hip, only to find the place where her gun normally rested empty. She stood to the side of the door and gestured for Dawn's colleagues to move back, before she opened it.

A tall man with windblown brown hair glowered down at Olivia. "Who the hell are you?!" he shouted. "Where is Dawn?"

Olivia kept blocking the door, never moving an inch. "Who are you?"

"I'm her husband!"

Husband?! Dawn is married?! Olivia could only stare at the angry man.

A small hand softly touched her back. "Ex-husband," Dawn corrected. "What do you want, Cal?"

"Why didn't you tell me? I had to hear it through the precinct grapevine! I'll kill the goddamn bastard who did this to you!" Dawn's ex-husband was raging uncontrolled, his hands clenched to fists, making Dawn take another step away from him.

Three things suddenly occured to Olivia: Dawn's ex was a cop, and he had just now heard about the rape. And now he was scaring Dawn with his righteous anger. "Can I speak to you for a minute? Outside." She directed an unyielding stare at him.

"Who is she?" The ex demanded to know, pointing a finger at Olivia.

Olivia stretched herself to her full five foot 7 ½ inches. Her leather jacket creaked as she squared her shoulders. Down, girl, she stopped herself, this is not a pissing contest between two cops trying to mark their territory, this is about Dawn – or at least it should be. She held herself back and let Dawn decide if and how to answer.

"This is Detective Benson," Dawn looked at Olivia before she added: "A friend of mine."

Olivia knew that she would always be proud to be called friend by a woman like Dawn, but at the same time Dawn's words started the guilty internal debate about acceptable professional behavior again. Knowing she wouldn't resolve this particular dilemma anytime soon, she turned back to Dawn's ex-husband.

"Caleb Montgomery," he grudgingly said. "What's going on in here?" He looked from Dawn to Olivia.

"I'm moving into a new apartment," Dawn explained.

"Hmm." Caleb Montgomery assessed the four women and the skinny Charlie Rosenbloom with a critical glance. "Looks like you could use a little help."

"Sure, we could use the help," Dawn answered looking him right in the eye, "but we can do without the patronizing comments."

Damn, I like this woman! She doesn't take shit from anyone. Olivia bit her lip to keep from laughing or applauding the feisty psychologist.

Caleb Montgomery wordlessly picked up one of the screwdrivers lying around and looked at Olivia. "Bedroom, you and me?"

"Ha! In your dreams," Olivia mumbled under her breath, but nodded. This way, she could at least talk to him without Dawn overhearing every word.

They moved into the bedroom, and Olivia watched him take in the room where his ex-wife had been raped. Clenching his jaw, he threw off the mattress and started to work on taking down the bed's headboard. His movements were angry and uncontrolled, making the screwdriver scratch over the wood.

"She lived through enough violence that night," Olivia said softly, but with a steely resolve. "Don't scare her any further, okay? She doesn't need your anger or your hateful spites of revenge against an unknown rapist, she needs your support."

Caleb Montgomery looked up from his work. "You with Special Victims or something, Benson?"

Olivia nodded and held his gaze. "You have something against that?"

"No. We can't all be real cops." His grin took the sting out of the words.

"Not only a real cop but a real comedian, too, huh?" Olivia took off her leather jacket and pushed up the sleeves of her old NYPD sweatshirt. She started loosening the screws on the other side of the headboard.

"So," Caleb's hazel eyes were close to her own, both of them leaning over the headboard so they could see the screw heads, "how do you know Dawn?"

Is that 'real cop' speak for 'Are you sleeping with my ex-wife, Detective?'? Liv wondered. "I've met her at a seminar a few weeks ago. My partner and I, we're investigating her rape case." She was hesitant to admit it, but didn't want to lie.

Caleb Montgomery straightened. He looked down at Olivia with an incredulous expression. "You're the investigator in her case, and you offered to help her move into a new apartment? Wow! Me and my colleagues, we wouldn't help a lady we're busting for speeding buy a new car!"

Now it was Olivia who found herself becoming angry. "Your lead-footed ladies are breaking the law, but Dawn's not a perp, she's the victim! Don't you think she deserves a little help?"

"Okay, maybe it's not the best analogy I could have chosen," Caleb conceded, shrugging broad shoulders.

Silently, they both grabbed a side of the headboard and lifted it clear of the rest of the bed. It banged against the slatted frame already lying on the floor.

"No need to be careful with the bed," Olivia said. "I don't think she cares or even wants to know what happens with it."

"Goddammit! How could this happen to Dawn!" Caleb stared down at the half-dismantled bed. His frustrated helplessness channeled itself into anger. "Do you know who…?"

Olivia held up her hands. "I can't talk about an ongoing investigation, you know that." She might have crossed a few lines of professionalism in her effort to help Dawn deal with the aftermath of her rape, but she wasn't willing to break or bend the rules for anyone or anything else.

"I expect you to get him!" The street cop pointed his index finger at Olivia. "We may be divorced, but I still care for her."

It was almost a declaration of love coming from a cop. Most of her colleagues weren't big on public displays of affection or eager to discuss their emotions. Olivia wondered why they had gotten a divorce. Or why they got married in the first place! She supposed he was a decent guy when his anger calmed down, but he didn't seem like a perfect match to the psychologist. Oh, yeah? And who would this perfect match be, you? Olivia mocked herself.

Caleb moved to one of the bookcases and grunted when he tried to push it to the side. "Three damn shrinks in the house; you'd think one of them could shrink all this heavy furniture we have to heave down the stairs into a more maneuverable size!"

Laughing, Olivia went to help him with the bookcase.

APARTMENT BUILDING OF

DAWN KINSLEY

1228 LEXINGTON AVENUE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24

Olivia stood next to Dawn, her arms hanging down limply at her sides. The muscles in her arms and back protested the heavy lifting she had had to do all day long – not that she would ever admit that. They had just carried down the last of the packed boxes, while the rest of the moving team took another trip to the charming old brownstone Dawn had moved into.

Olivia had checked out Dawn's new home thoroughly, testing out the two locks on the door and experimentally shaking the bars in front of the windows. Finally, she had nodded in satisfaction. The fifth floor apartment had recently been renovated and was up to the newest security standards. It also didn't hurt that the new apartment was close to the FBI headquarters, the D.A.'s office, Police Plaza, and Centre Street with its court houses, ensuring a constant police presence in the neighborhood.

Dawn closed the door of the van. "I'm sorry about Cal trying to back you into a corner when he first arrived."

"Hey, it's all right. I think we've come to an understanding." Olivia studied the tired face. "I just didn't know you'd been married."

Dawn shrugged. "Not for very long. It just didn't work out between us…we got a divorce after less than two years."

"Yeah, old story; we cops don't make the best spouses, being married to our jobs and all." It was one of many reasons why Olivia wasn't in or searching for a relationship.

"That may have been part of our problems, but mainly, it wasn't him, it was me…I…" Dawn sighed, kicking against the heap of dismantled bed parts they had stacked on the sidewalk. "He was an old friend of Aidan, my brother. I'd known him for years but there was never anything but friendship between us. Then Aidan died, not long after my father's death and…I thought I had come to love him, but I guess I just needed someone to hold onto. Should have known myself better than that."

"You know now."

Dawn snorted. Suddenly, there were tears in her eyes. "A little late for that insight. I'm not exactly good relationship material right now." She looked down at the bed lying in ruins at her feet. The bed she had been raped in. Raped. Silent sobs shook the psychologist.

Olivia had known that it would come to this at some point. Dawn had thrown herself into the practical things she had to take care of, making calls, looking at apartments, trying to resume a somewhat normal life. She had kept herself too busy to think about what had happened. She had tried to be strong, holding herself up to higher standards than her patients whom she told that they were allowed to cry, scream, and mourn.

Now that the moving out of and into apartments had almost been completed and there was nothing else to do, everything caught up with her, and she was falling into a black hole.

Olivia watched uncomfortably as the dam broke and tears began to fall. She wished Dawn's psychologist friends or her mother were here, but they weren't. It's up to you to comfort her or just stand there like some dumb cop and let her cry her eyes out, just because you have to be a professional.

When she saw Dawn's shaky attempts to hastily dry her tears or hide them behind her sleeve, she finally stepped forward. Hesitatingly, her arms came up and wrapped Dawn into a gentle embrace.

Hot breath danced across the skin of her neck, when Dawn let out a shaky breath, immediately accepting the embrace and burrowing herself deeper into Liv's arms. "I'm sorry," she said after a minute. "It's just that…I feel like he took everything from me…destroyed my whole life, left no part of it unsullied."

Olivia let her talk it out, not offering advice or asking any questions. She kept one supporting arm around Dawn's trembling shoulders, when the psychologist took a step back.

"I can't look at any male stranger without wondering whether he's a rapist or even the one who raped me. My family and friends can't look at me without pity or sadness. I even lost some friends who told me to `hush up' the rape and 'just get over it'."

"What kind of friends are those?!" Olivia shook her head.

"Not really close ones, but it hurt nonetheless," Dawn answered. "I don't need other people to make me feel guilty or doubt myself. I do that well enough on my own. He took my self-confidence, my trust in people, my friends, my job… I don't know if I can ever work with victims of sexual assault again. I have to pay attention to them and not to my own feelings! What if I keep having those flashbacks when one of them tells me about their rape?!" Dawn shook her head in desperation.

"Hey, don't stress yourself out." Olivia caressed a thin shoulder blade. "You'll cross that bridge when you come to it. It's too soon to be thinking about going back to work. Even if you can never work with rape victims again – and we don't know that yet – I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who need your help. I bet you'd be good with children; family therapy, maybe."

Dawn looked up, blinking back tears with long, blonde lashes. "Have you ever considered a change of careers for yourself? You should be a therapist!" A small smile trembled on her lips.

Olivia felt herself blush. Her ears started to burn under Dawn's grateful gaze. "I'm quite happy with the job I have, thank you very much!"

"I'm quite happy that you have this job, too," Dawn said softly.

Olivia bit her lip, unable to come up with an appropriate response.

"Come on." It was Dawn who finally broke the awkward silence. "Let's hurry up before the others start gorging themselves on pizza or Chinese take-out without us!"

APARTMENT OF

DAWN KINSLEY

7 BENSON STREET

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25

"Hello, Detective." Once again, it was Grace Kinsley who answered the door and walked her into the apartment. "You're the last one in; all the other helpers are already waiting impatiently for you…or rather for the entrée Dawn refused to serve before your arrival."

"Sorry." Olivia took off her jacket and hung it on the coat rack she had assembled yesterday. "Elliot, my partner, kept pushing unfinished reports onto my desk."

"Yeah, the dangers of being a desk jockey!" Caleb Montgomery said from his place at the dining table.

Olivia stopped directly in front of him. "Do I sense some deep-rooted jealousy, here? We can't all be detectives, pal," she gave back his words from the day before. From time to time, she could sense a jealous hostility towards her, but she wasn't sure whether it was because of their different positions within the NYPD or whether he suspected her sometimes more-than-friendly feelings towards his ex-wife.

Not waiting for an answer, Olivia rounded the table and greeted the other guests.

"Dawn's still slaving over the stove," Grace Kinsley said when Olivia directed a questioning gaze toward her.

Being familiar with the lay of the apartment, Olivia went in search of their hostess. "Hi," she greeted her from the doorway, careful not to startle her. "Thanks again for the invitation. It smells really nice in here. Anything I can help with?"

"Hi." Dawn's smile lit up the kitchen. She appeared to be a lot better than she had been the day before. "I still haven't found the serving tray," she answered Olivia's offer to help.

"Ah." Olivia entered the small but functional kitchen. "I think we put it somewhere on the highest shelf." A quick glance told her that the smaller woman wouldn't be able to reach it, so Olivia stretched her body and reached over Dawn for the serving tray. For a second, she breathed in the scent of honey and almonds from Dawn's hair, when their bodies came into close proximity, then she hastily stepped back and handed Dawn the tray. "Voílà."

Dawn smiled. "Thank you, Detective."

Olivia was glad that Dawn accepted her boundaries without question, never once trying to call Olivia by her given name. I'm not even sure she knows my first name! Speaking of names… "I just noticed the name of the street you're living on now, when I was searching for a parking space."

"Great name, huh?" Dawn grinned.

Olivia shook her head. "I've lived here in New York for my whole life, but I never knew there's a Benson Street." Benson Street, one of Manhattan's rare true dead end streets, was leading north from Leonard Street in the city's Civic Center.

"Maybe it was named after one of your great ancestors; maybe they rendered outstanding services to the City as well," Dawn suggested.

Olivia looked at her in amazement. She knows one of my closest ancestors is a man of violence, a rapist, and yet she doesn't seem to think anything but good things about me or my family? Wish I could share her attitude. She helped Dawn carry salad, bread, and spinach soufflé to the table where she noticed that the only unoccupied seat was right beside Dawn's.

She sat down and looked about the spacey living room. The setting sun was filtering in through orange-colored curtains, giving the room a soothing quality. Where only one day ago just the bare furniture had stood, Olivia could already detect clear signs of the Dawn Kinsley decorative style. All around her were small trinkets, stuffed animals, colorful drawings, and photos; memories of people and events Dawn obviously held dear. It felt like a home, not just an apartment.

"Help yourself." Dawn gestured toward the soufflé. "Like I said, we're not very big on formality."

Olivia pointed to the place next to her plate. "But you have napkins."

Dawn inclined her head. "My one concession to a house full of guests."

Olivia waited until the others had filled their plates, and then took her first bite. She loved leaf spinach but with her limited cooking talents had never tried a spinach soufflé. Her eyes widened, and she licked her lips. She held back a joking Marry me! and said "It's really delicious" instead.

"Have a little white wine with it," Grace offered, extending the wine bottle in Olivia's direction.

With a glance at the clear, sparkling liquid in Dawn's glass, Olivia shook her head. "Mineral water's fine, thank you."

Dawn set down her fork. "You're not on call, are you?"

"No, I'm not," Olivia assured her. She would have liked a glass of wine, but preferred red wine anyway, and she was determined to avoid any alcohol as long as Dawn still couldn't stand the smell of it. "And even if I was, I'm not sure I could leave while there is still food on the table. It's not often that I get to eat like this. I'm not much of a cook, myself."

"Donuts don't need any cooking," a grinning Allison Barry pointed out.

Caleb set down his beer. "Hey, no donut cop jokes, please! Us law enforcement personnel are very sensitive when it comes to our main food group!"

Not bothering to ask in the relaxed, informal atmosphere, Olivia helped herself to a second portion of the soufflé. "Actually, I can't stand the stuff."

Grace poked her in the shoulder with the non-pointed end of her fork. "I'm sure you didn't admit that in your entrance interview with the Police Academy!"

"Dad didn't like donuts, either," reminded Dawn with an affectionate smile. "He always said that white powdered donuts and blue uniform shirts are not a good combination."

Olivia wanted to know more about her father and what had happened to him, but she didn't want to introduce a sad topic into an otherwise relaxed evening.

"He died in a traffic stop ten years ago," said Dawn, sensing the unasked question. "He stopped a car because of a busted headlight, and the driver, a man with an active warrant out on him, panicked and pulled the trigger."

"I'm sorry," Olivia said sincerely and looked from Dawn to her mother.

Grace gave her a pat on the arm. "It's an honorable, but dangerous profession. I knew that when I married Jim. I just never thought I'd lose one of my kids to it too."

Olivia looked down at the table, suddenly almost feeling guilty just because she was a police officer.

Dawn cleared her throat and lifted her glass of mineral water. "To New York's finest. May they all be safe tonight."

The toast was echoed all around the table.

That woman's really got style! Olivia thought, sipping from her water glass. When she had first met Dawn, she had admired her good looks, and then – when she had started to interact with the visitors of her seminar – her charm and her easy way of relating to people. Now that she had experienced Dawn in many different situations, she found that she wasn't just attracted to Dawn as a woman but she really started liking her as a person.

She spent her first relaxed evening in what seemed like forever in the company of Dawn Kinsley and her friends. She was pleasantly surprised by the three psychologists, who were not at all like she had imagined psychologists to be. Not once did she have the feeling of being under constant scrutiny, the object of appraisal and analysis. Their job is hard enough, why would they want to do it in their free time, too? Olivia reminded herself.

Finally, every last bite of the meal had been eaten, and the dishes had been taken care of. One after the other, the guests said goodnight and left. When only Dawn and her mother remained, Olivia stood, too, and reached for her jacket. "Thank you for a very nice evening and a wonderful meal. I haven't eaten so well since my partner had to take me to a five-star restaurant on a lost bet."

"Has the NYPD added another zero to those generous cop pay checks? My husband's and son's bets never consisted of more than who would spring for a hotdog and a coffee to go," Grace said.

Olivia laughed. "No sudden enlightenment on part of the NYPD, I'm afraid. We usually bet for hotdogs, too, but this one was a bet we both were really confident to win."

"Do I even want to know?" Grace chuckled.

"No, you don't. I have a certain image to uphold, Ma'am," Olivia declared with a dignified expression. She slipped on her jacket and turned to go.

"Detective?" Dawn's voice made her turn around again. "Could you maybe stay for a few minutes longer? I'd really like to talk to you about something."

Olivia nodded and swallowed, almost afraid of what Dawn might want to speak about. She slipped her jacket back off, while Mrs. Kinsley hugged and kissed her daughter goodnight. Watching the warm interaction between mother and daughter always left Olivia with a vague feeling of longing.

"Let's try out the new couch," Dawn suggested, after her mother had left. She had given away her old couch, not wanting to be reminded of the devastation she had felt sitting on that couch just after the rape.

Dawn brought coffee and tea, and they sat down on the comfortable new couch. Olivia watched as Dawn leant one socked foot onto the coffee table, while the other rested on the couch, both arms wrapped around her knee.

Dawn's cat, which they hadn't seen all evening, strolled into the living room and sniffed on every chair leg that had come into contact with one of the strangers invading her territory. The cat stopped in front of the couch. The slanted pupils of the amazingly sapphire eyes widened when she spotted Olivia. Promptly, the cat sat down and ignored the humans. She licked her bushy tail and used her paw to wash behind chocolate-tipped ears. When she looked up after a minute and the stranger still sat on the couch, she let out a complaining "Miaouuuu!"

Olivia looked down at the cat, feeling decidedly unwelcome. "Am I sitting in her favorite spot?"

"She's a cat, every spot in the whole apartment is hers, and the one place that she can't have because it's occupied just now is always her favorite," Dawn explained.

"Cat psychology, huh?" Olivia shifted to the side, when the cat hopped up onto the couch between them and eased her body into a sphinx-like position. Feeling reassured by Dawn's expert supervision, Olivia reached out a single finger and scratched the cat behind one ear. "What kind of cat is she?" she asked, reasonably sure that there were different breeds of cats.

Dawn rubbed the cat's belly, making her purr and lie down more fully. "Kia's a Balinese, that's a long-haired version of the Siamese. Remember when you said you didn't want to marry her? What changed your mind?"

"Huh?"

"You told me you didn't want to marry my cat when you had to put her into a transport box, but yesterday you were the one who carried Kia over the threshold. Guess you're a closeted romantic, huh, Detective?" Dawn teased.

Olivia laughed and leaned back against the soft cushions, sipping her coffee. This is nice. She usually spent her days in the company of men and had few, if any, close female friends.

Even her one-night stands and the partners in her usually short-lived relationships were mostly men, although she was more attracted to women. Men were safer because there weren't so many emotions involved for Olivia. Men didn't expect her to give them insight into her heart and soul. They didn't want to hear her life's story on the first date and meet her parents by the end of the first month. With women, Olivia was afraid to feel too much, to lose control, to be consumed by her fears and desires. She was convinced that it would be just a matter of time before she would hurt a female partner. It was her inheritance, it was in her genes. So, she rarely allowed herself more than a one-night stand with a woman, always hiding behind affairs with men or secret attractions that couldn't go anywhere because the object of her admiration was straight, unavailable or totally unaware of Olivia's feelings – or all three, to make sure nothing of any significance could ever happen between them.

She had put Dawn firmly into the straight/unavailable/unaware-category. Most of the time, she didn't even think about sharing anything more with Dawn and was content with just being friendly acquaintances. Sometimes she even thought that it was only Dawn's unavailability that made her so attractive for Liv. If Dawn hadn't been raped, if she had been gay and interested in a relationship with her, Olivia was sure that she would have run the other way as fast as she could.

"So," Olivia interrupted her own, dangerously introspective thoughts, "what is it you wanted to speak to me about?"

Dawn moved the cat into her lap and turned around to face Olivia. "Well, now that I moved into a new apartment and live all alone again, I want to do everything I can to make myself feel a little safer."

"Okay. How can I help?"

Dawn shrugged. "I thought about buying a gun."

"A gun…" Olivia rubbed her neck.

"Not a good idea?" Dawn watched the detective's reaction closely.

"No, I didn't necessarily say that… It just depends. A weapon doesn't always keep you safe. If you depend on an external object for your protection, you need to keep in mind that it could be taken away from you and used against you. " Olivia studied the gentle woman next to her. "And a gun won't do you any good if you don't use it. Are you sure you could aim it at a human being and pull the trigger?" Twice, she had shot someone in the line of duty, and she knew that it came with a price.

Dawn looked down at her hands. "I always thought that I could never kill anyone, but that Saturday night…I think I could have."

Olivia was still ambivalent about the thought of Dawn owning a weapon. "What about enrolling in a self-defense course? That doesn't have to mean we're completely ruling out the possibility of buying a gun."

Dawn looked doubtful. "I'm not terribly coordinated."

"Technique is only a small part of self-defense," Olivia explained. She knew that self-defense classes could be an invaluable part of the healing process for a rape survivor. "You won't learn how to hit an attacker in the face after a 360 degree spin kick, but how to be aware of and react to your surroundings. We're not talking about Hollywood Kung Fu; we're talking about a simple, yet effective poke in the eye or a kick to the groin. They teach you the self-confidence to know you're worth defending, and they give you the means to do it."

"That sounds like a really good thing," Dawn said, the now green eyes shining with the determination to try it out. "Do you teach self-defense? You sound like you know a lot about it."

In her mind's eye, Olivia already saw herself instructing Dawn in self-defense, wrapping her arms around her and pressing her body against Dawn's from behind as she simulated an attack. "I know someone who does," she said quickly. "I'll give you his number."

"His?" Dawn repeated, looking unsure about the concept of taking classes with a male instructor.

"Who better than a man to teach you how to hurt a man?" Olivia half-joked. "He's the best, and I promise you'll like him. And he works with a female partner."

Finally, Dawn nodded. "Okay, I'll try it out. Can't hurt, right?"

"Not if you follow instructions and don't try that 360 degree spin kick," Olivia joked, rising from the couch. "Thanks again for the invitation."

"No, thank you," Dawn corrected. "I know lugging furniture around is not part of a detective's job description."

Olivia didn't answer, not wanting to emphasize the fact that she had helped Dawn in anything other than a professional capacity.

"Here." Dawn handed her a small plastic container. "That's some left-over coconut chicken and rice. I would have given you the recipe but you said you don't really have the time to cook."

"Or the talent," Olivia added. She hesitantly took the plastic container, feeling like a husband who was being handed his lovingly prepared lunch at the door before being kissed goodbye. She shook her head at the thought and reached for the door handle. "Thanks. Good night."

Part 6

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