REMEMBRANCE

“Somehow, I expected something a bit more dingy,” Alex commented as Brenner drove them down the driveway to Tobias Page’s home.

“Something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre?” Bobby suggested with a smirk, only to yelp a moment later when Alex smacked him across the shoulder.

“Not funny,” she snapped, drawing a sheepish look of apology from her partner. Brenner glanced at them in the rear view mirror as he pulled the SUV up outside a small, neatly-kept cottage.

“Something the rest of us ought to know about?” he inquired, and Bobby shook his head, a rueful smile on his face.

“No… Just an old joke,” he said.

“Didn’t seem like it,” Brenner muttered as they climbed out of the vehicle. “We might be an out of the way backwater, but we’re not that much of a backwater.”

“Sorry,” Bobby muttered. “I didn’t mean this place. This just reminded me of a less than pleasant experience Detective Eames and I had not that long ago.”

Brenner nodded, placated.

“Apology accepted. We believe we’ve got a great little town here, Detective Goren. Yes, it’s true that some pretty awful things have happened here in recent times, but I don’t believe we should all be marked for life over it.” He paused, and motioned up at the mountain. “It’s really not as bad up there as you probably think, and maybe when we wrap this up, you folks might be willing to take a trip up there and see for yourselves.”

“We’ll take that under advisement,” Elliot said quickly, noting out of the corner of his eye the shade of pale that both Bobby and Alex had gone at the mere suggestion of going up the mountain.

Brenner paused, eyeing Bobby and Alex strangely before shaking his head and leading the way up to the front door of Tobias Page’s home.

He knocked three times before the door finally opened to reveal a man with thick, black hair and equally black eyes. His face seemed prematurely aged, and he peered out at the visitors with open suspicion.

“Gus,” Page mumbled, his gaze flitting nervously to Bobby, Alex and Elliot. Brenner nodded in greeting.

“Afternoon, Toby. Can we come in? We’d like to have a little chat.”

Page stood still for a moment, then stepped carefully outside, pulling the door closed behind him.

“We can talk out here. Who are they?”

“Detectives from New York. They came to help us catch whoever killed those six women.”

Page looked indifferent, at the very least.

“Yeah. Shame about that.”

“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” Elliot commented. Page regarded him with a sullen gaze.

“So? So what if I don’t think those bitches are any great loss? I’m entitled to my own opinion. We still had free speech, last I checked.”

“You had a pretty big grudge against one of them, didn’t you?” Bobby asked, peering at Page with deep interest. Page was able to hold his gaze for only a few seconds before he had to look away.

“Claire, you mean. Yeah, I didn’t like her. She was a fucking cow. Whoever killed her did this town a favour, I say.”

“Watch it, Toby,” Brenner growled warningly. Page snorted derisively.

“Why? You must think I’m a suspect. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. Why should I lie about how I feel about those dumb bitches?”

“You had a beef with all of them?” Alex asked, and suddenly found herself feeling the full force of Page’s hostility.

“All women are bitches,” he said heatedly. “All of them. They deserve everything they fucking get.”

“You know, Toby,” Brenner said dryly, “you’re not doing a hell of a lot to convince us you didn’t have anything to do with these killings.”

Page looked at him sullenly.

“I know you cops. You’ve already made up your mind. I didn’t do it, but you don’t care about that, as long as you’ve got someone to pin it on.”

“If you didn’t do it,” Elliot said, “then you won’t mind us having a look around.”

“The hell I wouldn’t,” Page snapped. “Unless you’ve got a warrant, then you can get the fuck off my property.”

“See, now, that makes us suspicious,” Alex said. “If you didn’t do it, and you don’t have anything to hide, why not let us take a look?”

Page glared at her.

“Fucking bitch cop…”

Abruptly, Bobby shifted into his line of vision, all six foot four inches of him glaring right back at Page.

“I suggest you show a little more respect for my partner, Mr Page. She’s a hell of a lot more capable than you probably think she is.”

Page took a step away from them, to the door of his home.

“You want to look around my place? Get a warrant.”

He disappeared back inside, slamming the door behind him.

“Gee, what a pleasant guy,” Alex remarked dryly as they walked back to the SUV. Brenner sighed a little.

“He’s had to put up with a lot since he moved here with his mom when he was a kid. It’s turned him into a pretty bitter man.”

“A bitter man who has a real hatred of women,” Elliot added. “And a nice violent streak to top it off, I’ll wager.”

“Toby has never committed a single act of violence in the time he’s lived in this town,” Brenner growled. “I’m sorry, Detectives. He might seem like a prime candidate to you, but I think you have the wrong person.”

“We’ll see,” Bobby murmured as he suddenly veered away from the SUV and headed across the grass to a vehicle that sat nearby.

“What are you doing?” Brenner asked, frowning.

“Is this his van?” Bobby asked as he walked around to the rear.

“Yes, but what are you doing? We don’t have a search warrant…”

“We don’t need one,” Bobby replied. “Come and look at this.”

The four crossed the grass to join Bobby at the rear of the van. Alex and Elliot’s faces lit up with grins, while Brenner still looked confused.

“Bitter, and stupid,” Elliot commented with a chuckle. “I like that combination.”

The back of Page’s van was wide open, and the carpeting from within had been dragged out to lie on the grass. On that piece of carpeting were multiple blood stains, as well as visible hair samples. Inside the van itself, in plain sight, were varying lengths of rope and at least three knives, all of which were smeared thickly with blood.

“A perp that doesn’t clean up after himself,” Alex said with a smirk. “Gee, if only they made it this easy for us back home.”

“We still need a search warrant, though, don’t we?” Brenner asked with a frown.

“We need a warrant to cover the van if we want the ropes and the knives to be admissible,” Bobby answered. “But this piece of carpet is a freebie. It’s out in the open, and in full view. But if you’d care to contact your local judge to get the warrant…?”

Brenner nodded grimly and pulled out his cell phone.

“Okay, consider it done.”

He never had the chance to make the call. Seconds after he’d spoken, the sound of gunshots forced them all to duck for cover around the far side of the van.

“Okay,” Brenner gasped, “now I’m convinced.”

“It’s coming from the house,” Elliot confirmed, peering carefully around the edge of the van. A moment later… “Jesus!” he yelled, ducking back barely in time to avoid a bullet that shattered the van’s headlight.

“Toby!” Brenner bellowed. “What the fuck are you doing? You wanna get yourself killed, you stupid fool?”

“Get the fuck off my property!” a voice screamed at them from within the house.

“Can I use one of your cell phones?” Brenner asked his companions. “Dropped mine over there when the asshole started shooting at us.”

Bobby pulled out his phone and handed it to Brenner. At the same time that he was dialling out, Alex’s phone started ringing.

“Damn,” she hissed, pulling it out to look at the caller ID. A moment later, she looked over at Bobby, incredulous. “It’s Deakins!”

“Damn, the man has some incredible timing,” Elliot growled. “Tell him we’re busy, and you’ll call him back later.”

Alex threw Elliot an exasperated look, then shoved the cell back into her pocket without answering it.

“Okay, we’ve got back-up coming,” Brenner told them as he ended his call and handed Bobby’s phone back to him. “Just hang on, everyone.”

There was a pause in the shooting, and the four cops exchanged looks, each wondering whether Page had perhaps come to his senses, or maybe even run out of ammunition. Their silent questions were answered a moment later when the shooting began afresh, shattering the windows of the van and spraying them all with glass.

“Fuck!” Brenner yelled.

“He’s shooting up the evidence!” Elliot shouted. “Son of a bitch! We gotta do something!”

“You wanna play target practise with him?” Alex retorted. “Be our guest, Elliot.”

“We’ve gotta do something!” Elliot repeated insistently. “If he hits the gas tank on this thing, he’ll blow the van up, and us with it!”

“Hell, he’s right about that,” Brenner admitted, pale-faced. Elliot looked at Brenner intently.

“Do you know the layout of this place?”

Brenner gaped at him.

“You’re not seriously going make a run for it?”

Elliot glared at him.

“Do you, or don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“Where’s he most likely shooting from?”

“The study, I’d guess. When you come in the back entrance, there’s a hallway that leads straight down to the front door. The study is the last room on the left, but…”

Elliot looked back to Bobby and Alex.

“Cover me?”

“You’re out of your mind, Elliot,” Alex said hoarsely, even as she released the safety catch on her gun.

“Someone has to do something,” he growled.

“We’ll cover you,” Bobby assured him. “Just be careful. You don’t have a vest on.”

Elliot grimaced.

“Don’t remind me. And don’t tell ’Liv about this, either. She’ll kill me.”

Bobby and Alex exchanged brief looks of amusement and then, moving together, they stepped out into the open, and opened fire on the building.

Elliot took off as fast as he could, sprinting across the grass and praying that he wouldn’t slip, and go sprawling onto his face. He rounded the corner and vaulted over the small gate there without losing his momentum, although he very nearly did fall on his face as his pants leg snared on a loose bit of wire. He heard the ripping sound of material tearing, but didn’t stop to assess the damage to his attire.

Staying low, he ran down the length of the house and around to the back, acutely conscious that all gunfire had ceased. He sincerely hoped that meant another stalemate. The last thing he wanted was to come to the backdoor of the house to find Page waiting for him there with a loaded gun.

Coming within sight of the backdoor, he hesitated, checking that his gun did, indeed, have a full clip in it. As he was checking, the sound of a police siren reached his ears, followed rapidly by further shooting from within the house.

That was good, Elliot told himself breathlessly. That meant Page was still up the front of the house.

He moved up to the backdoor and tried the handle. To his great relief, the door opened easily.

Moving as fast as he dared, Elliot made his way up the hall, doing a cursory check of each room just to play it safe. Treading as silently as he could, Elliot moved down to the last room on the left, as per Brenner’s instructions. A careful look inside revealed Page standing by the window, rifle up and braced by his left shoulder as he fired randomly out at the van.

For several seconds, Elliot didn’t move as he weighed up his options. If he were to speak now, from this vantage point, there was nothing to stop Page from swinging that rifle around and shooting at him. And though he was fairly sure his reflexes were good enough to take out Page before he was shot, firstly they wanted Page alive and in a condition that they could question him in. Secondly, ‘pretty sure’ simply wasn’t good enough. He wanted to be a hundred and fifty percent sure before he took a risk that could potentially put a bullet in his chest.

So that left one option, and he could only pray that Page was so occupied with his targets outside that he didn’t notice what was right behind him.

Gun aimed at Page in a rock steady grip, Elliot walked across the floor – carpet, thank God, and not wood – edging closer and closer to his target. He was almost within arm’s length when a floorboard beneath the carpet creaked under his feet, and Page spun around, eyes wide with panic and anger.

Elliot saw the gun coming around, and reacted on pure instinct, shoving logical thought clean out the window. Lunging forward, he grabbed the barrel of the rifle and yanked it right out of Page’s grasp. Abandoning the rifle to the floor, Elliot used the energy of adrenalin flowing through him and spun Page around, slamming him into the wall and slipping a pair of handcuffs on him in what had to be some sort of record time.

“Clear!” he bellowed out the window, even as he pushed Page to the floor, and planted his foot squarely on Page’s back to keep him from moving.

A minute later, the front door exploded open and Brenner ran in with two of his deputies, and Fin and Logan close behind.

“Well done, Detective Stabler,” Brenner praised him as they hauled Page to his feet. Elliot couldn’t quite bring himself to speak. Instead, he looked at his fellow detectives, pale-faced and covered in a thin sheen of sweat from the ballsy stunt he had just managed to pull off.

“Olivia is gonna ring your neck, Elliot,” Fin growled when Brenner and his men had taken Page out.

“Yeah,” Elliot muttered, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead and leaving a gritty mark there. “Tell me about it.”

“C’mon, man,” Fin said with a chuckle, and ushered his friend out of the house.

“You two okay?” Elliot asked as he emerged from the house to find Bobby and Alex waiting on the grass, guns still in their hands. Alex eyed him critically.

“We’re fine. Not so sure about you, though.”

Elliot looked down at himself, puzzled, and realised what she meant a moment later. His right pants leg was shredded, and rapidly soaking with blood. Before he had a chance to take stock, though, Olivia arrived with Bishop, looking less than impressed with her partner’s antics.

“Elliot!”

“Oh, brother,” Elliot muttered. She strode over, but her tirade was halted before she could begin it when she saw his leg.

“You’ve been shot?”

“Nah,” he answered quickly. “I must have done it going over the gate around the side of the house… Ah, shit…”

He’d just discovered his right hand was torn up as well.

“That’s going to need stitches,” Brenner announced firmly as he came back to the group. “Probably a tetanus shot, too, I’ll wager. I can take you to the local clinic. Dr Clark will be there, he’ll be happy to fix that up for you.”

None of them missed the interesting shade of pale that the detective went at the suggestion of needles, but any protests he’d planned on making were lost when Olivia shot him an evil look.

“He’ll go with you, Lieutenant. Won’t you, Elliot?”

Logan clapped him lightly on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Elliot. I’m sure Munch will be happy to go with you and hold your hand.”

Elliot gave Logan a sour look, and limped away to Brenner’s car without a word.

“I’d better go with him,” Olivia said ruefully as she watched his retreating figure.

“Don’t be too hard on him, Olivia,” Bobby told her, a small, amused smile on his face. “He took down Page without anyone getting shot.”

“He might wish he had been when he realises he can’t claim a new pair of pants for trying to pole vault a wire fence,” she retorted as she headed after her partner.

A thorough search of the property of the property revealed more than any of them could have possibly hoped for. In addition to the evidence found in and around Toby Page’s van, a shed out the back of the property revealed a collection of knives that would have put Jack the Ripper to shame. Though most of the blades were in immaculate condition, there were a select few that were covered in blood.

A further search within the house itself revealed a small room not dissimilar to the one in Erik Mathers’ cabin at the top of the mountain, and in David Graham’s house in Denton. It was a small, concrete room with only one small window high up, too high for anyone to reach, and blood spattered over the walls and floor.

“This is where he kept them,” Logan said grimly as they looked around. “Where he kept the women he killed. Just like Mathers…”

He trailed off, glancing uneasily at Bobby and Alex, but neither seemed concerned with the comment. In fact, Logan mused, as he watched Bobby looking around the room with a familiar enthusiasm, they were both behaving as though their own traumas didn’t exist. Maybe, he thought, it was because the end suddenly looked to be in sight, and it didn’t appear that they were going to have to go up the goddamn mountain after all…

“As soon as CSU analyses all this blood, we’ll have enough evidence to bury Page, and he won’t need to say a word,” Alex said, and Logan couldn’t help but notice the change in her tone, from hard and grim to light and… dare he think it? Almost relaxed and cheerful.

“I have to say it,” he said suddenly, and Bobby and Alex both ceased what they were doing to look at him.

“You have to say what?” Alex asked, watching him suspiciously. Logan held up his hands defensively.

“Don’t bite my head off, I don’t mean any disrespect… But this has got to be the fastest solve in history. I mean, I’ve never known a serial murder case like this to be cracked so damn fast! We only got here yesterday afternoon! It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours!”

Bobby and Alex exchanged glances.

“We’ll count our blessings when we’re in the van on our way back home, thanks very much,” Alex said wryly, and Bobby grunted in agreement before continuing with his examination of the room.

Logan smiled and shook his head, heading out of the room to leave them to it. He wasn’t going to say that everything was fine, that they’d be heading home again soon enough. He wasn’t superstitious, but he didn’t care to risk jinxing them, either.

Alex watched him go out of the corner of her eye, then spoke quietly to Bobby.

“What do you think?”

Bobby took a step back from the wall he’d been looking at. He knew what she meant without having to ask.

“This isn’t like Denton. We’ve got him, Alex. I really believe that. There’s no accomplice here. It’s just one very bitter, angry man with a very big grudge.”

She sighed softly.

“I just can’t help feeling like we’re about to get thrown a curve ball.”

“Just bad memories,” he murmured, walking over and pulling her to him in a protective embrace. “It’s okay, I feel the same way, but it’s going to be all right. We’ll be heading home before we know it.”

“And we can shove it Salinger’s face?”

“Definitely.”

“Good,” she said flippantly and, extricating herself gently from his arms, she strode out of the room. Bobby watched her go with an affectionate grin, and turned his attention back to the evidence at hand.

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