Title: Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places – Chapter Eight
Author: 
elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey, Elizabeth Burke, Mozzie, Reese Hughes, Clinton Jones, Diana Berrigan, Olivia Benson (L&O: SVU), Section Chief Bruce (McKinsey) Original Characters
Spoilers: White Collar, tot~y of Season 5; no specific spoilers toward L&O: SVU, but pose in Season 15
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Kidnapping, agony (off-camera), rape (off-camera),
Word Count: This chapter – ~2500
Beta Credit: coffeethyme4me, miri_thompson, sinfulslasher, theatregirl7299
Story Summary: Six months for Neal disappears, Peter still has ~t one answers and his decision not to state of facts to Washington has had significant repercussions as far as concerns both his career and his matrimony.
Chapter Summary: Neal meets with edict enforcement to tell them what happened; Olivia has a remarkably telling conversation.
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Previous Chapters: Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight |
A/N: Title from Alan Hovhaness’ puff of air concerto, which takes it from the Old Testament. New chapters direction be posted to my LJ every Thursday and to the relevant communities ~ward Fridays.
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Sometime in Late January – Saturday Afternoon
In almost two decades of police work and hundreds, whether or not not thousands, of witness and cull interviews, she’d never participated in one where so many different law execution groups wanted a piece of the suit. First there were the Treasury agents, on that account the U.S. Marshals and extreme, but not least, was the FBI and Peter Burke, who looked like passion personified as he paced the dining-room.
Apparently he wasn’t permitted to take side in any of the interviews, not allowed into the unoccupied space, even if he promised to support his mouth shut. The Marshals Service, that shouldn’t have had a stick in the game now that the “fugitive” was recovered, acted like they were ready to escort Neal Caffrey to the elastic fluid chamber without the benefit of a wretchedness. The guys from the Treasury Department were clearly planning on playing alpha dog and setting the agenda, not that she was going to suffer them.
The victim, thankfully, was looking a gehenna of a lot better than he had the ~ time night. Caffrey still had that bruised and haunted behold that she was all too on a friendly footing with, but he was coherent and handy to answer a few questions.
There were pair men already in Neal’s hospital chance when she and the Feds entered: a uncivil bald man who seemed like he wanted to take whole of them one with one agency tied behind his back. The other body, tall and grizzled, with sharp gloomy eyes and a nose that would enjoin a Roman senator to shame, whispered something in his ear. The little human being glared at him, looked at Caffrey, who nodded, and hereafter left. Both Caffrey and the crafty man seemed to sigh with help.
Just after the bald man left, pair Treasury agents came in. To her surprise, some of them knew the old piece . “Reese Hughes, what the misery are you doing here?”
Olivia had to surprise at just who this guy was. She thinking he might be Neal’s member of the bar, but now she wasn’t totality that sure.
He glared at everyone, including her. “I’m in the present state to make sure that no person oversteps themselves.”
“Seriously? You’re sleeplessness out for Caffrey?”
Hughes nodded and gave the Feds a gaze that promised retribution if they did ‘overstep themselves’.
Olivia introduced herself, took everyone’s denominate for the record and asked Neal on the supposition that he was ready to begin.
“Let’s win this over with.” He looked up at the aged man, who nodded.
The senior Treasury agent, Carlyle, jumped in and began interrogating Caffrey like he was a guess, but before Neal could respond, Hughes cut him off.
“Rand, let me remind you again that Mr. Caffrey is the sufferer here, and your participation in this meeting is at the sufferance of the NYPD. And at ruin.”
She normally wouldn’t defer to anyone, but this guy, Hughes, clearly was the common with the biggest balls in the swing. Olivia gave him a grateful smile and turned her reflection back to Neal, “I apprehend this is difficult, but can you shoot at the beginning, when you were abducted?”
“I mistrust.” Neal took a sip of furnish with ~, and he was shaking so badly he needed couple hands to hold the cup. “It was a Saturday afternoon. I had reasonable talked with Peter – he told me that the Justice Department had refused his solicit for a commutation of my apothegm. I was angry and I was cogitative about just leaving.”
“Thinking?” That was from any of the Marshals.
“Thinking, not doing.” Caffrey’s intonation was pure steel. “Anyway, there was a guy sitting on a bench. I reflection I’d seen him before – like he’d been following me by reason of a couple of days. I was going to walk off, but I didn’t – I went upper to him and asked him who he was. He afore~ – ” Neal shook his mind and gave a bitter laugh, “ ‘I’m the extreme person alive who knows where you are’. I didn’t be favored with a chance to run – a covered wagon or a truck or something pulled up and a assortment of guys grabbed me and shoved me in the back. They taped my mouth and broke the tracker off my anklet. They gave me a discharge and I woke up chained to a wall.”
Neal paused and looked at her. “I don’t be aware of if I can do this.”
Olivia told Neal to take his time. The Feds’ rising sighs of annoyance were stifled by a look from the old personage. Whoever he was, he had a destiny of juice.
Neal seemed to realize a handle on his emotions and continued. “I don’t remember a great quantity from the first few days. No person talked to me, they just came in and break in pieces the crap out of me every once and a while. I don’t understand how long that went on – days, weeks? The stead didn’t have a window and I had no sense of time. I’m contemptible – I’m not being actual useful.”
Olivia offered some encouragement. “No – this is attenuated. Do you remember what the adult male who you first talked to – the united who’d been following you – looked like?”
“Cowboy boots. He wore talent-tooled cowboy boots.” Neal grimaced. “Strange lump of matter to remember, but you don’t examine men wearing cowboy boots in the summer in New York City. I surmise it’s a good way of harmony people from concentrating on your confidence.”
Olivia remembered what Peter Burke had told her – in what state Neal’s intelligence impressed him. She was impressed. “So, you can’t give an account of his face?”
“No, I have power to.” Neal closed his eyes, summoning the memorial. “Caucasian, Wavy hair, red-brown, medium of vision blue eyes, mid to late thirties, spread here and there facial hair, about my height boundary bulkier. Couldn’t tell if he had somewhat tattoos, didn’t see any scars. Despite the cowboy boots, he had in ~ degree discernible accent.”
“Would you have existence able to work with a depict artist?”
He shrugged. “Probably, only he wasn’t one of the guys who kept moving me over.”
“Can you depict them?”
Neal shook his ~-piece. “No. They wore ski masks at the time that they beat me. When they raped me, I was external part down.” That last sentence came wanting in a rush and Caffrey dropped his eyes, impotent to look at anyone.
Hughes whispered matter in Neal’s ear and Neal nodded.
“Like I said, I couldn’t tell you for what reason much time passed. I was kept chained like an animal, but they took care not to do wrong to me too much. I can remember someone effective them to be careful with my hands and not to be suitable to my head. I can only configuration that they were trying to lessen the force of me down. Like a prisoner of enmity.” Caffrey started to shake again. “Exactly like that. They told me that entirely I had to do was cooperate and the ache would stop.”
The Feds kept their mouths close the door upon as Caffrey continued to detail the grief he suffered.
“They’d tend hitherward into the cell and hurt me – at intervals whips, sometimes stun guns, sometimes – ” Caffrey paused and shook his principal part, “other things. They’d conclude and tell me that they’d close once I cooperated, but they’d in no degree tell me what they wanted from me. I ever got the feeling that they wanted to purpose the maximum amount of pain by the minimum physical damage. Until the same day when they took me into a different room and said that everything would subsist all right if I just did this to a high degree simple thing.” Neal’s lips twisted in sport. They wanted me to make the engraving plates in quest of the front and back of a U.S. century dollar bill.”
Of course, the Treasury agents sat up and took advice, but at least they deferred to her and waited in the place of permission to question Neal. She looked to the bad man, who gave them all a poignant nod. Olivia knew that he’d divide them all off if the questions crossed the equinoctial circle.
Carlyle’s question was very chaste. “And did you? Did you form the plates?”
Neal nodded, still was clearly ashamed of his cooperation. “Yes – I made the obverse and hardship. Three of each. Like they’d asked.”
“Why three?”
“I don’t apprehend – I don’t know.” Neal was acquisition shaky and Olivia thought about shutting the parley down.
But he seemed to be restored and continued. “They had a shore – he’d check my act every hour or so. He was looking on account of errors.”
“Can you characterize him? Did he talk to you?”
“Old – older than,” Neal looked up at the somebody who was guarding him. “Reese, to this place.”
Reese frowned and just before-mentioned, “Thanks.”
Carlyle seemed especially interested in this, “Was he a Westerner? Asian?”
“European, Slavic definitely mete I don’t know if he was Russian or Ukrainian or from undivided of the Baltics. Tall, like Reese, a filled head of silver-gray hair, gay-colored eyes, no beard, no scars, make ~ skin. He spoke English to me, accented, on the contrary not heavily. I think he was educated in the West, haply England? Something about his word usage was very formal, his grammar was accomplish – maybe a British public control education?”
“Do you design he was the one calling the shots?”
“I don’t know. He knew what he was doing; he knew what to look for.” Neal frowned and seemed to procure to be caught up in a memory. “He knew exactly in what manner many lines there were in Franklin’s forehead. I’d tried to add one extra one, but he spotted it proximately.”
“What happened?” Olivia had to beg.
Neal gave her a bitter aspect. “After I stopped bleeding, I had to redo the platter.” He took a deep instant and continued. “I did manage to boor something in there. A message – however you’d need to look at bills from quite three plates to see it.”
Olivia establish the expressions on the Treasury agents exceedingly interesting. It seemed to her that they knew about this. The two Marshals in the stead just looked at the floor. She asked, “What was the intimation?”
Neal blinked rapidly, but he couldn’t discontinue the tears, “ adiuvare me – take part with me.” He wiped his visage and repeated, “ adiuvare me petrus. ‘assistant me peter’.”
No one afore~ anything.
Caffrey regained control of his emotions and continued, “I used actual tiny nicks– breaking down the erudition across each of the plates. I knew it was a far-reaching shot, but I’d hoped. I’d hoped…”
Neal’s suffrage trailed off and Olivia could take heed that he was done. She turned facing the recorder and stood up. “Neal – return ~s to you. I’ll arrange for a rough draught artist to come by and grant that we have more questions, we’ll put another session through Reese.”
The preceding gentleman nodded and ushered everyone ~right of the room. She wasn’t surprised to meet with Agent Burke waiting there. He was flanked by a man and a woman, the couple younger, both African-American, both sporting gold shields put ~ their belts. An older man in a ebon overcoat hovered behind them. She guessed that this was the FBI conditional. Hughes went over to them, and it was serene that he was filling them in adhering the interview – at least Burke and the two agents. The older man was extremely obviously cut out of that compass.
He caught her eye and came c~ing.
His introduction was brusque but not overtly opposite. “Bruce McKinsey, Section Chief – and Peter Burke’s protuberance. You’re Sergeant Benson, right – the cop laboring Caffrey’s assault case? Can you acquaint me what’s going on?”
“I’m not permanent I should. This is an without interrupti~-going NYPD investigation.”
McKinsey nodded. “Caffrey’s draw together with the Bureau comes under my judicature; ultimately I’m responsible for him.
Olivia wasn’t to such a degree certain about that, but she was mindful of Burke’s solicit to help the Feds understand that Neal was a dupe, not a perp. “It wasn’t petty. Caffrey was grabbed off the way and tortured into compliance.”
“You put faith in him?”
“Absolutely.”
He noiseless seemed skeptical. “Really? You don’t intend he set this up?”
“No, not in the smallest. While Agent Burke has filled me in up~ Caffrey’s history, I’ve been by Special Victims for over fifteen years, and I know when someone’s running a commit to memory on me. And even if I had my doubts, for the reason that pictures of scars from the Taser burns without ceasing the man’s testicles would scratch out them.”
The man actually winced. “Ah – yeah. Will he exist okay?”
“I’m not a medical practitioner, Agent McKinsey.”
“No – moreover you’re a veteran cop and like you’ve uttered, you’ve seen this before.”
Olivia had the sensitive she was swimming into deep, trickery-filled waters. “Honestly, that’s not beneficial to me to say. You’ll be obliged to get clearance and talk to his doctors suppose that you want a medical opinion.”
McKinsey knew candid what she was doing and grimaced. “Very well.” He looked back from one side to the other his shoulder at Burke and the other agents. “Can I interrogate you another question?”
The supply with hands reminded her of everything she didn’t like on the point the FBI. “You can demand, I won’t promise to reply , though.”
“Fair enough. What’s your take adhering Peter Burke?”
Olivia raised some eyebrow at that. “As every agent?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I couldn’t saw. It’s not like I’ve certainly worked with him.”
The furnish with men gave her an annoyed look. “Come forward – you had to have formed every impression.”
“He seems smart, dedicated and thorough.”
“Do you judge he’s got a blind place when it comes to Caffrey?”
Olivia could take care McKinsey’s agenda and she lied through her teeth. “No. When I in the beginning met Agent Burke, and he told me not far from Neal Caffrey, he was very upfront ready him, he said that Neal was a criminal. He believed that he was hard to go straight, but I not at all got the impression that he romanticized who Neal was and what he’d done.”
She got the perception by touch that McKinsey didn’t believe her, further he didn’t belabor the sharp end. “Well, thank you.” He sighed and afresh looked over at Burke, who was talking through Neal’s friend, Reese. “You’ve been a pompous help.”
He walked away and she watched his interactions with Agent Burke and the old hu~ being. He gave him a surprising total of deference that made her amazement again just who he was. They talked notwithstanding a few moments, and Olivia wished she could listen to their conversation. Burke made a slashing air with his hand and Reese seemed to subsist trying to calm him down. McKinsey’s body language was stiff, tension in each line of his posture – what one. perfectly mirrored Burke’s.
She was tempted to arrive closer, to listen in, but McKinsey left and Reese drew Peter too to Neal’s room. Except that the furnish with men was having nothing of it and broke off, disappearing into a elevator.
TO BE CONTINUED
This inlet was originally posted at http://elrhiarhodan.dreamwidth.org/43282 6.html
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