elrhiarhodan | White Collar Fic - Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places

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, all of Season 5; no specific spoilers for L&O: SVU, but set in Season 15
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Kidnapping, torture (off-camera), rape (off-camera),
Word Count: This chapter – ~2500
Beta Credit:

coffeethyme4me,

miri_thompson,

sinfulslasher,

theatregirl7299
Story Summary: Six months after Neal disappears, Peter still has no answers and his decision not to go to Washington has had significant repercussions for both his career and his marriage.
Chapter Summary: Neal meets with law enforcement to tell them what happened; Olivia has a very 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’ wind concerto, which takes it from the Old Testament. New chapters will be posted to my LJ every Thursday and to the relevant communities on Fridays.

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Sometime in Late January – Saturday Afternoon

In nearly two decades of police work and hundreds, if not thousands, of witness and victim interviews, she’d never participated in one where so many different law enforcement groups wanted a piece of the action. First there were the Treasury agents, then the U.S. Marshals and last, but not least, was the FBI and Peter Burke, who looked like rage personified as he paced the hall.

Apparently he wasn’t permitted to take part in any of the interviews, not allowed into the room, even if he promised to keep his mouth shut. The Marshals Service, which shouldn’t have had a stake in the game now that the “fugitive” was recovered, acted like they were ready to escort Neal Caffrey to the gas chamber without the benefit of a trial. The guys from the Treasury Department were clearly planning on playing alpha dog and setting the agenda, not that she was going to let them.

The victim, thankfully, was looking a hell of a lot better than he had last night. Caffrey still had that bruised and haunted look that she was all too familiar with, but he was coherent and ready to answer a few questions.

There were two men already in Neal’s hospital room when she and the Feds entered: a short bald man who seemed like he wanted to take all of them one with one hand tied behind his back. The other man, tall and grizzled, with sharp blue eyes and a nose that would put a Roman senator to shame, whispered something in his ear. The little one glared at him, looked at Caffrey, who nodded, and then left. Both Caffrey and the old man seemed to sigh with relief.

Just after the bald man left, two Treasury agents came in. To her surprise, one of them knew the old man. “Reese Hughes, what the hell are you doing here?”

Olivia had to wonder at just who this guy was. She thought he might be Neal’s attorney, but now she wasn’t all that sure.

He glared at everyone, including her. “I’m here to make sure that no one oversteps themselves.”

“Seriously? You’re watching out for Caffrey?”

Hughes nodded and gave the Feds a stare that promised retribution if they did ‘overstep themselves’.

Olivia introduced herself, took everyone’s name for the record and asked Neal if he was ready to begin.

“Let’s get this over with.” He looked up at the old man, who nodded.

The senior Treasury agent, Carlyle, jumped in and began interrogating Caffrey like he was a suspect, but before Neal could respond, Hughes cut him off.

“Rand, let me remind you again that Mr. Caffrey is the victim here, and your participation in this interview is at the sufferance of the NYPD. And at mine.”

She normally wouldn’t defer to anyone, but this guy, Hughes, clearly was the one with the biggest balls in the room. Olivia gave him a grateful smile and turned her attention back to Neal, “I know this is difficult, but can you start at the beginning, when you were abducted?”

“I guess.” Neal took a sip of water, and he was shaking so badly he needed two hands to hold the cup. “It was a Saturday afternoon. I had just talked with Peter – he told me that the Justice Department had refused his request for a commutation of my sentence. I was angry and I was thinking about just leaving.”

“Thinking?” That was from one of the Marshals.

“Thinking, not doing.” Caffrey’s tone was pure steel. “Anyway, there was a guy sitting on a bench. I thought I’d seen him before – like he’d been following me for a couple of days. I was going to walk away, but I didn’t – I went over to him and asked him who he was. He said – ” Neal shook his head and gave a bitter laugh, “ ‘I’m the last person alive who knows where you are’. I didn’t have a chance to run – a van or a truck or something pulled up and a bunch 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 shot and I woke up chained to a wall.”

Neal paused and looked at her. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Olivia told Neal to take his time. The Feds’ heaving sighs of annoyance were stifled by a look from the old man. Whoever he was, he had a lot of juice.

Neal seemed to get a handle on his emotions and continued. “I don’t remember much from the first few days. No one talked to me, they just came in and beat the crap out of me every once and a while. I don’t know how long that went on – days, weeks? The room didn’t have a window and I had no sense of time. I’m sorry – I’m not being very useful.”

Olivia offered some encouragement. “No – this is fine. Do you remember what the man who you first talked to – the one who’d been following you – looked like?”

“Cowboy boots. He wore hand-tooled cowboy boots.” Neal grimaced. “Strange thing to remember, but you don’t see men wearing cowboy boots in the summer in New York City. I guess it’s a good way of keeping people from concentrating on your face.”

Olivia remembered what Peter Burke had told her – how Neal’s intelligence impressed him. She was impressed. “So, you can’t describe his face?”

“No, I can.” Neal closed his eyes, summoning the memory. “Caucasian, Wavy hair, red-brown, light blue eyes, mid to late thirties, sparse facial hair, about my height but bulkier. Couldn’t tell if he had any tattoos, didn’t see any scars. Despite the cowboy boots, he had no discernible accent.”

“Would you be able to work with a sketch artist?”

He shrugged. “Probably, but he wasn’t one of the guys who kept working me over.”

“Can you describe them?”

Neal shook his head. “No. They wore ski masks when they beat me. When they raped me, I was face down.” That last sentence came out in a rush and Caffrey dropped his eyes, unable to look at anyone.

Hughes whispered something in Neal’s ear and Neal nodded.

“Like I said, I couldn’t tell you how much time passed. I was kept chained like an animal, but they took care not to injure me too much. I can remember someone telling them to be careful with my hands and not to hit my head. I can only figure that they were trying to break me down. Like a prisoner of war.” Caffrey started to shake again. “Exactly like that. They told me that all I had to do was cooperate and the pain would stop.”

The Feds kept their mouths shut as Caffrey continued to detail the misery he suffered.

“They’d come into the cell and hurt me – sometimes whips, sometimes stun guns, sometimes – ” Caffrey paused and shook his head, “other things. They’d finish and tell me that they’d stop once I cooperated, but they’d never tell me what they wanted from me. I always got the feeling that they wanted to cause the maximum amount of pain with the minimum physical damage. Until one day when they took me into a different room and said that everything would be all right if I just did this very simple thing.” Neal’s lips twisted in mockery. They wanted me to make the engraving plates for the front and back of a U.S. hundred dollar bill.”

Of course, the Treasury agents sat up and took notice, but at least they deferred to her and waited for permission to question Neal. She looked to the old man, who gave them all a sharp nod. Olivia knew that he’d cut them all off if the questions crossed the line.

Carlyle’s question was very simple. “And did you? Did you make the plates?”

Neal nodded, but was clearly ashamed of his cooperation. “Yes – I made the obverse and reverse. Three of each. Like they’d asked.”

“Why three?”

“I don’t know – I don’t know.” Neal was getting shaky and Olivia thought about shutting the interview down.

But he seemed to recover and continued. “They had a guy – he’d check my work every hour or so. He was looking for errors.”

“Can you describe him? Did he talk to you?”

“Old – older than,” Neal looked up at the man who was guarding him. “Reese, here.”

Reese frowned and just said, “Thanks.”

Carlyle seemed especially interested in this, “Was he a Westerner? Asian?”

“European, Slavic definitely but I don’t know if he was Russian or Ukrainian or from one of the Baltics. Tall, like Reese, a full head of silver-gray hair, light-colored eyes, no beard, no scars, smooth skin. He spoke English to me, accented, but not heavily. I think he was educated in the West, maybe England? Something about his word usage was very formal, his grammar was perfect – maybe a British public school education?”

“Do you think 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 get caught up in a memory. “He knew exactly how many lines there were in Franklin’s forehead. I’d tried to add an extra one, but he spotted it immediately.”

“What happened?” Olivia had to ask.

Neal gave her a bitter look. “After I stopped bleeding, I had to redo the plate.” He took a deep breath and continued. “I did manage to put something in there. A message – but you’d need to look at bills from all three plates to see it.”

Olivia found the expressions on the Treasury agents very interesting. It seemed to her that they knew about this. The two Marshals in the room just looked at the floor. She asked, “What was the message?”

Neal blinked rapidly, but he couldn’t stop the tears, “ adiuvare me – help me.” He wiped his face and repeated, “ adiuvare me petrus. ‘help me peter’.”

No one said anything.

Caffrey regained control of his emotions and continued, “I used very tiny nicks– breaking down the letters across each of the plates. I knew it was a long shot, but I’d hoped. I’d hoped…”

Neal’s voice trailed off and Olivia could see that he was done. She turned off the recorder and stood up. “Neal – thank you. I’ll arrange for a sketch artist to come by and if we have more questions, we’ll arrange another session through Reese.”

The old gentleman nodded and ushered everyone out of the room. She wasn’t surprised to see Agent Burke waiting there. He was flanked by a man and a woman, both younger, both African-American, both sporting gold shields on their belts. An older man in a dark overcoat hovered behind them. She guessed that this was the FBI contingent. Hughes went over to them, and it was clear that he was filling them in on the interview – at least Burke and the two agents. The older man was very obviously cut out of that circle.

He caught her eye and came over.

His introduction was brusque but not overtly hostile. “Bruce McKinsey, Section Chief – and Peter Burke’s boss. You’re Sergeant Benson, right – the cop working Caffrey’s assault case? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m not sure I should. This is an on-going NYPD investigation.”

McKinsey nodded. “Caffrey’s contract with the Bureau comes under my jurisdiction; ultimately I’m responsible for him.

Olivia wasn’t so certain about that, but she was mindful of Burke’s request to help the Feds understand that Neal was a victim, not a perp. “It wasn’t pretty. Caffrey was grabbed off the street and tortured into compliance.”

“You believe him?”

“Absolutely.”

He still seemed skeptical. “Really? You don’t think he set this up?”

“No, not in the least. While Agent Burke has filled me in on Caffrey’s history, I’ve been with Special Victims for over fifteen years, and I know when someone’s running a con on me. And even if I had my doubts, seeing pictures of scars from the Taser burns on the man’s testicles would erase them.”

The man actually winced. “Ah – yeah. Will he be okay?”

“I’m not a doctor, Agent McKinsey.”

“No – but you’re a veteran cop and like you’ve said, you’ve seen this before.”

Olivia had the feeling she was swimming into deep, shark-filled waters. “Honestly, that’s not for me to say. You’ll have to get clearance and talk to his doctors if you want a medical opinion.”

McKinsey knew just what she was doing and grimaced. “Very well.” He looked back over his shoulder at Burke and the other agents. “Can I ask you another question?”

The man reminded her of everything she didn’t like about the FBI. “You can ask, I won’t promise to answer, though.”

“Fair enough. What’s your take on Peter Burke?”

Olivia raised an eyebrow at that. “As an agent?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I couldn’t say. It’s not like I’ve really worked with him.”

The man gave her an annoyed look. “Come on – you had to have formed an impression.”

“He seems smart, dedicated and thorough.”

“Do you think he’s got a blind spot when it comes to Caffrey?”

Olivia could see McKinsey’s agenda and she lied through her teeth. “No. When I first met Agent Burke, and he told me about Neal Caffrey, he was very upfront about him, he said that Neal was a criminal. He believed that he was trying to go straight, but I never got the impression that he romanticized who Neal was and what he’d done.”

She got the feeling that McKinsey didn’t believe her, but he didn’t belabor the point. “Well, thank you.” He sighed and again looked over at Burke, who was talking with Neal’s friend, Reese. “You’ve been a big help.”

He walked away and she watched his interactions with Agent Burke and the old man. He gave him a surprising amount of deference that made her wonder again just who he was. They talked for a few moments, and Olivia wished she could hear their conversation. Burke made a slashing motion with his hand and Reese seemed to be trying to calm him down. McKinsey’s body language was stiff, tension in every line of his posture – which perfectly mirrored Burke’s.

She was tempted to get closer, to listen in, but McKinsey left and Reese drew Peter over to Neal’s room. Except that the man was having nothing of it and broke away, disappearing into a elevator.

TO BE CONTINUED
Go to Chapter Ten