Chapter Text
Someone Like You
chapter 1: A magical copy
Oct 2014
Toby's steps slowed as his breath stuck in his chest. Red and blue lights bounced off the dingy concrete buildings and the puddles in the uneven brick street. He fought the urge to turn and run.
He hadn't done anything wrong. This wasn't about him.
The usual crowd of twinks and bears and random night clubbers had been pushed back behind yellow tape, replaced by uniformed cops stomping their feet on the wet ground and blowing white mist on their hands, and sober professionals in waterproof government jackets.
They weren't here for him. His heart raced anyway, Pavlov's pulse.
Drug bust? That wouldn't be surprising. For this many cars and milling uniforms it had to be big. There were a couple of paramedics, not looking like they were in any kind of hurry. A black SUV with the coroner's shield on the door. Had his half-assed attempt at self-control gotten him out of a shooting? Cold air slipped around his legs, and he shivered.
Toby wasn't in the dark safety of the club, anymore. He pulled a tissue out of his coat pocket and wiped his mouth clean, tugged his coat tighter and stayed on the far side of the street, trying to blend in with the onlookers. He felt sticky and used and didn't want to be dragged in for questioning looking this way. Or at all.
Thank god he'd come out for air. He'd told himself he was done for the night, was headed for home, but one taxi after another had passed and even though he was freezing under his coat and his feet were killing him, he hadn't flagged any of them down. He'd just circled a couple of blocks, got some extra cash out at the ATM, killed forty-five minutes strolling the West Village in these shoes until he weakened and headed back here for one more round.
It looked like that temptation had been taken care of. Toby rubbed his head. What if he'd been rounded up for questioning? He had to stop doing this. He traded one addiction for the next. Alcohol for heroin. Heroin for rage. Rage for Chris. And now this place. This shit hole, which was bad enough when it wasn't infested with cops.
There were a few people milling around by the police barricades who seemed upset, a whole lot more who were just excited to be so close to big news. Toby recognised a fair few of the regulars from inside. If he was smart he would leave: take his aching ass and trampled body and get far away before someone asked for his statement, but curiosity held him.
"Tobias!"
A split-second of terror until he recognised the voice. "Hector!" Toby moved along the sidewalk to join him, grateful to have someone to talk to. "What happened?" Hector was six foot two and almost as wide, covered in Santa Muerte tattoos, someone he would have scuttled across the street to avoid ten years ago. They'd hooked up once, but Hector had tried to kiss him.
"Rumour is a kid got raped real bad and killed in the bathroom. Sick fucker."
Toby had thought he was done with violence and death when he walked out of prison six weeks ago. "Do they know who?"
"You know that white-blond waify kid who used to trail after Bubbles? I'm pretty sure it's him."
"Hell." Toby had talked to him once at the bar, never fucked him. He was grateful for that. That kid and Toby weren't each other's type. If anything, they were competition, lining up for the same...
The cold slid under Toby's coat and raised goose bumps. He'd seen him tonight. Alive, not that long before he left. "Do you know which bathroom?"
"Nah."
"Do you know what time?"
"I don't know, Tobias. What the fuck?"
"I might have... I saw him go into the bathroom."
"Shit, man." Hector looked him up and down. "Maybe you were the last to see him alive."
Maybe he was. Toby stared across at the police with their notebooks out, picking their way through the crowd.
Hector snorted. "You gonna front up to the pigs dressed like that, baby? Maybe one of 'em'll take a shining to your pretty ass."
For a couple of minutes, Toby had forgotten where he was, who he was. He couldn't talk to the cops. Especially not looking like this. Toby looked down. With these shoes it didn't take much to guess what was going on under the jacket, and a tissue wasn't going to clean off the rest of his make-up. So what, then? To hell with the kid, because Toby couldn't choke down a little humiliation? That was a laugh. "I have to do it." Toby steeled himself and checked the street, was about to step off the kerb when a dark sedan pulled in too fast, rolling to a stop across the road. A couple of plainclothes cops stepped out of the car.
Chris.
The ground rolled under Toby's feet. It was Chris. Toby blinked and blinked again, but there was no question. He had to be crazy. Toby knew that face, the shape of that body better than his own, felt his own body reaching the way it always had. Chris in every detail, but instead of a wifebeater or sweatshirt he wore a long navy coat over a jacket and red tie, and as he turned a gold badge swung on his neck. It was Chris.
Chris shoved his hands in his pockets and said something over the car to the woman who'd climbed out the driver's side. He pulled a woollen cap over his head and they headed through the barriers, casual as could be, as though the world hadn't just been turned inside out.
Toby had been coming here for weeks, searching for something to wake him up inside. It was like Toby had wished Chris into existence, but that was ridiculous. Toby hadn't had a wish come true in years.
Chris was dead. In a life full of uncertainties, Toby knew that much for sure. Chris lay twisted on the floor of Em City, wide blank eyes staring up at Toby and the balcony he'd plunged from. Even a broken neck couldn't break that relentless focus
So what - Chris rose from the dead, and they let him out of prison and gave him a detective's badge? Rising from the dead was the most likely part of that scenario. But if that wasn't Chris, it was a magical copy. Everything was right. The strong nose, the sharp eyes, receding hairline cropped close. Even the build looked right through the bulk of clothes. Toby wanted to touch him so much his hands ached.
Toby was at the barricade line before he even realised he'd been creeping closer. He hadn't taken a drink in six years, or a drug in longer than that. He hadn't drunk anything anyone could have slipped something into but nothing else made sense. His gut, his heart, his cock, all told him that was Chris Keller. All Toby had to do was get through this barrier and call his name, and his head would turn, as perfect as the moment when Toby finally reached him on death row.
Chris was talking to forensics people like they all knew each other, barking orders at the uniforms like it was something he'd been doing for years. Maybe Toby had strolled through a wormhole into an alternative universe. If Chris Keller was a detective here, what did that make Toby?
"Stabler!" was yelled from across the scene, and Chris looked up, ambled over. Not quite the way Chris walked.
Stabler. Detective Stabler.
A uniformed cop broke Toby's view. "Any other witnesses? Anyone seen this man tonight?" He was holding up a photo that looked like it had been blown up from a driver's license. That was the kid. The cop wrinkled his nose as he looked past Toby. Up by the entrance the Chris doppelganger was bitching out another uniform, jaw hard, eyes flashing with irritation. Toby held his breath, waiting for that sudden false grin like a rattlesnake's tail, but the partner put her hand on his arm and he backed down, only throwing back a look of disgust.
No, Toby wasn't going to front up to the cops looking like this. Smelling like this. Especially not that cop. He couldn't move, though, until Chris headed into the club behind his partner, through the door Toby had scurried out of less than an hour ago. Toby slipped back into the crowd. Now he was going to hail a cab.
"What the hell do you mean, misplaced? You've lost it?" Elliot's hand squeezed the phone as he slouched back in his chair, catching Olivia's sympathetic look. "Both of the evaluations were with the paperwork I sent you two weeks ago."
They'd worked right through the night and he was about ready to call it quits. They'd finally run their way through the parade of reluctant witnesses in the Markstrom murder: hipsters, closet cases, bikers, trannies and garden variety gays. No one saw anything, but they all had plenty to say about cops not doing anything to help, and none of them could draw a line between the two.
Liv was on the phone with the ME and Elliot was snatching two minutes to call his divorce lawyer, which had turned into ten minutes dealing with her assistant. He rubbed his forehead as she started shuffling through papers again. The future didn't exactly look bright, but Elliot was ready to be done with fucking lawyers.
Elliot sighed, looked up and noticed a guy in the doorway staring at him. Bookish, glasses, a soft grey overcoat that looked custom. Hair just slightly too long for the Wall Street look. And nervous, like he might rabbit any second. Elliot looked around for someone to send over there, but Olivia was stuck on her own call and nobody else was nearby. And the guy was staring pretty hard at Elliot.
This assistant would have him sitting here for another ten minutes. "Look, just get Diane to call me, all right? She knows my number." Elliot was on his feet before he put down the phone, not giving the guy a chance to run. "I'm Detective Elliot Stabler. Can I help you?"
He stepped backwards, eyes darting to the elevator and then back to Elliot, seeming honestly surprised that anyone had asked him a question. Elliot moved back to give him space, and he moved forward again, like some strange little dance, and then the guy braced himself with a visible effort. "Elliot Stabler."
"Yeah."
"You're investigating the murder at Franco's last night."
"Yes - you have information?" He rubbed a hand over his head and bit his lip, so Elliot moved in and lowered his voice. "We can be discreet, sir. Let's find somewhere quiet." Elliot gestured towards the interview room and caught Liv's eye. This guy was either a nutcase or the key they'd been looking for, and the suit said he probably wasn't a nutcase. She tipped her head, never pausing on her call. She'd stop by.
Elliot led the way to the interview room, saw the way the guy hesitated in the door. "Sorry it's not very friendly. If you'd prefer-"
"It's fine." The witness shed his coat, looking around for somewhere to put it until Elliot took it off his hands and hung it up by the door. It weighed a ton, and the dark suit beneath looked tailored, too. If this guy was Franco's clientele, he was seriously slumming it.
"Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?"
"No, I'm... I just wanted to talk to you."
Elliot pulled a chair around so he was sitting diagonally, took out a notebook and pen. "Will you tell us your name, sir?"
"Tobias."
He's push for a last name later. "You have information?"
"I was at Franco's last night."
"Inside?"
Tobias hunched over his elbows, looking a lot less comfortable in himself than he had in that first glimpse. Closet case, Elliot wondered? Worried this would get him outed? Or involved somehow? He wasn't Wall Street. He'd shed his expensive coat and underneath was an expensive suit but something about the way Tobias kept tugging his sleeves, straightening the jacket, told Elliot he didn't wear it often. He'd dressed up to come here today. Manicured fingernails, no wedding ring, but Elliot still wouldn't have picked him as gay. He stared up at Elliot, eyes wide behind his glasses. "Detective Stabler." He said the name like he was trying it out. "How long have you been a cop?"
"Since I was twenty-one." Elliot sat back, his best 'just chatting' pose. "What do you do?"
"Just... office work. Real estate. Nothing interesting." Highly-paid office work. "And you've always done this? Sex crimes?"
"Most of it." Elliot hated explaining the job to strangers, but he kept a friendly face on it. This guy wanted to trust him. "I get to help a lot of people."
Amusement glittered behind Tobias's glasses, and it raised Elliot's hackles.
"You were at Franco's last night."
Tobias chewed his lip again and the laughter was gone, like maybe it wasn't at Elliot's expense after all. "I don't know how helpful I can be. I didn't see anything happen."
"Just tell us what you did see," Elliot said, gently.
"I saw the kid - I don't know his name-"
"Leo." Elliot flipped through the file, slid across the photo as a reminder.
Tobias sighed when he saw it, but his eyes tracked straight back to Elliot and Elliot realised it was the first time his gaze had wavered. This guy was intense, though the staring didn't seem challenging or lewd. Curious, maybe. "That's him. I saw the kid go into the bathroom. I saw another guy go in a few seconds later. I'd noticed them talking in the back corner not long before that."
It wasn't much, but it was more than they'd gotten out of the rest of the crowd. "Can you describe the guy who followed him?"
"Tall, dark-haired, muscular. Gym junkie, probably."
"That rules out the twinks and the drag queens, but probably leaves half the clientele." Tobias flushed, and Elliot kicked himself. So much for building trust. Elliot wondered what group this guy fell in.
"Greek," said Tobias, suddenly.
"Greek?"
"Maybe. Mediterranean. He looked Greek, but maybe..."
Maybe Italian, or Albanian. "Tattoos? Height?"
"Yeah, he had some ink. My height - 5'11". Early, maybe mid-thirties."
It was the best lead they had so far. "If we sit you down with a sketch artist..."
"Sure."
"What time did you see them go in?"
"Eleven? Five-past?"
That was their window, right on the nose. Olivia would be through that door in- The door clicked as Olivia slid in. She hung back, letting Elliot hold Tobias's attention. He never even looked her way.
"You didn't think to intervene?"
Tobias looked at him like he'd just asked how babies were made. "It was two guys going to the bathroom in Franco's. Men fuck in that bathroom all night. I'll bet your CSU had a job with the fluids in there."
O'Halloran had said they could dedicate every New York forensics lab around the clock for a month and not get through it all. "Men don't leave that bathroom on stretchers every night."
"That's why I'm here. I imagine you won't have many willing witnesses from that crowd."
Right again. "Have you fucked in that bathroom?"
Tobias rubbed his hands over his face, under his glasses. "Yeah."
"Last night?"
"Yeah." Tobias dragged his hands away. "You'll let me know if I need a lawyer, right?"
Elliot had to hold on to the trust they'd built. "Just routine questions. We see plenty of terrible things in our line of work, Tobias. We aren't going to judge what two consenting adults get up to."
That got a little huff, amusement or embarrassment, Elliot couldn't tell. "You run the DNA on the floor in the first stall, you'll find me. Unless they haven't washed the stalls this week, then you might find me in the second."
Leo Markstrom was killed in the fourth.
Olivia leaned on the table. "Will you give us a DNA sample?"
"You don't need it."
They'd come back to that. Elliot had a feeling there was more going on, but he had to take his time getting there.
He tapped the photo. "Do you know the victim?"
"I've seen him around. Made conversation at the bar once, a few weeks back. We've never..."
Never had random sex in a filthy toilet stall without asking each other's names. Elliot supposed that was the measure of knowing someone, in a place like Franco's. Even after all these years at SVU - more so, after wading through other people's sex lives - Elliot didn't get the appeal. He could analyse it, paint out motives, profile the behaviour, but on a gut level, he didn't understand why anyone would want to fuck anonymous strangers. Let alone in a hole like that. Even with the total wreck of his marriage in the hands of lawyers, it was Kathy that Elliot's body craved. Still Kathy on his mind when he jerked off in the shower. He wondered what drove Tobias: maybe he didn't wear that suit so often, but he seemed together, clean-cut, educated. Rich self-hating gays usually stuck to secret handshakes in golf clubs.
"I have to ask: did you take any drugs last night?"
"No."
"I'm not going to prosecute you, I just-"
"I didn't take any drugs."
"How many drinks did you have?"
"None." Elliot felt his eyebrows rise, but Tobias was firm. "I wasn't there for the scotch."
Elliot held his gaze for a moment. He believed him. That wasn't what he was hiding. "Would you mind taking a blood test? If we need to call you as a witness, it'll help our case to show you were sober." From a gay bar fuelled with drink and drugs, home to cop-haters and attention-shy closet-cases, they were never going to have a lot of solid eye-witnesses.
"Look, I'm no good to you as a testifying witness. I just wanted to help you find him."
Elliot leaned in. "You seem like a pretty good witness to me. I can understand if you're worried about being outed-"
Tobias waved his hand. "There isn't anyone who could think less of me. I'm saying my testimony wouldn't be worth a damn."
Olivia cottoned on first. "You've been in prison."
Elliot almost laughed, until he saw Tobias's panicked look at Elliot. Elliot sat back. Even now it didn't sit right, but details fell into place: the way he'd hunched down in here, the fear of giving too much away. That was the look, hidden beneath the suit. Tobias was a damned skel.
Tobias's expression turned resigned under Elliot's glare. "I got four to fifteen for vehicular manslaughter and DUI. I served eight years in Oz."
And Elliot gaped again. Oswald was no country club. He'd thrown some serious scumbags in there.
Elliot looked back over his shoulder. Olivia was just as surprised. She let a mocking edge into her tone. "Four to fifteen years in Oswald for vehicular manslaughter? The judge didn't like you."
He glanced her way. It was the first real acknowledgement he'd given her, but he still directed his answer to Elliot. "There wasn't much to like."
Their witness had been in Oz. A scumbag drunk driver with a death on his conscience. So much for the clean-cut office guy. Looking closer, he wasn't as lean and geeky as he'd first appeared; there was some muscle under the tailored jacket. And maybe what Elliot had passed off as fear of being outed had more to do with fear of cops. Two big reasons for Tobias to keep his mouth shut but here he was anyway, hard-time con in a three thousand dollar suit voluntarily putting himself in an interrogation room. It made him even more of a puzzle. "How long have you been out?"
"Six weeks. I got out in September."
Shit. Some witness. And still the best they had. "Your record isn't good, but you present yourself well enough..."
"The reason I took so long to come forward..." Tobias's eyes dropped, cheeks shading red. This wasn't going to be good. "Last night I was all dressed up. My prettiest red dress and lipstick to match. How does that play with a jury?"
Elliot's mouth fell open. "You're a transvestite?"
"No!" His eyes went wide, like it had never occurred to him. "Maybe? You can ask my therapist, when I get one."
Olivia said, "We don't care about what you were wearing. We care what you saw, and it sounds like you have some serious karma to win back."
Tobias narrowed his eyes. "If my testimony was worth something I'd consider testifying, but I'm not going to go to court to be smeared by a defense lawyer for nothing. I'm just here to help you find the guy. If you don't find more than me to build your case, you won't have one."
Elliot wondered if he had a problem with women, or it was just the way Olivia was needling him. He was right, though; even if he was solid, the defense wouldn't have a lot of trouble dirtying him up for a jury. Elliot hadn't got any sense of feminisation from Tobias. Was that why he looked so uncomfortable in his suit? He wished he was in a dress? Elliot couldn't picture it.
Olivia stepped in, ready to distract. "Why didn't you speak up last night?"
"I'd gone to out to find an ATM, and when I came back the place was surrounded."
"What time was that?"
He pulled out his wallet and rummaged for a slip, checked it and slid it across the table. To Elliot.
Elliot let it sit there for Olivia to pick up, to gauge Tobias's reaction. His gaze never wandered from Elliot. She read, "11:31. There's an ATM right outside the club. Why'd you walk all the way to 5th Avenue?"
"Same reason I never run my bill on a tab. I value my privacy."
It was a convenient alibi - Warner put time of death between 11:15 and 11:45. It was also a believable story, and it fit with what Elliot had seen of him here. They'd check ATM surveillance, but Elliot wasn't counting Tobias as a suspect.