Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to Third Watch or any of it's characters or any other shows and characters.
Author's note: Thanks for the reviews. I'm glad you're all enjoying this.

Chapter Eight "Law and Disorder"

The next day Sully and Bosco are again on patrol. Sully is behind the wheel as usual and Bosco is restless in his seat. He looks out the window then glances over to say something to Sully, but he is cut short before he speaks.

"No!" Sully growls.

"No what?"

"What ever you were gonna say, the answer is 'no'."

"Then I was gonna say 'do you mind if I drive?'"

"Then the answer is 'yes'."

"Then the question is "shall we do what I want to do today?'"

"Then the answer is 'over my dead body.'"

"Then the question is 'Where can they put that huge tarp for Yankee Stadium when it isn't raining?'"

Sully glares over at Bosco who is grinning back at him, but the radio sounds out a tone and the conversation ends as Bosco answers a call for shots fired. They turn on the lights and sirens and head to the location.

They arrive at the scene and a man on the street waves them over. "Down here. I found them when I was dumping the garbage."

"You called it in?" Bosco asks him.

"Yah. I was closing up for the night. I heard a loud bang a few minutes earlier but I thought it was a car backfiring. When I took the garbage to the dumpster, I found them."

He leads them down an alley and behind the dumpster is a girl curled up in a ball against the wall covered with a coat that apparently the caller placed over her. She is beaten badly and bleeding. Next to her is a man laying on the ground with a puddle of blood forming under him on the pavement.

Sully calls for a bus then asks the guy, "Do you know her?"

"No. Not really. I see her out here all the time. She sells drugs in the alley here."

"So you don't care that she's dealing ten feet from your business?" Sully says disapprovingly.

"No one can see her back here. She don't beg for money or bother my customers. I only see her when I dump the trash before I go home."

Bosco leans over the girl and tells her help is coming. He asks her what happened. She tells him that the guy approached her to buy a bag. When she handed it to him he grabbed her and started tearing her clothes. She tried to fight him off and he began beating her. She lost consciousness for a while and when she woke up he was on top of her. She tells Bosco that he raped her. As she tried to push him off she felt a gun in his coat. She pulled it out and they wrestled over it until it went off. He fell on top of her and she rolled him off.

Bosco checks the man and he has no pulse. He gets on the radio and calls in that they have a drug dealer who is claiming rape and a dead body. He tells them to send EMS, the ME and a detective.

Faith and Jelly questioned Romel Harris and found he had an alibi for the night of the fire. After talking with him they both feel that he is not involved. They decide to look at the evidence from the case that he was originally sent to prison for.

The box of evidence contained very little. Harris had fought with a man over money. The fight ended with Harris killing the man with a tire iron. He then placed the man's body in his car and set it on fire. He poured siphoned gasoline from the car all over the man and lit the fire with his lighter. The detectives found a print on a cigarette butt that led them to him, and in his apartment they found his lighter with traces of gasoline on it.

Faith notices that the lighter that was labeled as evidence is missing from the box and so is the cigarette butt. "Do you think that one of those CSI people killed the doctor and are framing this guy?"

"For what reason?" Jelly asks. "If they wanted his job they could have it. He was announcing his retirement. Everything points at Harris."

"But Harris...I don't know. Convicts usually blame the cops or their lawyer or even the judge, but I've never heard of anyone blaming the forensic person for processing the evidence that convicted them."

"Lets go check with the ME and see if he found anything new."

Back with Sully and Bosco

They wait for about twenty minutes then suddenly a car comes rushing up to the scene. Two detectives climb out and walk up to Sully. They flash their badges. One detective is a tall composed black man and the other is an older Italian looking man with thick wavy salt and pepper hair. He approaches Sully in the way a senior cop would deal with another senior cop and ignore anyone else at the scene.

"I'm detective Fontana this is my partner detective Green. You wanna show me the stiff."

Sully walks him to the scene and explains what they have found out so far. Suddenly a second car comes roaring up with a gumball flashing and a tall balding yet fairly young man with a high forehead steps out, along with a dark haired attractive woman. They walk up to Bosco and flash their badges.

"I'm detective Stabler and this is my partner Benson. We're with special victims. I understand you have a rape victim."

Then another unmarked car comes screeching up with lights flashing and another man and woman hop out and as they approach, the man surveys the alley. He is wearing a black trench coat and he holds it against his body as he bends forward to take a close look around a dumpster that isn't anywhere near the bodies. He stops to inspect everything in the alley on his way to the scene. The neurotic looking dark haired man flashes his badge too quickly to be read, then immediately slips it back into his coat. The blonde woman with him follows and stands behind him obediently, stopping when he stops and watching patiently as he looks at everything. She looks like she could be his daughter.

He finally speaks to Bosco. "I'm detective Goren and this is Ames. I understand you have a drug deal gone bad. Did anyone touch anything and who are all these people? I need the area cleared. Who called this in? Did you get statements from the witnesses?"

Bosco looks at him like he's strange. "Whoa man, you need to slow down. This crime scene is pretty well covered. The detectives outnumber the vics three to one."

The man gets in Bosco's face and says, "I'm sorry, thought you were just a patrol officer." Then he tips his head to the left as far as he can as if he is studying Bosco from every direction and says, "Yah you are. You're just a patrol officer. I believe you're work is done here and it's up to us bigger cops to take over now."

Bosco tips his head to match him and says, "What the hell is wrong with your neck? Is your big head too heavy to hold upright?"

Detective Olivia Benson steps in. "Goren, I'm sorry you and Ames came all the way out here for nothing, but this is a rape. This falls under the guide lines for special victims."

"Well the report I heard was that it is a drug dealer who is only claiming it's a rape. It sounds to me like this was a drug related shooting. That falls under the category of criminal intent."

"Claiming rape? That's the problem with you men. You don't know how debasing and demeaning it is to be raped. To you it's like purse snatching, but to me...I grew up with a mother who was a drunk and I know what it feels like to hash up these awful, horrible feelings of being abused and degraded. And there is no way in hell that I am going to abandon this victim now that we've formed a bond."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Detective Green asks her. "This is a murder and we got it covered. You all can leave."

Stabler says, "Olivia is trying to make you see that we don't just look at our cases as paperwork or statistics. This girl reminds me of my daughters. With that in mind, I can solve this case because I have something special working for me...the vengeance of a father who's daughter has been violated."

"Until we know different, this man was murdered. My partner and I are investigating this murder, which apparently is out of your realm." Green says calmly.

"We can solve murders, right Goren?" Ames says from behind him.

Fontana waves his hand as if to shoo them all away. "Look, we were the first detectives on the scene and I'm a crotchety old seasoned veteran, so you all have to respect that and back off." Without looking at anyone in particular as if none of them are important he says, "The case is ours. Now leave so I can do my job." He slips on some latex gloves then walks over to the dead man to search his pockets.

"Hey, what do ya think you're doing? We have to comfort the victim first before we work the crime scene." Stabler says angrily as he walks over to the injured woman and slips on his own gloves. He crouches next to her and begins asking her if she is well enough to tell him what happened.

Goren also puts a pair of gloves on and snaps them loudly as he hurries over near the injured woman and starts searching through the clothing that had been torn from her, to confiscate her drugs.

The detectives start arguing and it turns into a loud shouting match. Sully slaps Bosco in the stomach and says, "Lets get out of here, there's too much law and disorder for my taste."

"Hold on, this is getting fun."

"Yah but if they start shooting, that will be a crap load of paperwork."

"Good point." Bosco says as he turns and follows Sully to the RMP.

As they head out of the alley, Sully notices a blind man turn into the alley with his seeing eye dog. "Excuse me, sir...you can't come down here. I'm afraid you'll have to walk around. This is a crime scene."

The man tips his head up to the left and right as if he is trying to smell who is talking to him, then he breaks out in a smile. "No it's ok, I'm suppose to be here."

Bosco responds, "No...you're not. There has been a crime committed in this alley and you can't walk through the crime scene."

The man stops and his dog sits as he reaches into his jacket. Bosco can't see his eyes through his dark glasses, and even though he is facing Bosco's direction, he seems to be staring distantly over Bosco's head as he talks.

"I'm not walking through the alley, I'm a cop." He opens his wallet and holds his badge straight out in front of him. "I'm detective Dunbar, and this guy is Hank." he says as he pats his dog.

Bosco moves the man's hand to correct where he is aiming the badge so that he can read it. "Is this a K-9 dog or something?"

"No. Don't be ridiculous, the dog is not the cop...I am."

"Ridiculous? Look pal, maybe you didn't notice because you can't see...but you're blind."

"I suppose you think that you're the first cop that has tried to tell me I can't do this job, but believe me, I've heard it all and I'm going to prove everyone wrong."

"Blind Justice." Sully Quips. "Now I've heard it all."

Bosco looks the man up and down in disbelief then he finally says, "You're going into that alley and you think you're going to convince those six detectives that are arguing over the body, that you're the best man for this case?"

He flashes a confident smile and nods his head. "Yup...that's exactly what I plan to do."

"Well good luck." Bosco says doubtfully. He shares a grin with Sully and they continue walking to the RMP, but Bosco leans close as he passes Dunbar and says softly, "You might be a bit more credible if you turn your badge right side up when you show it."

"Doctor Hawkes, I'm detective Gramaldi and this is detective Yokas. We spoke on the phone. Did you find anything new in doctor Kirkland's autopsy?"

"Yes as a matter of fact I did. I was just about to call you. I took the liberty of getting Kirkland's medical record's faxed to me. It turns out that he never had his appendix removed."

"Are you saying that our vic is missing his appendix?" Jelly asks.

"Not exactly. He has one..."

"There's a 'but' coming, there's always a 'but'. Ok...he has one, but what?"

"But it isn't his."

Faith and Jelly give each other a confused look. "How could it not be his?" Faith asks.

"It was surgically placed inside his body."

"Are you saying he had an appendix transplant?" Jelly surmises.

"There's no such thing." Hawkes informs him.

"And yet here we are." Jelly states.

Faith rolls her eyes and tells Jelly, "I think what he's trying to say is that this body is not doctor Kirkland but someone doctored it up to look like it was."

"Exactly." Hawkes says excitedly. "When I noticed the appendix was actually stitched in place, I took a closer look at his dental records. This body has all the same fillings and missing teeth, but the x-rays don't match up. They are two different people with the exact same dental history. I checked and found that Kirkland had several of his fillings for almost fifteen years, yet the fillings on this guy show no wear at all. They're brand new. I put a rush on the DNA sample but it still may be a day or two before I get it."

"Nice work Hawkes." Jelly says. He turns to Faith. "But now we got a body we can't ID, another one we can't find, and twenty eight suspects that we released, with the exception of the three we re-arrested. Shall we go question them again? This time I'm gonna do it as bad cop."

"As much as I'd love to see that, I don't think they're behind this."

"Then why are they going out of their way to throw us off the track with Harris?"

"Technically they're not. They're following the clues just like we are. Plus they're all from out of town. This is pretty elaborate to pull off from another state. But there is one person who had untraceable access to Kirkland's medical and dental records, Harris's case file, and access to a dead body, and can perform surgery and dental work on it."

"Doctor Thomas Kirkland himself. He's not dead."

"Exactly. Lets see how much his widow stands to receive in insurance money. I'll bet it's significantly more than he'd get if he just retires."