Confessions
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Law & Order Franchise.
Jack waited impatiently in his office and valiantly resisted the urge to buzz his secretary again. Emily was a wonderful secretary and rose to the extensive demands that even her position in the office placed on her. She was pretty good about him occasionally taking his frustrations with a case out on the world at large, too, but she'd finally had enough.
Apparently calling her every half an hour for the past five hours was 'excessive.' She would let him know when the man he was looking for arrived.
He had been able to work for most of the time he'd been waiting but now the sheer length of time he'd been kept waiting was starting to get to him and he realized that he'd been reading the same motion three times already with no more idea of what it said than a vague feeling of 'My client should be free to kill whoever he wants to.' That was probably accurate, come to think of it, but hardly specific.
He was just wondering whether it would be too much to just camp himself outside of the man's office when he finally got the call. He waited as long as he could bear – maybe another two minutes – before hurrying over to Ron Carver's office.
Carver had strolled leisurely into the office at four o'clock that Thursday afternoon and Jack kind of had to wonder why he'd bothered at all if that was the way he was going to do it.
Jack rapped firmly on Carver's door and got a relaxed, "Come in."
Carver was dressed impeccably in a suit and tie as he always was but he was far from hard at work. He had an honest-to-God word search sitting right there on his desk but he hadn't gotten very far in it.
"Oh, Jack," Carver said, having the decency to set his word search aside. "You wanted to speak to me about the Montino case, yes?"
Jack nodded slowly. "I did. In fact, I've been wanting to speak to you about it since this morning."
Carver had the grace to look a little abashed. "My apologies, McCoy. If I had known that you had been waiting so long then I would have come in sooner."
"Why didn't you come in?" Jack demanded. "Did Major Case need you?"
"Well…no," Carver admitted.
"Do you make it a habit to come in at such a ridiculous hour then?" Jack pressed.
"Only when I have something else I'd rather be doing," Carver explained.
"What did you have to do today?" Jack asked, mildly curious.
"Detective Logan swore up and down that I was a dead ringer for a man that you once prosecuted, Benjamin Greer. I was attempting to prove him wrong but…" Carver trailed off and shook his head in incredulity. "It seems I won't be able to do that."
Jack cast his memory back. Benjamin Greer. The name didn't ring a bell but then he had prosecuted a great many people in his day. Still, if Logan mentioned it then it would have probably been during the one year that they had worked together. That narrowed it down some. And if it was someone who looked like Carver…Ah, he had it.
"You really do look like him," Jack marveled.
Carver closed his eyes. "Not you, too."
"I won't say anything," Jack promised. Well, not to him. Logan already knew and Briscoe and Claire weren't around to be told about it. He would have to see if Van Buren had heard. If he recalled correctly, Greer had annoyed the living daylights out of all of them and they were used to working with Logan. And that 'black rage' defense…Thank goodness the jury hadn't bought it.
Although there was that incident with the cab afterwards. Maybe it hadn't been as bad as the cab driver just forgoing a passenger instead of choosing him and Claire over that black man but it had been sobering. Not sobering enough to make him reconsider the validity of blaming a crime on the color of your skin but enough to make him feel out of sorts for the rest of the day.
"So I hear you're working with Detective Logan," Jack said, changing the subject. "How's that going?"
Carver gave him a look. "Well, he hasn't punched out any councilmen yet if that's what you're asking."
Jack didn't bother fighting an amused smile. "That's certainly good but he's only been there for a few months now. Give him time."
"I'm sure he'd find your show of faith touching," Carver said dryly.
"Me?" Jack asked rhetorically. "I've got plenty of faith. I have faith that this time he'll make sure that there aren't half a dozen cameras around."
"There was a lawsuit filed against him back during the Garrett case," Carver admitted. "Although that was clearly political."
"The Garrett case," Jack murmured, feeling a sudden spike of envy. "I wanted to prosecute that one."
"Why didn't you?" Caver asked, surprised. Jack usually got first crack at cases.
"I would have," Jack replied. "But I was a little swamped myself and Arthur didn't want to risk it and I didn't want to give up any of my current cases."
"What did you have?" Carver asked him. "I remember the one with that kidnapper that you had to agree to give him complete immunity in exchange for the girl's location and that the judge rejected the plea bargain."
Jack nodded. "There was that, yes. I also had to deal with SVU on a case and inter-departmental work is always complicated. Fontana had to reopen a case from…well, around the time Logan left, actually. We had a carbombing that turned into an issue of euthanasia. Then there was this gang case with a reporter. A teenager died in police custody and then there was this missing five year old where we had to determine who was the most culpable for the abduction."
Carver let out a low whistle. "That sounds busy."
Jack shrugged. "Nothing more than usual. I think Arthur just didn't want to make you look incompetent by taking the case out of your hands given all the media scrutiny and the attacks against your abilities that Garrett's camp had already made."
Carver sighed. "I just wish that he had been the actual murderer. He deserved a far worse sentence than he got."
"At least he's no longer a plague upon our judicial system," Jack remarked. "So what happened with that lawsuit? It got dismissed?"
Carver nodded. "It was always going to. There were seventeen plaintiffs and that might sound impressive but it was from a twelve-year period and the first sixteen had all been investigated and Detective Logan was cleared. They were just included to lend credence to the final claim and Logan's partner was the only eyewitness willing to come forward and she supported him."
"They could only find seventeen in a twelve-year period?" Jack asked, surprised. "Although trying to track people down after all this time can be difficult and I suppose there isn't really much trouble you can get into in Staten Island. Except for that mafia case in '98, I mean."
"You didn't ask what the lawsuit was about," Carver pointed out.
" 'Detective Logan punched me' isn't really legalese so I'm assuming it was the use of excessive force," Jack replied.
"It was," Carver confirmed but he was still looking at Jack strangely. "You worked with him, right? Did he regularly go around punching suspects?"
"I only ever saw him the one time that we all know about," Jack assured him.
"Then why-" Carver started to say.
"We didn't really get along," Jack said shortly. "It was always a bad mix, I think. I don't like it when cops screw up and evidence is thrown out. I especially don't like it when the evidence getting thrown out leads to a dismissal and I'm left with egg all over my face. Detective Logan doesn't like being yelled at or having his police work questioned."
"I see," Carver said neutrally.
"I was almost surprised that he ended up punching Crossley instead of me," Jack mused. He had wondered, on and off, whether the reason that Logan had gone after the Councilman instead of the myriad of other reprehensible defendants to go free or even the priest who had tried to molest him (had it only been attempted?) was because of the way that Jack had torn him to shreds on the stands and forced him to claim incompetence. And the worst part was that it had all been for nothing in the end.
That had frustrated him, too. Whenever he tore a regular witness of his down, he knew he was risking all future cases that he'd need to rely on them for. But still, he didn't see Jack hauling off and punching anyone. Hiding a witness and attempting to get a simple drunk driver the death penalty, sure, but that hadn't cost him his career, had it?
"I really haven't had much trouble with him," Carver informed him. "I keep waiting for him to punch somebody, you know his reputation, but I'm starting to think that maybe it won't happen."
"I hope it won't," Jack said, realizing as he spoke the words that he actually meant them. "Ten years on Staten Island…if I were reassigned as prosecutor there I'd go into private practice. I really would." Jamie had made judge by now and she was still offering him a place at her old firm.
Carver chuckled. "No chance of that happening, I'm sure. You'll either get disbarred or you'll be here forever."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Jack said seriously. "But I was asking about your hours, wasn't I?"
Carver frowned. "Were you? Oh, yes. You were. What about them?"
"I know that I hate to surrender a case but I can't have that much more work than the others in this office," Jack reasoned. "How do you manage to get your workload done when you're out of the office so often?"
Granted Carver hadn't actually said that but his casual attitude about not being there when he had something else to do certainly implied that. The most obvious explanation was that Carver was either very bad at or very indifferent to his job. That couldn't be the case, though, with Carver's impressive conviction rate that was just as high as his own. And despite what every single defense attorney who had ever stepped into his office may have thought, if Jack McCoy was assigned a case then (unless he realized that they were not the culprit after all and the police had screwed up) he was virtually guaranteed to get a conviction.
"I work with some wonderful detectives over at the Major Case Squad," Carver said, not without a hint of pride. "Notably Detectives Goren and Eames although Detectives Logan and Barek are quickly proving themselves as well."
"And I've worked with some wonderful detectives over at the 2-7," Jack retorted. "I've seen your case records from time to time and I know it isn't a matter of simply not having cases."
"No, I suppose it isn't," Carver agreed.
"How can you have so many cases and win nearly all of them and yet appear to have so little work to do?" Jack inquired. "Do you take your work home?"
Carver laughed. "I swore to myself that once I got my first promotion that I would never do that again and it would take a lot more than not wanting to come into the office to get me to go back on my word."
"Then what is it?" Jack asked impatiently.
"My detectives are…perfectionists, for lack of a better word," Carver said slowly. "It's not enough for them to just know that they have the right man. In fact, usually the actually figuring out who the guilty party is comes very early in the procedure. Oh, no. They must have a confession or they won't be satisfied."
"So?" Jack didn't get it. "The detectives that I work with usually get a confession, too."
"It's been a few years and so things may have changed but I seem to remember Abbie Carmichael complaining that your confessions almost always got thrown out," Carver said a little delicately.
Jack shook his head ruefully. "Oh, that hasn't changed and it's gotten to the point that we're not even surprised when it happens anymore. If it's not them asking for a friend or family member who the detectives have no way of knowing is in any way involved with the law then it's the suspect being Mirandized about a crime thirty years ago. Or they weren't provided with a lawyer fast enough. Or it was duress. Or, well, the lawyer doesn't want the confession to be used and judges have a strange hatred of confessions."
"Not the judges on the cases that I'm assigned," Carver said almost smugly.
Jack's jaw dropped. "You mean…?"
Carver nodded, satisfied. "Oh, yes. I not only am thoughtfully provided with a confession in nearly every case that I must go up against a jury for but on the cases where I can't plead them out I have their confession."
"So judges don't grant their motions to suppress?" Jack couldn't believe it. "How on Earth do you manage that?"
"I generally don't get motions to suppress," Carver said blithely.
"…How?" Jack demanded. "I am trying to think of a single case I've ever had that hasn't had the defense attempting to suppress each and every bit of evidence that I've ever had."
"Between us, I think that the lawyers just aren't very good at their jobs," Carver said conspiratorially.
"All of them?" Jack couldn't believe it. "You don't just work with underpaid and overworked public defenders, Carver. You deal with Major Case."
"I get my share of public defenders," Carver told him. "But yes, they're all terrible at their job."
"Because their clients confess?" Jack inquired. "Because there's really not much they can do about that if their clients won't listen to them."
"I've watched how my detectives run their interviews," Carver explained. "It's very compelling but I'm afraid it does involve some browbeating. It definitely does call the confessions into question and despite the fact that their lawyers are usually right there, they rarely say a word. They just sort of sit there, zoned out, while Goren and Eames or Logan and Barek harass them into confessing."
"It can't be that bad," Jack said again although he was feeling much less certain this time. What did he know about how Major Case worked? Major Case Squads weren't even supposed to handle homicides and yet, from what he could tell, that's what Deakins had them doing almost exclusively.
"It is. And let's not even get started on the people who are invited under false pretenses, secretly interrogated, not Mirandized, and their lawyers don't care enough to make what would probably be a successful motion to suppress the confession," Carver said, shaking his head. "So, you see, there's really not all that much I have to do. I have to be on call whenever someone wants me to watch an interrogation but aside from that…with all these confessions…Even without the plea bargains, how much work do you really need to do for a trial where the defendant has confessed and gone into detail about every aspect of the crime?"
"I really wish I knew," Jack said, no longer even trying to hide his jealousy. He wouldn't want such an easy caseload for all of his trials but it would be nice to not have to fight over every damn thing for once. And a confession! If he could use a freely given and properly obtained confession against an actual defendant for once…
Maybe it wasn't just a steady stream of surprisingly stupid lawyers (although Carver was right, that had to be a part of it). Maybe the detectives themselves were good enough to pull that kind of crap off and get away with it. And why not? Major Case was certainly an elite squad.
Jack had never actually met the man and yet he knew enough about Goren to know that anyone other than Deakins would probably kill him. Trying to split up a partnership was never a good move (and Deakins would probably kill him if he tried to take away the only partner that Goren could apparently work with since his partner track record was worse than Logan's).
Still, since Logan had apparently moved on from his punching people days and gone into an obtaining usable confessions from people state, maybe he could try to get him back. Sure, going back to the 2-7 would be a step down from Major Case but Logan had always been sentimental about his old precinct. If Briscoe were still around he wouldn't he need to ask.
"I know what you're thinking," Carver's voice cut into his musings. "And I must warn you that if you try it then I am going to have to take appropriate steps to stop you."
"Oh?" Jack asked, raising his eyebrows. "And what, exactly, would you consider 'appropriate steps'?"
"I'll leave that to your imagination," Carver said smoothly. "But perhaps you should consider the fact that there are no cameras in my office."
Ah, he should have known. Logan really did have that effect on people, didn't he?
"Really, Carver, I have no idea what you mean," Jack lied as he mentally tried to schedule in a visit to Van Buren.
"I'm watching you," Carver warned.
The lengths a man would go to to preserve an obscenely light workload.
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