"So what is it about this case that's gnawing at you, Don?" Munch asked after he closed Cragen's office door.
"Is it that obvious, John?" the captain asked.
"Not to the others, but I sensed something was bothering you from the start, and as the case has unfolded you've seemed," Munch paused uncharacteristically at a loss for words. "I don't know, almost guilty," John finally said though he seemed to doubt his own words.
"What are you, Vulcan?" Cragen asked, and shook his head.
"Part Betazoid, on my mother's side," Munch replied, going along with Cragen's Star Trek reference.
The two men sat in companionable silence for a minute, and then Cragen shifted in his chair, and finally got up and walked to the observation window in his office.
"When it started to look like these attacks were probably being committed by an Amerasian, I wondered if the perp might be my own child," he said, turning as he uttered the last three words.
"You fathered an Amerasian child?" John asked in a soft, stunned voice.
"Yeah," Don admitted, saying the single word as though it weighed a ton. "I was an 18 year old kid when I was sent to Vietnam. I found myself in a terrifying and dehumanizing environment. But then I got R&R, and I met a local girl. Her name was An. The time I spent with her was like being in paradise. The horror of the war was so far away. Near the end of my tour, An told me she was pregnant. I went to my CO to ask him what I could do," Cragen's face clouded with the memory.
"Until that day I'd always looked up to him, but that day that all changed. He looked at me," Cragen paused and repeated himself, "he looked at me and said, 'well, why should you do anything, son. You got great timing, knocking up one of the local girls just before you ship out.' He slapped me on the back and said 'forget about it.' I tried to get some help from my unit's chaplain, but he wasn't much help either. I kept in touch with An after I shipped out, and I sent her money for our baby girl Doan Vien, but I lost track of them shortly after the fall of Saigon," Don's dark eyes shone with barely restrained tears.
"How old would your daughter be?" John asked.
"She'd be 35 this month. I don't know if she's alive and if she's alive whether she's in Vietnam or here in the States," he said.
"Did Marge know?" John asked.
"No, I didn't tell her. I thought about it when the Homecoming Act was passed, but I couldn't bring myself to, because Marge had finally come to terms with her not being able to have children, and I felt if I told her about my daughter, it would just be rubbing salt in her wounds," Don explained. John noticed Don looking at his desk and realized that this was painful enough to make his captain think about the bottle of Vodka he kept in his bottom drawer.
"Either that or give her a slim hope that there was a child out there somewhere for the two of you to raise," Munch suggested.
"Hardly a child, by the time the Homecoming Act was passed, Doan Vien was in her late teens. It took so long for the US to do anything about the Amerasian children," he said bitterly.
John sat for a moment unsure what to say. He thought psychiatrists were highly over rated, and only just barely tolerated the unit's shrink George Huang, but he had the feeling this might be a job for a professional, before he could say anything though, Cragen brought things to a conclusion.
"Thanks for listening John, I think that's what I needed most of all."