It's Father's Day, we don't usually work the weekend but we've had this case, what we'd call a red ball back in Baltimore. It had been eating us up for a while, but Cap said it would be all right if Elliot and Fin both took the day off.

Elliot probably spends, as much time now, as he ever did with his kids, but I can tell it just doesn't feel the same to him since the divorce, so he makes more of an effort on special days.

And Fin is trying to rebuild his relationship with his son Ken. Finding out about Ken's sexual orientation didn't help an already strained situation. It's not that Fin's homophobic; it just it took him off guard, and Ken jumped to the wrong conclusions. They'll work it out; at least I hope they do for both their sakes.

So anyway, it's Father's Day and it's just me and Olivia and the Captain working the red ball before it becomes a cold case.

Cragen, he and his wife never had kids. I wonder, now that's she's gone, if he ever wishes they'd had a few rug rats. Maybe that would have made her loss hurt even more, or maybe she'd have left him when he was drinking, for the kid's sake, you know.

Then there's Olivia. Well, Olivia's situation is understandably, she never knew her father, and being what he was, she probably never really wanted to anyway. Still, I know what it's like, missing what all the other kids have.

So, anyway that leave's me. Married four times and no Munchkins. No one ever brought Father's Day cards or plaster of Paris handprints to me. No ugly ties or a daughter dancing on my shoe tops either. Guess it's obvious, I've thought about it a few times, maybe more than a few times. By the time I married Billie Lou, I'd even convinced myself maybe I could do it, maybe I could set my misgivings aside and play daddy.

Probably a real good thing that marriage didn't last, see it's like I told Brian, I wouldn't want to give a kid the responsibility of having me as a father; because sure enough, if I'd have had kids, I would have been like my old man. I'd have found it all too much to handle, and taken the easy way out. When one of them mouthed off too much to me, I'd sit down at the kitchen table and eat my gun, leaving the kid to feel guilty, and like he had to atone for things for the rest of his life.

Ah, screw Father's Day; it's just a conspiracy of the card companies to sell more cards.