Jessica Sheets: A world where black-letter law bends under the weight of empathy.

Jack McCoy: And that's a good thing?

Jessica Sheets: If you're human.

Jack McCoy : Opposing counsel hasn't called me that in a long time.

Jessica Sheets: Ah, But Jack, I know where you live. [She looks through the window at the man under arrest for statutory rape of her own client.] So that's the bastard, huh?

Jack McCoy: Now that's the Jessica I remember.

– Shangri-La, episode 2, season 13


Apartment of E.A.D.A. Jack McCoy

7 pm Friday 13 October 1995


"That's her," Claire Kincaid said at the knock at the door. "Remember —"

"The char siu is her favorite so don't eat it all, don't ask about her mother, and don't forget to mention her article in the Harvard Law Review, got it," Jack McCoy said. He grabbed Claire's hand as she started toward the hall and pulled her close for a kiss. "Don't worry, Claire. It's just dinner, with a friend of yours. I think I can manage."

She put her hand flat on his chest. "Jess is not just a friend, she's my best friend, and if you screw this up and she doesn't like you, Jack…"

He grinned down at her. "I feel like I'm meeting your parents."

"More important," Claire said. "I actually care about what Jess thinks of you. So remember, the article was called —"

"It's oh so quiet, judicial commentary on sexual orientation civil rights violations, I've got it," McCoy said, stole another kiss and let her go.

He heard her open the front door and exchange greetings with her friend. Discreet, Claire had assured him. She'd drink arsenic before she spilled any of my secrets.

I want her to know you, Jack, it's important to me.

So here he was, about to host a dinner party — if Chinese takeaway on the kitchen table qualified as a dinner party — for his secret office romance and her best friend.

Jesus, I must be in love.

"Jack," Claire said from the doorway. "This is Jessica. Jessica Sheets. Jess, this is Jack McCoy."

Claire's friend was almost the same height as Claire, slim and dark-haired as well. They could have been sisters, except Jessica's voice had a slight trace of a rust-belt twang and her face was squarer and more mobile than Claire's. In fact, her eyebrows climbed almost to her hairline as she looked McCoy up and down before shaking his hand. "I hear a lot about you, Jack," she said. "Some of it even good."

"Jess …" Claire said in an undertone.

Jessica had either not had, or not heeded, the same lecture McCoy had heard from Claire about best behavior and getting along. "Probably not the true parts," McCoy said. "Can I offer you a drink?"

"Jess brought wine," Claire said, holding up a bottle. "I'll open it."

"I considered champagne," Jessica said, "but I wasn't really in the mood for celebrating."

McCoy watched the way Claire's shoulders tightened as she went to look for the corkscrew. Terrific. It was one thing to be prepared for an awkward dinner with someone whose company he might or might not enjoy.

It was quite another to realize that Claire had set him the task of winning approval from a woman who showed every sign of hating his guts on sight.

But then, why wouldn't she? Claire had told him about Judge Thayer, and the humiliating coda to that workplace relationship. She'd no doubt told her best friend all about it at the time.

"I'm going to put some music on," McCoy said. "Jessica, will you help me chose?"

Only one of her eyebrows went up this time, although high enough to make Leonard Nimoy jealous. "I don't know much about music recorded before the eighties," she said. "Before then, Claire and I were too young to have our own radios."

McCoy ignored the dig at the age difference between them. "Have a look," he suggested. "There might be something you like."

The minute they reached the living room, Jessica turned and jabbed a finger in his chest. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but —"

"I care about Claire," McCoy interrupted her. "You care about Claire. You don't have to like me, but will you for chrissake call a truce until the end of dinner?"

She folded her arms and studied him, frowning fiercely. "All right," she said at last. She pulled a record off the nearest shelf at random and shoved it at him. "I'll forget I know what you're really like — for this evening."

"Thank you," McCoy said wryly. He looked at the record, and raised his eyebrows. "London Calling, for a dinner party?"

Jessica shrugged. "Whatever that is," she said, and strode back into the kitchen.

McCoy put the record back, chose something a little more mellow for the turntable, and joined the two women in the kitchen.

Where he worked harder than he'd ever worked in his life, the bar exam included.

Usually, when he exerted himself to be particularly charming, he was pushing at a door that was already at least ajar. Jessica Sheets was closed and locked and, given the circumstances, McCoy couldn't exactly try to flirt her into a better mood.

He steered the conversation to their years together at law school, and was an appreciative audience for their anecdotes. He was appropriately amused by Jessica's dry humor, and suitably outraged by the various indignities young women lawyers had to put up with from colleagues and judges, even at the end of the twentieth century. He made sure that Jessica got the lion's share of the pork. He told his best war stories, making sure to include the recent ones that showed Claire in a good light.

Jessica was polite and courteous and watched him with a raised eyebrow that said I know exactly what you're doing, Jack McCoy, and I'm not fooled.

"So, Jess, congratulations," Claire said, with what she no doubt thought was natural casualness. "Congratulations on your article. It was very … thoughtful."

Jessica grinned. "You haven't read it," she said.

"No, I … uh, skimmed it," Claire said. "It was very … well reasoned."

If the topic had come up earlier, McCoy might have said something similar. But it was late, he was more than a little tipsy, and he was exhausted from an evening that might as well have been spent talking to a brick wall. A brick wall that made up its mind to dislike me before I opened my mouth and shows no sign of changing its mind. "I read it," he said. "The premise is undermined by your reliance on litigation as a primary civil rights mechanism."

"Come on, Jack," Claire said quickly, with a glance at Jessica. "The only reason I can practice law at all is the women who sued to be admitted to the bar —"

McCoy shook his head. "Not true. The first woman to hold your job, Claire, anywhere in the country —"

She nodded. "Clara Foltz. Admitted to the California Bar after the state legislature changed the law to allow —"

"After the state legislature passed a law which she wrote, opening up the bar to women and to men who weren't white, as well." McCoy refilled his glass. "The point is, the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled that women had no constitutional right to practice law. Ms Foltz made an end run around that determination. Suit your tactics to your circumstances."

Jessica rested her arms on the table and leaned forward. "So you're saying gay and lesbian Americans should give up pursuing their constitutional rights —"

McCoy leaned forward as well. "I'm saying that constitutional rights are what the Supreme Court says they are, and the court is more likely to uphold a states' rights argument than expand the interpretation of the fourteenth amendment. What do you want, Jessica, to advance equality or to go down in a blaze of glory in Washington?"

"Jack …" Claire said.

"I don't want some patchwork framework where my rights change when I cross state lines!" Jessica said.

"Neither do I, but expecting the judiciary to break new ground while ignoring the legislature is running headfirst into a brick wall over and over again." Jessica's glass was empty as well, and McCoy refilled it. "Besides, you don't have the court you need at the moment. Bank your appealable issues until —"

"Thank you for the advice," Jessica said sarcastically.

"I'm not giving you advice, I'm disagreeing with your opinion," McCoy snapped. "If you don't want people to disagree with you, don't publish in the Harvard Law Review!"

Jessica took a gulp of her wine while Claire stared into her own glass. "Why did you disregard the influence of Arabella Mansfield?" she asked.

McCoy blinked. "I don't disregard —"

"Patriarchy and the Penal Code, New York University Law Review," Jessica said. "You're not the only one who did their homework. Not one mention of Mansfield. Why not?"

"Because when I wrote that article I was about your age, and likewise assumed I knew everything," McCoy said acidly.

"And now you're certain of it," Jessica shot back.

McCoy shook his head. "A few years of criminal practice was more than enough to rid me of that illusion."

"It certain rid me of my illusions," Claire said. She shook her head. "The state places a vulnerable child in an abusive home, and we prosecute the woman who removed her from that home? We get a slam dunk conviction for murder and only then find out we've convicted an innocent man?"

"Annette Fennady and Hank Chapel?" McCoy asked, and she nodded. "Fennady was acquitted. And Hank Chapel was cleared and released."

"I don't remember you being so sanguine about it at the time," Claire said.

"I got over it," McCoy said blithely, draining his glass.

She frowned. "Doesn't it bother you that jury nullification and Lennie Briscoe's instincts are the bulwark against a miscarriage of justice?"

"It's an imperfect system, Claire," McCoy said, not for the first time. "Filled with imperfect people. We do our best."

Claire shrugged. "And if our best isn't good enough? I have thirty-nine A felonies on my desk this week, Jack. I can't possibly look into them all enough to be sure there isn't some error, some assumption by the police, that's going to lead to another wrongful conviction."

"That's what defense lawyers are for," McCoy said. "And if you're juggling thirty-nine major cases, I don't think an unwarranted conviction is what you need to worry about."

"Join the side of the angels, Claire," Jessica said. "Come work with me and help me keep the justice system honest."

"Honest isn't exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think of defense attorneys," Claire said wryly.

"The system needs them, too," McCoy said.

Claire raised an eyebrow. "The system needs Paul Kopell?"

McCoy drew breath to tell her just exactly how low that blow was.

Jessica spoke first. "I refuse to count Kopell on my team, Claire. He was working against the justice system, and the legal profession is better off without him in it. And —" she leaned forward, waving her wineglass for emphasis, " — if I ever go off the reservation like that, hell, if I put a toe over the canons of ethics, I expect you to come after me just as hard as Jack here went after Kopell." She took a gulp of wine. "Or we won't be friends."

Claire shrugged. "I can't imagine you ever would, but fine. You conspire to have anyone killed, I'll be sure and prosecute you for it."

"We keep each other honest. That's how the system works," Jessica said. She raised her almost-empty glass. "To the system. To our imperfect, occasionally nonsensical, often absurd, beautiful system."

McCoy raised his own. "To zealous defense attorneys."

"To ruthless prosecutors," Jessica countered.

McCoy nodded. "To splitting legal hairs."

"To caviling objections," Jessica said, one corner of her mouth twitching up.

"How about 'to justice for all'?" Claire asked.

"But Claire," Jessica said, tilting her glass a little toward McCoy. "That's exactly what Jack and I are already drinking to."


.oOo.


A/N: The cases Claire refers to are from "Nurture", episode 20 of season 4, and "Act of God", episode 17 of season 5, and "House Counsel" episode 10 of season 5