Drinking For The Pleasure Of Falling Down
Home of Muriel Aitcheson

Carthage NY

"Those boys never would learn thing one, none of them," Muriel Aitcheson said. She shook her head regretfully. "There never was a one of the McMillans, except maybe Therese, who was ever going to make anything of themselves."

"You know Timmy has been charged with a very serious crime down in Manhattan," Regan said. Her tone was respectful without being deferential and completely without emotional colouration.

On the rare occasions when McCoy interviewed witnesses himself, rather than delegating an ADA to do it, he was more than able to cajole, persuade, threaten, intimidate or browbeat a witness into co-operation. Regan made no effort to do any of that with the retired school-teacher. She sat in the old lady's kitchen, drinking the tea Muriel Aitcheson had made them both, exuding a neutrality so deep it was almost indifference.

"I had heard that," Muriel said. "I had heard it. It seems hard to believe, that I taught a boy able to do such things, there in my classroom all those years, well, when he was willing to come, of course."

"You didn't think he was capable of committing that kind of crime?" McCoy asked, picking up on the hesitation.

Muriel looked at him, her faded green eyes shrewd. " Mr McCoy, I'm sure that not many people look at a person they know and think to themselves, there walks a monster in human form. But these crimes are committed, all the same, aren't they? And mostly by people who no-one thought was 'capable'."

McCoy nodded, accepting her point.

"Besides," Muriel said. "I'm sure I'm no expert on such things, but I have heard on the television that a lot of those drugs young people take these days can make even a sane person crazy. And if there's one thing I would have always said about the McMillans, it's that if you can drink it, smoke it, snort it or shoot it in your arm, they'll be first in line.

"What was Timmy like at school?" Regan asked.

" Timmy was two steps behind his brother Dave," Muriel said. "Always. He followed his brother and his brother's friends whatever they did, where-ever they went. Followed Dave down to the city, too."

"Where's Dave now?" Regan asked.

"Sing Sing," Muriel said. "What with that, and Timmy gone, and Jeremy dead last fall, there's no-one out at the McMillan place but the old folk and Therese." She shook her head again. "I had some hope for that girl, once upon a time."

"Tell us about her," Regan suggested.

"Not much to tell, dear." Muriel poured more tea with hands that trembled with age. Regan steadied the teapot for her and Muriel gave her a quick smile. " Therese, she's the eldest of that generation, and I thought she had real promise. She was a smart girl, and she was responsible – grown up for her age, even then. She raised herself, pretty much. Then Jeremy came along, and she was raising him – and then Dave, and Timmy, and pretty much being a parent to her own parents. And …" Muriel's voice trailed away, and she shrugged. "I think about it sometimes. How maybe I should have called child services. Maybe if they'd all been taken away, maybe Therese would have ended up somewhere where she had a chance. But here … cooking and cleaning and trying to get her brothers to go to school, to stay in school, to learn something, to stay out of trouble … How could she do all of that, and her just a child herself, and do well by herself as well?"

"There's no way," Regan said softly.

"And in the end, it didn't make any difference. Her parents are still falling-down drunks in a falling-down house, her brothers have ended up where they always were going to end up, and Therese – well, Jeremy dying was hard, and Dave getting sent away that last time. How she is now, with Timmy, I don't know." Muriel shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. "Such a shame. Such a shame. She was such a bright little girl. All yellow hair and long legs and a mouthful of smart-ass."

As they thanked Muriel Aitcheson for her time and hospitality and went back to the car, McCoy was almost sure that Regan's eyes were as damp as the schoolteacher's. He held his tongue as she tossed her coat into the back and settled herself in the driver's seat, her movements easy and economical. After giving her directions to their next stop, McCoy waited until they were well on their way before breaking the silence.

"That family you told me about," he said. "Back when you were growing up."

"What about them?" Regan asked.

"You called them – the Roberts boys?" McCoy said, trying to remember the name. "Was there a Roberts girl?"

Regan was silent a long moment, staring ahead at the road unspooling ahead of them. "Yes," she said at last. "There was a Roberts girl."

"Did she end up like Therese McMillan?" McCoy asked.

Regan shook her head. "No," she said. "Worse."

Her tone held a finality that forbade further discussion, an edge McCoy couldn't read, and he let the topic drop. After a moment Regan reached over and punched on the radio, twisting the dial until she found a station. A twangy tenor filled the air, and Regan winced and lowered the volume.

"Would you prefer to drive?" she asked unexpectedly.

"If you're tired – "

"No," Regan said. "I meant – you said you preferred not to be a passenger. If you'd rather be driving … "

"Actually, I'd rather be riding," McCoy said.

Regan shot him a bemused glance. "Horses?"

"Motorcycle," McCoy corrected.

"You ride a motorcycle?" Regan asked. McCoy wasn't sure if he heard incredulity in her voice.

"When I can," he said. "Everyone needs – something to do, outside work. A hobby."

"You might want to look into getting a hobby less likely to turn you into an organ donor," Regan said.

"You might want to look into getting a hobby," McCoy countered.

"Haven't we had this discussion?" Regan said. "You told me drinking counts."

"Was that your hobby in Seattle?" McCoy asked.

"You asking if I was half-in-the-bag when I was on the job, and that's why I got shot?" Regan snapped.

"I'm making conversation, Regan," McCoy lied. "That's something normal people do."

They drove in silence for a while. "Sorry." Regan said at last. "Actually, before I got shot I used to collect stamps."

"Really? That sounds …"

"Boring," Regan said. "And no, not really."

McCoy laughed.

"Do you know," Regan said, as if it were a perfectly normal remark rather than a complete non sequitur, "Your liver grows back if part of it is cut out?" She ran down through the gears for a steep hill and shifted back up as they came over the crest. For a moment McCoy could see quite a distance across the snowy woods, with the road snaking through the dark trees like a river of asphalt. Then they were down into the forest again, the view cut off by thick trees flashing by on either side of the road.

"I had heard that," McCoy said. He stole a sideways glance at Regan as she shuffled on and off the clutch to take a corner, accelerating smoothly into the straight. She drove as if it were not even second, but first nature, the car an extension of her will. It was the same unhurried assurance she'd shown talking to old Muriel Aitcheson, or to Trooper Harris.

Leaving the office, leaving the city, seemed to have done her the world of good. Once again, McCoy marvelled at the difference between Regan Markham, unsure ADA, and who she became when she wasn't trying to fit herself into the DAs Office. He hadn't seen this easy confidence in her since –

Regan folds the cloth and wipes McCoy's forehead, her touch impersonal despite the intimacy of the act.

She had said to him, on that ragged edge of exhaustion where truths were told as much by accident than design, I was a good cop. That's all I ever wanted to be. Watching her drive, McCoy realised he was seeing the Regan Markham who had been a police officer, and knew she had told him not only what she believed but what was in fact the truth: she had been a good cop, confident in her authority, tender to those in need. Her face in profile was incalculably calm despite the marks left by Edward Walters's battering, her hands on the steering wheel were strong and long-fingered. The rangy build and athletic bearing that made her look like she was in drag in the suits and pumps of a junior lawyer fit when McCoy looked at her and thought 'cop'.

Facing disbarment, McCoy had briefly considered losing the career that he knew he was uniquely suited for, that he loved, that gave him not only a pay-cheque but a kind of moral sustenance: the knowledge that he was doing the kind of good that only he, Jack McCoy, could do. He had known he was tough enough to survive it, if it came to that, but he hadn't known how he could go about it.

As he watched Regan steer the car surely through the snowy landscape, McCoy realised for the first time that her loss was of that magnitude. For Regan, law was a poor second choice.

And yet, surely, she could have found some way to stay with Seattle PD, he thought. He was about to ask her when they rounded a turn and the radio picked up a stronger signal. A woman's smoky voice filled the car, singing something about how anyone who'd ever had a heart wouldn't turn around and break it.

Regan's head turned sharply.

McCoy reached for the volume but Regan gestured to him not to, turning her attention back to the road.

"Leave it," she said softly, barely audible over the singer. "I haven't heard this song in the longest time."

The singer was waiting down on the corner and thinking of ways to get back home. McCoy tried and failed to place the band. Regan flicked a glance in his direction. "Cowboy Junkies," she told him. "Kinda apt, given what we hear about the McMillans."

"And you're a fan?"

Sweet Jane, crooned the Cowboy Junkies. Sweet, sweet Jane

"Used to be. Back west – you know they're from up in Canada. There was this one time, I musta been twenty years old – we heard they were playing a free concert at a radio station in Portland." Regan was smiling a little.

"We?" McCoy asked.

"Me and Robbie. We were – he was my boyfriend at the time. So we decided to drive up. We're on the way and we get a flat," Regan said. "We changed the tyre – it's raining, you know how it gets in the coastal ranges up there, just kind of misting down through those big trees – and then maybe 10 miles further we get a flat in the spare. And you know, that's it. But we got close enough to pick up this local Portland radio station on the car stereo, right? So we spent the night sitting in this car, trying to dry out with the car heater, listening to the Cowboy Junkies playing their concert on this static car radio…" Her voice trailed aware and she shook her head gently. "Best damn night of my life."

McCoy watched her. Regan's eyes were unfocused, looking as much into memory as at the road ahead. Her face was luminous with a tenderness that made her almost beautiful. On the radio, the Cowboy Junkies were calling out to anyone who'd ever been lonely, to anyone who'd ever been split apart.

McCoy let the silence stretch out, and then broke into Regan's reverie. "What happened to Robbie?" he asked.

"How do you know something happened to him?" Regan asked, coming back to the present.

"You're not in Seattle with him, he's not here with you," McCoy said. "What happened?"

"Oh, whatever happens to people," Regan said. "You know. Time passes." There was the same finality to her voice as there had been when he had asked about that family she'd known growing up, the same edge. Hearing it the second time, McCoy identified it: grief.

What happened to him, to the man whose memory makes you look like that?

And what happened to you, Regan Markham? What happened to you?

.oOo.