Taking The Case
Office of District Attorney Arthur Branch
One Hogan Place
Friday 15th September 2006
"You wanted to see me?" Jack McCoy tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. He could ill afford the time for this meeting with the caseload on his desk, but Arthur Branch was, nevertheless, his boss, and when Branch called, McCoy answered.
"Come in, Jack. How are you?"
"Fine." McCoy said.
"Busy, I hear." Branch waved him towards the couch and got to his feet. Oh, great, McCoy thought, One of those meetings where Arthur fancies himself the boss-who's-a-friend.
"Criminals don't take a summer vacation." He steeled himself, and sat down.
"You don't have to prosecute them all yourself, though, Jack. Or all by yourself." Branch settled himself in his armchair.
"I'm fine. I work better on my own." McCoy said. "Was there something else?"
"Yes." Branch accepted McCoy's change of subject. "Have you heard about the Jennifer Walker murder?"
"Reporter dead in Central Park?"
"Choked on her own newspaper, but the police kept that back from the press to screen confessions. She was working on a story about Councillor Tony Nettle when she was killed, a big story that might have ruined his career. Her apartment was burgled a week before she got killed and her files were stolen."
"And you think Nettle did it?" McCoy asked. Choked to death …dark hair and tape and the trunk of a car - He blinked until his vision cleared.
"Detectives Briscoe and Green want to pick him up for the fraud and see if they can match his prints to Walker's apartment." Branch said. He leaned to take a file from his desk and held it out to McCoy. " I don't want this to be a political embarrassment. See what you make of it."
"Alright." McCoy took the file and began flipping through it. "Anything else?"
"I'd like you to pick a new assistant, Jack." Branch said.
"I don't have time to toilet-train one of your baby ADAs," McCoy said absently, attention on the papers in his hands. Incident report – D 40 – autopsy report "I've tried. This current crop of graduates you've got aren't worth the paper their degrees are printed on."
"You can't pretend to have given them a fair chance!" Branch said.
As McCoy flipped to the end of the file he knew the scene-of-crime photos would be next, he could feel the glossy prints through the carbon paper of the complaints form. Don't be such a fool, he told himself, they're just photos of a woman you never met. Look at them.
McCoy slammed the file shut and glared at his boss.
"There are lots of people who never get a fair chance," he said, standing up. "I can't change that. I don't need another assistant. And I don't want one. And I'm due in court."
He stalked out before Branch could say anything else.
He was due in court. McCoy slung the Walker folder onto his desk and grabbed his suit jacket and briefcase. Heading for the elevator, trying to tuck his briefcase under one arm and roll down his shirtsleeves with the other hand, McCoy was too preoccupied to look up from the carpet, too preoccupied to let his gaze and mind rest on the empty office he had to walk past.
If he didn't look, it was still possible that the light was on, that the chair was occupied by a young dark-haired woman bent industriously over her case files. It was still possible that a soft voice would call out Hey Jack, let me help you with that, and a hand would take his briefcase so he could straighten his tie and put his jacket on. It was still possible …
So he didn't look. He was too busy to look. He was always too busy to look. Because if he looked, the office would be empty and tape and blood and swollen features and the trunk of a car …
McCoy made it to the elevator. The doors shut and he leaned against the wall, eyes closed, fighting nausea.
Because it wasn't possible, not really. Not really.
Not ever.
