Competency Hearing
Office of EADA Jack McCoy
One Hogan Place
11. 45 am Friday December 15th 2006
Knuckles rapping sharply on her door made Regan jump. She put her finger on the sentence she was up to in the law report before she looked up.
Jack McCoy was leaning against her door frame, jacket off and tie askew, hair falling into his eyes. Not even midday, Regan thought, and already the senior prosecutor is giving way to the shanty Irish street-fighter. As always, the sight of her boss at his disheveled best made her smile. "Jack," she said.
"Are you caught up?" McCoy asked, returning her smile.
"With Whitford?" Regan asked.
"Yeah," McCoy said. "With Whitford. And with Logan's shooting."
"Is there news on Detective Logan?" Regan asked.
"He's out of surgery. Still critical. High dependency care."
Regan nodded, absorbing the news. "And the case?"
"No location on the shooter. No witnesses. I hear from Van Buren that they're hopeful on the ballistics and I hear also that Goren and Eames are working on the idea that whoever did it was aiming for Mike in particular. Maybe they'll turn something up."
"I hope so," Regan said, and meant it.
"It'll be a while before we see it on our desks," McCoy said. "And meanwhile, what is on our desks is Whitford. You caught up?"
Regan nodded. "We have motive problems, don't we? No infidelity, no jealousy, no – no husband-wife stuff that might have made him kill her."
"Briscoe and Green were sure he did it when they collared him ," McCoy said.
"The circumstantial case is solid," Regan said. "The forensics are convincing. All that's missing is a teetotal nun with 20-20 vision who actually witnessed the killing."
"And a motive," McCoy said.
"And a motive."
"What are you looking up there?" McCoy asked with a gesture towards the law report on Regan's desk.
"It's this civil suit from the nineties," Regan said. "Linton v Conlon. Came up in my bar exam. It's been stuck in my head since we started Whitford. I'm trying to see why."
"Linton v Conlon. That's a medical malpractice case," McCoy said. "If my memory can be trusted."
Regan snorted. "Lennie Briscoe knows every address on every street or lane in New York city – and you know every nuance of every reported case in New York state. It is medical malpractice. Ms Linton sued her doctor, Dr Conlon, for prescribing the wrong dose of medication to her. He fought it. She won. He paid big-time – fifteen million."
"She was badly hurt?" McCoy asked.
"He was badly drunk when he wrote the wrong medication on the prescribing pad. That's what got the case on the bar exam – it was a punitive damages question."
"And what does it have to do with Whitford?" McCoy asked.
Regan sighed. "I don't know. I honestly don't know. Maybe – maybe it's just stuck in my head for no reason. Or a stupid reason. Maybe the nurse had the same first name as Eileen Whitford."
McCoy shook his head. "Or maybe there's some connection. Trust your instincts. But don't stay bound up in the law reports. Poke around a little."
"Okay," Regan said uncertainly. She wanted to ask McCoy what he meant by poke around but she didn't want to admit that she didn't know. "Do you want me catching from Complaints this weekend?"
"No. Concentrate on Donald Whitford," McCoy said. "We've arrested and charged an apparently loving family man and dedicated pediatrician with the murder of his apparently devoted wife. This conviction is not just about justice for Eileen Whitford. It's about the reputation of the office as well."
"You mean the reputation of Arthur Branch," Regan said.
"Arthur has reminded me more than once in recent months that making him look good is in my job description," McCoy said. "And in yours. How'd it go with Skoda?"
"Fine," Regan said, off balance. "Fine. He – "
"So I know you took a bullet in the line," Emil Skoda says. He's very still, a spare contained man with watchful dark eyes. "Jack told me you got shot in the arm."
Regan looks at him, trying not to be intimidated. "He told you that?"
Skoda looks back at her. Regan doesn't like it. "Yeah. Interesting, that you'd share what's eating you with Jack McCoy."
"There's nothing eating me," Regan says. "I just – I saw the kid out of the corner of my eye and it – startled me."
"The footage is a YouTube favorite across the city," Skoda says. "You know, Detective Green had just as much reason to be startled. You went for the kid – he went after you."
"Yeah, not reasons like me," Regan says tightly.
"What makes your reasons special?" Skoda says.
Regan lifts her chin and tries to stare him down, refusing to give in to the skepticism she's sure she can hear in his voice. Skoda's gaze is very steady.
Regan looks down first.
"It went fine," Regan said again.
"Good," McCoy said. He hung his head and looked down at his feet, and then back up at Regan through the shock of hair that fell over his forehead. "Regan – I can't cover for you again. With Arthur. You have to get your head straight."
"My head is straight," Regan said.
"Don't bullshit me," McCoy snapped, his eyes bright with anger. "I understand you've had a rough time, but I'm through making excuses for you. This goes back before Carthage, before Walters. I need a second chair I can rely on, not one I have to babysit. So stop lying to me and stop lying to yourself and get your head straight."
"You were suspended from the DAs office after a complaint was lodged – an assault?" Skoda asks.
"I lost my temper," Regan says. "I was wrong. But I was cleared."
"You lost your temper today, too. Do you lose your temper a lot?" Skoda asks.
"No more than average," Regan counters.
"What does that mean?" Skoda says.
"You're the psychiatrist. You tell me."
"Do you lose your temper more than you used to?"
Regan is silent a long moment. "I never used to lose my temper at all," she says at last.
"Before you got shot." Skoda says. "In the elbow." Regan thinks he sounds incredulous.
"I'm not going to talk about it."
"You're going to talk about it," Skoda says. "Oh, not today. Not to me. But sooner or later you're either going to sit down in a room like this and talk about it with someone like me. Or someone will cut you off in traffic and you'll find yourself holding a gun to their head while you tell them about it."
"I don't carry a gun," Regan says instantly.
"Really?" Skoda says. "Most ex-cops still carry. Unless of course they can't get a license. Unless they're 'ex' because of some kind of misconduct issue."
Regan says nothing.
"Interesting," Skoda says. "Okay. Well, how about this? Either you can talk about it at a time and place of your choosing or one day somebody will do something that sets you off and the next thing you know you'll have them down on the ground and you'll be pounding the crap out of them and it'll take somebody pulling you off them to stop you killing them. Oh, wait." He turns the screen of his computer around and Regan sees a frozen image of Ed Green hauling a madwoman out of a crowd of people, and then sees Jack McCoy in the background and recognizes the madwoman as herself. "You're telling me how fine you are," Skoda says evenly. "Does that woman look fine to you?"
Regan blinked hard and looked down at the book on her desk. "I understand," she said quietly.
McCoy took a step into her office. "Look," he said more gently. "If you want to talk – "
"Everybody wants me to talk," Regan snapped. "Nobody wants to accept there's nothing to talk about."
"Go a full month without beating anyone up and I'll consider taking you at your word on that," McCoy retorted.
"So if I don't play along with you I get pink-slipped by Jack McCoy?" Regan asks.
"I have to write a report," Skoda says. "You might not be a cop, but you're a public servant. The DA's Office is responsible to you – and for you."
"And nobody likes to get sued," Regan says. "So you decide if I get sacked or not?"
"I don't want to get you sacked," Skoda says. "I would prefer to see you again. In a professional capacity. And maybe with a less adversarial affect."
"So you can fix me?" Regan asks. She means it to be sarcastic, isn't sure it comes out that way.
"I can't make you all better," Skoda says. "But I can teach you some techniques. That will maybe enable you to keep your job and function in society without assault charges."
"To 'function in normal society?" Regan says. "Fuck you. Can I go now?"
"Yeah," Skoda says. "If you want. I'm always available if you want to – "
Regan doesn't hear the rest of the sentence as the door closes behind her.
"One month," Regan said, striving to make her tone light. "Done deal."
McCoy's assessing gaze didn't waver. "Last chance, Regan," he said.
.oOo.
