Manhattan YMCA

7 pm Thursday 12 July 2007

Regan retrieved the basketball from under the hoop and walked back to the top of the key. She bounced the ball, set her feet and then raised her arms to —

"You're dropping your left shoulder too much," Jack McCoy said behind her.

The shot hit the rim and bounced off. Regan turned to see McCoy standing on the court's sideline, jacket slung over his shoulder and bag in his hand. She could tell he was on his way home — he'd already changed into jeans and his tie was nowhere in sight. "Told you," he said.

Regan fetched the ball. "You distracted me."

He grinned. "Making excuses, Ms Markham?"

"Maybe you and me should play a little one-on-one, Mr McCoy, and we'll see who needs excuses then." When he shook his head, it was her turn to grin. "Coward."

"I'm not dressed for it, for one thing," McCoy said, looking down at his jeans and then at Regan's shorts and T-shirt. "And for another … I prefer it when we're on the same side."

She tossed the ball to him, a fast snap. He caught it reflexively, his bag and jacket falling to the floor. "That's because you like to be on the team that's going to win."

McCoy weighed the ball on one palm and then lofted it back to her, a high pass Regan had to jump for. "Or because I prefer a fair fight."

She pivoted and put the ball through the hoop. "Excuses again."

This time it was McCoy who retrieved it. "Excuses, reasons, they're both in the eye of the beholder." He took a few steps back and sank a basket himself.

"Why are you here, if not to play a little ball?"

"I was looking for you on the Coran case. Colleen said you'd be back in an hour, and you'd taken your gym bag." He passed the ball to her. "So I deduced you'd be here."

She passed it back. "Emalia Coran, aka Emily Watson. Nothing in her home or work that points to a reason to kill her, Ed and Lennie say."

McCoy raised the ball, concentrated, and shot. "Two all," he said as it went clean through the hoop. "So they're looking at the scene."

Regan took a long step the side as the ball rolled toward her. "Yeah. Someone must have had access …"

"It's an unusual place for a woman like that to be at night. If she was taken there, her killer knew it well." He watched Regan lining up her shot. "Watch the shoulder."

The basketball hit the rim, circled, and didn't go in. "Dammit. And if she was there on her own?"

"Then there's something we don't know about Ms Coran, or Ms Watson, or whoever she was. And it might be the motive for someone to kill her." He raised the ball. "If this goes in, it's 3-2. Rules say I win, best of five."

"And if I say we're playing best of seven?"

He grinned at her. "Then I'll have to sink two more. Or you'll have to stop dropping your shoulder."

Regan looked at her watch. "I have to get back to the office. So, okay, best of five."

"And what do I get if I win?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at the basket.

She shrugged. "I'll buy you a drink."

"When, the twelfth of never?" McCoy said, lowering the ball.

Regan put her hands on her hips. "Come on, Jack. We talked about it. You know Arthur's asked Colleen to get the sign-in sheets from the front desk for the 10th Floor? In case he catches us working late together when the rest of the staff have gone for the night?"

He bounced the ball, once, twice. "I didn't. But Arthur can't be everywhere. In a city of eight million people and two million bars, I think we could have a drink together every now and then." He bounced the ball again. "Unless you're using Arthur as an excuse to avoid telling me you don't want to."

"God, I want to!" Regan burst out. McCoy gave her a long look, and she felt herself blush. "Alright. Sink the basket, and I'll buy you a drink. Next week, sometime. Somewhere a long way from the office."

She was both disappointed and relieved when his shot went wide. "Wasn't meant to be," she said, fetching the ball and heading for the sidelines where she'd left her gym bag.

"I guess not," McCoy said quietly.

Regan bent to pick up her bag, and when she turned around, McCoy was gone.

At least the fact that he was gone unusually early for the night meant that Regan could immerse herself in the details of the files in front of her without worrying about making sure there was at least one other ADA somewhere on the 10th floor still at their desk. She was in Part 18 next week, on her own again, another trial that ought to be a slam dunk. People v Grady. Another affirmative defense, this one of mental disease or defect for a car-jacking. Regan had two experts to testify that the defendant, while intellectually challenged, was not intellectually disabled.

But never a trial turn into a battle of the experts, Jack McCoy always said. Regan turned back to the beginning of the file and began to make a list of potential witnesses who might be able to testify from their own observation about Bill Grady's mental capacity.

It was past midnight when she finished, and the house was dark and quiet when she got home. She crept up the stairs, careful not to wake Abbie, and was tired enough to fall asleep without more than a brief memory of how Jack McCoy had looked, poised with the basketball in his hands, long arms stretched out as the ball flew from his fingers …

The shrill chirp of Regan's cell phone woke her.

She opened her eyes to complete darkness. That meant the call was an emergency, because calls in the small hours of the morning were always emergencies.

Except when they're wrong numbers.

She rolled over and reached for her phone, knocked it to the floor and had to fumble around to find it. "'Lo."

"Ms Markham? It's Julian Beck. From forensics?"

A forensic emergency? The neon green numbers on her bedside clock told Regan it was two in the morning. "What's up, Mr Beck?"

"I found something!" he said happily.

Regan sat up, scrubbing her free hand over her face and desperately trying to remember which of the cases currently on her desk had a forensics problem. "You did?"

"On the gun!"

There was nothing for it but to admit ignorance. "Ah, which gun, exactly?"

"The one from the Coran homicide? That's linked to that old unsolved as well?"

Oh, that gun. "I don't really have hold of that case, Mr Beck."

"Well, yeah, but I have a match and I don't have Detective Briscoe's number."

Because Lennie Briscoe is too smart to let anyone but his partner, his lieutenant, and dispatch have his after-hours contact. "Is it urgent?"

"No, but it's interesting."

"Okay, Mr Beck." Regan rubbed her face again. "Lay it on me. What have you found?"

"Well, the gun had been wiped down and so had the magazine. But when I disassembled the mechanism I found two prints on the extractor pin. Both are partials but there's enough of them that when I ran them I pulled up four point matches on both."

Four points wasn't enough for court, but it was enough for investigation. "Two people? Who?"

"One person, two digits. Right thumb and right forefinger of one Carl Kolinski."

"So it's Kolinski's gun."

"He was the last person to give it a really thorough cleaning," Beck corrected. "And who knows how long ago."

"Still, it's a start," Regan said. "Good work, Beck." She paused. The last thing she wanted to do was to give Julian Beck the idea that calling her to share his late-night eureka moments was a good idea … but he'd stayed up half the night running prints to try and catch a murderer and besides, she'd always found something endearing in Beck's eager enthusiasm. "Thanks for the call."

She put the phone down and flopped back down on the bed.

There was a tap on the door and she raised her head again. "Yeah? Come in."

Abbie Carmichael opened the door a little and poked her head in. "I heard your phone ring. Good news? Bad news?"

"Good news, but not the fast kind," Regan said. "Fingerprint match on a murder weapon, may or may not be the last owner. Sorry it woke you."

"I was up." Abbie came all the way into the room, hands cradled around her swollen belly. "My bladder is now officially the size of a pea and junior here kicks it every thirty seconds. And I am never being pregnant in summer again. I feel like I haven't slept a full night in weeks."

Regan sat up. "When does your maternity leave start?"

"When I put Ahmed Salayek, John Cincato, and all their little friends behind bars for the next 25 years." Abbie — it was unkind, Regan knew, but there was no other word than waddled at this stage of a pregnancy — waddled over to the bed and sat down on the foot. "I rest my case tomorrow. Today, now. So depending on the defense … maybe a week, maybe two. Once the jury is charged and deliberating, there's no issue with me being replaced."

"I hope your closing has plenty about the future of our nation and the safety of our children."

"Won't someone think of the children?" Abbie drawled. "Yeah, it will. The only place I'm happy to play the gender card is when I'm dealing to a jury I want to put a piece of shit behind bars for the foreseeable future. Convict, ladies and gentlemen of the jury! For the sake of my unborn child, and all the other unborn children!"

"Just pray your waters don't break," Regan advised.

"Doctor says I have four weeks and first babies are often late."

Regan paused. "You know that's bullshit, right? Meant to keep you from turning up at her office or at emergency every time you get gas?"

"I'm pretending that it's true, Regan, so don't force me to face reality. Four weeks is plenty soon enough."

Regan hugged her knees to her chest. "You're going to do great."

Abbie looked down at her swollen stomach. "The closer it gets, the more attractive elective Cesarean sounds."

"Healthy mother, healthy baby, that's the aim." Regan shrugged. "Everything else is details. If you want a Cesarean, have one."

Abbie paused. "I wouldn't have expected you to say that."

Regan grinned. "Because I'm such a hippie?"

"Because you're so … competent."

"You're not exactly incompetent yourself, Ms Carmichael."

Abbie shook her head. "I don't mean professionally. I mean, if someone left a baby on the doorstep here, I'd be calling children's services and you'd be … heating up a bottle and improvising diapers out of tea-towels."

"Sure. I worked patrol for more than ten years." Regan grinned. "Hell, I delivered two babies, let alone held them while their mother was put in a patrol car or an ambulance. The first two years of it, I had a partner who was twenty years in and he said 'pick than damn kid up and give him your keys to play with' and whatdaya know, it worked."

Abbie raised a skeptical eyebrow. "It just takes practice?"

"It just takes doing what a hundred thousand other people have found works and then repeating it the next time," Regan said. "And plenty of women have C-sections and their kids and they are just fine. So if that's what you want, go ahead."

"And if I'm just scared?" Abbie asked. "Regan, I know a natural birth is best for my baby. All the studies show it. Maybe not by a lot, but how can I not give my child the best possible start?"

"Giving birth is hard," Regan said. "And painful. It's fine to be scared. It's fine to make a decision that you can't face it. We all have limits. And they're different for different things. I couldn't do what you're doing, with Tom. I'd be crazy, knowing the man I loved was in a war zone on the other side of the world."

"Who says I'm not crazy?" Abbie said. They both laughed. "Oh, Regan. This would be so much easier if he was here."

"I know." Regan held out her hand, and Abbie took it. "But you've got me and my experience at baby-wrangling, and Jack when you need someone to get a spider out of the bath. You're going to be fine, Abbie Carmichael."

She squeezed Abbie's fingers, firmly telling herself that her words were true.