One Police Plaza

10 pm Thursday 19 July 2007

Logan and Wheeler made the formal processes as quick and painless as possible. It was a side of police work that McCoy never saw and rarely thought about, dealing with witnesses. Interviewing suspects, yes, that was a part of making the case he paid close attention to, watched in person from time to time, even now. Whatever the defendant said to the arresting officers was almost always important to the case McCoy had to made in the courtroom. And the nuts and bolts of detective work invariably came out on direct as McCoy's police witnesses walked the jury through the logic that had led to the defendant's arrest.

Witness statements, however, arrived on his desk as a simple narrative, shorn of questions and comments, and McCoy's only interest in them was the facts they conveyed. The way the witness told their story on the stand mattered — sometimes it was the one factor that made the difference between conviction and acquittal — but the way they had told it to the police was completely irrelevant.

Now he found himself observing the two detectives with a certain professional curiosity. Mike Logan was casual, leaning back in his chair with one arm flung over the back of it. We all know this is just routine, that pose said. In case McCoy hadn't gotten the message, Logan prefaced most of his remarks with phrases like Just bear with me and Sorry, just a quick question.

Megan Wheeler, in contrast, was all business: bolt upright in her chair, absolutely still except for the hand holding her pen as she made occasional corrections to the pages she'd typed up while McCoy changed his shirt and washed off Kuen's blood. She parsed every sentence for possible ambiguities and points of confusion. By the time she was done and McCoy was signing each page of the statement, it was a crystal clear account of the evening.

Even if it does sound like it was written by someone else.

In fact, he realized as he scrawled John J McCoy at the bottom of the last page, it read more like Regan's drafts of opening and closing statements for trials than anything he'd ever write himself. "Do they teach you to write like this?" he asked Wheeler as he put the pen down.

"We can't all rise to your standards of eloquence, Jack," Logan said, smiling.

"At the Academy," Wheeler said. "Why?"

"It's … a distinctive style," McCoy said, striving for a balance between truth and tact.

Wheeler shrugged a little as she checked each page of the statement to make sure McCoy had signed them all. "They teach us to make sure a defense attorney won't start waving around a copy of a witness statement that got turned over to him on discovery and pointing out all the holes in it to a jury."

McCoy raised his eyebrows. "I haven't seen a lawyer try that more than once or twice in thirty years."

"That's because of our distinctive style," Logan said sardonically. He stood up. "I'll organize a blue-and-white to run you home. I'd offer to take you ourselves, but —"

McCoy nodded, getting up. He picked up his suit jacket from the back of the chair and checked that his tie was still in the pocket where he'd put it when he'd changed his shirt. "You have work to do."

"That, and the fact that Wheeler insists on driving," Logan said, opening the door for McCoy. "Takes years off my life every time I get in the car."

"I have never had an accident —" Wheeler said, and then stopped as Logan mimed casting a fishing line and reeling in a catch.

McCoy was smiling as he stepped into the corridor. Regan was waiting for him, leaning against the wall with her arms folded. Take a picture and call it 'Cop waiting'.

He stopped in front of her. "You write like a cop," he said.

Her eyebrows went up. "Is that a polite way of saying badly?"

"Yes." McCoy gave in to the temptation to put his hand on her shoulder. "But now I know why, I know how to fix it. Mike's getting someone to take us home. Apparently Detective Wheeler drives —"

Regan nodded. "Like Fernando Alonso on speed, according to both Serena and Rey." She studied his face. "How are you feeling?"

He shook his head. "I'm fine." The corners of Regan's mouth quirked downward, and McCoy insisted, "I am." It was the truth: his hands had finally stopped shaking sometime during his interview with Logan and Wheeler and the corridor no longer had the odd flat brightness as when he'd arrived at One PP.

"You will be, anyway," Regan conceded. "Colleen is moving everything off your schedule for tomorrow. Kibre is going to handle getting a continuance on Darley. The Mayor's media people are handling any press inquiries."

The press. "Rebecca," McCoy said. "There were cameras there, reporters. They'll make a meal of it — she shouldn't hear about it like that. I don't even have her phone number, dammit, she won't let Ellen — " And why couldn't Ellen realize that a decision Rebecca made when she was a stubborn, angry eighteen-year-old shouldn't be allowed to stick? Why can't Rebecca come to terms with the fact that her parents divorced and just call me?

And why couldn't I find it in me to be a decent enough husband and father for my grown daughter to at least let me have her damn phone number?

Regan squeezed his arm. "Rebecca is fine, Jack. Colleen called your wife. Your ex-wife. She was still in the office, and Colleen told her what happened, told her you were fine. She told Colleen she'd let Rebecca know."

"And Lisbeth?" McCoy asked, the sudden anger ebbing as quickly as it had flared. "And — Christ, Abbie!"

"All okay," Regan said. "Colleen talked to Lisbeth, I called Abbie." She shrugged a little. "We've been playing it down, bystander at a stick-up sort of thing. It's how all the official statements are running at the moment. I think they want the Mayor and Arthur to stand up together tomorrow morning and give the official line on …" Her voice trailed away.

McCoy nodded. "On someone trying to murder a prosecutor." Another thought struck him. "Neil's name will get out. I need to call Jamie. Neil won't call her — she'll need to tell Katie before it hits the news."

"Call her from the car," Regan suggested, looking past him. "Mike's either trying to signal that the car is ready or trying to tell me he's off to milk a cow."

"Or arrest a cow," McCoy suggested. "If it belongs to Mrs O'Leary." Regan looked blank. "Chicago humor."

She hooked her arm through his and got him moving toward the elevator. "Did Mrs O'Leary's cow play for the Cubs or something?"

"Given their record, I wouldn't be surprised." He let her draw him into the elevator when it arrived. "Mrs O'Leary's cow was popularly blamed for starting the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. It's a classic example of anti-Irish prejudice and you'll eventually hear about that cow from more than one defense attorney trying to convince a jury that their client is the innocent victim of racism."

Regan pressed the button for the ground floor. "Because the cow was Irish?"

"Mrs O'Leary was Irish —" He stopped. Regan was utterly deadpan but there was a tell-tale crinkle at the corners of her eyes.

Mike Logan, cracking jokes about police report writing and Wheeler's driving. Both of them, in the interview room, everything calculated to keep the witness both relaxed and focused, to build rapport. Building that bridge of empathy that will lead some random citizen unfortunate enough to witness a crime all the way to the witness stand, a fully-subscribed member of the prosecution team.

Exactly as Regan is doing right damn now.

"Stop being a damn cop," McCoy snapped. "I don't need you to coddle me or win me over!"

Regan paused. "Remember that night we got a location on Phillip Watts out of Gervits?"

The abrupt change of subject threw him for a second or two, and scrambling after the memory distracted him from his irritation. Regan, blotting blood from a split lip with fingers that tremble. "I took a dive," she says, and though her voice is steady there's a tension to it that McCoy has heard a hundred times before, in the voices of witnesses pushed to the limit. To the limit, and beyond it.

"The night you got his location," McCoy corrected. The doors opened and they stepped out into the lobby.

Regan shrugged. "Potato, Potahto. Remember, we split a pizza and a bottle of wine and you told me about the first time you handled an arraignment before Judge Janice Goldberg. I still can't believe she was on the bench back then."

McCoy stepped ahead of Regan to open the door for her. "She's a New York institution. I'd be willing to bet she was born fifty years old with a gavel in her hand."

"No takers." The patrol car was waiting at the curb. One of the uniformed officers got out and opened the passenger door.

McCoy got in as Regan went around to the other side. He waited until she was in the car and fastening her seatbelt. "What does Janice Goldberg have to do with anything?"

"All I remember about that story is that it somehow involved Germaine Greer and it was hilarious. And your perp got R.O.R'd."

"She'd read that article I wrote and decided to have a little fun with the cocky young A.D.A," McCoy said. "I woke up in a cold sweat remembering that for months."

She turned to look at him. "Then why did you tell the story to me? And why that night?"

He shrugged. "You were shaken up. You needed …" He paused. "A distraction. Dammit. I'm being an asshole again, aren't I?"

"No," Regan said gently. "You're just shaken up." She reached across the backseat and touched his hand. "Call Jamie."

McCoy nodded and took out his cell phone, finding Jamie's number in the contacts directory. He realized as the call went through that he had no idea what time it was, whether or not he'd be waking her up.

Not that late. Jamie answered on the second ring. "Hello, Jack," she said, her tone far too light for her to have heard what had happened. Her next words confirmed it. "What is it this time, emergency search warrant or 7 am motions hearing?"

"Neither," he said. "Jamie. Listen, everything's alright. But there was an … an incident. An armed robbery." No need to tell her that he'd been the target of a murderer. "I was meeting Neil over a case. Neil shot the man before he could shoot anyone else. He wasn't hurt, but there were reporters at the scene. I didn't think you or Katie should hear about it on the news."

"Neil shot someone?" Jamie said incredulously. "He doesn't even have a gun!"

"He had a gun tonight," McCoy said. "I'm a witness, Jamie, so I don't know, I can't know, which way the police or the Office will move on this but the guy had a gun to — to someone's head. I don't think you need to worry. I think it's going to be self-defense all the way. But I guess it's going to be big news tomorrow. I didn't want you, or Katie, to be ambushed by it."

"Yeah," Jamie said slowly. "Thanks. And you were there? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he said. "On my way home."

"By yourself?" Jamie asked, a touch of concern in her voice.

"Two cops and an A.D.A. to make sure I get inside the door," McCoy said. He didn't say so there's no danger of me ending up in a bar. They never talked about the fact that Jamie had seen the worst of his drinking, but he knew she was never entirely convinced he wasn't still in danger of crawling all the way into a bottle.

"The A.D.A. — your Regan Markham?"

"Yeah," McCoy said. My Regan Markham, if this night had gone even slightly according to plan.

"Let me talk to her," Jamie said.

McCoy held the phone out to Regan. "Apparently, it's for you," he said.

Regan took the phone and listened for a moment. "I will, Judge Ross," she said. "Do you want – okay."

She closed the phone and gave it back to McCoy.

"What did Jamie want?" he asked.

"She told me not to let you sweet-talk me into bed," Regan said calmly and one of the cops in the front seat choked trying to smother laugher.

McCoy looked at her, sitting serenely beside him in the squad car. He might have been wrong when he accused her of trying to manage him like any witness, but he wasn't wrong about the calm compassion in her face. It was Regan's cop face, the one she wore when something called up the woman she'd been on the force.

She hadn't been wearing it as she came through the door of the restaurant, ignoring everything her training and her experience would have instilled in her about crime scene protocols. When she'd touched him, he'd known for the first time that he was all right. When he'd taken her in his arms, it had been as if in holding her he was holding everything that mattered in his life, keeping all of it safe and whole.

He'd known, seeing that moment's unguarded, desperate relief on Regan's face when she saw him, how it was for her – for all her talk about decisions, about being sensible, about working relationships versus silly flings.

He'd realized, holding her, how it was for him.

McCoy wasn't sure which had surprised him more.

And now she was putting a distance between them. He didn't want the good cop. There were a dozen officers he knew who could put on that same kindly, impersonal face. He wanted the woman in the car with him to be the woman who'd looked at him as if he was all in the world she wanted to see, the woman whose arms around him had held him with more strength than he'd thought she possessed. He wanted her composure to crack again, as it had when he'd kissed her at One PP, he wanted to see the fierce tenderness she hid beneath it.

He reached out across the backseat of the car and touched her hand. "Should I be pissed with Jamie for giving away my game plan?"

Regan smiled. "Depend on how good a line you got going in sweet-talk," she said. He ran his fingers across the back of her hand, a slow figure eight, holding her gaze, and saw her lips part a little, her cheeks color.

She turned her hand over and folded her fingers around his, holding him still. "I'm going to order some food," she said. "You got a preference?"

He shook his head. "I'm not hungry."

"You will be," Regan said, calmly confident. She took out her own phone. "Mr Huang's okay? It's on the way."

They stopped at the restaurant, and one of the patrol officers ran inside to pick up the food Regan had ordered. A block later, and the blue-and-white let them out at McCoy's building. Regan carried the paper bag stacked with takeaway containers in one hand and took McCoy's arm with the other. He felt himself getting irritated with her all over again. As if I've been rendered incapable of reaching my own apartment.

He shook her hand off as they crossed the lobby of the building. "What did Jamie really say to you? On the phone?"

"Not to let you drink too much," Regan said.

"Then why did you say what you did?" Christ, she'sthe one worried about appearances and Arthur Branch. He pushed the call button for the elevator harder than necessary.

"Because if I'd said she told me to make sure you ate something, you would have refused to let me order dinner out of sheer mule-headed stubbornness," Regan said. "I couldn't think of anything else. I figured two guys in the bag from the 13th joking about what a player you are was a lot better than having them talking about how you maybe have a drinking problem."

The elevator arrived. McCoy held the door for Regan and then followed her on. "I don't have a drinking problem," he said, pressing the button for his floor.

"I know. I would have noticed."

"Jamie thinks … I had a problem. I …" McCoy found it suddenly important to make Regan understand. "When Jamie worked with me, I drank more than she thought I should. But I didn't have a drinking problem. I was …"

"I know," Regan said again, gently. "You were employing a suboptimal coping strategy."

McCoy paused in the act of stepping off the elevator. "That's what Liz called it," he said. "Liz Olivet."

"I guess it's standard shrink bullshit," Regan said, "because I was quoting Dr Skoda." She followed him down the hallway. "I didn't know you'd seen Dr Olivet."

"I didn't," McCoy said tartly, fishing out his keys. "She saw me. It took me a while to work out that she wasn't just happening to drop by my office for coffee and a chat once a week." He realized his hands were shaking again, shaking too badly for him to get the key in the lock.

Regan took them from him matter-of-factly and unlocked the door. "And when you worked it out?"

"I started calling Emil when we needed a consultant psychiatrist." He followed her through the door. "Liz and I are on speaking terms again now, but it took a few years." He paused. "She was trying to help, but …" Liz is gentle and kind and so sympathetic that McCoy feels like a dog that she's found hit by a car at the side of the road. It fills him with anger, an anger that he welcomes because it's infinitely preferable to everything else he feels these days. Yes, he misses Claire, but he can work his way and drink his way through it. He's injured, but injuries heal. There is absolutely no reason for Liz to look at him with such aching sadness.

Because if he admits that his loss is of such magnitude as to warrant Liz Olivet looking at him as if he'd just received a terminal diagnosis, so great that a couple of belts of scotch and late nights with the law reports won't get him past it …

Then he'll have to admit there's no way to get past it at all.

The anger and the sense of loss so acute it was a physical pain washed over him again, as sharply as if no time at all had passed.

"You preferred your own suboptimal coping strategies," Regan said, and McCoy blinked, suddenly unsure if he'd spoken aloud or not."Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt." Regan kicked the door closed behind them. "Kitchen," she said. "Food."

He hung his jacket on one of the hooks by the door. I wonder if the dry-cleaner will be able to get the blood out. "I'm not hungry —"

"You're white as paper and shaking. You need to eat something before you fall on your face."

He put his hands in his pockets."You said that was adrenaline."

"It was adrenaline, when I said it. Now it's low blood-sugar. Come into the kitchen and eat something before you fall into a hypoglycemic coma or something and I have to remember whether I'm supposed to pour orange juice up your nose or put your hand in a bowl of warm water."

He followed her into the kitchen. "The bowl of water is a frat house prank." Which she very well knows. Ten years in uniform, she could do basic first aid in her sleep. Another distraction, another damn patronizing, manipulative strategy —

"There you go. Better not to cast yourself on my tender-but-not-very-well-informed mercies." Regan began to unpack the food. "Sit. Eat."

"I said, I'm not hungry. I'm not a child, Regan, I know whether or not I —" The opened containers released a mingled aroma of Mongolian beef, chow mein and sesame chicken and McCoy's stomach gave a ferocious growl. He realized that he was more than hungry, he was starving, so ravenous that he was light-headed and weak-kneed. He sat down hastily and grabbed the nearest container.

Regan, sitting opposite him, applied herself to her food with the same eagerness, and for a while the only thing either of them said started with could you pass me the —

The containers were all but empty when McCoy put his chopsticks down and leaned back in his chair. "You were right," he said.

"I know," Regan said calmly.

He eyed the last shrimp, but found he was too tired to raise his chopsticks to pick it up. "I'm sorry I —" A yawn surprised him.

"I know," she said again, just as calmly. "Three down, one to go."

"What?"

"One 'S' is followed by four more," Regan said. "Shooting followed by shock, shaking, starving and sleep."

"They teach you that at the Academy?"

She smiled. "I got that from my first partner. Ken Hirata. Twenty year veteran, serving out his last five breaking in rookies. I got almost shot for the first time answering a domestic disturbance with him. I was almost exactly as damn stupid and as damn stubborn as you are, telling him how fine I was while my hands shook so hard I couldn't even open the door of the patrol car."

"Tell me —" Another yawn interrupted him. "Tell me about him."

Regan shrugged a little. "What do you want to know?"

"Anything." He raised his eyebrows. "I told you about Janice Goldberg R. my defendant because I didn't get her joke about The Female Eunuch. Your turn."

"I still don't believe that story," Regan said. "Goldberg hasn't given bail under two hundred thou in living memory."

"It was a weak case. I ended up agreeing to a plea of reckless wounding to avoid an outright acquittal. Your turn, Regan. Tell me a story."

"Okay." She began to stack the takeaway containers together. "So, week two on the job, my uniform still had store creases in it, not yet authorized to carry a service weapon, Hirata and me get a call. Reported deceased, check it out. So we roll lights-and-sirens all the way and I'm shitting myself." She got up and carried the takeaway containers to the kitchen trash. "I'd never seen a D.B. I'm wondering if I'm going to faint, or ralph, or disgrace myself in some other way, and meanwhile Hirata has his foot to the floor and he's telling me about all the floaters and three-week decomps he's ever seen." She dropped the containers in the trash and turned, leaning back against the sink. "I'd guess you wouldn't have ever seen a floater."

"You'd guess wrong," McCoy said. His eyes wanted to close, and he forced himself to keep them open. "When I was doing your job, I spent my share of time asking questions over autopsies."

"Well, I hadn't, then, and Hirata made it sound even worse than it is, if you can imagine such a thing. By the time we get there, I'm sure that whatever I'm about to see is going to be unimaginably bad. We go in, there's a middle-aged lady in the living room saying her husband is dead in the bedroom. It turns out she's covered him with a sheet. Hirata checks him while I stand near the door trying not to look too closely. He says, yeah, he's dead, you stay with him while I go call the meat-wagon. So there's me, in the room alone with this corpse under a sheet, working up my courage to take a look. And just when I take a step forward, suddenly —"

"Suddenly?" McCoy asked when she didn't go on.

"He sits straight up, and —" Regan held her arms straight out in front of her. "Brains …" she groaned in the best approved horror movie style. "Braaainsss … The guy under the sheet was James Killen, one of Hirata's friends from a different station. The two of them ran the same joke on every one of the rookies. Hirata was the corpse for Killen's newbies, and vice versa."

McCoy could remember the picture he'd seen of Regan, on her graduation day, so young, so earnest. "What did you do?"

"I peed my pants." Regan grinned. "And then I tased his ass. Hirata comes racing back in and Killen is lying on the floor twitching and I'm saying he's a zombie, he's a fucking zombie and Hirata looks at me and says, Reagan, you fucking idiot, tasers don't work on the undead, you are off my team for the zombie apocalypse."

McCoy began to laugh. "You tased a zombie."

"Damn straight." Regan folded her arms and gave a single, decisive nod. "Seattle PD has firm non-discrimination policies. Male or female, black or white, living or dead, makes no difference to us. We hook 'em and book 'em with no regard to race, creed, color — or pulse."

McCoy shook his head, still chuckling. "What were you supposed to do? What did they expect you to do?"

Regan shrugged. "Run screaming. Which, if he had been a zombie, would have been the smarter play. It also would have given Hirata the chance to video me hauling ass away from the living dead for the enjoyment of the whole squad-room the next day."

"Rookie hazing," McCoy said, and Regan nodded. He looked at her, propped against the sink, her arms folded, her long legs crossed at the ankles. He could absolutely believe that if Regan was ever really confronted by the living dead, her first reaction would be to make an arrest. If she had probable cause, of course. "His mistake. Although he was right about the zombie apocalypse."

She blinked, and then frowned. "I think I'm offended."

He shook his head. "Regan, if a civilization-ending plague of anything breaks out, you're going to be among the first to go down, because you're constitutionally incapable of turning your back on anyone who needs your help." He fought a yawn. "Witness this evening."

She looked away. "False pretenses. I …" Her voice trailed away, and she shrugged. "Didn't want to be on my own, either." She closed her eyes, a muscle moving along her jaw. "They went in, I heard the shot, it was a minute or so before they said who it was. But you don't take that kind of chance unless things are going real bad, real fast, and I thought …"

"Regan." He reached out toward her. "Come here."

"Sorry." She pushed herself upright and crossed to him, taking his outstretched hand. "I haven't had all that terrific an evening, either."

McCoy tugged her closer, until she was standing by his chair and he could put his free arm around her waist. "And I've spent most of it being an asshole."

She laughed softly, arm circling his shoulders. "All that fight-or-flight has to go somewhere. I've seen worse than a bit of irritability."

Closing his eyes, he leaned against her. "Such as?"

"Well, I know a woman who smacked her boss in the kisser," Regan said mildly, running her fingers through his hair, and he laughed.

"The circumstances were —" He yawned. "Different. You were …" The train of thought eluded him. "It was different."

"Jack." Regan's voice was very soft. "You're falling asleep."

" 'm not," he murmured.

"Liar," she said fondly, a laugh in her voice. "You should go to bed."

He tightened his grip on her. "But then you'll leave."

"If you want me to stay, I'll stay," Regan assured him. "But you need to lie down, Jack."

He let her hoist him to his feet. "I want you to stay." She tried to steer him toward the hall and he resisted. Hands on her waist, he tried to read her expression. It was never easy at the best of times, particularly difficult at the moment since he was tired enough to be seeing double. "Regan. I want you to stay. But what do you want?"

She stepped closer to him and put her hand on his cheek. "I want to stay. I want to be here, with you, and I want to stay. And I also want you to lie down while you're still conscious."

He nodded slowly. "I can support that agenda," he said, with what was meant to be a charming smile, ruined by another uncontrollable yawn.

"Then come on," she said, and turned him toward the door.

McCoy's eyes closed on their own accord on the way down the hall and refused to open again. He trusted Regan not to let him walk into the wall and let her guide him. "Bed," she said, and he felt the mattress against his knees. He started to sit on the edge, lost his balance, and ended up lying on his face on the bed. Shoes, he thought vaguely. I should take off my shoes. Then he felt Regan doing just that.

"Thanks," he said, or thought he said. He managed to roll over. "Regan. Come here." He felt the mattress give as she sat down on the edge of the bed, found her arm and tugged her toward him. "Here. Properly."

Perhaps he was already asleep and dreaming, because Regan gave in to his urging and lay down beside him. "Don't you mean improperly?" she asked.

McCoy concentrated, and managed to raise his arm to circle her shoulders. "That was certainly my plan for the evening," he mumbled. And after a detour, things are back on track. Regan was in his bed, they were lying down, his arms were around her. He just needed to rest his eyes a moment longer, and then he would kiss her and —

Sleep hit him like a wave of black velvet and he was out.