Regan stopped dead in the doorway to Abbie's living room. Ishould have known Jack would be here. If she'd thought about it, she would have known — because where else would Jack McCoy be, when a key witness's credibility was in question, but getting answers?
McCoy, and Lennie Briscoe, and Ed Green. That was just about everybody whose opinion mattered to her these days, all in the room with her.
And Green was holding a DVD in a case. It could have been anything, it could have been Abbie's holiday snaps or an installation disk for a word processing program, except Regan could see the Post-It note stuck to it, the one with those three damning words in Marco's handwriting.
So now they know. And soon Anita Van Buren will know, and Mike Logan, and Megan Wheeler … Serena will know, Abbie will know …
White lighting flashed outside the window, bright enough to cast the faces of the three men in sharp relief for an instant, followed by a roll of thunder that went on and on.
"What are you doing here?" McCoy asked. It took Regan a moment to make sense of the question. What are you doing here was not the question he should be asking her. What have you done? maybe. Or who are you, really?
She pointed at the DVD that Green held. "I came to get that. Carver will need to see it before Gorton shows the judge."
McCoy looked at his watch. "Did you come via Schenectady?"
"I walked."
"Walked," he said flatly. "Without your protection. And why the hell aren't you answering your phone?"
"Yes, without my protection," Regan said. "I think we all already know exactly how Gorton's going to take care of any testimony I might be able to give against him. He's not going to take the risk of trying anything criminal, not when he doesn't need to. And I needed a minute."
McCoy scowled at her. "You needed a minute. And why? To think about how you were going to explain letting Neil Gorton ambush me?"
"I think we're going to leave you guys to it," Briscoe said, putting a hand on Green's shoulder and turning him toward the door. "We'll be outside in case Gorton gets any ideas."
"Stay," Regan said. "Lennie, Ed — stay. Jack's not the only one I owe an explanation. And an apology"
"Honey, you don't owe us anything," Briscoe said.
"Call in," McCoy said to the two detectives, "Tell Major Case that Regan's here and they can call off the dogs."
"Will do," Green said, and stepped past Regan into the hall. "You want me to fetch you a towel, counselor?"
A towel. Regan realized that the cold trickling down the back of her neck was water from her sodden hair, that her clothes were as drenched as if she'd showered in them. "Thank you."
"So what's your explanation?" McCoy demanded. "What's the real story here, Regan?"
"Did you watch that DVD, or just search my room for it?" Regan asked.
"Ed Green searched, and yes. I watched it."
Regan folded her arms. "Then you don't need to ask." Green came back in to the living room. He had a towel from Abbie's bathroom in one hand and he offered it to Regan. She took it, and said, "I'm sorry. To all of you."
"You should be," McCoy snapped. "Jesus Christ, Regan! You know enough about witness prep, or you should know enough about witness prep, not to let me get ambushed like that! If you'd told me, I would have been able to —"
"To what?" Regan asked. "To erase history?" She looked at the towel in her hands, trying to work out what to do with it. After a moment she patted her arms with it, water oozing from her jacket.
"Are you telling me," McCoy said, low and rapid, "that what Durham said was true?"
"You watched the video," she said. "You know it's true."
"Frank Tourmetti was unarmed when you shot him, and Mr Durham dropped his hold-out piece at the scene to cover it up."
"Yeah."
"You know, that CCTV footage, there's more than one way to look at it," Briscoe said. "You had just been shot. It's been known to affect the judgment."
Green raised his eyebrows. "You got that right," he muttered.
McCoy's phone buzzed. He dug it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and silenced the call. "Why didn't you tell me any of this before now? Why am I only hearing about it from Neil Gorton, of all people?"
Regan stared at him. Why didn't I tell you? Jesus Christ. Jack McCoy would work day and night to close the cell doors on someone who'd done what Regan had done, in his own jurisdiction. And he wonders why I didn't tell him? "Because I thought you'd never know," she said finally. "I'm sorry. I lied. To all of you, at least, I didn't tell you the truth. I let you think better of me than I deserve. I thought I could … turn a new page. Get a fresh start." She shrugged a little. "I should have known, there's never any such thing."
Briscoe cleared his throat. "Regan, honey, I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that neither Ed or me has said anything about any of your rights. And —" he shot a hard look at Green. "Neither of us going to."
Green shrugged. "And you're in a room with two detectives and a district attorney," he said. "Sure feels like it might be custodial to me."
Regan's eyes stung and her vision blurred with tears. She scratched at her cheekbone to hide the quiver in her lips. Even knowing what she'd done, they had her back. It was almost like being inside the blue wall again, like she'd been —
When Marco had my back.
"You guys hungry?" she said when she could be confident she could speak with her voice shaking. "There's probably something in the fridge I can heat up."
"No." McCoy had a tone he used for recalcitrant witnesses and stubborn defendants and he used it now. "None of us is hungry. We're going to talk about this and we're going to do it now."
"I could eat," Briscoe said, with a glance at McCoy. "Come on. Let's see what we can find."
He followed her into the kitchen, Green behind him, McCoy bringing up the rear.
"I'm not going to stop asking, and Ron Carver isn't going to stop needing to know, because you stall, Regan," McCoy said testily.
"Cool your jets, Jack," Briscoe said. "No-one thinks well on an empty stomach." He opened the fridge and surveyed its contents. "No offense, Regan, but you girls keep a pretty lean cupboard, here. Just about the only things that aren't in a takeaway container are potatoes, and a block of cheese."
"Neither of us are much good in the kitchen," Regan said. "There's some Indian that should still be okay —"
"Why don't you find me a potato peeler," Briscoe said, "and a sharp knife, and a cheese grater, and a cutting board, and a couple of bowls."
"I'm not sure we really have the time to —" McCoy started to say.
Green put a hand on his shoulder, leaned close and said something Regan couldn't hear, and McCoy subsided.
Regan found the things Briscoe had asked for and set them on the counter. "You want to peel or slice?" he asked her.
"Slice," Regan said. "Gran-Da always said I take too much off when I peel."
Briscoe nodded. "There's an art to it." He pulled two stools over to the counter and sat on one of them. Putting the knife and the cutting board in front of Regan, he picked up a potato and began to peel it. "You did this a lot with the old man, I'm guessing."
"Had to pull my weight, right from the start," Regan said, taking the peeled potato.
"Paper thin slices," Briscoe said, and Regan nodded and began to cut. She had done this a lot with her great-grandfather, every night for almost ten years: peeling carrots, shelling peas, cutting, chopping, drying the dishes after dinner while Gran-Da washed them. They'd eaten at the kitchen table, too, even though the house had a dining room. The dining room was for company, which they never had. The kitchen was where they lived, where all the important conversations happened.
She realized as she picked up the second potato that she'd come in here for precisely that reason. The kitchen was a place where you could say things that you couldn't say anywhere else, at any other time, while your eyes and hands were busy and the person you were talking to was just as occupied.
"There was just the two of us," she said. "He had his way of doing things, and he wasn't going to change it. One week I thought dinner was pizza when my father had managed to find a day's work and Cheetos in front of the TV if he hadn't. The next it was sitting down at the table at six sharp each evening to meat and three vegetables. Up at six in the morning to make time for chores and a proper breakfast before he drove me to the school bus, and I think the only time he let me stay home sick I had a broken leg. And that was just two days. The third I was back on the bus with my cast and my crutches."
"Sounds like he was hard on you," Green said, putting a stool on the other side of the counter and sitting down.
"He was a hard man," Regan said. "Not hard on me, particularly. Just hard. He used to tell me about how it was for him in the old days. Him and his partner, Mick. Working the back-roads. He was old enough to have been a cop during Prohibition, you know? He used to tell me that you're never beat until you quit, but the second you quit, you've lost. Give up and you're gone, he used to say."
Briscoe nodded. "Sound advice," he said. He glanced at McCoy. "Pull up a pew, Jack. Grate some of that cheese."
Regan couldn't look away from the tricky task of cutting potatoes into exactly even slices, but she heard another stool scrape on the floor. "I was peeling potatoes the first time Gran-Da told me you couldn't let a man live after he'd tried to kill you once already," she told the cutting board. "He said, if a man draws down on you, you put him in the ground. Then or later. And you're taking too much away with the peel, girl."
"Is that what happened?" Briscoe asked. "That night?"
"I could hear his voice." God, she could hear it still, scratchy and creaking with age. Give up and you're gone, girl. Give up and you're gone. "I was hurting, I was bleeding, I was listening to people I knew dying and I was scared." She stopped. "And those are all excuses. I had ten years in, I was a grown woman who'd been in more than one hairy situation, and all I could think to do was ask a dead old man for advice."
"I wanted my mom," Green said quietly. "Last thing I remember was wanting my mom. The sensible thing would have been to want an ambulance, because god only knows what my mom could have done for me at that point, but that's the thought that was going through my head."
Regan took the next potato and turned it over and over in her hands. "I was thinking that if you give up, you're gone," she said. "And I was thinking, if a man draws down on you, you put him in the ground."
"I think a lawyer could make a pretty good case that remembering your grandfather's advice doesn't exactly rise to the level of intent," Briscoe said, and at McCoy's surprised look, "I might have only done one semester at Brooklyn Law School, Jack, but I've listened to you and just about every other A.D.A. in One Hogan Place explain the elements of the crime to me like I'm a ten-year-old over the past twenty years. And I've been in a courtroom once or twice over the years, too."
McCoy shook his head. "If this was about charges, I'd agree. But Regan, you're going to have to give a lot more detail to Ron Carver, and then again to the judge. Without your account of seeing Gorton and Kuen together, everything falls apart like the house of cards it is. There is no way Judge Steinman is going to rule a challenge to your credibility as a witness out of order."
Regan sliced up another potato. "Isn't the credibility of a witness a matter for a jury to decide? United States v. Welsh held that there's a distinction between probative and credible — "
"Which would be relevant, if Ron Carver was asking Judge Steinman to admit your testimony at trial, but as far as this motion in limine is concerned, her honor is the trier of fact as well as of law. The question is whether there is sufficient probable cause to believe that an indictment against Neil would be sustained with the addition of potential accomplice testimony from Rivera. Whether or not Steinman believes your account becomes pertinent."
"And that's why I only did the one semester," Briscoe said. "Ed, see if you can find a big frying pan anywhere."
"Cupboard to the left of the stove," Regan said. She picked up the last potato and began to cut it up. "It doesn't really matter what my account is, does it? Gorton's going to show that CCTV footage and everyone in the courtroom, including the judge, is going to see a bad cop, a cold-blooded killer."
At the edge of her vision, she could see McCoy shake his head. "No. Not cold-blooded. No-one could watch that footage and say cold-blooded."
"Just a killer then." Regan watched Briscoe start to arrange the sliced potatoes in the saucepan. "That should make tomorrow's hearing go just fine."
McCoy leaned forward a little. "Regan, you have to tell me what happened."
"You've seen the video. Now you know exactly as much as I do."
"Tell me what happened. The judge is going to ask, Regan. And I couldn't stop Ron asking you for the details so he can be prepared, even if I tried. Which I won't. Neil Gorton is going to get away with murder if tomorrow goes badly."
There was nothing else for Regan to do with her hands. She set the knife down carefully. "I know," she said. With one finger, she turned the knife to line up precisely with the edge of chopping board. "I guess this is my test, isn't it, Jack?" Will I be like Serena, and take the risk of letting a murderer walk because the personal price is too high?
Or will I be like Jack McCoy, and do everything possible to win the case in front of me, no matter the cost?
"Maybe it's mine," McCoy said quietly, and Regan looked up to see him watching her steadily. "I draw your attention to the incident in question," he said, voice level, matter-of-fact, the exact tone he used when eliciting testimony from a prosecution witness. "Please describe, in your own words, what happened."
If the question had come from Jack McCoy, her friend and her boss and her partner and yes, her lover, Regan couldn't have answered, wouldn't have known how to begin to answer. Could never have found a way to tell him the truths that would turn every one of those things into the past tense.
But it was E.A.D.A. John James McCoy asking her, asking as a prosecutor with a police witness in the box.
Regan could still remember the first trial she'd ever had to give evidence at, when an ordinary stop-and-search had turned up a gun and a confession. David Cohen had prepared her for that one. Don't editorialize. Don't speculate. Say exactly what happened, as far as you know from your own observation. Keep it matter-of-fact. Don't give the defense any chance to suggest you were angry, or scared, or anything other than a professional peace officer doing exactly what you were supposed to.
"At that time, I was assigned to the Narcotics Abatement Squad at Seattle Police Department Headquarters as a public liaison officer," Regan said, not thinking about anything except the details. "I was working the late shift. Essentially, my job was to answer any phone calls that came during the evening reporting drug activity, determine if they needed an immediate police response or not, and catch up on paperwork generated during the day. I worked on the second floor. At approximately 9.45 pm, while I was in the ladies' washroom on that floor, I heard gunfire." Regan kept her voice calm and even, thinking about the white line of a road at night, rolling towards her and vanishing under the wheels of her car. "I left the washroom."
"What did you observe?" McCoy asked.
Regan watched Briscoe layering grated cheese and sliced potatoes in the frying pan as if her life depended on being able to repeat the recipe later. "There is a short corridor on the second floor where the washrooms are located. At the end of that corridor, I could see a man lying prone. I recognized him as Detective Mickey Farrell. When I approached him I could see that he was gravely injured. His service weapon was lying on the floor." She didn't think about Mickey's eyes going fixed and glazed, didn't think about the fact that she'd had to reach across his dead body to take his gun. Say exactly what happened, as far as you know from your own observation. Keep it matter-of-fact. "Before I could assist him, he died. I picked up his gun."
"What, if anything, did you do after you picked up the gun?" McCoy asked.
Regan took a deep breath. "I went around the corner of the corridor into the bull-pen."
"What was your purpose, at that time?"
"To get to a phone. Call 911, call back-up, call Tactical Response — anyone. Everyone."
McCoy kept up the same familiar rhythm. "And what, if anything, happened then?"
"I saw a man I recognized as a janitor who worked in the building firing a semi-automatic weapon indiscriminately. I later learned that his name was Frank Tourmetti. I also later learned that the weapon he was using had been illegally modified to make it fully automatic. I instructed him to drop the gun." She paused. "He turned toward me and he didn't lower the gun."
"Can you be absolutely certain he was aware you were a police officer?"
"Yes," Regan said steadily. "I identified myself, I was in uniform, and we were in a part of the police station that was not open to the public."
"How did you identify yourself?"
"I said Police, police, drop it, drop it, you fucker," Regan said dryly, and heard Briscoe laugh where he stood at the stove.
"And what, if anything, did Mr Tourmetti do then?"
"He shot me," Regan said, flat and even. "Four times."
"And after that?"
"His gun jammed. He dropped it to the floor and he put his hands over his head."
"And what, if anything, did you do then?"
Regan shook her head a little. "I moved toward him in order to take him into custody."
McCoy paused, and when he spoke again his voice was a little sharper. His cross-examination voice. "Did you call for help?"
"No."
"Why not? Didn't you state that calling for help was the reason you moved out into the room?"
She shrugged a little. "I don't know why I didn't."
"Was it because you'd already formed the intent to execute Mr Tourmetti and didn't want anyone getting in the way?"
"No." She made it a strong, clear denial, without anger, without heat. It helped that it was the truth. "At no time did I plan to kill Mr Tourmetti. I sought to arrest him. I'm not going to tell you that my decisions were the correct ones. They weren't. For one thing, there were police officers on the floor above me, at least some of them with service weapons. I could have used the internal phone system to alert them to the fact that the suspect was disarmed. I could have called 911 and they would have relayed the same message. I could have remembered that those officers upstairs would have heard the gunfire and might even then have been ready to assist me. I could have kept my distance, held Mr Tourmetti at gunpoint, and waited. All of those would have been better decisions than the one I made."
"Why didn't you do any of those things?"
"I didn't think of them. I was a police officer, Mr Tourmetti had just committed a crime, and it was my job to take him into custody."
"And what happened then?"
"I got about five feet from Tourmetti." She met his gaze. "And I shot him in the head."
"Why?"
"I wish to god I knew," Regan said flatly.
