CHAPTER 2: AFTERSHOCK
Claire entered the classroom where Mac was finishing his class.
"How is it possible that the Idler case upheld the statute, while the Bannen case had the exact opposite holding?" Mac asked the class. Claire found a seat at the back, smiling in recognition of Mac's question. "Miss... Stadler?" Mac picked one of the students in the front row.
"Um, in Idler, the plaintiffs sued as a class?"
"Ah. So hundreds of people were ripped off. Irrelevant. Guess again, Miss Stadler," Mac said witheringly.
The poor hapless student made another lame guess that Claire couldn't hear. Mac looked away from her in mild disdain, then stepped down off the stage, approaching the girl.
"Take out your case book. Look at the first page on Idler, Miss Stadler and tell me why the holding is exactly the opposite to that in Bannen," he stood before the young woman, who, Claire reflected, probably strongly resembled a deer in the headlights as she stared up at him. "The answer is not on my forehead, Miss Stadler, look at the damn book." Such vintage Mac. He was so abrasive as a professor. As a person too, but his manner often hid a sensitive, caring heart.
"I'm, I'm sorry, I - I don't know what you're looking for," the poor girl admitted.
"Because Bannen was written by Renquist," Claire mouthed the words along with him. Good old Mac, still enthusiastically intimidating students after twenty-five years. "People, the law is written by human beings. Some with less grey matter than others," he glanced at the girl significantly. "Remember that." The class concluded and the students filed out. Claire stood and approached Mac.
"Here for a refresher?" he asked her.
"Some things never change. You pulled that Renquist thing on me." That poor student was probably going to kick herself for days, and definitely never sit in the front row again.
"And you never read a case the same way after that," Mac replied with satisfaction.
"I never dared to!"
"Proving once again that fear is an excellent motivator," Mac said smugly.
"I still don't think that's what Socrates had in mind."
"That's exactly what he had in mind."
"Well he never had to set foot in a courtroom."
"Ah, but if he did-" Mac began.
"He'd be totally unprepared," she interrupted him. Law school. Harvard hadn't taught her a damn thing about what being a lawyer was all about, and Mac had told her enough about his current school that she knew it was just more of the same. "Look what goes on here, Mac. The school teaches contracts without ever showing a contract to the students. Civil procedure, nobody ever shows us a complaint, or answer..."
"That's because it's a law school, not a lawyer school."
"Always a snappy answer at the ready," Claire commented, and he chuckled. Mac was a lot like Jack in that respect.
They left the building and started walking towards Mac's office. It was so nice out here, the trees on campus blossoming, a late-spring/early-summer breeze ruffling her hair. Claire breathed in deeply, glad that she wasn't stuck doing research or slaving away at some case on this beautiful day. Today was a day to be alive, experiencing life and the world around you. Not shoving the world away in the fruitless pursuit of ephemeral justice.
Not being put into the ground after being executed in the wee hours of the morning.
"So what brings you to our fair campus today, Claire?"
Claire shrugged. "I'm not sure," she said. "Hey, can't a girl come and see her old professor just to say hi?"
"How's work?" Mac asked, ignoring her attempt at levity.
"It's there," she said evasively. Not that she was here, she didn't know quite how to begin to talk to Mac. There was so much to talk about.
"I ask again, then, Counselor, how's work?"
"It's... it's not much like what I expected when I was in your class." She thought for a minute of the unfortunate Miss Stadler. She had no idea what she was in for. "The bottom line is, we walk out of here, we have no idea what we're walking into."
"You have a mind that actually functions," Mac pointed out.
"I'm just saying there's a lot more to the profession than reading Law Review articles."
"You don't like trial work, you can always write wills, do house closings..."
"Or teach."
Mac laughed. "Touché!"
Claire hesitated. "It's a juggling act. Pragmatism... idealism... cynicism," she paused for a moment. "I'm thinking about quitting."
"Oh bravo, another disillusioned member of the bar. Take a ticket, Claire, there's a hell of a line ahead of you," he said over his shoulder as they entered his building. "What's the trouble? Weary of contemplating the lavish lifestyles of defense lawyers from afar? Do I sense covetousness for the finer things of life?" They smiled at each other. Mac knew her too well for that. Envious though she might be for the finer things that a defense lawyer could afford, she hadn't gone into law for the money.
"So what is it? Tired of seeing criminals evade justice?"
"Sometimes," Claire admitted.
Mac paused on his way into the main office. "Claire... I hope you don't want me to give you a pep talk on the importance of representing The People of the State of New York." Claire smiled again.
"No, I don't need a pep talk. You were never very good at pep."
"A lack in my character of which I am exceedingly proud. Pep is for cheerleaders. Excuse me for a moment," Mac went to get his mail and hand some papers in to a secretary for photocopying or filing. Claire looked around the law school's main office. Right in the middle, in terms of décor, from the offices where she spent most of her time. The 27th Precinct had not been designed with aesthetics or ergonomics in mind, and Jack and Adam's offices... they might be civil servants, but they rated fairly respectable surroundings nonetheless. Mac rejoined her and motioned her out the door.
"I was up at Attica today, Mac," she began as they entered Mac's office.
"That was damned stupid," he commented, shutting the door behind them. Typical, challenging, Mac.
"I was part of it. I had an obligation."
"And you want me to say that it's all right?"
"No, of course not!"
"Well it is," Mac stated calmly, sitting down.
Claire felt like he'd thrown a glass of water in her face. Mac? Mac Geller saying an execution was OK? "Wow," she said after a stunned moment. She sat down.
"You're surprised?"
That was putting it rather mildly. "I guess not all your lectures stayed the same."
"The law must be stable but should never stand still. It's not an absolute, it's not like physics," he pointed out. He'd used the same words so many times to explain away changes in the law towards abortion, women's rights, civil rights, segregation, and, when she was in his class, environmental protection and gay rights. This - using the same words to excuse changing the law to make it legal for the justice system to take a life...
"But State-sanctioned killing?"
"It's the penicillin of the nineties."
Claire felt ill. "You shoulda been an ad man, Mac," she said bitterly. Was everybody just an old cynic now? Is that what was fashionable among lawyers these days?
"I am. What do you think the law is, anyway?"
"A way of bringing order to the chaos."
"It's society's way of slapping itself on the back. Look what a great job we're doing, look how civilized we've become," he said derisively.
She was repelled. Mac Geller, who used to teach about legal ethics and the beauty of the law, cynically proclaiming it to be nothing more than an exercise in self-delusion. "There has to be some exactitude, Mac! Taking a life is wrong. Period."
"Well, you can fool yourself, but you can't fool me. You didn't go up there out of obligation. You went up there to show off your sense of moral superiority."
Suddenly she was angry. Angry and incredibly sad. How dare he dismiss everything she was feeling, everything she was struggling with, as mere posturing. "It's not superiority. It's conviction. What happened this morning is gonna stick with me for the rest of my life. And since when is conviction a character flaw?" she flung at him, sensing her throat constricting and her eyes filling with useless tears.
"When it turns into self-congratulatory depression," he returned calmly, crushingly. "You can quit the profession, Claire. You just can't quit the human race."
"Thanks, Mac." This was going nowhere. This was worse than arguing with Jack. She stood up to leave.
"Claire?"
"Yes?" she turned around impatiently.
"You know your mother would like you to come by one of these days for dinner," he said gently.
She nodded, not trusting herself to say anything, and left.
ooo000ooo
Mac gazed at the door as it closed behind Claire. Standard modus operandi for them. He had always had a somewhat conflictive, though positive, relationship with Claire, both as teacher and stepfather, and their conversations often ended with her leaving the room in disgust. But she always came back to him afterwards and showed that she had thought about what they had talked about, that it made her grow.
But maybe he'd been too harsh with her. He'd heard about the execution, knew that Claire had been involved, and wondered if she would attend. Claire was young, idealistic, passionate, and the execution had apparently affected her deeply, as anybody who knew Claire would have known it would. Mac could have told her that going to see it would be a bad idea.
Should he have let her get away with her histrionics, just this once?
He mentally shook himself. No, of course not. Claire wasn't a child. She was a bright young woman who needed to be shaken up a little bit when she let her emotions get the better of her. So she'd gone to the execution and seen a man die. How was that any worse than seeing the aftermath of the many murders that she had prosecuted?
She'd said this would be with her for the rest of her life. Claire sometimes overstated the facts in her zeal to express herself. She was immersing herself in self-pity, according the event more of an emotional impact than it deserved.
Mickey Scott had died today. That was inescapable fact. He would have died whether Claire was there or not. That was inescapable fact as well. Claire felt that she had an obligation to see the end of the sentence, and that was fine, but she had to understand that attending an execution should not be seen as an excuse to wallow in useless moral hand-wringing. It was self-indulgence, and Claire was better than that.
ooo000ooo
Claire paused outside of Mac's building. Her mother would like her to come by for dinner. For what purpose, exactly? So that her mother could wax poetic about her new drapes and Mac could attack her principles again?
She looked at her watch. Early afternoon. Well, this had been a waste of time. Of all the times that she and Mac had had good talks, challenging talks, resulting in growth, this... this had been a dismal failure. She felt even more let down than before.
She also felt deeply disturbed. Could there be a grain of truth to Mac's cynical words? Could it be that she wasn't disturbed about the morality of the execution and the end of Scott's life, but only about how that affected her?
She felt responsible for Scott's death. What did that mean, exactly? Did she have a right to go off and feel sorry for herself for the rest of the day? At what point did her moral soul-searching become a mere indulgence, or, as Mac had called it, self-congratulatory depression?
Did she feel morally superior to the rest of the people there today, the rest of the people involved in Scott's case? She recalled her feelings of impatience towards Jack, napping on his way to the execution. She recalled her relief that Lennie was there too, at least unsure about the process and not out for blood like Jack and Curtis and everybody else in the room.
Who was she to feel morally superior to any of them? She thought she was the only one feeling for Scott... but was she? How could she know what was going on in Jack's mind, Lennie's, Curtis'... Scott's brother's?
For that matter... what did that mean, 'feeling for' Mickey Scott? Did she even know enough about Scott to be able to think of him, feel for him?
She recalled wondering why Scott hadn't made his lawyers fight his death sentence. She didn't know why. She had no idea. Why not?
Well, because she hadn't asked.
And why hadn't she asked?
Because it would have been inappropriate. She was a prosecutor and he was a convicted felon that she had helped to convict. It wasn't appropriate for her to go to him and ask him, So, Mr. Scott, tell me, why aren't you fighting your sentence?
It wasn't the done thing.
What did that matter? When the stake was a man's life, what did 'the done thing' matter? If she really felt such sympathy and compassion for Scott, shouldn't she have gone to see him, asked him? Not hidden behind concerns about impropriety? Maybe if she'd asked, she might have found some way to get the appeals process started. Delayed his execution. Possibly even saved his life.
She sighed. This was what always happened when she came to see Mac. She wound up questioning herself. Normally it was disturbing but challenging, invigorating. Not today. Maybe today what she needed was not challenge, but sympathy. But where could sympathy be found?
ooo000ooo
Well, a diner might not offer sympathy but it could at least offer sustenance. She picked up a magazine somebody had left behind - Vogue, something she would no doubt completely forget two seconds after she finished reading it - and ate a light lunch, skimming through the articles. The diner was surprisingly empty for early afternoon, and she was seated close to a television set that was tuned to a local station. All of a sudden she looked up at the sound of a familiar voice.
"Mickey Scott was declared dead at 12:22 am Eastern Standard Time. The cause of death was cardiac arrest caused by lethal injection," Adam Schiff was saying. There was a din of reporters shouting questions. Adam pointed to one of them
"What's going to happen to the body?" he asked.
"The family has 24 hours to claim it. If they don't, it'll be buried at State expense," Claire reflected that it would be very surprising if anybody in Scott's family claimed the body. If they didn't go to see him die, they wouldn't want the expense of seeing him buried. Adam had moved on to another reporter, a woman.
"Mr. Schiff, isn't it true when you were in private practice you wrote an amicus brief against the death penalty?" she asked. Claire remembered it well. She had read it during the Paul Sandig case, when Adam was agonizing over whether or not to seek the death penalty for Sandig.
"That was twenty-five years ago," Adam answered evasively.
"And you've since changed your mind?"
"The people changed theirs. Thank you," he left the podium.
Claire turned away from the TV and finished her sandwich. The people changed theirs. And that made it OK. She'd read his amicus brief, and it had surprised her to read Adam, cynical, 'make a deal' Adam, arguing so passionately about the injustice of the death penalty, the ethical necessity for the State to never, ever take a life and turn itself into a murderer.
And now this. 'The people changed theirs'.
She knew Adam had been conflicted about asking for the death penalty in the Sandig case. She'd never seen Adam like that before, his weary curmudgeon's face unsure and hesitant, he who was so quick to make pronouncements and decisions. She'd wondered how he would feel when Sandig finally did face the needle, if that moment ever came, what with the lengthy processes of appeals that Sandig had before him. But Scott had beaten Sandig to the table.
Adam hadn't visibly agonized over Scott's sentence, which made sense. Not only was Scott not the first murderer to come onto Adam's plate as a possible death sentence, he was far less sympathetic than Sandig. It was somewhat more difficult to feel hesitant about putting to death an unrepentant rapist-murderer with no real family and a violent history than it was to put to death a conservative, relatively law-abiding accountant with a wife and children.
Now Scott had been executed, and Claire wondered how that impacted on Adam. Did it make an impact? Was there anything left of the passionate, principled defense lawyer he had once been? Or was that all in the past, twenty-five years ago, like his amicus brief?
DA 'Make a Deal' Schiff. He also treated justice as a game, much like Jack, only for him the stakes were votes, not ego. She'd thrown that in his face a few weeks ago over the case of James Smith, a homeless schizophrenic who had gone berserk and slaughtered three people and permanently maimed a fourth.
It had turned out that she'd pled Smith out for stalking a few months before with a slap on the wrist, and everything had hit the fan. The press had had a field day with her lapse in judgment - it was easy to see, in hindsight, that Smith should never have been pled out. Adam had been furious with her, in part because she'd caused him public embarrassment and in part because he didn't want her to use the DA's office to make up for her mistakes. She had angrily defended herself, telling him "My mistake was following your lead, Mr. Schiff. I cut a deal the way you like them - quick, cheap, and out the door."
Jack had sat helplessly looking from her to Adam while the two of them shouted at each other before Adam took her off the case and she stormed out. She'd been furious with Adam and furious with herself, furious with the whole justice system. She'd told Jack that she was starting to think they were on the Maginot line of the justice system, and it was wearing her down. That she was doubting the whole system, that she was thinking of quitting.
And Jack had pulled her back. He'd asked her to be his second chair on the case, defying Adam's express wishes. He'd reminded her that she didn't have to apologize for being human and making an honest mistake, that she couldn't have foreseen Smith's future actions, that she had enough on her plate without feeling guilty about something that really wasn't her fault. That she could still do good work, put Smith away so that at least he wouldn't do it again. It had helped, but not resolved her conflict, her feelings of dissatisfaction and burnout.
How long had Jack been doing this? How long had Adam? No wonder they were cynical. She felt burnt out after just a few years.
So burnt out, in fact, that she'd put in a job application at the U.S. Attorney's office. She hadn't told Jack about it - in fact, they hadn't talked about her thoughts of quitting, not outright, since the Smith case. She didn't even know how she felt about her application. She wasn't sure what she wanted from a possible job change. Was it just that she needed a change of pace? Or would the U.S. Attorney's office be more of the same, just a different office?
Or did she just want to get away from Jack?
Or did she just want to get out from under Jack's shadow, professionally? It was so hard to separate Jack from his job, separate their relationship as lovers from their relationship as coworkers. Could what she and Jack had together survive their not working together?
For that matter, could it survive their working together, especially after the last few weeks?
ooo000ooo
Claire left the diner and wandered into a bookstore, rudderless and dissatisfied. Today just wasn't working out. She needed distraction, but she kept obsessing. So she tried to talk things out, but that didn't work. Nothing was working. She wasn't connecting with people she wanted to connect with, wasn't resolving anything.
She suddenly thought of Jack, who had said he'd call her. Went to a payphone and checked her messages.
"9:04 AM," said the tinny voice of her answering machine's time recorder, followed by a beep and a too-hearty male voice. "Congratulations! You have been selected as the winner of one of twelve very special prizes at Virgin Megastore! Simply press 1 for our fabulous prizes!" There was a long silence, followed by a beep.
Great, machines talking to machines. She deleted the message.
"9:24AM," was followed by a hang-up. She deleted it.
"9:56AM," the New York City Library telling her that the book on schizophrenia that she'd borrowed during the Smith case was overdue. Right, she knew that. She deleted it.
"1:06 PM. Hey, Claire, it's me," Jack's voice. "Look, I know you're taking the rest of the day, but I thought we could have dinner in tonight." There was a pause. "I just want to spend some time with you, and hours in the car to Attica and back last night doesn't count. I'll bring the food and everything - just let me know when you want me to show up on your doorstep and I'll be there. I'm meeting Liz Olivet for lunch, but then I should be back in the office later this afternoon. Call me when you get this. Love you."
Claire listened to it and left it on the machine. No. She couldn't call him right now. Maybe later. Right now the last thing she wanted was to go from Mac's lack of understanding and sympathy to Jack's. She'd listen to the message again later, when she was in a better frame of mind.
"2:14 PM." The U.S. Attorney's office, wanting her to come in for an interview. Not knowing how she felt about that, she left it on the machine too. She'd listen to it later and decide then whether to take down the contact information or not.
"2:36 PM. It's me. Change of plans - I'm taking the rest of the day off. Page me when you get in and we'll figure out the evening. Bye."
Her eyebrows raised as she listened to the message, and left it on the machine too. Jack was taking the rest of the day off? That didn't sound like Jack. At all. She checked her watch, 2:40PM.
Maybe she should page him. If there was some reason Jack was taking the day off, maybe they could talk about it. Maybe he was feeling conflicted about the execution. Maybe he was feeling bad about all the fighting they'd been doing, and wanted to make amends. Maybe he wanted to apologize about treating her feelings so callously.
Maybe he just had a migraine and would be annoyed at her for bringing up irrelevant trivialities like her feelings about Scott's execution. And the whole messy squabbling would begin again.
"End of messages," said the voice of her machine, and she hung up the phone.
Oh well. Since nothing was working out mentally, maybe she could busy herself with things that could work out. Her apartment was a mess. She could clean it, bury herself in work that needed to be done but that she usually couldn't do. She headed home.
ooo000ooo
Almost two hours later, she surveyed her work.
The apartment was spotless. That was the nice thing about living alone and almost never being home: there really wasn't much to clean. Once she'd done the dishes and wiped down the counters, done some laundry and picked up stray books and papers, the place looked like a hotel after the chambermaids had done up the room.
She didn't want to stay in a hotel.
It had been a nice break, though, and it was nice to be able to point to something she had accomplished. She might feel no more comfortable with Scott's execution, her job, or her relationship with Jack, but at least she had a clean, tidy apartment.
And absolutely no wish to be there.
She glanced at her answering machine, with the message light still blinking. She could call Jack. She could call the U.S. Attorney's office.
No.
She picked up her overdue library book, "Understanding Schizophrenia". What a horrible case. What a horrible thing to live with. The blood of those people was on her hands, and she hadn't even done anything bad - just her job.
Just her job. One of the things that had disturbed her during the trial was that James Smith could have been a lawyer too. There but for a quirk in neurochemistry go I, she'd thought as the trial progressed and he defended himself brilliantly, using all the skills he'd learned in law school and never had a chance to use before schizophrenia took over his life. She'd read his closing statement and Jack was right, he could have hung the jury. Instead, he was drugged and incarcerated, and she was free to practice law. Which she wasn't sure she wanted to do any more. She wasn't sure she liked what practicing criminal law had done to her.
It had occurred to Claire before that her job was a little out of the ordinary. She routinely dealt with death, violence, rape, all sorts of crimes and criminals. Most people only saw that kind of thing on TV. Was she hardened by it? Was she a different person than she had been a few years ago? Had her job changed her?
It definitely hardened many of the people in the system, cops and lawyers she dealt with who seemed immune to human emotions when it came to crime. They could dispassionately talk about the most horrific things without flinching, and segue into a heated discussion of baseball in the next breath. And that was good, that was how they kept themselves sane, but... sometimes it was hard to tell where to draw the line between sanity-preserving distance and callousness.
Even people she liked, like Lennie Briscoe, were somewhat callous. He could make the most tasteless jokes about the most horrific situations, and the worst thing was, she sometimes found herself laughing.
And yet Lennie had a soft spot. He was still capable of feeling emotions like sympathy, doubt, uncertainty, sorrow... he was far more thoughtful and intelligent than his gruff hardened old cop demeanor might suggest. Claire wondered if Lennie spent time mulling over his job, wondering if his job hardened him, made him somehow less human. What did he think about the execution now that he'd seen it? How did he deal with his own role in the execution?
She suddenly wondered if the execution had made Lennie question his job as much as it had made Claire question hers. After all, being a cop meant that your job had the potential to end a life even more directly than just sending a felon on his way to an executioner's table, or letting a dangerous schizophrenic off to kill three people. How did Lennie deal with the fact that his job might some day call upon him to fire his weapon and kill a person? Claire knew from Lennie's service record that Lennie had never fired his weapon at a perpetrator before, like most cops. TV shows aside, most real cops went through an entire career without ever shooting their weapon. But how did Lennie make his peace with the fact that some day he might have to?
OK, this was useless. Her apartment was spotless and her thoughts weren't going anywhere. She had to get out of here.
She decided to go see Lennie.
ooo000ooo
"Thank you," Anita Van Buren was paying a delivery person as Claire entered the squad room of the 27th Precinct. She spotted Claire. "Long day," she commented.
"Actually, I'm not on the clock. I thought maybe Lennie..."
"Day off. The man is scarce," she started towards her office and Claire trailed behind. "Look, are you hungry? 'Cause I ordered the orange beef and the General Tso's. This job, you'd think I'd be able to make up my mind. Which one do you want?"
"I'm not really hungry," Claire said, disappointed. So much for that. This was just a great day. Not connecting with anyone except people she didn't really want to connect with.
"Hey, you making any headway on that Fox thing?" Van Buren asked her, taking cartons of food out of the bag.
Fox - oh, right, Joey Fox, the Peeping Tom turned opportunistic rapist. No, no progress. "The wheels of justice grind slowly." Suddenly she had a thought. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Fire away."
"Why didn't you go up there today?"
Van Buren didn't have to ask what she was talking about. "It's not part of my job."
"Why didn't I think of that," Claire said ruefully. Did everybody think it was that simple?
"You know, Claire, if I thought I could get some kind of divine guidance by watching them run poison through that bum's veins, I woulda made the trip," Van Buren said. She looked at Claire sympathetically. "But the fact that you're here tells me my decision to stay away was the right one."
"That's not why I'm here," Claire protested, knowing that that was exactly why she was here but not willing to give any more ammunition to yet another person who would probably dismiss her feelings or tell her she was being silly or self-indulgent.
"Mmhm. We all seek absolution in our own way," Van Buren said, her voice neutral. She held out a pair of chopsticks. "You sure you don't want a dumpling?" she asked invitingly.
Absolution. A good word for what she was seeking today. A way to make peace. A way to live with herself.
A way to just spend a little while not feeling so churned up. Claire smiled and gave in, taking the chopsticks.
ooo000ooo
Dinner had been a surprisingly nice, relaxed affair. She and Anita had shared the Chinese food and not mentioned Scott or the execution or, surprisingly, anything about their jobs. Anita had told her about her elder son, who was having difficulty reading, and Claire had told her about her dyslexic cousin who'd had a lot of trouble in school until a resource teacher tried putting transparent coloured overhead sheets on top of whatever he was reading. Suddenly letters made sense, especially when he used red sheets, and he'd had a pair of glasses made up with flat red lenses. Now everyone called him Elton, after Elton John's funky glasses, and he was enrolled at NYU as an English major.
Nothing to do with the law or crime or the execution. There was life outside the criminal justice system after all.
When Anita was called away to oversee the interrogation of a suspect, Claire had decided, what the hell, catch up on some cases. She'd looked through her notebook, trying to make some headway. The Frunt case was going nowhere fast. Their initial evidence had been thrown out and the defense was calling for dismissal. There was a garbage collector who might have seen something but Briscoe and Curtis hadn't been able to catch him at home. The Fox case was stalled, stalled, stalled. She made a few calls and left a few messages with different labs and sources.
Anita came back in and phewed with relief.
"Well. That was messy."
"What happened?"
"Animal rights activist. His father doesn't want him to admit to anything, but he's convinced that he's right and some day the world will know he was some kind of hero. He's trying to confess to stealing those animals and setting that lab on fire and his father's trying to shut him up," she chuckled and got out one of the cartons they hadn't finished before, munching some more.
"That reminds me of my introduction to the criminal justice system," Claire decided she wasn't quite full either and found another carton. Anita really had ordered way too much food.
"Your first case?"
"My only case as a defendant."
"Counselor!" Anita grinned at her. "A defendant? Now this I have to hear. Protesting?" Claire nodded. "Of course. Somehow I didn't think you'd been in for hooking or drug dealing."
Claire smiled. No, not drug dealing. She'd been arrested for being a naïve, idealistic young kid. "My friends and I were protesting the occupation of East Timor and I was arrested, no I'm not kidding, for trespassing and vandalism and obstruction of justice."
"Vandalism, Claire," Anita's eyes twinkled with amusement.
"So my father, who's seen me for Christmas and one week in the summer since my parent's divorce five years before, gets this frantic call from my mother. He comes and tells me I have to plead innocent, not admit to anything. He says there's not enough evidence to convict me and I have my future to think of. Which went against my moral convictions, I wanted to be Rosa Parks and not deny anything." Claire reflected as she spoke that it had been a long time since she'd been as sure of anything as she'd been sure of that protest.
"I can picture that. You were how old?"
"Eighteen. So my mother and my father are both sitting there, telling me what to do and say and agreeing with each other for the first time in my memory, and I'm just furious with them, especially because they keep reminding me that my father 'knows the law'," Claire explained to Anita's quizzical gaze, "He had one of these civil service jobs that allows you to perform legal duties in the area that you work in. I think he worked in the Municipal Property office or something, to be honest I'd never paid much attention when he talked about his job."
"Everybody's a lawyer when their kid's in trouble," Anita commented.
"So we go down to the courthouse, and my parents are sitting there, together, which they haven't since I was about twelve, and I know I'm going to get off with a fine but they're convinced I'm going to jail - I was right, by the way, I had to pay 150 - and I just decided that I was old enough to make up my own mind and not listen to what some civil servant had to say, even if he did have a legal title." She grinned at the memory of her poor father's face, and her own bravado, when she defied him. She'd been so sure she was right, but so scared too. Not of the sentence, but of her parents, who she knew were going to kill her when she ignored their advice.
"What was he anyway?"
"He was an Acting Justice of the Peace. So the clerk calls my name, I stand up, and say, 'Guilty, Your Honor'."
"And justice for all," Anita chuckled.
Suddenly Claire's beeper went off. "Damn." She checked the pager screen and it indicated a voice message, and Jack's code. "Hm. I better take this in private," she said apologetically.
She went to a phone in a room that was usually used for witnesses or grieving families. Dialed in her pager's number and code. There was Jack's voice, with background noise that sounded like what... a bar?
"Hi Claire, I jus' left a message for you at home but I guess yer not there." There was a pause. "I been leavin' messages for a while now, it would be really nice if you answered one of 'em. Gimme a call, I 'ave my pager on, I'm at a bar called - hey, what's this place called?" Jack's voice lost volume as he went off the phone. "Oh, it's called The Green Table," he went off-phone again, "Where is it?" There was a small pause, "An' it's on the corner of 12th and 36th."
Oh great, Jack was drunk at a bar. She'd seen Jack drunk before and didn't have much patience for it. Especially not today. And what was that, 'I been leavin' messages for a while?' That wasn't her problem. Just because Jack McCoy decided he wanted to get together today was no reason for her to jump to.
She didn't let herself think about the fact that he'd sounded a little forlorn as well as annoyed at her as she returned to Anita's office.
"Who was that?"
"Uh... just some work related stuff."
"Problems with the... boss?" Anita asked neutrally.
Claire shrugged. Anita pursed her lips. "It's a delicate situation, isn't it?" Claire glanced at her, took in her knowing gaze. OK, so Anita had figured it out. Most people who knew them probably had.
"It's been... it hasn't been easy lately."
"The execution hasn't helped, has it?"
"No, not really."
"I wouldn't think so."
"No."
"Claire, why did you go? If you don't mind my asking."
"I don't know any more," Claire admitted.
"What did you think you'd get out of it?"
"I don't know. I guess I wanted to be able to live with myself, to know that I didn't hide from the consequences of my actions."
"Why, did you ask for the death penalty?" Anita asked, a bit puzzled.
"No, actually, I'm against it. It's always Jack's idea to ask for it in Murder One cases. I argued against it."
"I thought so. So how is it your fault?"
"Just because I didn't push for the death penalty doesn't mean I didn't have a hand in it. I worked on the case. I helped to gather the evidence and prepare the witnesses and file the motions and write the briefs... my hand killed him just as much as the hands of the men who actually turned the knobs."
"What are you supposed to do? Excuse yourself from any cases where McCoy might ask for the death penalty?"
"I couldn't. Not if I wanted to keep working in the DA's office. You can't just selectively bow out of cases that don't sit well with you personally."
"So is that an option?"
"What?"
"Not working in the DA's office." Claire looked at her for a moment. Was it?
"Lieutenant? We're gonna need your help on this," a detective Claire vaguely recognized as a new transferee to the 2-7 poked his head into Anita's office.
"Excuse me for a minute," Anita hurried out.
Is that an option. Not working for the DA's office. Well, frankly, it was. She loved the job, but lately... she thought of her resume at the U.S. Attorney's office. She didn't know what she wanted from that. Would the U.S. Attorney's office be any different from the DA's? Different enough to help this feeling of unease that she felt lately?
Did she even want it to be different? Part of her felt eager for a new world, one that wasn't so complicated, but a lot of her was still drawn to this one despite its complications. A new job would offer a change of scenery, and would get her away from Jack. She just wasn't sure if she wanted that.
Once again she found herself thinking about Jack, her relationship with him. Heaven and hell, all in one package. Brilliant, driven, charming, sexy... opinionated, obsessive, cold, conflictive.
She found herself drawn to other people these days, just like she found herself drawn to other jobs. Other people who seemed to promise a simpler life. She'd done some work with a couple of detectives from Baltimore a few months ago and she'd felt quite attracted to the younger one. So sweet, so interesting... so nice. You could say a lot of good things about Jack, but nice just wasn't one of them.
Tim Bayliss was nice, polite, her age, uncomplicated, came on a little too strong but in a totally adorable way... and she'd turned him down despite the interest she felt, because of a relationship she couldn't even acknowledge. Not that she and Jack had much of a hope that nobody knew, but they didn't go advertising it.
She reflected, however, that while she'd liked Tim, she hadn't felt more than a passing regret at having to turn him down. Still. What if she was free to pursue another relationship? With a nice guy?
Claire went back to her notes. Pretending she was here to work, when really, she wanted to connect with somebody. Somebody who wouldn't repel her as Mac had this morning, as Jack had all month.
ooo000ooo
An hour later, Anita was back. Claire ignored the slight feeling of unease she felt at the fact that she was keeping Jack waiting for her. She hadn't asked him to wait. He could take a cab if he wanted. Besides, she was feeling a bit better talking to Anita.
"This job," Anita sighed. "Some days, I just wish I could go home and forget about the whole messy business."
"Yeah?"
"Oh yeah. That detective? I approved an arrest for a woman we thought killed her baby daughter. She's been sitting in detention for two days, her two older kids are with a neighbour, and we just got back an ME's report that says that baby died of a heart condition."
"How did they miss that?"
"They didn't. When Hovermayer called the ME, some idiot read him the wrong file. There were two babies in that week, and one of them had cause unknown, possible SIDS, and the other one was this baby, heart failure."
"Oh my god."
"Yeah. That poor woman, she's been worked over by interrogations and lawyers and god only knows what else... and her kid just died," Anita shook her head in regret, then seemed to shrug it off and said, "You wanna get a coffee? Where were we anyway?"
Talking about my stupid Trespassing conviction, thought Claire as she followed Anita out. Which wasn't what she wanted to talk about at all. "How do you do it?" she blurted out. "How do you keep this from getting to you?"
"How do you know it doesn't get to me?" They found Profaci had just started a new pot, and waited for the coffee to brew.
"You always seem so sure of yourself."
"It's the nature of the job, Claire. You have to project confidence. You have to be convinced you're right - willing to be proved wrong if necessary, but you can't be second guessing yourself all the time or you'll never get anything done."
"Hm."
"You've been second guessing yourself a lot lately, I take it."
"Yeah."
"This isn't just about Mickey Scott, is it?"
"No, I guess not."
"Smith still bothering you?" Anita asked perceptively.
"My actions caused three deaths."
"Your job was to do exactly what you did. It's easy to say in hindsight that you made the wrong decision. But if you got a case like that today, you'd do the exact same thing and you'd be right to do it."
Claire reflected that Anita had certainly changed her tune since the day they'd found out she was the one who pled Smith out. Out of politeness, or a sense of perspective now that some time had passed? "No, I wouldn't. I would call the sister back and not assume she just wanted leniency for her brother."
Anita raised her eyebrows questioningly.
"Smith's sister. She called me during the first case, when he was arrested for stalking. She wanted to tell me that he was violent, that he needed to be hospitalized. I assumed she wanted leniency and didn't bother to call her back."
"That's an expensive lesson to learn," Anita observed.
"Yes it is."
"And we all have lessons like that in our pasts."
"Those lessons can devastate people's lives," Claire said after a pause.
"Yes, they can. Because we're human and we play a high stakes game to the best of our ability, and sometimes we lose."
"And you just shrug all of that off?"
"No."
"But you're comfortable with the responsibility."
"Not comfortable. But I can handle it."
Claire reflected on that for a moment. "I don't know if I can. I feel like a fraud sometimes. Like everyone else has a right to be here, making these decisions, and I don't."
"You think you're the only one that feels that way? You think the rest of us always feel sure about what we're doing?" Claire shrugged. "We're just very good at pretending and convincing ourselves."
"So you do convince yourself?"
"Otherwise you find a new job. You're not a superhero, you can't be right all the time. You're gonna make mistakes and you just have to live with them." Jack had said something pretty similar to her over Smith.
"And feeling like a fraud..." Anita smiled as she got out two mugs. "I think most of us feel that way sometimes. Especially women. We're not brought up to be sure of ourselves, and you have to be in this job." She paused thoughtfully as she poured herself a coffee. "You know, you just have to realize that somebody has to do this job, and it might as well be you."
"You always seem so sure..." Claire said wistfully.
"Hell no. Are you kidding? I got the outside down OK but sometimes the inside's just shaking. Just hoping I can pull it off and fool everybody else into thinking I know what I'm doing. And I do." She smiled nostalgically as she poured coffee for Claire. "First day here, I was so nervous," she handed Claire her mug and started back to her office. "Lennie comes in my office, and I can see on his face I am not what he expected, but he never said anything."
"But he was thinking it," she could just picture Lennie's face. Probably a lot like how he'd looked the first time he'd met and taken orders from her. OK, kiddo, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now, but you better show me you know your ass from your elbow real fast.
Anita sat down. "So he gives me the why's and the wherefores of some case. I tell him what to do, and he does it. Girl, I looked in the mirror and said Anita, you have arrived." They shared a chuckle.
"And I thought it was just me."
"No, don't let the macho fool you. It's everyone. You know, we make decisions that affect people's lives, that's scary business. The only cure: don't talk about it."
Don't talk about it. So what had they been doing all this time? "Sometimes all the fighting... ludicrous judges, moronic lawyers..." Adam... Jack...
"... idiotic unies. Please don't get me started about downtown."
"But the wheels keep grinding, eating up people on both sides of the aisle."
"And we're still here," Anita said firmly.
Claire thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess we are." Still here. Still doing good work, most of the time. It wasn't ideal, it wasn't what she had imagined when she first became a prosecutor... but it was good work.
"You can't take all the blame, Counselor," Anita's face was compassionate.
"I'm not," she paused. "It just sticks in my throat."
"Wanna get a drink or something?" Anita asked gently. That sounded like a good idea. Unfortunately...
"Oh, ah, no, I've already kept him waiting long enough." She looked at Anita with gratitude. "Thanks." Anita smiled back.
ooo000ooo
Anita gathered up her things to go, thinking about Claire, thinking about Scott. She'd been right. Nothing could be gained by going to the execution. Claire might have talked about James Smith, about her job, about the justice system, but underneath it all lay Mickey Scott.
She hoped that nobody else had been as disturbed by it as Claire. Lennie had had the sense to take the day off, so he'd probably be OK despite looking somewhat off this morning. He was generally pretty level-headed. And McCoy had probably just gone right back to work and been OK too. Nothing ever seemed to throw McCoy off for long.
Then again, she would have bet before this morning that Curtis would be OK too, but then he'd lost it over absolutely nothing with a little creep in the holding cell. Not that Curtis was normally laid back - in fact, he let things get under his skin way too easily - but he'd seemed so unaffected by the execution when he first came in. Oh well, hopefully he'd had a nice day with his family after she sent him home.
Oh - what was that? Anita picked up a notebook, Claire's name on the cover. She'd probably need this. She called and left a message on Claire's machine, closed up her office and headed home.
ooo000ooo
Claire entered her apartment, pissed off as hell. She'd gone to the corner Jack had mentioned on her pager message service, and it had turned out to be a used clothing store. Nobody had ever heard of the bar. She'd wasted an hour trying to be Jack's taxi service and possible alcohol detox service, and for nothing. She glared at the blinking light on her answering machine and decided ignore it. She didn't need to listen to Jack's voice on her machine, getting more and more intoxicated, waiting for her to come pick him up at a non-existent bar. To hell with him.
She glanced at the schizophrenia book on the kitchen table. Better put it next to the front door, remember to drop it off at the library tomorrow.
She held it for a moment, remembering Jack comforting her over her failure with Smith. He'd asked her how many cases she'd had that week, how many felonies, how many plea bargains... and when she'd answered, proving his point that there was no way she could have known that doing just a bit more extra work would prevent disaster, he'd teased her gently, "Guess what? You can't leap tall buildings either."
Jack could be sweet. Not consistently, often not when she needed him to be, but there was a reason she was still with him. A reason why she said no to the Tim Baylisses of the world. She smiled, dismissing her anger at Jack for now, and took out her file on the Frunt case, looking for clues. She knew there was something in here. As she pored over Frunt's financial records, she thought over the conversations she'd had that day.
Your job was to do exactly what you did.
Yes, it was. A job that she did rather well. Smith had been a failure, an expensive lesson to learn. They all had failures like that. Mistakes happened. Jack had once put the wrong man in prison for killing several black youths, and the right man had, some years later, killed again. That was on Jack's conscience, but he seemed to be able to live with it. Could she?
So is that an option?
What?
Not working in the DA's office.
Yes, it was an option. She realized, though, that it was not an option she wanted to pursue right now. She decided that when she listened to her messages, she'd delete the one from the U.S. Attorney's office.
You can't take all the blame, Counselor.
No, she couldn't.
Scott was dead. There was no getting away from that. She suddenly realized she'd been thinking about Smith, thinking about Frunt, thinking about Fox, and not thinking much about Scott. Not since she'd gone to see Mac and had wondered if he was right about her obsessing being self-indulgence.
Since when is conviction a character flaw?
When it turns into self-congratulatory depression. You can quit the profession, Claire. You just can't quit the human race.
Mac was right. Decisions, death, crime, even the death penalty - that was all part of life. In another profession she might not have to deal with them, but that wouldn't make them less real. Mickey Scott would have been no less dead today if another ADA had helped to convict him, would have been no less dead if she hadn't witnessed his death.
The fact was, life went on. Mickey Scott was dead. Adele Saunders' parents were at peace, or thought they were. James Smith was in a hospital for the criminally insane. Reva Frunt still needed justice and Joey Fox still had to be convicted. There were still criminals to put away, justice to be served. Not as clean or as pure as she'd thought before she started working at the DA's office, but justice of a sort nonetheless.
As for the death penalty... in her profession, in her position, she could work to get rid of it or at least try to exert her influence over people like Jack and Adam so that they didn't ask for it with every Murder One case. They valued her opinion. Jack valued her opinion. And he valued her, as a person and as a lawyer.
All of a sudden she wondered if he was still waiting for her. Decided she may as well try to see - she wasn't going to get to sleep any time soon, but it wasn't from brooding any more, it was just from the residue of a long day of ruminating and making some pretty major decisions, many of them involving Jack. Funny that on a day when she'd spent so much time thinking about him, he'd probably spent a lot of it thinking she was ignoring him.
She went to her answering machine, then realized that she didn't want to listen to it, didn't want to get angry at him again if he'd left more messages for her whining that she was leaving him waiting. May as well just go to The Green Table and see if he was here.
She realized that part of why she didn't want to get mad at Jack for whining was that she knew she would deserve any whine he threw her way. Jack deserved better than this from her. No matter what her difficulties with him, she shouldn't act childish and stand him up, especially all day. Especially since he'd sounded like he wanted to talk to her. Not just debate, but connect with her.
She paged him and waited for him to answer. Called his number at home - no answer there either.
She sighed. OK, turnabout is fair play, she thought. What was the name of the bar? The Green Table. She got out the phone book - oh, there, The Green Table, at 12th and 26th. Not 12th and 36th like Jack said. That wasn't too far from her home, actually.
ooo000ooo
At last. She'd found the seedy bar, but no Jack. Well, it had been some time. Still, he could have paged her to let her know he was leaving.
Then again, she could have paged him at any point during the day to let him know she was deliberately ignoring him. She supposed they were even. They'd talk about it tomorrow, after Jack recovered from the hangover she was sure he'd earned, if his voice on her pager was any indicator of how much he'd had to drink.
Maybe he was at a pool table. Did Jack play pool? She had no idea. She really didn't know what he did with his spare time other than be with her. He'd mentioned going to the gym a few times, but other than that...
Oh now that was interesting. Jack wasn't at the pool table, but Lennie Briscoe was. Playing pool, which she knew he did extremely well - she'd seen him play when they had that case in Baltimore a few months back.
"Too much time on your hands," a heavyset middle-aged man was saying to Lennie.
"Yeah, too much time, not enough time," Lennie went to set up a shot, and sang a short burst, "'Tis I'll be there-'" he spotted Claire. "Whoa, looka' this!"
Oh my God. Lennie was drunk. She felt sinking sympathy. She knew, of course, everybody knew, that Lennie Briscoe was a recovering alcoholic. He hadn't had a drink in years. And here he was, completely drunk. "You've been drinking," she stated.
He slapped the pool table. "That's what's causing this!" He threw the stick down onto the table in mock anger.
"This your kid?" asked the heavyset man.
Lennie smiled. "Aah, let's see. Do you hate my guts?" he peered at her earnestly. What? "I guess not." He smiled again and took a sip of his drink.
"Jack called me."
"Jack. Jack turned into a pumpkin. Can I buy you a drink, Counselor?"
"No thanks," oh, Lennie. Lennie focused his eyes on her blearily.
"Oh - OK, I got one for you," he sat on the edge of the pool table. "How come California has the most lawyers, an' New Jersey has the most toxic dumps?"
"Because New Jersey got first pick," she answered him. Poor Lennie. Her heart felt heavy for his sake. Here was this good, decent man, reduced to drunken incoherence.
"You don't get it," he smiled ruefully at her.
OK. Jack was obviously gone, but she'd be damned if she was going to let Lennie continue to kill his liver out here. He didn't deserve this. She took a hold of his arm and said gently, "Look, why don't you get your coat, and I'll drive you home."
ooo000ooo
"Home, James," Lennie leaned his head back in her car.
"Where to?"
"I use' ta know," he said woozily, chuckling.
She looked at him in concern. So this was what he'd done today. "So this morning really bummed you out?"
"Do I look bummed out to you?" Lennie asked good-naturedly. No, you look drunk, she thought. That's going to make you pretty bummed out tomorrow, I'm sure.
"You know, it wouldn't be so terrible," Lennie mused.
"What's that?"
"If you were my kid," he told her. What? This was part of why she didn't like it when Jack drank. A conversation with a drunk was so hard to follow. Although Lennie was a lot more cheerful than Jack when he got drunk. Jack tended towards belligerence.
"I guess I should take that as a compliment," Claire replied with a smile after a moment.
"Hey, yer smart, yer pretty, you got a good job, and you don't hate my guts," he told her. What had happened to him today? Did he have a run-in with his daughter as well as watch an execution?
"Lennie, I doubt your daughter hates you," she reassured him. Not the Lennie she knew, who had a caustic wit but a good heart. Nobody could hate Lennie - dislike him for his tactless comments perhaps, but not hate him.
"Oh-ho, no, you don't know 'er, you don't know 'er," Lennie said. "I don' even know 'er." He paused for a moment. "I never will, I never will," his voice dropped to a near-whisper and Claire glanced at him in concern. That was a lot of pain. She hoped he'd be OK - and then she heard a horn blasting and a bright light blinded her and