The usual disclaimer: The characters are not mine, no profit is being made.
Rating: PG
Author's notes: A missing scene or two from the episode, "The Birthday Present", which was written by Stephen Cannell himself. Many thanks to Cheri for beta-ing .
The plot thus far: Mark and Sandy Knight, a police officer of sorts (he does information announcements for the police department), join forces to track down evidence in an old murder involving a soon-to-be-released crazed killer, Weed Randall, and present the findings to Judge Hardcastle for his birthday. The frosting on the cake is that the judge is recalled to the bench to try the case (something about a dying witness and a crowded court calendar). Alas, Weed arranges for a gun to be smuggled into the court-room and shoots the judge.
While Hardcastle spends the rest of the episode with one foot on the banana peel and the other in the grave, Sandy goes off on a vengeance-bender, kidnapping a known associate of Weed's, and using him to find the motel where Weed is hiding out after escaping in the confusion at the courtroom. Meanwhile, Mark, aside from showing a moment of bad judgment when he steals a convenient Corvette (have they no cabs in L.A.?), tries to find Weed before Sandy can get to him. When McCormick arrives at the confrontation between the two men, he is forced to shoot Weed to save Sandy's life.
In the denouement, Hardcastle, looking surprisingly fit for a guy who took "a .38 hollow-point to the right chest cavity" and McCormick have 'A Talk'. Mark does not behave like the typical action-show hero, who regularly knocks-off a half-dozen bad guys before the last commercial break; in fact, he's distraught that he had to kill even a bottom-feeder like Weed. Hardcastle, in a very un-Hardcastlelike moment, gets (as Mark puts it) sappy. Aww . . . go ahead and rewind it. Yeah, sure, you know you want to.
What follows is my take on what occurred before and after the last scene of the show.
Lost Souls
By L. M. Lewis
Frank Harper pulled into the lot of the Sunspot Motel within ten minutes of receiving the call, maneuvering his police sedan through the growing crowd of vehicles, marked and otherwise. He took in the scene with an experienced eye. There was Sandy Knight, already loaded onto the ambulance gurney, still talking to an investigator--Stiggs from I.A. The guys from the coroner's office must have just arrived. They were standing aside while the evidence tech took photos. And there, over by the motel office, head down and with his hands in his pockets, was McCormick, cornered by two detectives from homicide, Riley and Wilkes.
Harper had gotten some of the details from the dispatcher. He knew Randall was dead, and that McCormick had pulled the trigger. The rest he had filled in using gut instinct, that Mark wasn't the kind of guy who would shoot first; but he couldn't help feeling strangely relieved, seeing Knight lying there on a stretcher.
He parked and walked over to the office, hearing Wilkes peppering McCormick to go through the sequence of events one more time. Up close he could see the tension in Mark's face. He's gonna snap. They're gonna push him and he'll say something smart and piss them off, then we'll all get to go down to the station, and he'll spend the night in the lock-up. It wouldn't matter that he'd taken out a serial killer and kept him from adding a police officer to his list of victims. To these guys McCormick was an ex-con.
It surprised him, then, to hear McCormick patiently, wearily, begin the whole recital again, for what had to be the umpteenth time. "When I drove up--"
"In what?"
"That," he pointed, "the 'vette."
Harper turned around to look where McCormick was pointing and saw not the judge's venerable black Corvette, but a late-model silver one that he did not recognize. He had a sinking feeling. For the moment, though, Wilkes was letting it pass.
"Weed had a gun on Sandy—on Officer Knight. He pushed him towards my car. Sandy went charging back at him and then Weed fired a shot. Sandy was down. I had my, Hardcastle's, gun out." McCormick's eyes were closed now. He spoke slowly, with intensity. "I told him not to . . . not to make me do it."
"Where was he pointing his gun?"
"At Sandy."
"And then?"
"And then I shot him." Mark's eyes were open; he was staring in the direction of the still-uncovered body.
Wilkes looked down at the notebook and then at his partner. "Fits. It's pretty much what Knight said." He turned towards Harper and acknowledged him with a nod. "Looks like self-defense. But the car's registered in someone else's name, a . . ." he looked down at the notebook, "Michael Rousseau, not reported stolen, though."
Frank smiled his most collegial smile. "Why don't you let me look into that, boys? You must already have a mountain of paperwork on this one, eh?"
"Well," Wilkes seemed doubtful but Riley, the older of the two, who had maintained a bored silence up till now, nudged him once and whispered a few quiet words in his partner's ear. "Okay," he flipped his notebook shut, and looked hard one more time at Mark, "but we'll need you down at the station by tomorrow to give a formal statement."
Frank held his smile as the two detectives walked off towards the body. When he turned back to McCormick, the man was slumped against the wall, his head tipped back and his mouth grimly tight.
"Yeah, I stole it. Sandy went flying out of there and the Coyote was all the way back in Malibu. The truck was at the courthouse and the keys were in his 'chambers'." McCormick said the last word bitterly. Then he looked up at Harper anxiously. "Have you heard anything from the hospital?"
"Not before I headed over here. But no bad news, either."
McCormick let out a breath.
"Rousseau," Harper jerked his chin towards the Corvette, "wasn't he one of the ER docs? Yeah, it was Rousseau. Short guy, dark hair. Must be working a double." Harper glanced down at his watch. "He'll be getting off any minute now. I'd better make some calls." He stepped into the motel office and reached across the desk for the phone. The owner said nothing. McCormick was still standing at the door, watching the activities that surrounded the body of Weed Randall.
Harper finished the last of the calls and rejoined Mark. "S'okay. I talked to him. I mostly told him the truth. I think I said something about 'police business'. He seemed kind of impressed that you were a racecar driver, once I told him there hadn't been any damage—there isn't any damage, is there?" He had McCormick by the elbow and was walking him toward the Corvette.
The younger man stopped and shook free. "Frank," he frowned, "it's a car . . . I just killed a man."
"Yeah, I know," Frank said slowly, "and he was a stone-cold killer who would have finished Sandy and you. So, I'm sorry you had to do it, but I'm not sorry that you did do it. Okay?"
He pointed McCormick toward the passenger side and turned to talk to one of the uniformed officers, pointing out his sedan and handing the man a set of keys. The officer nodded.
"Nice," Frank slid into the driver's side of the 'vette. "Been wanting to test drive one of these." He reached instinctively for the ignition and then glowered as McCormick pointed out the loose wires hanging just below the dash. "No damage, eh?"
"I'll put it all back just the way I found it." McCormick promised sincerely. "But do you have enough on you for a half a tank of premium?"
"Yeah, I do." The long-suffering Frank Harper shook his head slowly. "Just promise me one thing, Mark. The next time you need a ride, drop a dime. You must know my number by now."
Three days later.
It was less than fifteen minutes into Rio Bravo when Mark noticed the judge's eyes had drifted shut and his breathing had become deeper. He stood up quietly, reaching for the control and turning the volume down.
Then he gathered up the holster and rewrapped it in the surgical towel. It didn't belong here. He had brought it because . . . because he had very much wanted to hand it back over to Hardcastle, to be rid of the responsibility that had gone with accepting it in the first place. It seemed to weigh twenty pounds when he'd carried it in earlier that evening. Now he thought he could manage it. He would take it home, clean it, and lock it in the safe. And that will be that.
He slipped out into the hallway. Visiting hours were nearly over and the place was quiet. He took the back stairway down to the first floor, to avoid curious glances or questions about what he was carrying. At the bottom of the stairs he turned right, towards the back exit, and found he had gone the wrong way: a hallway that ended in a cul-de-sac, with a double door that opened into a dim room. He'd stepped in before he realized it was a chapel, lit by the flickering of candles. There were voices behind him in the hallway, a group of the sisters talking softly.
He quickly put his bundle on the floor, in the corner where the shadows were the deepest, and sat down in one of the chairs. The murmuring voices continued. He stared at the votives near the front of the chapel, row on row of flames in red glass holders. A little tin box affixed to the front rail said "For the St. Mary's Rehabilitation Center." McCormick smiled. He stood up, dug in his pocket and, finding a crumpled bill and some change, wedged them into the slot.
He took one of the thin splints of wood out of the tray of sand next to the candles. It was something remembered from childhood: light a candle, make a wish, like a birthday cake in reverse. No, his mother had tried to explain it, not a wish, a prayer. He was staring at the unlit splint. Hardcastle.
No, he'd already prayed that prayer, while he'd held the man's hand in the courtroom five days ago.That prayer had been answered.
"Thank you," he breathed it inaudibly. Not Hardcastle, the judge didn't need his prayers.
Myself. No, he'd already been to a confession of sorts, up there in the ICU, and Hardcastle had done everything but bless him. Go and sin no more . . . not likely, he smiled.
And then the smile fell away. He touched the tip of the wood to one of the flames, held it there till it caught, then lifted it up for a moment. He watched it eat into the fragile wood and form an embered curl. You may have sent a man to Hell.
"Oh, God, I hope not."
He bent the flame to the wick and lit a candle for Weed Randall.