Chapter 1: Woody

Five months earlier…

"Well, here's to the old bastard. May he go where ever the hell he pleases and never come back." Jordan held up her glass in mock salute and then drank the entire two fingers of whiskey in one gulp.

Woody also drank deeply from his glass, though his contained only cranberry juice. He rarely drank more than two drinks in one night, and he had passed his self-imposed limit more than two hours ago.

"Are you sure you want to go that far, Jordan? I mean, he did come for you tonight. I couldn't get him to stay behind tonight. In fact, I had to convince him to let me come." He watched her reach drunkenly for the whiskey bottle and pour herself another drink, draining the last remaining contents.

"Woody, I learned more about my father in the last twenty-four hours than I've learned in all my years of snooping around his back."

Woody raised an eyebrow. Jordan was a remarkably coherent drunk. And he should know. It seemed as though she had been perpetually drunk since her father left town again the night before. "We all have our secrets, Jo." He reached out and took away the second bottle of alcohol – this time vodka – which she had just opened. "I'll admit, Max has more than most, but if he doesn't want to share them, that's his problem, not yours."

Jordan made a feeble attempt to retrieve the bottle, but then put down her glass and ignored him as he returned it to the cupboard above the her refrigerator. "I know. He's a big boy. I'm an adult too, Woody. I told him that the other night, too. But it makes it all worse. No more innocence. No more child's eyes. I know exactly how bad what he did was. Is. And he never trusted me enough to tell me. Then he waltzes in –"

On the word 'waltz,' she does her own impromptu waltz, nearly tripping over her own feet and the chair in her apartment. Woody nearly reached out for her, but she righted herself almost instantly. She might be a coherent drunk, but her sense of balance was always gone within minutes of any kind of alcohol consumption.

"– drops off his dirty laundry, and then waltzes right back out. And the only reason he told me was because Cahill came around and blew the lid off the whole thing!" She flopped down onto the couch.

"Okay there, tiger. I think it's time for you to hit the sack."

"How come he did this to me Woody? Doesn't he know how much it hurts?"

Woody lifted her feet up onto the couch and pulled down the throw blanket that rested along the back of the couch. "I'm sure he has his reasons, Jordan. There's only so much you can do for him. The rest has to come from him."

"You're such an optimist, you know that? It really pisses me off sometimes," she said, her eyes, which had been drooping the last 20 minutes, finally closed.

Woody chuckled. "I was more optimistic before I met you." The truth was he'd never been an optimist. Not since he was four and his mother died, no matter how much he had begged, pleaded and prayed. No. Inside, what he actually did was prepare for the worst. Then, he was pleasantly surprised when things did work out. That, and his own out-loud wishful thinking was what the others saw when they looked at him. "Get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow night at work." Tonight was Friday, well, actually, it was technically Saturday now, and both he and Jordan were working third watch on Saturday.

He heard her mumble a few more things as he tucked the knit blanket around her shoulders. He dropped a light kiss on her forehead before quickly and quietly cleaning up the kitchen, then making sure all her doors and windows were locked. He took one last look at her, wishing she didn't have to face her father's betrayal like this, that he could stop her pain, before letting himself out and locking the door behind him.

What he didn't see was Jordan, jumping up from a dream an hour later. For a few moments, she sat disoriented, shivering, on the couch. Then, having caught her bearings, she stood, dragging the blanket around her shoulders. She stumbled into the kitchen, making her way in the dark. Reaching up above the refrigerator, she pulled down the bottle of vodka Woody had put away earlier. Opting to forgo a glass, she drank directly from the open bottle, needing the strong liquor, needing anything, to stop the haunting dreams that had plagued her during the last few nights and that seemed especially vehement tonight.

"God damn you, Dad," she whispered, taking another drink from the bottle.

Part 2

"Hey Bug. Have you managed to come up with anything on that guy we found in the park the other day?" Woody stepped off the elevator, the doors closing just as he saw Bug coming out into the lobby of the morgue.

Bug reached out, seeing the elevator closing. The door ignored his plaintive summons, and closed anyway. "Aw, man. Today's going to be one of those days," he muttered. Then, looking up at Woody, "Um, yeah. The guy died of natural causes. Poor guy had a heart attack. There was already some dead heart muscle, so this wasn't his first. Sleeping out in the cold and under that bush where no one could see him didn't help either."

"Good." Woody rocked back on his heels. "Well, not good that he's dead, but the fact that it was natural causes will make my job easier. Could I get a copy of the death certificate for the file?"

"Find Emmy. She'll help you get a copy of the C.o.D. cert. I'd love to help you right now," Bug said, reaching behind Woody to press the call button for the elevator again. "But Nigel and I've been called out to an accidental drowning at some health club over on 7th. Nigel's getting the van," he explained when he saw Woody looking around for the tall Brit.

"Well, good luck with that one," Woody said, moving away and into the morgue. He paused, and turned back to Bug, who already had one foot in the now arrived elevator. "Hey Bug, wait."

Bug turned, holding the door with one hand. "Yeah?"

"I though Jordan was on call today."

Bug grimaced. "She's on a bit of a time out. She came in today with one massive hangover and pissed off at everyone. She yelled at Dr. Macy and now he's making her do all her backlog of paperwork. I was supposed to be in trace today, but now I'm stuck going out on calls."

Woody frowned. She hadn't been that drunk last night, had she?

"Hey Woody." Bug caught his attention again.

"Yeah?"

"I know you took Jordan home the other night. What did you do to her? She's so pissy she even yelled at Lily." He stepped into the elevator and let it close.

"Hey, don't look at me! I didn't do anything." Woody said as the elevator slid shut and Bug disappeared.

He shook off Bug's warning while he obtained a copy of the death certificate from Emmy. Then, the warning back in his head, he stepped into Jordan's office. "Hey, Jordan. How're you feeling?"

She didn't even look up. "Don't get me started. First, I wake up on the living room floor with a massive hangover, and then Garret takes me off call and sticks me with all this paperwork! Look at this!" She pointed to a stack of charts and papers on the left side of her desk. It must have been over a foot high. The only reason it wasn't higher, he realized, was because it would have toppled over. In fact, it looked as though it already had. There was a roughshod pile of charts and papers on the floor next to her desk.

"Well, we've all told you to do your paperwork the same day."

"Oh shut up, ya Boy Scout."

Woody couldn't help but smile a bit at that remark. But then it faded. "Are you okay? Bug said you had a bit of a hangover. I didn't think you had that much to drink."

She finally stopped writing and looked up, sighing and rubbing her temples. "I didn't. I think all the emotions just kind of caught up with me at the same time. Plus I didn't sleep very well. But hey, thanks for cleaning up and locking everything."

"No problem. Look, I've got to get back to the precinct, but I'll see you later, okay?"

Her head was back down in the papers. "Yeah, yeah. Get back to doing your cop stuff. I'm on detention. I'm not allowed to go out and play. I'm being traumatized. You can buy me a beer later to make up for it."

"Happy paperwork day, Jordan," he chuckled as he stepped out of her office and closed the door. Looking back through the glass window, he saw that she hadn't even looked up to flip him off in response. He laughed harder.

But that was how it started. That night, after both their shifts had ended – during which Jordan had managed to get through about 90 percent of her paperwork – he had taken her out for a drink. He had taken her to O'Malley's. Now that she had sold the Pogue and it was closed for remodeling by the new owner, it was the bar most frequented by the local cops.

And after what happened the night before, he watched how much she drank. She limited herself to only three, while he only had one since he was driving and he was going to Mass the next day. For hours, they had talked, lamented about the evils of paperwork and then he had driven her home, walking her all the way to her door. Knowing she didn't want and wasn't ready to go further, he dropped a kiss on her forehead and said good night.

Two weeks passed, and he noticed that she had a lot more headaches at work. And she was more abrupt, and had even less patience, something he didn't think was possible. She was snapping at everyone – Bug, Lily, Garret, Nigel, even him. The times they went out together, by themselves or with friends, and he found himself watching how much she drank. Each time she had one more. And she was moving from the low alcohol content fruity drinks to the hard straight stuff.

Two more weeks passed, and one morning he came into her office to find her passed out, smelling vaguely like vodka, on the couch in her office. He found the half empty bottle in her desk drawer. When he woke her up and helped her home, she explained that they had just wrapped up a tough case – a little girl and her mother had been murdered by the abusive father as they tried to leave him. So he had let it go. That time.

He had taken her home. After he tucked her in, he again went around and checked the doors and windows. As he walked through the kitchen to reach the back door, he closed a couple open cupboards. One of them was above the refrigerator. The alcohol cabinet. Looking in, he saw that its contents were fully stocked. He frowned. The last time he had looked in this cabinet, almost a month ago, it had been fully stocked as well. But with different items. Where before it held one bottle each of gin, vodka and whiskey and half a dozen bottles of drink mixes, now the drink mixes were gone. In their place were more bottles of hard liquor. He could see a bottle of sherry – not the cooking kind – and at least three different brands of Vodka. He sighed as he shut the cabinet. He was going to have to have a talk with her.

Another three weeks. There was the incident with Cal. He had broken his own rule and had a few drinks after that one, but she had had more. Lily's mother had died. He sat with her and held her after she finished comforting Lily. She'd had a stiff drink after that one. More than once he realized, he had found himself telling her to take it easy on the alcohol.

When that failed, he had resorted to asking the bartender to start watering down her drinks.

One Tuesday night after work, Woody found himself at a bar with Lily, Matt, Nigel, Bug and Jordan. After Jordan's fifth drink in less than two hours, he found himself pulling her away from the bartender, at whom she was yelling freely.

"Come on, Jo. I think it's time to go." He held firmly to her wrist as she tried to go back to the bar and tear the young college age bartender a new one. Finally, she let herself be dragged away and out to his car.

"Jordan," he said as they got closer to her apartment on Pearl Street. "I think you've been drinking too much lately."

"What, because of that?" She jerked her thumb behind her. "I had a right to yell at him. He was watering down my drinks! I wonder if they do that to all their customers? It's not a good way to keep customers coming back. I should know. I owned a bar for a while."

"Jordan…"

"You know, we should start something. Tell everyone not to go there because they water down the drinks and still charge full price."

"Jordan…"

"We should start with the cops. They like to drink and live on basically a fixed income…"

"Jordan!"

"What!"

"All the bartender's there, and everywhere we go, water down your drinks," he said pointedly as he stopped the car outside her apartment. "Because I ask them too. You drink too much."

She turned toward him and let her mouth hang open. He waited for her to say something, but she didn't.

After a good fifteen seconds of silence, she suddenly, only a bit clumsily, unbuckled the seatbelt he had fastened on her and jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind her.

"Jordan, come on!"

"No," she shouted through the car window at him. "You have no right to do something like that. No right to judge me. You're not my father or my big brother. Hell, neither one of them cared enough to stick around, why should you!"

"Jordan…"

"No, Woody. I do not have a problem with alcohol. That's all I'm going to say." She lowered her voice, "Don't bother coming up." And she turned on her heel and stalked into the building.

He sighed and let his head fall to his chest. He definitely hadn't handled that right. But he didn't follow her. Instead, he waited until he saw the light go on in her apartment, then drove off to his own apartment.

After thinking about it, he realized that he hadn't given her a chance. She had been drunk when he confronted her. She may be a coherent drunk, but that didn't mean she could think clearly. So, the next morning he went to her office. And told her the same thing. And she promptly slapped him and told him to get out, repeating that she did not have a drinking problem. She physically pushed him out of her office, and slammed the door behind him.

Once outside her office, Woody took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. Her adamant denial had just confirmed his fear. Jordan Cavanaugh was an alcoholic.