One Of A Kind
Abbie Carmichael's Townhouse
7am Friday May 11th 2007
God send us all such friends.
The words echoed in Regan's head when she woke the next morning in a sweaty tangle of sheets, fragments of a fading nightmare about One Hogan Place and screaming clinging persistently to the edge of her mind.
She rolled over and looked at the clock. Five am. She felt as if she'd barely slept. Danielle had sent her to bed at midnight, reminding her that she needed to be sharp for court. Swinging her feet to the floor, Regan rubbed gritty eyes and yawned. So much for that idea.
A shower and coffee restored her a little. She sat down at Abbie's dining room table, now covered with files and notes, and tried to concentrate on the day ahead, a day that would probably bring Keri Dyson's testimony. And, please God, will bring something conclusive and damning about Keri Dyson from Rey Curtis and Serena Southerlyn.
A sudden cold thought seized her, recollection of McCoy's abrupt exit from the courtroom yesterday. He's not a man who forgives. What if McCoy turned up at the courthouse today prepared to dismiss his lawyer?
He has every legal right to do it.
And she'd given him enough provocation.
Panic seized her. Barely pausing to push the notes she'd need for the day into her briefcase, she grabbed her jacket and hurried out into the street, hailing the first cab she saw and giving the cabbie McCoy's address.
Outside his door, she rang the bell and waited. As she was about to ring it again she heard the lock snib back and the door opened.
He clearly slept as badly as I did, Regan thought when she saw McCoy. Early as it was, he was up and dressed except for his suit jacket and tie. He looked at her silently.
"Can I come in?" she asked as the uncomfortable silence stretched.
Still unspeaking, McCoy stepped back to let her through the door.
As he closed it behind her Regan looked around. The apartment was far neater than it had been on Sunday. The piles of books and papers that had littered the living room were gone, and a pile of boxes was stacked against the wall. Regan took a step toward them, reading the notations scrawled on their sides in McCoy's handwriting. Law Journals – 2004 was written on one, Cybercrime on another.
He's packing, she realized.
Not packing to move.
Packing so everything can be stored while he's in jail.
The realization hurt, a little twisting pain in her chest that made it hard to breathe. Oh, Jack. She could imagine him working late into the night, filling boxes with all the accoutrements of his career, his life, alone in his apartment with his fear of the future and a face-down picture of Claire Kincaid. Oh, Jack.
"What do you want?" McCoy asked harshly behind her, and Regan turned to see him regarding her with an unreadable expression.
"To talk to you about today," she said. "Cutter's likely to call Dyson this morning. I want to make sure you understand I'm going to go hard on cross."
"You made that clear yesterday," McCoy said. He rubbed his hand over his face. "You want coffee?" he asked abruptly.
"Yeah," Regan said, surprised at the hospitality. He turned without another word and went to the kitchen.
Regan took a few steps further into the living room. She ran her fingers over the shelves of the bookcase, mostly empty now, and picked up the framed photograph that still lay there, face down.
That nice young woman, Claire Kincaid, Mrs. Farr had called her, and said I hear him, sometimes. Walking around that apartment at three in the morning.
Rescuing the suffering outlaw only pans out in the movies …
Regan looked down at Claire Kincaid's laughing face. You would have rescued him, she thought. If you'd had enough time.
If you'd been here none of this would have happened. Jack wouldn't have been drinking with Keri. Even if Keri had slipped him a mickey, you would never have let him leave with her. And even if he had, you would never have let him persuade you to file the charges. You would never have let him believe he was guilty. You would never –
No, Claire Kincaid would never have made any of the mistakes Regan had made.
Sorry, she thought. I've let him down all along the way. I've screwed this up, big-time. Sorry.
She couldn't see accusation in Claire's eyes – but she couldn't see forgiveness either.
It's a damn photograph, girl! her Gran-Da's scratchy voice said. You losing your mind?
Yeah, Gran-Da. For example, old dead lawmen are talking to me, Regan thought.
Hearing McCoy in the hall, she put the photograph back as it had been and turned away from the bookcase.
"What are you going to do with these?" she asked McCoy, indicating the boxes.
He shrugged, careful not to spill the coffee, and handed one mug to her. "I'm sure they'll be useful to someone," he said.
Regan looked back at the bookcase, noticing a couple of novels still left on the shelves beside a photo album. "And this stuff?"
"Lisbeth – my sister – can store a few things for me," McCoy said. He sipped his coffee. "I'm not sure what to do with the bike. My nephew would love it – but Lisbeth wouldn't."
Regan opened her mouth to tell him about Keri Dyson's work history and her speculation about it, then paused, remembering how angrily dismissive he had been of her idea about GHB. What had he said to Serena? The last argument of a desperate and incompetent lawyer – my client was framed.
She was just too tired for an argument she could put off for a little while longer, too tired to break the fragile and tentative truce between them.
It might come to nothing, she rationalized. I shouldn't get his hopes up, when it might come to nothing.
McCoy cleared his throat, interrupting Regan's thoughts. "I've been meaning to ask you," he said. "Can I have my keys back?"
Regan blinked. Keys. She'd had them since she'd stayed here, that cold January weekend McCoy had discovered just how shabby her accommodation was. He hadn't asked for them back, and Regan hadn't offered, even after Branch's warning had made it clear that there could be nothing more between Regan and McCoy than professional camaraderie. Returning the keys would say – Regan hadn't let herself think about what returning the keys would say, and why she wasn't willing to say it.
She didn't think about it now as she fished the keys out of her pocket. "Here," she said past the irrational lump in her throat.
"The landlord will need all three sets," McCoy explained, not moving to take the keys from her hand.
"You're really planning for me to lose, aren't you?" Regan said. She set the keys on the bookshelf, beside the photo album.
"I'm looking at the evidence," McCoy said. "You've got to learn to do that, Regan, look at the evidence, not look for what you wish was there."
Regan nodded, not trusting her voice, and turned away so he couldn't see her face. Looking for a distraction, she took the photo album off the shelf and opened it, looking for the picture she remembered, Jack McCoy aged three, with a shock of hair and a cheeky grin.
The album fell open at a picture of a big man in a police uniform a few decades out-of-date, broad-shouldered, feet planted firmly on the ground as if to keep the earth subdued, one huge hand enveloping the shoulder of the skinny boy at his side, a boy whose young face already showed traces of Jack McCoy's distinctive features. Father and son, Regan thought, for the way they stood together made the relationship clear, even though she couldn't see any resemblance in their faces. She peered more closely at the photograph, looking for some trace of the adult Jack McCoy she knew in his father. Nothing. She looked again at the boy dwarfed by his father. If the child is father to the man, she thought, then the boy in this picture is where the man I know comes from. He didn't look like the kind of boy who'd grow up to be a tough alpha lawyer, the DA's junk-yard dog, as he stared solemnly at the camera. He looks …
He looks as if he has a black eye.
She looked again at the way they stood, father and son, the way the man's big hand held his son's shoulder, the way the son stood straight and braced and tense.
Regan turned a page, turned another. She saw a picture of a woman who must be Jack McCoy's mother, face turned away from the camera in an attempt to hide the healing scab of a split lip, turned the page and saw a teenage Jack McCoy with a cast on his wrist.
"Do we really have time for you to be looking at old photographs?" McCoy asked testily.
Regan turned to look at him, the album still open in her hands, and wondered if she had really heard the edge of anxiety in his voice or just imagined it. "Maybe I need to make the time," she said. Turning another page brought her to a picture of Jack McCoy as a graduating senior, smiling for the camera despite a bruised and swollen lip.
What had he said to her in the car on the way home from Carthage? At the time Regan had been preoccupied with her struggle with her own history, but McCoy's words came back to her now with a keener edge. These terrible old men who shape our lives. Men we can't live up to, can't live down. You didn't turn into him? Maybe you're stronger than he was.
She shut the album. "Maybe we both need to take a trip down memory lane," she said evenly.
McCoy shook his head but Regan didn't give him a chance to speak.
"I've been racking my brains, trying to work out why you're so set on getting in the way of your own defense," she said, keeping her voice calm and steady. She held the album out to him. "And this is why, isn't it?"
"They're just old photographs," McCoy snapped. "And they're none of your business."
"Old photographs of things that you wouldn't think could stay a secret," Regan said, remembering his words to her the previous Sunday, his sudden anger. "But that did, right, Jack? For how long?"
"Forever," McCoy said. He met her gaze, looking defiant, looking defeated. "I'm not going to talk about this, Regan. I never talk about this."
The child is father to the man. Jack 'Hang 'em High' McCoy, brilliant, demanding, intemperate, passionate in the pursuit of justice – and an eight year old boy who had to steel himself to stand next to his father.
A boy who saw his mother beaten.
These terrible old men we can't live down…
Her story stacks up, McCoy had said, not meeting her eyes.
It all made sense, at last, in a way too painful not to be true. Oh, Jack.
Guilt is like water, Skoda had said. It finds the lowest level.
And when it gets too deep, you can drown.
Regan laid the album back on the shelf, beside the face-down picture of Claire Kincaid.
Claire Kincaid, who would have known what to say to McCoy right at this moment, who would have had the right to say it, because she loved him and he loved her, because she was amazing, and astonishing.
Oh, Jack.
"I understand," Regan said quietly. She turned back to face him, knowing then with a certainty beyond her best denial, that what was between them would never be only professional, not for her.
You're in pretty deep, aren't you? Danielle's words, but an old man's scratchy voice. Over your head, girl.
Did you ever learn to swim?
Too late to ask that question, Gran-Da.
"I understand," Regan said again. "You're not going to talk about it. So listen. My father was a drunk with a gambling problem, and I can put twenty dollars and a shot of scotch on the table for a poker game and walk away when they're both gone. Not everything comes down through the generations."
"Thanks for your homespun wisdom," McCoy said acerbically.
Regan paused. "Are we going to be like this, now?" she asked softly. "Because of yesterday? Is this what we're going to be like?"
"What did you expect?" McCoy demanded. "An attagirl?"
"No, I guess this is just about exactly what I expected," Regan said, trying to smile, trying to sound as if she didn't care.
She realized she had failed at both when McCoy sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Look," he said, his tone more conciliatory, "I know what it's like to want to win. I know how easy it is to go too far. You got carried away. Let's leave it at that."
Tempting as it was to nod and agree, Regan said: "No. We can't leave it at that. Because I'm going to go as hard today as yesterday, I'm going to do everything legally permissible to get you acquitted. I didn't get 'carried away'. I made a decision – a decision to stop letting you hang yourself."
"You have to understand – " McCoy said angrily.
Regan cut him off. "I understand that every piece of hard evidence I have points to you being framed. I understand that Keri Dyson's plan was not to lay charges but to blackmail you for a promotion. And I understand that you are not your father." McCoy opened his mouth, scowling, and Regan cut him off. "And maybe you should understand that you aren't the only person in the gun here."
McCoy drew breath for an angry reply, and then let it out on a sigh.
"I shouldn't have got you involved in this," he said, sinking down onto the couch. "I didn't think – I didn't think about what it would mean, for you. Just – when I saw that file, when I saw Keri's face, I couldn't think who – except for you. That I could rely on you. That I could trust you."
"You can trust me," Regan said, sitting beside him.
"Just not to do as you're told," McCoy said with an attempt at a smile.
"Not when you're telling me to do something stupid," Regan said.
"I'm sorry," McCoy said. "For getting you involved. For putting you – for all of it. All of it."
"Jack, it's okay," Regan said. "You remember, I told you – I'll find a way to meet the cost of any check you need to write." She laid her hand over his. "It's going to be okay. We're going to win."
"I'm not used to having quite so much at risk in the courtroom," McCoy said with a wry smile. "The last time was when Claire was trying to clear my name by nailing Diana Hawthorne for concealing exculpatory evidence."
"I bet she did just great," Regan said.
"She was pretty good," McCoy said, smiling at the memory.
"I'll try to be as good," Regan said.
"Oh, Claire was one of a kind," McCoy said offhandedly, getting to his feet. He held out his hand for Regan's mug, and she gave it to him. "Never knew anyone like her, before or since."
As he took the mugs into the kitchen, Regan pushed herself to her feet and once more picked up the photograph of Claire Kincaid. One of a kind.
"We should get going," McCoy said from the hall. Regan turned to see him with his jacket on, tying his tie as he spoke.
"Do you want me to put this back for you?" Regan asked, holding the picture up.
"No," McCoy said shortly. "Leave it."
Regan looked down at Claire Kincaid, one of a kind, astonishing, amazing. "If you tell me why," she said softly.
"I don't have to explain myself to – " McCoy started to say, taking an angry step toward her.
"You don't have to," Regan interrupted. "But I'm asking you to."
He stopped, and shook his head wordlessly. Regan waited, the photo in her hands.
"I could always tell when she was disappointed in me," McCoy said at last. "She used to look at me with this – this accusation in her eyes. She never had to say a word. And I can't – I can't look at her accusing me. This – I read Keri Dyson's affidavit too, Regan. It happened – just there, in the hall. I can just imagine what she'd have thought, seeing it. Leave the picture where it was."
"I can't see any accusation, Jack," Regan said, pretending to study the picture. "Whatever happened in the hall, it wasn't what Keri said. I know that. And so does she." She held the photograph up for him to look at. "If she's disappointed at anything, it's at you letting yourself get spun around and twisted up by this."
"She doesn't know anything," McCoy said softly. "She's dead. It's just a photo."
Regan thought for a moment she'd bet higher than her cards could justify but she hadn't played years of squad room poker for nothing. She looked him dead in the eye.
"Then put it back on the wall."
He drew a breath, anger flashing in his eyes, and Regan braced herself for a sharp retort. Then, to her surprise, he let the air out of his lungs gently, took the photo from her hands, and hung it back in its place on the wall.
As Regan steered him out of the apartment, she glanced back at Claire Kincaid, restored to pride of place. Maybe I can't look after him as well as you would have, she thought, I'm not as good a lawyer, I'm not one-of-a-kind, and nobody's ever been astonished or amazed by me.
But I'll do my best, anyway.
I'm not you, Claire, and I can't pretend to be. But I'll do the best that I can.
.oOo.
A/N: McCoy's line about being a sore loser was originally in episode "Jeopardy".
