Extradition


Supreme Court 100 Centre St

4:30 pm Friday May 11 2007


The late afternoon sun was still warm as they left the courthouse. McCoy paused on the steps, feeling the breeze as if he had been shut inside for weeks instead of just since that morning. The others kept walking, Serena and Curtis heading for her car, Danielle going left and Sally and Nora walking side-by-side, talking quietly. Only Regan stopped, waiting for him.

"Monday's going to be a hell of a day," she said when he started down the steps again, falling into step beside him.

He grinned. "Cutter's not as smart as he thinks he is."

"If he's half as smart as he thinks he is, I'm in trouble," Regan said.

McCoy shook his head. "You can take him."

"In a bar-brawl, sure," Regan said. "In the courtroom, not so much."

"My money's on you," McCoy said.

"It kind of has to be, doesn't it?" Regan said, but she was smiling.

They turned together and began to walk along Centre Street toward the subway. After a moment McCoy broke the companionable silence.

"Why were you so sure?" he asked her.

Claire would have given him a look, mingled affection and exasperation. She'd have taken his arm. You big dope, she'd have said.

Because I love you.

Regan kept walking, gaze on the pavement. "Because I know you," she said.

"That's not enough," McCoy said.

"It's what I've got, okay!" Regan flared.

"No, I mean – as a lawyer. You can't just 'know'. You need to look at the evidence and reason it out. Feminine intuition isn't a sound guide to guilt or – "

"Oh for – how many times have you gone with your gut instinct, Jack?" Regan asked. "A man makes a judgment call and he's got good instincts. A woman does it and she's being irrational. Give me a break!"

"That's not what I'm talking about," McCoy said.

"It's exactly what you're talking about."

"You didn't make a judgment call – you closed your eyes and jumped."

"Because you asked me to," Regan said.

"That's not judgment. It's blind faith." McCoy turned to look at her as they walked. "Justice is blind, Regan. The people who work for her can't afford to be."

"We all need to trust someone, Jack," Regan said.

"You shouldn't trust me that much. You don't know me."

"I know enough," Regan said. "I know everything I need to know."

She didn't look at him as she spoke and he wondered what it was she thought she knew, striding through the early evening with her chin up and her jaw set.

Before he could ask her she stopped. "This is my subway," she said. "See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah," McCoy said. "Or, we could – are you hungry?"

Regan shook her head. "I'm tired," she said. "And so are you. Go get some sleep, Jack."

He accepted his dismissal. She turned and walked away from him, toward the subway, and then stopped, and turned. "I always knew you hadn't done it," she said. "I told you. If you couldn't trust your own judgment, why didn't you trust mine?"

McCoy hesitated.

"I guess we don't all need to trust someone," Regan said with a sad little smile. She turned, and was gone before he could form an answer.

Her words stayed with him all the way home. He found some cold Chinese in the fridge and ate it standing up at the sink, unwilling to go into the living room where the pile of boxes were a silent reminder of the waking nightmare that the last week had been.

We all need to trust someone… Which was a fine sentiment, as far as it went, but it was the people you trusted who betrayed you.

Who turn out to be someone you never knew, with a name you've never heard. Who turn their backs on the values you thought you shared. Who leave. One way or another.

The apartment felt empty, as if no-one really lived here. McCoy told himself it was just because he'd packed up almost everything he'd owned, spending days and nights concentrating on the task because while he was working out how to fit the largest number of books in the smallest number of boxes he wasn't thinking about anything else.

Liar. The hollow quiet was a familiar feeling, one that would usually see him picking up the phone, flipping through his address book as he pondered which number to dial.

Tonight, though, he thought he was exhausted enough to sleep even with the apartment echoing the silence back at him. He went into the living room long enough to retrieve the photograph from the wall and took it into the bedroom, propping it on the bedside table. The room was less empty with her there.

We all need to trust someone…

Had Claire trusted him? Or had she trusted that the version of him she believed in was real?

It wasn't a question that had occurred to him when they were together. It wasn't a question he could answer now she was gone.

He lay down, leaving the bed-side light on so he could still see her, laughing – the way she'd always be laughing – laughing at something he'd said, something so unimportant he couldn't even remember it. She'd told him she knew him, too. I know you too well to think that's what you really believe, she'd said, somewhere in amidst the last, worst fight they'd had.

She hadn't known him. She'd just believed he couldn't really be the man in front of her, had been convinced that there was a real Jack McCoy buried inside, the man she had faith he could become.

Maybe there had been.

Or maybe there could have been. Back then, in the past.

An old quote came back to him, unbidden. But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.

He closed his eyes, Claire's laughing face still clear in his mind.

The next he knew, the phone was ringing. Disoriented, he reached out, fumbling on the nightstand.

"Hello?"

"Mr. McCoy, I have a long-distance call for you. Will you accept the charges?" Colleen Petraky said.

"Colleen?" McCoy asked. "What – ?"

"Will you accept the charges?" she said again, and McCoy was no longer certain he recognized her voice.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I'll accept the charges."

There was a click on the line, a pause, and then Claire Kincaid said: "Jack?"

His heart stopped beating. He couldn't move or speak or breathe.

"Jack, are you there?" Her voice was thin and crackly with distance.

He got a breath. "Yes," he said hoarsely. "I'm here. Claire, I'm here."

His mind racedto explanations – it had been a terrible misunderstanding, a mistake; it had been an elaborate ruse to put her into witness protection; the last decade had been a nightmare from which he was now waking – where was she, how far – should he take the bike, hire a car – would he need to fly – Tell me where you are, Claire, I'll be right there.

But he didn't say it, because at the same time as he sought desperately for a rational explanation, he was noticing how consistent his imagination had become. Because if the past is a foreign country, then of course it's a long distance call.

"Claire," he said again, instead, trying desperately not to wake up. "I'm here."

The last words he'd spoken to her – not the last words she'd heard him say, getting out of the car, but the last words he'd said to her in the hospital. I'm here, Claire. I'm here. As if she could hear him. As if it mattered.

"You're such an idiot," Claire said. "The man I knew would have fought this from the beginning."

He held the phone receiver so hard that if he'd been awake it would have cracked in his hand. "I'm not the man you knew, Claire."

"That's obvious," she said.

If he could have seen her face, he would have known how she meant him to take that, but the distance and the phone-line flattened her voice and robbed him of any hidden meanings.

"I'm – " McCoy bit back the next word. I'm the man losing you made me, he could have told her, wanted to tell her, wanted her to know how that moment when he had heard Adam's voice crackling out of the answering machine Pick up the phone. Jack. Pick up the phone. It's Claire. You need to come to the hospital, Jack. Pick up the phone. There's been an accident. Goddamn it, Jack, pick up the phone! had lodged down inside him like a mouthful of slow poison, incurable, inexorable …

But what would that do? How would that change anything?

She must have heard it in his voice. "Are you going to blame me now?"

"I'm not blaming you," McCoy said quickly. "Claire."

"Using me as an excuse, then," Claire said. He heard her sigh. "You've been doing that for a while."

"An excuse, Jesus!" McCoy said, genuinely angry. "As if I wanted – "

"As if you wanted to hold on," Claire said, gently. "I know, Jack. It's alright, I'm here."

"Not so often," McCoy said without thinking. "It's been – " such a long time since I've seen you. Years, even, until that moment in the car on the way home from Carthage.

"When you want me," Claire said. "When you want me, I'm here. So, hey, are you going to kick Mike Cutter's ass?"

He couldn't help smiling, hearing her smile in the low drawl of her voice. "I'm going to try," he said.

"A lawyer who represents himself – "

"Has a fool for a client," McCoy finished. "I know. I have a lawyer."

"Any good?" Claire asked. Her voice was easy, conversational – just like the old days, when they'd talked over cases on the phone, over dinner, in bed.

"She's got a few tricks up her sleeve," McCoy said. "I'd rather it was you, though."

"She?" Claire said. "The new model? What is she, Sally Bell mark two?"

"No," McCoy said.

"Don't tell me she's the new release Diana Hawthorne!" Claire said.

"No," McCoy said again. "She's not – she's an ex-cop. Nothing like Sally or Diana." Nothing like you, either. "Rough edges. A temper."

"Sounds like Mike Logan in drag," Claire said.

McCoy snorted. "Closer to Mike than Diana, that's for sure," he said. "But – " He paused, reaching for the words, then gave up. "She's not you," he said instead. "Not even close."

He heard her sigh. "You should get some sleep, Jack," she said. "You've got a lot of work to do."

"No – " he said quickly. "Don't go, Claire. Don't – "

He was awake, and listening to a dial tone.

Don't go, Claire.

But she had.


.oOo.


A/N: "But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead." is a quote from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta.