A/N: In Limine, lit. "On the threshold"


Supreme Court 100 Centre St

9.15 am Monday May 14th 2007


The courtroom doors opened and Regan moved towards them. McCoy was following her, and then she felt a little space opening up between them, and turned.

Mike Cutter had stopped McCoy with a hand on his arm, was leaning in and talking low.

Regan got her shoulder in between them. "My client, Mr Cutter. You know the rules."

Cutter's glaze flicked from McCoy to Regan and then back again. He was a lean man with a face more angles than curves but today he looked pulled especially tight and there were shadows under his eyes that suggested he'd slept even worse than Regan had. "You should have told me, Jack," he said. "Yesterday, Jesus, you should have told me a week ago before I hung myself out to dry on this. Tell me how either of us is going to walk away from this one with our reputations intact."

"I don't know what you're talking about," McCoy said. "We're not holding anything back that's discoverable."

"I'm not talking about discovery, Jack, I'm talking about —"

They were causing a mild pile-up at the doors to the courtroom and Regan was pretty sure at least a few of the gawking bystanders were reporters. She couldn't see an open door that might indicate a free conference room.

Then the sign for the men's room caught her eye.

She took McCoy by the shoulder and Cutter by the arm, just above the elbow where she could get a good firm grip, and shoved them both towards the door. Neither of them were small men, and either one of them could have made it difficult, but Regan had learned long ago that it takes most people a few seconds to decide to resist. That was why they taught rookies to get the cuffs on fast, and that was why Regan was pushing the two men ahead of her through the door to the mens' room before Cutter planted his feet and tried to yank his arm away from her grip.

She squeezed the tender flesh between bicep and bone hard enough to hurt and forced Cutter through the door after McCoy, following hard on his heels so he had no chance to turn.

There was no-one else there. Regan closed the door and put her back to it. "If you two want a pissing contest, well, go right ahead. If you have something pertinent to say about the trial, Mr Cutter, say it to me."

Cutter ignored her. "You wanted to plead guilty, Jack," he said, biting each word off, stabbing his forefinger at McCoy. "What was I supposed to think? What would any prosecutor think? I knew there was a case to be made if I could just find it."

"And you knew that a conviction would leave an empty desk on the 10th floor and my scalp on your belt would be a pretty convincing addition to your resume!"

"Yes!" Cutter turned in a circle and raked his fingers through his hair. "Yes, goddamn it, guilty as charged. I like to win. I like high profile cases. I have ambitions. Tell me that none of those things are true about you!"

"I'll give you that one. But I'm fighting for my life in there, Mike, and I won't lie down and die to make you look good."

"Forget about making me look good. I'd settle for not having to chose between setting my own career on fire and letting yours — and more importantly the office — be irreparably tarnished. Jesus, Jack! Did you see this coming? Were you setting me up? Did I steal your fucking parking space one time or something?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about —"

"I thought Dyson was salting the evidence. I swear it, Jack, that's all. It happens, you know it happens."

"It does," McCoy said. "I might have thought the same thing. You could have looked more closely, though."

"I had a defendant who wanted to plead guilty, how close would you have looked?"

"You played a bad hand as hard as you could," McCoy said. "I understand the instinct but I fail to see why you're blaming me for it."

Cutter whirled back to face him, leaning forward, almost close enough to prompt Regan to get in between them and force Cutter back. "Because you could have stopped me! You had to know how those first days of the trial looked, how it would have looked to you, damn it, Jack, and you never explained. Ms Markham was trailing her coat on GHB last week and that's because you don't know what happened, do you, Jack? You can't remember! But you couldn't tell me that, you couldn't say, hey, Mike, I don't know what happened that night and I'm afraid that more than the surname runs in the family —"

"Stop right there!" Now McCoy was the one in Cutter's face and if Cutter was angry, McCoy was incandescent with volcanic rage. "I don't know what you think you —"

"It's 2007, Jack, we talk about this —"

"What did Regan say to you? What, Mike? What?"

"She told me —"

McCoy turned, glaring at Regan. "Goddammit, Regan! I don't know what you think you know but —"

"She told me her father died driving drunk!" Cutter had the capacity for impressive volume, Regan realized, especially in a small room with a lot of tiled surfaces. "She didn't say a word about you, Jack, so lay off her! It was your sister who told me about your father so if you want to be angry with anyone —"

McCoy could turn up the volume to eleven as well. "You involved Lisbeth in this?"

"I had to know, Jack! You know that!"

"My privacy —"

"The second you told ADA Markham to walk that complaint downstairs your privacy became my business and you know it. What privacy do you give defendants, Jack? When you're looking for motive, sending detectives to turn over their underwear drawers and read their love-letters? Getting warrants for wiretaps and tendering their conversations with their kids into evidence? When —"

In Regan's opinion, Cutter had a point, and she could appreciate the frustration that made him want to make it at length and at the top of his voice. However, a glance at her watch showed her they had about two minutes before the judge walked into the courtroom. She pitched her own voice to carry, not shouting like the two men but hard and even like a police officer asking what's going on here into the middle of a rowdy scuffle. "What are you going to do?"

"What do you think I'm going to do? I'm going to put Keri Dyson on the stand."

"Suborning perjury to get a conviction?" McCoy snapped.

"Jesus, Jack," Cutter snarled. "Learn to listen to someone besides yourself for once."

He headed for the door and Regan moved aside to let him pass.

"And what do you think this has achieved?" McCoy glared at Regan. "Aside from leading Mike by the hand to conclusions neither you nor he have any right to draw? Aside from getting my sister involved in this mess?"

"You said yourself on Saturday night that I needed Cutter to call Dyson. And I didn't, I swear I didn't say a word about — about anyone but myself."

"Don't give me that!'" McCoy glared at her. "He's fully literate in between the lines and you know it. You said enough to tell him where to look."

"You'd rather go to jail?"

"You could take this case apart without Mike putting Dyson on the stand."

"But I can't give you your life back," Regan said. "Not without exonerating you in the court of public opinion as well. I know you didn't want anyone to know. And I understand why, Jack, surely you know I understand why. But juries need a story they can understand, you taught me that, and last night, Mike Cutter was the jury who mattered."

"You could have called Keri —"

"As a witness for the defense? Jack, I need to get her on cross and I need Cutter to get out of my way while I do it and you know, you know all that is true. You're the one who said it." She paused. "Hating me for it won't unring the bell. And we have to get in there."

She pulled open the door and waited, and after a moment McCoy strode through it.

"We're not done with this," he snapped as he passed her.

"Didn't think for a moment we were," Regan muttered as she followed him.

They made it to the bar table with seconds to spare, not helped by the fact that McCoy stopped dead halfway up the aisle. Regan shoved him in the small of his back, surreptitiously following his gaze to see who he was staring at. It was either a young man who looked to be about thirteen years old wearing a fedora with home-made press sign tucked in the band or a middle-aged woman. The woman was tall and slim, with a strong-boned face that women's magazines would characterize as 'handsome' rather than 'beautiful', and a thick mane of dark hair pinned up in a loose bun. Regan glanced back as she reached the bar and caught a profile that made it unmistakable: that could only be Lisbeth McCoy.

"All rise," the bailiff said. "The court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Wright presiding."

Regan rose to her feet along with everyone else as the judge came in. "Mr Cutter," he said almost before his backside hit the bench.

Mike Cutter stayed on his feet as everybody else settled back into their seats. "Your honor."

"ADA Rubirosa delivered the report on the contested documents to me this morning. Do you have anything to add before I make my ruling?"

"Only that I profoundly regret not securing such a report before originally tendering the documents as evidence."

"Noted." Judge Wright looked down, reading from his notes. "In light of concerns raised by police experts as to the veracity of the medical records tendered in evidence by the prosecution, not to mention certain other matters brought to the court's attention by the District Attorney's Office —"

Regan turned to stare at Cutter, but he was looking straight ahead with an expression of obedient attention. It was Connie who caught her gaze and gave her a tiny smile.

"— I hereby rule these records are excluded from evidence," Judge Wright was saying. "And I intend to instruct the jury so and inform them of the reasons. Anything to say, Mr Cutter?"

"No, your honor."

"You have no case, Mr Cutter. Do you intend to present one, or should I save us all time and dismiss the charges right now?"

"Your Honor, I have one more witness."

"You don't want to quit while you're behind?"

"No, your honor. I believe the court should hear the entirety of the evidence."

"Very well. Bring the jury in."

Cutter sank back into his seat as the bailiff opened the door to the jury room and the jurors filed in and took their places in the jury box. He kept his gaze fixed on the legal pad in front of him as Judge Wright explained to the jury that sufficient doubts had been raised about the veracity of the medical records tendered in evidence as to make them inadmissible. When he asked if they had any questions, one of the jurors raised his hand and asked what veracity meant.

"It means that the experts in the police laboratory have doubts that they're true," Judge Wright said.

A little murmur ran through the jury box at that and through the courtroom observers benches too. Regan had to work hard not to grin. Sometimes, a bell can be unrung. Sometimes, the silence afterwards is of a finer quality than could ever have been possible before.

She wanted the share the moment of triumph but she didn't dare try to catch McCoy's eye. Last night in Cutter's office she'd followed the letter of the law and of McCoy's instructions and known she was tap-dancing through their spirit in hobnailed boots. At the time, it had felt like a move straight from the Jack McCoy playbook. She'd thought about how much it cost her right then, but not about what it might cost her when McCoy found out.

What did you expect, an attagirl?

Danielle Melnick had said it. He's not a man who forgives. What he sees as betrayal – he's not a man who forgives.

"Mr Cutter?" the judge asked, tone testy.

Mike Cutter rose to his feet. "The People call Keri Dyson."

.oOo.