Jack McCoy downed the last of his nightcap. The grandfather clock read a few minutes after two and McCoy was contemplating whether to go back out and try to retrace his fiancées steps. When he arrived home shortly before one, he had assumed Malinowski was on her way home from the steakhouse, after a late night seesion of prepping, with her assistant.
Impulsively he reached for this cell phone, only to remember he had forgotten to charge the battery and the phone was dead. The oversite had also made it impossible for him to reach the fiancée earlier in the evening, to notify her he had been delayed by an unavoidable scene at the bar association dinner, after he had made his speech.
After stripping off the tux jacket and removing the dangling strip of cloth from his neck, McCoy had called the steakhouse from the lofts land line, only to be told Malinowski had left nearly a half hour before his call. Assuming she was on her way home, McCoy had poured himself a drink and sat down to wait.
He glanced at the clock again and gave a fleeting thought to calling the local precinct and using his new found clout as DA to have some uniforms keep an eye out for his future wife. Remembering the reaction she'd had when he had the locals track her down at the law library only a few months before, he discarded the idea, for the time being.
He decided to give it another half hour, remembering how often time had gotten away from him when he had a big cases to prepare for. Besides, another half hour would give him a little more time to unwind from an evening that had turned into one long chain of disasters.
First, the car had been late. When McCoy finally entered the bar association dinner, the waiters were almost finished clearing the dinner dishes. With half a dinner roll and a glass of water to sustain him, McCoy began the speech that was scheduled to kick off a list of speakers. After a series of technical problems and the sense of an unexpectedly chilly reception, McCoy made it through the speech, only to begin playing the waiting game. A game which included polite applause and quiet table chatter in between speakers for another two hours.
After saying good night to the President of the local Bar, McCoy thought he just might be able to slip out without being snagged by a colleague, acquaintance, or a reporter and make to the steakhouse before they stopped serving dinner at eleven o'clock. Then he heard a voice that, on any other night would have sounded like music to his ears, coming from behind him.
McCoy turned to give his former assistant a hug. As the pair went through the usual pleasantries, McCoy noticed the troubled look on Judge Jamie Ross's face.
"Jamie, this is an unexpected pleasure. I thought you and Dave were scheduled to be in Albany until the end of the month. Is everything all right?"
"Dave and I are fine," Ross replied hurriedly, as the hall began to fill with other guests that left the banquet room. "Jack, I do you have a few minutes? There is something I think you need to hear, in private?"
McCoy put aside the urge to press her and offered Ross his arm. In the time he had worked with Jamie Ross, McCoy had found that if his attractive assistant thought something was important enough to bring to his attention, it was something well worth hearing.
The pair walked around the corner and into an empty banquet room. After closing the heavy double doors, McCoy turned back to Ross, eyebrows raised.
Ross toyed with the turquoise wrap that matched the strapless evening gown she was wearing. After spending the evening seated next to Danielle Melnick and her date, Ross had heard enough of the couples 'table chatter' to know Jack McCoy's friend of more than twenty years was trending on thin ice. Rosses fear was if the ice gave, Melnick would take McCoy down with her.
"Jamie, is everything all right at home," McCoy asked with growing concern. "Did something happen to Katie or Dave-?"
"Everyone's fine Jack," Ross said quickly. "Everything at my place is fine. The question is, how are things at yours?"
"Brooke and I are fine," he said, even more mystified. "If we ever get a moment without one of our phones or beepers going off, I think we might even set a date for the wedding. But I hardly think that's what you brought me in here to discuss."
"Jack, I really wish it was," she replied with a sigh, while she tried to decide what the gentlest way was to tell the DA of his good friend's activities.
"Come on Jamie. Just spit it out. If this is about your ruling on that arrest warrant last month ... you know I reserve my grudges for defense counsel, not judges."
"Well at least I know your vengeance will be directed in the right direction."
"Not if you plan to keep talking in riddles," he retorted, working hard to keep the impatience out of his voice. "Listen Jamie, it's late and Brooke is waiting for me. If there's something you want to tell me, let's hear it."
"You're not going to like it," she said with a sigh. "Look, I know how far you and Danielle Melnick go back … Jack, do you know how that report that got filed with the 1 6, the one about your fiancée's hospital visit?"
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"Danielle," a livid baritone thundered a few feet from the startled defense attorney.
Melnick and Sam Prescott were chatting at the cab stand in front of the Four Seasons Hotel, when McCoy caught up with the couple. McCoy's tone told her he was in no mood to mince words or participate in their usual banter. The expression on his face told left no doubt in Melnick's mind as to the cause of his distress.
After a word to Prescott, she moved to meet him far enough from the cab stand as to be assured she was out of the lover's earshot.
"Jack, that was some speech tonight. After all these years, you would think you would have grasped the guidelines for exculpatory evidence..."
"Save your critique for pillow talk with Prescott," he snapped as glared down at her. "I defended you when Brooke said you had a hand in that emergency room report ending up at the 1 6. I told her, after knowing you for almost a quarter century, I felt confident you knew what kind of man I was, obviously I was wrong."
"Jack that has nothing to do with ..."
"It has everything to do with it," he thundered. "No wonder Hazel Bennett from Legal Aid was glaring at me all night! Half her cases are domestic violence cases…she probably thinks the DA is just another closet batterer!"
"Jack, the 1 6 cleared you," Melnick countered as she nervously glanced at the small crowd gathering behind him. "This really isn't the place..."
"Don't play games with me Danielle. I know you tipped off the 1 6. I also know you've made it known to several prominent members of the Manhattan legal community, that it looks like the ADA on the Crawford case has an abusive boyfriend. As it if would take someone like Hazel Bennett more than a couple of hours to find out that boyfriend is the DA of her own county. What the hell were you thinking, Danielle?"
"Danielle is there a problem here," asked a concerned voice behind the defense attorney.
"Answer me, Danielle," McCoy demanded, ignoring Sam Prescott's inquiring gaze. "Did you think that somehow putting on this farce would give you grounds to ask to have Brooke recuise herself from the Crawford case? That you might draw an ADA that might actually accept that so call plea bargain you tried to get by her?"
"How dare you question my ethics, after some of the stunts you've pulled," Melnick shot back angrily.
"Stunts? You want to talk about stunts," McCoy countered while he shifted his accusing stare to Prescott."You tell me Sam ,which sounds more irresponsible to a former prosecutor? Planting grounds to get a ADA removed from a case to give a defense attorney the bet shot at an acquittal or a defense attorney that is so naive that she lets herself be used as a messenger for one of her homicidal clinets, resulting in the death of a DA in another state..."
"Jack, how could you," Melnick gasped.
"Now Jack," Prescott interjected as he protectively stepped in front of his date. "I don't know what this messenger business is about, but as far as the other, Danielle was genuinely concerned about Mal when I told her about those bruises. Quite frankly, given your background, I did see any harm in having the police..."
McCoy's look of outrage immediately transformed into the same kind of look he had the last time he'd played basketball and had a ball knock the wind out of him.
"My background," he said to himself, before turning his attention to Prescott. "You know Sam, as someone who's known Danielle for almost three decades, I think you might want to focus your energies on learning the details of the alustrous career of Danielle Melnick, as opposed to my tortured childhood. Let's start with the blood on her hands from the murder of DA Mark Featherstone in North Carolina about the time you went into witness protection..."
"Stop it Jack," Melnick pleaded as she looked up into Prescott's dumbfounded eyes. "You know the only reason that a happened was that Marxist ruling by Judge..."
"Mark Featherstone is dead," Prescott said in amazement. "No, you said this happened in North Carolina? The Featherstone I worked with had been a DA in Florida for the last several years."
McCoy met Melnick's shining eyes before looking at the pavement, as he responded somberly.
"He was on a hunting trip out of state when it happened, Sam. I'm sorry you had to hear it this way. But if you're going to be involved with Ms. Melnick, maybe you better learn take her cause of the day with a grain of salt. Especially when she enlists you in a ploy to undermine your ex-wife."