I'm telling ya, baby, they ain't mine. The lyrics are from Ani DiFranco's song "Providence"; the title is from Shakespeare. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback.

The Fall of a Sparrow
Violet
I wonder what happens if I get to the end of this tunnel,
And there isn't a light
I've worn down the treads on all of my tires
I've worn through the elbows and the knees of my clothing
And I'm stumbling down the gravel driveway of desire
Trying not to wake up....


"For the last time, John," Jeffries said, "I am not going to tell you that!"

"Why not?" Munch asked, accompanying her up the stairs of the old apartment building. "Your first sexual experience is a powerful, character-defining moment! I'm trying to do a little bit of partnerly bonding here." She ignored him. In a wheedling tone, he added, "Besides, Cassidy told me about his first time...."

"It's embarrassing. Cassidy was embarrassed so much around you that he stopped noticing it after a while. Did you tell him about your first time?"

Munch evaded the question by directing his attention to the uniform cop waiting on the landing. "Detectives Munch and Jeffries, Special Victims Unit. What have we got here?"

"Guy gets drunk, comes over to his girlfriend's place, and tries to rape her," the officer explained, leading them into the apartment. A woman with a bruised cheekbone was sitting on the couch, trembling, and muffled noises were coming from down the hall. "Halfway through, she grabbed a gun, tied him to a chair, and called 911."

"It's going to be okay," Jeffries told the woman. She nodded and started to cry, and Jeffries sat down beside her, offering her a Kleenex.

"Bitch!" shouted a voice. There was laughter, and the voice yelled again: "Shut up!"

Munch walked down the hall and surveyed the scene in the bedroom. The floor was strewn with torn clothes, and a bedside table had been knocked over. The uniform's partner was sitting on the bed, chuckling at the man who had been bound to the chair with what looked like a jump rope.

The man in the chair. The face of the man in the chair.

He hadn't seen it many times before, but he knew he was not mistaken. "You got his name," Munch said to the younger cop. There was no question in his voice.

"Yeah," the uniform said. "Frank Cantwell. Lucky she didn't waste his ass."

Munch was no longer listening. He turned on his heel and walked down the hall.

"John?" Jeffries called after him as he stormed through the living room.

"Cantwell. Frank fucking Cantwell. I gotta go call Kay."

Before she could stop him or ask any questions, he was gone.


---


Kay twisted her hands restlessly, watching the gray sky roll past her window. The landscape was quiet, and her thoughts were anything but.

Her partner, Hurley, had fallen asleep almost as soon as the train started moving. It was just as well. She didn't want to talk, not when she couldn't even put things in order in her own mind, which had been racing since she heard Munch's voice on the phone.

Rotation, she thought wryly, was the best thing that had ever happened to her. As pissed off as she had been (and still was, she added mentally, forcing herself into honesty) about being shoved out of Homicide, she had to admit it had given her some sorely-needed distance. Moving to Fugitive, with a new group of colleagues and a new kind of responsibility, had enabled her to push away the anger and the sorrow she'd brought with her. Now it was coming back with the force of a hurricane.

Frank Cantwell killed him, and got away with it.

Beau Felton. Her partner. Her friend. Who had been noticeably edgy about working with a woman when she joined the squad, but had become her best defender as soon as he saw that she was good police. Who had tried like hell to deal with his crazy wife, and wanted nothing more than a normal home for himself and his children. Who had gone undercover after his suspension, without ever telling her, barely even speaking to her. The damned, lazy, caring, foolish son-of-a-bitch.

And Frank Cantwell killed him, and got away with it.

The days immediately following his death had been some of the worst ones of her adult life. It still hurt like hell to think about how she'd fought tooth-and-nail with Giardello and finally realized that he simply didn't trust her abilities enough to let her work on Felton's murder. She'd been forced to the sidelines, making awkward conversation with Megan Russert and watching Pembleton handle the investigation with only half his heart in it. She'd hated seeing so much of the case tossed to Gharty and Falsone, who weren't even murder police -- or very good police -- at the time. And that horrible handful of hours when she had truly believed her partner capable of suicide. It hadn't been fair to her, and it hadn't been fair to Beau.

Frank Cantwell killed him, and got away with it.

She'd spent the last couple of years alternately trying to ignore and cope with the events of those few days. When Gee had been shot, she'd thought that she wanted to help with the investigation out of loyalty, though it was more than he'd done for Beau. Then, when Brodie brought the news of his death, she'd suddenly realized that the rift between herself and her former lieutenant would never be closed, and she hadn't been able to stop her tears. She'd been trying to accept it, just like she'd been trying to accept that she would never solve or resolve Felton's killing. That single phone call had offered her a chance she'd given up on.

She rubbed her exhausted shoulders and leaned her seat back a little, but did not sleep.

She was not going to let him get away again.


---


Munch was wired and irritable, which wasn't much different from his everyday demeanor. Jeffries was getting used to her partner's irascible behavior, though, and she could sense the edge underneath his customary negative attitude.

"You know, it's okay if you're nervous," she said, when he started to complain about the weather for the second time in an hour.

"I'm not nervous; I just hate Penn Station. Look at this ridiculous junk they sell here! Princess Diana teddy bears. I-heart-New York ceramic mugs. If anyone coming through this place loved New York so much they wouldn't be in such a hurry to get out of here. And this coffee is worse than the junk that's been stewing in the squadroom."

He didn't even sound convincing to himself, so he changed tactics. "Anyway, it's a nerve-wracking situation. I'm in a different unit, two hundred miles away from Baltimore in the biggest city in the world, three years after we started looking for this little -" He stopped, searching for a suitable word.

"Asswipe?" Jeffries suggested, secretly enjoying the way Munch always seemed taken aback for an instant when she exercised her sailor's vocabulary.

"That'll do," he agreed. "Cop-killing asswipe. Lowest of the low. And he turns up here, out of the proverbial blue. So it's playing a little havoc with my nerves; you don't think that's an appropriate reaction?"

"I didn't mean that," she said, but let it drop.

Munch kept pacing intermittently, unable to stand still or stay silent for long. "I mean it about this coffee. It's swill. It's worse than swill. They probably make it by reheating the watered-down dregs left at the bottom of a bucket of swill."

"Same old Munchkin," Kay's voice said behind him.

He whirled around, smiling for the first time in hours. "Kay! Your train got in on time; I'm pretty sure that qualifies as a miracle."

"It's Amtrak, John, not Lourdes." She smiled back at him, wearily.

"Was your trip okay?" he asked, studying her with concern over the upper rims of his glasses.

She shrugged. "I got here, huh?" She indicated her companion, a short, forty-something guy with the map of Ireland on his face. "This is my partner. Greg Hurley, John Munch."

They shook hands. "You used to work Homicide in Baltimore?" Hurley asked. Munch nodded. "Yeah, I thought I recognized your name. You're the guy who always had some weird, paranoid theory and never made any sense."

Jeffries nearly choked on her coffee. Howard laughed outright. Munch shot a genuinely murderous look at Hurley and turned to Monique, who was guffawing into her napkin. "And this is my partner," he said in a tone of mock-affronted dignity. "Monique Jeffries, this is the estimable Sergeant Howard. Have I ever told you that she had the only one hundred percent clearance rate in the history of Baltimore Homicide?"

"Only one or two dozen times." That earned her another of Munch's drop-dead glances.

"Yeah, well, I'd love to take time for everyone to get acquainted, but this really isn't a pleasure trip," Kay said. "You guys got Cantwell in custody, right?"

"Safe and warm down at the precinct," Munch told her. "Cantwell didn't give up some of his old tricks. Our auto squad is crawling through his address book now, they figure they can make him for a whole slew of open car thefts."

"The more, the merrier." Kay pulled her hair back into a knot and looked up, eyes blazing. "Let's go start a fire under him."

The four cops navigated their way through the crowds. Howard walked like a New Yorker, Jeffries observed, purposeful and determined and direct. Something else occurred to her as they headed for the exit, and she turned to her partner, grinning.

"Munchkin?"

He shook his head. "Don't you even try."


---


In the dullness of the Special Victims Unit headquarters men's room, Munch leaned against the wall, buried his face in his hands, and silently argued with himself. In the back of his mind there was a scathing little voice, much like the one he spoke with when he was flaying a self-important suspect.

Okay. How do you think you're going to get through the next few hours without screwing up?

Of course, he reasoned, this was more than a routine case. He didn't expect it to be one; it wasn't every day that a chance to nail a sleazy dicksmack like Cantwell came around. He knew he could work through the pressure. It just took a little extra concentration and control.

Which you don't have. Not when it comes down to the wire, and if anyone knows that, Kay Howard does.

He would like to believe that that wasn't true. That, in the years they'd worked together, he'd retained somehow a modicum of dignity. Of course he'd done some foolish things in those days, but he'd always stayed professional, reminding himself that she was a fellow detective -- a better one than he was -- and later, a sergeant.

Exactly. She's observant, and you're pathetic. Look at all your sorry attempts to scope out her sex life. Could you be more obvious?

He couldn't deny the effect she had on him, though. It took a lot for him to let his guard down with people, but there had been a handful of people scattered through his life who had simply looked right through him, leaving him with no resistance. Kay was one of them, with a vengeance. Very few women he'd ever slept with -- or men, for that matter -- had overwhelmed him the way she'd been able to, for years, with a well-placed glance. Very few insults hurled at him in moments of heartbreak rankled with him the way a single disappointed word from Kay could do. Without knowing how it had happened, he'd gotten wrapped around her finger. But if she knew this, or cared, she'd never shown it.

She knows you. You're a coward, and a failure. Why in the world would she want you?

He couldn't think of a reason.

Still, there was Cantwell. If nothing else, he could not let himself blow this unexpected chance. It was funny how he kept leaving Baltimore, and how it kept grabbing him back by the throat. For the sake of his years in Homicide, his (ridiculous, the voice in his head reminded him derisively) unrequited ardor for Kay and the respect she commanded as a cop, for the sake of justice and for Beau Felton, he had to steel his nerves and do this right.

As he opened the door and stepped out into the squadroom, he pushed self-mockery aside and mutely implored no specific God at all, in the only kind of prayer he ever indulged in:

Please. Let her have this. Let her demolish that little bastard.

Don't let me ruin everything. Not this time.


---


Cantwell looked up from the invisible pattern he was tracing on the table as the two detectives walked in. "Finally some service," he said, sneering. "Can I get a cigarette in here, or what?"

"I don't smoke," Jeffries said, and turned to her partner. "You don't smoke, do you, John?"

"Nope," he said, standing in the corner and looking steadily at him.

"Guess you're gonna have to go without," Jeffries continued, sitting down opposite Cantwell, "until we're done talking."

"I definitely want to press charges against that bitch," Cantwell said, still grinning.

"'That bitch' would be your girlfriend Deanna?" Jeffries asked.

"She ain't got no right to threaten me."

"Wrong," she said. "In fact, not only did she have the right to threaten you, we've got you dead to rights on rape."

Cantwell blinked, and glanced sidelong at Munch, whose unnerving, angry stare had not changed. "That didn't happen," he said. "She's lying."

"We don't see it that way," Jeffries told him. "She's at the hospital now being checked out by a doctor and a counselor who can't wait to back up her statement. You shouldn't have been so rough with her, Frankie. She'll be great on the witness stand, bruised and defenseless, talking about what you did to her."

"I told you she's lying." Cantwell's grin returned. "If you had any proof I did anything wrong, you wouldn't be talking to me right now."

"Wrong again, Frankie!" she retorted. "Half the cops in the district are going through your apartment as we speak, calling all your contacts, digging through every last piece of your personal business. They've got a big string of grand theft auto charges to hang on you. I'm sure Deanna will be happy to give up some of your friends' phone numbers, won't she? You think they're gonna stand up for you when their asses are on the line? They're gonna sell you out like the rat bastard you are."

"Which basically means you're going to rot in jail and then burn in hell," Munch pointed out, from the shadows.

Cantwell's gaze flickered uncomfortably to him, and then settled on Jeffries again. "Could you go find me some smokes, babe?"

"You don't want me to leave you alone with this guy," she said, suppressing the urge to smack him. "He has a real problem with little pissants who push women around."

"I get it. This is supposed to be some 'good cop, bad cop' shit, right?"

"You watch too many movies," Munch said, his glare unwavering. "For you, no one in this room is a good cop."

Jeffries got in his face a little more. "See, we don't need you to tell us anything. We have a woman ready to get on the stand and swear you raped her. I'm sure the auto squad will find plenty of your dirty laundry, and even if they don't, they'll find something to hang on you. And the D.A. doesn't take too kindly to low-budget thugs like yourself. You're going to be in a cell for a long time, babe."

"Bullshit," Cantwell said. His pronunciation gave the word more syllables than it needed. "If you don't need me to talk, why am I sitting here?"

"We just wanted to see what kind of absurd, moronic story you'd come up with," Munch fired back.

Jeffries nodded. "Personally, I can't think of anything that could get your ass out of the sling it's in."

"Face facts; you're not exactly an intellectual," Munch said, approaching the table at last. He had not stopped glowering at Cantwell, whose smarmy facade was starting to slip. "Getting blitzed, beating and raping a woman half your size - it doesn't take a genius. And this car stuff just proves what you are: a worthless, dickless, small-time sleaze."

"That's not true!" Cantwell shouted, defensively. Then he realized how guilty that sounded, and he shrank back slightly in his chair. "You know, I really could use a cigarette."

"Yeah. Right. Whatever," Munch said. "I'm gonna go call the hospital, see if Deanna's rape kit is back yet." He stalked towards the door.

"I've got some typing to do," said Jeffries, and followed him.

They entered the observation room, where Howard and Hurley were waiting. "He's all yours," Munch said. "We've got him running scared."

Kay turned to her partner. "Greg? I-"

He interrupted her. "You want to go in alone. I understand."

She nodded. "Give me your cigarettes." He handed a pack to her and she strode out, grim but energized.

Sitting at her desk, going through a case file with Stabler, Benson watched the small, dynamic woman going into the interrogation room. "You're letting her question the suspect by herself?" she asked Cragen, who was passing by.

"So?"

"So?" Benson repeated, brusquely. "She's personally involved in the case; you don't think that she'll compromise the investigation?"

Cragen and Stabler stared at her blankly, as if she had suggested the sun might rise in the west.

"Guy killed her partner, Olivia," Elliot said at last. The tone of his voice was enough to make her drop the subject.

Kay regarded Cantwell wordlessly for a few seconds through the window set in the door. The anger and the sadness, always intertwined, rose in her, and she swallowed hard to check them. There would be time to deal with that later; she had work to do.

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