Buffy held out the photo and waited while Spike studied the man's face. “We worked with him on the Malone kidnapping, remember?”
Spike set the photo face down on the coffee table. “How could I forget good ole Stalin? Thought he was going to have a heart attack when Jack told him you were going to be on the team,” he recalled with a grin. “He'd just finished his little ‘Women have no place in the FBI' rant when you waltzed in.”
“That's about how he treated me, too,” Buffy sighed. She sat on the couch and flipped open the case file. “It was such a hassle getting him to listen to any of my ideas.”
“You weren't the only one with that problem, luv. We all had difficulty dealing with him. If you hadn't called attention to that piece of evidence he overlooked, we might have never found the girl. I'll agree that he was a narrow-minded sexist bastard, but that doesn't make him a killer,” he pointed out. When Buffy didn't respond, he joined her on the couch. “All right, Agent Summers, let's get to work.”
Nodding in agreement, Buffy found a blank sheet of paper and drew a line down the middle forming two columns. “First off, he would know about the nickname. This was shortly after the Academy so you were using it more than my given name,” Buffy said as she wrote her reason down in the first column.
“There were three other agents working that case. Any one of them could have picked it up,” Spike countered.
“I compared Dawn to Krissy Malone several times, so he knows how close I am to my family. This was deliberate. Losing my family would devastate me and he knew it,” Buffy continued writing down arguments in both columns.
“Again with the other agents, pet. You've made no secret about your affection for your family,” he argued, warming up to the task. This had been such an integral part of each investigation he and Buffy worked together: the way they bounced ideas off each other, analyzed each suspect, every piece of evidence beyond the shadow of a doubt. They picked at any detail that seemed even slightly off-kilter, and they always questioned the other's ideas, keeping in mind all the possibilities until they inevitably narrowed them down to one or two.
Buffy glanced at the names on the case file and smiled triumphantly. “One of the other agents is dead and the other two still work with me at the office. If they'd had a problem, we would have known about it already.”
“Okay, point to you for that one,” Spike acknowledged, reaching across the blonde to cross out his two previous arguments. “Let's look at motive, then.”
They continued on their list for the next two hours, passionately debating each side of every point. When they finally finished, both agents were pleased with the results.
“I told you it was him,” Buffy smirked as she watched Spike recopy the list. The arguments for Stalin being the killer were far stronger than the arguments against it. The overwhelming depression that had been building the last few days suddenly seemed more manageable when faced with the familiarity of arguing with Spike and the knowledge that the case would soon be solved and put to rest.
Before Spike could respond, the front door burst open and four dripping FBI agents stepped just inside the tiled entry. Buffy jumped to her feet and ran into the bathroom to get towels. Once they weren't in danger of ruining Spike's carpet, Xander, Anya, Willow, and Tara went upstairs to change clothes.
“Should we tell them now?” Buffy inquired as she and Spike made hot chocolate for the others
“I don't see why not. Let's hold off on revealing his identity, though. We don't have concrete evidence yet and I'd hate to ruin another's agent's not-so-good name based on a hunch,” he responded, carrying the heavy tray into the living room.
“I say we call Jack and see what he can find out for us,” Buffy suggested. “He knows our history with this guy and he's the only one there I really trust these days. And thanks to your loose lips, he'll know what ‘Stalin' means.”
Once the drinks were passed around and the group was settled in, Buffy handed Tara a copy of the list. “We think we know who the killer is. Spike and I have spent the past couple hours working through the details; we've listed our arguments here,” she explained.
Tara set down her mug and perused the handwritten notes, frowning in confusion upon reading the title. “We're looking for Joseph Stalin?”
“Hasn't he been dead for several decades?” Willow inquired. “Did either of you happen to do anything today that involved, oh, I don't know, any drugs or alcohol?”
Spike snatched the list back from Tara and glared at the two women. “It's a bloody nickname, you daft bints,” he clarified. “Stalin was a pain in the ass to work with. If the evidence contradicted his assumptions, he'd disregard it. If you disagreed with him in any way, shape, or form, you were ignored or ridiculed. Buffy and I christened the git Stalin after about two days of working with him.”
“I can see where the nickname came from, but what does that have to do with our case?” Xander interrupted. “What is his real name, anyway?”
“We'd actually prefer not to tell you just yet. We don't know for sure that it's him and don't want to be accused of slander or anything like that,” Buffy smiled apologetically. She then explained the pertinent details of the Malone kidnapping: how they'd almost blown the case because Stalin wouldn't listen to what anyone else had to say and was blatantly ignoring solid evidence. She then told them about her meeting with Jack and Stalin's subsequent transfer to a smaller, more remote field office.
“Has he ever actually threatened you?” Anya inquired once Buffy was finished.
“No, I can't say that he did, but I didn't have any contact with him once that was over. He was put on probation then transferred,” Buffy admitted. Sensing the general air of doubt, she tried to reassure them, “I know it sounds like a long shot, but I'm right. I can feel it,” she insisted.
Willow dug through the briefcase she'd taken to the office and passed around copies of the tests run on the bullet fired at Buffy. “The bullet matches one from a gun used in a murder in Anne Arundel County three years ago. A man was abducted while on a hunting trip then shot with his own gun. There were several suspects but never enough evidence to pinpoint the murderer.”
“Do you have the notes on that one?” Spike inquired, a cold uneasy feeling washing over him.
Buffy caught the look in her ex-partner's eyes and sighed heavily, recognizing it too well for her liking. “Damn it Drusilla,” she muttered crossly. Even when she sent the other woman out of the state, she still managed to get in the middle of everything.
Catching the perplexed expressions from the others, she stood up and stuffed her hands in her jeans pockets. “If I remember correctly, Spike and I were assigned to this case. Drusilla Moore was one of our main suspects, but we never could tie her to it. Am I right?” she turned to Spike and raised an eyebrow.
“As usual, pet,” Spike smiled wearily. “We found the gun but there were no prints on it. It was kept as evidence, but obviously someone got their hands on it.”
Without saying a word, Xander went out to his car and came back in carrying a large dry erase board. “This was by my desk and I thought it could help us keep all the details together,” he explained while clearing off a space on an end table and leaning the board against the wall.
Tara took on the task of writing the essential parts of the theory on the board. “The case against ‘Stalin' right now is weak, but I've seen Buffy in action. I trust her intuition. Unless we get evidence pointing otherwise, he's our main suspect. We've also got a gun used in a murder most likely committed by Drusilla. Is there any chance that these two knew each other?”
When the two blonde agents shook their heads, Tara set down the marker she had been writing with and looked at the others expectantly. “Oh man, I don't like this,” Xander wrinkled his nose in disgust as he came to a disturbing conclusion. “What if he had an informant inside the office?”
“That still wouldn't explain how he got the gun,” Anya countered. “He was stuck in some Podunk field office until four weeks ago. I highly doubt that he flew all the way here to steal a gun from the evidence room.”
“Are your photo albums still arranged by date?” Buffy moved to stand in front of a tall bookcase. At Spike's nod, she reached for the first album and began flipping through the pages. As the others hashed out the details behind Buffy's theory, she found the picture she was looking for and stuck it right under Spike's nose.
“Look, he was at your retirement party!” she exclaimed excitedly, pointing to a fairly tall and muscular African-American man lurking in the background. “If he flew in for your party, who knows how many times he's come back. I'm going to call Jack and see if we can't pull his financial records and find out just how often our buddy here flies the friendly skies.”
Spike couldn't take his eyes off the picture. There was Stalin, the man who had caused his best friend so much grief and agony, smiling and toasting the camera. Staring at the photo, transfixed the contemptuous look in the other man's eyes, something dawned on him. “Dru,” he groaned, quickly closed the book before the other agents could see.
“What about her?” Buffy snapped, holding her hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver. Spike had been in another world ever since she'd mention the raven-haired murderess. Was he still in love with her despite what he'd said the other day?
“If he got the gun she used in that first murder, what else does he have?” Spike queried, oblivious to her irritation. “Red, even though the bullets and the gun are missing, they'd still have the information from Dru's case in the computer wouldn't they?”
Willow hesitated for a moment then shrugged her shoulders. “Unless someone's gone in and deleted the files, it should all still be in there,” she confirmed.
“Buff – “ Spike started.
“Check to see if the gun that was used to kill my parents was the same gun Psycho Bitch used, gotcha boss,” Buffy interrupted. “Jack, it's Buffy. No, I'm doing okay. Spike and I think we have a suspect. It's going to sound crazy, but just hear me out. Yes, it's another one of my ‘sense' things. Stalin. No, not the Russian. Yes. We need his financial records for the past three years and we need forensics to compare the bullets from… this case… to the ones used in the Moore killings. Please. Yes, we will keep you updated. Thanks.”
She returned the receiver to the cradle and faced the others. “The lab results won't be in until later tonight, he's putting a rush on them. Once he receives the bank statements, he'll fax them over here,” she explained.
Xander groaned and slumped down further in his seat. “So what? Now we have to sit here and wait?”
Realizing that she may need information from Drusilla, Buffy dug her cell phone out of her pocket and headed for the back door. Hopefully Angel could force the insane criminal to cooperate.
As Buffy was walking to the door, Spike glanced down at his watch and mentally calculated the time difference between Baltimore and England. It had been several hours since he'd checked in with Angel for a report on Dawn's situation. He checked to make sure he had the piece of paper he'd written the phone number on and followed Buffy to the porch.
“Where are you going?” Willow inquired suspiciously, stopping the two agents before they could shut the door. She was still a bit irked that they weren't trusted to know the identity of their suspect.
“I've gotta call a man about a girl,” Spike responded before stalking off to a far corner of the backyard.
Buffy tilted her head curiously and frowned at her best friend's retreating back. Who could he be calling? “Yeah, what he said,” she murmured, closing the door softly.
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