“Buffy Summers is on the line for you, Mr. Pratt. Do you wish to take her call?”
Startled out of his state of deep concentration, he unselfconsciously exclaimed, “Yes!” Trying to convey more restraint, he coughed and murmured, “That is, put her through, please.”
Shaking his head at himself, he picked up the receiver and punched the button as soon as the light began blinking.
“Hello, William Pratt here.”
An uncertain voice greeted him. “H-hi William, this is Buffy.”
A little thrill went through him and he then realized it was the first time she’d ever directly called him by his name.
“Hi, Buffy.” Wracking his brain for something to say, he drew a blank, ran out of time, and hurriedly continued on. “How are you?”
“Good. Um, do you have a minute?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay.” Silence ensued on her end.
William slowly tapped his fingers on his desk. “You still there?” he inquired curiously.
“Yeah.” He could hear her clearing her throat. “I wanted to ask you something.”
He tried not to chuckle at the effort it obviously cost her to call him for a favor. “I gathered.”
“Do you know if the DA’s office has the latest police report on the Hamilton case? I was just gonna call Gavin Park, because I know he would have it, but then I thought since you work with him, you might know. And then I thought why not call you first ‘cause Gavin Park doesn’t even know who I am, really, and you do, so maybe—”
As she rambled on he looked at the file on his desk that he’d asked for from Gavin the day before. Internally congratulating himself for his foresight, he put her out of her misery.
“Actually, I have a copy of it.”
Buffy was struck speechless for a moment before her mind started racing. “You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I see it?” William could hear the eagerness in her accelerated breathing. He leaned back in his chair.
“What are you going to do with it?”
There was only the slightest hesitation before she came back with the obvious rejoinder. “Read it,” she stated in a matter-of-fact tone.
He examined his nails as he considered his response. “So how would that happen?”
Buffy responded immediately. “I can come by, whenever’s convenient for you, and I’ll make a copy of it.” She paused before she hastily added, “Or I can just borrow it and give it back to you.” William almost felt bad for stringing her along. Almost.
“No.”
“But you said—”
“I only asked you how it would happen,” he pointed out, leaning forward into an upright sitting position. “I can’t let you make a copy of it, but I might be able to let you take a look at it. Though I do need to know why you really want to see it.”
“What’s the difference?” Her annoyance was audible.
“It’s my ass on the line.”
“So butt out.”
“That was almost funny, Summers. Just tell me what you’re up to.”
“You know I’m not going to do anything illegal,” she reasoned. Buffy tried another tack. “And I’m not going to get you in trouble, I swear,” she promised. “If that’s what you’re worried about.” There was the barest suggestion of a taunt in her last words.
William could see right through the game she was playing and he wasn’t going to fall for it.
“Famous last words,” he shot back, unmoved.
Buffy gave up. “Just forget it, ok? I should have known you wouldn’t help me.”
“Now hold on, I didn’t say no either. Just answer my question first.”
“I want to take a look at the crime scene,” she snapped.
Jackpot, William thought. “Now was that so hard?” He smiled to himself. “When are we going?”
William wasn’t sure where he had pictured Buffy living or what he had expected Buffy’s place to look like, but he had entertained a few possibilities in his mind. A loft right in downtown L.A., maybe, or a fancy condo in West Hollywood. He could have easily seen her in a beach house if Malibu weren’t so far away. So he had been surprised when she had given him a Culver City address, and even more surprised when he made his way through the sedate tree-lined streets of the city’s older residential area just a few blocks south of its revived downtown on Sunday evening and pulled up to her house. It was an authentic craftsman-style bungalow complete with overhanging eaves, dormer windows, and tapered front columns. There were lots of plants, both potted and landscaped, decorating the walkway and porch. The overall impression was lovely and very homey. It was undoubtedly still worth well over a million dollars.
It certainly wasn’t the typical place where a young single daughter of a Fortune 500 CEO lived, however. For the first time, he wondered if she was playing house with someone. As he walked up the front steps, he noted that her car was the only one parked in the driveway.
Buffy answered the door on the first ring.
“This is a bad idea,” were the first words out of her mouth.
“Good evening to you, too.”
“I think we should reconsider this,” Buffy continued, as if he hadn’t said anything.
Although she didn’t appear inclined to invite him in, William was gratified to perceive she was clearly home alone.
“Oh really? Is that why you’re dressed like a cat burglar?”
Buffy looked down at her black ankle boots, black cords, and black turtleneck sweater. She hurriedly pulled the black knit cap off her head. Her tousled blond hair gleamed in the low light of her foyer.
She made a face. “I don’t wear the uniform anymore. This is what I came up with.” She gestured at him. “Besides, you’re wearing black too.”
At her mention of a uniform, a fantasy had immediately started unspooling in his mind. With lightning speed, patchwork images of handcuffs, shiny black boots, and Buffy roughly manhandling him bombarded his brain. Silently vowing to return to it all later, he hurriedly hit the mental pause button and tried to come back to the conversation.
“You ready to go?” he asked hastily, trying to move the mission along before she decided to abort it. It had already taken a herculean rhetorical effort on his part to get her to agree to his condition for viewing the police report.
Giving in to the inevitable, Buffy sighed and said in a tone of surrender, “Just lemme get my bag.”
While she was gone, William peeked around the half-open door into her house. It was as large as it looked from outside. Beautifully preserved hardwood floors and stairs led from the foyer to a second story. Craning his neck, he caught a look through the archway to the living room of tasteful European and ethnic-inspired furnishings. Beige damask sofas somehow harmonized with lacquered Asian end tables and African masks hanging on the walls. He was momentarily taken aback by a particularly striking one covered in chipped red paint with vicious wooden teeth that seemed through its cut-out eyes to glare at him.
He darted back to the other side of the door as Buffy reappeared, stuffing what looked like a few metal tools into her already bulging messenger bag before joining him outside.
Minutes later, as they drove by the bright lights of the Kirk Douglas Theater on Washington Boulevard to get to the 405, William cast about for a good opener and settled on the obvious.
“You like living in Culver City?”
She shrugged and looked out the window at the busy street. “There’s lots more restaurants these days,” she said affably. “We even have our own celebrity chef now.”
William was puzzled by her response. Before he could ask why she had chosen the westside suburb, she was asking him a question.
“Where do you live?”
He thought about how unimpressive his home was compared to hers, with its sterile white walls and grey pile carpeting. “Uninspiring apartment in your typical mid-sized complex near the Mormon temple.”
“Do you like it?” she asked conversationally.
William wasn’t certain she was actually listening to him. He tried a different approach. “I moved there after law school because Gunn and Xander, whom you met, were living there. It’s close to Century City, where Gunn works.” He couldn’t quite hide his disappointment as he told her, “’Course now they’ve both left the neighborhood.”
“But you’re still there.”
“Yeah.” He paused to consider why. “Just can’t be bothered to move, I guess. One place is as good as any other in Hell-A.”
“That’s one way to put down roots,” she replied, clearly unimpressed.
He studied her skeptically. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Don’t get me wrong, your place is nice enough but the Cleaver community is a bit much, isn’t it?”
There was a blank silence before she said, “I’m living in my mother’s house.”
Even though she was sitting right next to him, her voice sounded as though it was coming from far away. William suddenly felt like an atheist who had just stepped into a church.
“Oh. So she’s—”
“Dead,” Buffy said flatly.
William silently cursed the fact that somehow everything out of his mouth seemed to cut her in the most insensitive way possible.
“Sorry.” His fingers scraped the dashboard mercilessly. “Um, mine too.”
“Great, we can start a club,” Buffy said sarcastically. She wasn’t looking at him again.
As he pulled the car onto the freeway, William debated trying to smooth things over but figured he’d do best to just give her what she wanted at this point.
Buffy started when William suddenly reached over and popped open the glove compartment. “I put the police report in here,” he explained. Buffy pulled out the rubber-banded manila envelope. “I can put on the overhead light for you,” he offered.
Her eyes were riveted to the stack of paper she was removing. “Nah, I’ve got it.” She fished a large flashlight out of her bag. “Thanks.”
As they sped towards downtown, he left her to her absorbed reading and shuffling.
Once they exited the freeway, they began to make their way through the seedier urban boulevards and side streets of South Central. For the first few blocks, they passed lingering pedestrians in front of the closed shops and only a few other vehicles on the road.
As they neared the tower blocks of Watts, the traffic increased and they didn’t go unnoticed by the local population. A couple of cars filled with cruising teenagers whistled at the De Soto and watched as they drove by.
“Way to make with the inconspicuous,” Buffy groaned.
“You really think yours would have been better? Rolling up in ‘Herbie: Fully Loaded?’”
“Why don’t we drive Civics?” she lamented.
“Maybe ‘cause we actually have personalities. C’mon, we’ll fit right in with all the Lincolns and Cadillacs.”
Buffy’s lips twitched. “They’re not uncommon,” she admitted.
William grinned.
“Okay, pull up here,” Buffy directed as they turned the corner on Alameda.
Turning to her as he put on the parking brake, William stopped short as he was caught in her gaze.
She wore what he had come to recognize as her most serious expression, the same one he had seen when she had come over to check on him after the scuffle at the jail. “So listen, I should probably tell you I’m packing.” Buffy patted the flap of her bag.
“What?” an uncomprehending William asked, effectively destroying the solemnity of the moment.
“You know, ‘packing.’” Buffy rolled her eyes, whether at him or herself she wasn’t quite sure. “Heat?” She spelled it out for him. “I’m armed.”
“Oh.” William looked at her bag with the icon of a cartoon monkey gaping back at him and was struck by the incongruity of it all. “You just keep it in your messenger?”
Misinterpreting his question, Buffy defensively informed him, “I have a license to carry a concealed weapon. Even as a—civilian.”
William blinked. “I have no doubt.”
She moved back into her public servant persona. “I’m sure nothing’s gonna happen. I just thought you should know.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks. For telling me.” As the words came out, William had the sinking feeling that this was his dominant other mode with Buffy—tongue-tied and apt to blather inanities that came across as insincere. No wonder she couldn’t stand him.
She looked at him oddly before suggesting as they exited the car, “If anything weird happens, just follow my lead, ok?” She was wary he would protest, but William simply nodded dumbly and seemed content to walk along beside her as she located the alleyway two blocks down from where they had parked. The immediate area was mostly deserted, and as Buffy moved forward purposefully, she was hopeful that they might carry out their visit undisturbed.
“Looks like this was it,” she announced as they entered the alley in question.
From where they stood, they had a dim view of the dark lane.
“What the hell happened here?” William asked as they moved deeper into the street towards its lighted backsection.
The alley boasted an ample mess of garbage, apparently both indigenous and imported. Alongside tin cans and open Styrofoam trays of rotting food, the remains of a couple of neon pylons that had been ripped apart littered the ground and barricade tape was haphazardly strewn about everywhere.
“Public crime scenes have the shelf life of Wonder bread in this town,” Buffy told him.
“I can see that.”
As she studied the area illuminated by the errant glow of a streetlight from some distance away, the obvious reason why she had wanted to come down here after sundown finally sunk in for William. She wanted to approximate the conditions of the night in the alley as Dashawn and Carlos had experienced it.
Angling her head towards the sole source of light, Buffy slowly turned around in a circle to do a 360-degree scan of the alley from the perspective of a potential shooter. It occurred to her that it was not a place likely to attract much attention. The few back windows that looked onto the street were mostly barred. Even if someone had seen something, they would be extremely reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement. The police report had indicated that interviews conducted with neighboring residents had gone nowhere. Unlikely as it seemed, the possibility of premeditation couldn’t be ruled out entirely. It certainly had the advantage of helping to explain the untraceable disappearance of the body.
Breaking out of her reverie, she set about getting to work.
“Can you do something for me?” she asked William.
He tried not to sound too eager. “Sure.”
“Follow me.” He followed her back down the alley to the cross street where they had entered.
“Stand—here,” Buffy directed, gesturing towards a spot on the corner. “Let me know as soon as you can see my face from here, okay? And um, let’s try not to attract attention. Just wave to me when I’m fully visible.”
“No problem.”
Buffy flicked off her flashlight and headed back down, slowing as she reached the lighted perimeter. She turned to face him and they communicated through semaphore. William watched as she paused every few moments to make chalk markings on the ground.
“Okay,” she called out when she was finished. William walked back down the alley to join her.
Buffy spent the next fifteen minutes poring over the area within the circumference of her markings with her flashlight. She knew the CSI unit had taken a few ground fragments with blood splatter for processing, but given that a two-minute survey of any alleyway in the city would yield that kind of sample, she figured it didn’t hurt to check again with an eye for less obvious clues.
William stood outside the chalked circle silently observing her. He wanted to help but didn’t know how to except possibly by staying out of her way. Crouching down over a crack in the asphalt, Buffy pulled on a pair of latex gloves from her bag and started sifting through some debris. He couldn’t help but wince as he watched her handle what looked like broken glass and God knows what else.
As Buffy worked the area over, William remained fixed on her figure, catching flashing glimpses of her between the shadows. In her body language, he read a level of focused determination that unexpectedly moved him. He imagined he shared the sense of that dead seriousness of purpose, although in his own field of work it had always tended to be motivated by anger. He wondered what motivated her, if it was the same thing or something else altogether.
After many minutes of further examination, Buffy finally let out a dissatisfied breath and ripped off her gloves.
William ventured over to her. “What are you looking for, exactly?”
Buffy looked distractedly up at him as she stood up. “Nothing. Anything. I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s enlightening.”
Buffy threw her hands up. “You’re the one who wanted to tag along,” she reminded him testily. “Time wastage comes with the territory. It is the territory.”
William didn’t want to go down this road. “Hey, I’m not complaining, here. Just trying to understand what you’re after. Haven’t the police already gone through here?”
“Sure they have,” Buffy agreed, crossing her arms. She scanned the ground. “But… sometimes, when you already know you won’t get impressions or trace evidence, your search for physical evidence becomes kinda…” One arm came untucked from its crossed position to gesture vaguely in the air.
“Cursory?”
“Yeah.” She paused, thoughtful. “Especially outdoor shootings. If you don’t find casings, you think there’s nothing else.”
“But?” he asked, sensing she had more on her mind.
She had started prodding at some dirty textile remnants on the ground with the toe of her boot. “It is nearly impossible that there would be no usable evidence from a crime scene. The problem that remains, then, is how to find it.” She suddenly sounded like she was quoting a textbook, or maybe a motivational speaker on forensics.
“So what now?”
Switching gears, Buffy began rifling through her bag, unearthing a few pages of the report that she’d tucked into it.
“Phase two,” she announced. “Let’s block it out.” Unexpectedly, she then asked him, “How tall are you?”
William briefly considered exaggerating, but given the circumstances, thought better of it.
“‘Bout five nine.” He paused. “And a half,” he added.
“Average height,” Buffy noted to herself as she studied a page of the report. “That’ll do.”
William scowled in the dark.
“You be Holtz, and I’ll be Hamilton,” she informed him.
William bristled. “Oi, how about you be Holtz, and I’ll be Hamilton.”
She looked at him as if he’d just grown an extra head. “What?”
“I don’t see why I have to be the victim,” he griped.
Buffy’s patience, never in oversupply, instantly evaporated. “This is pretend,” she said, her voice rising.
“So you pretend you’re dead.”
“Let’s just remember which one of us has the gun, shall we?” She shot him her best menacing glare. Even in the poor lighting her intention was communicated.
William huffed. “Nice, Summers. You always resort to threats to get what you want?”
“Only when I have to,” she retorted primly. “Now—stand over there.”
“Fine,” he muttered.
Trudging over to the area she had indicated, William watched as Buffy kneeled on the ground and dug in her bag. This time she pulled out a clunky piece of equipment about a foot long that appeared to be composed entirely of metal brackets and rods. As she set it deliberately down on the ground he could see that the base of it opened like a tripod.
“Hamilton is six two.” Buffy did some mental math. “So I need eight.” She turned a knob and a retractable metal tube with brackets attached on opposite sides was raised. As she unfolded them, the brackets locked into an interlaced horizontal position. The end result seemed to be a kind of open-frame metal platform of adjustable height. She stood up and tested her weight on it with one foot.
“Nifty contraption,” William observed.
Buffy couldn’t help herself. “Isn’t it neat?” she agreed. “Never thought I’d use this again.”
William smiled at her enthusiasm. “You got to keep it?” he asked before realizing what he was saying. When he did, he wanted to kick himself.
Luckily Buffy didn’t seem bothered by the reminder. “Huh? Oh no, my friend Oz made this for me ‘cause I used to complain about my height for figuring out trajectories.” She pointed to the reinforced tripod legs. “See, part of it’s actually a converted music stand.”
“Ah. Cool.” He wondered what kind of friend would build specialized equipment for her.
“One more thing.”
She dug in her bag and pulled out a metal tape measure.
“Hold this,” she directed. William accepted it dutifully.
She located her smart phone in the back pocket of her bag. To William’s surprise, she unlocked it and began clicking through the utilities menu.
“Who you gonna call?” William stopped short. “That line’s not really usable, is it?”
Buffy shot him a little smile. “Nope. And nobody.” She showed him her phone screen. “Compass function.”
“Ah.”
“Okay, here we go.”
Buffy stepped up onto her platform, and assumed a shooter’s pose as she faced William.
She tapped him on the chest. He couldn’t so much feel as sense the heat of her whole body above him. The scent of her shampoo tickled his nose but was just out of reach. He knew it was probably just her nearness, but he idly wondered if a kink for role-playing murder scenes was an established fetish or if it constituted a whole new contribution to the oeuvre.
“Measure the height?” she requested.
“Oh. Sure.” Relieved to have something else to focus on, William quickly pulled out the metal tab of the tape. It hit the ground with a clang.
“To about here. Within three.”
“All right.” William squinted at the tape. “Five feet two inches.”
“Kay.”
She looked at her phone screen. “Two-thirty-eight southwest.” In a flash she had hopped off her riser and was making a beeline for the far side of the alley, following her marking. Halfway there, she suddenly whipped around but continued moving backwards towards the wall.
“Stay put,” she unnecessarily ordered William.
He couldn’t help but grin. “Aye, aye, captain.”
From a distance, William could just make her out, now chalking a wall. The next minute she was back, and had reassumed her perch above him.
“Okay, now keep facing me, but move slowly to your left.” William complied. As he moved, Buffy also turned her body to follow his path.
“Okay, stop.” She craned her neck back to observe the angle from which the only source of light streamed in.
“I don’t think your face would be visible from the street anymore, do you?”
William glanced towards the end of the alley. “Yeah, don’t think so,” he agreed.
She turned to her phone screen again. “Fifty-five northeast.” Neglecting this time to remind him not to move, Buffy headed back to the far side of the alley from her new direction. William observed that the length of distance she was marking off covered a good eighty feet, which included an old enclosed garage space and a wooden shed-like structure among the few nondescript buildings.
Buffy began her sweep, holding her flashlight in her left hand while she read the stucco and brick surfaces with the fingers of her right as if was a Braille text. William slowly paced a short distance behind her, keeping one eye on her progress and one eye on the quiet street. Once, she stopped and broke off her search to do a rapid re-scan of a patch of ground behind her again. The second time she moved away from the wall, William asked her what she was looking for.
She jerked her head for him to follow her back to the wall. Crouching down, Buffy then shone the light on a patch of brick wall and directed his attention to a small triangular indentation in it. Tracing it with her finger, she calmly said, “See, this is probably a bullet hole.”
William could only manage a surprised “What?”
“It’s probably not from Hamilton’s gun,” she hastily explained. “This is too low. And the angle is weird.”
“Oh.” A deflated William absorbed this new information.
“The report mentioned one marking.” Pausing, Buffy added with a trace of satisfaction, “I’ve found two so far.”
William felt himself share her small sense of triumph. “So we know they weren’t that thorough.”
Buffy nodded and returned to her task. Ten minutes must have passed while she meticulously pored over the dilapidated shingles of the makeshift shed. If there was anything new to be found, it was likely to be here, he supposed.
When she got to a narrow gap between the buildings, William watched her slip through and work her way methodically up and down a short stretch of the perpendicular wall. Around a window, she ran her fingers lightly along the edges of the frame up to its mid section. She repeated this action several times, returning to feel a particular spot just above eye level each time.
Apparently finished with her manual inspection, she stood unmoving and continued studying the spot closely with a flashlight. When she got on her tiptoes to get a better view from above, William decided to interrupt her.
“What is it?” he asked as he approached.
She spoke in a low voice. “I think there’s something here.”
“What?”
“Not sure.” She shined the light directly on a high spot where the window met the frame and moved back so that he could see. Leaning forward to see the spotlighted section, William could make out a depression in the frame. It looked as though something was embedded in the rotting wood.
From where he stood, William caught what might have been a metallic glint. “A nail?” he guessed.
Buffy strained upwards on her tiptoes. “I can’t see it from above,” she said, disappointed.
He turned to peer through the window. “What is this place?” he asked.
Buffy put the flashlight flat against the filthy window and they got a hazy view of an empty room with the abandoned remains of whatever had once been its purpose lying on the concrete floor.
William and Buffy spoke simultaneously.
“Is that a barbell?” he asked.
“An old gym, maybe? There was one somewhere around here that closed like four years ago,” Buffy remembered.
Turning her attention back to the frame, she tried to figure out a way to get at the section she was interested in without disturbing its potential contents. Retrieving her Swiss army knife, she used a small blade and began to try to cut it away from the brick wall, starting at the mitered joint at the bottom. Unfortunately, her blade was too dull and she couldn’t effectively cut through even the old wood.
After several of her futile attempts to make any headway towards her goal, a frustrated William broke in.
“You’re never gonna get it that way, pet.”
Buffy glared at him. “What would you suggest?”
Shrugging, he looked around on the ground. Spotting a large broken brick shard, he picked it up and moved her aside. Without further warning, he smashed it high against the frame, shattering some of the old glass housed within it in the process.
Buffy was horrified. “Oh my god, I was wrong.” She shook her head at him. “This isn’t COPS, this is Keystone Kops.”
“Got the job done, didn’t it?” William asked cockily, gesturing towards the split wood frame, now conveniently unloosed from its attachment to the wall.
Letting out a disbelieving grunt, Buffy inspected the remnants of the window. Gingerly, she gave the broken strip of the frame a good tug, pulling it down like a ledge and then inspected her prize still embedded intact within it below the point of break.
“Huh. Nice work,” she grudgingly admitted.
“No problem,” he replied, sounding all too pleased with himself.
Buffy whipped out a pair of tweezers and handed William the flashlight.
It was like a surgical operation. As he illuminated the spot, she gently pried apart the shredded wood around the object she was after.
As it came into view, Buffy noted, “It’s definitely not a nail.”
“I’ll be damned,” William muttered as she carefully plucked out a deformed bullet.
Buffy held her tweezers up to the light, peering at it. She rotated it slowly to inspect it from all angles.
“Full metal jacket,” she observed.
“What’s that mean?”
She furrowed her brow, eyes still on the bullet as she answered his question. “Old school ammo. Rips right through the body. Not like the new designer stuff.”
Their eyes were drawn back to the bullet as if by a magnetic force.
Thinking over their improbable quest, the enormity of the discovery sunk in for William. “This is incredible.” He gazed at her. “Isn’t it?”
“If it’s the bullet that killed Holtz,” Buffy qualified. She stared at the bullet critically and her lips pushed out in an expression of doubt. “It could just be a stray that’s been stuck here since the 80s.”
“I think we caught a break,” William said confidently.
She cocked her head at the bullet as if it were speaking to her. “The probability of a nearly impossible event is greater than zero. This means that sooner or later it will happen.” Once again, she sounded like she was reciting someone else’s words.
He decided to push his luck. “And who said that?’
She shrugged. “Giles.”
He paused a moment to consider his next words. “He trained you well.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “Maybe.”
Silence descended for a moment.
Then William gestured towards their prize. “So you gonna turn that in? If you don’t want to go back and have to explain yourself to the Captain, I could do it for you.” Buffy didn’t see him looking at her hopefully.
“Nah, neither one of us can deliver it directly.” Thinking of Faith, she checked the time and said, “But don’t worry, I know someone who will help.”