Fred said something audible, and Kate looked up sharply, realizing this time she was actually being addressed. “What did you say?”
Fred looked up from where she was crouched beside the massive desk in the middle of the room. “I said I bet this is where he hit his head.”
“Who hit his head?” Kate asked, her brow wrinkling.
“The guy. Liam Angelus. The body has a mark on the head, and there’s blood and what looks like maybe hair on the corner of the desk. Whoever processed the scene must’ve missed it because the wood of the desk is so dark.”
Kate walked over to Fred and crouched down, examining the corner of the desk. Sure enough, there was a patch of what looked like blood and hair. “You think it’s the vic’s?”
“Only one way to be sure,” Fred replied before scraping her find into a vial for processing.
“If it is his and he did hit his head on the corner of the desk that night, do you think it even has anything to do with the case?” Kate asked.
“Honestly, I have no idea. This one’s got me baffled. Nothing’s making any sense.”
Kate nodded, actually relieved to hear Fred say what she’d been thinking. It was nice to know she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t seem to make the pieces fit on this one. It made her feel a bit less like an idiot who couldn’t do her own job – especially since she’d wager Dr. Burkle had a few IQ points on her.
Heavy foot falls alerted the two women to the arrival of ADA Gunn and they both stood, their gazes turning towards him. “You said you had something to show me at the crime scene?”
Fred set the vial down on the desk and rushed over to Gunn, tugging his arm so he was turned towards the wall. “Look.”
“It’s the shot-up wall,” Gunn said evenly. “I knew about that.”
“No, really look,” Fred told him. “Look where those bullet holes are. Someone William’s height didn’t make those. Someone the size of Mrs. Angelus did.”
Gunn crossed his arms over his chest. “Which isn’t too surprising considering she turned herself in right before I got here.”
Fred’s eyes bulged. “What! But she didn’t do it either!”
Now it was Gunn’s turn to look surprised. He’d figured the wife for the real perp the whole time and had been relieved when she’d turned herself in, hoping he could get to the bottom of what had happened and deal with it from there. But if she didn’t do it, and William didn’t do it…
It was all making his head hurt.
“Okay, why don’t you think she did it?” Gunn asked.
“Because of the bullets. The tests came back from the lab and the ones in the wall definitely don’t match the ones in the body. But they do match the ones in the gun, which makes me think that Mrs. Angelus panicked and shot the wall when she was fighting with her husband, but she didn’t check to see if he was dead. He might have hit his head and gotten knocked out because I found blood on the desk, but…”
Gunn stopped her, holding up a hand. If he was going to make sense of all of this, it needed to come more slowly. “If she didn’t shoot her husband, then why is he dead?”
Fred’s mouth snapped shut and her shoulders slumped. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe it was the son.”
Fred and Gunn turned towards Kate at her declaration. “How do you figure?” Gunn asked. “His story’s got holes.”
Kate stepped forward, joining the other two. “Okay, so his girlfriend comes over to his place, beaten and freaking out, thinking she just shot her husband. He goes over to see if he’s dead or not, finds him alive, things get heated, and the son kills the father.”
“But why give the false story?” Gunn asked.
“Because he knows it’s false,” Kate replied. “I mean, it’s kind of crazy, but I’ve seen people try weirder to beat a murder wrap. He confesses to a crime that he knows we’re going to figure out is bogus. He brings us the wrong murder weapon after getting rid of the real one, knowing we’re going to figure out the bullets don’t match.”
“So what, he’s trying to escape a murder rap by confusing the hell out of all of us?” Gunn asked.
“Who else could it be?” Kate asked, crossing her arms in front of her. “The only suspects we have are the two of them. No one else was here that night, and Angelus certainly didn’t shoot himself five times.”
“Unless someone else was here,” Fred pointed out. “Did this guy have any enemies?”
Gunn snorted. “That’s putting it lightly. Three ex-wives, screwed over former business partners, and a whole mess of people who just thought he was a jerk.”
“Well I read about this thing one time where people investigating a crime get so caught up on proving a certain suspect did it that they ignore the other possibilities,” Fred said, talking so quickly Kate found herself having a hard time keeping up. “Maybe we’re missing the big picture. I mean, yeah, William could’ve killed his father and is trying to get away with it by giving a false confession to a murder he actually did commit, but I think we need to be looking at other people, too. And we need to find the gun that actually put the bullets into Angelus.”
Kate and Gunn both stared at Fred for a moment until she held up her hands. “Well? What do y’all think?”
“I think we need to start looking around,” Gunn replied. “Figure out if anyone else was here. Did he have any security cameras, anything like that?”
Kate shook her head. “We looked. He had an alarm, but it wasn’t tripped.”
“Telephone records!” At Fred’s loud outburst, Kate and Gunn both blinked. “Well,” she began, her words quickly gaining speed again. “If the alarms weren’t tripped, that means it was someone who Angelus let in, and no one else but the wife lived here, so maybe it was someone he knew was coming. And if he knew they were coming then…”
“There could’ve been a phone call,” Gunn finished for her, grinning as he said it. “You’re one smart woman, you know that?”
Fred looked down, blushing. “It’s nothin’ really, I’m just thinkin’ out loud. I mean, I could be wrong. Probably am.”
“No, you could be on to something,” Kate said, a pensive look on her face. “I’ll look into getting his phone records, both cell and land lines.”
“And I want to talk to the kid again,” Gunn added. “See how he reacts to the wife turning herself in. If I could get him to back off his story, maybe we’d have a better chance at getting the real one.”
“And I’ll take those blood and hair samples I scraped off the desk back to the lab,” Fred said. “See if they belong to Angelus. It would be nice if they didn’t and belonged to the murderer instead, but seein’ as he had that big ol’ bump on his head when they brought him in for autopsy, I don’t think I’m gonna get that lucky.”
Plans laid, the three of them set out to see if they could get to the bottom of what had really happened to Liam Angelus.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Angelus, I’m Charles Gunn, the Assistant District Attorney.”
From across the table in the interrogation room, Spike looked Gunn in the eye. “Don’t call me that. It’s Spike.”
The young man’s eyes were hard, his expression blank.
That changed with the next words out of Gunn’s mouth.
“Okay, Spike. I was wondering if maybe you could explain something for me. Seems your father’s wife came in this morning and confessed to a murder you claim to have done.”
Spike paled, swallowed hard. For a moment, he was completely silent, then he started talking quickly. “She didn’t do it. I did it. I don’t know why she’d even say she did it. Girl must be out of her mind, what with everything that’s going on.”
Gunn decided not to play his hand and tell Spike he was starting to suspect maybe neither one of them did it. He wanted to see what he could get this boy to say, what sort of truth he could pick from the lies.
Because by this point, he knew he was lying – the question was just whether or not it was to cover his own ass or Buffy’s.
“Come on, Spike. You and I both know what you’re doing. You’re what, nineteen? Do you have any idea how much you’ll be missing spending your life in here? There’s lots of other women out there. You don’t need to throw your life away for this one.”
Spike’s gaze locked back with Gunn’s, his eyes hardening again. “I did it. Not Buffy.”
In that moment, Gunn realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere. He’d severely underestimated the young man across from him, both in strength and stubbornness.
“Are we done here?” Spike asked, his voice level, detached.
Gunn nodded and signaled to one of the officers standing guard. “Yeah, I think we are.”
Spike let himself be led back to his cell without a word.
The moment Spike was shut in his cell again, the panic set in. What the hell was Buffy thinking turning herself in?
He’d told her not to. He’d told her to let him take the fall, let him do this for her. He was strong; he could handle this.
She’d already been through too much, suffered when she’d never deserved a moment of it. He needed to do this for her, needed to spare her from more pain. She’d already been in one hell because of Liam Angelus. She didn’t need to find herself in another one now that he was gone.
He roared, punched the wall, earning him a shout from the guard and a row of bloody knuckles. Still, he did it again, before turning around and cursing at his inability to do anything that wasn’t futile.
He’d known, talking to the ADA, that the time he had before they released him and kept Buffy in his stead was limited. There’d been reason to doubt him from the beginning, and now that they had Buffy’s confession, he knew the murder charges on him wouldn’t stick. What happened from here on out would be out of his control. Buffy would be sent to prison and he couldn’t stop it.
He felt helpless.
Guilty.
He should’ve worked harder on his confession, made it stronger, made his story stick. He should’ve woken her up before he left, stressed to her the importance of letting him do this. Looked her in the eyes and made her believe this was truly how he wanted things to be. He should’ve made this work.
He hadn’t.
He’d failed her.
She was the only person in his life to love him and he’d failed her.
William sunk down on the bunk, his head in his hands. He closed his eyes and all he could see was her in a place like this. She’d fade away here. His bright, golden goddess would pale without the sun.
She’d be broken.
And William didn’t think he’d know how to fix her.
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