"Break a finger?" Willow echoed. "The only way I'm going to break anything is if you keep hauling me around." She firmly planted both her feet on the ground and grinned up at Faith.
Faith raised an eyebrow, looked pointedly at Willow's defiant stance, and smirked. "Nah. I won't need to break anything, Red." With a single tug, Willow was moving again – this time at a far faster pace. When they finally reached the bank of elevators, Faith stabbed at the call button with an impatient finger. Her smirk faded as she regarded Willow soberly. "I know it ain't the norm, Red, leaving the Juniors to do the work. It's gonna have to be if we ain't all gonna end up like B. Worn out, pissed at the world, and hidin' who the fuck knows where."
"Rome," Willow murmured.
Her reply coincided with the ding of the elevator arriving. Faith waited until they were inside to ask, "Rome what?"
Covering a yawn with her hand, Willow explained. "Buffy's not hiding. Well, not really. She's in Rome." Her eyes flickered to the numbers slowly lighting over the elevator doors. "She always talked about traveling and seeing the world. I get postcards whenever Buffy goes someplace new. The last one was from Rome."
The car slid to a halt and the doors opened. "Huh. Does Tweed know?" Faith didn't think so. Giles had looked like he'd bitten into a lemon the last time she'd mentioned Buffy in front of him.
"I…" Willow bit her lip, and Faith watched her chew voraciously as she fumbled the keycard into the lock. "Probably not." The abused flesh didn't get a reprieve after the answer. Willow went right back to nibbling on it.
"B still pissed about the whole Spike thing?" Leave it to Buffy to lose her father-figure over her vampire lover. "She shoulda listened to me. Fuck 'em and toss 'em." Stripping off her overshirt, Faith tossed it on the small table near the window and collapsed onto the bed.
The bed depressed next to her and Faith looked up. Willow lay at the foot of the bed, head propped on her hand. "Do you really think I buy that, Faith?" She wrinkled her nose. "I haven't been that stupid since high school." Flashing an impish smile, Willow added, "I hope not, anyway." The smile dimmed slightly. "We both know you aren't like that, Faith. There hasn't been a string of warm bodies flowing in and out of the Council building, and you haven't tied a scarf to the doorknob here. You can stop with the act."
Faith didn't know what to say. How had they gotten sidetracked? Scrambling to hide her unease at Willow's all-too accurate statement, she changed the subject abruptly. "I'm ready for some shut-eye, Red. You wanna tell me what's in that envelope now? Or we gonna wait until breakfast?"
She'd expected a glare or a dramatic sigh at the blatant avoidance. Instead, Willow sat up as if she'd been pinched. "Oh! The envelope." She blushed and then went pale. "No. We…we definitely need to do it now."
From the sound of Willow's voice, Faith didn't think Willow really wanted to do it now at all. "Look, Red, it can't be that bad. I mean, unless you got some other prophecy stuffed in there." She narrowed her eyes at Willow. "That ain't it, is it? Some piece of shit saying I'm supposed to go out in a big blaze a glory?" She waited tensely for Willow to respond.
"No." Willow hopped up and retrieved the envelope from the other bed and then returned. "It doesn't really have anything to do with Slaying, Faith." She held it out, and the stiff paper of the envelope shook visibly. "Open it," she said quietly.
Faith wasn't sure she wanted to. There had already been too much drama for one day. She sat up and took the envelope, slitting the seal with finger. A thick stack of paper stuck out of the opening. "Guess you were right. It ain't a bomb," Faith tried to tease.
The joke fell flat. Willow didn't even smile.
"Right." Clearing her throat, Faith removed the papers and peered at the top page. It bore a large, circular seal at the top which read, "State of California." The room spun. Fuck. The cops had found her. Faith heard the rattle of the cell door closing. Her muscles readied themselves for yet another escape. She wasn't going back willingly.
A warm hand landed on her shoulder before Faith could run for the door. "Read it, Faith." Willow met her eyes with an understanding look. "It's…it's not bad news. Really."
Not trusting her voice, Faith merely nodded and forced herself to go back to reading. She frowned. The language was formal and contained words Faith didn't recognize. Giving up, she held the pile out to Willow. "You're gonna have to translate. I don't think they taught this kinda shit in the sixth grade."
That earned her a long look before Willow nodded and took the documents. She never even glanced at them. "They say that you're a free woman, Faith."
Now Faith did make it off the bed. "I'm what?" She must have misunderstood.
"You're free. The State of California threw out your conviction." Willow tossed the papers onto the bed and stood, too. "After the First, Giles and I started digging into the old Council records as well as all of your case files. We found a few things."
Stomach cramping, Faith took a step away. She had to get out.
"Faith…" Willow's soft voice dragged Faith's attention back to the conversation. "Didn't you ever think it was funny? How fast you were convicted? Why you got such a long sentence?"
"I killed people, Red. That's what they do with murderers." The words hurt Faith's throat and she reached up automatically to rub at the ache.
Willow took Faith's hand, the slender fingers tightening when Faith tried to pull back. "They do, yes. Normally, though, they only do that when they have enough evidence to prove the person committed the crime. With you…" Sighing, Willow sat down and pulled Faith with her. She drew one knee up on the comforter and turned to face Faith. "They didn't have any evidence, Faith."
That wasn't how Faith remembered it. She remembered the feel of the cuffs on her wrists and the cold, hard chair under her legs. She remembered the staccato pounding of the detective's typewriter as she'd taken Faith's confession. "I told them I did it, Red," Faith said huskily. "Don't need evidence for that."
Unbelievably, Willow giggled. "Actually, they do."
***
Chelsea regretted the couscous. It sat uneasily in her stomach and threatened an imminent return as she breathed in the sickly-sweet smell of formaldehyde and decay in the autopsy room. Pressing a hand over her protesting stomach, Chelsea concentrated on breathing through her mouth.
"What the hell happened to this thing? It looks like someone used it for target practice." Melinda Warner asked as she wheeled the mangled coffin in on an gurney, interrupting Chelsea's preoccupation with her indigestion.
"I think someone would have reported a cannon going off in the cemetery – even in Canarsie." Liv didn't seem bothered by the morgue atmosphere. She peered eagerly at the coffin, trying to get a glimpse of the corpse inside. "Besides, unless Charlie here was doing the firing, you'll have to find another explanation. The box exploded from inside." She pointed at the metal fragments and the way they clearly jutted up from the interior of the casket.
Warner chuckled. "I'll mark this one in the books. This job keeps me in scary stories for Halloween. Exploding coffins are new." She parked the gurney in the middle of the room, carefully setting the brakes on all four wheels. "Hand me that crowbar, Liv, and we'll open it up."
Olivia picked the tool off the counter behind her; she did not, however, hand it to Warner. Instead, she walked over to the already mangled coffin. "I'm not sure we need it." Using the end of the crowbar, Olivia scraped at the dirt caked around the edges of the lid. It flaked off easily. "We aren't the first people to want to check on the dearly departed."
"It's already open?" No longer conscious of the smells, Chelsea straightened up and moved closer. She couldn't believe it. Once Olivia had cleared away the dirt, it was easy to see that the lid was merely sitting against the side walls of the coffin. "So…" Trying to put the pieces together, she looked up at the other women. "We really were chasing McLaren the other night?"
"It's looking more likely." Olivia took hold of the coffin lid and lifted. More dirt streamed to the floor. "This wasn't a grave robbing. The casket was opened from the inside, and there is no body or skeleton. It takes a strong stomach to steal more than a watch off a skeleton's bony arm."
Melinda tossed her clipboard onto a nearby cart. "You're missing the bigger problem, Liv." She seemed pale under the harsh fluorescent lights of the room.
Shivering suddenly, Chelsea rubbed her hands up and down her arms. "I don't really want to know what else could go wrong with this investigation. We chased down – and then lost – a man who supposedly died three decades ago."
"The man we signed out to the funeral home was definitely dead, Detective." Melinda pointed to her discarded clipboard. "No one survives having their chest cut open and all of their organs removed."
She paused, and Chelsea waited for the other shoe to drop.
Before Warner could finish, Olivia jumped in impatiently. "So we made a mistake on ID. It wasn't Charlie McLaren on the slab all those years ago. It happens. I'll call the Captain and have him reopen the old case. It won't make the Commissioner very happy, but we'll catch the bastard for real this time." She reached for the radio clipped to her belt.
"Liv, you're missing the point," Warner repeated softly, and Olivia's hand fell away from the radio. "You said it yourself. The casket was damaged from inside. In my experience, the dead don't dig. Whoever did this wasn't the dead John Doe or Charlie McLaren we signed out. It was a live body buried in that grave."
Olivia wasn't accepting that. Chelsea watched as Olivia frowned and shook her head in denial. "That's not possible." Snapping a hand up to forestall anything else from Melinda, she leaned over the coffin. "I'm not talking about somebody switching out the corpse for a live body. It wouldn't be the first case like that I've worked." Olivia picked up the lid of the coffin and held it out. "This might not be the top of the line; the thing's still got to be a half-inch thick, though. How many people do you know who can rip through a half-inch of metal and then dig up through at least three feet of dirt?"