"There was another visit." Coyne said.
"So, this is not a casual dalliance," the Reverend said. The point of his upright knife rested on the scarred wood of the table, his palm on the pommel. As he turned his hand slowly, the knife dug into the timber. "This is a part of their design."
"Do you have any orders?" Coyne asked.
The Reverend closed his hand on the knife and lifted it, then began tapping the blade on the table. "Let it ripen. Every day that goes by, they will believe that they have deceived us, and with that, their arrogance will grow. Then, when we act, the pain will be doubly sharp."
Coyne nodded. "Very good. Any orders for the squads?"
The Reverend nodded. "I know that what I'm asking them to do is hard, to fight and purposely restrain themselves. Assure them that I am aware, remind them of our greater goal…" He grinned; Coyne looked away. "Tell them that, tonight, they may inflict damage. After all, if the enemy wins too easily, he begins to suspect a trap."
Coyne nodded and swallowed. "Very good, sir." He left the room, sweat beading his scalp.
The Slayer pushed through the library doors into a strangely silent library. She frowned and went to the counter.
"Giles?" She hoisted herself up on the counter and looked down, as if her Watcher might be hiding. Dropping to the floor, she looked around and raised her voice. "Giles?" Frowning, she made her way to the stacks, but the librarian was nowhere to be found. She made a slow circle, then shrugged and turned to go–
–and almost ran into Matti Hollis coming into the library. They both stopped short, shuffling their feet.
"Sorry," Buffy said, "although, I don't know why I'm apologizing, I mean, if we ran into each other–" she pressed her palms together in front of her, then bent her hands sharply to the left while she made a squishing noise "-I'd probably end up roadkill."
"I seriously doubt that." Matti looked over her head. "Is Mr. Giles not here?"
Buffy shook her head. "No, no, he's not." She glanced over her shoulder, then back at the cheerleading coach.
"Huh, that's odd." Matti put her hands on her hips. She wore a yellow polo with 'Sunnydale High School' embroidered on it and cardinal-red warm-up pants with three yellow stripes down the outside of each leg.
"Tell me about it," Buffy said. "But Giles has been on the wig lately."
"He's been through a lot, with the Watchers Council and everything."
"Oh, yeah. I get it, totally. I can't imagine what it's like, having your life upended by a mystical cabal." Buffy kept a deadpan poker face.
Matti ran her tongue over her teeth. "Touche, d'Artagnan." She looked around. "Well, you gotta minute? I wanted to talk to you anyway."
"Uh, me, uh… yeah," the Slayer stammered. "I, uh, you, what…" She shook her head. "I promise, English is my first language. Let me start over… yes, I gotta minute. What's your needage?"
Matti licked her lips. "Have you talked to Cordelia?"
"Oh, see, I thought you were gonna ask, like, what's the meaning of life, or what's the definition of love, or does free will exist? Something easy."
Matti tilted her head down. "So, that's a 'no'?"
Buffy made a rueful face. "Hard no."
"Have you tried?"
Buffy sighed. "I think we're all aware of how much Cordelia doesn't want to talk to me. She's been very clear about it." She pulled at the strings of her sky-blue hoodie.
Matti nodded. "Well, would you try?"
"Your words, they are in English, but they confuse me."
The gym teacher crossed her arms. "Buffy, I know that Cordelia's being… unreasonable, and I appreciate that she's off-loaded a lot of her pain onto you–" she held up a hand as the Slayer opened her mouth "-and I know that's not fair. I know there's nothing you can do about that. I'm not asking you to do the impossible… but I am asking you to do the difficult."
"How could I say no? You make it sound so appealing."
"I'm worried about her. I think this time of year is going to be really hard."
"This time of… ?" Buffy's mouth opened in an elongated oval. "Oh, prom."
"Yes, prom. You probably know better than me how important it is to her."
"Yeah, I think we all know it was supposed to be her moment of crowning glory."
"And now it's gone."
The Slayer nodded. "And if that's not enough, all of that mojo has transferred to Harmony."
"Yeah, could you enlighten me about that?"
"Me?" Buffy pointed to herself. "I don't move in those circles. Such levels of intrigue are beyond me."
"But Cordelia was part of your group."
"She was more like an associate member… like Spider-man in the Avengers."
"But Spider-man's a powerful hero in his own right."
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Well, thank you for destroying my analogy. Okay, let me see… okay, she's like Catwoman… she might be on your side, but you can't always be sure… or the Punisher… she'll do the right thing, but for her own reasons…" The Slayer waved her hands as though clearing away smoke. "Sorry, scratch that, I went down the rabbit hole. Point is, yes, Cordelia's one of us, but she's sort of chaotic neutral… no, wait, make it chaotic good–"
"What?"
Buffy stared at the teacher. "Chaotic good? D&D?"
Matti shook her head. "I never was into D&D. Kinda surprised you are."
The Slayer lifted one eyebrow. "Please. My real life is dungeons and dragons. I got that from Xander… anyway, yes, Cordelia remembered that there are vampires and became one of us by default, but she wasn't… really."
"Huh… she's between worlds."
"Ex-squeeze me? Between what?"
Matti tapped a foot, her focus somewhere in the middle distance. "So, she's excommunicated from her old crowd, and you guys never fully let her in."
"Whoa, whoa." Buffy held up her hands. "First, she burned her own bridge when she went public dating Xander."
The teacher's attention snapped back to the girl. "Do you think she shouldn't have done that? I mean, don't you give her any credit for taking that step?"
The Slayer shrugged. "It's a thin line between brave and crazy."
"So, she told off her old social group, Harmony stepped into the vacuum and assumed leadership, and you guys still never considered her a full part of your little gang? Then Xander sleeps with Faith?" Mati's face darkened.
"Hey, hey." Buffy took a step back. "Back off, Cousin Vinny." She shook her shoulders. "We're not the bad guys here."
"I know you're not," Matti said. She turned and went to the counter, leaned back on her elbows. "But let me ask you this… is Harmony going to extend the open hand?" Buffy blew a raspberry in response; the gym teacher nodded. "So, are you?"
The Slayer's eyes narrowed. "Oh, sneaky, sneaky, you." She looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll try. My mom knows my blood type in case things go sideways."
"Yes, sir, the Summers girl and the Hollis woman were in the library… no, Rupert Giles was not there… I don't know where he is… Well, I'm reasonably certain that he's off campus… No, I cannot legitimately ban faculty from leaving during their prep period… Well, I think it's important that Giles doesn't need to be there for them to interact… Yes sir, I'll try to get more useful information… You have a good afternoon, too." Snyder hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment, then shook his head. He stood up and took a deep breath as he buttoned his jacket, then headed for the office door. Somewhere out there was a freshman trying to sneak a cigarette who was going to rue this day.
"There you go."
Suarez looked up as the videotape slid across the table. It was old and the plastic windows were cloudy. "Have you watched it?"
"Oh, yeah. It's cued up to the good part."
"Great." Suarez picked up the tape and stood. A TV with a built-in VCT stood on a rolling cart in one corner of the room. Suarez unlooped the AC cord, plugged it in, and punched the power button. The blue screen blossomed, and he slid the tape into the slot.
A burst of video noise scrambled the screen, then a high-angle view of a sidewalk and part of the street came into jerky view. The view was lumpy and monochromatic; flashes of white at the upper edge of the frame indicated passing cars. A harsh white smear bled in from the upper right, evidence of the presence of a street light. Grainy lines slashed the picture, then disappeared. As Suarez watched, a figure entered, moving from right to left on the diagonal.
The figure was a smear of black, an oval of white, then a patch of black over dark gray.
"That's her?"
Kasabian pointed at the screen. "Look at the time code. It fits."
Suarez nodded and hit the pause button. The frame froze, grainy and jumping. "That's not much to go on." He tapped the remote on his thigh. "I'm going to take it to the lab."
"Knock yourself out." Kasabian stretched. "I've got files on my desk."
"Sure," Suarez said. "Hey, good job, man." Kasabian gave a two-fingered salute and lumbered away down the hall. Suarez scooped up the tape and headed to the elevator. Minutes later, he stepped out into the labyrinth of the basement lab. The AV guys were in the northwest corner of the area.
Suarez stopped in the doorway. "Hey, guys, got a minute?"
One of the techs pushed away from a table full of small electronic parts. "Oh, hey, yeah, all we've got is time." She turned back to her work.
"I really just need a minute," Suarez said. "I've got a tape here I'd like you to look at,"
The tech sighed and pushed her goggles up on her forehead. "Hey, Thompson, I'm gonna take five. It's probably quicker to just do this than try to explain why we don't have time." She stood up and stripped off her white cotton gloves. "Okay, over here." She led Suarez to a bank of TVs and VCRs.
"What's that?" Suarez said, pointing at a chunky black machine with a smooth face.
"That? DVD player. In five years, they'll be everywhere. Whatta ya got?"
"This." Suarez held up the tape. Where do you want me to put it?"
She looked at him for a long moment. "Are you messing with me?" She pointed. "That one."
Suarez flushed, aware of how suggestive and stupid his statement had sounded. He inserted the tape into the indicated VCR and rewound it a few seconds. The image flickered up and the girl walked across the frame. He stopped the tape.
"That's it?" she asked. "Wow, it really was a minute. Less, actually, Okay, you've got a tape, what do you want from us?"
"Can you clean it up, enhance it, get me a clear print of her face?"
The tech laughed, hard. "Dude, you watch way too much Star Trek." She ejected the tape and held it up. "This is an everyday Maxell tape, like you buy at any Wal-Mart. It's not even the high-end Maxell. The site is probably using a nineteen dollar surveillance camera, so the signal is bad, and it's recorded on SLP, which means the original image quality is for shit. I also guarantee you it's been taped over a bunch of times, based on the condition of the cassette."
"Wow, were you just waiting to let that out?"
She wiggled the tape at him. "We're good, we're very good, but we're not magic, and you idiots need to realize that."
"So, you can't do anything?"
She sighed. "Let me finish what I'm working on now. That'll take about two hours. Before I go on to the next thing, I'll try to pull a mug shot for you."
"Hey, thanks."
"Ah, you're lucky… this is so crappy I won't have to waste a lot of time on it." She shrugged. "It'll be like I'm back in high school. I'll get you something in… three hours."
"Thanks," he said. "I owe you."
"Sure." She grabbed a pad of forms from the shelf. "What's your name, floor, and room?" He gave her the information. She copied it, tore off the form, and folded it around the cassette. He nodded and started to leave..
"Hey, Suarez." He turned back. She was reading his name off the form. "That thing about owing me? That's not just a figure of speech. You do owe me, and, one day, I will collect."
He shook his head. "I will gladly pay."
He thought that three hours would drag, but Robertson and Arakelyan dropped by with a list of reported incidents that matched the criteria. He grabbed his pushpins and began to work on his homemade scatter chart.
"Dude, you are putting in a lot of hours on a do-nothing," Robertson said.
Suarez shrugged as he shoved a pin into the cork. "Yeah, the case itself looks like a zero, but you never know. We're already more on the radar than we thought we'd be." He related Kasabian's tale of the hospital interview. "Might as well hit it like an eager beaver… it might lead to something else."
"Yeah." Robertson nodded. "Another turn on the shit detail." He left. Suarez continued his mapping, then stepped back to survey the results. He was taking it in when a clerk walked in and dropped a manila envelope on the table. Suarez thanked him and shook the envelope. A matte 8x10 slide out. The image was grainy and blurred, but there was a face on there. A note had fallen out of the envelope. Suarez picked it up.
This is the best I could do. If I blow it up any more, you just get blobs. You owe me.
Suarez looked at the photo; it wasn't good, but it gave him an idea. He picked up the phone and punched in an extension.
"Yeah," he said, "this is Suarez up on four… yeah, Baby Huey. Listen, I need to set up an appointment with a sketch artist." He hung up and looked at the map. A shiver ran up his neck. There was something here.
