Author's Note: A plan comes together. Some fragments of the episode are quoted here, not all by the original participants.
Despite the EXIT sign, I'm assuming that Ted maintained the fiction of an actual house, on the outside, anyway. He had to bake those cookies somewhere, and I doubt he always used his girlfriends' kitchens.
X X X X X
In the original timeline, they'd broken into a workroom to start off. Wherever the workroom was, it wasn't at the front of the house, which looked like a typical suburban house, though smaller than the one the Summers' lived in.
The neighbors weren't out and about, or peering through windows; still, we should probably make this look good, just in case.
I walked straight up to the front door and knocked, to Willow and Xander's horror. They ran up, Xander saying, "What in the name of Odin are you doing?"
"Making it look good," I said. "Quit standing out. Go over and look through the front window. See if you see anything."
Xander did so, and said, "A curtain. From the top to the bottom."
"Can you see anything?"
"It's white with some really neat beads."
"If I wanted fashion critiques, I'd have brought Cordelia. Willow?"
"Not really," she said. "It's dark inside. I can't see any furniture but I've only got a couple of cracks."
"Look around behind you while I knock on the door again," I said, not facing them. "See if there's anyone looking at us at all. Look at yards, windows, backyards, and cars."
After thirty seconds, Willow said, "If there's anyone there, they're hiding really really well. Like, we'd need Superman to find them well."
"What she said," Xander said. "All quiet on the Western front."
"Good. Then we can stop pretending to have a good reason we're here. Come on."
I led them quickly around the back. There was a tall wooden fence blocking our access -- easy enough to unlock, though. There wasn't a white picket one in front, though. Ted's somewhat creepy nostalgia for the 1950s apparently stopped somewhere.
Ah. And here we were: The workshop was at the back of the house. Xander tried the door and got nowhere. We peered through the window and saw the home junk room we all knew and loved from the episode. Xander reached down for a brick when I stopped him. "Let's not try to attract the attention of the neighbors," I said.
"I was just --"
"I know, and good idea -- just less noisy."
Okay, what's your idea?" he asked.
"Something a bit more subtle," I said, "And without that telltale sound of breaking glass that nosey neighbors and cops so tend to love."
"In Sunnydale?" Willow asked disbelievingly.
"Maybe today is the one day a year they feel like doing something," I said. "In any event, if Don Lamb sees any one of us, he'll be delighted. Donny's lazy and incompetent, but he's also mean when he can get away with it."
"And again with the, 'What's your idea?'" Xander said.
Once again, Keith Mars comes through. I pulled out a set of lockpicking tools from my pocket and proceeded to, yes, pick the lock.
"Can I--?" Xander asked.
"No," I said firmly. "It's barely okay that I'm using them." Not okay at all, if Dad found out. I'd get half a pass for "in the cause of good," but it would be taken away for "breaking into the home of a psychopath."
Fifteen seconds later, the door swung open and we found ourselves in Ted's workshop. It was full of machine parts, computer parts, and old furniture.
"You guys search here," I said. "Look for anything weird."
Willow nodded and started looking; Xander was still skeptical. He wasn't being hostile, just Xander. "There's enough mechanical junk here to create my own robot army," he said. "I think we're well past weird."
"Then look for well past weird," I said, and went off to look at the rest of the house, getting out my camera as I did.
The only furniture in the rest of the place was by the front door; serviceable stuff, enough to fool anyone who peered in. The bathroom had nothing -- no washcloths, no towels, not even toilet paper. I took pictures of that, though Ted was smart enough not to leave signs out saying, "I'm a killer robot." The few items of furniture that were there in no way looked used. I was reasonably sure Ted didn't bring his spouses back here until he was ready for the big reveal, and at that point they weren't going anywhere, anyway.
I took a couple more pictures; it would be enough for Dad, Buffy, and Giles at this point. Had to keep going through the motions.
Not hearing anything from Xander or Willow yet – I didn't think I would, unless they discovered the entrance to the secret basement – I went into the kitchen.
And here's where he was dumb.
First off, the only food he had in there was stuff he could use for baking: ingredients for cookies, pastries, and pizza. No vegetables, no fruit, no bread; yeah, you could assume he baked for every meal, making his own pancakes and frying up eggs every time, but it still looked really weird.
It was the only room I'd seen that looked used, at all. Everything else matched Cordelia's description of "No sign that anyone lives here." But then, she'd only been gone about a minute; she probably hadn't looked in the kitchen. The bathroom and the weird furniture pattern would have been enough to convince me, anyway.
That wasn't the dumb, though. That was the "suspicious if you're already suspicious." It wouldn't convince Joyce Summers and it sure as hell wouldn't convince Don Lamb.
The dumb was that he had all the stuff he used for baking in the kitchen.
The eggs.
The chocolate chips.
The cast iron skillets.
The tranquilizer.
Prescribed to him. Sitting in the cabinet in between the vanilla extract and the cinnamon.
I took a few more pictures – making sure to get at least one close-up of the label – and returned it to its place in the cabinet. This was proof. This was concrete, Don Lamb can't ignore it proof. How he'd gotten a doctor to prescribe it, I had no idea. Maybe he did the office computer system and asked for a return favor.
Right then, Willow yelped -- I'd say loud enough to wake the dead but in this town? All that required was a normal alarm clock – and Xander swore, though not as loudly.
I ran back to the workroom, hoping they'd found the hidden stairway to the basement dungeon, and found Willow studying something closely.
"What've you got there?"
Xander was still shuddering; Willow was in full on science-geek mode, and proudly displayed her discovery.
I looked at and repressed my own shudder. There's knowing, and there's knowing knowing.
It was an eye. A full-out, no-doubt about it robot eye, complete with human-like eyeball.
"Don't tell me Xander was right and Ted is building his own robot army," I said.
"I don't think so," Willow said. "At least, not the army part."
"One robot?"
"Yeah," Xander said. "Him." When I didn't say anything, Xander said, "Well, it would explain a lot."
"Like why he doesn't age," I said, "And why this house doesn't look lived in. The only new things I've seen here are the food and that one oriental rug."
It was more or less the same prompt Cordelia had used in the original timeline; and it had more or less the same result. Peeling back the rug, we found the trap door, and the concealed stairway.
"Willow?" I said.
"Yeah?" She was still looking through the machine parts.
"See if you can find anything else that looks like a body part – or maybe some plans." I doubted the plans; Ted would keep them in his head. Never hurt to check, though. "Any problems, yell once, and run." I handed her my cell phone. "Just in case I can't get reception down there." It wouldn't surprise if Ted had shielded it, somehow.
We walked down the stairs and found the perfect 1950s home, complete with curtained windows that, when I pulled the curtains aside, ended up looking out onto nothing at all. Xander flicked the light switch on, and the record player came on as well, playing Frank Sinatra.
"Lucy! I'm home!" Xander said as he walked down the stairs.
"Lucy Ricardo lived in an apartment in New York City," I said.
"You get the idea," he said. "This is straight out of sitcomland."
"Yeah." Cordelia's line was too good not to reuse; God, if you're out there, forgive me my plagiarism. "Just like home. If it's the '50s and you're a psychopath."
I took some a few pictures of the fully furnished basement, including the weird-ass windows and the secret staircase.
"Huh," Xander said. "What've you got in the closet, Ted?"
He pointed me towards the closet. And I surely pulled off a better performance than any Oscar winning actress in history by not flinching.
(Again, knowing knowing. I've seen dead bodies before, and I'm not just counting vampires. Up close and personal? An entirely different experience, and not a pleasant one. Something I hope I never get used to, in any universe.)
In the meantime, Xander opened the closet door.
"Veronica," he said. "Did you bring a flashlight?"
"No. Why?" I'd stupidly forgotten that the lights inside were kind of dim and didn't fully illuminate the inside of the closet. It's what happens when you try to balance everything in your head; eventually, something falls off.
"I'd like to know if I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing." He opened the closet the entire way and tilted a nearby floor lamp until it lit up the inside of inside of the closet. "And I am seeing it. "Holy shit. You wanted evidence, you got it."
"What's in there?" I forced myself to say.
"His first four wives," Xander said.
I steeled myself, stepped forward, turned the flash on my camera, and looked into the closet.
It was as bad as you think. It was worse than I'd allowed myself to think.
I took seven pictures. The light from the floor lamp was enough. "I have what we need," I said. We shut the door, moved the light back, flicked off the light, walked up the stairs, collected Willow, called Cordelia, and got the hell out of the neighborhood.
I'm not going to describe what I saw in there, unless I'm in a court of law.
I will say this much: They all had to go through hell. Wives two through four had had to see the evidence that the wives before them had as well.
X X X X X
We met back at the library, even Cordelia, who'd said, "I've come this far; I'm not going to stop now." Xander told her everything on the way back. Neither Willow nor I were in much of a mood to speak.
Yes, I knew what I was going to find. Forgive me if seeing four women who were tortured to death by a psychopath shakes me up a little.
Everyone was there; everyone Buffyverse, that is, except for Joyce.
We explained what we'd seen. Willow had found more evidence that Ted was a robot; enough to convince everyone in the room, anyway.
Working together, Giles and I managed to convince Buffy not to run off half-cocked to pound Ted into the pile of parts he so richly deserved to be.
"Wait until he's alone," I said. "Wait until tonight. You don't want witnesses."
"If it's a choice between my mother's life and exposing my existence to the world," Buffy said –
"Then you save your mom, and to hell with the secret identity," I said. '"But you don't want any witnesses when you beat up someone who looks human. At least, no witnesses who don't already know who and what he is. Not unless you have no choice."
"And it doesn't look like he likes to go berserk in public," Cordelia said. "So you don't need to worry about him locking up your mom in his dungeon until at least the next time they're alone."
"Mom's working at the gallery this afternoon," Buffy said. "They're getting together for some family time tonight. We're all supposed to watch some movies. My presence is not optional."
"When tonight?" I asked.
"7."
"What are you thinking, Veronica?" Willow asked.
"I'm thinking Buffy's going to need to watch that movie."
"Like hell," Buffy said.
"No. We need to wait until tonight. When he's not suspicious." After a second, I added, "When you have a firmly established alibi. And when it's dark."
X X X X X
Buffy gritted her teeth and agreed to try to make her way through it. I assured her she wouldn't have that much to make her way through.
We kept track of Ted for the rest of the day, trading off. Even Giles got involved. Me, not so much; I was busy trying to make sure everyone else knew what they were supposed to do.
At around 6:30, Ted, who apparently hadn't been aware of the earlier breaking and entering, left, with a basket full of baked goodies. Buffy, for her part, had a severe stomachache and wasn't hungry.
Dad called; the lead had fizzled, but he knew where Abel Koontz's hooker friend was going to be tonight for certain.
I told him my weekend was uneventful. I think he believed me.
Anyway. Ted showed up and was firmly ensconced in the Summers household by just after 7. The sun, of course, had set a long time previously – night came early in December, even in California.
So, while Cordelia kept an eye on the Summers household, Xander and Willow went to the Bronze and publicly stayed there, and Giles came with me to Ted's house. (Giles' Citroen? Far too noticeable. The idea now was to blend in, and the Citroen did that about as well as a stretch limo would have.)
Angel was there waiting for us. I'd spent a full hour giving him the lowdown on what was going on, and he was eager to help.
It wasn't enough to have Ted arrested; it wasn't enough to have him disappear. He had to disappear under mysterious circumstances with everyone knowing what he'd done. I didn't know if Ted qualified as the owner of the house. It would be easier if he didn't, but we weren't hanging our hopes on easy.
It wasn't easy. All Angel was able to do was kick open the back door, and then stand guard while Giles and I went inside. That was okay, for the moment. This time, we had a flashlight, and a Polaroid Camera, not the one I'd taken earlier, which was as secure as it could be, hidden back home.
We went inside, visibly rummaged around the top floor – with gloves on, of course -- and then headed down to the secret basement. Eventually, we opened the closet
Yes, I had to do this again. No, it wasn't fun.
Giles held the flashlight while I took three pictures of the contents of the closet, and then I went outside while Giles went to Ted's phone –
And called the police.
How could he justify being inside the house?
He couldn't. He was a burglar.
But the police could just come there and arrest him, because did he have something to show them, better get down here.
And that's when Giles and I left, leaving Angel the camera.
We parked down the street and waited.
Sure enough, Don Lamb and company weren't going to pass up an easy arrest like a burglar turning himself in. The sheriff himself showed up.
Angel told us this later: He showed them the photos; pointed to the stairway from the back door; and told them he wasn't going inside. Fortunately, they didn't try to force him.
Lamb went inside -- it was a crime scene, so he didn't need a warrant -- came outside, and threw up.
Normally I'd make fun of him, but not in this case. Then he started treating it like the multiple murder it was. Lamb was incompetent and corrupt, but even he had a sense of morals, however deep it was buried. This crossed that line. I'd known it would.
When the multiple cop cars started showing up, Angel made himself scarce, taking a spare moment to hop the fence to the neighbor's yard and start running.
He found me and Giles still parked a couple of blocks down the street and said, "Go."
We went. I called Buffy, who got thirty seconds; while she was telling me we had to talk later, I was telling her that our end of the deal was done.
I called Cordelia immediately afterwards; she took off.
I dropped off Giles at the high school, Angel two blocks from Revello Drive, and hied myself to the Bronze as fast as my LeBaron would take me.
Ted Buchanan left the Summers residence shortly before 11 PM.
And was never heard from again.