“Kate, this case is right up your alley,” Frank said, as Detective Kate Lockley ducked under the crime scene tape.
“And why’s that?” Kate asked ill naturedly, approaching the center of activity.
“Our corpse is some kind of a werewolf or something,” Frank replied.
“This had better not be some idiot who shot his neighbor’s dog for barking too much again,” Kate said, stopping to glare at her fellow officer.
“Would I do that to you?” Frank asked, overly-sweetly. “No the victim’s human.”
“Alright, I’ll bite, why did you say it’s my kind of case, really.”
“The shooter thought this guy was something weird, he used silver bullets, a lot of ‘em,” Frank replied. “We don’t have any ID on the corpse, but he didn’t belong in this neighborhood; a well-dressed Caucasian male, mid to late twenties, brown hair, brown eyes, probably just moved here, he didn’t have time to get a tan yet. The coroner can tell you the rest.”
Kate nodded curtly and walked over to the body.
“Hey Detective,” Dr. Jack Wakes greeted her.
“Hey Jack, how’s your second week on the job going?” Kate asked.
“Better before tonight, I don’t know what this guy did, but he sure pissed someone off. I’m guessing that the shooter unloaded around two full clips into our victim, I won’t have an exact count until I can get him to the lab and start pulling the bullets back out. There are so many holes they overlap. Plus silver’s soft, the bullets deformed more than lead would on impact, makes a bigger mess. But what really takes the cake is after the guy was on the ground the shooter walked right up to him and put a bullet through his heart and another between his eyes. See this marking?” Jack asked shining a flashlight in the corpse’s face. “It from the muzzle of the gun being pressed into his skull.”
Kate gasped, her face turning white as the blood pooled in her stomach, making her feel nauseous.
“What is it?” Jack asked looking concerned.
“I know the victim,” Kate said softly. “He’s a local PI.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “Was he a friend?”
“No,” Kate said more firmly, “I didn’t like his methods, too close to vigilantism.”
“I guess that gives us a place to start looking for a motive,” Jack said.
“Yeah, it does,” Kate said. “Frank, we’ve got a name and occupation. I’m acquainted with the victim, I should probably take care of the notification and collecting statements from his co-workers.”
“I’m not going to argue with you over that job,” Frank said.
“Oh, Jack,” Kate said, pausing to look back at the coroner. “The victim had this weird skin condition, sunlight caused a rapid breakdown of his cellular structure, I’m not sure whether or not it means anything now, but, just to be safe, you should probably keep him away from UV’s. I’d hate to have the case fall apart because the body damaged before we could run all our tests.”
______________________________________________________________
Xander stood irresolutely in the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel. He’d tried calling Angel several times since returning from Chicago, but the vampire was never available when he called. After a week, Cordelia had admitted that Angel had no intention of ever accepting a call from Xander.
So Xander had decided to come visit, he figured he’d be harder to ignore in person.
“Xander!” Cordelia exclaimed, noticing him hovering near the door. “Why are you here?”
“Well, I thought this way Angel would have to kick me out himself, rather than just have you refuse to forward my calls,” Xander said with a self-deprecating grin. “After the last four years I figure I owe it to him to give him the chance to be a jerk for a while. I’d really like a chance to apologize and he should have the chance to tell me how much of what he said in Chicago stays between us. Where is Angel anyway?”
Cordelia winced, “I wish we knew, he went out to do a little clean-up on a case of ours, he never came back. Wesley’s out trying to find him now.”
“Could he be in trouble?” Xander asked.
“This guy was just an abusive boyfriend,” Cordelia replied. “He shouldn’t have been a danger to Angel or anything. I mean sure he hired a demon to scare his girlfriend into dropping charges against him, but that demon was a real wimp. We didn’t even get to the fighting part, the demon left the country as soon as he heard that his target went to Angel for protection.”
“So you’re thinking Angel just had a late night or something,” Xander said. “That he had to go to ground because of the dawn right? That he’ll probably be back shortly after sundown.”
“Right,” Cordelia replied uncertainly.
“I’ll wait,” Xander said. “If he doesn’t, I can help you guys look for him.”
______________________________________________________________
Kate checked for witnesses before slipping into the city morgue. A few moments inspection of the logbooks told her which drawer she was looking for.
Kate propped a chair under the doorknob, then removed a cross and a stake from her purse. Cautiously she opened the appropriate drawer and slid the slab out.
She was almost surprised to see that it was still occupied. “I thought you’d be gone by now,” Kate said to the body. “I mean silver’s for werewolves not vampires, right Angel?”
“But I guess having a piece of metal bouncing around in your brain is pretty traumatic no matter what you are,” Kate continued pulling the sheet back to reveal his face and chest.
“Not much healing going on,” Kate commented. “Well that explains why no one was screaming about monsters or aliens, huh. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were just another dead body too.”
“Still, I’ve seen your kind die, if you were really dead there wouldn’t be a body. I thought about just staking you,” Kate said conversationally. “But I’m not like you. I don’t run around passing judgment on people… things, I’m a police officer. The stake is just in case I had to defend myself.”
“I wish your playmate, who ever that was, had done his research, it would have made things simpler for me,” Kate said, setting the stake down to remove a syringe from her purse. “But don’t worry. I came up with a solution to our problem. I think you’ll like it Angel.”
Carefully Kate injected Angel with the contents of the syringe, then pulled the sheet back up over his face. “That should make sure you don’t wake up too soon,” She said, closing the drawer then leaving the morgue.
______________________________________________________________
Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn and Xander were clustered around the front desk in the Hyperion’s lobby. It had been four days since Angel had disappeared and they had yet to find a trace of the souled vampire.
“I’m going to the police,” Cordelia said.
“And tell them what exactly?” Wesley asked. “We’ve discussed this before.”
“Well that time we still had leads, remember?” Cordelia snapped. “I could tell Kate something’s happened. She may hate Angel, but she’s still a police officer right? She has to help, or at least keep an eye out for something.”
“Like what, suspicious dust piles?” Gunn asked sarcastically, Cordelia slapped him.
“Sorry, but you’ve gotta face the facts,” Gunn said. “Soulful’s been MIA for four sun filled days, nobody on the street has seen him, not the people not the demon-types. Vamps are hard to keep penned up, if he were alive or whatever, we would have heard from him by now.”
“I don’t buy it,” Xander said. “Cordy is Angel’s connection to the Powers that Be right?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with this?” Wesley asked.
“Well if Angel’s really dead, why did she get that vision about the chaos demon last night?” Xander asked.
“Lets go talk to the police,” Cordelia said triumphantly.
______________________________________________________________
Kate stood in the morgue, the forged papers giving her the right to claim Angel’s body clenched nervously in her hands, her gaze shifting guiltily toward the drawer containing the vampire’s comatose body.
“Look Detective, this isn’t exactly by the book,” The officer said.
“I’m paying for the burial,” Kate replied curtly. “All you have to do is follow instructions. No cremation, no embalming, crosses are to be carved into every side of the casket and make sure it’s well sealed.”
“You said you notified his people, shouldn’t they claim the body and make these arrangements?” the officer asked.
“The only people he knew were the ones he worked with, they gave me full discretion in seeing to the body, you’ve seen the paper-work,” Kate said.
“So just let us cremate him and be done with it, why all the extra fuss?”
“Just do what I tell you to, it shouldn’t be that far beyond your abilities,” Kate snapped, turning to leave.
“Hey, Detective,” the man yelled. “Do you ever wonder why you don’t have any friends?”
______________________________________________________________
Kate returned from the morgue to find Cordelia Chase and a dark haired boy Kate hadn’t seen before waiting at her desk.
“Angel went missing five days ago,” Cordelia said without any preliminary niceties.
“I don’t see what you want me to do,” Kate said.
“You’re a detective, so go look for clues or something. Find out what happened to Angel,” Cordelia replied.
“I’m afraid you have the wrong department,” Kate said. “I’m a homicide detective, we don’t get involved until after there’s a body, and we both know your boss wouldn’t leave one of those. I’d send you to Missing Persons, but then he’s not a person is he? I guess we just can’t help you.”
“You know when I walked in here, I wondered why you’re hidden back in the corner like this,” Cordelia said. “Now I’m guessing it’s cause you’re too busy being a bitch to be a police officer.”
“Come on, Cordy,” Xander said softly. “Insulting the Detective won’t help Angel.”
“Wait,” Kate said. “What was Angel working on when he disappeared? I could have the department look into it, who knows what might turn-up.”
Cordelia smiled gratefully. “It was a domestic violence thing.”
“So how did Angel get involved?” Kate asked. “Why didn’t the client go to the police?”
“She did,” Cordelia replied. “But the boyfriend hired a demon to go after her. When she described what was after her since she left him the police laughed her out of the station.”
“You think the demon took Angel out?” Kate asked.
“Not likely,” Cordelia snorted. “The way we heard the story demon-boy bought a ticket for the first plane to anywhere when he heard Angelus was looking for him. Anyway, Angel was going to go introduce himself to the creep boyfriend, make sure he wouldn’t try anything else until our client could press charges, only Angel never came back.”
“What’s the boyfriend’s name?” Kate asked.
“Danny Morals,” Cordelia replied. “The girl is Rachael Deeks, she’s a model.”
“And he’s been in trouble with the police before, but he got off on a technicality,” Kate said thoughtfully.
______________________________________________________________
Once she knew who to look into it didn’t take long for Kate to find evidence linking Danny Morals to Angel’s supposed murder. A few calls netted enough information to obtain an arrest warrant, and to establish that Rachael Deeks had gone missing within twelve hours of Angel being shot.
“Where is Rachael, Danny?” Kate demanded.
“How would I know, she left me,” Morals replied bitterly.
“You shot the guy she hired to protect her from you,” Kate pointed out. “I think you know exactly what happened to Rachael.”
“I didn’t shoot anyone,” Morals said.
“Right,” Kate said, rolling her eyes in disgust. “He was shot with ammo you had custom made, but you didn’t do it. Why am I not believing this?”
“I reported my gun stolen, the ammo was in it at the time of the theft,” Morals replied. “You find my thief, you’ll find your murderer.”
“Danny, you expect me to believe that two clips of your custom made ammo end up in a guy hired to protect your ex-girlfriend from you, who just happens to be missing, and you had nothing to do with it?” Kate asked.
“I expect a jury to believe it, after Wolfram and Hart explains the situation for me,” Morals said. “Speaking of my lawyers, I think we should be calling them about now.”
“I have one question for you first,” Kate said. “Did you know silver doesn’t kill vampires?”
“What?” Morals demanded.
“You didn’t do your homework very well Danny. Silver’s for werewolves, it’s wood that does it for vampires,” Kate explained. “And you know that really funny thing? Our corpse disappeared the night after the coroner finished pulling the bullets out. I’m sure that it’s just a mix up, you know wrong tag on the body or something, but the guys down at the morgue swear that the guy walked out.”
Danny’s face went chalk-white.
“You tell me where Rachael is or I’ll leave you hand-cuffed in his office, maybe he can get an answer out of you. I’ve heard he doesn’t take loosing clients well,” Kate threatened.
“You can’t do that,” Morals said.
“Watch me,” Kate dared him.
“I couldn’t loose her,” Morals said. “I love Rachael. I’ve got her at my cousin’s place. She would have realized that we belong together eventually. I just needed her to listen to me. That vampire she hired was getting in the way.”
______________________________________________________________
“I still don’t see how filing a missing person’s report will help,” Wesley said, as he and Cordelia sat in the waiting area at the police station.
“I don’t know!” Cordelia exclaimed. “Maybe he got hit in the head and is wandering around somewhere with amnesia. It can’t hurt.”
“How may I help you?” the police officer asked.
“Angel is missing,” Cordelia said firmly, showing the officer a picture of Buffy and Angel from the prom. “He’s been gone for two weeks now.”
“Have you contacted his family? Is there any reason for you to suspect something may have happened to him?”
“We are his family,” Cordelia replied. “And do you think we’d be here if we thought everything was hunky-dory?”
“I have some forms you’ll need to fill out,” the officer said, handing Cordelia a stapled packet.
Cordelia began skimming through the form. “I knew I was right to bring the drawing of his tattoo,” she said to Wesley, pointing to the identifying marks section of the form. “This will help won’t it?” Cordelia asked showing the officer the sketch she’d copied from the watcher’s diaries.
“Hold on a minute,” The officer said solemnly, “I need to check something, may I borrow that.”
“I told you, I told you,” Cordelia repeated excitedly as the officer checked something on his computer.
“The tattoo was located behind his right shoulder?” The officer asked.
“Yes, you know where he is?” Cordelia asked.
“I’m terribly sorry, but your Angel was killed, I can’t imagine why you weren’t notified.
“But you saw the tattoo,” Cordelia said. “Angel can’t be dead.”
“I remembered the tat,” The officer said. “I’d never seen one like that before.”
“Wesley, tell him Angel’s not dead,” Cordelia insisted.
“Cordelia, please,” Wesley said. “Officer, could we see the body?”
“I’m sorry, Detective Lockley already arranged for burial, the best I can do is to send you to the cemetery.”
“That will be acceptable,” Wesley said, grabbing Cordelia’s arm as she prepared to storm off.
“Wesley, let go of me. I’m going to go hurt her. She buried him!” Cordelia protested.
“Cordelia, we need to leave,” Wesley said, half carrying the infuriated girl out of the precinct.
______________________________________________________________
“Now this brings back memories,” Xander said, his shovel thunking into the newly laid grass. “Just like high school.”
“I might not have gone to high school, but I know grave robbing wasn’t in the curriculum,” Gunn commented.
“Actually medical students were quiet renown for graving robbing at the previous turn of the century,” Wesley said.
“Dig!” Cordelia commanded from her perch on a nearby tombstone.
“I remember this part too,” Xander said. “Somehow the girls always get out of digging up the bodies.”
The three men dug in silence until Gunn’s shovel thunked hollowly on the lid of the coffin, a few minutes more and the dirt around the casket had been cleared.
“Crosses,” Wesley said softly. “No wonder Angel couldn’t free himself.”
“It’s sealed shut with some kind of soldier,” Xander said, forcing the blade of his shovel under the lid of the coffin and using it as a lever to pry the box open.
“Xander, some caution might be advisable,” Wesley said offering the younger man a cross. “We don’t know what state Angel may be in after such a lengthy confinement.”
“He can manage the blood lust,” Xander said waving the cross away. “I don’t want to greet him with one of those, it’s kinda unfriendly.”
“Okay, who are you and what did you do with Xander Harris?” Cordelia asked.
“Chicago changed things Cordy,” Xander replied. “I trust Angel now, I want him to know that.”
With a loud crack the seal on the coffin broke, Xander slipped his fingers under the heavy lid and heaved it open. “Angel…” he breathed in shock.
The other three crowded in closer.
“Help me get him out of there,” Xander ordered.
Gunn moved to help lift the vampire from the grave as Cordelia asked, “He’ll be all right, won’t he?”
“I hope so,” Wesley replied solemnly.
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