Chapter 21
Spike sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair, across from an old woman who had decorated the full of her desk with crucifixes and anthropomorphic lambs and sheep. She was no taller than five feet, the poor dye job on her thinning, elderly hair was a dull shade of silvery lavender, and her bulbous and grandmotherly form was adorned with a cheap polyester floral print dress with only two buttons straining at the neckline to keep it all in place.
Spike relaxed a fraction upon entering the lady’s office, having fully expected to be ushered outside and into a waiting police car to ship him off to his doom. But he hadn’t been. He was ushered here, amid biblical scriptures scrawled in pretty calligraphy on any and everything in the room. Her coffee mug had a Psalm on it. Her calendar had an excerpt from the Book of Mark. The stuffed lamb that hung, limp and lifeless over her ten-year-old monitor, wore a priest collar and The Lord’s Prayer embroidered on its back.
He felt as if he’d been brought to the pearly gates for judgment, but instead of St. Peter, he was to bare his sins to Mrs. Ruthie Busybody, age sixty-eight, affinity to pastels, cross stitch, Jesus, and baby powder.
The police officer that escorted Spike to this office not moments ago, stood tall by the door, his meaty hand lying atop his gun and his eyes narrow and suspicious, as the social worker straightened a manila file folder on her desk and put on her bright pink reading glasses.
“Well, let’s see,” she said, squinting and holding her glasses at various distances from her eyes until she could read the text before her. “William Pratt, age…oh, happy birthday,” she said, lifting her focus from the paperwork to smile at him genuinely.
“Thanks,” Spike said, his lips tight and impatient. Maybe she’d show him some mercy.
“So how long have you been harassing the Summers?”
The floor seemed to drop out from beneath him. The officer sniffed casually.
“I haven’t been harassing anyone.”
“Uh huh,” she said, still smiling, as she turned the page in his file.
“I don’t know what you’re looking at in that file, but I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“Lower your voice,” the officer said, taking a step forward. Spike grumbled and sat back in his chair.
She licked her middle finger and turned another page. This time, Spike could see what was in the file. Photographs. Surveillance camera photographs. Fuck.
“What are those?”
“These,” she said, turning them around to slide them across the desk so he could see, “are pictures of you outside the Summers’ mansion. A complaint was filed yesterday, and we even have testimony from the guard on duty. This does not bode well for your probation, which is why I asked Officer Finn to stay so that I might question you without any danger to me.”
Spike’s heart pounded in his chest, and a very sickening feeling started to infect his confidence. With a shaking hand, he picked up the stack of photos. He growled softly as he inspected each picture, shocked as well at the lengths Angel was willing to go to get him out of the way. Spike never considered that the Summers had cameras on their estate, but of course they had them. If you had that kind of money, you protected what was yours, especially after that attempted robbery Buffy mentioned on their first date. These photos were taken the day he’d told Buffy he loved her. The day Angel punched him in the jaw.
Except that image, that bit of fun had been cleverly omitted from the photographs. There was no use telling them. They wouldn’t believe him anyway. He knew this song and dance well enough by now to know these people were already rooting for the wrong side. The only evidence the police received were photos of Spike on the premises, pushing Angel roughly as a crying Buffy watched on in horror. He was glad, now more than ever, that he hadn’t hit the prick. If he had, he’d be seriously fucked right now. Certainly they couldn’t ship him off to London for a mere shove. But if that’s how this shit was gonna go down, he wished there was a way to go back in time to break that git’s neck so it was worth all the trouble.
“Why were you there that day?” she asked, pulling him out of his murderous thoughts.
“I didn’t break any rules by going to see Buffy. The guard let me in, obviously.”
He noticed the lady’s lip twitching as she read over the report again. “It says here that you were asked not to return to the property, that the mother told you in person, and that you have deliberately chosen to ignore the request by coming over nightly.”
“I haven’t been anywhere near her house since that day,” he said, squeezing the arms of his chair in an effort to remain calm. “Where’s your proof? I haven’t done a bloody thing wrong and that motherfucker in the photograph is—”
“Sit back!” the officer said, pushing Spike’s shoulder until his back hit the chair.
“Calm down, Mr. Pratt,” the lady said. “Shouting at your probation officer isn’t the wisest idea.” Her eyebrows rose in warning, and then she smiled as if none of these events had transpired, as if they were old friends chatting over a nice cup of tea.
“Now, then, it also says here that you were spotted at Royce Hall and that you ‘manhandled Mrs. Summers and forced her to pay for your entry to the daughter’s dance recital.’ Is that correct?”
His mouth dropped open wide, his shock and disbelief more than apparent in his expression. “I can’t believe…that’s…who said that?”
“I am not going to discuss who filed this report until you start telling me what happened.”
This report, the thing sure to seal Spike’s fate to a long life of prison for fucking up in the first month, was several pages long, stapled together, and filled with a million lies that Spike had no way to prove the contrary.
“I’m not answering any questions until I have a lawyer. Isn’t that one of your laws here? I get representation, don’t I?”
“You aren’t a U.S. citizen.” The police officer smiled, and maybe it was only Spike, but it seemed as if he enjoyed saying that.
She rolled her eyes and sighed in frustration. “You are legally allowed to have a lawyer present, even if you are not a U.S. citizen. In order to do that, however, we’ll have to keep you until we can locate one. That could take a while.”
“How long is a while?”
She shrugged. “It depends on their availability. There is so much paperwork.” She fiddled with a cross on her desk and bit her lip. “Perhaps a day or two? Three? Who knows…”
So she was one of those types of Christians, the kind that would look fantastic in a red cloak, holding a soldering iron against your eyeball to torture you into confession. He shifted nervously in his seat, and because he didn’t exactly know what rights he had as an illegal alien on a six month trial, he figured it was best to remain silent.
“To be honest, I don’t know what sort of judge allowed a criminal such as you into our great nation in the first place, but that’s my foolish optimism that this country isn’t run by socialists.” She removed her glasses and folded her chubby little hands together. “For whatever reason, you were given a second chance to turn your life around, Mr. Pratt, and it seems that in the very first month of probation, you’ve managed to show absolutely no remorse for your actions, no respect for our laws, or for the grace given to you to prove you deserve to be released as a sound member of society.”
This was bullshit! Complete and utter bullshit!
“I didn’t do anything! You wanna know what happened? I went over there, had a bit of a romantic interlude with Buffy, her boyfriend showed up and clocked me in the jaw. See this?” he said, pointing to the barely visible bruise still on his chin. “I pushed him when he started threatening me, out of self-defense, and then I left and never came back. I’m sure if they’ve got surveillance cameras, there’s a video camera, too, to prove what really happened. And also, for the bleeding record, her boyfriend has been threatening me ever since.”
As if a light bulb clicked on in his head, he reached in his pocket.
“Hey-hey-hey,” the officer rushed to say, “keep your hands where I can see them!”
Ignoring him, Spike quickly pulled out the notes Angel had been leaving. He tossed them onto the desk. “Those, right there! He’s trying to frame me! And…I can’t believe I just said those words,” he said, feeling as if he were living out a scene in a crime television series. “But it’s true! He doesn’t like that his ex-girlfriend might have feelings for me, so he’s trying to rub me out!”
Mrs. Bindle – which was her real name, according to the nameplate bookended with two golden Cherubs on her desk – took the notes and read them over.
“This doesn’t prove anything. I don’t even know what these are supposed to mean and even if I did, you could have simply written them yourself.”
“What about Buffy Summers? Has anyone questioned her? Joyce? They’ll tell you what’s what.”
She motioned to the policeman with a nod of her head, and Spike looked between the two of them frantically as Officer Finn approached. “What are you doing? What’s going to happen? This isn’t right, man! This isn’t fucking right!”
“Nothing is happening, William,” she said. “It is protocol for instances such as these that we detain you until arraignment or until the charges have been dropped, whichever comes first.”
“Please stand up and place your hands behind your back.”
“Detain me? You mean put me in jail,” Spike said gruffly, standing up with a jolt and placing both his fists in the small of his back. The second cold metal hit his wrist, Spike started to feel a desperate urge to break something, or start crying. Or begging. Begging might work.
“Please don’t ship me off, Miss. I’ve been working really hard. Just ask my uncle. I haven’t even been drinking! That report is wrong, I’m telling you. Please call Mrs. Summers and put an end to this. Please? I can’t go home! I can’t go back to that place. It’ll kill me if I go back there! Please!”
So it was begging and crying he’d landed on, but it was just enough to soften her eyes. It must have been quite a performance, because Spike was pretty sure she’d seen her fair share of criminals pleading their innocence.
Mr. Finn held him firmly by a grip to his upper arm as Spike awaited her response.
“We have to detain you until Mr. Summers arrives.”
All the breath in his lungs dissipated in a harsh exhale as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “M—Did you…did you say Mr.Summers?”
“It’s up to him what happens. If he drops the charges, you’re free to go.”
“If not?”
“Well, if not…then it’s bon voyage.”
He swallowed hard and nodded his head, trying to come up with a way to get out of this. If he had a chance to speak with Buffy’s father face to face, it could go either way. He might have an opportunity to prove his case and turn this around, or Hank could take one look at him, laugh his billionaire ass off, and sign him off to prison without thinking twice. Whatever happened, it was Spike’s last chance.
As the officer escorted him to the door, Mrs. Bindle spoke up to grab Spike’s attention one last time. “I almost forgot. Your monthly probation fee?”
“Oh. Right.” Not only was this the worst day of his life, but he also had the privilege of paying her fifty dollars to hand-deliver it to him. Fucking typical.
* * *
Five hours. Five fucking hours he’d been in this cell. Wasn’t even a real jail cell, just a holding room in the back of the government building for miscreants like him awaiting their carriage to the big house. There was a dirty metal toilet with the seat missing, a water fountain attached to the back of it, and a vast variety of curse words etched, marked, and scratched into every surface below eye-level in the tiny room.
And they’d locked him in here for five hours. No fucking telling what Rupert was up to. He was probably very polite when they told him the news, and only when he was back in the VW would he lose his temper. Maybe he’d add to the decorations on his marred dashboard with a few punches of his own.
The thought was improbable, but Spike needed something to keep him entertained while he waited, and thoughts of his uncle in a state of rage were quite amusing.
But just what the fuck was going on? How long would he have to sit here? This building wasn’t equipped to keep prisoners and they’d no doubt move him to the city prison if it took any longer. And wasn’t that a delightful thought?
“Come the fuck on!” he said, writhing petulantly on the cement and ceramic-tiled bench he was perched upon. “This is bloody ridiculous! Don’t I get a phone call?”
“Shut up back there!” he heard an officer say. Spike flipped him off through the walls and felt better for an entire twenty seconds.
He couldn’t think about going back home. If he thought about that, he’d lose all hope. The temptation to travel down that spiraling rabbit hole of misery was starting to break down his resolve. Five hours of keeping a positive outlook, hoping for the best and holding his head high could only last so long before his neck started to cramp and his back slid down the wall until he was lying flat against his own bad luck.
He wouldn’t see Buffy again. He wouldn’t see his uncle again. He’d be back in jail, getting his face pounded and his bones broken and his dignity stolen. His one and only chance to make things right was spoiled by a spoiled rotten brat with far too much time and money on his hands.
Suddenly, Robin Hood was quickly becoming Spike’s new hero.
“And he got Maid Marian in the end,” he mumbled to himself, smiling, despite his foul mood.
There was a loud, clanking noise that echoed down the hall, and Spike sat up straight, tilting his head to listen. A door opened, the sounds of footsteps grew louder, and a moment later, three men approached Spike’s cell. There were two police officers flanking either side of a man with impeccable, reddish brown hair, a very expensive looking three piece suit and shoes as shiny as the glimmer in his blue eyes.
Spike rose to his feet and straightened his shoulders when the man looked him over.
“You’re short,” he said, eyes narrowed, fat fingers tugging on his shirt cuffs beneath his suit jacket, and his cufflinks – with the initialsH.S. written in diamonds – twinkled from the jostling.
“So are you.”
The man who needed no introduction smiled a bit and waved the officers away, nodding in silent thanks when a chair was offered to him. He scooted it loudly towards the cell and sat down, crossing one ankle over his knee and exposing a burgundy, silk trouser sock.
“Let’s talk.” He rubbed the dimple in his chin and extended his other hand as if showing a client where to sit in his office. Spike sat back down on the tiled bench.
“It seems there has been a bit of miscommunication in the past few days that has led to a very unfortunate and quite inconvenient turn of events.”
“You’re damn right,” Spike said, itching for a smoke.
“Well, I’m a busy man so I won’t mince words. I would like to apologize to you for any problems this may have caused or for any damage to your record. I’ll see to it that’s handled before I leave.”
He had to be dreaming.
“Come again?” Spike was positive his eyes might fall out of his head.
“I don’t make a habit of repeating myself,” he said, smiling in a sly way that Spike might have recognized in himself if his mind weren’t still reeling.
“But look at this from my side. I get a phone call from Buffy’s boyfriend telling me there’s this punk kid causing trouble, stalking my daughter, using violence to get his point across, and I’m all the way on the other side of the world. The only thing I can do is tighten up security until I could get back home.”
Spike’s jaw ticked as he nodded, not wanting to see Hank’s point of view.
“Why didn’t you ask Buffy what was going on?”
He sighed. “She’s not too happy with me these days and Joyce is just as bad. Women,” he said, laughing, as if Spike could to relate to him and his million-dollar family issues.
“So what made you change your mind?”
“Never underestimate the power of a woman’s tears. My daughter called me an hour ago, right as my driver picked me up from LAX.”
Spike couldn’t hold back his smile. She’d come to the rescue for him! She’d professed her undying love to her father to save him, mere minutes before he was shipped off to jail!
“Buffy called you?”
“And…it turns out…” Hank rubbed the back of his neck and his forehead crinkled in shame as he looked at Spike. “Angel’s the one who has been stalking her.”
“Oh.” Not what he wished or expected to hear. But…oh shit, “Oh, shit! What?”
“She told me they broke up and that he’s been harassing her and Joyce. She said he’s always tried to control her and pick fights with any guy who even talked to her when they were dating. She never told me because I liked him so much, but she’s my daughter! Why would she think I couldn’t understand the—” He didn’t seem to be speaking with Spike any more when his emotions got the better of him and his brow crinkled as he stared at a spot on the wall. He might have planned on keeping this short and sweet, but it was obvious that Hank had been given a dose of reality and couldn’t quite collect his thoughts.
“Now he’s gone too far and made my family unsafe by bribing our security guard. I feel like an idiot for siding with him all these years, for helping him along while he treated my little girl that way. I built my empire on my knack for sniffing out a liar and somehow, he pulled the rug out from underneath me! I am not happy!” Hank’s fist looked large and imposing, especially as it slammed against his knee with resentment.
Spike could only blink, could only breathe heavily as the man who had always been thought of as an enemy came to the startling conclusion that he’d been played by a teenaged boy.
“And on top of it all, I just lost a two point five billion dollar resort deal to come home and clean up his mess!”
So there was the real fuel for his ire. Whatever. Spike would take what he could at this point.
“Yeah, and…and he can’t even throw a good punch!”
Hank didn’t hear, and if he did, he said nothing about it. He stood up abruptly and said, “Only reason he got into Notre Dame is because of me. I gave him my trust and my money, even arranged for him to meet some associates so that he could start investing on his own, and he does this to me? Nobody messes with my family.” His eyes darkened as he said, “No one.”
Spike swallowed hard, afraid that statement wasn’t solely directed towards Angel.
Hank whirled towards him and walked right up to the bars. “You like football?”
Shaking his head frantically, he said, “No, sir.”
“Baseball?”
“No, sir.”
“Basketball?”
“Sorry, no.”
There was a beat. “You like any kind of sport?”
“MVP of my rugby team for four straight years. And hockey’s a bit of all right.”
Hank’s tongue flicked the inside of his cheek.
“Don’t know what she sees in you.”
“She sees something in me?” Was it wrong to dig for bones in someone else’s back yard? He couldn’t help it. He just needed to hear that she loved him or that she couldn’t live without him. Either would do. Both for a bonus round.
Hank shrugged. “Jesus Christ, I don’t know how teenage girls think. All I know is she begged me to drop the charges so that’s what I’m doing.”
Spike rushed over to shove his hand through the bars and shake his hand. “Thank you so much, Mr. Summers. Thank you.”
He lifted his chin, ignoring Spike’s proffered hand, and his face scrunched up as if he’d just smelled shit. “Clean up your act. Get a bank account. Some new shoes. And you’ve got to do something about that hair.”
“Not doing a sodding thing to this hair.” Hank pursed his lips and Spike rolled his eyes as he said, “I’ll consider the shoes.”
“It’s just friendly advice. All right, I’m done here,” he said, the last part directed to the officers waiting at the end of the hall.
In the blink of an eye, Hank Summers, infamous and rarely seen father of Buffy Anne Summers, exited LA County Probation Office inside the back seat of his limousine, and disappeared almost as quickly as he arrived.
Spike was released an hour later.