Chapter 22: All Fall Down
Author's Notes: There are a few things I want to point out. First, this is a hard chapter, as is the next one. A lot happens, and some of it is ugly. Second, each character is portrayed as themselves, they speak for themselves. If a particular character casts aspersions on the honesty or worthiness of another character or entire class of people/workers, that is their experience and opinion, not necessarily the actual truth of the situation. Everyone has their own view of the world and their own agenda. So please do not become offended if a character attacks some group or profession as I am not alleging that the character is necessarily right. They may well be, but it is still not meant as hard real world fact. It's a story. The situations are real, the laws are real, and the people are portrayed as actual people do behave. But as the saying goes, one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch (girl). [Ah, Michael Jackson, the early years. *g*]
Mid-December
*Knock Knock Knock* "Coming!" She walked over to the door and asked before opening it, "Who's there?"
"Police! Open the door!"
Buffy froze. *Huh?*
Buffy looked through the peephole and saw that a number of police officers were indeed standing in front of her door.
*Oh God. Zack!*
"Okay! Okay! I'm opening it." She unlocked the door and stood back quickly as the officers rushed her and threw her against the wall face first and spread her legs out. Some woman officer was patting her down and going through her pockets.
"What are you doing!? Why are you doing this?!" Buffy was almost incoherent with shock. *Omigod!*
"The apartment's clear." An officer announced to the tall, young, and completely bald African American man standing nearby. Unlike the other officers, he wore a dark suit with a detective's badge on a chain around his neck. While the others fanned out around the apartment, the bald man remained with Buffy.
Detective Charles Gunn had been assigned the task of searching Faith Lehane's apartment in Sunnydale. He already knew from the investigation report that the suspect lived there with her cousin and a baby. The report was incomplete, however, due to the speed with which the bust was being handled, and he wasn't taking any chances that the blonde girl in front of him was armed or had access to arms in the dwelling. He also had not known when they arrived that Faith was not in the apartment as well.
He watched as a female officer made a quick search of Buffy and nodded to him that she was unarmed. There was only some change and a house key in her jeans pockets. Gunn moved forward and took Buffy's arm and led her over to a hard back chair and sat her down. He pulled up another chair and sat facing the girl.
She was so frightened that she was trembling, and he decided that he would play this as though he was just a friendly investigator doing his job and enlisting her assistance here. He was hoping to draw her into trusting him and giving him information willingly. If he scared her too badly, she'd just freeze up on him. He needed to be reassuring, and at the same time, hold her precarious position over her head as something out of his control should she refuse to cooperate. He needed to position himself as her safe harbor in what for her must be a horrifying situation.
"You're in a world of trouble right now. You can help yourself by being straight with me from the beginning. Understand?" he started in a calm and gentle voice. Around him the officers were systematically tearing the dwelling apart in their search for weapons and drugs and any other items that might prove relevant to their investigation. The warrant was pretty broad and they could look anywhere they chose right now. Buffy was watching them tear everything apart with wide terrified eyes.
"Do you understand?"
"Y-yes. I underst-stand," she stammered. She looked like she might start crying.
"What is your name?"
"Buffy....Buffy Summers."
"Okay, Buffy. My name is Charles Gunn, and I'm a detective with the Sunnydale Police Department. I need to ask you some questions. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Where are Faith Lehane and Robin Wood?"
"Faith? Um, they went away for the weekend. Together." She was distracted by an officer ripping the sofa apart.
"Where did they go?"
"I don't know."
"Sure you do."
"I don't."
"She wouldn't leave on a trip and not mention where she was going. I told you that you need to be straight with me, Buffy. The only way I can help you is if you tell me the truth."
Buffy started crying as she stammered, "I-I really don't kn-now. It was sup-posed to be a sur-prise roman-tic week-end. Even F-faith didn't know where R-robin was taking her."
Suddenly, from another room, a baby started crying. Buffy went stiff immediately and tried to jump up and out of the chair, but Gunn held her back. She swung her head toward him and suddenly the terrified young girl was fierce. "My baby. Give me my baby!" No pleading there, just raw primal ferocity. The transformation was startling. He might have to rethink his opinion of this one.
She struggled against him again, and then looked over to where an officer was carrying the little one into the living room. Buffy tried to rise again, and Gunn stopped her once more.
"Hold on." Gunn ordered Buffy sternly. He rose and gestured to the officer to bring the baby over to him. "Did you search the baby?" The officer looked uncomfortable but replied that the baby and her clothing were clear. Gunn nodded to the officer, and the officer handed the baby to her mother.
Buffy took Katie in her arms and did a cursory examination of her to see if she was indeed unharmed, and seemingly satisfied held the little girl close to her chest and rocked her slightly, back and forth. The baby laid her head down on her mother's shoulder, stuck her thumb in her mouth and hiccuped a few times as she settled down. Buffy glared accusingly at Gunn as she sat down again.
"Don't touch my daughter." Her mouth trembled but her voice was strong and clear.
"Okay, we're good here. You can hold your daughter. But I am still going to talk to you, and you need to cooperate. Understand?"
"Yes." She seemed to be calming down a little, but she no longer resembled a scared little girl. Gunn was impressed.
"Is there anything in this apartment that we should know about?" Gunn continued.
"What do you mean?"
"Drugs, guns, other weapons, false identification papers, anything that you know is illegal. It would help you if you told us about it before we found it on our own. And we will find it, Buffy. As you can see, my men are doing a thorough search."
The girl looked stricken. Guilty. *Interesting. She knows something's here.*
"Tell me."
Silence.
"Tell me now before we find it. It'll only go harder for you if we find it without your help."
"Um, well," Buffy looked really uncomfortable. "My ID card is fake."
Silence.
"And?" Gunn prodded.
"And what?"
"What else?"
"Nothing else. I have a fake ID. That's all." She looked scared again, and Gunn found it difficult to believe that she was that concerned about a fake ID, unless she was wanted in some other jurisdiction or under another name on some other charges.
"Why do you have a fake ID, Buffy? Are you wanted on other charges, needed to hide here with your cousin?"
Buffy looked stricken. Something was seriously wrong here. Before Gunn had a chance to ask her further about this, he heard a commotion in the other room, and an officer entered the living room and called out to Gunn that he needed to 'take a look at this'. Apparently, they'd found something incriminating in a back bedroom.
Gunn told Buffy to stay put and went to see what they'd found. When he returned he looked hard at Buffy.
"You have something you want to tell me?" he asked her in a clipped tone.
Buffy just shook her head and looked puzzled. "No. I don't know what you're talking about. That's my bedroom, there's nothing illegal in my bedroom."
"
Really?" Gunn remarked in disbelief. "What would you call this?" He reached behind him and brought forward the rocking horse for her to see.
"It's a
rocking horse." Buffy frowned and explained as though she thought he was thick. "Those are illegal?"
"They are when they have these hidden inside the seat." Gunn pulled out a bag of what appeared to be drugs of some kind and a gun and two clips of ammunition. The seat had a hollow compartment within that had been screwed closed. It was clear that someone had unscrewed it and discovered the contraband within.
He watched Buffy's entire face go pale and slack in what could only be shock. He handed the toy and it's contents off to an officer and strode quickly over to the girl to catch her if she actually did pass out. She was trying to say something but words weren't actually forming any longer, and then suddenly she burst into great heaving sobs, clutching her daughter and rocking back and forth on the chair.
He tried to get her to stop but she clearly wasn't hearing anything he said any longer. She just sobbed. Not knowing what else to do, he handed his gun to an officer nearby and took the girl in his arms and held onto her and helped support the baby as well. After a couple of minutes she seemed to come around to herself again and looked up at him with big watery eyes.
"I didn't know," she shook her head. "I swear I didn't know...Oh God. In her toy horse! They put it in he-her toy horse!" she just cried and cried, but she was with him now, and he let her settle back into the chair on her own again.
"Buffy, you're going to need to come with me to the station. Do you understand?"
Buffy nodded miserably and looked back over to where an officer was bagging the horse and the contraband as evidence.
"You have the right to remain silent..."
~~~~~~~~
After another brutal scene in which Katie was forcibly removed from her mother's arms, Buffy was handcuffed and taken to the Sunnydale Police station. Their promises that Katie would be fine and that social services had been called to take charge of the little girl did not reassure Buffy in the least. But the big men with the guns were clearly determined to separate them, and she had to relinquish Katie in the end.
She had been seated in an interrogation room about an hour now, and no one had come in to speak to her. The room itself was grey brick top to bottom, with a large metal table and several matching chairs. A large mirror hung on one wall. Buffy knew from watching television that the mirror undoubtedly was a one-way window as well. She knew they were watching her from the other side of the wall, and it was creepy. The room was too cold and she hugged herself trying to keep warm.
She wished someone would come in and talk to her already, so she could explain what had happened and get her daughter back. That was her only hope, that they would believe her and give her Katie again so she could go home. She just wanted to go home.
On the other side of the mirror Gunn was watching the young girl with interest. A search of the apartment had produced other things aside from drugs and the weapons. In his hand he held the fake ID she had confessed to, as well as what he assumed was her real identification and papers. According to a New York school ID card - a private school, from it's name - the girl in that room would be the right age to be a high school junior right now. He thought the girl in that picture looked like a happy cheerleader type. Apparently her life had taken a different turn somewhere. There was an official copy of her birth certificate which confirmed that she was indeed sixteen years old now. The baby's birth certificate named her as Katharine Marie Summers, daughter of Buffy Anne Summers and 'unknown'. She had just turned one last month.
What the hell was this girl doing in Sunnydale California, living with a stripper/drug dealer? Where was her family? Something was very wrong here. He assumed she was a runaway, and from the date of the New York school ID, had left quite a while ago. They checked the national database and contacted New York, but found no match of missing persons/runaways that fit her description.
His primary concern, however, was that she was a juvenile and the mother of a juvenile. That complicated things more than he liked, and he was waiting now for a social worker and court appointed attorney to arrive before he began questioning her any further. He wanted to get this right. This investigation was too high profile to be making rookie mistakes regarding the interrogation and search. He wanted no mistakes, no legal technicalities leaving wiggle room for an acquittal.
"Well,
this is a problem, isn't it?" A familiar voice spoke behind him.
Gunn turned around and smiled at the man behind him. "Hey."
"I've gotta say, I had no idea she was that young. I mean, she seemed young, but some girls do, you know?"
"Yeah."
"Waiting for social services and an attorney?"
"Yeah, I don't want any screw-ups on this one."
"Good idea. Let me know when they get here. I want to watch this interrogation myself."
"Sure thing."
Alone again, Gunn turned back to the window and continued watching the girl.
"What is your story, little girl?" He spoke softly to the girl behind the glass.
Buffy heard the door opening, and looked up to see a short blonde woman in hideous polyester pants and shirt enter the interrogation room. The woman smiled and sat down on the opposite side of the table from Buffy.
"Hello dear," she smiled, nodding and clucking with sympathy. "How are you holding up?"
Buffy just stared at the woman, completely confused by her presence in the room.
"Oh! Where are my manners? Dear me! My name is Pat Winslow, and I'm a social worker with the Department of Social Services, Children and Family Services Division." She paused a moment and placed her hand on top of Buffy's hand. "I'm here to assist you with Katharine, dear."
That got Buffy's full attention. "Katie? Where is she? Can I see her?"
"Well, dear, I'm afraid the police won't let you do that at the moment. But we have Katharine at our office nearby, and she's in good shape, happy as a little clam." Pat assured her. "But we need to get her someplace to stay while you're, shall we say, indisposed."
"You mean, a foster home?" Buffy deflated. This was like a nightmare.
"Yes, exactly. And in order to do that properly, dear, I have some paperwork you need to sign here." Pat pulled some official documents from her briefcase and placed them before Buffy with a pen. "Just sign on this line right here, and we can get Katharine safely tucked away with a good foster family before you can say lickety split!" Pat smiled widely at Buffy, who just stared back at her as though she'd lost her mind.
"What does this mean? It's five pages long. I have to sign this thing before you'll take care of Katie? That doesn't make any sense."
"Well, no, not when you say it like that. What this paper means is that we'll be able to get Katharine in a nice, solid, warm family foster home tonight. If you don't sign it, then she'll have to go to the juvenile shelter up north, where other dependent children and babies with no foster homes live. It's not a good option for Katharine, not when we have an opportunity to get her properly placed nearby, near you, and in a good family home." Pat smiled gently, and pushed the papers forward again, and handed Buffy the pen to sign.
Buffy was uncertain, but the shelter didn't sound like a good place for her baby, so she took the pen and began to sign her name.
The door swung open and a booming voice broke the spell. "Hold on there! Don't sign anything!"
Startled, Buffy dropped the pen and sat back in her chair.
The young man had longish brown hair, and wore blue jeans and t-shirt, with a leather jacket draped over one arm which held a briefcase as well. He strode over to Buffy and held out his hand as he deposited both coat and briefcase on the table, sweeping aside Pat's carefully laid out paperwork as he did so.
"Lindsey MacDonald," the handsome man introduced himself. "I'm your court appointed attorney. And you must never ever sign anything that I haven't given you the go-ahead to sign, okay?"
"Okay." Buffy agreed softly. For a small man, he seemed larger than life. His presence just filled the room. Buffy noticed that Pat suddenly looked unhappy.
"Pat." Lindsey greeted the other woman with less enthusiasm. "Swooping in quickly, I see."
"Mr MacDonald," Pat chided him, "I do not swoop. I was merely trying to get her daughter into a good foster family today."
"Uh-huh. Well I'm sure you'll have no problem getting the baby into a good home without the formality of obtaining the mother's signature. My client will not be signing anything right now."
Pat gathered her documents and pen and stuffed them back into her briefcase. "Fine. Then I'll just be going then," she faced Buffy. "I'll be seeing you when your case comes up before family court then. Don't worry about Katharine. I'm sure she'll be fine."
"You'll make sure of that, won't you Pat?" Lindsey asked as she was walking out the door.
"Of course, Mr MacDonald." Pat sniffed, then shut the door soundly behind her.
Lindsey sat down in the chair next to Buffy and turned to her with all seriousness.
"Lesson One: Never sign anything anyone gives you without your attorney reading it and giving the go signal."
"You didn't even look at it." Buffy observed.
"That's because I knew what it was. And you clearly did not." Lindsey said pointedly.
"What was it?"
"Papers relinquishing full custody of your daughter to the DCFS. Which is not the same thing at all as taking custody of her, without your consent, while your legal situation is sorted out. Those papers would voluntarily give up custody and relinquish your parental rights to your daughter. Which brings us to Lesson Two: never trust social services to act in your best interests until you have made damn sure that they actually are doing so."
Buffy thought she was going to be sick. She had almost signed Katie away. "Why would they do that to me?"
"Because to Pat, you are nothing but a runaway underage unwed mother with no visible means of support, living off the proceeds of drug sales and deeply involved in the drug trade and adult entertainment industry. She sees you and she sees trash. She thinks your daughter would be better off if she never saw you again. And that is Lesson Three: a lot of the people who now control your life and fate see the same thing when they see you. Do not fool yourself. You are nothing but a means to an end to the cops, and a trashy drugged out underage whore to social services."
"And what am I to
you?" Buffy bit out angrily.
"You're my client." Lindsey said quietly. "What else you are remains to be seen."
~~~~~~~
The interrogation went about as well as could be expected. Buffy insisted she knew nothing about drugs or weapons, and had no idea any were in the apartment, and certainly not in her daughter's toy horse. She explained how Faith brought the horse home, and how she called to thank Robin for it. That it was supposed to have come from a shop 'up the coast' but she had no other information about it.
She did not know what Faith did at work but had been told she was an assistant manager of the club now, having started as an exotic dancer, and was Robin's girlfriend for close to a year. She told them that the only other person from that part of Faith's life she had met was Lorne, and she asked whether he was in custody also. She told them that he was a very nice man and that she hoped he wasn't in trouble, too. Gunn told her he could not comment on Lorne's status right now, but he would note her statement for the record.
She explained how she earned money cleaning houses, then taking in sewing. She kept a small notebook of the things Faith had bought for her and the date when she paid her back out of her earnings. She admitted Faith was the primary support for the two of them. She noted with some concern that there was cash in the house and she asked that it be held safe until she was permitted to have it again. Gunn told her she probably wouldn't see that again, as there was no way to prove it was not payment for illegal services. Buffy wanted to argue but Lindsey told her she wasn't going to win that one and to let it go. She pouted, but dropped the subject.
Gunn was frustrated. He wasn't getting anything useful to the investigation from this girl, and Faith and Robin were still in the wind. They had no idea where they were headed but capturing them quickly did not look good. So he decided to turn the interrogation around to Buffy herself. Who was this girl? And what were they going to do with her?
He excused himself from the room for a moment and went to speak to the people watching the interrogation on the other side of the glass. Lilah Morgan, the district attorney assigned to the case, was watching closely, and told him flat out that the only actual crimes they had on her were possession of drugs with intent to sell and possession of the gun and ammo. She could also make a case for child endangerment. She frankly did not believe a word the girl was telling them. In her opinion, anyone could see she was hip deep in this.
Gunn disagreed. He had seen her face when the stash was discovered, and no one acted that well, certainly not this girl. She was also only sixteen, and he thought she belonged in juvenile court, not adult court. That would be his recommendation, unless new evidence of her involvement was discovered. Gunn's boss had been watching also, and his gut told him that Gunn was right on this one. As they argued their points of view, they heard the door to the interrogation room click open, and turned to watch in amazement as an undercover officer entered the room and sat opposite Buffy. Now that Buffy and Lindsey were not alone, Gunn reached over and turned the sound back up, wondering what would happen next.
Buffy was stunned. How could this be possible? "But you're..." she trailed off.
"Hi sweetpea. Been a long day for you, hasn't it?" the tall man smiled sympathetically from across the table.
Lindsey leaned toward Buffy and asked, "You know him?"
"Lorne." she said simply.
Lorne smiled wider, and took her hands in his own large ones and squeezed them reassuringly. He looked exactly the same as always, larger than life and clothed in the loudest clothes she had seen on him so far. The detective's badge he wore on a chain around his neck was the only thing that identified him in any way as a police officer. Buffy was thunderstruck.
"You're a...."
"Cop. Yeah. I've been undercover at the club for almost two years now."
"So that's why you wear those clothes?"
"No, these are actually my clothes." Lorne nodded genially.
Gunn and the others chuckled at that one. They teased Lorne about his choice in clothes all the time.
"Oh. Sorry." Buffy looked down. *Good Buffy, insult the only cop here who knows you and might help you. Swell.*
"Believe it or not, I get that a lot. No offense taken honey." he smiled. "Now, tell me what your story is sweetheart. We can't help you if we don't know where you've come from and why you're here."
Buffy looked at Lindsey, who nodded that she could answer the questions. And she told her whole story to Lorne that evening, leaving out the rape. She didn't want anyone to know about that. If other people knew, then someday Katie might find out and Buffy never wanted that to happen. She'd make up something, but she'd never let her little girl know that she came into this world in such an ugly way. She knew Faith would keep her secret, but she trusted no one else with it.
After she had told everything there was to tell, Lorne smiled again and told her he'd be right back and left the room.
"What do you think will happen now?" Buffy turned to Lindsey worriedly.
"That depends on whether they believe you."
"Do you believe me?"
Lindsey looked somberly at the girl before him, and replied softly. "Yeah, I do."
"Thank you." She stared at her hands in her lap. "So you don't think I'm a trashy, drugged out, underage, unwed-mother whore?"
Lindsey smiled. "No ma'am."
"Good." A lone tear ran down her face, and she wiped it away with her hand. "Good."
Lorne approached the group on the other side of the glass. "She's telling the truth. I've seen her at her home on more than one occasion, and she doesn't know anything. Faith keeps her completely in the dark about the club, especially once she found out about the drug and stolen identity business going on there. Faith loves Buffy, and they're cousins, but with completely different upbringing and life experiences. Faith protected Buffy from the harsher parts of life, she didn't want her to know about these things. Buffy's practically an innocent. And she has no business anywhere near adult court." This last he spoke to Lilah, who just shook her head and crossed her arms as she surveyed the men around her.
"You men. You're so easy. A hard luck tale from a beautiful young thing and you fall all over yourselves trying to protect her. Fine. We'll bring this to juvenile court, and she will still be charged with child endangerment." She held up a hand when the men began to object. "I'm sorry, but she has been living in a precarious situation as a runaway three thousand miles from her home and taken a tiny baby along for the ride. She lives with a stripper and 'assistant manager' of an illegal drug organization. She is not getting off without going before a judge and making her case."
Gunn and Lorne looked unhappy, but nodded their understanding.
"You can testify for her if you wish to do so. I'm sure she could use some character witnesses when the time comes. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going into the room and explain the charges to Ms. Summers."
Gunn and Lorne followed Lilah into the interrogation room, and listened while the charges were explained to her and she was told that she would be charged in juvenile court. The first hearing would be on Monday. Since this was Saturday, she would be housed in the jail for the rest of the weekend, and would be kept separate from adult prisoners in the local lock-up. Gunn nodded his understanding of that stipulation.
Lindsey told Buffy he'd see her on Monday morning, before she was brought before the juvenile judge.
And with that, Gunn led Buffy away to her first night in jail. She had never felt so lonely in her entire life.
As she curled up on the narrow bunk, she said a prayer for Katie, that she'd be okay wherever she was now. She asked God to keep her baby out of the juvenile shelter and that she hoped she could be in a loving foster family for a few days until she could get custody of her again. And she thanked Him for sending her Lindsey, Gunn, and Lorne to help her, and also for Faith, that she'd be safe wherever she was tonight.
If she ever saw Faith again, though, she was going to seriously kick her ass for exposing her daughter to drugs and a gun hidden inside her own toy. That was unforgivable. There was no going back from that one. Never.
Finally, late that night, Buffy fell into a fitful sleep.
So ended Day One.