Voices in the Dark

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part III

She’s out there, I know she is. The night air is thick with murder, and whenever there’s devilment afoot you can count on finding her in the middle of it. Even when she doesn’t start it herself (and even I don’t blame her for everything that happens in this misbegotten town), she flies straight to trouble like beetles to a lava lamp. How can I be expected to maintain order when I have her tripping me up at every turn?

I still dream about the blissful day I expelled her, and the happy humdrum months that followed. The death rate dropped nine per cent while she was out of town, and you want to tell me that was a coincidence? But no, the ACLU had to get into it, and her sultry Nordic spitfire of a mother, and suddenly she’s under my feet again and the FDA is confiscating the band candy and there’s another pocket quake under the library, and who catches the flak for all that? Me, who else?

No one else understands this job, no one else can see this stinking quagmire of a school from my perspective. Do they think I enjoy riding roughshod over these pestilential children, crushing their spirits, dimming the eager light in their eyes? Well, yes, actually I do, but that’s beside the point. I serve an important function here, I’m one of the unsung heroes who hold everything together. I don’t expect glory or even recognition, I’m no fool. But do they have to call me “Ferengi” and “Ratboy” and “impotent Nazi troll”?

Fine, let them laugh to each other and whisper names behind my back. I have the pride of a man doing a thankless task for the greater good. I’m the first line of defense against chaos, madness, the collapse of civilization. I run a tight ship, I brook no nonsense, I keep things in order. I’m the Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike, I’m Horatio at the bridge, I’m Mister Waverly orchestrating those U.N.C.L.E. pretty boys in holding Thrush at bay. I may not be popular, but … well, the last man to hold this office was a cheerful tolerant namby-pamby who got himself eaten on school property. You’re not about to see that happen to me.

Somehow everything keeps coming back to her. She’s a slippery one: always with an alibi, always with that smarmy Brit backing her up, always with her guerrilla group of student accomplices. (And her mother. If I could just get my hands on … no, drop that.) Sly, and sullen, and defiant, and right on the hair-trigger edge of instant violence. Behaviorally speaking, she’s a perfect twin for that little psychopath Mayor Wilkins has taken under his wing —

Oh. Well. I didn’t really want to go there. I have enough sleepless nights already without letting in those kinds of thoughts.

It’s Detective Stein’s fault. I had more than my share of worries and headaches, but never any doubts until he invited me to sit in on his weekly poker game. Just a few civil servants getting together to relax and trade war stories: him, Hiro, and Finch, and I made the fourth. I don’t win any friends in this job, so I jumped at the chance to at least be with people who understood what it was like. And even though I’m no hot shakes at cards, I did okay, I usually came out twenty or thirty dollars ahead every night we met.

The real game, though, was the conversation. War stories, I said; we all had plenty of those, but right out of the gate I learned there were rules for the telling. The most important one was to never let on exactly what it was that we were talking about. Say it casually, straight face, no excitement or raised eyebrows, we’re just a bunch of regular guys mentioning the things we have to deal with at work. The wonderful warm sense of shared knowledge was more liberating than any gushing gabfest; the whole point was that we didn’t have to say it all straight out, we understood.

That was how it worked for me, anyhow. Finch said the least, and did the poorest job of looking nonchalant. In a way I liked him for that. Stein is always stolid and imperturbable, the best poker face I’ve ever seen; and Hiro talks about the things that pass through the coroner’s office with a gentle little smile and a twinkle in his eye, even when the subject is someone’s heart burnt out from the inside, or bones turned to yogurt, or brain extracted through the nostrils; but Finch was scared, plain and simple. He and I could both see how serious this whole business is, and now he’s dead, and I know she had something to do with it even if Stein says her story checks out clean.

Because I don’t trust him. He and Hiro are following an agenda of their own, a game inside a game inside a game, dropping hints, making me afraid to believe in anything. It was all so subtle I still don’t really know when it began, but … well, sometimes the things a man doesn’t say carry a message all their own. Never really anything I can put my finger on, but it’s filling my mind with questions they won’t admit to raising, and I know they’re doing it deliberately.

I won’t. I won’t let them weaken me. I believe in Richard Wilkins, more than anyone else he’s kept this town from spinning away into insanity. He picked me for this job, he’s stood behind me when the bleeding hearts and alarmists were ready to turn the school into a parking garage, and I swore to him I’d give the best I have. I won’t back down from that promise.

Only …

Only there was that little clandestine night meeting in the cafeteria, and the box full of those hellish spiders, and the Mayor’s new protégée, the one who looks like a motorcycle moll. Why was he meeting in secret? Why was she carrying that evil-looking knife? How did his face heal from the same wounds that killed the cop? Why, with my employer and superior on one side, and all the usual suspects on the other, did I not know which side to be more afraid of?

Why was Finch part of the group that worked so cunningly to make me question my loyalties? Why is Stein so blandly unconcerned about the regulatory roadblocks that have been holding up the new security measures at the school? Why am I not allowed to fire that Limey librarian, or at least bar his prissy “cousin” from coming and going on school property? Whatever happened to the Mayor’s other associate, the snappily-dressed black man with the charming smile and eyes that looked you over like you were top sirloin?

So much depends on me. The weight of the world rests on my shoulders, responsibilities no one else could possibly understand. I want to do the right thing. Maybe … maybe a man in my position has an obligation to hedge his bets.

Mayor Wilkins has really been pushing to get the security upgrades in place before graduation, especially the metal detectors. He’s always pleasant, but every time a state ruling has caused another delay (building codes, mandatory minority contract bidding, materials inspections, a red tape nightmare), I’ve seen his smile get a little stiffer. We only have a few weeks left now. In my time as a school administrator, I’ve learned a trick or two for tweaking the process; if I really pushed, with a bit of luck I could see it finished by the original deadline.

But, you know, there are structural repairs that also need to be done, and our budget isn’t unlimited. Leaders have to make decisions; sometimes it’s a matter of weighing the benefits and going with your gut. All things considered, I think we’ll be okay if the metal detectors are installed in time for the Fall term. Not my fault if those pinheads in Sacramento have to micromanage everything, it’s just the way the system works.

Besides, what does it matter? The biggest thorn in my side will be gone after this school year ends. Personally I hope she goes to college somewhere in Bosnia, but even if she picks UC Sunnydale I’ll still see to it that her shadow never darkens my campus again.

So close to deliverance, so close! Some terrible snarl in the fates wouldn’t let me beat her, but then she couldn’t beat me, either. And in such a very little time, she’ll leave for good.

Graduation can’t come soon enough to suit me.

 

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